Our round-up of what the nation’s restaurant critics were writing about in the week up to 25th August 2024

The Sunday Times

Daquise, South Kensington

Charlotte Ivers may not have discovered a new restaurant, but she scored a genuine scoop in her review of this legendary and much-loved Polish institution (est. 1947), breaking the news that it is under threat of closure since its landlord, Transport for London, has secured planning permission to extend South Kensington tube station and redevelop the area.

“It’s world famous, a mainstay of guidebooks to London in Korea and China. It’s also a love story: Daquise is a merging of the names of the first owners, a Mr Dakowski and his French wife, Louise. And now it’s going, probably… The restaurant will, like everything else in London, likely become the site of luxury flats — the history, the fame, the love story gone.”

Charlotte was taken by a friend whose Polish family have been regulars for three generations, greeted by hugs from the 92-year-old owner – just what you want “in a transient city where most restaurants don’t make a decade”. The unchanging Polish repertoire of creamy, dill- and horseradish-flavoured dishes went down a treat, along with the butter-drenched carrots recommended by Charlotte’s colleague Jeremy Clarkson, who told her Daquise was his “favourite place in London.”

“It takes 77 years to build a restaurant like this. It’ll only take a couple of days to bulldoze it,” she lamented.

*****

Evening Standard

Cornus, Belgravia

David Ellis was baffled by what he called the “Greek-builder” design of this new restaurant from the team behind Medlar, leaving it somehow unfinished, with exposed air conditioning ducts clashing with the white tablecloths and “shoddy A4 print-out” menus.

The cooking, on the other hand, was absolutely and classically superb, led by Gary Foulkes “one of those chefs’-chef chefs” who learnt his trade at The Square under Phil Howard, who is name-checked on the menu for his dish of “parmesan-infused gnocchi pucks topped with langoustines painted in a potato and truffle sauce, topped with girolles and shavings of black summer truffle. If you don’t like truffle, it ain’t for you. But otherwise? It’s bang-the-table, f***-me-that’s-good, up there with Wilton’s twice-baked cheese soufflé as London’s finest starter”.

The Cornish lobster with spaghetti was another dish that “might convert fine-dining sceptics, offering a convincer for the merits of fine French technique”, while chicken came with a “truly beautiful sauce, tasting as if a roast chicken had simply melted”.

With its serious wine list and sky-high prices, David judged it to be very much a restaurant for the type of well-heeled senior Belgravians “who talk of summering somewhere. It is not, perhaps, for the hot young things. Not sexy, in other words…”

***** 

The Guardian

The London & Paris, Folkestone

Grace Dent visited a hotel dining room with 170 years of feeding cross-Channel travellers behind it – these days a “rather cool seafood restaurant [with] a real sense of history in its quaint, wilfully eccentric dining room, boasting bold wallpaper, original tiled floors and mismatched dining chairs”.

A menu of “non-stop maritime madness complete with numerous devil-may-care twists” from ex-Rocksalt chef James Pearce is backed up by a “long, lovely, fishy specials board… featuring fresh whitebait, dressed crab, coal-roasted lobster and sumptuous spins on sea bass, plaice and turbot”,

In short, Grace rated it “one of the best restaurants operating along this stretch of coastline”, making “a concerted effort at every turn to pack in extra interest, flavour or pizzazz, and while some of it may not quite land, most of it does”.

*****

The Observer

Panda’s Kitchen, Harrow

Jay Rayner happily followed up a reader’s tip to a Sichuan restaurant in the ‘Little Chinatown’ near Harrow-on-the-Hill station – his boyhood stomping ground – where he found “thrill-seeker’s” comfort eating in bowls of food “so powerful and so intricately layered that it demands your full attention”.

With its wipe-down tables, laminated menus and soft drinks from the plastic bottle, “Panda’s Kitchen does not do fancy” – but the cooking more than compensated.

Stand-out dishes included Sichuan Mao roast duck – “a quiet showstopper” – and red-braised lamb using potato as a thickener which was “very much Sichuan” but “also shakes hands with things like scouse from Liverpool or Monmouth stew from Wales, those dishes that make a little prized and expensive meat go so much further through the alchemy of seasoning and time”.

*****

The Times

Asador 44, Cardiff

Giles Coren headed to a steakhouse opposite Cardiff Arms Park which has “Welshified Basque beef vibes” by showcasing dry-aged beef from retired Pembrokeshire and Carmarthenshire dairy cows, in the northern Spanish style.

Giles was impressed by the concept, the ambition and the meat, which was “very, very, very good beef, that could have been great”. Where it fell just short was in the cooking, which left his steak “too red, too shiny, too happy. It could have been darker and crustier and meaner, like the man who ate it. The thick fat could have rendered down a bit, crisped and toffeefied.”

This fantastic beef showed best in a “deep, treacly, ‘slow and low’ cut of cheek served in an iron skillet over crunchy-chewy ‘beef rice’”, while the other Spanish-influenced dishes also impressed: prawn croquetas rolled in charcoal; salchichon of ibérico de bellota scented with truffle; “fabulous” olive oil chips; charcoal turnips in whey sauce with jamon; and thin-sliced red, yellow and green heritage tomato in the restaurant’s own “en rama 44” olive oil, dusted with dried olive crumbs for vegan umami.

***

West Room, Edinburgh

Claire Sawers attempted to recapture her memories of the bacari she visited on a trip to Venice, sipping cocktails and nibbling cicchetti over lunch in this six-year-old West End bar during the Edinburgh Festival.

The pescatarian cicchetti were “fabulous” – crunchy and rotund squid croquettes, smoky with paprika and dusted with parmesan – while the mini pizzette also hit the spot. On the debit side, her zucchini flowers were swamped by thick batter and bruschetta overwhelmed by garlic.

“Maybe the Venice theme has been watered down (like the city itself) over the years: to be honest the West Room doesn’t really stand out from the city’s Spanish tapas bars or Greek mezze spots. That said, the drinks were deliziosi, the mini bites an improvement on the crisps and nuts you get in most Edinburgh bars, and for one happy hour or so I got to reminisce about Venice.”

*****

Daily Telegraph

Agora, Borough Market

William Sitwell was dispatched by his editor – clearly against his will – to Greek restaurant Agora – the more informal sibling to Oma upstairs, which other critics have raved about, and where booking is available. Poor William had to queue outside with his family for 45 minutes, and once inside could barely hear above the “yellingly loud room”.

“The dishes match the hubbub, unfussy and canteenish. Sort of like street food or festival nosh that you bung in as the din ensues,” he reckoned.

That said, William had the good grace to praise a “wonderfully garlicky borani – like tzatziki on acid – topped with flattened and crisp garlic”, and a  “fabulously authentic” Greek salad with “not a lettuce leaf in sight, just cucumber, tomatoes, onions and some creamy cheese on top, and those rustic, teeth-challenging rusks with their lovely balsamic-like sweetness”. 

All in all, then, a place for teenagers rather than this particular adult.