Dining Out 060: Everything I Ate In London In February

Connie's Pizza, Mangal II, The Plimsoll, and more

What’s up party rockers I am back and this time I actually mean it. I have taken a very long time away from Dining Out - too long, honestly - and have had a couple of false re-starts since, but ultimately I have missed this a lot, and I enjoy having the push to write, because otherwise I’m very liable to just let my brain atrophy while I stuff it full of as many episodes of Love Is Blind as I can. I’ll still let it atrophy a bit, for a treat, but I’m very excited to goss with you all about my dinner on a regular basis again too.

Dining Out is going to come out on Sundays from now on, mostly because I like the idea of people reading it while they have a chill little coffee or try not to get the egg yolk from their breakfast sandwich on their top. It might take the form of a restaurant review, and it might also just end up being shit like “The Official Ranking of Chicago Town Products,” but either way, I hope 1) we all have fun and 2) it’s at least a bit informative. For paying subscribers, there’ll also be a couple of extra posts per month, so if you’d like those, that option is available to you. Mwah.

While I was gone, I had a bit of an up and down relationship with restaurants and eating out - I’ve been pretty depressed, on and off, “lol”, which famously limits you from doing the stuff you actually enjoy - but in recent months, I’ve been back at it with a vengeance. So, I figured that for my first post back, I would share with you a bunch of mini-reviews of places I went to - and for the most part really enjoyed - throughout the month of February.

Herein lies pizza, pubs, and the root of my worst hangover in many years, plus some supermarket cookie recommendations (which you should heed because truly I have put in the hard yards). Thanks for reading and see you next week, and the week after that, and the week after that. I can’t wait.

Dinner @ Connie’s Pizza in Peckham

Sir, a third hypey pizza place has hit the Peckham/Nunhead area. Following in the hallowed and much-discussed footsteps of Dough Hands at the Old Nun’s Head and D4100, comes Connie’s, another proponent of the “London”-style pizza I used to write about quite a lot. This style - thin crust NY vibes, but a) usually personal pie size and b) a bit greasier; the sort of thing that only people who grew up getting a £3 margherita from a chicken shop after school could invent - was established at places like Crisp and Dough Hands, and can now be seen all over the city, including, now, in the arches by Queen’s Road Peckham station.

Opened by the same chef who is behind 081 Pizzeria on Peckham Rye - which is a strictly Napoli-type operation, all airy, springy dough and Buzzball-sized burratas as toppings - Connie’s takes on this trendy style and does it incredibly well. I love Dough Hands but sometimes I find the base a bit too blackened and therefore kind of hard to actually eat, but this is a little sturdier. Highlights were the meatball and mozzarella stick starters (not to be like, perversely “cheese pull” about it but they are really gooey in a fun way), the nduja and stracciatella pizza, and the fiorentina style pizza (fuck it more egg on pizza 2026). I personally wouldn’t bother with the vodka one because it’s pretty much just a margherita, and the creaminess that makes that sauce special doesn’t translate onto a pizza, in my opinion.

My only real gripe was that I wished they had a few more fun cocktails on the menu but I’m just a basic hoe who loves spicy margs so I have no idea why anyone listens to me in the first place to be honest. Tl;dr: Great pizza, go eat it.

Lunch @ The Plimsoll in Finsbury Park

Yes, The Plimsoll is really good. You know this, I know this, everyone who has ever been forced by the algorithm to watch Topjaw, Clockwork Orange-esque, knows this. It was, however, very nice to remind myself quite how wicked it is at lunch the other week, because when something becomes received wisdom, you start to take it for granted, right?

The Dexter cheeseburger, obviously, remains the final boss of pub burgers I’ve known and loved, but there’s so much else going on too: there’s a could-be-too-delicate radicchio and pistachio salad made hearty with the addition of a shitload of cheddar cheese, a piri piri chicken thigh confited into submission, with chips so crisp and then fluffy that I temporarily lost all concept of the word “Nando’s,” and my favourite of all, calamari in meltingly light batter, chucked on the plate in a golden pile with a wedge of lemon, hinting at the brilliance of The Plimsoll’s sister restaurant, the seafood-focussed Tollington’s. All killer, no filler, still as banging as ever, Amen.

Dinner @ Eat Vietnam Bar-B-Grill, Deptford

This one has been the subject of a full review before, almost exactly a year ago, and I had just as good a time in 2026. The abridged version is: everything rules, you have to get something cooked on the grill, the quail goes absolutely crazy, the bánh khọt (mini pancakes ft. a singular prawn in each one) is one of my favourite restaurant dishes probably ever, and you should order the wings over the ribs, if you want my two cents. It’s affordable, it’s always packed, and you will leave feeling incredibly happy.

Dinner @ Detroit Pizza, Islington

Following a series of unfortunate events at the opening party for Hot Saint Pizza at the Old Queen’s Head (the unfortunate events being that every time a pizza came out to be served, it was descended upon by about 20 people with more gusto than that of the Brighton seagull who once stole a full doughnut from my hand), Elise and I decided to eat elsewhere, and landed on nearby Detroit Pizza.

We had gigantic frozen margaritas, a hot honey and pepperoni pizza to share and a green salad. You know when a meal is exactly what you’re wanting? This was that. We sat in a booth, kiki’d over these massive “It’s Five O’Clock Somewhere”-type drinks with fishbowl-in-Tenerife straws, and chomped pizza until we could chomp no more. I’d have preferred a slightly more chunky, less bubbly base - I prefer my deep dish pizza to be more breeze block-like, with hardened cheese down the sides; it’s just who I am - but the overall experience was basically ideal.

Also I should say! Hot Saint Pizza looks ace - similar vibe to Connie’s; I was sad I couldn’t elbow my way to a slice, and I am excited to go back and try it soon - and we got some really cute pics in the photobooth so all was not lost.

Lunch @ The Camberwell Arms

I fucking love eating at the pub and places like The Camberwell Arms are why. The food here is never wanky: it’s just designed to taste good, make you happy, and be bolshy and flavoursome enough to stand up to a decent bit of booze. There was fresh pasta, a super light mussel and kohlrabi salad, the classique Scotch bonnet and pork fat on toast ([Gob Bluth voice] COME ON), plus a stunnique fish dish - flaky, clean - with mashed potatoes buttery enough to rival my mother’s, which is high praise indeed.

Lunch @ Il Bambini Club, Shoreditch

This is the new restaurant inside the Hoxton Hotel in Shoreditch - a very worthy alternative to the B*g M*mma venue up the road - and I have to shout it out for one very specific and important reason that I wish all Italian restaurants would copy immediately: YOU CAN GET A SIDE ORDER OF RIGATONI.

This meant that when I ordered a main of big old meatballs in sugo, which was served with chunks of oily garlic bread (this combo is my longest yea boi ever), I was also able to avail myself of a half portion of pasta, so that no element was missing. Revolutionary!!! Also, they have this green bean salad which is randomly unbelievable.

Dinner @ Mangal II, Dalston

Of all the class meals I ate this month, this was my favourite for a lot of reasons. It is extra-special, always, to go to a friend’s place and see how they run a room - anyone who has eaten at Mangal II knows that Ferhat could do it better than most in his sleep - but honestly, regardless of that, this whole dinner was sooo fucking swagged out from beginning to end, with so much to yell about.

There was silky hummus and a soft, tearable sourdough pide to scoop it up with for every man, woman and child (get the one with added fat and thank me later); cull yaw ribs; poussin made smokier on the grill than I’d thought possible for a bird; a trio of adorable desserts including one which basically tasted like a churro with custard but about seven times as good as you are imagining that to be.

All of that in a buzzy dining room on a busy Friday night, with my two best girlies? I might as well be describing nirvana itself.

72 drinks and no dinner at Forza Wine, Soho

I spent some very cherished time last year as Forza Wine’s brand manager, and I left to take up my current role at Polyester just as renovations were beginning on Forza’s now-complete Soho site, so I was VERY excited to go to the launch party of said restaurant last Wednesday.

Everyone involved in the operation is a true legend and what they have pulled off is genuinely so cool - the finished product looks so sleek and swanky and sexy (there’s even a mirrored ceiling), and I can’t think of anywhere else in central London quite like it. Come summer, there will be handbags over tables on their terrace, mark my words. I wish I could tell you a bit about the food but unfortunately I was too busy drinking frozen apple daiquiris (sweet and tart), ordering from the martini bar (lethal), and chaining Forza-branded cigs that I did not get that far (leave that one with me until a later date).

Did this behaviour result in my getting so twatted that I could not remember the code for my building when I arrived home, meaning that I stood in the street for ten minutes scrolling through my flat’s group chat to try to retrieve it? Perhaps. Was it worth the brutal hangover the next day? You know what, definitely.

Honourable mentions throughout the month:

- the M&S speckled egg cookies

- the Sainsbury’s cereal milk cookies

- the ham and cheese croissant that brought me back from the dead the day of my Forza-inflicted hangover

- the two amazing bottles of blush-red wine me and Hannah accidentally had at Dynamic Vines in East Dulwich last weekend

- You Me & Sushi and chicken wine on a school night with Imo and Elise

- pancakes, chicken wine and the ANTM documentary on a school night with Imo and Elise

- the blue cheese and jalapeno martini that Hannah made to pair perfectly with a buttery Bleecker double cheeseburger

- Mini Eggs

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Dining Out is written by Lauren O’Neill. Weekly articles are free to read every Sunday, and you can follow me on Instagram here, but if you’d like to see more, you can subscribe for £5 pcm or £50 annually to get extra content a few times a month.

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