Ethnic food streets in London

In particular, there is Chinatown (north of Leicester Square) for Chinese. You could take the train to Southall for Indian. There are a number of Middle Eastern restaurants in the area near Marble Arch and Edgware Road. In Soho, you can find just about any type of food.

I'd suggest that you look on timeout.com for restaurant suggestions; their restaurant section lets you search by type of cuisine. Additionally, a couple of London food blogs that I like are www.londonelicious.com and www.gourmet-chick.com.

Finally, if you like cooking, I highly recommend the classes at Eat Drink Talk (www.eatdrinktalk.co.uk). The instructor, Jennifer has a number of classes in ethnic cuisines.

The big area for the Middle East community is around Edgware Road which runs North-West from Marble Arch towards Paddington. There is also a street near Euston station called Drummond Street that has many South Indian vegetarian biased restaurants.

Good recommendations by others. Another place is the Portobello Road market. Several blocks of odd shops with a whole lot of street food vendors with cusine from everywhere.

Brick Lane in Whitechapel - Huge Pakistani, Bengali and Indian population. Tons of curry houses and Bengali-indian bakeries.

Take District tube line to Aldgate east, walk about 7 minutes west on Whitechapel Road (Or Whitechapel High St, whatever the main road is where station lets out)and Brick Lane will be coming up on the left. Just make sure to keep your hand on your purse and wear your moneybelt! It is a bit of a dodgy area.

To put your whole question in context, the vast majority of restaurants outside the hotels, pubs and chain restaurants are 'ethnic'.
The problem you'll probably have is the reverse finding good 'wsetern food' at a sensible price and quality you'd find outside of London.

There seemed to be a particularly high concentration of Indian restaurants around the Euston St. tube station.

Rachel,

I know Italian is not listed in what you're searching for, but il Cucciolo restaurant on Denman Street (one of the lanes adjacent to Picadilly Circus) is wonderful. Their tortellini in brodo soup is authentic.

Hi Rachel

As an Asian Indian, I can recommend Khan's Restaurant in Bayswater. It is about a 10 min walk from the Bayswater tube station, and although the meals there can seem fairly frenetic, the food is great and the dishes are extremely reasonably priced. I do not believe that Rick covers this restaurant in his London guide, but the Let's Go guides should have a review. You can find a restaurant review if you do a Google search for Khan's Bayswater.

Enjoy!

Penn