Use them or lose them

Use them or lose them

by | Oct 15, 2023 | Business, Eating Out, Restaurant

Use them or lose them.

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.

Pub Bar
Where are all the French and British restaurants?

Where are all the French and British restaurants?

by | Sep 18, 2023 | Business, Eating Out, Restaurant

Where are all the French and British restaurants?

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.

Enderby House

Enderby House

by | Jun 2, 2021 | Eating Out, Pub, Restaurant, Reviews

Enderby House

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.

 

Cattleya Restaurant

Cattleya Restaurant

by | Dec 29, 2020 | Eating Out, Restaurant, Reviews

Cattleya Restaurant

Well, Christmas is over. Nothing happened, we just stayed in as we were instructed to do by our glorious leaders and adhered to the tier 4 rules. We stayed home, ate a lot, drank a bit more than usual and connected to our families via Zoom and WhatsApp.

I honestly do not think I can stand another year like this.

One of the few enjoyments over the Christmas period is when after you have had a Christmas left over roast for the third day in a row and you are sick and tired of washing up for the umpteenth time is to call out for a takeaway.

No pots and pans or roasting trays to scrub out and all you need to washup are two forks, two knifes and two plates. Heaven.

This is leading me into my first review, and I will review this place as I usually visit this place when it’s not in lockdown or tier 4 shutdown almost weekly, and we’ve been going there for over 12 years, and lately making use of their take-away service.

Cattleya Restaurant –  52 Charlton Church Lane, London SE7 7AB

Cattleya Thai Restaurant and Takeaway in Charlton, South East London (cattleyarestaurant.com)

It’s a Thai restaurant that also does basic Spanish tapas menus, as before it was a Thai restaurant it was a tapas café called Chu and Cho, and since the tapas side of the business was so popular with the locals, they decided to incorporate it into the Thai restaurant.

Over the years the menu has changed a little but not much and you will find all the usual Thai dishes found in many other Thai establishments.’

Before Covid-19 reared its ugly head, they would have monthly live music in the form of ‘SE7’ an amateur band formed of local musicians associated to the East Charlton residence association, playing on an ad-lib basis. Before ’SE7’ there were other local acts the Los Dawson’s and Gus Glen.

When we made a trip to Thailand, we deliberately compared the authentication of the food in Cattleya to the local establishments in Bangkok and Phuket and I was please to say the food was very genuine although it has been noted that over the last few years, I have noted they have toned down slightly the heat and spiciness in some of the dishes to accommodate a more British palate.

The owner Nittaya these days leaves most of the front of house duties to others whilst doing the actual cooking especially now that the take-away side of the business is escalating due to the pandemic.

I would recommend this restaurant highly to anyone, when you can eventually start going there again. In the meantime enjoy their takeaway service on Deliveroo.