Tom E.'s Profile

A little bit pricey compared to your local chippy but WELL worth it.

Fantastic fish and chips, whitebait and crispy squid. Easily the best I've had in London. READ THAT AGAIN!

Great location and friendly staff as well. Do yourself a favour and spend a few bob more than usual on a great dinner in Hammersmith.

Stephen's replies to my grumpy review are pretty fair, I guess.

Power to him for replying!

Do you like Masterchef? If the answer's yes then you'll love The Pass. By dining within the kitchen, by having TVs focused on the chefs at work and by being able to walk up to the pass where the plating is done, the whole experience is akin to being on the set of a show like Masterchef and of course... unlike sitting at home in front of the TV here you get to eat the delights that have been made up. Wonderful!

After hearing good things from Yee Gan, we actually went on a whim. Waking up on a Sunday morning and booking through the Opentable app that's within this very webpage you're reading. Within a few hours we were seated for Sunday lunch choosing which tasting menu to go for and what wine to have. Nice to know that great Michelin-level dining can be a last minute decision.

Without going into too much long-winded detail we went for the 5 course Sunday lunch tasting menus, added the optional cheese course (goats cheese and apples in various forms - a must!) and also got the amuse bouches, all in all giving us 7 courses each. We alternated the options on the menu so we could taste everything between the two of us, and the diversity was outstanding in both ingredients, textures and cooking techniques. All-in-all, this 2 hour long lunch with 14 plates, a wine and a beer came to 108 pounds for 2 of us. Incredibly reasonable for the standard of cooking, service and the theatre of the kitchen.

Let's keep this review simple:

Incredibly annoying place with ridiculously overpriced food that looks good under the fancy lights but tastes no better than any authentic bakery round the corner. You can buy a loaf of bread here for 7 POUNDS. For 1 loaf. I kid you not Mr Moneybags!

Princi simply seems to be about looking good and being expensive. It's the food equivalent to the make-up and perfume stands that clutter the entrance to every department store.

Custard donuts that overflow the yellow goodstuff are always welcome with me. Shall I buy one, or two.... or wait a minute there's about 100 other things I'd like to try here.

I think my advice for my future self will have to be to ignore everything else edible at Portobello Road Market so that by the time I reach its furthest end I'm famished and flush with cash. This should then allow me to at least sample 10% of the offerings at Lisboa Patisserie, including the donuts, the custard tarts and the choziro or parma ham rolls.

There's one main reason to come here - warm, wet balls. I'm talking about xiao long bao of course (or XLB simplicity). Beijing Dumpling is one of a few dumpling specialists that have recently arisen in Chinatown and have added the much-sought after soup-filled dumpings known as XLB to London's must-eat list. I think they could be the best.

The first thing you'll notice is the XLB being made as Beijing have cleverly put their dumpling-making kitchen right at the front window on Lisle St. This means you can see your lunch being expertly crafted and smell the pastry, soup and meet even before you open the door to the stylish wood-interior dining room. It also means that sometimes you can't see anything due to a crowd of euro food tourists with giant digital SLRS taking photos.

There are 6 or so different variants of XLB or soup broth with dumplings in and apart from that the menu is quite yawn. The XLB are decent, if small (they come in eights) and have a nice consistency which means they don't break but don't taste just like pastry. Good job BD!

Definitely worth a try, and if you have the chutzpah too, it's definitely worth asking them why they're called 'Beijing Dumpling' when XLB is actually from Shanghai.

Very popular on a Friday night. Not sure if that's anything to do with Catholics having fish suppers on Fridays or more to do with Pensioners celebrating the weekend. Either way, turn up early if you want to get one of the plastic-topped tables and not just stand in the take away queue.

As the other reviews say, this place does great Fish and Chips and feels proper bonafide London through and through. Pickled onion with your plate sir? We had a lovely crispy whitebait starter and satisfyingly bright-green mushy peas. Our cod and chips (regular size) were too large to finish but golden crispy and delicious. I particularly loved their chips here. We also had a special of grilled sea bream which was fantastic and a massive portion given the price of a tenner. You'd get half of the fish for 20 quid anywhere else and it'd be ruined by some french sauce, so hats off to master superfish for cooking it right.

Highly recommended timewarp fish and chips. Their signs still have their phone number beginning '071...' which means they've not bothered updating them since before 1995.

Blimey - the most authentic Thai dinner in London turns out to be in a pub basement!   You'd never know from on the street that The Heron is something so special, so take my word from it and try it out. This restaurant not only serves some of London's best Thai food but the whole experience is straight out of suburban Bangkok. The dishes are flavoured, spiced and look exactly like they would at a Bangkok night market. Even the fading 90s-nightclub style is just the same as thousands of cafes in Thailand. The cocktails list is typically Thai, with Coke and Chivas Regal listed well-up the top (Thailand's love of bad whisky has always amused me).

You'll not be surprised to hear that at 8pm the whole joint starts doing Thai karaoke as well. If this isn't your thing then come a little earlier. The song book is positively encyclopedic though and worth a browse.

Considering how hidden the Heron is, how rough the upstairs pub is and how cheesy the dining room looks - it's actually incredibly popular, especially with Thais. You'll need to book one to get your hands on a few of the 20 or so seats. We were there on a Friday night and many unsuspecting diners were turned away having not booked.

Quick description of our dinner - we had two of the house specials, the rich and wonderful orange curry (a sour and spicy soup with prawns and citrus flavours) and the fried sea-bass done EXACTLY like in Thailand with irresistible crispy skin and a side-dish of spicy sauce. As well as these two we also took one of their som tums (papaya salads) of which there are many options. Som Tum is Thailand's real favourite dish and usually comes incredibly spicy. We went for Som Tum with grilled pork neck and it was just perfect, blowing away all other som tums I've had in London (and I've had quite a few).

So the Heron, just a scruffy pub behind thousands of Lebanese restaurants? No. A new best for Thai food in London? Quite probably.

I was SO tempted to follow-up on Yee Gan's review and ask if they had free wifi. But even asking to use the wash basin next to the til was met with a glare of 'what kind of place do you think this is?' Politely they did point out that they have a toilet downstairs... phew.

Yep, there's no mistaking that this place is barebones original Chinatown but it's also very good. In terms of decor and ambiance it's the Chinese equivalent of the most plastic-chaired ketchup greasy spoons you've ever been too. No frills, no fuss. And like a good greays spoon it's a great place for a cheap cup of tea and some nourishing grub. At Sun Luen almost all that grub is bread-based and delicious although the soya bean jelly in the fridge under the counter is also a big draw, and was satisfying at least 70% of the customers while we were there.

Next time you want a warm cup of tea and a cake, ditch the Pat Vals and Starbucks and try out Sun Luen instead. Trust me - you'll save a packet and far prefer their red-bean buns to a crappy chocolate muffin any day.

Addie's is one of the ten or so Thai restaurants in London that cater mostly for the Thai community rather than for native Thai-food lovers. They have an authentic menu including Isaan street-food, and a downstairs area for karaoke parties. The decor is quite cool and modern with gorgeous little scale models of street-food stalls framed on the walls. The place is frequented heavily by London's Thai students - so much so that booking in advance at the weekend is essential. The whole restaurant is buzzing with cool young Thai kids who've spent their parent's money on Kings Road early that day. You can't move for boutique shopping bags.

But on to the food and drink... the Thai food is great, but not London's best and the prices here feel a good 20 to 30% more than many equivalents. We had the Isaan sausage (gorgeous but I'd give it London's bronze), a fermented fish som tum (disappointing), fried cat fish in morning glory (wonderful), a spicy lemongrass and pork soup (very sharp) and grilled pork neck (very tasty but not stellar). With rice, sticky rice and a beer and Thai iced tea it came to about 45 pounds.

Addie's is definitely worth a try, especially with a big group. Book early and plan to party.