Our round-up of what the nation’s restaurant critics were writing about in the week up to 8th September 2024
The Evening Standard
Ambassadors Club House, Mayfair
Jimi Famurewa was the first critic to the latest opening from all-conquering JKS Restaurants – this one a “typically fine-drawn love letter to the princely flavours and riotous drinking traditions of the undivided Punjab”, a “maximalist sanctuary” in busy Heddon Street inspired by the Sethi siblings’ maternal grandfather’s Himalayan holiday home – “all filigreed jewel box interior, riveted vault doors and bustling patterns”
Jimi hinted at a possible limitation: that something of a formula has developed among what he called London’s “world-beating contemporary Indian” restaurants – “squint and you could be in Gymkhana, Brigadiers or other, non-JKS businesses like Gunpowder, Jamavar and Dishoom”.
Any misgivings he had were soon swept aside by the “confidence, swagger and boldness” of the cooking, displayed in dishes like Hariyali keema made with rabbit and a “transcendent Ajwaini warqi naan that combines smoky char, fragrant carom seeds and the buttery flakiness of roti canai… Despite the gloss, you get the constant sense of deep emotional investment, light experimentation and restaurateurs that are enjoying themselves”.
*****
The Guardian
Ambassadors Club House, Mayfair
Grace Dent followed Jimi into print a day or two later – broadly agreeing with his positive take on a restaurant she described as a “paean to grandness, cocktails and snacking” and a place that “seemingly wants to lead you astray, with three types of margaritas, one of which you can buy by the 1½-litre bottle for £200”.
Overall, she reckoned it “handy, ostensibly fancy but still semi-affordable, open late and easier to get into than Gymkhana, which reportedly has a waiting list of about 1,000 every evening”.
The food was “authentic” – not Anglified, Frenchified or anything else-ified, with a menu full of Indian names and terminology – rich and delicious, although for Grace “the real fun was in the opening papads, chaats and ‘bitings’ sections, which feature nine small snacky plates of joy to pick at, scoop through and share”, including a basket of mutton keema naan with a dipping bowl of bone marrow masala.
And while Jimi held out against dessert, Grace manned up for all our sakes to sample a mango angoori rasmalai with mango mousse – “It’s very refreshing,” she was assured by the insistent waiter. “Reader, this was a bowl of sweet, plump milky mango dumplings crowned with God-tier whipped mango cream.”
*****
The Observer
Giovanni’s, Covent Garden
Instead of discovering somewhere new, Jay Rayner bucked his usual practice by revisiting an old-stager of an Italian restaurant established in 1952 and first visited by Jay in 1971, during his “privilege-sodden childhood”.
“It doesn’t look like much has changed, which is the whole point,” he says. “Lights are low. Candles flicker. Enormous pepper grinders are proffered. It is all sweetly funny in the best way, but it is also something important. It is very good.”
The food is an “extremely solid take on the classic Anglo-Italian repertoire”, with crowd-pleasers like a carbonara that “as rich as an oligarch, but so very much more entertaining” and a spaghetti vongole that is “joyfully, tearfully perfect”.
Before returning to the restaurant, Jay had shared fond memories with his sister of the twinkling welcome they had received from Giovanni himself. The restaurant is now run attentively (possibly, Jay suggests, too attentively) by Pino Ragona, the son of founder Virgilio Ragona, so Jay asked him if there ever was a Giovanni. “He grins and shrugs. ‘No, but you know, people liked to think there was’.”
*****
The Times & Sunday Times
ASKR, Leith
Chitra Ramaswamy was enticed by the promise of coal fire and smoke at this “ambitious fine-dining restaurant” with Nordic influences from former Pompadour head chef Dan Ashmore (backed by his old boss, Dean Banks), whose name apparently means ‘ash’ in Old Norse.
It is, she said, “every bit as swanky” as its predecessor, the steak restaurant Chop House – “trends may come and go, but cooking over coals will always be cool”. And while it started out with only £100-a-head tasting menus, there are now à la carte options and a three-course lunch for £35.
Cocktails and starters were impressive, including signature barbecued flatbread with aubergine dip and an “excellently scorched mackerel”. But the main courses were “hit and miss”, including day-boat cod and borlotti beans which were both slightly overcooked, and were served with ‘nduja sauce that “lacked punch”. A hearty confit duck leg braise contained “rock-hard wedges of barbecued turnip”.
Chitra was also disappointed that her ‘beetroot cooked in yesterday’s coals with burnt butter’ was “as fresh as a garden after a blast of summer rain but — and this is a general note to a restaurant named in honour of cooking over coals — more smoke please!”
***
Xi Home, Liverpool Street
Charlotte Ivers was thrilled by the tongue-tingling Sichuan pepper she encountered at this new backstreet spot on the edge of the City with “the sort of low neon lighting and casual-chaotic vibe that makes you think, ‘Yes. I’m young and relevant. This is what being part of a global city feels like’.”
The latest addition to the “expanding empire of Wenjun Xiang, who aged only 27 has been flogging dumplings since she was a teenager working at the Bang Bang Oriental Food Court”, it is inspired by the cuisine of the city where Wenjun spent her first 12 years, Dalian in northeast China.
The standout dish was wasabi prawn balls, billed as ‘Gourmet’s top choice’ – “juicy king prawns fried in a light tempura, glazed with a sweet wasabi mayo and dusted with sesame seeds. They are massive, plentiful, not much to look at. They are also an utter joy.”
Despite her overall favourable view, Charlotte was firm on what not to order: the heavily hyped house speciality soup dumpling, that comes with an “Instagram-friendly little red straw” to suck out the broth but which is “a nightmare to eat, collapsing and disintegrating”; and the cocktails, of which the lychee gimlet reminded her of Parma Violets while the peppercorn tonic “tasted the way festival portable loos smell at the start of the day”. Enough said, Charlotte – as you suggest, we’ll stick to beer.
*****
Daily Telegraph
Ibai, Smithfield
William Sitwell added his voice to the critical consensus hailing this French-Basque steakhouse as the “modern, metropolitan, meat-eating man’s restaurant of dreams”.
The ‘croque Ibai’, their take on the croquet monsieur, is already becoming a cult dish, and William added his own poetic evocation: “Imagine prawn toast, then let the toast be prepared in heaven with angelic sorcery… It was as memorable and revelatory as seeing Venice for the first time”.
As for the king crab rice, it was worth the £85 charged even if you have to “pull your kids out of prep school, sell the holiday home, sack the butler”, while the headline diary-cow steak lived up to expectation as “the best-cooked, purple-pink-flesh, blackened-fat sirloin”.
If you ask him “where’s good in London?”, William will send you to Ibai.
*****
The Independent
The Angel, Hetton, North Yorkshire
Lilly Subbotin rustled up a rather gushing review of her stay at Michael Wignall’s well-known Yorkshire Dales inn, kicking off non-chronologically with her tribute to its “precise, beautiful and meticulously thought-out brekky”.
Dinner, presumably the main event, “is a total delight from start to finish, and in all honesty – faultless. Seriously, I have tried to think of a criticism and I can’t. Even the things that sound pretty bizarre – such as white chocolate, caviar and eel – are exquisite.”
Particularly memorable were a tomato dish “where they ferment tomatoes for a whole year” and a lamb dish incorporating “several tiny pieces done all different ways”.
