2013 Euro Vacation: London pubs and restaurants

One of the advantages of staying in the Angel Islington is the great variety of restaurants and pubs in the area, with Upper St alone having what seems like hundreds of them.
We managed to go to a few up-market restaurants, plus a lot of small cheaper ones, and quite a few pubs.
The most spectacular restaurant was not in Islington, but in Knightsbridge - Heston Blumenthal's London restaurant, which is located inside the Mandarin Oriental hotel. This was by far the most expensive meal we ate but was worth the experience. He does not serve the very weird stuff here that he has at his Fat Duck restaurant, but everything was superbly done. The menu items all had some historical basis in very old British recipes, with modern updating of ingredients. Pen's entrée was a pate with mandarine flavoured jelly, but is was done to look exactly like a fresh mandarine, with the orange "skin" being the jelly and the pate inside. We managed to keep a copy of the menu for foodie friends at home to have a look at.

We ate a couple of times at Jamie Oliver's Italian restaurant in the Angel - great quality food, wine and service, and good value for money. Very lively place, full every night of the week. Pen and Georgie ate also at Jamie's Fifteen, which is in Shoreditch.

The other foodie highlight was eating at Ottolenghi's place in Upper St, just down the road from our flat. It's a fairly small place, and difficult to get a booking - we had to wait a week to get a booking for dinner. Very interesting and healthy food, just like you see on his TV shows.

There is a huge number of small places,plus pubs in the area. The photos below show a sample of some that we favoured with our custom!