Did you know that there is a Bermondsey ‘Village’? (It even has its own website – bermondseyvillage.org.uk.) Presumably this helps explain the name of this new bar/restaurant. The ‘East’ bit is still fractionally puzzling. Presumably it’s supposed to evoke Manhattan’s Bohemian East Village. To us, however, it just smacked of ‘trying too hard’ – an […]
Location, location and location – if anything, restaurants are even more subject to the estate agents’ mantra than houses. Unless a particular establishment is very grand (think Gordon Ramsay in Chelsea) or has the potential to be a fashionable magnet in its own right (Hakkasan, say), a wise restaurateur will usually want to ‘cluster’ with […]
Is it any surprise that London can baffle visitors? On the one hand, the US foodie-bible Gourmet proclaims it ‘the best place on the planet to eat right now’. But, on the other, it’s still nigh on impossible to find a really delicious and inexpensive lunch (unless you ‘go Indian’, ‘go Chinese’, etc). Part of […]
In the days of my father’s National Service, recruits only needed to know one thing: ‘If it moves, salute it. It if doesn’t, whitewash it’. Perhaps Shaun Clarkson – designer and co-proprietor of this new gastropub – has military blood, because he seems to have taken the second part of this advice to heart. Walls, […]
As an integral part of the HQ of Allied and Morrison – a top architectural practice – this smart Southwark café is an unusual venture. It’s not without precedent, though: The River Café originally started as the canteen for a firm of architects (Richard Rogers), a tie-up that doesn’t seem to have done either business […]
Tuesday night, 10pm. I’d just staggered out of a wine bar near London Wall. My judgement dulled by drinking on an empty stomach, I decided this was the time to check out that new Mexican bar and cantina I’d heard about. Even if it was in Shoreditch. Arriving on a forlorn stretch of highway north […]
Oliver Peyton is often hailed as a visionary. Restaurants he has launched ‘ahead of their time’ include Mash & Air (Manchester), Coast, Isola and the Atlantic. None of these endured, not least because – once the novelty had gone – the basics of a good-value dining package were often absent. Presumably those who run the […]
Mrs Harden was not happy. Like her sister-in-law (also Mrs Harden) she knows by now that restaurant critics don’t just spend their lives checking out the latest Knightsbridge hotspots. But trekking to Brixton on a cold and windy night? Well, really. The many clouds overhanging our visit darkened further when the restaurant didn’t seem to […]
The Royal China group’s first venture on this Marylebone site was a luxuriously minimalist Japanese restaurant called Michiaki. It didn’t last. Now they’ve turned it – essentially unchanged – into a sort of club-class Royal China. Many readers will know that Royal China is widely regarded as the capital’s leading Chinese chain, so you might […]
Tips from City AM readers about hot new openings that might otherwise slip below the radar are always particularly welcome. One such message – to mail@hardens.com – alerted us to this newcomer on the Isle of Dogs. The walk to the restaurant from, say, Canary Wharf tube is a little bit under ten minutes, but […]
