Rik L.

Review of Leon

22 Feb 08, 14:46

Not as good as I expected

I'd heard a lot about Leon, how the food was an experience to remember and that it would change lunchtimes forever, so as you can imagine, I was pretty enthusiastic about going there.

Walking into Leon is reminiscent of entering a bar in Shoreditch. Old wooden tables, plastic chairs and lots of quirky furniture decorate the place. The place is almost a haven from the sanitized lunch-time fare you get in the City.

The food, while enjoyable, wasn't as amazing I was led to believe. I had meatballs and rice, which was nice, but rather plain. You can tell the ingredients are of high quality, but it isn't exactly a party in your mouth.

Although the food isn't too pricey, £5.65 for a large meatballs, they seems to cover their costs by charging £2 for a bottle of coke, which is completely over the top. I would have smuggled in a can from the newsagents if I'd known!

Overall, it was a nice place to eat, just not as good as I had hoped for.

0 out of 1 person found this review helpful.

Review of The Larder

22 Jan 08, 16:05

Amazing sandwiches

Okay, let me just say that I've never been to the restaurant part of The Larder just yet, but I have been to the sandwich shop part and wow, their food is fantastic!

I don't usually give out 5 stars to many places, but The Larder is now one of those places that I will definitely recommend. Everything is made with quality ingredients, the bread here is absolutely amazing with the best crust, they give out very generous portions of our sandwich fillings too. The other homemade foods, from the casseroles to the cookies, are also amazingly good too.

The sandwiches are quite expensive, but when you take into account the low prices of the sundries, getting your lunch here is no more expensive than going to Eat, Pret or the nearby Benugo. In fact, you can get a delectable lunch time meal and change from a fiver - what more could you ask for?

4 out of 4 people found this review helpful.

Review of Timpson

05 Sep 07, 11:36

Good shoes

I always find it amusing how these places all do the same services - shoe repairs, key cutting and trophy making. What would they do if you took key-shaped shoes? Repair them or make you another pair?

Anyway, I digress. I took my broken shoes here to get their heals fixed. The price was only £13 to get them completely fixed by the next day. The workmanship seems very good, they look as good as new now and I can walk around without hobbling, so it's all good!

1 out of 1 person found this review helpful.

Review of Simply Salad

17 Jul 07, 17:45

Simply good salads

When you think of salad, one generally thinks of lettuce with a bit of shaved carrot on top. Maybe a bit of cucumber. If you're lucky. Some may call this rabbit food, but salad doesn't need to be boring, does it?

Simply Salad has a massive pick-and-mix salad bar that has everything from your more boring items, such as lettuce, to stranger items, such as crab sticks and stuffed vine leaves. All in all, the salad I get are always very tasty and pretty good value at only £2 for a small box and £3 for a big box. The big box has a very satisfying amount of food, filling but not too filling.

The best thing that Simply Salads does is the Crispy Cornflake which is, as the name suggests, a chocholate cornflake flapjack/cake thing, and it's the nicest thing in the world that costs 89p.

0 out of 0 people found this review helpful.

Review of The Slug And Lettuce

17 Jul 07, 17:05

Posh Wetherspoons

I was with some of the reviewers below when the staff were (more than) a bit rubbish, but I have been here before, so I'll summarize my visits. The Slug and Lettuce is a wine bar chain, like a city-banker version of Wetherspoons. It's rather large with good, if not a bit bland, decoration.

As with Wetherspoons, Slug and Lettuce pubs have no hint of character whatsoever, you almost know what the interior is going to look like even before stepping into the place. Good if you're a city banker, bad if you're someone who likes a bit of originality.

Drinks here are definitely on the expensive side, pints can easily cost £4, a glass of wine can cost £6. They're no different than any other pub either. You get to pay extra - some might say over the odds - to sit in a chain pub.

The food here is quite nice and surprisingly it's not as price-inflated as the drinks. It is pretty standard quality though, no gourmet food here. You'd never take a date for a meal here, it's more generic pub grub and there's plenty of pubs in the area that do a much better job of pub food. As said with the other reviews, the staff aren't the brightest bunch in the world, but I won't go too much into that.

There's a lot of bars and pubs in Farringdon, and a high percentage are good places to go. The Slug and Lettuce isn't a bad pub, per se, but it's definitely not a good pub.

0 out of 0 people found this review helpful.

Review of One Tun

15 Jul 07, 22:58

It's not all about the chairs

I went here with Greg, whose review is below mine, and although he does go on about very small things, such as the plastic school-canteen chairs (which he didn't sit on, and I did, and they were actually very comfy) and the fact that the place looks a bit run down. Well, yes, the One Tun does have the look of a northern working mans club with a thai takeaway bolted on, but this gives the place a certain charm to it. You wouldn't get some shiny Wagamama wannabe having Victorian erotica photos on the walls, would you now?

The fact that some of the food was not exactly piping hot doesn't help the One Tun's case, but the food was nice for only a fiver. I had garlic chicken and rice, which was rather good and nicely filling for a lunch time. If you're not as bothered about chairs that you don't even sit on, then this is a good place to check out in your dinner hour.

0 out of 0 people found this review helpful.

Review of Smiths Of Smithfield

11 Jul 07, 21:33

Great place

I went to Smiths mainly due to most of the good reviews on here and other people's recommendations. You usually take things with a pinch of salt, thinking that places can't be as good as people say, that they're being slightly hyperbolical, but Smiths of Smithfield is one of those places that deserves the credit. It is the best meal that I've had in London so far.

Every course that I had was great, starting from the starter of bread and balsamic vinegar to the dessert of summer pudding. Even the wine was fantastic. The main course that I had was the chicken, leek and mushroom pie, with amazing pastry and even better filling. I can't think of anything bad about this place, even the price is pretty reasonable for what you get, which is high quality food, and a great night out.

2 out of 2 people found this review helpful.

Review of Piada

21 Jun 07, 20:52

Good lunch

Sandwiches for lunch? Go Italian and turn that boring bread into an authentic flat bread and your boring sliced ham into delicious sausage!

Piada doesn't quite look like a lunch time takeaway from the outside - or the inside for that matter - it's very restauranty, with it's walnut coloured furniture and comfy seats. This isn't exactly your local caff.

The choice isn't amazing here, it's basically flat bread or nothing, and if you're not a cheese fan then there's about two things to have. That's not to say what I had wasn't nice though, it was good. I had the sausage and spicy greens flat bread. I don't quite know why the spicy greens was just spinach and olive oil though.

Piada is pretty expensive, with flat breads at about £4, so don't go here for a cheap lunch. The service is somewhat speedy, so luckily you won't spend all lunch waiting for food.

1 out of 1 person found this review helpful.

Review of Slaughtered Lamb

05 Jun 07, 20:53

Great drinks, even better food

The Slaughtered Lamb is a lovely little pub tucked away in the Clerkenwell / Farringdon area that has a great selection of drinks and an even better range of foods.

This place must be the only place in London that does Kirin Ichiban and Aspell Cider on tap, which is great for me, but if you're more a real ale fan, then there's also great ales (so I'm told... not really an ale admirer myself).

Now, even if you don't drink, you need to go here for the food. The dishes are something of a cross of pub grub and gastropub, but without the ridiculous price tag. Really well made pub food. They mainly specialise in fish, but do the pub classics - my particular favourite is the sausages and chips. The chips are done to perfection, the best for miles around.

It can get very busy here though, especially at lunch and weekends, which is testament to how popular it is in the area. If you really want to try the food, it's definitely worth reserving a table, but don't let it's busyness put you off going though.

1 out of 1 person found this review helpful.

Review of The Bear

24 May 07, 22:20

Friendly and relaxed

The first thing a colleague said when walking into the Bear was "Is this a gay bar?". While the place did have a lot of camp tendencies - Scottie dog in the middle of the room, men with moustaches, etc. - it isn't just a place for men who like other men. Being just off the main road, on St. John's Square, gives the outside of the Bear a rather nice relaxed feel to it and is quite pleasant to sit outside in the warm weather. There was a DJ on when I went, which seemed a bit pointless, mainly because everyone was trying to talk over the loud and rather dull R'n'B music. The staff behind the bar are nice enough, although I did feel a bit sorry for the barmaid who had 70% of the welovelocal staff trying to look down her top. Definitely one of the nicer bars in the Farringdon and Clerkenwell area, and one not completely full of men in suits. Plus it's the only bar I've ever been to with a Stannah stair lift.

1 out of 1 person found this review helpful.

Review of Eat

20 May 07, 19:46

Good lunch-time place

I'm a bit of an Eat soup fan. You can't beat the Chicken Pot Pie soup - as they say, it's an Eat classic. The soups tend to vary from really good like the chicken pot pie to disappointing like the soup resembling bovril with prawns floating in.

The sandwiches are pretty good, better than Pret in my opinion, but Pret wins the dessert battle. Like Pret, Eat is pretty expensive. You can easily spend over a fiver on a small lunch.

The service at this Eat is quite good, although sometimes its like a cattle market, what with people not knowing where to queue. The servers are nice and pretty quick, but never look particularly happy to be there.

All in all, it's a good place to get your lunch from!

1 out of 1 person found this review helpful.