Eating Classy Abroad: London Chain Restaurants

September 8, 2008 by Merit  Send to a Friend

The Brits have never been known for their culinary talents, so it’s genuinely surprising to see so many restaurants packed on every street when you get here. Of course, there are many great, unique restaurants scattered about London that serve delicious food, but the bigger pattern you notice when wandering around here is the ubiquity of about 6 or 7 chains. It’s not noticeable at first. Slowly, however, you realize that the same semi-well-masked restaurants are everywhere. They’re like Starbucks in its glory days.
As an American with a weak-dollar bank account, you might be tempted occasionally to slink into these spots. This is the order to frequent them in when doing so:

1. Masala Zone (6 restaurants, mostly in central + west London)
The curries in London are generally fantastic and a bargain, so it’s no surprise that a chain of Indian food is actually decent. It’s at the top of this list but, really, when possible, you should just go to one of the bajillion curry spots in the city for good, cheap, Indian. They’re usually BYO, too!

2. Nando’s (53 locations)
Honestly this one is here because of the bottomless fro-yo. It’s pretty much the only place in London where you can get it, and its bottomless, to boot.

3. Gourmet Burger Kitchen (23 locations)
Pretty decent burgers – try one with Cajun relish. A word of warning, though: medium-rare gets you rare-rare, so order accordingly.

4. Pizza Express (89 locations)
Eh. It’s pizza. You can’t really go wrong with it.

4. JD Wetherspoon (80+ locations)
One of the most remarkably insidious of the chains. They’re often cloaked behind names like “The Shakespeare’s Head,” “The Knights Templar,” or “The Plough and Harrow.” Once inside, though, the uniformly “quirky mismatched” chairs, enormous plastic menus, and signs for £4.99 beer + burgers will let you know you’re in a Wetherspoons. The aforementioned £4.99 cardboard burger + beer may tempt you to come here more often than you’ll admit, however.
Other chain pubs to watch out for are O’Neill’s, Pitcher & Pianos, etc, etc. The pub chain thing is slightly out of control – don’t be fooled by their ‘ye old pub’ facades!

5. All Bar One (22 locations)
Another sneaky one. Typically appears to be contemporary-stylish, and while the drinks are whatever, the food is awful and the fact they try and come across as classy is just offensive to the whole chain-food ethos. Think still-frozen chicken saté or styrofoam “chargrilled butterflied tiger prawns.”

…1,267. Pret, EAT, Yo!Sushi, etc.
Some of the most nauseating prepared foods out there. Oh, and don’t be tempted by Yo!Sushi’s conveyor belts. The food is horrible. Just avoid these places entirely.

Finally, not a chain, but you may think it’s one: Anything with “George” in it.
Seriously, the amount of “Royal/Great/X-George” or “The George I-IXVLM”s pubs and hotels there are here is insane. As far as I can tell, however, these are just the product of a load of patriotic Brits, rather than nefarious chain-owners.
I guess the biggest advice here is that, while it may seem like London’s a cesspool of Olive Garden-y options, it just takes a little more time to find the individual, non-chain gems that are good and reasonably priced. As an American, of course, you’ll soon come to see ‘reasonably priced’ to mean a $26 lunch. Hm…Maybe I should have made a list of those, instead. Apologies.

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