Our round-up of what the nation’s restaurant critics were writing about in the week up to 19th August 2024
Evening Standard
Miga, Hackney
Jimi Famurewa visited a new Korean restaurant “like no other in the capital” – a two-generational father-and-sons project combining old school and new school in a minimalist modern shoebox of a setting.
“There is Aesop in the loos, but a collagen salad on the menu and a bowed paterfamilias in the kitchen. The result is a justifiably hyped, word-of-mouth success that honestly may be one of the best places I have eaten at this year. They talk a good game here. But, holy cow, do they back it up.”
Miga is apparently Korean for beef, and the appropriate highlights of Jimi’s meal were galbijjim (soy-braised short ribs) – “an abominably flavoursome, all-weather stew of evanescent, slow-cooked vegetables, beef so tremulously tender it slips from the bone with the gentlest spoon-nudge” – and the signature seolleongtangan, an “ambrosial, milky, cleanly mineral” ox-bone broth available neat or as the base for an “enthralling noodle soup”.
*****
The Guardian
Cornus, Belgravia
Grace Dent supped at a new “fine-dining” spot from the team behind Chelsea’s Medlar, following up after a 15-year gap which she thoroughly approved of – too fast an expansion often proving ruinous to restaurants. It’s run by “lovely, smiling and very amiable staff”, but the restaurant itself is “somewhat serious”, and “seriously rooted in the principles of French cooking” under chef Gary Foulkes.
The prices are “pretty serious, too”, with a tomato salad clocking in at £20 – although the tomatoes are a rare heirloom variety sourced from Hubert Lacoste in Gers, southwest France.
Grace clearly found the whole operation quietly impressive – much as it isn’t aimed at her demographic. “It isn’t trying to be youthful or on-trend, it’s just celebrating exquisite products cooked by a talented team working at a level that only a handful of people in Britain today could even hope to manage… Big prices, nice tablecloths, no riff-raff: to your average Belgravian punter, that is as good as it gets.”
*****
The Observer
Maida Grill House, Salford
Jay Rayner was delighted to confirm that the Manchester tradition of “rice and three” – the bargain curry combo developed at the legendary This & That in the Northern Quarter 40-odd years ago – is still alive and well, as evidenced in this two-year-old from Maida Kosar and her husband Hussein.
Jay’s trio comprised keema curry with peas, a big spoonful of chicken masala in a thick tomato-based sauce and tarka dal. “It is a plate of profound care and nourishment” costing £8.50 – “roughly the going rate these days”.
“It needs to be said that Maida is both good and cheap, and great because it is cheap. At the end of a lunch for two that will later see me declining dinner, I settle a bill for £32.50, tip refused because, ‘It’s not that sort of place’.”
*****
The Times & Sunday Times
Kioko by Endo at the OWO, Westminster
Giles Coren couldn’t get a booking at Tollington’s, the north London chippy makeover that’s causing a sensation in hip foodie circles, so he had to settle for a meal at a new place from the “great, glorious and beloved Endo Kazutoshi” of Rotunda fame, at the hotel owned by the Hindujas and full of “ridiculous International Superwank restaurant offerings”.
The food was, of course, delicious – most notably a “rich and fatty/salty, utterly sublime” crouton piled with chopped raw fatty tuna and a splodge of aged caviar.
But, said Giles, … “Everything was beige, it was £540 and everyone was on their phones. Like everyone, all the time… scrolling while they ate. It didn’t make one feel, you know, special.”
“Endo is a genius, no question,” he concluded. “But this is not the sort of place that does it for me. I just don’t warm to the ghoulish transience of a megahotel and the tax exile citizens of nowhere such a place attracts.”
***
Margot, Edinburgh
Chitra Ramaswamy hung out at the “hippest new café in Edinburgh”, a few doors along from its big sister, the seafood restaurant Leftfield in Bruntsfield.
Like Ardfern in Leith, a spinoff from The Little Chartroom, it is one of a new breed of places to eat “beautiful, considered, seasonal, not-too-serious food conceived by some of Scotland’s best chefs for prices that are expensive for a café but not bad at all for relaxed fine dining”.
“As recently as five years ago there were virtually no cafés like this in the land. Now the affluent bubbles in our cities glimmer with them. Many are a rip-off. Some are fabulous.”
The breakfast/brunch dishes involved a lot of lemons and yoghurt (both “obsessions” here) and were generally “sumptuous”, while the cakes she took home with her were “flawless”. “I could eat everything on Margot’s day menu, then return for dinner… The wine list — 23 by the glass in the evening — is brilliant.”
***
Maricarmen, Manchester
Charlotte Ivers spent an evening in “gentrifying Ancoats” at a newish tapas bar where waiters circulate with trays of small plates which are counted at the end and charged at £3 each – “a bit like Yo! Sushi, but with significantly more joie de vivre”.
Plates of uniformly beige bites circulate. “None is particularly remarkable, but it’s all fun.” Charlotte identifies a theme of “Meat. Carbs. Grease. Repeat” and prays for some vegetables, which arrive in the form of floppy and overcooked tender stem broccoli.
Charlotte has nothing polite to say about the food, but rather puzzlingly declares the whole experience “magical”, and closer than anything else in this country to a night out in Madrid.
*****
Daily Telegraph
The Bower House, Shipston-on-Stour
Noting that outside our cities, actual restaurants (as opposed to pubs serving food) are relatively rare, William Sitwell saluted this “fine and dandy establishment” in a historical Warwickshire town centre, “with a menu that is distinctly English with some cheffy flourishes and a nod to sensible food trends”.
“The Bower champions the kind of honest ingredients I’m starting to see about the place; first trout then quail.”
A lamb dish with courgettes, tomatoes and artichoke paste also passed muster, “although there was a smear of black something across the plate, so hardened you’d need a stripping knife to get it off” – evidence that the chef had not completely freed himself from the tyranny of faddiness.
*****
Financial Times
Lita, Marylebone
Tim Hayward was in turn amused, enthralled, flabbergasted and appalled by a Mediterranean restaurant which opened earlier this year to general critical enthusiasm.
As a first-time visitor he was subjected to a mini lecture on “The Concept”, which turned out to be “Broadly Italian/Bitish ingredients/ small plates/sharing courses… Ninety-eight times out of 100, it’s the same concept.”
Much of the food was pretty delicious – mussels; raw Fuentes bluefin tuna with “finely minced corno peppers… that made me profoundly happy”; Romana courgettes with artichoke hearts and ricotta; rice cooked in squid ink with Scottish langoustines; Cornish lamb with smoked aubergine. Then came the main course, a choice between Cornish turbot, Peak District T-bone and rib of Galician beef ranging from £120 to £160. “Even though these dishes were conceptually designed to be shared, it’s the first time I’ve looked at lunch and thought, no… there is genuinely no way I can justify that on expenses.”
The most upsetting feature, however, was the sight of waiting staff so gorgeous that it occurred to Tim they had been hired for their looks. “I’m fat, old and bald. They largely make me feel awkward, ugly and irrelevant.”
“Lita represents something new to me. I loved the food, the service was impeccable and the prices are no more shocking than we’re going to have to get used to. What I’m less comfortable with is eating in a restaurant designed for people better than me.”
