On the Regent’s Park fringe of Camden Town, Gordon Ramsay’s glamorous conversion of a palatial boozer; food and service are good (rather than anything more), but the overall experience is highly suited to a celebration or romance. Many people have been a bit mystified by this Gordon Ramsay group restaurant, bar and small hotel, in […]
Opposite the big Pimlico Sainbury’s, a no-nonsense Brazilian buffet affair, offering tasty food at reasonable prices; its rather bare design, however, makes it more a practical stand-by than an obvious party destination. [Capsule review only – not much we can really add to the above, and, despite our best efforts, we’ve been unable to obtain […]
Is the restaurant god a Sloane? Chelsea’s three historic shrines to Sloanedom – Dan’s, Monkey’s and Foxtrot Oscar – have all been pillaged in recent years, and in each case the vengeance has been terrible. Most obvious is Monkey’s, which became Tom’s Place, which quickly became Aikens’s ex-place when it was shut down for being […]
A smart but no-nonsense brasserie, five minutes from Harrods (on the former site of the Brasserie St Quentin), offering a welcome ‘plain vanilla’ stand-by, for locals and shoppers. Just occasionally, the name of a restaurant really does tell you everything you need to know about it. This is one of those cases. Even if it […]
On the thinly-provided eastern fringe of the City, an airy new business restaurant that’s trying hard – in our view, too hard. Slate plates need to be approached with great care. We don’t mean that they’re less serviceable than china (which they probably are), but that they send a message that the chef regards himself […]
A relaunch of a grand Indian restaurant, by Gloucester Road tube; the charm that once made it famous has been totally obliterated, and it now charges high prices for a thoroughly humdrum experience. OMG, what have they done to it? Perhaps there should be some sort of law that London hotels just aren’t allowed substantially […]
From a major chain operator, a relaunch of a classic Victorian restaurant site in Soho as a Gallic bar/brasserie; food and service are above ‘chain’ standards, but the new décor doesn’t ‘work’. We should be grateful for the survival of Kettners. Even after its latest relaunch, its Soho premises offer what’s quite possibly the most […]
From the Martin brothers (Gun, Botanist et al), a small and rather uneventful corner pub, just off Hatton Garden; it offers decent-enough simple fare, but it’s only its backing that makes it of any note. There’s a natural tendency among restaurant critics (and guidebook writers) to follow the latest openings of operators they’ve heard of. […]
