This prettily-located chippy now loudly proclaims the formerly little-known fact that it was established in 1939. It is only very recently, however – since its acquisition by the Embassy (Mayfair nightclub) people – that it has got in touch with its heritage side. The battered former appearance of the place (ho ho) has now been […]
Finns. They just don’t get it, do they? Surely, everyone knows you can’t open a café in the heart of the West End, and give everyone lots of air and space around the tables. This isn’t Helsinki, you know. And then they put in a big plate glass window, so that the people inside can […]
Voted best restaurant in the Wharf’, says the website of this big and busy Canary Wharf oriental (which has recently emerged from a major refurbishment). Well, they’re certainly getting bums on seats: the large, ground floor pan-Asian brasserie – a good mates’ get-together kind of place – has a nice buzz to it. Today, though, […]
In London, great purpose-built public dining rooms – of the nature of New York’s Four Seasons, or the Train Bleu at the Gare de Lyon – are rare. Our top contender is arguably the lofty central chamber of the Royal Festival Hall, which benefits from wonderful proportions, as well as a spectacular river view. Like […]
After ten years in Downing Street, our soon-to-be-ex PM will soon have the novel possibility of popping out to a local restaurant for dinner. If he puts his ear to the ground, he may well hear there’s a new Italian of some note, just round the corner from his new house. The newcomer has just […]
With summer increasingly upon us, fancy a trip to the country for lunch? No time? How about a trip to the Middle Temple Garden then? If it weren’t – and this is where reality intrudes – for the traffic noise from the Embankment, you could almost be in an English country garden (or at least […]
The ‘Zinc’ brand – the most avowedly mass-market of the concepts to come out of the Conran dream factory, and one of the worst – was sold off last year to the Individual Restaurant Company. IRC promptly closed the Fulham branch. And now, the former flagship site, just off Regent Street, has been re-launched under […]
In the Good Old Days of the Twentieth Century, people earned their money in the Square Mile, and spent it Up West. Nowadays, however, the old order has broken down. You find City-type firms in Mayfair, and Mayfair-type shops in the City. At the Royal Exchange, for instance, there’s now a concentration of jewellers with […]
Kit Kemp – who, with her husband Tim, owns Firmdale Hotels – has created some of London’s best contemporary hotel interiors. They may sometimes seem a touch self-indulgent, but they are often witty: beautiful even. (Her decoration of a ballroom-style chamber at the new Haymarket Hotel – now one of the most elegant rooms in […]
There’s been much musing in the foodie world of late about the word ‘gastropub’. Has the term – which only came into existence in the mid-’90s – become so devalued as to be worthless? It is certainly over-used. But perhaps all words need to go through a misuse stage, before people work out whether they […]
