Our round-up of what the nation’s restaurant reviewers were writing about in the week up to 6th October 2024
The Observer
In a footnote to Jay Rayner’s damning review last week of restaurant 18 at Rusacks hotel in St Andrew’s, 18’s executive chef Billy Boyter this week announced his departure after just eight months – with a parting swipe at Jay.
While his review took issue with the quality of the cooking, Jay was most scathing of the restaurant’s clientele of steak-and-golf-loving middle-aged American men, the reason why – in his memorable phrase – the place “smells of newly pumped testosterone”.
Billy hit back in an interview with Dundee’s ‘Courier’, saying the review was “really disappointing to read”. “The 18 restaurant is for the American market who like steak and things like that. You need to know what type of place you are coming to.”
As exec chef, Billy was not in 18’s kitchen every day; if Jay had wanted to taste his cooking, he should have eaten in the hotel’s smaller One Under Bar restaurant, where “I was hands-on with every dish”.
And just in case readers are marvelling at the lethal power of Jay’s pen, Billy made it clear (and Rusacks confirmed) that he had handed in his notice two months ago, to pursue an as-yet-unnamed opportunity that was “something I couldn’t say no to”.
***
Hot Dogs by Three Darlings, Harrods
For the second successive week, Jay turned his attention to a venture catering to the well-heeled international tourist market at an ‘iconic’ attraction – this time, Jason Atherton’s new hot dog concession in Harrods.
Oh dear. These hot dogs, from an “otherwise esteemed chef”, do not match the standard of hot dogs sold at, for instance, the Yankee baseball stadium in New York, despite costing between £19 and £22 a pop. They have a “weird, rough, grainy and very dry texture. The casing is wrinkled and hangs off them like an oversized old sock”, while “the buns are dense and claggy and undersweetened”.
Can things get worse? They can: “The online menu promised chips, but Harrods won’t let them have a deep fat fryer and apparently an air fryer didn’t work. So instead, there are tater tots for £7.50, which do have the authentic ‘mum’s been to Iceland’ crunch.” As for drinks, the wine list offers two of each colour: “The cheapest white is a Picpoul at £50 a bottle. It’s available online for £9.79. That’s a mark-up by a factor of five.”
Jay did find something nice to say: “Let’s hear it then for the sweet salty spiced corn ribs, the best thing on offer here.”
*****
The Guardian
Albatross Death Cult, Birmingham
Grace Dent declared this “omakase fine dining” spot with just 14 counter seats from Alex Claridge of the Wilderness, his partner Rachael Whittle and head chef Piotr Szpak, to be “one of the top five seafood places in the UK today, even though it has been open for only a few months”.
It’s a “strange, industrial space” – “a paean to stainless steel, cement and stripped-back brickwork”, with a ludicrously pretentious name (a reference to Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s ‘Ancient Mariner’) and a “relentless, post-punk dark wave backing track by the likes of Lebanon Hanover” (me neither).
But it’s also “a special restaurant run by people who are at the top of their game” who will take you on a “forward-thinking, experimental, edible maritime journey that will keep you in its tentacles for at least three hours”.
*****
The Times & Sunday Times
Café François, Borough Market
Giles Coren was beguiled by a “sublime new Borough Market restaurant” that he visited in its first 24 hours open to the public – “a hell of a place” from François O’Neill that also incorporates a bakery and a sandwich bar.
He kicked off mock-guiltily with a “Foie gras, bacon and egg muffin à la Joe Beef” – “God, it was good. But don’t order it. It’s plain wrong. That’s what I’m for: to take the moral risk and report back from the blood-spattered front line of Yum.”
Less ethically compromised but “almost equally sinful” were lamb merguez flatbreads; “sleek, brown anchovies, fat as salmon, draped over brioche fingers and a smear of Café de Paris butter as thick as your school geography teacher”; and the “terrific” surf & turf comprising a half lobster, prime rib, frites and béarnaise.
“Have these, by the way, with a Picon bière (£6), which is an ice-cold lager that you spike yourself with a thimble of Picon, the bitter orange aperitif designed for the job.”
***
Eastfield, Dundee
Chitra Ramaswamy found another winner, the “buzziest new opening in Dundee”, a city “which gets cooler by the year”. Eastfield is the first solo venture from Harris McNeill, previously head chef at Ballintaggart Farm in Aberfeldy, and “hovers in the hip zone between café and casual restaurant”
Open only during the day with the occasional BYOB dinner, it is an ultra-minimalist operation with no website, no phone number and no bookings, just an Instagram account and a “concise, hyper-seasonal menu, chalked on a blackboard” and served on vintage crockery.
“You can’t order badly here. It’s all good”, Chitra advised – but three items stood out: flatbreads “browned from a hot pan, smelling like a pancake, glistening with melting butter, stupendously squidgy”, which you find yourself thinking and blabbering about days after eating them; Welsh rarebit with Isle of Mull cheddar that is “lunch of the gods”; and an “already legendary Guinness cake, moist, yeasty and very grown-up”.
***
Goodbye Horses, Islington
Charlotte Ivers dined fashionably early at a cool new restaurant, an experience that left her as “frazzled” as the waiter, given that the tables were limited to 60 minutes (90 minutes if you sit at the counter), her boyfriend was 18 minutes late, and they had to negotiate their way through a tricky list of unfamiliar wines which “like all natural wines were perfectly nice if you like the taste of hay dissolved in vinegar (which I do), and perfectly horrible if you don’t”.
“There’s some great stuff” on the menu, she said, praising a “lovely, hearty oxtail ragout with rice” and a “chic” tomato salad on a bed of figs and crumbled Spenwood cheese.
But “I can’t report on the bread treacle ice cream because at 86 minutes we were told they needed the table (sorry, slice of bar) back. ‘But you could eat it standing up?’ says the waiter hopefully. Sorry. Life is too short, and doing that would make me wish it was shorter. He says he’s sorry, and looks it. He offers a free glass of dessert wine, then seems immediately to forget we accepted the offer. We don’t push it — he’s frazzled.”
Charlotte’s conclusion: “It’ll be really good. But go in a year or two.
*****
London Standard
Marquee Moon, Dalston
David Ellis had an uncannily similar experience to Charlotte’s a mile or so to the east, at another hip new place with a name referencing relatively obscure 1970s/80s music, an accomplished kitchen and service that, frankly, was out of its depth.
Marquee Moon is a “long-abandoned boozer” relaunched as a restaurant, cocktail and hi-fi bar. “Handsome with its raw plaster walls and green Formica table tops”, it “has all the hallmarks of a top-tier new opening: the good looks, that short, concise and inventive menu. Fantastic cocktails”.
The kitchen mixes pub classics with Asian dishes to good effect, so you’ll find sausage and mash, mushroom parfait, Sichuan chicken drums and a “flailing onion bhaji shining with oil under a green sauce” that’s “a shoo-in for London’s finest bar snack”.
Service, though, was haphazard, forgetful, unhelpful, inconsistent and more – and of course the bill was wrong. “Someone, somewhere, needs to put a grown-up in charge,” David pleaded.
*****
Daily Telegraph
Marceline, Canary Wharf
William Sitwell was impressed by the “modest and reassuring” offer at this new floating bistro in Canary Wharf, whose owners are so keen to get everything right that “it feels a little clinical. In time perhaps it will soften as it gets rough around the edges.”
Most of the food from the standard repertoire was well done, but for William the real showstopper was Jeffrey – “Hand in pocket, burst buttons on his shirt and quite the most fabulous sommelier I’ve come across,” he turned the dinner into a “charming, erudite and wonderfully funny wine tasting”.
“Normally it’s chefs who crave and deserve the light. Jeffrey is a shining star without vanity, but simply wit and know-how. Go there for him, if nothing else.”
*****
Financial Times
Kadeau, Copenhagen
Continuing his international search for ‘fine dining’ (and having been disappointed by a visit to Paris last week), Tim Hayward headed to the capital city of ‘New Nordic cuisine’ and found exactly what he was looking for at Kadeau, a restaurant that “uniquely, in my experience, expressed the peak of cooking and the essence of hospitality”.
Tim was spellbound by ingredients he had never encountered, which had been foraged from the chefs’ home island of Bornholm then prepared in combinations he could never have imagined, and by the brilliant, intelligent cooking – but also by the “humane” scale and the friendly, informal tone of the operation.
“This is exactly how I imagine a self-made billionaire genius with a social conscience, a disarmingly humble and democratic ethic, a taste for modest Danish/Japanese design and humbling generosity might live.”
“This is going to be as fine a dining experience as I’m ever going to have” – even though, with the absence of tablecloths and fawning, “it doesn’t feel like fine dining, by any of the old standards.” And at £500 for a meal with a couple of glasses of wine, the experience would only ever be available to a self-selecting group of wealthy customers.
