LDNGuide
Where To Eat When You Can’t Be Bothered To Change Out Of Your Comfy Clothes
photo credit: Aleksandra Boruch
One of life’s great pleasures is eating in a restaurant where your comfiest and most downright offensive clothing isn’t so much accepted as completely unacknowledged. Being looked up and down as if you’ve just been caught wearing Crocs in the rain isn’t something you want, especially when you’ve gone somewhere because you just can’t be arsed. Thankfully there are plenty of restaurants across London that are as comfortable as you want to stay and will keep you in that sofa state of mind.
THE SPOTS
photo credit: Aleksandra Boruch
Drive-thrus were invented for hungry people who can’t be arsed to get up out of their car seats. While this LA-style burger spot in Mile End has the animal fries and comforting food down, you do unfortunately have to flex those calve muscles when ordering and collecting your food. But once you do, you’re in for one of London’s best smashburgers. Plus there are BBQ rib-topped fries and their take on the Big Mac which taste better sat in a car, wearing the kind of thing only your local late-night Sainsbury’s staff have had the pleasure of seeing before. Get stuck in, get messy, and stay nearby because you’ll probably want another smashburger when you finish yours in three bites.
photo credit: Aleksandra Boruch
A place that serves buttery lobster tails, bang bang prawns, and Oreo waffles all together is a place that respects your choice to rock up in jogging bottoms. Because we’re pretty sure even Ethan Hunt wouldn’t accept a mission to conquer the £40 bucket at this seafood-led Camden spot in slim-fit jeans. Get the heavily buttered corn and show it the respect it deserves, tear the tangy BBQ chicken thighs to pieces with your mitts, and refer to your dominant hand as ‘the crab claw’. After all, who needs a cutlery middle man or anything without an elasticated waist when you’re getting down and dirty with the best XXL lobster tails this city has to offer?
A good bowl of phở is the food equivalent to lying in front of the fireplace listening to David Attenborough read out every nice thing ever said about you. It’s warming, nourishing, and Sông Quê is where you should be getting yours. Aside from serving some of the best broth in London, this Kingsland Road Vietnamese is perfectly unpretentious. Meaning that it’s just as perfect for a date as it is a day after the night before group dinner. You probably won’t get any huskily read compliments, but the food more than makes up for that.
Getting a melted cheese sauce stain on your white shirt is inevitable at this Philadelphia-inspired spot in Fitzrovia, so wearing trackies here is basically just you being a responsible adult. A responsible adult, eating a moreish Philly cheesesteak in a dive bar decorated with lifesize cut-outs of Danny Devito, that is. Come here for a fun, relaxed evening where you can stuff your face with lots of tater tots and receive zero judgement.
photo credit: Aleksandra Boruch
You Me Korean in New Malden feels like your aunt’s house. If your aunt knows how to make a top-notch Korean meal with everything from perfectly crispy pajeon to obsessively good jajangmyeon. The homely dining room is filled with photos of the owner’s daughter with football players, and regulars visit in with their most socially acceptable version of pyjamas or gym clothes that have never seen the gym. If you’re with a big group make your way to the private dining room at the back, that’s really just a huge table with extra space for sizzling bibimbap and trays of fried garlic prawn.
You and your ‘running bottoms’ go way back. Have either of you ever seen a treadmill? No, no you have not, but who cares because you’re about to eat some excellent noodles. Chang’s Noodle is a cash-only spot in Bloomsbury that’s got you covered whether you’re after some solo shan xi yo po hand-pulled noodles for lunch or a weekly catch-up with your favourite people—you know, your fellow ‘runners’. Even if you go in hard on the noodles, don’t miss the braised pork belly with steamed broccoli.
photo credit: Aleksandra Boruch
Anytime we go to Normah’s wearing something that doesn’t fit into the loungewear section of our wardrobe, we kick ourselves for not being better prepared. It’s not that this casual spot inside Queensway Market isn’t worthy of our glad rags, in fact it’s one of the best restaurants in the city. It’s because we so desperately want to enjoy the excellent Malaysian food to the fullest—king prawn curry laksa and flaky roti—that we like to rock up in our most comfortable, least precious clothes. It might also have something to do with the fact that the beef rendang is our favourite kind of sedative and will most certainly end up on your t-shirt.
When you really can’t be bothered with anything. Like, really, really can’t be bothered with anything aside from lifting up a fork and feeling anything but 100% cotton against your skin, then Gökyüzü is the place to be. One of the many excellent things about this legendary Turkish spot on Green Lanes is that it’s open from 9am until midnight. Meaning that you can be eating a lahmacun in your pyjama top at 10am, and a bowl of manti in your pyjama top at 10pm. Which is all we really ask for in a restaurant.
photo credit: Aleksandra Boruch
Eat Vietnam Bar-B-Grill is pro-trackie. We know because we’ve rocked up to this excellent Vietnamese spot in Deptford in our most weathered Nike number, and still had a whale of a time. The menu is vast but the quality is consistent. Cánh gà (chicken wings) have a tangy house glaze that’s equal parts aromatic as it is rootin’ and tootin’. Summer rolls are unlike any sad interpretations you’ve had before, while any meat off the bar-b-grill section of the menu is likely worth a spot on your table. Book ahead, bring numbers, and make this your final stop of the night, trust us.
Dotori is a mile a minute Korean and Japanese restaurant in Finsbury Park where nobody gives a flying fart about what you’re wearing or who you’re with. The reason being is that this no-reservations spot is far too busy seating people queuing outside, putting down portions of their sizzling bibimbap, or taking pick-up orders for the lazy sods who can’t be bothered to wait 10 minutes for a seat (us). We tend to stick to the Korean menu, although you’ll be content here regardless. Just bear in mind it’s cash-only.
The King could walk into The Fryer’s Delight hankering after saveloy and chips, and Amal Clooney could walk in with her husband nagging for scampi, and you’d all still end up getting the same handful of tartare sauce packets. That’s just the kind of place this no-nonsense chippy in Bloomsbury is. The booths and red formica tables are a bit of a London icon, and the fish and chips aren’t bad either. Few things are as comforting as a chip butty and a cup of builders, and this is a solid place for both.
The top three spaces for comfy clothes goes something like: your sofa, your parent’s nicer sofa, and the biscuit aisle of your corner shop. Only go to Persepolis in Peckham, and you’ll walk through the biscuit aisle to find a brilliant and serene cafe that serves a huge range of Persian-inspired vegetarian food as well. You can either go à la carte alone or get yourself a mezze platter for one or, if there are at least two of you in need of some TLC, go for the £30 tasting menu. It’s a happy and relentless amount of food that starts with falafels and dips, and ends with baklava.
If you rock up to E Pellicci wearing head to toe peacock feathers like some upper class Zazu, the jolly Italian family that owns and runs this place will probably mock you mercilessly before you’ve even managed to consume a single baked bean. This proper, old-school Bethnal Green caff is all about fried bread, communal banter, casual fun, and waging a one-man eating contest with yourself as you try to finish every last scrap of their truly massive full English. You can do it—remember there’s no jean button constraints to stand in your way.
photo credit: Rianne Shlebak
You’ll find a mix of people at this no-nonsense Chinese restaurant in Earl’s Court. But whether they're on a date or having a heated family dinner, one thing you should know is that everyone at Sichuan Popo is too focused on the bamboo steamers filled with pillowy prawn and scallop dumplings to notice the stain you’ve been passing off as “coffee from this morning” for three weeks in a row. The lighting is dim, the servers are to the point, and the dim sum is served until closing. Eat with your head held high and blame that stain on the gong bao king prawns.
We have so much respect and affection for the cold liangpi noodles at Xi’an Impression that if they jumped up off the plate and asked us to put on a suit jacket and quick-fire style a bouffant, we’d do it. But that would never happen, partially because as far as we know noodles can’t talk, but mostly because this small Chinese spot in Highbury not only serves some of the best hand-pulled noodles in London but it’s also laid-back enough for a completely casual meal.
Lovely, lovely pubs. The spiritual home of pints and never being underdressed. The Camberwell Arms definitely falls under the bracket of ‘lovely British pub’ but they also serve some truly excellent food like pork fat and scotch bonnets on toast, beef tartare, and a beef and ale pie for two that’s got ‘elasticated waistband’ written all over it. Of course, you can stop by this Camberwell spot on a weeknight, but coming here for a Sunday roast wearing your comfiest trackies will bring a whole new meaning to Sunday best.
