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 […]
We kick off this week’s review of the reviews with a corker. Everyone should read Marina O’Laughlin’s scathing dissection of NYC interloper Hotel Chantelle in the Guardian, if only to hear the phrase ‘le wanquerie’, from the woman who brought us ‘Mayfair Wankpits’. From the food, to the service, to the very reason behind the […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
Rapper-turned-chef Rabah Ourrad’s food at Wormwood gives pause to The Observer’s critic-in-chief Jay Rayner His one caveat? “Some will find the Wormwood experience profoundly irritating. There is a breathiness to the service, an intensity in the way ingredients are pointed out before you’re allowed to eat them, which can be wearisome. And costs mount.” Zoe […]
