Our round-up of what the nation’s restaurant reviewers were writing about in the week up to 1st December 2024 – a much shorter list than usual, with Christmas coming early for a number of critics as their publications switched focus to seasonal recommendations
London Standard
AngloThai, Marylebone
David Ellis beat a path to a restaurant “famous before its first service” from John and Desiree Chantarasak (“him the chef and her the wine head honcho”). Operated as a “travelling roadshow” for the past six years and due to go permanent as long ago as 2021, it has finally opened with backing from MJMK, the outfit behind Santiago Lastra’s nearby Kol.
It’s an expensive-looking place – “a billionaire’s beach shack” with a “Purple Rain frontage, white wood cladding and an endless collection of crockery” – costing around £75 a head for dinner (excluding drinks), whether or not you opt for the chef’s recommendation menu. John’s signature dish, a coconut ash cracker shaped much like the Michelin flower, prompted David to ask “I wonder what he’s after?”.
The cooking throughout was “thoughtful, elegant… understated but marked by a sense of absolute confidence in the kitchen”. If anything, it was a bit too understated for David, as evidenced in a massaman curry of Hebridean hogget (raised on Desiree’s family’s farm), which was “excellent if a little tame”.
The best dish came last – aubergine with sweet basil and soy-cured egg yolk, its spice “like flickering flame. They do like heat, it turns out; I only wish I’d seen it before… when bold, when John lets loose, AngloThai can astound.”
*****
The Observer
Desi Yew Tree, Wolverhampton
Jay Rayner sang a hymn of praise to the “brilliance of Desi pub culture”, having eaten accompanied by football on the telly in the industrial district of Graiseley, in a boozer whose kitchen is run as a separate business by the Gaire family from Nepal – hence the ‘Himalayan’ chef’s specials.
This was a prime example of the British Desi pub, in which enterprising immigrants from the Indian subcontinent “took over a classic institution of the very culture which had done its best to exclude them – the pub – and made it their own”, the process creating “symbols not of exclusion, but of inclusion”.
One key element of the Desi pub is its great value: here, the £18 ‘medium sizzler’ is a platter loaded with chicken wings and tikka, seekh kebabs, lamb chops and turmeric-yellow fish pakora. The cooking is “solid”, and for Jay (who’s clearly not big on football) there was the added pleasure of watching buttered naans being cooked.
Some of the cooking was a notch or two above “solid”. “For us tonight the star dish is the rara gosht, the brownest of brown stews made with both minced lamb and whole braised pieces of meat, so that texturally it is falling apart in multiple directions. It is sweet with clove, cinnamon and bay and comforting on a night when a cold autumn mist hangs over Wolverhampton.”
*****
The Times & Sunday Times
Drift, North Berwick
Chitra Ramaswamy enjoyed lunch at “one of the best tables I’ve sat at this year. No, any year”, perched on a cliff edge overlooking the North Sea. The café – “six niftily put-together shipping containers, plus a newly converted horse trailer outside for ordering takeaway” – was opened in 2018 by Jo and Stuart McNicol as a farm diversification project, employing local staff and using local, seasonal, sustainable produce.
It’s “brilliantly done”, too, with Korean panko-fried chicken bo ssam “as crunchy as you’d find in the best hipster fried chicken pop-up”, while equally good chicken Milanese arrives accompanied by “a side of giant chips, skin on, dusted with plenty of paprika and drizzled with aioli – exactly what you want, but rarely get, when you order patatas bravas”.
Chitra recommends arriving via the coastal path from North Berwick, less than an hour on foot, to savour the “jaw-dropping” location and build up an appetite. If that’s not possible, there’s both a spacious car park and a local bus service to drop you at the door.
*****
Daily Mail
The Beefy Boys, Cheltenham
Just back from the Big Apple, where he double-checked his “triumvirate of New York burger brilliance” (Hamburger America, JG Melon and Corner Bistro, fyi), Tom Parker Bowles headed to the third branch from a cult West Country operation he reckons is “up there with New York”.
“These boys know a proper burger starts and ends with the quality of the meat. Here it’s impeccable”, he said. You can choose your burgers ‘thick’, ‘smashed’, ‘Oklahoma’ or ‘Cali’ style, topped with anything from pastrami and peanut butter to “ghost chilli pepper sauce that would make Satan sweat”, or stick to a classic ‘OG Boy’, a “lusciously messy five-napkin beauty, the juice cascading down my arms”.
For the full “immersive” experience, the ‘Chilli Cheese Boy’ sits in a puddle of chilli, topped with nacho cheese sauce. “Bliss. But forget napkins. After this, you’ll need a bath.”
