The River Café

Press Reviews (8)

• John Walsh (8th December 2008)
  Food 5/5 stars, Ambience 5/5 stars, Service 5/5 stars
  
  Another rave review of the Hammersmith legend which – the professional critics would have us believe – is better than ever since its post-fire relaunch. To start with, it “looks gorgeous”, with the menu (“more more elaborate than I remember”) offering “flavour-at-all-costs cooking”. Lunch was “epic… Homeric… instensely satisfying and incredibly filling”.
• Marina O'Loughlin (19th November 2008)
  4/5 stars
  
  This Hammersmith legend is “a restaurant that amply deserves its booked-out longevity”, says the critic. “Not only does it serve some of the capital's most consistently ravishing food but it has spawned a generation of influential chefs… It's attention to detail… that sets it apart from its pretenders”. It’s still, however, not a place where she feels particularly at home.
• AA Gill (17th November 2008)
  5/5 stars
  
  The critic visits the relaunched Hammersmith institution, and finds it “much the same, if a little Botoxed around the edges”, and, intriguingly, filled with “plump and glossy manipulators of art, information, entertainment, gossip and money, who all dress 10 years younger than they should, but with an expensive, déclassé shabbiness”. These, he says, are “men [who] look like they lie for fun, the women like they fart blank verse, and I’m aware that they make me bristle” – we always thought those were the sort of people who crop up as guests in Gill’s reviews! Whatever: “this place is still one of a handful of consistently five-star restaurants in London; and if that thought brings out the angry provincial chippy son of Jarrow in you, do what I do: get over yourself and have the squid with chilli.”
• Giles Coren (4th November 2008)
  Meat/fish 7, Cooking 8, Prawns 10 (ie, there were no prawns on the menu, as stipulated by my current “Ban the Prawn” campaign), Score 8.33
  
  After its post-fire refurbishment, the critic visits the famous Hammersmith institution and finds it mercifully little changed.
• Richard Vines (17th October 2008)
  3/4 stars
  
  The critic neatly summarises the recent physical changes at this famous West London Italian. “The restaurant looks beautiful. It's the same long room as before, but there's a smart new reception area, with a cheerful yellow front, while at the other end of the space, a wall has been removed, so the kitchen has become part of the dining room. There's now also a bar at the entrance, where you can sit and eat snacks. There's a large wood-fired oven whose flames you can spot as you enter and the familiar large, projected clock is behind it.” The food is “fabulous”, but the financial service’s man notes that the prices are high.
• Fay Maschler (17th October 2008)
  4/5 stars
  
  She admits the prices are high, but the doyenne of critics receives the revamp of this west London legend with something of a hymn of praise.
• Jasper Gerard (13th October 2008)
  8/10
  
  The Torygraph’s man is quickly on the case of this relaunched Hammersmith legend, though his review is not really helped by a lot of preamble about Jamie Oliver (who once cooked here). The look of the place – following refurbishment after a fire in the spring – strikes him as largely unchanged, and the menu “simmers and sizzles with earthily fresh, though often imported, seasonal ingredients”. This is, it turns out, an establishment “so right it transcends fashion”. Prices, however, are “top whack”.
• Jasper Gerard (6th August 2007)
  8/10 points
  
  The critic finds food “as fabulous as the prices” at this west London insitution (even if, after two decades in business, its “familiar” interior just looks like “a suburban branch of Carluccio’s”). Dining at the River Café, he observes, “is like seeing a revered if rather wrinkly band play live. Yes, there are new songs, but it is the old hits you hum to”. The place’s achievement is that it serves “simply-cooked food we've tried a thousand times that still leaves customers smacking their lips”.