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Review of the reviews – London

Tom’s Place (First major review)

Jan Moir, Are You Ready to Order

Online, Ms Moir gets in with the first review of Tom Aiken’s new chippy. Is the tide turning agains the celeb-chef bandwagon? “At the moment”, she concludes, “Tom’s Place is too greasy, too expensive, too preachy and too self-consciously green for comfort”.

Dehesa

Fay Maschler, Evening Standard

Rating: 3/5 stars

Mrs M visits the new Soho sibling to the celebrated Salt Yard tapas bar. She does one of those ‘shopping list’ pieces – mercifully rare nowadays – where her review is largely taken us in taking the reader in excruciating detail through what she ate.

Fox & Anchor

Marina O’Loughlin, Metro

Rating: 3/5 stars

This Smithfield re-launch “isn't really a gastropub”, says the critic, but “a sympathetic and lovely renovation of a historic old boozer… with a sensible approach to food and… mainly spot-on delivery”.

Foxtrot Oscar

Guy Dimond, Time Out

“This might be the first restaurant from Gordon RamsayTM to be an underachiever”, says veteran reviewer Guy Dimond. (Has he really never been to Banquette or La Noisette?) Even the faithful, it seems, are unimpressed by Ramsay’s relaunched Chelsea bistro, which is “so lacking in soul and the food is so unremarkable that you wonder why you didn’t stay home and cook instead”.

The Mercer

Guy Dimond, Time Out

TO’s head critic – who, unusually does two reviews this week – visits this “expensive, but not overblown” City brasserie. This being Time Out, there’s the obligatory City-boy dig (“just the sound of an over-refreshed hedge-fund manager failing to negotiate the stairs”), but – overall – the place gets the thumbs-up.

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