The décor is so much that it’s perfect. It is shiny, sparkling, dazzling, shimmering… and it’s Napket. I love to have my favorite health treat a carrot; beetroot and apple shake in this dramatic and glamorous room.

Especially after shopping in the surrounding shops in this end, the most interesting part of the famous high street King’s Road.  I first noticed this modern urban café chain (3 outlets in London) thanks to my good friend, who loves shopping and eating so much, that she probably serves herself meals in her dreams dressed in her new Vanessa Bruno dress.

She describes Napket as a gourmet wall of elaborate salads, exotic sandwiches and slabs of cake cut from what looked like loaves of bread. She remembers almost every bite in details because she writes everything on a note and copies the dish at home. It is that good. Just listen to her:

"I jumped on the watermelon juice (not often you find that in London) and tucked into a mini grilled tandoori and yoghurt wrap and endive salad with figs, gorgonzola, apple, walnuts and balsamic vinegar and parma ham.”

As extra modern gimmicks there are iPod connections at the tables and black, scented toilet paper.

Napket; 342 King’s Road, Chelsea, Tube: Sloane Square

People who cause divided opinions are usually interesting acquaintances. Electric Brasserie on Portobello Road in Notting Hill is the same. Some love it and think it’s the best brunch in the city and others find it completely overrated. I like the place.

The big space with the long, rough zinc bar is vibrating and sizzling. If you’re lucky enough to get a seat right by the entrance, you can spend all day here watching the vintage fashionistas, the yummy mummies with strollers and designer shades, the back packers with hippie hairdo’s and the motley crowd of business men passing by.

Portobello Market is almost too obvious to mention and too crowded on Saturdays. I prefer drifting around on a weekday when some of the shops and stalls are closed. But even on a sleepy Monday, Electric Brasserie is lively. The menu is a typical London mix of hamburgers, seafood and oysters. It’s pretty pricey for a café. The food is simple and served on rustic wooden boards and in zinc bowls. Don’t forget to have a Bloody Mary at the bar.

Electric Brasserie, 191 Portobello Road, W11 2ED. Tube: Notting Hill Gate, Ladbroke Grove or Westbourne Park

Extract from Karin Graabaek's book LONDON my love!, published by Gyldendal.

Which dish is Britain’s finest gastronomical invention and intended to make you feel greasy, unhealthy and fabulously guilty? Fish ‘n’ chips of course. Now Michelin-starred chef Tom Aikens (another of UK’s many celebrity chefs) has decided to give the dish a “feel-good”-lift.

In February Tom Aikens opened an eco-friendly fish 'n' chips restaurant named Tom’s Place on Cale Street in Chelsea, just around the corner from his other two restaurants.

Photo by Dou_ble_you

The restaurant has been designed using recycled materials wherever possible and it only serves fish from sustainable sources (mostly the fishes are line-caught from small, family-run day boats in Southern England). Expect also the menu to include a few fish you won't find in traditional chippies, such as red gurnard, ling and megrim sole.

A portion of fish ‘n’ chips at Tom’s Place isn’t particular cheap. Price tag for a cod is around €16, but then it hasn’t got a bitter after-taste of guilt and bad conscience.

Author David Rich Momondo

Even though the British are not famous for a healthy exciting food culture, London is today only third to Paris and Tokyo when it comes to Michelin star restaurants. The city has over 6000 restaurants and 43 of them have one star.

That position is partially achieved by the fact that food is offered from more than seventy different places in the world, and in numerous variations – particularly Indian. But traditional British food is also getting a revival, and top chefs make a virtue of transforming traditional British dishes, such as bangers and mash, into delicious meals. The well-known “afternoon tea” is still legendary and can be enjoyed in trendy teahouses and mundane hotels and cafés.

Inn The Park: St. James Park

Kick-start your day with a “Great Britain Breakfast”, which is just perfect at the bright drop-shaped restaurant Inn The Park in St. James Park. In addition, you get a beautiful view over London’s oldest park, created by Henry VIII.

In The Park, St. James Park
www.innthepark.com

Leon Restaurant

Organic food is a big thing in London, and if you’re into that kind of stuff for breakfast, Leon Restaurant in the East End can be recommended. Even though it’s a chain consisting of several restaurants, neither the food nor the interior design is watered down. On the contrary, it’s cool in a very London way, with a laid-back lounge area, where you can eat a healthy breakfast with organic sausage or bacon in a sandwich bread, a so-called ’bap’. And the prices are reasonable.

Leon Restaurant, 3, Crispin Place

Afternoon tea

If you’re searching for a true English experience, enjoy a traditional “high tea” in one of London’s exclusive hotels.

It can be pretty pricy, and you have to be nicely dressed, but then you’re ready for sandwiches, warm crumpets (a mix between a scone and a pancake) and lots of well-brewed tea. It’s such a popular thing that many places require a table reservation.

The Ritz, 150, Piccadilly
£ 36 and up
www.theritzlondon.com

The Savoy, The Strand
£ 35 - 43
www.savoy-group.co.uk

The Dorchester, 53, Park Lane
£ 29 - 39
www.thedorchester.com 

Claridge’s, 55, Brook Street
£ 34 - 45
www.claridges.co.uk

Fortnum and Mason

It’s not a hotel, but a department store with a “high tea” area and a wide selection of expensive cookies and teas that you can buy and bring home. Everything so neatly wrapped that you will want to keep the wrapping.

Eagle

The Eagle in Clerkenwell was the city’s first “gastro pub” – and in 1991 it laid the grounds for a new trend. Namely, traditional pubs that serve quality food. Eagle still ranks among the best ones. It’s airy and unpretentiously decorated and the Mediterranean and American cuisines influence the menu. You will spend around 30 pounds on a meal, and then there’s a great selection of beers!

Eagle, 159, Farringdon Road.

Sketch Gallery

The Sketch is maybe one of the most hyped  restaurant/gallery/bar/club-complexes in London, ever since it opened its doors in 2002. But it’s worth visiting, either for dinner or for hanging out in the bars, the club or the gallery. Or just to enjoy the carried through postmodern decoration with colorful plastic, Louis-something chairs and Swarowski-sponsored toilets. It was particularly the £ 125 menu in the Library and Reading Room restaurant, which made banner headlines in the beginning, but you can actually enjoy a very good dinner at Sketch Gallery.

In the daytime, The Gallery serves as an art gallery, but at night it’s transformed into one of the city’s hippest brasseries, with an exciting and affordable menu. Around midnight, the tables are moved aside and the DJ warms up for clubbing. For lunch, Sketch Glade is also an obvious choice with light dishes at affordable prices.

Sketch Gallery, 9, Conduit Street
www.sketch.uk.com

Famous chef Gordon Ramsay, who also runs the Michelin kitchen at Claridge’s in London, added this restaurant to his empire in 2005 and it is really a gastronomical delight. What’s missing in the interior decoration, which lacks originality, is richly compensated for in the menu that offers French food with an Asian inspiration.

Maze, 10-13, Grosvenor Square.
www.gordonramsay.com

St. John

They serve British food with a controversial twist and the chef makes a virtue of using the parts of the animals that others would throw away. St. John is one of the restaurants, which in recent years have challenged the British kitchen, and very successfully. Even though you wouldn’t think that you would like to eat pig spleen and rook chicks, it’s not that bad! There is more traditional food to choose from as well. You can also try St. Johns Bread and Wine in Spitalfields, 94-96 Commercial Street, which has more ordinary British dishes in an updated version.

The area has become a kind of ghetto for good British dining. Another recommendable place is Canteen on Crispin Place.

St. John, 26, St. John Street
www.stjohnrestaurant.co.uk & www.canteen.co.uk

Tayyabs

If you’re into Indian food and curries, Brick Lane in the East End is the place to go. Indian restaurants lie like pearls on a string, but you can also go to Tayyabs, a Pakistani restaurant in Whitechapel behind the East London Mosque.  The long line outside on every day of the week may be annoying, but it indicates that it’s one of the best curry houses in the city. The food is traditional and the grilled meat and the curries are all very good – and cheap.

Tayyabs, 83-89, Fieldgate St, Whitechapel.
www.tayyabs.co.uk 

By David Rich