Ba Shan
AA Gill, The Sunday Times (Rating: 0/5 stars)
The service is the only part of the operation at this Soho newcomer which the critic actually likes, finding it “unusually friendly for an oriental gaff: fast, precise, helpful and anticipatory.” The design here is from “that particular Chinese school of gratuitous undesign”, and “[t]his one had been turned inside out so that its insides looked like an outside with fake eaves and tiles and stuff.” More offensive than the décor is the “awful” food: “[b]adly seasoned, viciously oversalted, with flavours that elided into a Pot Noodle brownness.”
Baozi Inn
Zoe Williams, The Telegraph (Rating: 5/10)
Chinatown’s Baozi Inn – an earlier member of the group that also now includes Ba Shan – “shot to fame as London’s most authentic vendor of northern Chinese street food”, the critic tells us. She has an up-and-down meal, from the “heavy and suety” baps (after which the place is named) to the “[t]otally delicious” dragon wantons. The experience is let down by the service; “basic co-operation” was absent, and it was “so fast it was basically telepathic.”
Fine Burger Co
Giles Coren, The Times (Rating: ‘Fine’)
As Giles notes, there‘s a new breed about: “temporary fast-food shacks at sports matches and concerts and the like [that] are setting themselves up as ‘quality’ options.” The burger he samples, however, turns out to be “a downright summer food scandal”. “There was nothing ‘fine’ about it. It was totally not fine at all. It was not even mildly okay. And there was nothing to merit a £6.50 price tag either.”
No.20, Sanctum Soho
Tracey MacLeod, The Independent (Rating: Food 3/5 stars, Ambience 3/5 stars, Service 3/5 stars)
The critic visits the dining room of what’s been “billed as London’s first rock‘n’roll hotel”, and finds a “smallish dining room [that] makes a valiant stab at high-style retro glamour, without quite pulling it off”. She is “pleasantly surprised by the unshowy modern- British fare on offer” but “there was no escaping the fact that we were on our own in a near-empty hotel dining room. No rock stars, no magnums of Cristal being cracked open, and only the soundtrack of Nineties-style chill-out music to ease the come-down.”
Comptoir Libanais
Terry Durack, The Independent on Sunday (Rating: 14/20)
“It's a caff, a deli, a shop, a fast-food outlet – and the cleverest thing about it is that Lebanese food doesn't at all mind being mass-produced.” The critic enjoys the “absurdly generous” dishes at this “fun, frantic and filling” Marylebone joint, which is part of a small chain. There are quibbles – “the ordering/paying system needs sorting; and there is no alcohol” but the plus points – “the style, the fresh, juicy food, the flexibility”, “for under a tenner each” – seem to win him over.
Time & Space, The Royal Institution
Matthew Norman, The Guardian (Rating: 1/10)
“The restaurant attached to the world's oldest scientific research body is naffly named Time & Space, and that is by light years the best thing about it.” From the second paragraph, you know that this isn’t going to be a happy review, and it does indeed turn out that the food is sometimes “repulsive”.
Deeson’s British Restaurant
Jasper Gerard, The Sunday Telegraph (Rating: 3/5)
Canterbury, opines our scribe, is a city enjoying a “startling gastronomic development”, of which the latest example is this “British Restaurant in the shadow of a cathedral spire”. This new establishment appears to tick all the right boxes: the décor is a blend of “clean white tiles” and “jaunty” works of art, “[c]hildren are well catered for[, s]uppliers are given due prominence and all the right noises are made about local sourcing.” The meal gets off to an encouraging start, but after some “disappointing” mains, the critic finds himself defending it on the grounds that it has “only been open seven weeks so it’s still finding its way.”
Yalla Yalla
“The magic formula for many modern restaurants”, the critic tells us, “is summed up in [Ferran Adrià’s] phrase ‘fast good’”. He visits a recently opened Lebanese café in Soho “that has the potential to be ‘fast good’ at its best.” It is a small place – “there are only nine tables and about 25 stools” – with “an unusual but cosy interior”. It is already doing good business, thanks to a “talented” chef-patron who creates “a delicious array of food fresh every day”.
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