Halfway through, we were already making plans about when to come back
It’s telling that London is now so over-furnished with fancy new restaurants that it can be incredibly tough to lure the capital’s diners to unfamiliar postcodes. Or, in the case of Allegra in Stratford, at the edge of the former Olympic Park, it’s a little like herding fog. Allegra is just six brief minutes by rail from King’s Cross St Pancras – just take the Javelin train one stop through the extra-fast Scooby-Doo tunnel (heck, the trip is even kind of fun), and Allegra, or, more accurately, the new skyscraper in which it lives, is the first thing you’ll spot as you exit Stratford International station. Don’t question why this station is called “international” when the line goes no farther than Kent; that’s another story.
“But Stratford feels such a long way from Islington,” many have whined, as if I’d suggested they lambada the Camino to Santiago while wearing jelly shoes. Londoners will rarely trek right across the capital for dinner. Many will, however, fly to Lisbon for the weekend to eat bacalhau à brás. I am but a conduit of this madness.
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