Soho Oasis

Andrew Edmunds Restaurant

Andrew Edmunds

Linking trendy Carnaby Street and Berwick Street market is Broadwick Street - off this is a quiet backwater Lexington Street.  Here you will find an eclectic mix of restaurants & shops.  One of my favourite restaurants is ‘Andrew Edmunds’, Andrew is an antiquarian print dealer by trade with his shop next door to the restaurant.  Some I feel would find this venue rather cramped, as its small & very busy - you can only book a table a week in advance and the restaurant is on two levels, ground floor & basement.  The décor is somewhat shabby, but this has a charm all of its own.  The dark interior is lit with candles which creates a romantic, cosy ambience.  It is totally unpretentious, staff are friendly & knowledgeable - mainly actors between jobs.  I would liken the restaurant to a bistro one would find in the back streets of Paris.  The menu is short & changes daily, just good well cooked rustic style food sensibly priced.  The wine list is excellent - no greedy mark-ups, so you will find exceptional bottles at much lower prices than other restaurants.  Do try and visit I know you won’t be disappointed.  (0207 437 5708)
The area is a foodie paradise - opposite is ’Mildreds’ vegetarian restaurant that was established in the 80’s and still going strong.  They serve excellent well priced food in friendly
informal surroundings.  Next door but one is ’Aurora’ which has a modern European menu that changes monthly.  In the warmer months you can eat outside in the courtyard garden.  Other restaurants in the area include Fernandez & Wells food & wine bar, Café Gourmand, Wagamama - you really are spoilt for choice.

Antiquarian Prints

For those of you that followed the channel 4 documentary ‘Riches to Rags’ featuring Lily Allen and her sister Sarah their shop ‘Lucy in Disguise’ is next door to Andrew Edmunds.  It looks pretty cool from the outside with its clever façade of gold plastic discs
that twinkle as the air moves them.  The stock inside is an Aladdin’s cave for all vintage clothing fanatics.
While here do go back to Broadwick Street and visit Cowling & Wilcox which is an absolute must for art supplies.  In fact the shop is quite diverse, we bought an excellent selection of Christmas cards and wrap at really good prices.

Dinner à deux

Running a shop over the festive period involves long hours with little time to prepare for my own Christmas.  Not that I’m complaining - in fact I’m extremely grateful that we were busy considering all the economic gloom.  I did manage to decorate the Christmas tree the evening of the 21st - at least it was done for Christmas Eve - the rest of the house had to wait until Christmas day morning!
Having worked 14 days without a break we were feeling pretty wrecked and selfishly engineered it that we were on our own Christmas day to enjoy a quiet relaxing day, just pottering around, with family visiting on Boxing Day.

We decided to have our meal Christmas day night and I drew on my culinary skills from a previous life as a successful restaurateur and prepared a fairly light dish of a large puff pastry case filled with seafood in a light creamy sauce accompanied by roasted tomatoes on the vine.  I cheated and used Just Roll pastry - it really is just as good as making your own.  The fish came from our excellent fish stall which is under the market house in Tetbury each Wednesday.  Having prepared a béchamel sauce,  I sweated off in butter finely chopped red onion , reduced white wine, tarragon leaves - to intensify the flavour I always add a  Knorr fish stock cube and finish with a good dollop of double cream.  A dear friend kindly gave us a posh bottle of champagne from Harvey Nicks, which proved to be the perfect accompaniment to this Christmas day supper.