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196 Caledonian Rd, Islington, London N1, UK

While this small restaurant has a smart appearance, it is typical of central London: seating and a bar are at street level, and  there is a kitchen downstairs.  The menu is intriguing, but a good choice is a mixed plate that will give you a variety of tastes, the Yestome Beye-Aynetu (pardon me while I check the spelling…) It comes on a silver dish covered with pieces of the soft sourdough bread, injera, which overhangs the edges of the platter. On top of the bread are generous portions of six fairly dry dishes; three of them vegetable (green beans and carrot, cabbage, and my favourite, spinach) and the other three pulses (orange lentils, brown lentils and split peas with green chillis…the last obviously has a strong taste. but it’s not overwhelming.) It’s a hearty, tasty, filling and I would say nutritious cuisine that works well as finger food. Nestled in a part of London that seems to be changing its character (there’s a vegan shop further down the street!) this restaurant is most definitely worth the short walk it will take you to get there.

124 Drummond St, London NW1, UK

The search for the perfect dahl may be unending, but the product at this smart vegetarian restaurant comes pretty close. The cooked lentils are accompanied by a mix of curry leaves, dried chillies, mustard seeds and garlic which give it a rich flavour without the heavy use of spices. They also do a great bhaji of shredded onion, spinach and potato, that comes with a powerful chutney.

Like other restaurants in Drummond St, Chutney’s offers a buffet for lunch.  Indian food suffers less than most cuisines do by sitting in a bain-marie, and the hot dishes, a good half dozen of them, are all tasty and satisfying, as are the cold ones (the strong tasting salad, with slices of red onion, goes beautifully with curry and the chick-peas that sit beside it .) There are fruit and milk based sweets, plenty of rice and bread, and you are welcome to all you can eat! And quite apart from the question of how much you eat, which will probably turn out to be more than you thought you would when you walked in, for this price the food is of astonishing quality.

118 Drummond St, London NW1, UK

Standing just across the street from the two vegetarian restaurants most recently reviewed, this restaurant seems to have decided to aim for a different clientele. This is not to say vegetarians can’t eat there, for they do a very respectable vegetable thali, which comprises thick dahl, mushrooms, okra and potato with spinach, along with rice, a small chapati and raita. But people after veggie food will find  themselves better catered for elsewhere in the street, so this restaurant is mentioned here for the sake of completeness.

133-135 Dummond St, London NW1, UK

There’s far more to enjoy in this vegetarian restaurant than you might think from looking in as you stand outside. You can start with the amazingly plump samosas (you can tell a lot about an Indian restaurant by how seriously they take their samosas), then move on to a bowl of  the dahl, richly satisfying without being hot, which is based on yellow split peas with plenty of mustard seeds and coriander. Then you might incline towards the Mysore masala dosa, which comes with sambal, coconut mix, chutney, and…cutlery; I’m not sure whether the necessarily awkward use of knife and fork on a dish designed to be eaten with fingers is a good idea, but the product is fine. The same sambal and chutney appear as accompaniments to the uthpappam, a kind of spicy lentil pancake. If you find that deciding what to order is beyond you, there’s always the daily special, which offers a wide variety of dishes served on a metal tray, although as it inevitably includes dairy desserts vegatarians will appreaciate it more fully than vegans.  Behind the modest appearance of the Ravi Shankar there lurks a very serious restaurant.

121 Drummond St, London NW1, UK

The first Indian restaurant you encounter walking along Drummond St away from Euston station, passing the vegetable shops, is this unpretentious but thoroughly enjoyable establishment. It offers a number of set meals, such as a Gujurati Thali that consists of dahl, aloo matar, pooris or chapatis, rice, and a fairly basic salad of shredded lettuce. The menu also offers daily specials; on Friday this is corn palak, a delightful, lightly spiced dish of spinach into which grains of corn have been mixed. It’s a generous serving, and is accompanied by chapatis or rice and salad. The extensive menu has many other dishes, every one of them veggie, and it would be a wonderful experience to work through them one by one. This is a deservedly popular restaurant.

11-13 The Brunswick, Brunswick Square, London WC1, UK

Japanese fusion is the style at this busy restaurant, popular with students. For starters you can try the mixed salad greens, which come with avocado, wakame and dressing. Another side dish is maki, a kind of sushi without wrapping in which the rice encloses avocado, asparagus and kanpyo…the waiter didn’t know what this last ingredient was, and it turns out to be seasoned gourd; pickled ginger, soy sauce and horesradish accompany the dish. More substantial is the satay vegetable lo mein, in which tofu, capsicum, sprouts, carrots, mushrooms and white onion are piled on a bed of noodles or rice; the onion, not common in East Asian cuisine, is only  lightly cooked, giving the dish extra crunchiness as well as a strong taste. Don’t be surprised if you find a queue outside the door, but this is not the kind of place where people linger, so you won’t be waiting long for a table. In every respect its style is that of a hare, and I’m not sure why a tortoise enjoys equal status in its name.

131 Drummond St, London NW1, UK

Two of us sat to lunch at this downstairs vegetarian eatery, and owing to a confusion over the menu we ended up eating the same thing,  the arrabbiata pasta. It’s somewhat spicy, its tomato-based sauce not too runny, nicely cooked to a perfect al dente texture, and comes with lots of olives, although these are of the pitted kind that don’t have too much taste. The dish is vegan, but the staff offer a bowl of parmesan cheese which can be sprinkled over it.  It may have been better to have ordered one of the more health-food style options rather than a dish one could get at any Italian restaurant, but the pasta makes a pleasant meal. Juices are available, including one I’d never struck before, made from apple, carrot and spinach; the last ingredient showed itself in the greenish tinge of the drink, but its taste was submerged beneath the sweetness of the apple. The apple, carrot and ginger juice is strongly recommended.

Drummond St is famous for its Indian restaurants, which I hope to discuss in a series of reviews beginning in a few weeks.

113 High Holborn, London WC1, UK

One sometimes finds authenticity in unexpected places, and despite its air of efficient modernity one eats very well at the Safadi. The favva beans in the ful are cooked to the point of disintegrating, the pieces of soft falafel, of the kind shaped like cupcakes,  come with lemony tahini, pickles, tomato and shredded lettuce, and the parsley in the tabouleh is so fresh it seems to have come straight from the garden. But the outstanding dish is the fattoush, in which a large plate of tomatoes, lettuce, green capsicum, cucumber and bread has had poured over it a brown liquid that turns out to be pomegranate juice, which gives the dish an unexpected but utterly appealing sweet edge. The supply of bread is plentiful, the complementary olives are welcome, and while there is no alcohol the still lemonade and freshly squeezed orange juice complement the strong tastes of the food superbly. The speed of the service fully accords with the name of the restaurant, and the vegetarian dishes on the menu are very reasonably priced. I recommend the Safadi without hesitation!

Shop 3A 341 Mains Road, Market Square, Sunnybank

Market Square in Sunnybank is the undisputed “China Town” of the southside, although it sports restaurants from a variety of Asian backgrounds.  Little Singapore is one we have been wanting to try since it opened in the not too distant past but were often put off by it’s busy and full appearance, delaying a vist there until we could afford to be…well… delayed.  Recently we gave it a go and were very pleasantly surprised.   The service was friendly and speedy (despite it being as busy as ever), the food  freshly made and delicious, and when asked for a Vegetarian recommendation, were assured that anything on the menu could be made vegetarian.   We enjoyed our meal very much and will most definitely return…

58 Marchmont St, London WC1, UK

The annual Marchmont Street Party took place on a fine day, and the little thoroughfare in central London was full of Caucasian, Indian and Muslim families, the faces of their youngest members stretched with concentration as they clutched their balloons. Among those feeding the happy throng was Alara, a health food store where the staff seem to be southern European, that offers self-service takeaway vegetarian meals.  It’s hard to choose from so many tasty looking foods, but I ended up with a plate of a lentil dish with potatoes and pumpkin known as dhansak, vegan shepherd’s pie, wonderful sprouting beans with ginger dressing to which crushed almonds gave extra crunchiness, some amazingly colorful beetroot hummus, a vegan potato salad with corn and peas, and a tomato and cucumber salad. Doubtless eating outdoors surrounded by people who are enjoying themselves adds piquancy to one’s lunch, but it occurred to me that the kinds of food on my plate, wonderfully reflecting so many cuisines, mirrored the varied human population on the street. The happy way in which peoples and cuisines can happily rub along together is surely something to be thankful for.