Eating out for £6.75 or less
In Acton, Tooting and Finsbury Park
Hello and welcome to Wooden City, a newsletter about London.
If you haven’t come here via @caffs_not_cafes, I'm a writer called Isaac Rangaswami and this is my Substack.
Every other week I publish an article about locally important places such as pubs, shops, restaurants and public spaces.
Wooden City is funded by its readers and paying subscribers get much more. This includes access to maps, full articles and an archive of material covering over 250 places so far.
I use a checklist on my phone to keep track of the inexpensive restaurants I want to visit. When I come across somewhere that interests me, I add it in. After I get to know one of those places and write about it, I tap the circle next to its list entry. A tick appears, before the entry flies down to join the others I’ve covered. If I go somewhere and decide not to write about it, I usually just delete it from the list.
I’ve been updating this list since 2019. It once featured only caffs, but for a while now those spots have been outnumbered by other types of restaurants. I’m not scientific about how I organise it, but I regularly reorder the list and the entries that call to me most always rise to the top.
At the time of writing, this list contains over 354 restaurants I haven’t visited yet. Today’s issue features three that I have: a Lebanese place, a Sri Lankan Tamil canteen and an Algerian sandwich bar. I’ve been to each spot at least twice and they all serve dishes for £6.75 or less.
L'Oriental Restaurant
L'Oriental Restaurant in Acton has been open for 22 years and will close in September, because its owner is retiring. If you go for lunch before then, you’ll find a condensed menu of mostly wraps and grilled meats. On my first visit, the proprietor told me he didn’t have any makanek, so I asked him what else was good. He recommended the chicken shawarma wrap, which costs £6.50.
During that visit, a woman wearing headphones and running gear popped in and greeted the owner by name, before asking for a wrap and checking how long it would take. It sounded like she ran a business close by and he offered to bring it over when it was ready. After that an elderly man came in and sat down for a bit, just to chat with the owner.
When I returned another time for dinner, a middle-aged guy in a rain jacket entered after me, and took off his backpack in a way that suggested he’d just finished work. “Hi Tony,” he said, before making small talk and collecting a plastic bag with his wraps inside. These regulars made me see Churchfield Road as a villagey bit of Acton, where people frequent the businesses near their homes.