Our mission is remarkably simple. To tell it how it is!
⦿ The Observer’s Jay Rayner finds a trip to Soho’s new Test Kitchen rather hard work, but thankfully is able to salvage his day through the restorative power of pastry at Maison Bertaux… “The strawberry tart at Maison Bertaux in London’s Soho should be available on prescription as an effective treatment for post-traumatic stress. The sweet […]
⦿ Jay Rayner of The Observer hit the jackpot with a visit to Riley’s Fish Shack, “two full side-access shipping containers fitted out steampunk-style” overlooking St Edward’s Bay in Tynemouth, near Newcastle, which he declared “the eating experience of the year”. “It is the pristine quality of fish cookery you always hope to find in one of those fancy, raised […]
The Observer’s critic-in-chief Jay Rayner asks himself the all-important question at Cliveden House’s new casual operation, The Astor Grill – would he return here and spend his own money? At £196 for two, the short answer to that question is a resounding ‘no’. “The wine list is short and more shameless than a 1960s pool […]
The Guardian’s Marina O’Laughlin once dismissed Balham’s Chez Bruce as ‘ultra-bourgeois and a little dated… onefor the Bufton-Tuftons, with their florid, claret-hoofing faces and fear of the new, I sniffed”. Not so anymore. The critic now seems to understand why it has been Harden’s reporters’ favourite restaurant for the past decade – “I’m forced to suspect […]
AA Gill heads out to The Woodford in search of Ben Murphy’s cuisine (a young chef of just 25 who trained under Pierre Koffmann) and finds that The Only Way is Essex is in fact a real way of life and not, as the Sunday Times’s columnist previously thought, simply a ratings-courting fiction. Incidentally he loves […]
Five stars for food from AA Gill?! A rare occurrence indeed. The first British spin-off (in Covent Garden) of Les Halles restaurant Frenchie wows the Sunday Times critic… “Frenchie is that thing I’d almost given up hoping I would see again: a really, really good modern French bistro. Not nostalgic or revisionist, but a sensible, […]
AA Gill is thoroughly unimpressed by Shaftesbury Avenue’s new Chinese hotpot restaurant Shuang Shuang – an “anxiety-inducing concept” where diners are asked to assemble their own soup from a conveyor belt of ingredients. It’s making The Sunday Times critic nostalgic for the days of turtle soup terrines, Michael Winner, and drinks trolleys… “This is by […]
This week the Times’s Giles Coren reviews a relatively new Italian in the Dickensian maze of streets just south of Spitalfields Market in the City. But more interesting than his opinions on their pasta (sorry Giles) is the critic’s prediction that 2016 will be the year restaurant reservations become fashionable again. In fact here is […]
Not too many reviews in critics’ corner this week with Marina O’Laughlin’s and Fay Maschler’s columns absent from the Guardian and Evening Standard respectively. We shall have to muddle through without their pronouncements and hope for a return next week. Among the reviews that caught our eye were three for D&D London’s latest dining behemoth, […]
Last week The Times’s Giles Coren was drooling over his keyboard at the very thought of another meal at Brad McDonald’s new Deep South-influenced Soho haunt Shotgun. This week his colleague AA Gill over at the Sunday Times takes said shotgun and fires both barrels at the place in his Table Talk column… “The first […]
