London Restaurants by category
Italian restaurants in hotels are a bean counter's no brainer. That's why so many hotels around the world have them. The cuisine is widespread, recognised and inoffensive to everyone, easy to prepare and (if you scrimp on the ingredients and the time) easy to come out at a low bottom line cost. Unfortunately the difference between a good one and a poor one is all too evident, but not until the food lands in front of you.
Villagio, unfortunately positioned on the Hammersmith roundabout opposite the bus station has that suicidal Hilton airport hotel vibe down to a tee. We went with guests, travellers thankfully too jetlagged to notice what the hell they were eating.
The room has that large, cold, boomingly beige, parquet wood vibe known the world over to those who need to turn tables between breakfast, lunch and dinner with a minimum of fuss. From the glossy corporate menu to the service there's no love here.
The food isn't even Hilton. It's Holiday Inn at best. My guests 'Italian' burger was a room service disaster. A lukewarm granite puck slapped between anaemic re-baked on the premises focaccia. The fries were alright, like underseasoned refugees from the nearby bus station MacDonalds. Chicken al Fungi was little more than underheated and cheap ricotta studded with gray lumps of protein masquerading as mushroom. No doubt someone counted the lumps to make sure I didn't get more than my allotted share. I was glad, I couldn't cope with any more than my allotted share.
As well as Hammersmith, they also have branches Berkhamsted, Andover and Barnet... I may pass.
Most people (by which I mean those with families, and those who don't entertain or travel for a living) tend to eat out at restaurants maybe a couple of times a month and when they do, are much more likely to have curry, Chinese or pizza, rather than the food that they could prepare at home. That was certainly what going for dinner at a restaurant meant when I was growing up. We'd occasionally go to a pub in a nearby village for a Sunday roast or posh restaurant in our local hotel (generally with guests or for a birthday) but this was to my mind generally an inferior version of the food my mother would cook and without the possibility of Angel Delight for dessert.
The rise of the gastropub may have given us another option, but things ain't changed much since the 80's and the same goes for Mittel Europe. There's little point travelling to provincial Europe and expecting to get a true sense of the local cuisine. It's like travelling to Grantham and expecting the best of British to be assembled for your delectation. It won't be.
Sure you can find plates of pork of various sizes; extruded into sausage (or wurst...), beaten into breadcrumbed submission as a schnitzel or simply served sliced with dumplings or gnocchi like spatzele. But this is often a pale imitation of the foods assembled in family homes, and just not what people (other than tourists) want to come out and eat...
The best meals we ate across Germany and Switzerland came in two restaurants recommended and frequented by locals, a trendy yet simple Thai in Luzern (at the same price as Michelin starred dining in London or New York, but that was the exchange rate rather than the locals ripping us off) and a Tex Mex joint in Freiburg where we joined families and students on dates to dine on cheap, inauthentic Mexican. How's that for fitting in with the locals...
