Our round-up of what the nation’s restaurant reviewers were writing about in the week up to 15th December 2024
London Standard
Chinese Gourmet, Canary Wharf
David Ellis overcame his aversion to the Isle of Dogs to visit this unheralded Chinese spot that had been recommended by a reliable friend. The venue was very basic – “the sort of wooden shed that B&Q sells” – although “it is reassuring sometimes, to know all the money must have gone into the food”.
The food in question was all the classics of Chinese cooking, but most notably the signature noodles: “not all sorts but enough: Chongqing, rice, wheat, glass, Xi’an Biang Biang. The latter made a pleasing mess of a dish, hand-pulled in a way that suggested that in fact claws were involved.” There are dishes from Hunan, Xinjiang and Sichuan, which meant plenty of spice to the cooking, as in the “powerfully flavoursome” prawn noodles.
“Restaurants like this, that go unnoticed, feel like gifts,” David purred. “This one might be the most memorable present of 2024.”
*****
The Observer
Claro, St James’s
Jay Rayner “thrilled to some of the best dishes I have eaten this year” at this London venture from Tel Aviv-based chef Ran Shmueli, which offers “smart, at times complex but most of all delicious” eastern Mediterranean cooking with Middle Eastern influences, in a converted former bank.
Jay’s favourite dishes were all plant-based, starting with a chilli tasting plate that involved multiple variations: “Each has heat, but there is subtlety here too; a recognition that chillies are a family, but not identical”. Deep-fried Brussels sprouts served with caper aioli were “a seriously nickable idea”, while the menu highlight “takes pumpkin and turns it into a tap-dancing, high-kicking Broadway star”. It came as a slab of pumpkin blackened on the outside with a sweet and fudgy centre, plus a citrus-boosted pumpkin purée, plus some lightly pickled pumpkin plus finally toasted pumpkin seeds on top. “When you start shouting ‘encore’ at your emptied plate, you know something serious has happened.”
If not exactly ruined, Jay’s experience of Claro was certainly undermined by the cascade of gushing emails that was triggered by his booking: acknowledgement and confirmation emails (“perfectly reasonable”) were followed by excitement-raising and exuberant promises, then thanks for coming and a plea for feedback. Six emails in all, which left him feeling as if he was “dealing with an objectively beautiful but desperately insecure person who is just gagging for affirmation”.
Proprietors and guest relations managers across the land, please take note.
*****
The Times & Sunday Times
Fonda, Mayfair
Giles Coren pretended he was going to review Chinese restaurants in Sheffield, in order to mess with Times reader metrics that show severely limited interest in out-of-London reviews, before swerving back to a “superfashionable” new Mexican joint in Mayfair’s Heddon Street, “the very epicentre of world dining”.
Chef Santiago Lastra’s follow-up to his hit restaurant Kol is nominally a ‘fonda’ – in Mexico, a humble family-run spot – although Giles pointed out that it “looks great, all mellow earth tones and smooth curves, like the second half of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” and is “fancy as f***”.
The cooking and vibes were also pretty fancy, with “insane skill levels” required to produce Mexican cuisine with 99% British ingredients – Lastra’s self-imposed restriction – hence no avocados or lime. This resulted in a guacamole substitute created with pistachio and cucumber or courgette and hempseed: “Either way, it looks right (that classic shade of 1980s toilet suite) and feels right in the mouth. And do avocados, honestly, taste of anything?”
But for all his polite enthusiasm, Giles was clearly unconvinced by the basic premise of Mexican-with-British-ingredients. Something was missing: “I did not personally feel the slap around the chops I always hope to get from this sort of cooking, the sharpness and fire that strafes me out of my fine-dining complacency and makes me yearn for Oaxaca.”
***
Duthchas, Leith
Chitra Ramaswamy was mightily impressed by a “tiny casual fine-dining restaurant punching well above its weight” in Leith, from the team behind Purslane in Stockbridge – chef Paul Gunning and “very slick” FOH Alexander McDonald.
Duthchas is a Gaelic word that evokes belonging or connectedness to the land. On the plate, Chitra found that it suggested combinations of ingredients that “shouldn’t-work-but-do”. Parsnip with vanilla in a laser-thin pastry case – “surely too sweet? No: wintry, lush, lovely.” Or diced salmon and beetroot on mashed chickpeas inside “of all things, a pani puri, an Indian street food staple you don’t expect to pop in your mouth in a fine-dining restaurant with a Gaelic name”.
Everything she tasted was both generous and considered, complex and crowd-pleasing, while the restaurant was relaxed yet formal, traditional yet modern, ambitious yet accessible. “What a fine addition to the capital’s ever-evolving top foodie destination”.
(Incidentally, one of the photographs illustrating this review, an interior shot, appeared on its side on the Times online – did nobody there cast an eye over the piece ahead of publication?)
***
Herb, Leamington Spa
Resuming her campaign to prove how variously and well we eat today throughout Britain – and not just in London – Charlotte Ivers followed up a reader’s tip to try out what was other strangely recommended as the second-best Keralan restaurant in Leamington Spa (after Kayal, since you no doubt wondered).
It is a homely spot with a bar like a thatched cabin and lots of green and gold and twinkling lights, giving it “the air of the passion project of an ageing eccentric”. And with a “frustratingly” long menu – all of it vegetarian – Charlotte entrusted the waiter to guide her choices.
The best dish, he said, was paneer pollichathu – apparently a Christian dish (do dishes profess faiths?) of semi-sweet, slightly sticky paneer and coconut milk curry, steamed in a banana leaf. “It’s warm, subtle, unlike anything you’ll have eaten in a traditional British Indian restaurant,” Charlotte reports. Also excellent was green papaya in a sauce of mustard, curry leaves and coconut: “Fruit in a curry brings some people out in hives, but the papaya is so savoury, the sauce so light and fresh, it’s a revelation.”
*****
Daily Telegraph
Sael, St James’s Market
William Sitwell diagnosed Jason Atherton as a man in the grip of “restaurateuritis” – an all-consuming malady that leaves him “opening restaurants with the fevered mania of a man who hasn’t eaten for a month, tearing flesh from the bone”. With four new openings to choose between, William “put on a blindfold, pinned a tail on the Atherton donkey and fetched up at Sael”.
He found it a grand place, all columns and glass and “great buzz” in a “forgotten corner of the West End”, but much of the British-themed cooking left William exhausted and wondering whether “less might possibly be more”.
The Marmite tart and brioche displayed “great pastry skills but left me feeling for my tummy and veins”, while he swerved the lamb kebab – “the thing to order apparently” – sensing it would be “like an anchor of doom dragging me to a deep abyss of night-time restlessness”. Finally, Atherton’s version of lasagne was “a mess”: “I just wanted a bleeding lasagne, not an explosion of snail, ox cheek, pasta sheets and creamy sauce.”
Perhaps William just was not hungry enough to do Sael justice. Next time he should work up a proper appetite with a lightening tour of the West End’s museums or a bracing walk along the South Bank before dinner – or bring a couple of ravenous teenagers along to help him out.
*****
Daily Mail
The Blue Stoops, Kensington
With 29 pubs closing down every week in Britain, Tom Parker Bowles was delighted to welcome a newly opened one – the flagship for Jamie Allsopp’s family brewery, a once-famous name that disappeared in 1959.
“Jamie is an old friend, and this is not only an exceptional pub, it’s a damn fine restaurant, too”, said Tom, his admission of a personal connection both hinting that this was not the most objective of reviews, and explaining its rather perfunctory nature.
The kitchen is run by Lorca Spiteri, formerly of Quo Vaids, Rochelle Canteen and Caravel, he noted, praising the robust main courses of slow-braised Hereford beef with buttery polenta – “spoon food at its finest” – and “a glorious chicken, leek and black trompette pie, the pastry crisp and burnished, the filling as heavenly as it is hearty”.
*****
Financial Times
Dongnae, Bristol
Tim Hayward – in common with many an Occidental taster – had never understood the appeal of tofu, a key East Asian ingredient, before his meal at this “gently inspiring” Korean restaurant from Kyu Jeong Jeon and Duncan Robertson, a chef couple who met working under Joel Robuchon in Paris.
The meal began in style with a “spectacular” hand-roll of Devon crab and Icelandic urchin roe wrapped not in familiar nori but in a special seaweed brought back from Korea, with an “assertive, almost tea-like taste that complements the creamy crab”. Dishes of pork belly (in Korean, literally “three-layer meat”) with fermented sardine pickle, grilled soy-glazed mackerel and clam and mussel bibimbap were also excellent.
Tim’s tofu enlightenment came in the shape of a stew that also involved small chunks of meat, courgettes, mushrooms and seaweed, and was “so good I seriously considered giving up cleaning my teeth”. The brown liquid in which it all swam was made from miso-like doenjang proudly reared by the proprietors for five years, resulting in flavours that were “deep, complex, sophisticated, rich. Give it some private tuition and three months building a school in Ghana and it’s got every chance of getting into Oxford”.
As for the tofu, “this stuff explained everything. Subtle fungoid flavours. Creaminess. Like a custard made with only the white parts of mushrooms grown in Paris in catacombs on the bones of saints.”
