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La Bontendrie is a friendly and good value restaurant serving traditional French cuisine. The lunch menu, offering two courses for just over 14 euros and a main for €12.50 is ridiculously good value given the area and how busy this place gets during lunch.

Despite the friendly service and the good food, i have taken away ne star given thr irregular hours this restaurant appears go keep. I have come here on a day the restaurant was meant to be open only to find the place pitch-dark with no notice of what has happened… And walked past the following day to find the restaurant operating as usual.

If you are in the area, give this place a go. You won’t regret it.

This is a great hidden bar with an amazing location, just minutes away from Liverpool St station. I’ve been here three times and have received friendly service each time. The last time I was here was for my birthday celebration and the staff were amazingly co-operative, giving us a table, even collaborating with my boyfriend to surprise me with cake and song.

The cocktails are definitely delicious, and the prosecco very well-priced at £18 a bottle. The bar also serves standard bar fare to help you absorb all of the tasty tasty alcohol.

The Mayor of Scaredy Cat Town does get crowded very early on so my advice is for you to arrive before 6.30 pm to maximise your chances of getting in.

Friendly bar staff, good range of drinks and, best of all, they allow you to bring in food from Whitecross St Market during the week and eat, provided you order drinks, of course. In the evenings, you can order pizza to be delivered to the pub to satisfy those late night cravings.

The pub also has a dartboard which, strangely enough, is located right next to the entrance of the ladies so do watch out when making your way to the facilities.

The restaurants clustered around this area of Queensway never disappoint (probably because, if the rumours are true, they all share the same kitchen). The standard Chinese fare is pretty good. The Szechuan prawns (which aren’t really done in the Szechuanese way) were delicious, while the roast duck gravy was out of this world. The beef ho fun in black bean sauce was amazing and even the sweet and sour pork, a dish I don’t usually order as I’m Chinese, was good.

And, of course, you get a fortune cookie at the end of the meal. That’s how you know it’s a proper authentic Chinese restaurant. (I’m kidding.)

This place is a little on the pricey side in terms of drinks, even bearing its mind its central location and the name behind the bar. The cheapest glass of red was £7.50, and, yes, I know one does get what one pays for, but, it is a recession and it’s a bit painful when a glass costs close to double that of other wine bars ten minutes walk away.

Also, I’m sure our waiter was trying to be friendly and eager, but he came across rather menacing whenever he asked us whether we were sure we just wanted glasses or if we were certain we didn’t want to set up a bar tab.

What are the good things about this bar then? Well, the decor’s nice. Seats are very comfortable and it was quiet enough the night I went for two of us to catch up without having to yell. And the toilets were quite nice.

I’m sure The Passenger is an incredibly nice bar. There must be a reason why it appears in the list of best bars globally, year after year after year. However, the night I was there – a Friday night, yes, I know – it was exceedingly crowded, and incredibly dark. I’m fine with the latter generally, but it made reading the menu on the chalkboard rather difficult, particularly given my lack of height. As for the crowds, that meant everyone had to wait about 20 minutes or more at the bar before their order was taken.

Now, to the drinks. The main appeal of the Passenger, or so I read, was that if you tell the bartender what you like, he’ll come up with a drink for you. I can appreciate how difficult that gets when it’s crowded and how that would contribute to long waits. What I didn’t expect was to have the bartender say, “so what kind of drinks do you like?” and for me to explain that I liked “sweet but not too sweet drinks like mojitos” and have the bartender then go “I’ll make you a mojito then.” What was so hard about that? I expected more effort than that to be put in, for sure.

I think I would have enjoyed this place more if I hadn’t been by myself. But, I was in Washington for a two-day stopover and I’d heard so much about the bar that I decided to risk it. Not a place I’d recommend if you’re on your own!

Possibly the best street food market in London. Whitecross Street Market has great Thai (right at the end, at the junction of Whitecross Street and Old Street), delicious vegetarian in the form of the Buddha Bowl, the legendary burritos from Luardo’s, Hoxton Beach falafels, grilled meat, Turkish, Indian, Brazilian… You get the picture.

Dishes average about £5 to £6, and the vendors have, by and large, been very friendly. The market is at its busiest on Thursdays and Fridays when the full array of stalls is here. The market is still open from Monday to Wednesday, but the range of food is considerably smaller.

The problem of finding a place to sit if you don’t work in the area is not an insurmountable one. The Two Brewers pub allows you to bring food in, while the nearby Barbican Centre has plenty of seating. During the summer, one could choose to sit in the scenic Bunhill Row cemetary.

If I worked in the area, I could come here several times a week, and never ever get tired of the range on offer.