Harden’s regular round-up of the restaurant critics’ meals, from the week ending 28 July 2019. Heritage, London W1 Jay Rayner for The Observer made some sweeping generalisations about Switzerland to start his review (“it’s expensive, tooth-achingly polite, efficient and profoundly committed to dairy fats”) but only to point out that Heritage manages just three out […]
Harden’s regular round-up of the restaurant critics’ musings, from the week ending 9 June 2019. AngloThai at Counter Culture, London SW4 “It’s testament to how much I want to eat Chantarasak’s food that I’ll schlep down here to this ghetto of Zara-clad Freddies and Livvys and sit on a petrol-fumed pavement table watching an unending […]
Harden’s regular round-up of the restaurant critics’ musings, from the week ending 5 May 2019. Bross Bagels, Edinburgh Grace Dent for The Guardian has nothing but love for the “Canadian-Jewish bagel bakery owner Larah Bross” and the Montreal-style bagels served at the three Edinburgh branches of Bross Bagels: “a whirlwind of perfectly judged brashness and thoughtful, […]
Peg, London E9 Jimi Famurewa from The Evening Standard is the latest critic to pay a visit to Peg; it reminded him of LA restaurants he’d visited (mostly because of the feeling of “smugness and nagging inadequacy” it engendered), but he soon admitted that his first impressions were quite wrong. The “no-reservations arrowhead of a […]
EartH Kitchen, London N16 Jay Rayner leaped straight in to describing the food when reviewing EartH (not a typo) Kitchen for The Observer; stopping just long enough to explain that it’s “the restaurant of a major new arts venue in London’s Hackney”. Crispy pig’s cheek salad was “an adult bowl of food designed to make […]
Angelina, London E8 Jay Rayner for The Observer visited Angelina despite the “acute flashbacks” he suffered when told it was a fusion of Italian and Japanese food; it took him right back to the “unmitigated disaster” that was Shumi in 2003. Luckily for him, and us, Angelina avoids any such disaster: it “feels like a […]
Lino, London EC1 Jay Rayner for The Observer saved one of the best until last – for him, Lino turned out to be “among my top places of the year”. It’s “dancing on the knife edge of modernity”; “so much of what they do bellows 2018.” His review also rounds up the rest of his […]
Jay Rayner in The Observer forgets culinary purity at Gaijin Sushi Birmingham where a Polish chefs cooks solid Japanese food… “Depending on who is using the word, Gaijin is either an aggressively offensive word for non-Japanese people, or a self-mocking term used by non-Japanese people to signify their otherness. “… this is a sushi joint run by […]
Jay Rayner in The Observer is the latest critic to fall in love with Tomos Parry’s food at Brat. The place itself is perhaps to achingly Shoreditch, but the cooking is utterly lovely… “Show cooking may be tough, but trickier still is the seemingly effortless; the edible equivalent of, say, Anthony Hopkins’s performance in The Remains […]
Jay Rayner in The Observer was unable to visit his original Chester target Brewery Tap because they don’t take late bookings, but finds a gem in Kokonut Grove… “The restaurateurs, chefs and waiters running restaurants in Britain offering the food of the Indian sub continent… if you want to eat in a British restaurant after about 9.15pm outside […]