The Brackenbury in W6 has no great claim to fame nowadays. It’s an ideal neighbourhood spot (I should know, as I live only a few doors away), but there’s nothing to hint that when it opened in 1991 it was briefly at the forefront of London’s gastro-revolution. Nobody expected to find such good food in […]
Since it opened a few months ago, restaurant critics have been queueing up to damn this Kensington newcomer. Undaunted, however, we made our way to its bright and contemporary, but rather hard-edged premises, set amidst a longstanding cluster of restaurants, just off the High Street. A wind of change has blown down this street in […]
No sector amongst London’s impoverished selection of specialist food shops has had greater claim to Cinderella status than the pâtisserie. Part of the reason seems to be that quality baking has not traditionally been seen as an occupation fit for an Englishmen. Famous pâtisseries – in order of establishment, Bertaux, Sagne, Valerie and Blanc – […]
Maybe it’s because I’m not a Londoner’, as the song doesn’t quite go – after a quarter of a century here, the Smoke can still surprise me. I’d always heard the Columbia Road market was quite a spectacle, but had somehow never hauled myself out of bed early enough on Sunday to enjoy it. Nowadays, […]
Greenwich – the ‘home of time’ – is possibly London’s most attractive something-for-all-the-family destination. Not wholly coincidentally, this World Heritage Site has also long been a pretty vile place to eat. (It doesn’t help that most of the more prominent local restaurants are under the common, and rather complacent, ownership of a local Mr Big.) […]
Clerkenwell’s Exmouth Market somehow manages to be perennially cool. Restaurant-goers know it best as the home of Moro: an establishment that has managed to combine good food, fashionable appeal and relatively reasonable prices for a fair number of years: a rare triple-act. Indeed, such has been its success, that one might have expected to see […]
The dreaded word ‘restaurant’ is absent from self-description of this ‘bar and food emporium’, so – naturally – the largest part of the establishment turns out to just such function. For what it is, this ‘secret’ dining room – dominated by a large, square black marble dining bar – tries a bit too hard. Solo […]
Some new restaurants are promoted so far in advance of their launch that the professional critics are almost bored with them before they open. Others save everything for a big launch ‘push’. The canniest ones prefer to wait to get their product sorted out, and then wage the big PR initiative. And others just sneak […]
In its former incarnation – can you use that word about a fish restaurant? – this long-established Clerkenwell site often seemed to want for custom. Its new proprietor, Raymond de Fazio, knows a bit about quiet restaurants: he backed Osia, in the Haymarket, which was critically acclaimed, but quickly closed for want of custom. Fortunately […]
For restaurant critics, offbeat formulas make for easy copy. Reviewing this ambitious-looking new Clerkenwell venture – which prominently advertises its ‘Thai-Indian cuisine’ – therefore looked set to be a cinch. My old friend obligingly set about ordering a Thai set lunch to complement my Indian one. I began to congratulate myself on how easily the […]
