Tourist icon: the museum houses one of the country’s largest archives
(Picture: hurk/Pixaby)Thanks to the interwar goings-on of the Bloomsbury Group, the area around the British Museum is indelibly associated with intellectual pursuits. Physical appetites, however, are harder to satisfy in this strangely restaurant-starved corner of central London.
But much like the vast British Museum itself, there are treasures to discover here — it just takes knowing where to look. So from regional Chinese to Japanese omelettes, old-school Italian to new-wave Brit and the most exciting Thai to open in London for years, here are the five best restaurants near the British Museum. As Bloomsbury groupie-in-chief Virginia Woolf said: “One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.” Here’s where to do just that.
Master Wei
Anyone simply looking for a quick eat near the British Museum should think of Master Wei as an approachable dumpling and noodle café. It is an authentic purveyor of the intriguingly sour and spicy cuisine of Xi’an in northern China and draws diners from all over London, not least the students from the nearby colleges of London University. The crowd-pleasing likes of pork and vegetable dumplings and beef ho fun are decent enough, but the regional specialities are way better: a salad of hand-shredded chicken in a spicy, vinegary sauce, say, or biang biang noodles concealing bombs of garlic and chili. Good value, too.
How far? A six minute walk
Price? Most dishes around the £8.50 mark
13 Cosmo Place, WC1N 3AP, master-wei.com
Ciao Bella
Villagey Lamb’s Conduit Street looks like something straight from the pages of Charles Dickens, only with better catering. We’re big fans of the cheese-fest that is La Fromagerie, the creative wine and food matches at Noble Rot and the Middle Eastern home-cooking of Honey & Co but for sheer rib-sticking deliciousness, this mamma mia trattoria is hard to beat. Dreamily creamy carbonara comes under an avalanche of parmesan, cartwheel-size pizzas are topped with all the old-school classics, there are variations on veal and seafood mains and joyfully unsophisticated desserts. Prices are reasonable, portions are big and the noise levels from happy diners high.
How far? A 10 minute walk
Price? Pizza and pasta from £12
86-90 Lamb’s Conduit Street, WC1N 3LZ, ciaobellarestaurant.co.uk
Abeno
As culturally eye-opening as what’s in the museum over the road, Abeno is one of the few places in London to serve okonomiyaki. The Japanese speciality is as tongue-twisting to say as it is to eat, an omelette-cum-pancake of egg, cabbage and dough cooked on a tabletop hot plate before being seasoned with all sorts of savoury additions, from organic pork, kimchi and prawn to spinach and cheese. There’s a vegan version here too, plus all the expected Japanese side dishes and homemade desserts. Abeno has been in Bloomsbury since 1993 and it’s difficult to understand why the formula hasn’t taken off elsewhere. The cooking is delicious and reasonably priced — for central London, at least — staff are friendly and for all the potential unfamiliarity of the food, the clientele of Japanese expats makes the place feel homely.
How far? A two minute walk
Price? Mains around £16
7 Museum Street, WC1A 1LY, abeno.co.uk
Café Deco
Neither a café nor art deco, this is the first solo project from chef Anna Tobias, who made a name for herself at Shoreditch’s Rochelle Canteen. Here she brings that restaurant’s vigorous English seasonality to bear on a veg-focused menu on which ingredients are left to do the talking: eggs mayonnaise filled with a custardy yolk and topped with assertive slivers of anchovy, say, or a vast slice of seasonal pie such as torta pasqualina — a Ligurian easter pie of spinach, egg and ricotta — washed down with natural wines. It might not be a café but it’s not a formal restaurant either — there are jazzy tiled floors, plain wooden tables and smiley young staff dressed in austere utilitarian garb — but Café Deco is utterly individual and charmingly idiosyncratic.
How far? A three minute walk
Price? Mains circa £20
43 Store Street, WC1E 7DB, cafe-deco.co.uk
Plaza Khao Gaeng
The flagship of the Arcade Food Hall at the base of the Centre Point skyscraper, Plaza Khao Gaeng attempts to recreate the atmosphere of a streetside Thai café, which means blinding fluorescent lighting standing in for blinding sunshine in the windowless but thankfully air conditioned room, vinyl tablecloths and melamine crockery, and some fiery cooking. Not for the faint-hearted, almost everything comes with a detonation of chilli, from the DIY nut-stuffed betel leaves to the minced pork and massaman beef curry, though the menu has enough blandly mouth-cooling items such as fried eggs, steamed rice and bitter melon to take the heat off. If Thai’s not your bag, there are another eight Asian street-food concessions (and one American) in the food hall downstairs.
How far? A six minute walk
Price? Smaller plates around £8, bigger around £14
