The ground floor of the 5-star Ned London, with its seven restaurants amid 92 verdite columns, repurposes a magnificent banking hall in the City of London. The Grade-I-listed former head office of the Midland Bank  was designed in 1924 by the great architect Sir Edmund ‘Ned’ Luytens for the clearing of transactions, not potato latkes. As a hotel lobby it is spectacularly sumptuous, but the scale of it is disorientating.

The Ned could stand to soak up some badly needed soul from Zobler’s restorative matzo ball soup. Or it could suck the soul out of it instead. Time will tell.

The Ned London grew out of a partnership between Andrew Zobler of New York’s Sydell Group and Nick Jones of the London-based Soho House & Co. Jones likes to bring over expert chefs on temporary visas to get his regional American restaurants off the ground in spectacular fashion, as he did with Pizza East and Electric Diner. To open Zobler’s he enlisted a legendary name or, more precisely, the heir to one: Zobler’s consulting chef is Isaac Gellis, the great great grandson of the Isaac Gellis, once the Lower East Side’s foremost purveyor of cured and kosher delicatessen meats. (Zobler’s is not a kosher restaurant.)

With his six-month visa nearly up, young Isaac’s future in London is uncertain and so too is Zobler’s enduring quality.

Go ahead, Nick Jones, prove me wrong. The potential for lasting greatness is there. Show me you have the will for it, too. Make Zobler’s even better, with or without Isaac Gellis.

Zobler’s #19 sandwich is a nod to Langer’s and that great LA deli’s Original #19 Sandwich – pastrami, coleslaw, Swiss cheese, Russian dressing on twice-baked rye. This homage is a beauty:

The toasted rye is packed with tender, high-impact, house-smoked pastrami, though the peppery kick is fierce, leaving a faintly bitter aftertaste. Less pepper and more fat on the meat would do wonders.

My dining companion, chef Jonny Rothfield, and I tried Zobler’s corned beef, the Jewish deli standard Londoners know as salt beef, on two sandwiches ordered a half-hour apart. The quality varied from cut to cut: The lean corned beef on The Purist, a no-nonsense sandwich dressed only with mustard (French’s, sadly, not deli mustard), was superb albeit a tad dry. The slices of corned beef on the wonderfully obscene Reuben, however, were marvellously moist and melty.

By asking just £3 for a bowl of matzo ball soup that actually has nice chunks of chicken in it and £8 for the powerhouse Purist, Zobler’s Deli offers incredible ROI – by which I mean the return on your investment, if not necessarily that of Ron Burkle, The Ned’s billionaire backer.

Go soon, before November 11^th 2017.

Julie Vu knew where to find the right baguette for her bánh mì sandwiches at City Càphê, the Vietnamese luncheonette she was planning to open this month in the City of London. She just wasn’t sure she could find it within 100 miles of Ironmonger Lane.

The baguette she grew acquainted with on forays to Vietnamese sandwich shops in the Belleville quarter of Paris was crackly but not hard, its thin crust giving way to an airy interior without the chewy, open-holed texture of traditional French baguettes. In London she sampled dozens of prototypes but despaired of sourcing anything exceptable until, voilà, she thinks she has it.

I wasn’t invited to Friday’s staff sampling of bánh mì in advance of the official opening on Monday (7 September). I just happened to be in the area, scouting burgermonday possibilities, when I spotted the City Càphê from afar. It’s amazing how my distance vision improves when the subject relates to coffee (càphê is Vietnamese for café). I entered the adorable shop and saw that Julie (left) and her friend Fiona Duong (center) were offering samples of their bánh mì.

The baguette, as viewed in this detail of sandwich cross section, looked bready to the eye, but its airiness was immediately apparent upon first bite. The interior compressed into the fillings as the flaky shell shattered in my mouth. Yum. Yes, I think she has it.

The three varieties of bánh mì I tried were already good, if a little plain, and likely to get better. With her baguette in hand Julie is prepared to think more about fillings and proportions as well as delve into more philosophical questions, such as: to mayo or not to mayo? Authentic or not I am fine with a brush of mayo on the baguette, as long as it’s just a coating and not the main ingredient. For mayonnaise sandwiches in which chicken, beef, pork, tuna and egg are merely accessories we already have Pret.

City Càphê – 17 Ironmonger Lane, London EC2V 8EY

The first Spianata & Co rolled out in 2004, so it is something of a stretch to term this Italian sandwich shop a discovery. Yet the thousands of City suits who walk by it every day, oblivious to its very existence, can make it seem like an esoteric find.

This pizza bianca is not the tomato-less “white pizza” featured at pizzerias but is instead the near-naked raft of classic flat bread from Rome. It’s one of the world’s great chews. Forget cheese: the only toppings are scant olive oil, salt and rosemary. Spianata’s version may not compare to Rome’s best –  Antico Forno Roscioli, Forno Campo de’ Fiori – but its golden, bronze-highlighted color looks right and its crisp-crusted air pockets and low density allow for chewy compression. My lone frustrations: that it’s baked with no rosemary to speak of and mostly in advance. If you want it warm, as you should, you usually have to ask for a reheat, which hardens the bread and doesn’t do it justice.

Spianata also prepares pizza rossa romana, which, as you’ve guessed, is painted with a coat of tomato sauce. It’s thinner and crisper than the bianca and altogether fabulous. Incredibly it’s only £1.60 cold, £1.85 reheated (due to VAT). I’ve otherwise tried and liked 3 toasted sandwiches assembled with pizza bianca, including the delightful Nutella breakfast panino, but won’t explore any further. From now on it’s either the bianca or the rossa for me. If I want a sandwich I’ll get 2 rossi and stick them together.

Spianiata has good espresso and cappuccino prepared with illy’s arabica blend. The illy red sign is hardly a reliable indicator of quality preparation, but here they have Italians who care about coffee on both sides of the counter and the results are positive. Spianiata didn’t make my list of top 10 coffee shops in London, nor did it qualify for my top 10 London pizzerias (which rated only Margheritas). Still, when stuck within the walls of London’s Square Mile, why not follow the Roman way?

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73A Watling Street, London EC4
41 Brushfield Street, London E1
20 Holborn Viaduct, London EC1
12 Moorfields, London EC2
29/30 Leadenhall Market, London EC3