London: Part 1 - Hangin' with Dickens' Ghost at Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese

We went to London for the first time this past weekend.

To say we had a good time IN London would be an overstatement, though it wasn't all bad.

Sorry, we love to travel,  but many of us detest tourists, and while there are a couple of attractions we'd like to see eventually; mostly museums related to art and history, and a cartoon museum...that off the top of our head; there just was no patience within us Saturday to do any of those things. We cannot tolerate long lines full of strollers of crying children, and unaware parents. We made it as far as going into the Tate, The British and International Modern and Contemporary Art, only to end up turning around and leaving before seeing any art.

We will go another day, not on a weekend. We'll be able to do that since after we leave England in April we will have to come back in September, at which time we will stay in London and be an actual tourist.

One of the best things we did in London was eat. Of course. Eating was something everyone involved that day could agree on, as well as loads of walking.

For lunch we ended up at a gourmet hamburger shop called The Gourmet Burger Kitchen in the shadow of St. Pauls Catherdral. GBK is actually a chain restaurant with 57 locations, and to the average Londoner, or European, it probably has mostly average burgers; however, as an American, and a foodie, one of the grand treats of traveling abroad has to be the higher probability of finding a burger joint where you can have your burger cooked to order. As restaurants in Europe tend on a more higher quality, purer grinds of beef, it is safer for them to make, and for customers to consume, a burger cooked, say, medium-rare. A burgers not a juicy lovely burger when it's a hockey puck, but if you like'd to eat a puck you can order it that way here. But why would you?

From the freshest ingredients GBK creates mouthwatering and juicy burgers all all varieties, they even sell a choizo burger, and two different lamb burgers.

We didn't get fries or anything, opting for just a burger. When you want to be able to nosh around town it's unwise to fill up on a full meal in one sitting.

We decided on 'The Wellington' a juicy medium-rare beef patty (because that's how we wanted it) topped with mushroom, horseradish, rocket (commonly known as arugula in some countries) and mayo. Simple, no cheese, no ketchup or other additions. It was delicious.

 

James ordered the 'Buffalo', simple and with fresh ingredients, he actually preferred his over ours.

We walked out into the London rain and continued to wander around the streets. There was no real plan in place so the entire day pretty much involved walking, we concluded by the time we got back to our friends flat later that night that we had easily covered 12-15 miles of London.

We walked and walked, taking photos of as much as we could, spending quality time with James, talking, and trying not to shove at people. Being tall means we walk faster than the average person and people are always "in our way".

We stopped for nondescript (okay, bad, just terrible) donuts in Piccadilly Square. As it got darker we found ourselves wandering in the theater district where the crowds got thicker because it was Saturday night. We eventually ended up on Fleet Street near dinner time, it was quite and cool, but at least it had stopped raining. The streets were fairly empty because the area is more of a business district, famous for being the  home of the newspaper industry in the 1980's. There were less people and many London cabs about, which we failed to photograph, there is one in particular that we loved with a black and white Guess advertisement along the side of it's uniquely shaped black body - all of the cabs we saw in downtown London are a specific make and model, and while they vary in colour, they are very distinct and classic looking. James says all cabs look like that here.

We were looking for a restaurant/pub that a friend/family member of James' had said made the best pies. That's meat pies, usually when the English use the world "pie" they are talking about a savoury pie that may, or may not, contain steak and kidney, which is the most popular kind. Turns out he didn't order the pie anyway.

We found the pub, and it turned out, while not exciting by most people's standards, to be an opportunity we did not expect.

The Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese sign on the street side,
with St. Paul's Cathedral in the  background.

While they have a sign right out on the sidewalk (or "pavement", if you are English), the entrance to Ye Olde Chestire Cheese sits back in a small alley. For whatever reason we did not get pictures of it, from the outside, however, the pub is well documented on the internet so you can locate more pictures on the internet if you'd like. Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese is the oldest chop house (steak house) in London, as well as a famous haunt for famous writers such as Dickens, Tennyson, Twain and Doyle, just to name a few, as well as Dr. Johnson (Samuel Johnson), poet, literary critic and father of the very first English Language Dictionary.

We feel tingles just writing that, knowing we were in such a place, if only for a mere hour.

The structure has been in place since about 1553, and then rebuilt after the great fire of London in 1666, with vaulted wine cellars that date back to the 13th century when the spot was home to the Carmelite Monastry.

When we walked in the door we were greeted with the pungent smell of years of beer saturated hard wood floors. The entrance is small, with typically high ceilings, dark wood and poor lighting, reminding us of traditional English hotels and pubs depicted in movies about old London, with it's narrow stairway greeting you as you enter; the small bar to the right, and the main dining room (The Chop Room) to the left. Sounds of people are everywhere, the place is full, in all the drinking areas, which are plentiful and scattered about the building; it appears to be a popular hangout of locals.

The dining room is large with old dark wooden booths that must surely date back to the time it was rebuilt, they creak heavily as we slide into the one in the back, facing the entrance and the rest of the patrons. To our left was the original hearth, warm embers of coal glow and heat up the room. Opposite us, on the other side of the hearth, is a long table, original to the building and said to be the favourite table of Dickens.

Our Tweet from Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese, complete with error.
The #LP is a hashtag for Lonely Planet travel.

The inside of the menu.

The coal hearth in the Chop Room of Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese

The Chop Room (main dining room) at the Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese 

An Original copy of 'A Tale of Two Cities' written by Dickens in 1859,
with an apparent reference to Ye Old Cheshire Cheese.

A decorative plate depicting Samuel Johnson at Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese.

The atmosphere is warm and dark. The food was horrid. That's a little matter of fact isn't it - upon returning home a search for other people's experiences with the food there is similar.

We ordered fish and chips - which, by the way, we have learned is only the best on the coasts, and is not recommended in inland England. Apparently more than one of us has been told this but we still insist on trying to find good fish and chips wherever we go in England. The fish was bland, and neither cod or haddock, and overly breaded. We remarked at the questionable existence of any fish. The rest of the plate was nondescript, consisting of chips (what the English call thick cut fries) and carrots with peas (something called mushy peas is what is traditionally served with fish and chips.

James had the roast beef with veggies and a Yorkshire pudding (a type of popover). The beef was grisly and tough, which with the low light made differentiating between the edible and inedible parts difficult. The veggies were fine, but the Yorkshire pudding was dry and tough.

We went ahead and tried dessert, choosing sticky toffee pudding, which was...not good. That's all we can say about the dessert.

Clearly people are not going to Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese for the cuisine. Having said that, and this being our first real entry written about our dining experiences in England; we still have to write about our Kangaroo rump from a couple of weeks ago; we will state that English food being bad is a myth, it comes down to the idea that everything has to be salted, and sweetened and made with ingredients that are full of sugar and sodium to the point of not being able to taste the actual food ingredients. Food everywhere we have been in the world is "bland" in comparison to the "food" the general population of the United States consumes. And it depends highly on where you choose to eat. In addition, England strives to reduce the salt in their foods because it has negative health effects, and one can always choose to add more - or just go to a McDonalds. After a couple of days one hardly notices the difference, when they can start to taste the natural goodness of the food.

The whole experience of London, partiality the nighttime, was made unique by the appearance of various women dressed in vintage style clothing from the 1920's and 30's walking around the city. There appears to be a resurgence of the vintage style, and set against the backdrop of London at night, it was a sight to behold. We passed a woman standing in front of a pub/restaurant, an architecturally perfect example of the era for which she was dressed, head to toe in gorgeous nostalgic fashion, from the perfectly coiffed hair beneath a red velvet hat complete with velvet flower appliqué, to her seamed red nylon stalkings in elegant red vintage-style heels beneath a perfectly styled dress. Breathtaking. Next time we will ask to photograph the women we see.

Over the next week we will post and share some of our other, lesser experiences and impressions of London. For now, a taste.