Our mission is remarkably simple. To tell it how it is!
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 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 […]
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 […]
The Observer’s Jay Rayner doesn’t so much review Plaquemine Lock in Islington as write it a love letter. The Cajun-Creole-influenced pub comes to us courtesy of Jacob Kenedy (of Bocca di Lupo fame)… “A celebration of the food of the Louisiana basin… The walls are painted a hot, sultry yellow overlaid by naive murals of life on the […]
Marina O’Laughlin’s idea of hell is Victoria’s new Nova development, and although Stoke House may not be its most hellish corner you’d still need a pitchfork to the Guardian’s restaurant critic anywhere near it again… “The music is deafening, the place full to the rafters: my hell doesn’t seem to be other people’s. The menu […]
⦿ Fay Maschler of the Evening Standard reviewed Elystan Street 4/5, Phil Howard’s new restaurant in Chelsea, where she ate some “sublime” dishes but gasped at the prices and missed having a tablecloth. “Smoked mackerel velouté with Porthilly oysters — from the River Camel estuary — with leek hearts and eel toast is a secular […]
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 […]
Grace Dent eats humble pie – and burgers – at Bobo Social The Evening Standard reviewer is forced to admit she judged this posh burger concept by its cover. Pop-ups in very poor taste? From death row dinners to human burgers, east London pop-ups become more outré. Oh dear, Marylebone’s Opso has a bad […]
