Product Description

Award-winning restaurant critic Charles Campion knows the best places in London for any occasion – and they’re all in this guide. Unlike other listings guides, all Campion’s 400+ restaurants have been carefully selected and all are described in detail. His reviews give colourful insights into the cooking, ambience and service, decode the menus and provide full details of prices, set meals, starters, main courses, desserts and wines.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #80048 in Books
• Published on: 2008-09-04
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 512 pages

Review
"'This book cannot be bettered.' Giles Coren, The Times 'Vital reading for any potential reader looking for somewhere to eat in the capital.' What's On In London 'A bewildering and exciting array of cuisines and restaurants... an essential handbook for the curious gastronome.' Deborah Ross, Independent"

From the Back Cover
Award-winning restaurant critic Charles Campion knows the best places in London for every occasion - and they're all in his new and completely revised. Based on years of experience, he has carefully selected more than 400 restaurants, covering over 60 cuisines and ranging from Mayfair hotspots to Pakistani grill houses. Each review covers the cooking, service and ambience, as well as giving tips on specialities and basic information on set menus and wine. Making it easy to compare the options, Charles Campion's London Restaurant Guide 2009 breaks down London into over 40 neighbourhoods, each with its own easy-to-read map. With a helpful list of branches, comprehensive indexing and Charles Campion's personal selection of 'top picks' to suit all tastes and pockets, here is everything you need to know. Charles Campion is a winner of the Glenfiddich 'Restaurant Writer of the Year' award. He has written about food and restaurants in the London 'Evening Standard' for over a decade.

About the Author
Charles Campion has written about restaurants for London's Evening Standard for over a decade. He is a past winner of the Glenfiddich Restaurant Writer of the Year award. He lives in Worcestershire. Click here for his website.

Customer Reviews

Good, but far from comprehensive
Charles Campion is a good food writer and I expected to find his restaurant guide more useful than I do. However, let's look at the good bits first. Each restaurant has a page (admittedly smaller than normal pb size, but still a page) devoted to it, so he has the space to give us a useful description of the food, service and ambience. In addition, there is a nearest station (BR or tube), credit cards, opening times, an indication of prices and web site, if any. Checking, as I like to do, the restaurants I know, I find his descriptions are complete and accurate (or, perhaps, his prejudices coincide with mine, although, judging by the frequency of entries, he is rather more keen on non-Western cooking than I am).

The book is divided according to region, with a little map (and I mean little) of each region at the beginning of its section. This approach has advantages and disadvantages, the disadvantages being most noticeable if you want a restaurant within an area bordering several of his regions. However, I think, for me, the advantages outweigh the disadvantages.

Perhaps the main criticism is that the book is far from comprehensive. I know the Covent Garden area and its restaurant scene very well, having worked there for 40 years and lived there for a few years, and yet many restaurants, including some both good and useful, have been omitted. Similarly, South East London, where I have lived most of my life, might as well not exist for all the note Mr Campion takes of it. For "Earls Court & South Kensington", where restaurants are as common as flies, there are just 4 entries. Presumably the defence is that it could not be more complete without the book becoming too unwieldy and/or expensive. However, it does mean that I would not rely on this as my only guide to London's restaurants, and, that being the case, it finds itself little used, as I am not going to check half a dozen guides every time I want to go out.

I also wonder what future the written restaurant guide, which inevitably is at least months out of date before it is published, has with the increased accessibility of on-line guides. Nonetheless, for now this does exist, it covers 400-odd restaurants, and those it covers, it does so well.

If you have previous editions of this title - AVOID
I previously purchased the 2006 edition.

If you have a copy of this book from 2006 onwards, you will not need to buy this - as a large majority of the reviews are a word for word reproduction from the 2006 edition.

Cynical exercise to publish this every year on that basis. I've emailed both the author/publisher to take issue...

If you've never brought a copy it is worth getting, whether you'd need to buy a future edition in the next few years would be questionable based on the above....