Eat streets: how to feast your way down London's best resto-roads including Goodge Street and Kingsland Road

Scandi sandwiches, cracking fried chicken and super-hot curry — four top food writers including Fay Maschler and Victoria Stewart find feasts on London’s best resto-roads
These streets: ubiquitous street food steps aside for fully fledged foodie destinations (Picture: Getty)

There is street food, of course. That über-trendy now ever-present fact of life in London where trucks, vans and stalls pop up along the likes of King’s Boulevard behind King’s Cross station. And then there are food streets.

For a single road to become a fully fledged avenue of deliciousness it needs a cluster of good restaurants. While Brick Lane is famous for its Indian food, and Whitecross Street offers Clerkenwell the best Latin-American burritos, to qualify for serious food heritage status a thoroughfare needs variety. Here, four food writers take a wander down the London streets that make them hungry.

William Sitwell on Golborne Road, W10

Under the tall shadow of Trellick Tower, north of Portobello Road, Golborne Road has long been a hub of Moroccan and Portuguese food. Market stalls jostle with street food vendors. There are cafés, delis, a patisserie and the long- standing fish market, Golborne Fisheries. For locals, the quality of coffee and pastries, and the fresh veg and fish has never been a secret. But today a smattering of decent restaurants has put the street on the foodie map.

First, a few years back, there was Pizza East Portobello (pizzaeast.com), bringing to this neck of the woods a taste of laid-back Shoreditch style with its wood-oven pizzas, antipasti, cured meats and cheese.

But the past 12 months have seen a smattering of newcomers which have pricked the ears, and more importantly the tastebuds, of food critics, and cemented this road’s reputation as a new food paradise.

Just next door to Maramia Café (maramia.com), which delivers perfectly on its promise of “The Taste of Palestine”, is John Doe (johndoerestaurants.com), whose chef Mark Blatchford cooks over English ash charcoal on grills and in his beefy oven, Bertha. His octopus in aioli is worth the mile-long schlep up Portobello Road from Notting Hill Gate on a cold and gusty night. He also turns out exquisite duck hearts on toast and lamb’s tongue with celeriac remoulade. A place at the bar enables the diner to watch the action.

Opposite, Snaps + Rye (snapsandrye.com) offers a pure breath of Danish air with its open sandwiches, meatballs and tartly delicious — if typographically challenging — smørrebrød: buttered rye bread. Further over the bridge there is West Thirty Six (w36.co.uk), offering a taste of Chiltern Firehouse style and — if you can manage to get served — plates of wonderful chargrilled organic salmon and melting slow-cooked ribs.

These smarter additions seem to be going down well with the established street food vendors. “It’s great that more and more people are coming here,” says Kass, the man in the van who runs Kass Morrocan Treat. “There’s an exciting atmosphere and we’re so busy now.”

Hassan, at the Moroccan Fish Grill agrees: “We’ve been here for 15 years and it’s great for us. There’s a real excitement to the market.”

But Ali, who runs the Ethnic Minorities Convenience Foods Stall is less enamoured: “The road has changed for the worse. Some days I’m happy and some days I’m not.” He should pop his head into John Doe, which will bring a smile to the saddest face.

Neighbourhood nosh: tucking in at Chicken Shop, Tooting

Fay Maschler goes to Goodge Street, W1

The grandaddy of Goodge Street restaurants, The Spaghetti House (spaghettihouse.co.uk) at number 15 will celebrate its 60th birthday this September. The enduring love for an Italian formula arguably more London than Lombardy is substantiated by the venerable Sicilian family-run Trattoria Mondello (020 7637 9037) at number 36.

Spanish/Italian tapas bar and restaurant Salt Yard (saltyard.co.uk) chose number 54 as the first outlet in its admirable small group. The joint is always jumping. It was soon joined by Barrica (barrica.co.uk) at number 62 — sister restaurant of Soho’s Copita — with a not wholly dissimilar offering but greater loyalty to Catalonia, specifically Barcelona.

The authentic Japanese Izakaya Yoi Sho (020 7323 0477), at number 33, opens in the evenings only in time for thirsty salary men. It came up with wooden railings long before trendy Barnyard around the corner in Charlotte Street. Hotpots, Szechuan, Hubei (central China) cooking, and karaoke are all available at Sanxia Renjia (sanxia.co.uk), number 29, where the best dishes are to be had by straying from the familiar into hot and spicy territories.

Chains are evident in Goodge Street as well. A popular, burgeoning one is Papaya at number 27, where South-East Asian snacks and Thai stir-fries and curries attract lengthy queues.

Two newbies that aim to banish the clamp of two slices of bread are Wrap It Up! (wrapitup.co.uk) at number 31b, where fillings for cold and hot wraps take their inspiration from around the world, and Indian burrito-seller Wrapchic (wrapchic.co.uk) at number 48, which sells rather endearing-sounding wraplettes, wraposas and wrapchos. Curry recipes based on fish, chicken, mutton or soya are regional.

Apparently the lava-rock grilled burgers created by Terry Thompson at the original Kua’Aina (kua-aina.co.uk) on Hawaii’s North Shore in 1975 — at number 40 — are a favourite of President Obama. I suppose he knows that the name is often used to describe a country bumpkin.

That peak lobster has been reached seems to be confirmed by the recently opened Fraq’s Lobster Shack (fraqslobstershack.com) at number 55 by a completely empty shell of a place at 1.30pm on a sunny weekday. The loud music that some objected to is these days turned down.

Stop press! To this Babel of feeding places in one short street soon comes Moba (moba.co.uk) at number 53 offering bahn mi and boulangerie and promising a fusion of Asian and French flavours, and Percy & Founders (percyandfounders.co.uk), which opens on March 26 in Fitzroy Place (where once stood the Middlesex Hospital).

Eat Streets - in pictures

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Helen Graves heads to Tooting High Street, SW17

Tooting is now officially up-and-coming, but locals have been enjoying its range of good value restaurants for years. One of the best is the Sri Lankan Apollo Banana Leaf (apollobananaleaf.com), which serves dishes such as fried mutton rolls; creamy aubergine masala so good you won’t know whether to eat it or roll in it; the lurid purple guilty pleasure that is the tasty and terrifying Chicken 65; and devilled mutton, which comes covered in dark spice paste, glittering with curry leaves.

If the Banana Leaf is closed then get yourself up the road to Jaffna House (jaffnahouse.co.uk), another slightly scruffy Sri Lankan and South Indian place with décor that’s more front room than fine dining, but serves cheap, vibrant food. Puffy oothappams are thick pancakes with vegetables and coconut, which taste perfect smeared with too much spicy chutney. Naan breads are spectacular, and the 12-item Friday lunch thali is ridiculously good value at £6.50.

If it’s dosa you want, then you could do worse than Dosa n Chutny (dosanchutny.co.uk), across from Tooting Broadway station. Huge papery dosa come with spicy lentil sambar and coconut chutneys at silly prices (£3.90 for the mysore masala). And for some of the best seekh kebabs in town, and a decent chicken karahi, Pakistani restaurant Lahore Karahi (lahorekarahirestaurant.co.uk) is the place. Always packed with queuing locals, it’s cheap, cheerful and fun.

Not in the mood for spice? No problem. The Honest Burgers chain (honestburgers.co.uk) now has a branch here. Its “best of British” approach includes the use of Ginger Pig beef and British cheeses such as Cheddar and Stilton. Don’t forget to order a side of the excellent chips with rosemary salt.

There are also new arrivals in town. Chicken Shop (chickenshop.com) has arrived south of the river, and its simple menu of rotisserie chicken and sides is hard to find fault with. A side salad is surprisingly good, as are house-made hot sauces.

Finally, there’s Tota (tota-restaurant.co.uk), the modern British face of Tooting High Street, with produce sourced from south London and a menu filled with hot-right-now items such as pickles and buttermilk onion rings. It’s open all day, too. Ladies and gentlemen, brunch has officially arrived in Tooting.

Victoria Stewart strolls down Kingsland Road, E8

In 2009, when the chef Nuno Mendes began The Loft Project, inviting up-and-coming chefs to host supper clubs at his home on Kingsland Road, the once grimy thoroughfare that tips into Shoreditch High Street was best known for its abundance of Vietnamese restaurants. A year later the opening of the Overground line sent the Kingsland Road into a sizzle. Now there are more restaurants than you can shake a fork at.

Taking a two-pronged approach, let’s start with the lively food hub around Dalston Junction. Turning left out of the station you could keep going towards the vibrant Vietnamese café Salvation in Noodles (salvationinnoodles.co.uk) for pho and coffee on Balls Pond Road, or you could turn the corner, falling straight into the laps of the Mussel Men (musselmen.com), former street food traders who now host messy seafood roasts and thumb wars at number 584.

At 592 the Arancini Brothers (arancinibrothers.com), who used to sell unimaginably high numbers of melt-in-the-mouth Italian risotto balls at markets, now have this permanent site.

Opposite, at 511, is the Chinese-inspired café Fan Tong (fantong.co.uk), which opened last year serving Szechuan spiced pork and hot chicken. On the right at 464 is the cheerful brunch spot, A Little of What You Fancy (alittleofwhatyoufancy.info).

Moving towards the hamlet of Haggerston is Chick ’n’ Sours (chicknsours.co.uk) at 390, which will be opened in mid-April by chef Carl Clarke, the man behind the Rock Lobsta pop-ups. Drop in for house-fried chicken, south-east Asian-inspired side dishes and sour cocktails.

Meanwhile, for good wine and plates of pumpkin gnudi, scamper further down to Rotorino (rotorino.com), Stevie Parle’s restaurant at number 434.

Or if you fancy eating your way around the world, try something from one of the many street food stalls at Hawker House, the latest venture from the Street Feast brigade (streetfeastlondon.com), which pops down after Easter.

From there on the good stuff is off the main road: pulled pork at Duke’s Brew and Que (dukesbrewandque.com), brilliant ramen at Tonkotsu East (tonkotsu.co.uk), light lunch by Jones & Sons at TripSpace (tripspace.co.uk) overlooking the canal, or coffee and brunch at one of four neighbouring cafes on the towpath.

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