Sake No Hana
Terry Durack, Independent on Sunday
Rating: 15/20
The Indie’s man is one of three reviewers this weekend to address Alan Yau’s “shimmering urban forest of blond wood and bamboo” (“a Shinto shrine for the secular”), where – as everyone notes – “the menu takes a bit of deciphering”. Said menu is, he helpfully reports – you may want to write this down – “a mix of Japanese classics: home-style braises, raw fish and noodles, grouped under cooking methods such as yakimono (grilled), agemono (deep-fried), mushimono (steamed), takiawase (simmered), sushi, and sashimi, here called tsukuri, a colloquial term used in Osaka and Kyoto”. The dishes he chooses generally, but not invariably, please.
“No wine is offered”, he notes, “and the cheapest champagne by the glass is Krug for £30”, so he is “forced to take a sudden interest in sake”. This is, he concludes, “undoubtedly a class act”, but “it remains to be seen if it has what most of us want from a Japanese restaurant”.
Rating: 7/10
The lack of wine strikes the Telegraph’s man as “very Japanese”, but he also finds it “very annoying”. This (lack of) drinks selection is complemented by an eight-page menu whioch “need[s] a good deal of explanation from our waitress”: “at first, her nods and inscrutable smiles are enchanting, but then they start to grate, especially when [a dining companion] seems to know more about some dishes than she does”. Even though bill for a rather up-and-down meal comes in rather higher than expected, at £136 for two, Mr Palmer concludes that he may return – “but not until [Alan Yau] revokes the no-wine rule”.
Rating: 3/10
Echoing a once-celebrated review which centred on the price of a melon (at Cecconi’s, under former management), Giles Goren kicks off with a sideways swipe at breakfast at Firmdale Hotels’ Charlotte Street Hotel, where eggs come priced at £4.50 each (“staggering, staggering, staggering”). This leads him effortlessly on to his coverage of Alan Yau’s new venture. “What the hell have we become?”, he rants, when “entry-level ’poo” – that would be the Krug, then – comes in at £30 a glass. It doesn’t get an better after that, and he concludes the place is just “an insult to the city”.
Le Café Anglais
Rating: 9.5/10
“[Rowley] Leigh has surpassed even himself with a restaurant that is wonderfully well designed to delight and satisfy, rather than to intimidate and impress“, raves the critic. He does wonder, though, how suitable, in the long run, its Bayswater location will prove.
Lamberts
Rarting: 3/5 stars
Mr Walsh kindly tops and tails his review of this south London restaurant with mentions for Harden’s. Having ‘discovered’ Lambert’s for the purposes of his review, he looks in the guide only to find that the place has been “well and truly discovered” by our own publication.
Caldesi in Campagna, Bray
Rating: 7/10
Mr Rayner is very impressed by the new rural offshoot of the Marylebone restaurant Caldesi: another attraction in what is already the most over-blessed village, culinarily speaking, in England.
Follow hardensbites Follow hardensparty
Become a Harden's fan
