Is London still the centre of the restaurant universe?

There has become something of a running joke among my friends that I’m never in the country. Given that here at Threadneedle Media we also run a travel magazine it is somewhat of a fitting statement – between work trips and holidays I have managed to leave the country at least once a month in 2024. It is great for the side of me that finds London an abundant sensory overload – not so great for this column where I’m meant to tell you about all of the fabulous places I’ve eaten in the capital.

It is in many ways helpful for the food writing side of my job, though. Restaurants don’t exist in a vacuum and while London can often feel like the centre of the universe, it is but 605 square miles in our big wide world. Getting out to visit other places not only helps contextualise the way we eat in London and the trends that grip the restaurant industry, but it also helps me shed my London-centric goggles.

Take, for example, my trip to Amsterdam earlier this month. For dinner on our third night we headed to Amsterdam Noord, first for drinks at Oedipus Brewing, and then onto Cornerstore for dinner. I was struck by how much the neighbourhood reminded me of Hackney Wick – the expansive outdoor courtyard at the brewery easily could have been the restaurant and bar-lined Queen’s Yard (which is, among other things, home to Crate Brewery), while the former-industrial home of Cornerstore with its DJ spinning vinyl and abundance of cowboy boot-clad twenty-somethings felt like someone had amalgamated five of Hackney’s best restaurants into one and plonked it inside a simulacrum of the East London suburb just across the North Sea.

Over dinner (Pan-Asian small plates and natural wines – all of it very good) my partner and I spoke about my assumption that London – or East London at least – had informed this area of a foreign city, rather than the other way around. It is, of course, natural to assume the place you live is the blueprint as humans are always inclined to find familiarity, but I think when it comes to London and restaurants there is another layer to it. For example, when I go home to Auckland, New Zealand, a place that is entirely familiar to me, I still find myself picking out places that I assume have taken influence from the city I currently live in.

There is Pici on Karangahape Road which was started by a former Padella chef and brings the pared-back menu of exceptional pasta to one of Auckland’s main gastronomic thoroughfares, alongside the Italian joint on Ponsonby Road which replicates the naughty exuberance of the Big Mamma group, and the restaurant from an iconic Kiwi chef which quite literally serves the St. John bone marrow – it even name checks Fergus Henderson on the menu. But there are also the exceptional fine dining restaurants that seem to be pulling influence from Copenhagen’s early New Nordic movement and redefining what New Zealand cuisine really is, like Ben Bayly’s Ahi, Tala in Parnell and the truly astounding Chef’s Table at Blue Duck Station.

This Nordic influence found its way to London as well, but mutated almost entirely upon arrival, because London seems to be hell-bent on making everything its own. Here, the core ideas of seasonality and local ingredients may find themselves interpreted as a motherlode of Lake District produce and day boat fish at Aulis, or given a Korean edge at Sollip.

Up in Scotland, meanwhile, I found deceptively simple and extremely delicious small plates at The Palmerston that had whispers of Brawn or Rochelle Canteen about them and astonishing pastries at Lannan that could have been from Toad or Fortitude or Chatsworth Bakehouse. The problem, though, is that I left wanting more of these restaurants I ate at outside of London. Because while I could name a number of similar spots within a 30 minute walk from my front door in London to almost everywhere I’ve been on these trips, in actual fact many of them were (whisper it…) pushing the boundaries in ways I haven’t seen for a little while in the city. Perhaps it’s the high rents financially prohibiting new concepts from opening or simply the fact that we’re all too bogged down in this idea that London is the centre of the universe to properly experiment, but I returned from these trips hoping for a slice of Amsterdam along the canal, or a little pocket of Edinburgh in London Fields, rather than the opposite.

I wanted to be able to pop into Freddy’s Bar at Hotel De L’Europe for a martini made with pickle juice and Heineken bitters before settling in above the water at Brasserie Marie for a peaceful dinner watching the boats chug past. I wanted to be able to head to Buurtcafe De Tros for smash burgers and fried slabs of lasagne all washed back with copious glasses of natural wine, or Gebr Hartering (Brothers Hartering) for comfortably the best steak of my life. I wanted the togarashi fries from Ramen Dayo in Glasgow, and a perfect plate of slow roast lamb with harissa chickpeas at The Palmerston.

I do think that, not that long ago, London was the most exciting place in the world to eat – and I still believe that many global dining trends have originated within the confines of the M25, but I also feel that a potent cocktail of increasing costs, the lingering hangovers of Brexit and Covid and insane VAT for restaurants has meant that London’s reputation is teetering. For now, I’ll have to make do with finding familiarity in the new elsewhere.