The worst areas to eat in London are the best places to live. Hampstead, Chelsea, Chiswick, St John’s Wood: all would be lucky to have even one restaurant that would be an 8/10 in Hackney. This is disappointing because Hackney is annoying, but, hey, hipsters make good restaurants.
I wonder why these areas are so lacking. Is it because St John’s Wood Man has an underpaid cook on speed dial? Is it because Belgravian Influencer orders a shawarma every night? Is it because Hampstead Family go into town when they eat out?
A little bruschetta of chopped rabbit livers comes next, visible through a translucent sheet of lardo
Whatever the explanation, the exception to this rule is Wandsworth Common. Here, there are some absolute giants (my theory is that Wandsworth is more right-wing-coded, and right-wingers are happier to do the three-course-three-bottles thing). The best is Chez Bruce, which sits on the site of Harvey’s, Marco Pierre White’s old place. Chez Bruce is a monster of a restaurant: yep, we’ll serve Pierre Koffmann’s stuffed pig’s trotter; yep, we’ll wheel out a board of 21 cheeses. It’s a vision of what was considered brilliant in the 1980s. It vindicates that era’s cooking, and it doubles up as a kind of burgundy bunker to protect its diners from the assaults of modernity.
