The Warrington

Jay Rayner, The Observer
“A gastropub with Gordon Ramsay's sure touch and none of his ego?”, tantalizes the headline. That is, indeed, just the experience the critic had at this Maida Vale gastropub, where only the steak and kidney pie is found in any way wanting.


The Grill, Brown's Hotel

Giles Coren, The Times
Rating 8/10
The critic announced the end of his tap water campaign, which has been both imitated (by the Evening Standard), and denigrated, by his Murdoch stablemate AA Gill (“the grand boulevardier of our profession”). On the new grill at the Mayfair hotel, he is generally very upbeat.


Marco

AA Gill, Sunday Times
Rating 4/5 stars
The critic finally gets round to reviewing MPW’s newish restaurant, which is a short walk from his house. The menu, he notes, “looks like the Ivy‘s”. (A delphic observation: how Marco’s honed-down purely French menu could be said to be in any respect like the Ivy’s, it’s very difficult to see.) Anyway, the food get cracking levels of approval – higher, as we recall, than in any of the ‘opening’ reviews – perhaps because “every one of [the] dishes brought back priapic memories” (sic).


Bord'Eaux

Terry Durack, Independent on Sunday
Rating: 13/20
The critic finds “lots of things to like” in what’s probably the most positive review so far of this grand Mayfair hotel brasserie, which he thinks is seeking to be “London’s answer to Bofinger… [or] La Coupole”. It even, he raves, has “that rare thing, an al fresco terrace with a view” – as the view is principally of Park Lane, this is presumably some sort of joke?


Purnell’s, Birmingham
Tracey MacLeod, The Independent
Rating: 4/5 stars across the board
“The ridicule is unfair”, says the critic, remonstrating with the unnamed website – that would be Harden’s, then – which recently made fun of Birmingham being appointed a member of a culinary panel which also included the likes of Lyon. There are “enough decent middle- to high-ranking restaurants to constitute a dining scene”, she remonstrates (albeit – as she chides – “not one you'd automatically compare with Lyon”).

“Most flamboyantly talented of the city's chefs is Glynn Purnell”, she continues, “who won Birmingham its first Michelin star at Jessica's”. (A moot judgement incidentally – many people would rate Andreas Antona at Simpson’s at least equally highly.) Glynn Purnell’s new headquarters occupy “a handsome Victorian warehouse conversion in the financial district”, and have the air of a “post-industrial gentlemen's club”. On the cooking front, “you find yourself making comparisons with masters of modernism like Heston Blumenthal, Tom Aikens and Hibiscus's Claude Bosi, under whom Purnell once briefly worked”, and the critic imagines that two stars from the tyre men cannot be far off.


Bryce’s Fresh Fish Restaurant, Ockley

Matthew Norman, The Guardian
Rating: 4.75/10
A very up-and-down piece on a not otherwise notable out-of-town fish restaurant. The review suggests its obscurity is entirely justified.