Profil von eyeful

It’s always good to find a restaurant that’s convenient for the local arthouse cinema, and being in the same parade as East Finchley’s Phoenix makes this a suitable pre or post film eaterie. Being seconds from the tube station and bus stop makes it easily accessible and it’s even close to Cherry Tree Woods, making it a pleasant watering-hole for a break for a coffee-and-pastry during an afternoon stroll.
Its informal atmosphere and reasonably priced meals makes this a welcoming choice for lunch or dinner - either tucked away in the romantic rear area of the restaurant or in the open front, overlooking the world as it walks by.
The food is neither spectacular nor interesting - but it’s simple and cheap and you can’t really go too far wrong with that kind of menu.

This functional eatery has been serving North Finchley for more than a generation.
I recently paid it a visit for the first time in about twenty five years, and I realised why…
The clientele is made up almost exclusively of young families and the middle-aged taking their elderly parents out for lunch.
The food is basic, but the choice is broad and the dishes are remarkably well priced - their children’s menu is particularly good value, which clearly explains the prevalence of young kids.
As such, don’t expect it to be an intimate venue for evening dates, but surprisingly, it doesn’t seem to attract the kind of screaming kids that might put you off your food - the excitement of being taken there for lunch seems to contain any urges towards bad behaviour.
As well as being a popular restaurant, where nothing has changed for decades apart from the font on the welcoming name-plate above the premises, Chix Chox is as well known as a takeaway patisserie, with a wide range of reasonably priced pastries.

The pubs have closed.
All restaurants have long since closed.
Even Soho has shut up shop for the night.
But you’re hungry.
Where are you gonna go?
You don’t really have much choice other than Tinseltown, Farringdon.
As it happens, there are worse places to go.
At up to £4.50 for a milkshake - and £3.99 for a few strands of pita with humous - it’s not cheap - but perhaps you have to pay slightly over the odds for the luxury of having somewhere you can go whenever you want it.
The security on the door seems rather odd - and almost off-putting - but once you’re inside, the staff are friendly and a cheesy menu (every dish named after something linked to Hollywood) offers you a wide choice of meals - from a whole host of nationalities. The food is functional, but fine.
And if it’s you’re friend’s birthday, make sure you let the staff know - they’ll get a candle in their dessert and they’ll get a special birthday message from Ne-Yo and a whole host of other so-called celebrities who might impress younger, cooler people than me.

Richoux prides itself on its lunches, teas and dinners - it’s only the latter I can comment on.
The place is a bit of a mixed bag, feeling like a cross between Paris and Manhattan, with food that’s a mixture of the eponymous brasserie-style French dishes and international delicacies as varied as a Japanese teriaki and a wide variety of Italian pasta and risotto dishes.
There is no question that the menu is very broad and there was very little left on the plates of my fellow diners.
As far as the main meals were concerned, the portions weren’t huge, but they were tasty, filling and well-priced for a restaurant in this area, with aspirations to the grandeur it clearly has.
The starters seemed a little over-priced though, with soup in excess of £5 a bowl.
There is also a £5 “cakeage” fee, should parties bring celebratory cakes with them.
Given that this applied in my case, I can’t really comment on the desserts, but the cake-counter was certainly filled with a wide variety of appetizing prospects.
While there are no complaints about the kitchen - whether the choice of dishes, the way they were prepared or the speed of the delivery - perhaps the weakest element of the dining experience was the rather inattentive waiting staff.
Sometimes, in a restaurant, you want to be left alone - but there are other times when you need an extra drink or someone’s itchy to pay and go - and the waiters should at least glance in your general direction from time to time, just in case.

If you’re looking for a restaurant, there are many criteria that will come to mind.
There’s so much choice in London that if taste or even value for money are what you’re after, it’s not hard to find the right place.
But if you find yourself pushed for time and need to find somewhere to order, eat, pay and leave within half an hour, this is the place.
Before we sat down, we told them we were in a hurry and they did their best to meet our needs.
When we said “jump” they asked “how high?”
Ordinarily, being served within a couple of minutes of placing your order might make you curse the fact that the food can’t have been cooked to order and has probably been sitting there waiting. But sometimes, finding somewhere with that food standing by is a godsend.
And in case you were wondering, the food was perfectly good and very reasonably priced for the West End, too.

Like few other restaurants, this place does what it says on the tin - it’s in Soho and serves pizzas.
Very conveniently located in the heart of Soho, space is clearly at a premium, so although it’s a fairly sizeable property, they do cram in those tables - not least because one corner of the restaurant is taken up by a piano, where live cabaret is provided most evenings. A little cheesy perhaps, but live music certainly beats the piped stuff.
To complete the atmosphere, in addition to the dinner jazz, portraits - like Herman Leonard’s Charlie Parker - adorn the walls.
The service is quick and attentive, without putting any pressure on your to rush your decisions - or your eating.
And the menu has all the usual Italian choices - majoring on the pizza. It’s reasonably priced, too, until you see how small the pizzas are. They’re well made and tasty though - so the size, on the positive side, just leaves room for dessert.
Here, the choice isn’t particularly expansive, but what more do you need from an Italian restaurant than Chocolate Fudge Cake, Tiramisu and cheesecake. Ice-cream is extra though.
Ultimately, the food is good and reasonably priced, the service is warm and the atmosphere welcoming - if a little squashed.

When you’re stuck for something to eat, most places you turn in London, it’s going to be a choice between Italian, Indian or Chinese, with TexMex thrown in for good measure, so stumbling across a Rusian restaurant makes a pleasant change.
With its dark red walls and bare dark-wood tables, Trojka immediately feels unconventional.
The menu is relatively small but strikes a good balance between authentic eastern European delights and dishes to please the less adventurous diner.
Starters include a beetroot borsch and blinis galore, while the main meals take in everything from the safety of fish and pasta to more traditional Russian fare - with some Ukrainian choices thrown in to fill out the menu.
The service is polite enough, but what makes this stand out, perhaps more than anything else, is that for Primrose Hill, it’s remarkably well-priced - and magazines, such as Hello, hidden under the tables for awkward moments, also add to the charm.

There’s nothing like stopping off for a coffee, pastry or light snack before, during or after a nice stroll on Hampstead Heath and there are few better places to do so than the bottom of Highgate West Hill - right across the road from Parliament Hill Fields.
Two cafes famously offer this opportunity, a stone’s throw from one of the greatest views of London - Cafe Mozart and its newer neighbour, Kalendar.
Having frequently enjoyed Cafe Mozart, the last time I ventured to the area, I plumped for Kalendar. But there were two differences from normal - it was pouring with rain, which made this the location of my socialising afternoon, rather than a diversion during my walk, making the atmosphere all the more important, and the friend I was with was a self-confessed food Nazi who will accept nothing less than perfection. At one of the smartest restaurants in the world, she moaned that while the food was “cooked to perfection” the menu wasn’t exciting enough.
So what did we make of Kalendar, as a place to be stuck for a rainy afternoon?
Compared with the Viennese charm of neighbouring Mozart, the rather spartan decor and randomly non-matching tables and chairs left us feeling rather ill-placed. And the staff did little to make us feel particularly welcome. Apart from when they bumped into our table, attempting to squeeze through the small gap between it and the deli-counter, it was as if they didn’t even realise we there - trying to place our order - and even getting the bill - it took ages to attract their attention. When the continuing rain afforded us time for a dessert, we had to approach the counter ourselves to elicit service.
The menu was certainly appealing - a broad selection of sandwiches, soups, pastas and the like, with a wide range of appealing drinks - hot and cold - and a well stacked dessert counter. And the meals themselves, while not spectacular, were perfectly adequate, for me, at least.
But the desserts - mouth-watering as they looked - left a lot to be desired.
My chocolate and raspberry cake was, sadly, dry and had but one raspberry thrown in, as if as an afterthought when the chef saw the label.
And my friend’s raspberry meringue was such a disappointment that even after exchanging it (the first had only one raspberry in a meringue the size of a grapefruit), it was so dry and tasteless that she had to leave most of it.
Sadly, after much hype and high expectations, the best that could be said of Kalendar in this occasion was that it got us out of the rain and didn’t give us food poisoning.
It was by no means bad, but coming with previous five star ratings, it was somewhat of a disappointment.
The menu, however, is certainly big enough to give them the benefit of the doubt and try again some time - perhaps with a less fussy companion.