The A-Z of eating your way around London

Pasta for breakfast, healthy fried chicken and waffles that look like fish. From the sublime to the surreal and the downright delicious, we decode the capital's freshest food and drink trends.

Blame the craze for Portuguese food, or simply the fact that these salty little fish can enhance almost any dish: anchovies are cropping up on many more dishes than simply pizza. Try the fat, salty Ortiz variety on a slick of goat’s butter at the new Foxlow Soho (right); fried flawlessly to zhoosh up coconut rice at Zheng; or head to Bonnie Gull for an anchovy mayonnaise you’ll want to drown in.

China’s national spirit, distilled from wheat or rice, is not something to be dabbled in lightly, so make sure you order some oolong-smoked quail to soak it up at The Tea Room in Soho, a newly opened speakeasy serving the danger drink — which has a distinct, powerfully musky smell and taste — by the bottle.

Everyone’s au fait with regional Chinese; now it’s time to discover Spain, starting with Catalonia, the autonomous north-east region. There’ll be amazing Catalan cheeses such as Picos de Valdeon Azul, La Serena and oven-baked Torta del Casar at Sibarita (below) and sea urchin on Iberico lard toast when Rambla opens later this year. In the meantime, try Brindisa’s Catalonian rice brunch, with dishes including arroz de costillas, made with pork ribs and morcilla.

Duck is a hot bird right now, and in our whole-animal, no-waste world, that means eating more than just the breast. At Duck & Waffle spin-off Duck & Waffle Local there’s deep-fried crispy gizzards (super-rich and tender with a slick of mustard, above). Look out too for duck offal green curry or khao soi (creamy curried broth) at Smoking Goat’s Offal Monday.

Eater

US food website Eater is an institution, trusted by millions of food-obsessed Americans for industry gossip, dissections of new openings and area guides. Now Eater is coming to serve us millions of food-obsessed Londoners and rate the capital’s best restaurants. Prepare for a bun fight.

Fideuà

Specifically, the baked lobster fideuà at Westerns Laundry (right), a contender for dish of the summer. Fideuà is a Valencian paella-like dish, the rice replaced with vermicelli pasta and baked so the top is crispy, the middle hot and gooey; scoff oodles of it at Barrafina’s fideuà feast on 20 June.

Gastropubs 2.0

Old-school pubs might be closing at speed, but in London there’s a new wave of public houses opening — with some serious food options. There’s the Langham, which is opening The Wigmore pub next door to the hotel this summer, with food overseen by Michel Roux Jr; Bocca di Lupo chef Jacob Kennedy’s Palquemine Lock in Islington; and the wonderful Prince of Peckham.

HFC

That’s Healthy Fried Chicken, obviously. Chicken legend Chick ‘n’ Sours is launching CHIK’N — a fast-food chicken shop, except one where the meat is free range and fried in zero trans fat rapeseed oil that will be converted into bio-fuel at the end. More importantly, it’s also serving its take on a McMuffin at breakfast.

Ikoyi

London’s first high-end Nigerian restaurant opens in St James later in the summer with a refined version of the mighty jollof, a spicy tomato rice dish, taking pride of place alongside pepper soup and beef cured in katsuobushi. Keep up your West African education at Chuku’s, a Nigerian tapas pop-up serving cassava bravas (left) and jollof quinoa.

Jaggery

These blocks of super-rich unrefined sugar, made of sugar cane juice or palm sap, are a staple of South Asian cookery. Apparently it’s good for digestion — a great excuse to head to Covent Garden and consume industrial quantities of Cinnamon Bazaar’s coconut and jaggery parathas (above) or to visit Talli Joe nearby, where jaggery adds molasses sweetness to the Masala punch.

Kensington

No, seriously. South Kensington is coming to life with Levantine spot Ceru and the brilliant high-end Vietnamese Go Viet. Naturally there’s London Food Month’s Night Market in Kensington Gardens, and now Dishoom is heading to the culinary wasteland of High Street Kensington.

Lagom

‘Lagom’ means something along the lines of ‘enough is as good as a feast’ in Swedish; it’s also the name of the street-food stall you really need to know this summer. The hugely talented ex-Smokestak chef Elliot Cunningham uses live fire cooking to produce beautifully flavoured plates of barbecued meat, fish and vegetables.

Momos

London loves a dumpling, and the little steamed parcel you need now is the momo, the Tibetan version. The main difference is thicker dough, which makes it more substantial — although you’ll still scoff a dozen, whether from street-food stand Momo Shack or filled with delicately flavoured chicken (above) at Darjeeling Express.

N16

Trying times for South Londoners: Stoke Newington has become budding restaurateurs' favourite patch. Jump on the Overground and head to Lacy Nook, Perilla, Dandy, L'Antica Pizzeria da Michele or cult hangout Andi's.

Old Food

Sustainability rules OK, and bartenders are obsessed with ‘closed loop’ cocktails: new drinks made from the waste of old. Nine Lives in Bermondsey (opening summer) will use the skin, oil and pith of discarded lemon slices in cocktails and liqueurs; while Trash Tiki at The Curtain makes cocktails (above) using leftover tortillas.