London - world city

London has been transformed from the capital of the British empire to the preeminent world city. Or rather, this melting pot city has been overlaid on the imperial center to create a fascinating but very crowded playground.

The pace has picked up and the congestion, especially in high tourist season, has intensified. And everyone is eating and drinking all the time. Every other storefront is a cafe, or bakery, or juice place, or restaurant, or pub, or sandwich place, or Starbucks, or Costa. The choices are innumerable.

I was juggling a couple of "secret London" guidebooks with Zagat's and my street map to identify targets for lunch and dinner. Those resources sent me to Abeno's on Museum Street in between my visits to the Sir John Soane house at Lincoln's Inn Field and the British Museum. The restaurant, rated a 25 for food, offers a savory Japanese pancake, the okonomo-yaki, as a specialty.

I ordered the Tokyo mix -- which adds pork, shrimp and squid to the base of egg, dough, ginger, spring onions and tempura batter. The lunch menu also included a miso soup and the side of the day -- marinated cucumber, but the main attraction was the pancake. The server mixed the ingredients in a bowl at the table, stirring and tossing, and then ladling it onto the hot griddle in the middle of the table, shaping it as a 2-inch thick pancake, then returning to turn and cover with a dome so that it can cook through. The pork belly is browned separately on the griddle then added to the top of the first cooked side. The pancake cooks through under a metal dome and then is served with a couple of sauces. I'm not sure I'll ever be fanatical about Japanese food, but it was nice to be able to try something different.

Borough Market Hall has become such a mecca for tourists that stalls offering ready meals have proliferated. There are still the beautiful butcher counters, fish stalls, produce, specialties, including a branch of famous Neal's Yard cheese store -- how wonderful it would be to have this as a resource for a special meal or even a weekly pilgrimage. But as a tourist, I have no complaint about the food ready to eat. I searched for Kappacasein, a cheese stall mentioned in a 2012 article by George Aquino that I found through Google. He said they had the best toasted cheese sandwich he ever tasted. And it was in fact terrific. Grated cheese -- predominantly cheddar with comte and "hard cheese" added -- was piled with some chopped onion between two slices of sourdough bread (Poilane?) and pressed into a robust electric grill to toast and melt. Two heaping half-sandwiches comprised the order for 7 pounds, making it a bargain at that price. They also served raclette, but that will have to wait for another time.

For dinner on Thursday, I wanted to find a Zagat-rated restaurant in Mayfair, near Claridge's, that offered British cuisine. Patterson's (26 rating on food) seemed to fill the bill but when I got there it had turned into a Japanese restaurant. But they kindly sent me around the corner to Wild Honey, a "New Brit" with seasonal dishes that earned a respectable 23 for food. The reddish wood paneling and red leather banquettes with bright modern paintings made a warm and welcoming impression. A bar seat was available and a personable Lithuanian waiter provided flawless service. Dinner guests were lively but the noise level was comfortable and a contrast to the American obsession with making places noisy to create buzz.

I opted for a la carte because the prix fixe menu seemed a bit boring. The smoked Lincolnshire eel for a starter was tender and delicate in flavor, different from smokier, eelier versions I knew from the Baltic beaches, but more appropriate for a swanky Mayfair restaurant. The rack of lamb main course was also tender and served with a spring roll with lamb shoulder as a complement that wasn't even mentioned in the description. A carafe of red wine was just the right amount to accompany. The English custard tart for dessert was so light it did not so much melt in your mouth as evaporate, leaving behind a creamy, sugary aftertaste. The grated nutmeg topping was just the right accent.

Staying with my friends for the weekend, I had a chance to visit their favorite neighborhood restaurant, a Vietnamese storefront that had astonishingly fresh salads and exceptionally flavorful treatments of what is often a lackluster cuisine. The caramelized pork entree actually tasted of both, and went well with the sauteed beans and bok choy the owner sent out to her regular customers.

An even greater revelation was the neighborhood bakery we visited on the morning of my departure. the E2 Bakery was a poster child, my friend explained, for School of Artisan Food, a relatively new institution housed in a classic estate in Sherwood Forest. The baker had learned his trade there, as well as how to run a small business, and had created a runaway success with his bakery nestled under the arches of (an abandoned?) train line. I couldn't resist the standard pain au chocolate, a crispy, puffy, extra-large version of my favorite pastry. I tasted their granola, which was toasted and garnished with a creamy yogurt and fresh berries and absolutely the best granola I'd ever tasted. Next time! The breads were beautiful and I brought back as a souvenir the signature Eccles cakes that the baker had revived as an English favorite -- a puff pastry with a piquant black currant filling.