This elegant but tightly-packed, East End gallery dining room offers a handy stand-by in a thin area; owing to various changes of régime this year, we don’t think a rating appropriate.
STOP PRESS: Jan 2011: Angela Hartnett has now taken over the management of this dining room.
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London’s galleries and museums tend to offer little of interest on the food front. Part of the problem is that, big and institutional bodies as they are, they tend to appoint big, joyless caterin...
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Press Reviews (5)
Giles Coren (28th September 2009)
5/10
The rating for the dining room of this recently-refurbished gallery a 5 comes with the critic’s “apologies to the chef”. It’s the gallery – and the fact that he is not allowed in it – that brings the score down. The restaurant itself is “small and cosy for such a modern space”, “[t]he staff are very kind and the menu is gloriously brief.” The food may sound “pompous” (such as “Textures of English sweetcorn”) but it demonstrates the “great talent” of head chef, Maria Elia.
AA Gill (8th June 2009)
4/5 stars
The new restaurant at the East End gallery is “small and neat and nicely turned out”. It has a “ubiquitous modern English” menu, “short and well made”, and complete with “the de rigueur mission statement of organic righteousness and gastro-correctness”. Although it is “without surprises”, the critic is “happy with the food”. Such a lukewarm endorsement hardly supports a four-star review of course, but then Mr Gill is on record as being too grand to make these awards himself, so it’s no great surprise if there’s the occasional mismatch.
John Walsh (11th May 2009)
Food 4/5 stars, Ambience 2/5 stars, Service 4/5 stars
“The gentrification of east London gallops onward. You can hardly move in Shoreditch or Hackney these days without encountering a new private club or school-of-Mark-Hix restaurant”, says the critic. The dining room at this relaunched gallery is “pure Primrose Hill, clean and new, tasteful and sweet-smelling”. “The Gallery Dining Room is absurdly small, but it's got a big heart for both flavour and invention.”
Charmaine Mok (30th April 2009)
3/6 stars
“[R]ich spicing and Mediterranean influences feature strongly here, in combination with local and seasonal British ingredients”, at this new East End dining room. “Mains are priced rather high”, but, “for a gallery eatery, [this is] a decent place to dine”.
Fay Maschler (23rd April 2009)
3/5 stars
The critic visits the dining room at the relaunched East End gallery, where “all is blonde wood panelling, bevelled mirrors and crisp white linen napkins”. The chef is “Maria Elia, who previously cooked to general satisfaction at Delfina Studio Café in Bermondsey, also surrounded by art”, and whose menu is “short, seasonal and something of a vegetable patch for those who eschew meat”. It has its ups and downs, but generally pleases.
Giles Coren (28th September 2009)
AA Gill (8th June 2009)
John Walsh (11th May 2009)
Charmaine Mok (30th April 2009)
Fay Maschler (23rd April 2009)
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