Our mission is remarkably simple. To tell it how it is!
Grace Dent in The Guardian rejoiced in the “sheer chutzpah” of chef Alex Bond at Alchemilla even before she ate a bite of the “veg-centric” menu. Bond has turned a huge, “crypt-like space… an abandoned coaching house” that had “sat unloved and festering for more than 100 years” into “a capacious, open brushed aluminium kitchen” […]
50 Kalo di Ciro Salvo, London, WC2 (****) in The Evening Standard visited the latest Neapolitan pizzeria to import itself into London (following on from L’Antica Pizzeria da Michele, which recently opened in Baker Street – the first branch in Stoke Newington is no more). Despite almost everything about the place – the location (Northumberland […]
When Grace Dent reviewed The Langham’s new ‘pub’ The Wigmore, she decided she never, ever wanted to go there again. We would hazard a guess that The Guardian’s Marina O’Loughlin would be quite happy to go back any time…“Silly? A bit. Delicious? Oh yes.” “Creative cocktails in their own weeny tankards… pies and roasts and toasties… reimagined […]
This week Jay Rayner reviewed Notting Hill’s family-run Italian, Da Maria, in the Observer, remarking that it’s the kind of place that ‘keeps London human and, more to the point, humane’. A shame then that it may be demolished to make way for an expanded cinema foyer. You know who’s side Jay is on… “Da Maria […]
Jay Rayner in The Observer keeps things on The Straight and Narrow, a piano bar and restaurant in east London’s Docklands… “Food and music are meant to go together. Jazz, which is what I have spent most of my adult life at the keyboard wrestling with, was born in restaurants like this. “The Straight and Narrow has […]
Jay Rayner in The Observer reviews Jean-Georges at The Connaught, where prices are as stupid as Donald Trump, but at least the food is good… “I try to avoid the flouncier excess of chef worship and napkin sniffing, but with Vongerichten I fail. I have spent atrocious amounts of my own money at his flagship high-end […]
Jay Rayner in The Observer doesn’t so much review Marylebone newcomer Fancy Crab as eviscerate it… “Fancy Crab isn’t good. It’s a terrible waste of their money and our money and everybody’s time. “The restaurant’s shtick is the enormous red king crabs, fished from the cold waters of the North Pacific around Alaska, which can […]
Marina O’Loughlin in The Guardian reviews Pascere, a new Lanes restaurant from the food and drink editor of Platinum Business magazine, Amanda Menahem. “Brighton is having a bit of a moment restaurant-wise; like Bristol, another beneficiary of the financial pain of attempting to launch any kind of indie in the capital. “The most exquisite thing that […]
It may be as massive as an ‘airship hangar’ but Bang Bang Oriental – an Asian food hall in Collindale – still offers some great eats, according to The Observer’s Jay Rayner “Top tip: set up camp at a table as close to the middle of the room as possible, or you’ll end up walking […]
We must apologise. Last week when we stated that surely everyone has now reviewed Chinatown newcomer Xu, we had forgotten that Marina O’Loughlin was yet to deliver her verdict in The Guardian. From the founders of the brilliant Bao, this more upmarket Taiwanese excited Tom Parker Bowles but disappointed Grace Dent and both Matthew Bayley at The Telegraph and Fay Maschler thought more bedding […]
