Our round-up of what the nation’s restaurant critics were writing about in the week up to 1st September 2024
Evening Standard
Mauby, Brockley
Jimi Famurewa was very taken by “this immensely likeable slice of British-Caribbean cool” from married couple Daniel and Heleena Maynard, who previously operated Deptford’s Jerk Off BBQ and showcase the Jamaican and especially Bajan cooking of Daniel’s heritage.
The restaurant “occupies the sort of beguiling, design-forward space that isn’t typically associated with Caribbean-inspired cuisine”, making it “unique, charming and, in its own minor key way, quietly game-changing”.
Jimi enjoyed most of the dishes he tried – in particular the “moreish” stewed kidney beans and “succulent” jerk chicken. “Mauby seems like it is after slow, steady growth and permanence, rather than any frantic, short-lived harnessing of hype.”
*****
The Guardian
Ibai, Smithfield
Grace Dent added her voice to the critical plaudits that have greeted this “hulking Basque pleasure palace” – a “brooding, gothically dramatic jewel of an 80-seat restaurant” between St Paul’s cathedral and Smithfield market.
With its top-notch Galician Blond and wagyu beef, “Ibai is certainly a swanky restaurant, but it lacks any pomposity”. But “to focus purely on those fancy steaks would misrepresent Ibai as a macho joint designed mainly for finance bros” when there’s a “complex, fully formed menu of Basque and French ideas, featuring octopus, turbot, king crab and red prawns”.
Better still, Grace reckoned “the pudding menu is worth the trip alone” for its pain perdu served with hazelnuts and rum.
*****
The Observer
Little Dumpling King, Stoke-on-Trent
Jay Rayner warmed to the attitude as much as the food at this noisy, red and black-decorated spot from chef owner Rob McIntyre, where the home-made crispy chilli oil – “much more crispy chilli than oil” – is a signature that turns up in one “banging” dish after another, indicating a “commitment to doing things properly”.
“They serve a menu that wanders Asia with the enthusiasm of fans who have bought every album and know every lyric. What they do and what they love is a celebration of inclusiveness; of migration and influences from elsewhere.”
The ever-changing menu of dishes with a top price of £14 ranges from “big fat steamed pork dumplings, full of depth and meatiness” and chicken wings in “thick, crisp, deeply savoury batter” to jackfruit dumplings, mung-bean hummus, deep-fried tofu, mussels in tom yum broth and various boa buns.
There’s also a Scottish theme: steamed haggis dumplings – “which sound like a night out in Glasgow gone very right” – are followed by the only dessert available when Jay visited: a Mars Bar deep-fried “sensitively … if that’s possible…. And then, a genius move this, they sprinkle it with brilliant white flakes of sea salt. It’s a cheffy touch, but a fabulous one.”
*****
The Times & Sunday Times
Cornish Bakery, Taunton Deane services
Giles Coren launched into an extended and passionate diatribe against the “awful, artificial, fatty crap” behind the obesity crisis that has turned 30% of the British population into “giant-arsed and elephant-thighed zombies”. Beyond enclaves of privilege in our towns and cities, he said, no healthier food is available – which is what brought Giles and his family to this Cornish pasty and sausage roll outlet tucked in among the usual McDonald’s, Chozen Noodle, Krispy Kreme, Costa and WHSmith at a motorway service station on the long drive home from Devon to London.
“It’s a chain, I know. But a smaller one. A prettier one. A British one. And the fact that the serious fatties didn’t seem interested must mean they’re doing something right.”
Even so, Giles appeared pleasantly surprised that his sausage roll was “one of the best I’ve ever had. Firm and juicy, roasted fat flavours, a bit of caramelisation, no artificial aftertaste, short, buttery pastry”. His son Sam’s pasty was “perfect too. At least a third of the contents was swede, steaming nicely and stacked down one end of the pie, as is correct.”
***
Kanpai, Edinburgh
“Is it the best sushi I’ve had in Edinburgh?” Chitra Ramaswarmy asked herself after visiting this long-running restaurant near the Lyceum and Usher Hall, a fixture since 2011 that specialises in “exquisitely made nigiri, maki, hand rolls and sushi rolls”. Her answer: a resounding “You bet!”
It’s a place that stands apart from the “on-trend” Japanese influences that are now seen in all sort of restaurants, going about its business “quietly, with little fanfare” – and the quality is apparent from Chitra’s first taste of grilled bluefin tuna nigiri: “buttery, smoky, fall-to-your-knees outstanding. Wow”.
A meal here is also a reminder of how much “sub-par” sushi is now available, she concluded. “Kanpai is not cheap but sushi this sensational shouldn’t be. It’s an art form. It’s also insanely delicious.”
***
The Abbey Inn, Byland, North Yorkshire
Charlotte Ivers sampled the Sunday roast at Tommy Banks’s latest venture – “the best located pub in Britain”, adjacent to the beautiful ruins of Byland Abbey and so close to the Banks family’s own farm that the beef she ate had “relatives still toddling around in the adjacent field”.
As a result, she said, “the beef is — and there’s no other way of putting it — quite viscerally beefy. So moist and fleshy that it feels half-alive, as though it was sliced off the cow’s rump as it passed by, and the beast waddled stoically on”.
Charlotte also rated the Yorkshire pud, although her roast potatoes were not quite crisp enough and the desserts were “silly” and “ultra-sweet” variations on soft-serve, Mr Whippy-style ice cream. But she was here for the beef, and even doubled up by ordering a starter of Dexter beef tartare that again hit the spot with “firm, precise cubes of nearly sweet beef”.
*****
Daily Telegraph
Native, Tenbury Wells
William Sitwell was impressed by this “properly fabulous” restaurant from Ivan Tisdall-Downes on the former site of Pensions – a handsome converted barn on the Netherwood Estate near the Herefordshire- Worcestershire border.
His meal began with two excellent starters – chalk stream trout and a ‘regeneration risotto’ of local grains – which were followed by ‘Ryeland mutton’ that was “literally the finest mutton I have ever tasted… earthy, rich and melting…, chocolatey and with such deep flavour I felt like running to the abattoir, standing in front of the lambs and screaming, ‘No, wait. They’ll taste better in a few months!’”
Then finally ‘marrowmel’, a dessert of bone marrow served in the bone, which you scoop out with a spoon. “It’s a bone marrow crème brûlée – so it’s striking and witty and, God, so sweet, naughty and moreish.”
*****
Financial Times
The Suffolk, Aldeburgh
Tim Hayward was reassured by the menu at this restaurant-with-rooms from George Pell, formerly of L’Escargot in Soho, in this “sleepy corner of Hampstead on the Suffolk coast” – “seriously, when was the last time you saw escargots (£2 surcharge for a Ricard flambé) or a twice-baked soufflé in the wild?”
His fellow customers, in linen and “daringly sockless deck shoes”, and the crab, with a “toothpaste-like wiggle of alarmingly sweet avocado purée”, were a little “overdressed” for Tim’s liking – but everything else was pretty well perfect.
The star turn were the specials – “big stuff straight from the sea”, in this case a “brill the size of a tennis racket” and a “Leviathan lobster pavilion’d in salad and girded with chips”. Both were prepared with “elegant restraint” and timing, and the lobster in particular was “sublime”.
