Edgware to Kenton via Queensbury
Four walks between three South Asian restaurants
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 everyday places in London with unusual staying power, like shops, buildings, restaurants and public spaces.
Wooden City is a reader-supported publication and paid subscribers get much more. This includes access to maps, full articles and an archive of material covering over 200 places so far.
I launched Wooden City partly because I wanted to expand my remit beyond restaurants and write about other places too. At the same time, I wanted to dig deeper into the interests that impelled me already: how London is changing, and what that change does to the places and histories that constitute it.
But the more I publish, the more I realise this newsletter is also about me getting to know this city better. Most of my writing has been learning out loud – about the details that determine a place’s character, about food, about London. I was spending all my free time walking around the city before I started my Instagram; that page was the first time I began turning aimless wandering into “research”.
For years my approach has been to find places that interest me on Google, then walk between a small group of spots that are relatively close to each other. With restaurants, that means eating in each place, looking for others en route and going back to the ones I like best.
I started systematising my walks in 2019, but it was the blissful gaps between lockdowns that I began to really double down. A walk from Edgware to Wembley in August 2020 was defining for me. I was inspired to walk between these areas after reading Jonathan Nunn’s work for the first time, specifically his guide to west London’s best-value restaurants. I can’t overstate how much Jonathan, Vittles and Eater London have influenced my writing since.
My route began with B&K Salt Beef Bar, then I followed the A5 down to Cafe Anglais, a historical caff in Colindale. After that I walked an hour and a half to Dosa Express in Wembley, another entry in the west London guide, before I carried on to Ace Cafe in Stonebridge. I noted down loads of other places on the way, many in neighbourhoods I’d never visited before.
I recently went back to Edgware with just two restaurants in mind but the intention of visiting three. I do a lot of planning before I go anywhere these days, so I thought it would be fun to improvise a little, like I used to do more of. The two places on my list were an hour away from each other on foot and I knew I’d find many others en route.
One Sri Lankan takeaway appealed to me the most, which happened to be right between my initial two. Over three more walks between these three restaurants, I’ve tried to get to know each of them better, along with the neighbourhoods they inhabit and sustain.
Royal Sandwich Bar
A patchwork of cultural references shapes the inside of Royal Sandwich Bar, somewhere I was inspired to visit after reading Vittles’s London sandwich guide. While a digital print on the wall depicts cattle racing and women in saris, its booths are upholstered with zebras, giraffes and cheetahs.
A few restaurants nearby serve both Kenyan and Indian food, so I thought these seats might suggest the place’s owners had come to the UK via East Africa. In fact the guy behind the counter, who’s from Nepal, told me he bought the seats from a friend simply because they were comfortable and looked nice.
Many people enjoy these seats, but most eat sandwiches and chips. It’s a high street hangout, where friends gossip over masala chai and families decide what to see at the cinema. It can be quieter on Mondays, but on a Friday at 12.37pm you are likely to find it almost full.
I keep going back to Royal Sandwich for many reasons. But the things I like the most are its signage, easy-going vibe and the personality its welcoming proprietor imparts into the dishes he makes.
On my first visit, I went for the paneer tikka toastie recommended in Vittles. The next day I came back for the kidney bean sandwich and the masala chips. Both sandwiches were neatly overloaded, oozing their layered components in the same way lasagnes do. But it was the chips that made me really grasp how places like this bring plainer, processed ingredients to life with sharper, fresh ones.
Royal Sandwich sometimes has up to four members of staff at work, but the same guy is always there and he usually takes your order. On my first visit, he looked at me in the attentive way Al from Scotti’s Snack Bar also does with new customers, as if memorising my face so that he could greet me more personally if I were to return.
Each time I did, he said, “hello brother” and thanked me for coming back. It was on my third visit that I tried his Bombay sandwich, another quiet lesson in how something can be sweet, sour, spicy, crunchy and soft, all at the same time.
31 Station Rd, Edgware HA8 7HX