Whilst trying to keep the list of restaurants within the borough up to date it struck me how much the restaurants of certain cuisines are suffering and struggling to stay afloat while in a cost-of-living crisis and the back end of the covid crisis.
I have already had a rant about the lack of British and French restaurants with the number of French restaurants now reduced to just one and even that one I struggle to call a proper French restaurant. Another ethnic cuisine that has struggled are the Caribbean restaurants with now just two within the borough. They have either shut up shop or moved and set up as takeaways,
It’s very sad to see restaurants being replaced by takeaways who seem to be thriving. The borough has a fair size community of Caribbean decent who I am sure would love to experience Caribbean cuisine within a restaurant atmosphere.
You must ask yourself then, if this is the case why did a lot of them just disappear? The only cause I can think of is they weren’t being used. It seems a simple case of ‘use it or lose it’. I’m sure peoples lack of money during the current cost of living crisis and to a lesser extent now, the covid recovery have had a big effect on this situation.
What the Royal Borough of Greenwich is in desperate need of are good French and British restaurants. Other surrounding boroughs have a few but we have hardly any considering we are a Royal borough that extols the virtue of British tourism. We currently have one Café Rouge . which as very soon to be closed down and converted to a Banna Leaf restaurant which is a pan Asian restaurant, after the parent company of Café Rouge got into financial difficulties.
That will leave just the Champagne and Fromage Bistro which although technically a restaurant only really specialises in, you guest it Champagne and Cheese with maybe a few cold meats on the side. Hardly what you would call a proper French restaurant. Then we have our British restaurants. I have had to delete so many British restaurants this year that I am reduced to scouring the locations of Fish and chip restaurants and Pie and Mash restaurants. These are no doubt worthy of being classed as British restaurants as many of us Brits regularly frequent these establishments, but what we really need are independent steakhouses or proper British restaurants.
Where is all the British grub you may well ask, and I will tell you. It’s in the Pubs of Greenwich. We have great British food being served in style at places such as The Greenwich Tavern and the Cutty Sark and Enderby House in Greenwich and the Dial Arch and Guard House in Woolwich. In fact almost every pub in the Borough will serve British food of some sort you just have to do trial and error to find the good ones.
On a lovely sunny evening on Wednesday 12th July we went t the opening of the new pub called The Duke of Greenwich (formerly The Vanbrugh).
I was mistaken in my last blog when I said that I thought the pub had been gutted and was completely different inside. Inside the layout is still the same.
The selection of craft and real ale beers on sale is most impressive although the barman did seem to go into a state of mind confusion when the wife asked for a glass of Pinot Grigio. She settled for a Sauvignon Blanc, which he could handle. I being a CAMRA member wanted to try out the real ales on offer.
Most of the real ales on offer were from the Brew By Numbers brewery which brews excellent beers just down the road by the river.
My wife also tried a Portuguese wine called ‘Chin Chin’ which she said was very nice.
The main food on offer that day was supplied by the large BBQ stage set up in the gardens although I am sure other food was being prepared in the restaurant part but was largely being ignored in favour of the BBQ.
I will eventually get around to writing a review about this place, but it will not be based on the opening day as that would be unfair. Most pubs are different in vibe and ambience once the celebrations are over and a more normal way of life sets in.
Going forward even if they kept the pub as it was on the opening day, I would be OK with that as we enjoyed ourselves. I will also try out their food to see what sort of selection they have but I strongly suspect that they will keep it as a basic pub grub establishment, which is fine as long as the food quality remains good.
The only reason the Vanbrugh closed was the licensee retired and there was no one available to take up the reigns. Let’s hope the Duke of Greenwich is a success. I for one will be popping in occasionally.
As stated in a previous post about the farmers market at Woolwich, the farmer market has now become more of a food festival rather than a place to buy organically produced raw fruit and vegetables, and now it would appear the organizers have come to realise this fact.
Starting this Saturday 5th June and repeating each first Saturday of the month throughout the summer period there will be on the same site a Street food festival along with live music, bars and other entertainment.
The weather is predicted to be fantastic this Saturday (but this could change) so the day should be a very, joyous, happy and entertaining event.
It’s great to be able to go into a restaurant to sit down and drink again, even if the Covid restrictions still limit group numbers to 6 people, and you have to book in advance and are usually limited to one and a half hours, but normality is slowly being restored, despite the Indian variant possibly delaying total freedom even further. Taking full advantage of the sunshine this Bank holiday Monday we booked a table at the fairly new Enderby House pub along the river by the Greenwich peninsular. Check out my review of the Enderby House on the pub review section.
Use them or lose them.
Reviews on the Sefa restaurant, Thai Tiger, Zaibatsu, and Kailash Momo restaurants added to the restaurant’s review section.