Our round-up of what the nation’s restaurant critics were writing about in the week up to 28th July 2024
Evening Standard
Henri, Covent Garden
David Ellis headed to what he calculated was Jackson Boxer’s sixth restaurant on the go, “a Paris-inspired bistro — wanting to be ooh la la, va va voom On-ree, not claret-at-the-golf-club Henry”, with marbled-topped tables “crammed together” too closely to avoid your neighbours’ business chat and gossip.
Some of the dishes were a delight – “those looking for the Instagram hit will want the seaweed canelé topped with orange pin-heads of trout roe”; carrot râpée was as exciting as grated carrot can get thanks to the addition of “spunky black olives”; while the snails with veal rice was “a wonder – the best snail dish in London”.
Others failed, including a raclette burger, pan-fried duck which missed the traditional confit prep and a “horrid” tartare of duck liver and beef. David noted that all the duff dishes came on a second visit when Jackson was not present.
So is the chef spreading himself too thin? David couldn’t bring himself to say so directly, but made it more than clear that his answer would be Yes.
*****
The Guardian
Tollingtons, Finsbury Park
A fortnight after the Standard’s Jimi Famurewa heaped praise on what “may be the best chips in London”, Grace Dent upped the ante dramatically, hailing “without doubt the greatest chips I’ve ever eaten. Hands down the best. No quibbles.”
Warming to her theme, she vowed: “I shall talk of these chips on my deathbed – these hot, fresh, fat, crisp chips fried in beef dripping and served with a heroic dollop of homemade allioli and a mild, sweet, silky bravas sauce. These are chips that defy sharing. They have all the punch of a 1970s trip to Scarborough with Ferran Adrià in charge of the ketchup.”
Grace was already a big fan of The Plimsoll, an “impudently shabby old boozer” a mile away run by chef Ed McIlroy and his team. Their minimal conversion of an old-school 70s chippy into Tollingtons, a “tiny, wonky, Haringey-meets-San Sebastián pintxo bar” serving seriously good seafood, confirmed her view that McIlroy and co are “the British food world’s biggest trailblazers”. “Comfy it ain’t”, though: you may well end up eating while standing with the throng on the pavement outside.
*****
The Observer
Hooyo’s Somali Cuisine, Luton
Jay Rayner was charmed by “Luton’s first Somali restaurant”, a “rather lovely” place “full of big family vibes, vivid textiles and groaning platters” that he found on Instagram. ‘Hooyo’ means both mother and home in Somali, and the mother in question, Foz Abdi, presides over both kitchen and dining room with “the air of a matriarch determined to make sure everyone is properly fed and watered”.
The dishes “speak of the Horn of Africa as a cultural crossroads”: India to the east, the Arab world to the north, and several decades of Italian occupation all contributing to a menu that encompasses “hummus, samosas, slow-roasted meats and spaghetti. Lots of spaghetti” – and ends with a “pleasingly dense and sponge-heavy” tiramisu.
The food is “fragrant” and “salty-sour”, and comes in portions that are generous in the extreme, from “a kitchen that only regards far too much as enough. The platter for two at £32 could easily feed three. The platter for six at £60 could presumably feed Luton.”
*****
The Times & Sunday Times
YiQi, Chinatown
Giles Coren was reeled in by the terse poetry of the menu at a new Chinatown ‘pan Asian’ restaurant – nowadays a derided 90s category, but in this case mostly Malaysian/Singaporean/Chinese. “Pork trotters (boneless) ancient taste. Genius… They had me at ‘pork’, as the saying goes. But they had me all over again at ‘trotters’. And then once more at ‘boneless’.”
He was rewarded with “a bamboo tube containing the most aromatic, fluffy and gentle coconut rice imaginable, with a pile of shimmering pork meat, fat and collagen, all cooked slow and low and long, so that each morsel trembled like a shy child’s lower lip, in a rich, sticky braising sauce”.
‘Street-food style oyster omelette’ and ‘Guinness crispy chicken’ were equally delicious – the latter “new to me but clearly a dish for the ages”, while the staff “unusually for Chinatown are superfriendly, upbeat, welcoming to all guests (Asian and Cheesy Big Nose alike), talkative, funny and up to endless japes and banter with each other.”
Giles even dropped into Tao Tao Ju, a dim sum joint next door, for another excellent meal, concluding that “Chinatown, so long maligned, is clearly having a moment. Be there or… miss out on the poetry.”
***
Brett x Lind & Lime, Leith
Chitra Ramaswamy attended a supper club hosted by a gin distillery in Leith, whose latest guest chef was the first from Glasgow – Colin Anderson of Brett – each of whose dishes were paired with a cocktail, several using foraged ingredients from the neighbourhood.
After a single course — a “gilda to end all glidas” consisting of a smoked anchovy on a crouton fried in chicken-fat butter, paired with a foraged gin fizz featuring “some fireweed plucked from the distillery car park” – Chitra declared there was “a party the length of Sauchiehall Street kicking off in my gob”.
Subsequent courses – clams with deboned chicken wings; monkfish tail; barbecued côte de porc; green tortellone stuffed with sweet prawns and tarragon, with sauce vierge; strawberries and meringue – were a succession of “giant flavours achieved with tiny, astonishing gels, peppy hot sauces, great seasonal produce, a laser focus on umami, texture and all manner of opulent emulsions and broths”, involving no fewer than 20 different vinegars.
“If [Anderson] and just one of his team can achieve all this in a minuscule kitchen 50 miles from home, well, my next trip will be to the west end of Glasgow, to eat in his sensational restaurant.”
***
The Orangery, Aynho Park, Oxfordshire
Charlotte Ivers took her mother to lunch at “the world’s poshest Ikea café” – a restaurant at a stately home near Oxford that is now the UK base of American furniture company RH (fka Restoration Hardware).
Eerily, they seem to be the only customers in the building, itself a succession of “tasteful” brown-and-beige decorated rooms, like “an MC Escher painting”. The grand dining room “feels like a Greek temple: white, cold, empty. Someone, somewhere, is losing an awful lot of money. I look at the legions of staff loitering around, utterly lovely and polite. What are we all doing here?”
The food barely registers, apart from a “cauliflower steak” that is “quite a glorious dish. A bit of rosemary, a lot of chives and lemon. Artfully blackened on the ‘live fire’ grill, it tastes new and exciting. Quite the achievement for a cauliflower.”
*****
Daily Telegraph
Kinkally, Fitzrovia
William Sitwell visited a new Georgian restaurant “so minimalist I’m struggling to describe it, which I suppose is the point. It looks like nothing; a bare cupboard in the corner of a disused flat.”
It takes its name from khinkali, traditional Georgian twisted dumplings – “bouncy stodge with different sauces” – lightened up here for more delicate tastes, and stuffed with lamb, pumpkin and not entirely authentic langoustine and wagyu.
William made no secret that he “went for dumplings, but preferred all the other bits” – namely aubergine in a rich and sweet satsebeli sauce; a smooth rabbit pâté served with spongy toast called nazuki; lamb chashuli, a Georgian stew that could feed an army in deep winter; and best of all dolmas – “pretty, green cabbage leaves, cooked perfectly thus surrendering their chew but retaining enough bite. They encased soft and gorgeous prawns and came in an elegant yellow sauce of tarragon, in which bobbed salmon roe. Georgian? I don’t know, but I didn’t care either, they were so good.”
