London with kids - A trip report
We visited London in July for 4 nights and 3 full days. Prior to our trip, I searched this board and jotted down many restaurant ideas but in the reality of our trip - we ended up in museums at lunch and snack time so that is where we ate. Our kids are 14 and 10 and they would not have been up for leaving the museum, going out to lunch, and returning. Starting with the British Museum - if you can avoid eating there - definitely do. It's not really awful - just not very good. The Imperial War Museum was a very pleasant surprise. The cafeteria was quite small and for some reason I had low expectations but everything we had was quite good. They had small things such as containers of humous and cut up vegetables as well as good soup and bread and cheese so you could eat a healthy lunch. I didn't try the hot meals but the rest of the family really enjoyed them. The Tate museum had good reviews for their food but we had a mid-afternoon snack there and weren't very impressed. We had a scone, a pastry and ice cream. The ice cream was good but the scone and pastry were barely average. For our first dinner we ate at Truly Indian. It was very good but did not offer up the unique flavors I was hoping for. The second night, we needed to have a quick dinner because we had tickets for the London eye. We had noticed a Pitt 'cue stand near the Southbank centre so the rest of my family got food there while I went into Eat to get soup. Their food was really good - mine was not. On our third day, we decided to visit King's Cross station and the eat st. markets. We got the Bhangra burgers, they were really unique and had very interesting flavors, everyone liked those. We also got a roll up with grilled halloumi cheese, the cheese was delicious and the roll up full of veggies but could have used a little more seasoning/dressing. We also got some pork belly buns, I didn't try those but they didn't get any raves. Our best meal of the trip was at the Needoo grill. All our entrees were uniquely flavored with the exception of the butter chicken, which I added to make sure there was something familiar for the kids. After ordering, we kept seeing people getting platters of grilled meat but we missed ordering that because I think it was on the appetizer menu. They looked delicious and we were sorry we hadn't gotten one for ourselves. For our last night, we were all tired and just wanted to eat near the hotel (Premier Inn County Hall). We ended up eating at PingPong - definitely not a chowhound type place - it's a dim sum chain. We've had excellent taiwanese dim-sum back at home, so we know what it should taste like, but still we had fun and enjoyed our meal. The restaurant comped us interesting non-alcoholic drinks, because it was the fourth of July, and they noticed we were Americans. We also really enjoyed the gelato at 3Bis and went there twice. It's a pleasant spot and the people who work there are really nice.
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Have to say the only surprise I've had at the Imperial War Museum (which I visit periodically for research purposes) is the extortionate cost of the food. I reckon it's the biggest food rip-off that I know in London.
On my last trip (four nights), I also stayed at the Premier Inn County Hall as it's an easy stroll to IWM. Lots of decent eating opportunities within a few minutes walk - Baltic and La Barca, for examples.
