London dining: dim-sum to haddock flan
Chef Marcus Warering at his eponymous restaurant Marcus Wareing at The Berkeley. Credit: Handout
Olympian appetites face a decathlon in London.
It's one of the world's great restaurant cities, with a United Nations of excellent choices -- a challenge for any visitor. That's a claim that for decades would have been considered balmy. W. Somerset Maugham famously observed, "To eat well in England, you should have breakfast three times a day."
Here's a quintet of restaurants to give you a taste of the city, in case you haven't booked a table with white-hot chefs Heston Blumenthal and Fergus Henderson.
While eating history: Consider The Court restaurant at the British Museum. It will keep you going after a few hours well-spent with Lord Elgin's Parthenon marbles, the Lewis chessmen, the Rosetta Stone, the Portland Vase and a moai figure from Easter Island. The dining room is in the Great Court, under the glass roof. Some recommendations: grilled sardines with caramelized lemon, boards of Spanish cured meats and English cheeses, Serrano ham croquettes, duck rillettes with house-made piccalilli. Fine for afternoon tea, too. Cost: $15-$40.
After viewing art in a museum, see it on a table at Marcus Wareing at The Berkeley. Wareing's elegant restaurant is among London's best. The menus of meticulous cuisine change regularly. Recent notables: Middle White pork with potato salad and preserved pear; quail with sweet-crunchy hisbi cabbage and girolle mushrooms; Scottish lobster with wild garlic; herb pappardelle with truffles and smoked egg. Cost: $70 (lunch) to $300 and up (dinner)
