Harden’s regular round-up of the restaurant critics’ meals, from the week ending 7 July 2019.  Mana, Manchester From the moment the first of 16 courses arrived, Marina O’Loughlin of The Sunday Times was “blown away” by Simon Martin’s cooking at Mana. He cooked at Noma for several years (unlike so many chefs, which, as Marina […]

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Harden’s regular round-up of the restaurant critics’ meals, from the week ending 30 June 2019. Tayer + Elementary, London EC1 Jimi Famurewa for The Evening Standard is on a roll; last week he discovered Gezillig, and this week he was in east London at the the new split personality venue from celebrated mixologists Alex Kratena […]

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Harden’s regular round-up of the restaurant critics’ roamings, from the week ending 23 June 2019. Darby’s, London SW11 Grace Dent for The Guardian was the first critic to beat a path to Battersea to sample “Robin and Sarah Gill’s new project” near the peculiarly placed new American embassy at Vauxhall (“a gargantuan, purpose-built, space-age fortress… […]

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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 […]

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Harden’s regular round-up of the restaurant critics from the week ending 26 May 2019. Amrutha, London SW18 Kathryn Flett for The Telegraph went vegan this week, at a restaurant “sited, eminently missably, in a small, plain room behind plate glass on a main road in Earlsfield”. The locals evidently haven’t missed it, as there was […]

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Harden’s regular round-up of the restaurant critics’ musings, from the week ending 19 May 2019. The Coconut Tree, Cheltenham “Eating well is an expression of normality.” Jay Rayner for The Observer was in the Cotswolds, seeking out normality in the form of Sri Lankan street food, as a way of re-establishing what’s good after the […]

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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, […]

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Harden’s regular round-up of the restaurant critics’ musings, from the week ending 28 April 2019.  Pasta Ripiena, Bristol Jay Rayner for The Observer isn’t afraid to say it: “the best things to eat are rarely the prettiest”. He was in Bristol, eating plates of pasta that look like “paintings by one-year-olds that proud parents stick […]

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Harden’s regular round-up of the restaurant critics’ musings, from the week ending 21 April 2019. Happy Easter! Xier, London W1 Grace Dent for The Guardian is always “questioning the entire point of modern haute cuisine” – especially lengthy tasting menus “often done badly: too pompous, too many petals, too few carbs, not a lot of […]

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Fishmarket, Edinburgh When in Edinburgh Jay Rayner for The Observer always heads to Ondine, and its “pitch-perfect seafood”; you can imagine how delighted he was to discover a sibling restaurant, “a collaboration between Ondine chef Roy Brett and his long-time suppliers Welch Fishmongers,” on the docks at Newhaven. At Fishmarket there’s a “classic metal takeaway counter” […]

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