Thursday, 3 September 2026, London: duck salad, steak, and The Lion King

Written 6 September 2026

Breakfast "at" our hotel turns out to be served on the 9th floor of its sister hotel the Indigo, a block and a half away. Only two choices were available—the Continental buffet (£19.50) and that plus ordering hot dishes from the menu (£21.50). We chose the former, still more than we wanted. The buffet included a good cheddar, a good Brie, some bleu that I didn't try, cheddar with chili peppers in it, and what looked like cranberry Wensleydale. Also cooked ham and excellent soft salami. The Viennoiseries were good but full-size. Real and vegan Greek yogurt, cut fruit, and bread that looked just like French baguettes, but was actually pretty heavy and dense. The view, on the other hand, was stunning—Nelson's column, the dome of St. Paul's, the Shard. We decided to look for breakfast elsewhere from now on.

After a brief stop back at the hotel, we went for an exploratory walk around the neighborhood to soak up a little (well-filtered through cloud) sun for the jet lag.

One great discovery, just steps from our hotel door, was Market Place, a stand-alone food court (one of a chain of them around the UK) with 16 kinds of street food! I was particularly taken with The Duck Shed, which served roasted and pulled duck in four ethnic treatments (British, Fremch, Vietnamese, and "vegan-amese," the last featuring "vegan duck"). You could get any of these as a burger, a wrap, or a salad bowl.

David spotted several promising pubs, where he hopes to get a pint (or three) of bitter during our stay. We read a lot of menus and chose Steak and Company on Irving St. for our evening's pretheater dinner. Back at the hotel, David wanted a nap and said he would skip lunch, so I worked on the computer for a while, then went out to The Duck Shed for a take-away French duck salad bowl, which I brought back to the hotel.

It was tightly packed into a cylindrical cardboard box, so it was a little hard to eat (with the little bamboo fork you can see sticking in it) without spilling bits everywhere, but it was outstandingly delicious! I spread out a towel to set it on, let the bits fall where they might, then picked them all up and ate them. It included crispy salad greens and lightly pickled cucumber slices (which the menu described as "cornichons"), topped with lots of pulled duck, in turn topped with "onion chutney" (which seemed to have a lot of hoisin in it) and a slab of melted raclette cheese. Wow. David admitted later that he was waiting for me to vet the Duck Shed food before he went there for a pulled duck burger.

I then set out on my own exploratory stroll, in the other direction, toward Chinatown. which is two or three streets wide and maybe 10 blocks long, and which you can actually see from our hotel's door, but in the few yards from our door to the Chinese section, I stopped in to have a look at Notre Dame of France, a lovely, round, Roman Catholic church. From the street, it looks just like an ordinary church door in an ordinary flat wall, but I had spotted the round outline in a Google aerial view of the neighborhood and was intrigued. The traditional "down the nave" view doesn't really work in a round room, but here's a view of the altar from just inside the entrance.

Chinatown is easily recognizable, even in aerial views, by the strings of bright orange lanterns hanging above the streets. As I took this photo, our hotel was half a block to my right, and the church door is halfway in between. The Chinatown gate is a couple of short blocks behind me.

The streets of chinatown are lined with ethnic food stores and tempting restaurants, including one I spotted that serves nothing but dim sum all day every day. Alas, I doubt I'll be able to talk David into that. Or even into the buffet place next door.

One item that I was seriously tempted by was displayed in a bin on the sidewalk—green coconuts for drinking coconut water.

In both Brazil and China, we've come across stands selling them, but freshly cut before your eyes and handed to you with a straw stuck in. These were precut, fitted with stoppered drinking ports, and sanitarily shrink-wrapped, each with a sanitarily wrapped straw. I guess you pull off the flat stopper, stick the straw in, and sip away. Afterward, if you want, when it runs dry, you can crack the coconut to get at the meat inside. Yummy and fun!

At the right here is a shot in through the window at the Chinese buffet place. This is the "fried foods" section. I tried to get photos of the restaurant windows with crispy roasted ducks and slabs of pork belly hanging them, but the glare off the glass was hopeless.

Next, I strolled down to check out the National Portrait Gallery (NPG), just a long block off the other side of the square. I was able to verify that (a) it's free all the time, (b) it has portable folding stools (although they're the heavier metal kind), (c) the staff recommend that you take the express escalator to the top, where the oldest portraits are, and work your way down (and forward in time), (d) it has a café and two table-service restaurants, and (e) we could spend days in there.

I immediately spotted this well-known portrait of old friend Charles Darwin by John Collier, and I really liked this photo of Queen Elizabeth II with two white draft horses. It must have been early spring, judging by the blooming daffodills and the Japanese magnolia covered with buds.

Others that caught my eye were this portrait of actress Dame Anna Neagle by McClelland Barclay, from her film No, No, Nanette, and this strange bust labeled "Souvenir 17 (Albert Edward, Prince of Wales)" by Hew Locke.

I was also pleased to discover a portrait (left) of Jerome K. Jerome, author of Three Men in a Boat, which we enjoyed immensely. It was painted by Philip de László.

The family protrait at the right was made to commemorate the 100th birthday of Elizabeth, the Queen Mother. It portrays, more or less from front to back, William (and a bunch of corgies), Charles, the Queen Mother herself (seated), Harry, Queen Elizabeth II, and Prince Philip. I couldn't find a label naming the artist.

Back at the hotel, about 4:45 pm I could hear a commotion in the square that not even the hotel's admirable double glazing could subdue. The Hari Krishnas had showed up, in force—several of the usual saffron-robed guys, plus a large troup of lady dancers in saris, some with big feathered fans, all singing and dancing for all they were worth. Later, on our walk to the theater, we passed their vegetarian food truck near the Strand, but it was closed up for the night.

At the appointed hour, I caught up with David, and we strolled down to Steak and Company for dinner, cutting off about a third of our walk to the theater in the process. The restaurant's gimmick is that they bring you a very hot volcanic lava stone on a tray, on which you cook your own steak. You start by choosing your cut (I chose 10-oz ribeye, and David chose 6-oz wagyu sirloin), then choose (from about four choices for each) your butter, your salt, and your sauce. You even have the option (which David took) to skip the stone and have the chef cook your steak. We ordered mashed potatoes to share.

I was a little disappointed that what I got was not raw steak that I cooked myself but steak that had been grilled on one side only. I put some of my garlic-parsley butter on the stone and gave each piece only the quickest of sears on the raw side, because it was already pretty much the rare side of medium rare that I would have ordered from the kitchen. But I managed not to overcook it, and it was delicious.

Once they had brought David a hot stone and he sent the whole thing back because he had specified the "plated" option, he was pretty happy with it. He got the plain salt and pepper mix and an excellent red wine jus.

The mashed potatoes, which came in a little copper saucepan, were outstanding and even better with some of the garlic-and-parsley butter on top.

For dessert, we shared the "strawberry Eton mess" for two, a crisp meringue shell topped with strawberry sorbet, whipped cream, fresh strawberries, and raspberry coulis. Yummy, indeed; we ate every bit of it.

Then it was on to the Lyceum Theatre for The Lion King. Rather different from the production we saw in New York, but excellent none the less. Rafiki wasn't the singer that the one in New York had been, but she was an actual speaker of an African click language (probably Xhosa)! Her speeches were amazing to hear.

They wouldn't allow photography during the production, of course, but here's a shot I got before the show of the big collection of drums in one of the boxes to the right of the stage. A similar assortment filled another box to the left, and both were played energetically throughout the show.