The Guardian
Grace Dent headed to “the Dover, a New York-style Italian restaurant on Mayfair’s Dover Street”, largely on the promise that it “was a place one could hear and be heard. Having now been, I can attest this is true: velvet curtains, wood panelling and not one but two tablecloths on each cover make every table feel like its own private island, where diners can hear their friends and, crucially, be unheard by other tables. This is gold dust. Privacy is romantic.
“The food is far better than I’d envisaged. This is basic comfort food served with aplomb: starters of prime beef steak tartare, nicely seasoned and pretty to look at, with a truffle and hazelnut salad, or prawns in marie rose sauce ornately arranged to resemble Mount Vesuvius.”
“This is a restaurant to keep up your sleeve for people who are sick and tired of restaurants – sick of the noise, sick of concrete walls, sick of sharing plates and of dishes arriving ‘as they’re cooked’ – and for those who are tired of opaque menus and feel with general dismay that the golden age of dining is behind us. This is a place to dress up nice, open a door to 1970s upscale but naughty New York and eat a slice of baked cheesecake brulee.”
Grace Dent - 2024-02-23Daily Mail
Tom Parker Bowles eased himself into the bar then the dining room at an establishment that “has been open for just over a year, but gets better each time I go” – “it’s like climbing into that wardrobe and emerging in a restaurant Narnia, or leaving drab Kansas to awake in a technicoloured Oz”.
“All London is here” on the Saturday night of Tom’s latest visit – “a mixture of actors and directors, bright young things, supermodels, locals and toffs.”
The atmosphere is “gently seductive” and the staff “impeccable, whip-smart, warm and there when you need them”, while the food is “far better than you might expect, the menu listing clubby comfort-food classics with an Italian-American burr: cheeseburgers and lobster rolls, spaghetti with meatballs and grilled Dover sole.”
Tom Parker Bowles - 2025-03-30
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