Water House

AA Gill, Sunday Times
Rating: 1/5 stars
Mr Gill’s épater-la-(eco-)bourgeoise starting point this week is that you don’t actually ever consume water: “[i]f you leave the tap running, it doesn’t vanish for ever”. This less-than-shattering aperçu segues into a tirade against the “stupid, lazy, T-shirt-slogan morality” of being anti-bottled water (which is, “ethically, intellectually and environmentally indistinguishable from bottled anything else”), and in due course – and “in a bad-tempered sort of way” – to this new eco-restaurant, which occupies a ‘weepingly depressing street” in Hoxton. And so the tirade goes on…

Nick Lander, Financial Times

Can Mr Gill have been to the same restaurant as the FT’s man? The latter found “good” food, “friendly” service and “excellent value for money”. In Mr Lander’s usual style, you get a lot of interesting business background too – something Gill’s piece could certainly not be accused of. It perhaps helps that Lander has sympathy for Water House’s aims: “the principles … constitute… a set of obvious, practical facts of working life that all restaurateurs and their customers have to face up to”, he concludes.


The Grill, Brown's Hotel

John Walsh, The Independent
Rating: 4/5 for food
The critic visits the new dining operation at “the capital's oldest operating five-star hotel, opened in 1837”, where ex-Caprice supremo Mark Hix is now making high-level input on the food front. It turns out that this is now a restaurant “that's almost belligerently hearty”, which the critic found “irresistible”. “The Grill may not win Michelin stars for Ferran Adria-style imagination or ambitiousness, but its commitment to British food, lovingly cooked to bring out its finest qualities, makes it an instant favourite. I'll go back as soon as possible.”


Oslo Court / Tom Aikens

Giles Coren, The Times

Quite a witty review from the Times’s man, comparing the famously ’70s Oslo Court (St John’s Wood) with the contemporary Tom Aikens (Chelsea). Not, it has to be said, entirely to the advantage of the latter.


Hibiscus

Zoe Williams, Sunday Telegraph

Something of a rave review of Claude Bosi’s Mayfair restaurant. “You know when you have a special anniversary, and somehow the very significance of it gives you the yips and you can't think of anywhere to go? Go here.”


Apicius, Cranbrook

Japser Gerard, Daily Telegraph
Rating: 8/10
The Telegraph‘s new man – whose predecessor, Mark Palmer, was unceremoniously shown the door – continues to settle in. He muses a lot on Apicius (the Roman glutton), before moving on to the restaurant, with which he has just two criticisms: the setting is “clinical” and some pastry is rock-hard. Such quibbles apart, however, “even Apicius would be proud to have this restaurant bear his weighty name”.


The Royal Oak, near Maidenhead

Matthew Norman, The Guardian
Rating: 9.25/10
“Sir Michael Parkinson's gastropub” is not only situated “on that Wind In The Willows stretch of Thames far more replete with faded TV stars than with water rats and moles”, but has a chef (Dominic Chapman) “[p]oached from the Hinds Head, Heston Blumenthal's pub in nearby Bray”. And Chapman, it turns out, “is a master of neo-traditional British cuisine”.


Le Cassoulet, Croydon

Terry Durack, Independ on Sunday
Rating: 14/20
The critic begins by pondering the wisdom of opening a grown-up French restaurant in Croydon (“[n]ot because everyone is staying at home and cooking, but because everyone is curled up on comfy couches watching telly in their local Indian takeaway, waiting for their beef vindaloo to be handed over”). Let’s hope the effort was not in vain, as it turns out that this is “a nicely old-fashioned, 'proper' French restaurant in an area that needs a bit of a leg-up”.


Anthony's at Flannels, Leeds

Jay Rayner, The Observer

Another disappointing meal Up North for the Observer’s man. Despite the occasional “flashes of brilliance”, the critic has a poor meal at this spin-off of Leeds’s highly-esteemed Anthony’s restaurant. He suspects that “they are trying to do too much for not enough money”, and that “the £18.25 they charge for three courses is forcing them to cut corners”.