AA Gill is back at the Sunday Times’s Table Talk column with a bang as he reviews London’s hottest new opening – Richard Caring’s improbably named Sexy Fish. He finds its a tale of two restaurants; the ostentatious room itself which ‘comes on like one of Ron Burgundy’s pick-up lines’, and then there’s the food […]
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 […]
Alan Pickett’s (sort-of) eponymous solo venture Piquet in Fitzrovia gets a double dose of restaurant reviews as both the Standard’s Fay Maschler and Tracey MacLeod of the Independent pop by to try the chef’s Gallic-influenced British dishes. The Indy’s critic finds the service surprisingly stiff and the venue strangely deserted. Fortunately the food also receives […]
If the hipster-driven dude food revolution was prompted by the 2008 recession then, according to Giles Coren at The Times, the arrival of Sackville’s in Mayfair (an opulently expensive ode to beef and truffles) is a sure sign the hard times are well and truly over… “There would be exposed brick, bespoke cocktails and an […]
The Evening Standard’s Grace Dent seeks out Shoreditch’s latest smokehouse venture, Rök, concerned that it may be a another tedious, cavernous, edgy-by-numbers barbecue joint, which – she says – it absolutely is not. “Rök is small — 40 seats — and elegantly formed, dispatching gorgeous, highly devourable sharing plates of exquisite British produce with a Nordic […]
It seems as though a few of the usual suspects were off on holiday last week, so here’s a somewhat truncated version of our review of the reviews. Find out where the critics ate this week… First up, did you know that Pret a Manger had launched an evening service restaurant on The Strand? Surely […]
No egg puns were used in the writing of AA Gill’s review of Egg Break in the Sunday Times, but no punches were pulled either. He hated the place, from the bottom of its ‘Fritzl memorial lounge’ basement to the top of its ‘counter-cultural, recycled, reclaimed, ironic’ name sign. And is this the least appetising […]
The Observer’s critic-in-chief Jay Rayner heads to Levanter Fine Foods in Ramsbottom in search of thick-cut Galician beef steaks. Unfortunately they hadn’t arrived yet, but that didn’t stop him enjoying everything else that Joe Botham’s Spanish restaurant had to offer. “We run up a bill of £60 without any booze, but with the lobster, which […]
Jay Rayner weighs in on the north/south restaurant divide question The Observer’s critic-in-chief heads to Manchester to try out the new Hawksmoor and stumbles across a veggie dining room, 1847, serving great food – well, apart from the desserts. Read our roundup of restaurant news in Manchester and enter our Hawksmoor Manchester competition. Meanwhile the […]
The Indy’s Tracey Mcleod heads to Marlow to review Tom Kerridge’s new venture, Coach It doesn’t take bookings and “like the new-look Tom Kerridge himself, is much smaller than you’re expecting” but the food doesn’t disappoint and would be worth waiting for. Telegraph critic Zoe Williams says Great Portland Street’s Portland is ‘a breath of […]
