Category Archives: Uncategorized

Afraid I’ve been a bit lazy with updating this blog – we visited Mi Tierra in October ’22, and I’m only writing this in April ’23 – so will be brief as my memory is a bit blurred. Colombia holds a special place in my heart – I spent eight months in the country aContinue reading “19. Colombia. Mi Tierra, Tottenham”

Afraid I’ve been a bit lazy with updating this blog – we visited Four Seasons in Chinatown in September ’22, and I’m only writing this in April ’23 – so will be brief as my memory is a bit blurred. Chinese is, of course, one of the world’s great cuisines, with an enormous richness andContinue reading “18. China. Four Seasons, Chinatown”

“If this is what Canadian food is like, I don’t think I ever want to visit that country!” Such was my summary to my dining companions (Alf, Mum and Dad) after our meal at The Maple Leaf, a sports bar in Covent Garden. The Canada-themed pub is part of the Greene King chain, so IContinue reading “17. Canada. The Maple Leaf, Covent Garden”

While I was waiting for Alf in Deptford, I sat in a pub opposite Maestro Bar, which is probably the only proper Cameroonian restaurant in London. I began reading reviews of the place on Google, and started to feel rather worried. Plenty of one-star ratings from peeved patrons about slow service left me feeling ratherContinue reading “16. Cameroon. Maestro Bar, Deptford”

I believe waiting staff channel the national spirit. Think of those wonderfully friendly American ‘servers’. Snide Parisian waiters. Thin-skinned Italians. Bored Brits. Well, the Bulgarian waiters at Sunny Beach, a restaurant near Turnpike Lane, were amusingly blunt – a characteristic I associate with the handful of other Bulgarians I’ve ever met. In a way, IContinue reading “15. Bulgaria. Sunny Beach, Turnpike Lane”

The best steaks are often described as ‘melting’ in the writer’s mouth. This description never made much sense to me and doesn’t seem particularly desirable. The whole joy of a steak is that it’s something to get your teeth into. Still, the steaks at Kaipiras, a small neighbourhood establishment down a Kilburn side street, comeContinue reading “14. Brazil. Kaipiras, Kilburn”

¡Qué idiota! Having sat down and browsed the menu at El Rincon, a quiet canteen on the noisy Holloway Road, I realised I’d made an unforgiveable mistake: this wasn’t really a Bolivian restaurant. We’ve been quite strict about eating at places that only do the food of the named nation. This is the main reasonContinue reading “13. Bolivia. El Rincon, Holloway”

I’ve got a lot of time for Belgium. It’s a small country that does a few things very, very well. Augustly preserved medieval towns. Tick Cartoons. Tick Large international institutions. Tick But above all it’s the world-beating beer, mussels, chips with mayonnaise and chocolate that really set this understated low country apart. So, I hadContinue reading “12. Belgium. The Dovetail, Farringdon”

Before meeting me and our mum for dinner in Croydon at 6:30, Alf had necked a frankly astonishing four pints with his teacher colleagues in Kilburn…on a Wednesday. Unsurprisingly, he merrily wolfed down his meal at Big Mike’s Calypso Kitchen, although he also needed to pee a lot, which was a problem since the establishmentContinue reading “11. Barbados. Big Mike’s Calypso Kitchen, Croydon”

We knew this one would be special the moment we walked through Kolapata’s door on Whitechapel Road. Bangladeshi families sat at metal tables enjoying their Friday right dinner, chatting in Sylheti, while waiters bustled around delivering plates of tasty looking food on trolleys. Sitting at one of the last available spaces by the door, AlfContinue reading “10. Bangladesh. Kolapata, Whitechapel”