We're all mad for noodles

The explosion in the number and variety of places to eat in London over the past decade is highlighted in a new survey today.

There are up to 40 times as many restaurants offering cuisines which were once rarely seen in the capital - with Thai and Japanese the fastest growing of all.

The number of Thai restaurants has increased by 4,325 per cent and Japanese by 2,260 per cent.

But restaurants describing themselves as "British" or "English" are in third place. Many of these belong to the new breed of gastropubs.

Traditional cafés and fishand-chip restaurants are the only types to dwindle since 1995. Listings of oldfashioned chippies fell by a third. Croydon has more chippies than any other part of London, followed by Walthamstow - positions they have held for 10 years.

The league table was drawn up by Yell, the firm that publishes Yellow Pages, using listings in 130 London postcodes. It found that the West End still
dominates, with Covent Garden and Westminster in the top two positions.

However, less central postcodes not usually associated with Michelin stars are now identified as gastro hotspots, such as E1, home of the Brick Lane strip of Indian restaurants.

The "loft-city" district of Clerkenwell, Spitalfields and Shoreditch in EC1 and EC2 has established itself as the spiritual home of modern British cooking. The original gastropub, the Eagle, opened in Clerkenwell in 1991.

WC2, home to Chinatown, still has the most Chinese restaurants, while Camden, NW1, emerged as the best place for vegetarians to eat.

In Restaurant magazine's recent list of the world's 50 best restaurants, 11 were in London, more than any other city. John Willoughby, executive editor of New York-based Gourmet magazine, said London is "the best city in the world to eat in right now".