In recent times, the site of the restaurant we review today has been both an Est! Est! Est! and a Caffé Uno. Not promising for a place that’s set its sights on the ‘fine dining’ market, you might think. For reasons that are hard to pin down, history has demonstrated that it’s remarkably difficult to […]
If media is the circus of the age, Nick Jones is one of its ringmasters. His empire stretches from his HQ at Soho House- via restaurants in Mayfair, Notting Hill and, er, Tooting, plus a country house in the Cotswolds (Babington House) – to an oh-so-hip club in New York’s Meatpacking District. Come Oscar time, […]
Today we record impressions from our first-time – shame! – visit to the home of the UK’s most famously funky ‘three-star’ chef, Heston Blumenthal OBE. From London, take the Maidenhead train and then a ten-minute cab ride. If you’re going to spend this much money – and, make no mistake, you are – you might […]
Reviewing Moroccan restaurants is a real challenge. Everyone knows know that the menu is going to consist of the usual starters, followed by a choice of tajines and cous cous, with pastries for pudding. Not much mileage there for the poor scribe. And everyone knows that the interior is going to be in the dark […]
Twenty years ago, you would have been most unlikely to find a City restaurant with décor such as you might have found in Mayfair. No restaurant was allowed to set up among the money-factories if it had any feeling of West End chic or – heaven forbid – any aspect that might be thought slightly […]
It’s stressful choosing a restaurant for friends. If you write about restaurants for a living, then mates are not generally especially forgiving when you take them somewhere that’s rubbish. This Indian café on Hammersmith’s scruffy main drag certainly doesn’t impress visually. With its tiny shop-conversion premises, I could see the thought bubbles over my guests’ […]
Damned in this column last October, the Mayfair offshoot of Rowley’s steakhouse closed a few months later. The site has now been taken over by multiple restaurateur Claudio Pulze. He came to public attention a dozen or so years ago for his involvement in A-Z Restaurants. (The ‘Z’ is Zafferano, still one of London’s better […]
The concept of eat-in/take-away is as old as the hills: café/bakeries being the obvious example. And many ethnic restaurants are as happy for you to take your hot dishes home as they are for you to eat in. Rarely, however, do restaurants make any attempt to – as some might see it – compete with […]
Unless you’ve been living on Mars for the last ten years, you’ll know Gordon Ramsay has built up London’s most impressive portfolio of top-end restaurants. Most of them are former ‘Savoy’ group hotel dining rooms. Their style is grand contemporary French, their quality is often impressive, but they tend to lack charisma. A whole constellation […]
Mews of Mayfair. The very name is presumably supposed to reek of sophistication, an impression intensified on entering the first floor dining room, which has the sort of very light décor which – in a house – you might be invited to enjoy only after taking your shoes off. We didn’t find it especially welcoming, […]
