As it nears its 25th year, Tessa Bramley’s (Michelin-starred) operation in a “beautiful old building” stirs up a mixed bag of emotions; even critics concede the food can be “technically great”, but prices are “astronomical”, service can be “bumbling”, and the overall experience is sometimes simply “dismal”.
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One of those handy reviews which pre-summarises itself. This is a “pretty chintzy, but welcoming and not prissy” room, where the food is “experimental” and “strange”, but “more than averagely impressive”.
Jay Rayner (16th June 2008)
The critic didn’t expect to like a place which looks “so curiously English… pretty and quaint, which are not normally qualities I enjoy” (“finding neither in myself”, he helpfully adds). “Fortunately, the food is nothing like the surroundings: “[i]t is modern and bright without being tricksy.”