Le Café Anglais, Whiteley’s

Press Reviews (9)

• Jay Rayner (22nd January 2008)
  
  “Poetry in four dozen dishes” – that’s the critic summarises the carte at Rowley Leigh’s much-hyped Bayswater newcomer. For, as Rayner notes, Leigh is: “one of a group of smart, bookish middle-class boys - think Alastair Little, Simon Hopkinson and Fergus Henderson - responsible for establishing a style of French bistro-influenced modern British cooking, without which eating out in this country would be a much sadder affair.” Rayner’s meal is not absolutely faultless, but “there is so much else here to like - no, to love - that I find it hard to bear a grudge”. “I want to go back, and often. Rowley Leigh has written a menu designed for eating from, and I intend to meet the challenge.”
• Matthew Norman (9th January 2008)
  9.5/10 points
  
  “[Rowley] Leigh has surpassed even himself with a restaurant that is wonderfully well designed to delight and satisfy, rather than to intimidate and impress“, raves the critic. He does wonder, though, how suitable, in the long run, its Bayswater location will prove.
• Giles Coren (7th January 2008)
  8.5/10 points
  
  The critic starts off with musings inspired by leafing through “the first restaurant guide to London”, and finds certain immutable truths of restaurant reviewing. (He’s actually wrong about the first guide bit. His guide is dated 1851 – correctly, as it refers to the Great Exhibition – but the first guide was actually published in 1815.) He then sings the praises of the new Bayswater venture from Kensington Place founder, Rowley Leigh, whom he accounts “a gentleman among chefs”.
• Marina O’Loughlin (7th January 2008)
  
  Ms O’Loughlin has a rather up-and-down experience at Le Café Anglais (the mains and the service being among the features which do not entirely please). No matter, she concludes, as chef Rowley Leigh is a “sussed and seasoned enough restaurateur to rapidly iron out kinks”. We’ll let the split infinitive pass, but what is the point of Ms O’Loughlin’s self-denying ordinance about not rushing in to review brand-new restaurants if she reviews places while they’re still clearly settling in, and still finds herself having to express hunches about how they will develop in the future?
• AA Gill (10th December 2007)
  3/5 stars
  
  Another week, another Gill review where the stars don’t really make much sense in the context of the review. “Too much misses its own mark. The seasoning is all over the place… It’s all fixable, and I hope it will be… But the meal we had took too long to be served, albeit by charming and informed staff, and was just too expensive for the imprecise and clumsy cooking”. So why the three stars?
• Jenni Muir (5th December 2007)
  4/6 stars
  
  With all the gush about for Rowley Leigh’s new Bayswater venture in the media, Ms Muir sagely notes that “it’s like 1990s Quaglino’s fever all over again, only less exciting”. She isn’t wowed by the place, but finds the food and service very satisfactory.
• Mark Palmer (4th December 2007)
  8/10 points
  
  “This is a stunning, 7,000 sq ft dining-room, fizzing and buzzing just like [Kensington Place, chef Rowley Leigh’s former establishment] but considerably more comfortable, concludes the critic ”. The whole experience is simply “a triumph”.
• Richard Vines (26th November 2007)
  
  "Early this month, I said Hibiscus was London's new restaurant of the year. Suddenly, that exciting venue has a challenger”, says the critic, who is generally very impressed by Rowley Leigh’s new competitor to the Wolseley. As he notes, however, its Bayswater location is hardly a match for that of the Piccadilly legend.
• Fay Maschler (15th November 2007)
  4/5 stars
  
  Rowley Leigh, head chef, instigator and one of the owners of the newly opened Le Café Anglais, is a friend of mine. I thought I should get that out of the way. At dinner there last Thursday I saw quite a few friends of mine who, as it happens, are also friends of Rowley's. He is a convivial chap. In setting up the company to run the restaurant, he found himself in the unusual - practically unheard of, I should think - position of having to send some of their money back to investors when it was discovered that the business was 50 per cent oversubscribed.