The London restaurant industry.

Getting to know the London restaurant industry is one hell of a challenge.

When I had previously been working in restaurants, in cities which now feel like small villages in comparison, there was a certain familiarity in the local industry. Everyone knew of each other, you were aware of who’s who, and any news was sure to make its rounds quickly across the industry. It felt like you could know the city’s restaurant scene within a fairly short period of exploration. You knew the local favourites, some “hidden” gems, and could probably count your personal preferences on one hand.

When I came to London, I was hit by the sheer size of the industry.

Of course, whenever you move to a new place, you will have to embrace the feeling of being a “foreigner” for a while, put in time and energy into exploring as much as you can, and slowly make your personal map of your new home.

But getting to know the hospitality industry in a city as big as London is an entirely new difficulty level for me. And having visited the city on several occasions before, I actually thought I was entering with a little head start.

Silly me.

Even if we ignore all the chains and franchises and only look at the independent businesses, making an overall image of what the industry in London looks like is virtually impossible.

Each borough, neighbourhood, quarter, or even street has its own ecosystem of restaurants in the same way entire cities do elsewhere.

Although I’m starting to learn a little more about the restaurants in the area I live and work in, if I was asked to give a recommendation in, say, the Battersea area, I wouldn’t know where to begin.

There is so much information, news, and gossip in hospitality. And where I lived previously, I could have easily told you various stories about who manages which places, which head chef works where, where they worked previously, which restaurant is working towards a Michelin star, where staff is treated badly, or which place used to be really good before going downhill after a change of management a few years ago. In London, I basically know nothing. Very slowly and painstakingly, I am putting together the few pieces I have into my personal London map, and drinking up all the information I can get.

Furthermore, the London hospitality scene is much more connected to a sense of timing than what I have experienced in other places. The turnover of new restaurants opening, trending, dropping, and closing happens at a - for me – previously unknown level of speed. In other cities, you may get some excitement about a new opening, but beyond that, there seems to be less of a sense of needing to know where to eat and when to eat there.

So getting to know the industry in London will take a lot of time – and a lot of money. London restaurants ain’t cheap. And on a precious day off, sometimes all I want to do is eat borderline bland food which I make at home, ideally catching up on my fruit and vegetable intake which I will have inevitably been neglecting in my working week. The last thing I may want is a long, complicated, heavy meal which will set me back by a considerable amount of money.

But then again, it’s London, the home of one of the best food scenes in Europe.

Every single day I could get consumed by an aggressive sense of FOMO if I even knew a fraction of what was going on and where I could eat. Perhaps I should be grateful for my current state of blissful ignorance of the London food scene. As long as I don’t fully know the breadth of what’s going on, I can’t regret what I’m missing.

In any case, getting to know the scene will be a long, slow and steady process, and I’m excited to find new favourite spots, hidden gems, and (perhaps most importantly) get the sweet, sweet gossip about what’s happening in my new local industry.