Even though I love street food, by which I mean stalls or vans that sell a very limited range of things for £5-10 apiece, it’s difficult to review. My favourite place for lunch in the world is Santana Grill, at Strutton Ground market near my office, which does some of the best burritos and tacos… Keep Reading

Bao’s Soho branch was the first place I reviewed for Straight Up London and, unlike everyone else, I didn’t think too much of it. The queue was ludicrously long and the food just wasn’t that interesting. Still, my girlfriend liked it and now that Bao has opened a second branch in Fitzrovia she wanted to go.… Keep Reading

(Update, 25th August: Bigbe Chicken is now Good Friend Chicken, and has moved a couple of doors down. When I last went, it was much the same with an expanded menu and slightly higher prices of around 30p or so per item. The old favourites were still superb, but the squid, which I hadn’t tried… Keep Reading

The thing you might already know about Blacklock is that it does chops. That’s its Thing, and it’s probably the first restaurant to centre itself around that concept in London, despite the plethora of barrel-scraping gimmicks and idiosyncrasies across the restaurant scene. I say ‘probably the first’ because I know that Whitechapel’s Tayyabs is famed for its… Keep Reading

The Grey Horse is an unassuming pub a few minutes from Kingston train station that has been rebranded as a whiskey bar and barbecue restaurant. I was a little apprehensive about going, suffering from a sore throat and having had a pretty bad run of barbecue food over the past few weeks. A bit like hamburgers,… Keep Reading

There’s a concept in economics that says when it’s difficult for consumers to tell good products from bad products before they buy, you eventually only end up with the bad – there is no advantage to selling things of decent quality, but doing so takes more work, so why bother? I sometimes wonder if the vast number of… Keep Reading

Brunswick house is a very strange proposition. The building has sat there since 1758, and for four of those years it’s been a perplexing enigma on my daily commute through Vauxhall. The area around Vauxhall’s bus station is a whirl of big, hard-to-cross roads, building sites, and soulless ugly high-rise buildings and offices, and despite… Keep Reading

My awkward relationship with Brixton’s restaurants continued with The Joint, a barbecue place in Brixton Village Market. I’ve written before about my biggest problem with Brixton: quite a bit of choice, but mostly in places that are outdoors which isn’t great even on a mild night. When we got to The Joint, I was a little annoyed to be moved from… Keep Reading

One of the things we’re aiming to do at Straight Up London is to create a useable guide to London: something that isn’t just interesting to read, but that is helpful for people deciding where to eat tonight. It’s why we’re putting so much effort into the food map (which now has 93 recommendations!) and generally try to emphasise things… Keep Reading