Good Things #7 | London's best private dining rooms
Plus An A-Z of of Chinese Food, and other recommendations
Lots of words for you this week — and no cooking. Which might be exactly what you’re after?!
At the beginning of the year I was asked by a friend to suggest a few good restaurants with private dining rooms (for a meal that I would also be at).
I have a love-hate relationship with this sort of request.
On the positive side: I enjoy a restaurant-themed challenge; and probably have above average experience and awareness of the better places to eat.
On the negative: even if I wasn’t going, I quickly become too invested in finding a genuinely a good place to eat, and so spend a disproportionate amount of time consumed by the task, overthinking every aspect — will it be to everyone’s taste, their budget and expectations? (as if it’s possible to please everyone); and then find that (because I care), it’s actually quite difficult to come up with a list — while loads of places have private rooms, if you’re more than 12 people the choice is much reduced … and even when you think you’ve nailed it you’ll find that, whatever the month, the preferred options are often booked long in advance. *Sigh*
Oh, also, I do actually have a job, and (to my mind), none of the Googleable ‘best’ private dining room lists are particularly well curated.
TLDR, I did a lot of pondering and clicking and also put some feelers out on Instagram (receiving a load of great responses).
Partly to avoid having to do the same thing again in six months, but also because I thought others might find it useful, I then put together a considered list of central(ish) private dining rooms — that I know are worth spending your hard earned cash on (as oppose company credit card). It’s not something most people need every week, but I suspect will be handy from time to time.
I also offer a couple of short lists with not-so-central gems; whole room/restaurant hire that’d work for fun parties; plus restaurants that can take tables of 8-16 (maybe even 20) within the main restaurant.
Also in the recommends if you keep scrolling: a podcast and three new books.
Happy reading and see you next week, Ed
p.s. I said no cooking, but please do make sure you eat some haggis tomorrow night (it’s Burns Night). If not traditional neeps and tatties style, then try spicing one up like Meera Sodha — her recipe would work for classic haggis, as well as the suggested vegetarian option.
Confused? There’s an engaging and definitely not AI produced documentary about wild Scottish haggis here.
To read this month
This week I started (and am now deep into) reading a new book by Jenny Lau titled An A-Z of Chinese Food, *recipes not included by Jenny Lau.
In short: it’s excellent, so I’m commending it to you right now!
A-Z is a collection of intelligent, thoughtful, illuminating and sometimes spiky essays that might well change the way you think about and eat food. Specifically, food of Chinese origin.
The subjects of this ‘anti-glossary’ vary: D and X are origin stories for Dan Dan Noodles and XO sauce; O (for Oriental) covers otherness and the importance of language and labels (and, actually, a really interesting deep dive into music and melody…); some (H and Z, for example) are part of the author’s personal journey towards understanding what is home, having straddled both east and west, and the value of being part of (creating?) a diaspora community; whereas U for Umami is a public dressing-down of ‘Chinese Restaurant Syndrome’ and the West’s unsubstantiated bias against MSG (and by inference, Chinese food and perhaps Chinese peoples in general).
What is clear is that cuisine, home, ‘authenticity’ … it’s not simple, is it? I have in my Notes app that reading this ‘provokes rumination, reflection, discomfort’. I suspect those are words Jenny used in her preface, rather than mine, but they ring true.
Like I say, I’m in it but not finished. I suspect when I’ve read each essay I’ll digest and go back for second helpings. You might like to tuck in too.
I’ve a copy of the book to giveaway to one paid subscriber. Read on below the paywall for details of how to claim that (also recommendations for other new books, a podcast, and those private dining rooms).