A handy Bloomsbury address – this little-known hotel dining room, near Euston, is “fairly formal”, and so “good for business”; it serves up “simple but tasty” cuisine “with an Italian bent”.
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Perhaps it‘s the prospect of all those dapper ‘euro-types’ about to be deposited at the new Eurostar terminal at St Pancras – Bloomsbury has the feel of somewhere on the up.
The area’s...
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Press Reviews (6)
Jay Rayner (20th October 2008)
Rather than a convincing restaurant, Jay judges this hotel dining room to be a “trannie with a heavy five o'clock shadow and big meaty hands”. “It’s not merely the austere, harshly lit space” but “its origins as the big room… where men in the duct-tape business could meet for their annual conference, are barely disguised”. Chef Santino Buscilgio “writes a good menu” using “solid British produce” in “the service of solid Italian cooking, with the occasional twist or twirl”. But while only one dish is “actively bad” the food “did the job, wihout adding to the gaiety of life”: “Propellerheads like me can write prose poems to a good osso buco; this one was barely deserving of a cringe-making homily in a Hallmark greetings card.”
Giles Coren (16th September 2008)
Meat/fish 8, Cooking 7,
Nicholas Lander (15th April 2008)
Rather unusually, the FT’s man devotes his whole column to a single restaurant, and a lesser-known one at that. He doesn’t especially like the “vaguely canteen-like” décor, but this new(ish) Bloomsbury Italian wins praise for its “intriguing” cuisine.
Fay Maschler (13th November 2007)
2/5 stars
Some of the Italian fare at this Bloomsbury hotel/dining room is “lively, sunshiny, [and] excellent”, says Ms Maschler, and the service delivers “a good time”. Her chef-companion, however, found some of the food to be “tasteless”.
Jenni Muir (8th November 2007)
“An antidote to the corporate hotel brasseries of the Euston Road”, this “buzzy” Bloomsbury (hotel) dining room offers food that’s “better than competent”, says the critic (though some dishes are “rather bland”).
Jenni Muir (6th November 2007)
3/6 stars
“An antidote to the corporate hotel brasseries of the Euston Road”, this “buzzy” Bloomsbury (hotel) dining room offers food that’s “better than competent”, says the critic (though some dishes are “rather bland”).
Jay Rayner (20th October 2008)
Giles Coren (16th September 2008)
Nicholas Lander (15th April 2008)
Fay Maschler (13th November 2007)
Jenni Muir (8th November 2007)
Jenni Muir (6th November 2007)
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