The London Restaurant Festival features excellent-value set menus at everywhere from casual neighbourhood joints to the city’s glitziest Michelin-star rooms. But it’s the Festival’s unique events that really make it stand out - from food trails to edible film screenings, we’ve rounded up our five top picks…
London Food Fight: Burger vs Burger
‘London’s best burger’ is a hotly contested title (there are blogs and apps dedicated to the subject), and this event at Borough Market seeks to find a definitive answer. The first London Food Fight is pitting 12 of the capital’s best patty flippers against each other on 17
London Food Fight, Jubilee Place, Borough Market, SE1. .londonfoodfight.com
Cicchetti trail
We have Polpo to thank for putting cicchetti on the London food map. These moreish little snacks are traditionally sold at Venetian wine bars (or bàcari), but are now a mainstay of the London scene. Graze on the city’s best arancini and crostini on the Festival’s Cicchetti Trail. You buy a ‘passport’ and then visit six cicchetti hotspots in one day, including Polpo Covent Garden, the excellent Theo Randall at the Intercontinental and Mele e Pere.
Edible Cinema: An American Werewolf in London
Jonathan Ross and his screenwriter/producer wife Jane Goldman (Kick-Ass, Stardust) are curating this special event for the festival. The pair have teamed up with Soho House to present two screenings of An American Werewolf in London at Notting Hill’s Electric Cinema on 26
Electric Cinema, 191 Portobello Road, London W11 2ED. ediblecinema.co.uk
Drink the classics: Treasure Island
Central & Co’s Drink the Classic series has seen the Soho bar and brasserie produce special cocktails inspired by On the Road, The Beautiful and Damned and Animal Farm. For its last session, a LRF fringe event running from 9
Central & Co, 22 Great Marlborough Street, London W1F 7HU. centralandco.com
Graze Up North
Eat your way around London’s foodiest neighbourhoods during the festival. There are three Graze events (West End, The City, North), but Graze Up North gets our vote for focusing on gourmet hot spots around Shoreditch and Islington. Buy a pass and then you can get a free drink in the 12 participating restaurants when you order a Graze dish. Restaurants taking part include Mark Hix’s Tramshed (with its incredible Damien Hirst centrepiece), Dishoom Shoreditch (hellooo bacon naan rolls) and Floripa.