Marina O’Loughlin in The Guardian is the latest critic to give Soho’s new Flavour Bastard a good bashing. “Not so much flavour bastards as thoroughgoing, unremitting, absolute taste tossers.” “Staff appear to be less amused and more terminally embarrassed… when they’re not explaining the concept to us at ludicrous length. The dishes are, apparently, bastardised in a tedious, […]
Jay Rayner in The Observer enjoys a knowing attempt to bring the street inside at Borough Market’s El Pastór (from Barrafina founders, the Hart bros)… It’s “a fun space of bare brick and shiny metal and colourful murals; a knowing attempt to bring the street inside”, with “tequilas in worryingly large servings” and “pork shoulder, marinated and […]
When our reporters praise Bray’s Hind’s Head it is because the picturesque pub is “thankfully not over-Hestoned” but The Sunday Times’s Lisa Markwell has the opposite problem – she can’t find any evidence of Blumenthal’s pseudo-scientific cooking at all, nor the influence of his trusty lieutenant Ashley Palmer-Watts – and it leaves her disappointed… “I […]
The Guardian’s Marina O’Laughlin is back in her native Glasgow, but the locals may not want to hear what she has to say about Dennistoun’s Bilson Eleven. “How dare I? How dare I be critical about a small, new indie restaurant, its name an elision of the chef/owner’s two sons (and the number of tables they, […]
Marina O’Laughlin’s idea of hell is Victoria’s new Nova development, and although Stoke House may not be its most hellish corner you’d still need a pitchfork to the Guardian’s restaurant critic anywhere near it again… “The music is deafening, the place full to the rafters: my hell doesn’t seem to be other people’s. The menu […]
In July this year Luke Mackay announced plans to open the Hour Glass pub on Brompton Road with hopes of recruiting a ‘GM with bonhomie’ and ‘a chef who isn’t a dick’. Tall order, but The Evening Standard’s Fay Maschler believes the Mackay (the man behind Brompton Food Market in Thurloe Place) has found it in […]