Our round-up of what the nation’s restaurant critics were writing about in the week up to 14th July 2024

Evening Standard

Tollington’s, Finsbury Park

Jimi Famurewa hailed the Spanish-accented makeover of a derelict chippy, by Four Legs chef Ed McIroy (Plimsoll and the Compton Arms), as “both a justified candidate for opening of the year and a reminder of what a confident, singular and beguilingly weird restaurant city we have.”

Quite apart from the “rowdy, cross-cultural brilliance” of combining old and new, British and Spanish, “classically coded cooking” and a casual environment, the Tollington team have “also imported the continental belief that eating and drinking well, rather than being an expensive luxury, is an inalienable right”.

Jimi’s most memorable dish was a case in point: “Beef dripping in London chippies is a rarity these days but here it is put to spectacular use for chips bravas: fat, hand-cut potatoes, cooked to a perfect, sweet-edged and tallowy gold crisp, and slopped in a messy Rojigualda of housemade aioli and punchy, warm salsa brava. With apologies to justifiably aggrieved vegetarians, they really may be the best chips in London.”

*****

The Times & Sunday Times

Cloth, Smithfield

Giles Coren opened his review with a disquisition on the rising standards of London cuisine, stating that the critics of yesteryear – Michael Winner, Jonathan Meades, AA Gill and their ilk – were forced into writing hilariously savage put-downs because most of the restaurants they reviewed were “utterly bloody stinking”, with “rotten” produce, “filthy” cooking and “vile” staff.

“But around 2013-2015 that started to change and now almost all new restaurants, especially in London, are incredible. Just eye-popping. So, so good. Some of them are a bit pricey, it is true, but only because being anything less than 100 per cent awesome is no longer acceptable in this town.”

Giles’s point is fully supported by the evidence of this week’s reviews by his peers, which are universally rave, as you will see, with the not so honourably exception of one venue in Glasgow. As to specifics, the particular subject of Giles’s praise was a recent opening by wine importers Joe Haynes and Ben Butterworth in Cloth Fair, one of London’s oldest streets.

The food, from chef Tom Hurst, was all spot-on – “such fresh, simple, vibrant stuff to find in a beautiful room on an ancient side street, I was quite beside myself”. In fact, with the “humble values” indicated by its mismatched “found” crockery, its “local thinking” and ‘youthful vigour”, Cloth was everything that the “hipster food movement” of East London and Brooklyn back in 2007/8 was trying to be – but with better cooking.

***

Sole Club, Glasgow

Chitra Ramaswamy delivered the sole (sorry) duff review of the week, to  an “experiential dual concept chip shop in Finnieston”, one of three new places opened in Glasgow this year by Nico Simeone’s fast-expanding Six by Nico group (next stop, apparently, Dubai).

Her meal wasn’t all bad. Various starters got a critical thumbs-up, likewise the beef-fat roasties and service, while the inevitable deep-fried Mars bar and Irn Bru soft serve were “zingy, fun and delicious”.

Mains, though, were a “disappointment”. Half a lobster – “so small it’s closer to a reasonably sized langoustine” – was so overcooked that a knife “just bounces off the claw meat like sunlight off the North Sea, except less pleasing”. “And it comes with sides that make no sense” – Yorkshire pudding! And an oily mac & cheese. 

***

Ardfern, Edinburgh

Charlotte Ivers headed to Leith, her favourite part of Edinburgh, to a new venture from Roberta Hall-McCarron and the team behind the popular Little Chartroom.

“It’s next door, and basically identical. The difference is there if you squint: it’s a bit less formal, a bit less fancy. But from the outside you’d be forgiven for not noticing Ardfern even existed, walking straight past to its famous older brother.”

The service – from Ellen – was terrific, and Charlotte was impressed by the brevity of the menu, which “feels delightfully chic. I like a short menu. It implies confidence, perhaps even arrogance. ‘We know what’s good for you,’ it seems to say. At Ardfern, they definitely do.”

The Guardian

The Counter, Tunbridge Wells

Grace Dent throughly approved of chef Robin Read’s debut restaurant in “Britain’s most civilised postcode”, which she clearly liked from the moment she stepped inside: “Gosh, this is a gorgeous room: rustic floorboards, high ceilings painted black, spotlights, peculiar art, fine cutlery and informal yet sleek, kind service.”

It’s tasting menus only, but in a no-waste rather than a bullying chef’s-ego way, according to Grace – there’s even a “waste vegetable broth” served with the sourdough bread.

“It’s hard to fault anything about the Counter, because this is precise, accomplished cooking that feeds you classily but plentifully, then aims to finish you off entirely with the dessert courses.”

*****

The Observer

Fifty Two at the Rudding Park Hotel, Harrogate

With Jay Rayner away, Emma Beddington was drafted as The Observer’s stand-in critic, and more or less admitted from the outset that she had never really eaten at a decent restaurant before, so any expertise that she had on the subject of “fancy food” was based on having watched “three seasons of The Bear and 9 million of MasterChef“. So she duly headed to a new spot in a “labyrinthine country house hotel complex” from a TV-familiar chef, Great British Menu alumnus Adam Degg. 

Whatever her shortcomings in gastronomic experience, Emma can certainly write, issuing forth bravura sentences that Gerard Manley Hopkins or Dylan Thomas would envy for their alliteration, assonance and internal rhyme. Try reading this aloud: “His dark-crusted, brown-butter custard tart dusted with star anise and nutmeg sugar shimmies, threatening collapse, at the slightest spoon nudge; pine caramel adds resinous complexity.”

So what did Emma make of the whole fine-dining schtick, as an “immersive”, lived experience rather than food-porn entertainment on the goggle box? Well, she managed to get hot under the collar at being charged £6.50 for a glass of water at a meal she had already told us was “free” (presumably as in, ‘on expenses’). But she seemed to enjoy eating the actual food – especially “the gloriously, almost ridiculously, OTT” signature lamb sharing dish.

“Fifty Two is better than fancy food as entertainment: it’s honest-to-goodness fun,” she concluded. Perhaps she should eat out more often.

*****

Daily Telegraph

Lilac, Lyme Regis

William Sitwell found a “deliriously good” 400-year-old cellar “with a menu that sings with the ingredients of this part of Dorset – produce that grows along and around the Jurassic coast”.

But it was chef-patron Harriet Mansell’s “saucing wizardry that elevates it to the sublime” – her refusal of the “signature splash” which many chefs deploy, which allowed each of her sauces to “stand proud and unique and magnificently tasty”.

Highlights of the meal included a South American-influenced sea bass crudo that was a “tango beneath the cliffs of Chippel Bay” and a plate of gnocchi on a “nettle sauce that delivered the beguiling flavour of an English woodland”.

… & elsewhere

Peeked at behind paywalls, two more critics added weight to Giles’s theory of contemporary restaurant excellence: Tim Hayward of the FT added his voice to the unanimous critical praise for Morchella in Exmouth Market, while Tom Parker-Bowles, never one to shy away from the louche, declared the retooled rock-era celeb hotspot Julie’s in Notting Hill to be “better than ever”.

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