Geales

Press Reviews (6)

• Giles Coren (22nd August 2007)
  Meat/fish: 3/10 points; Cooking: 3/10 points; Water: 10 (Belu); Score: 4.25; Price: That terrible meal for two was £80 for two courses before booze.
  
  Giles finally gets around to reviewing this Kensington chippy, which was given a fashionable new look a couple of months ago. He's not nearly as impressed as most reviewers were at the time; perhaps it was due to his waiter that was of “Bond-villain stature” (“Jaws”), or the “underdone” and “squelchy” lobster starter.
• Matthew Norman (17th July 2007)
  3/10 stars
  
  An odd and somewhat difficult-to-follow piece. As the critic says: “it isn't entirely a review at all, being as much a preview of what I suspect The Hole In The Wall is like on an average night as a report on a slightly disappointing meal” (sic). The meal he actually experienced was not thrilling, but he suspects that the involvement of Stephen Bull – the ex-London chef who allegedly “has a long and lustrous record for providing outstanding food at decent prices” – means it’s usually much better.
• Mark Bolland (9th July 2007)
  
  Here’s a new critical index not previously explored. ES’s critic notices the number of chaps who have “gold signet rings on their little fingers”, at this new upmarket chippy. This place seems to pass the test: “you know that this will be a posh, ketchup-free zone”. He broadly likes the place. But then he also describes the same owners’ Embassy restaurant as “excellent”. Hmm.
• Tracey MacLeod (12th June 2007)
  Food 3/5 stars; Ambience 2/5 stars; Service 3/5 stars
  
  “Welcome to Geales, of Notting Hill. It's a chippy, Jim, but not as we know it.” “Somehow”, the critic concludes, the recent fashionable makeover “has taken away the heart of the place”. “What remains is perfectly fine, but feels ersatz in a way that The Ivy or J Sheekey never do.”
• Terry Durack (4th June 2007)
  14/20 points
  
  This particular critic doesn’t especially like fish and chips, but he likes this re-launch of the famous Kensington chippy. “Geales is now much nicer, more comfortable, much cleaner, much smarter, with more attention paid to the quality, freshness and sustainability of the core product”, he concluded, and “it smells better, too”.
• AA Gill (4th June 2007)
  3/5 stars
  
  There seems to be a certain amount of critical navel-gazing going on at the moment, and Mr Gill considers the perennial “should-the-critic-visit-several-times” question. “All the colonically obsessive Miss Marple American ones go dozens of times in different costumes, trying to pretend that their review will be definitive. But a restaurant isn’t like a film, or even a play, for which a critique of one performance will be applicable to all performances. It’s more like a football match: it happens in the same place, with the same team, but the results are always different.” The cause of this introspection? Mr Gill ‘went back’ to Haiku – to which he awarded four stars for lunch a few weeks ago – and decided that at dinner it should only have one.