Pétrus
Jasper Gerard, The Telegraph (Rating: 8/10)
“Ramsay is in the process of reinventing himself with faultless, unfussy interpretations of classic combinations. Compared to that of his rival, the cooking is even vaguely affordable, if you don't let the charming female sommelier lure you into a too-thorough exploration of the wine cellar”. Praise for the chef's new Belgravia restaurant, where both the “bargain” set lunch and à la carte menu impress - special mention is reserved for desserts: “[i]f main courses are impressive, puddings excel”. “Will I return? Probably not. But if you seek opulent atmosphere for a (relatively) ordinary outlay, Gordon has proved he's no moron.”
Bistrot Bruno Loubet
The critic is impressed by his visit to the eponymous Clerkenwell bistro, where cuisine demonstrates the chef's ability “to take simple ingredients and extract the maximum flavour”. Alongside an “enterprising wine list”, particular attractions include guinea fowl boudin, trout Grenobloise, pollock with a pistou sauce; and a mille-feuille of apples and quinces.
Colony
“If so unmitigated a monstrosity would be an achievement anywhere, let alone in central London, the involvement as executive chef of Atul Kochhar – a Michelin star-holder at Benares – allows it to slip the bonds of the merely surreal and suggest a malign biblical miracle. Had Jehovah deployed Colony as the first of the plagues celebrated recently at Passover services, He'd have spared himself slaughtering every first-born Egyptian boy child. One meal would have broken Pharaoh's spirit.”
Oh dear. The critic's scathing crticism for this “soul-chilling” Marylebone fusion restaurant ranges from the “stale poppodums” and starters that are “no worse than abysmal”, to kedgeree tasting “like rice thrown into a pan of stale oil and sluiced around with burnt hot dog onions and some unidentifiable fish”. The rest of the menu fares little better, with every dish sampled “returned to the kitchen barely touched”.
Manson
John Walsh, The Independent (Rating: Food 4/5 stars, Service 3/5 stars, Ambience 3/5 stars)
“[I]t was a revelation, a love affair between young and old, ancient and modern, experience and innocence. Such subtlety! Such a change from all the chefs trying to yoke a dozen flavours together by violence!” It's not just the braised pork belly that impresses the critic at Gemma Tuley's “warm and welcoming” Fulham restaurant, which “irradiates an old-fashioned array of rustic chairs and tables, a long way from the townie pretensions of haute cuisine”. Other highlights from a rather “brusque” menu include scallops -“a paradisiacal wedding of seafood flavours” - and “fresh and delicious” sea bass. As for dessert, “you're taken beyond bliss and words to realms of le petit mort”.
L'Art du Fromage
Giles Coren, The Times (Rating: 8)
“I arrive at the position that L’Art du Fromage is a brilliant little place. Honest, wholehearted, fascinating, original and charming”. Despite needing nine hours sleep to recover from his visit to the Chelsea cheese restaurant, the critic is impressed by the French cuisine on offer, with “light, crispy, savoury, sublime” tarte flambée Strasbourgeoise proving a particular highlight.
The Harwood Arms
AA Gill, The Sunday Times (Rating: Food 4/5 stars, Atmosphere 2/5 stars)
More social critique from Mr. Gill in his visit to the Fulham gastropub, “a room where the motes of failure and despair and bad boarding-school experiences dance in the wasted sunlight. There were a couple of locals chewing the bar — leery, sneery, sloaney loafers, inevitably wearing clothes 10 years too young and three sizes too tight.” On a “surprising” menu, cuisine “is inescapably hooray; almost everything here died in terror, and for fun. That is the essential trick of English rah-rah food”. He seems to enjoy it, though: “this stuff is made with an easy, relaxed, even jaunty accomplishment. It’s better than you’d reasonably expect in a gastropub”. Service is “as you’d imagine, delivered by a nice boy with lovely manners and an easy charm, who probably has a girlfriend and a labrador, both called Suki, as well as a disappointed mother”. Despite the locals, however, he concedes that this is “[v]ery good”, and “worth the toff-slumming”.
Blythswood Square, Glasgow
A mixed review of this Glaswegian newcomer. The dining room is “grand” and “effortful”, and service is “charming and efficient”, but cuisine fails to hit the mark. Main courses “collapse in on themselves”; a pastilla of duck leg ressembles a “a log which could have your eye out”, and black truffle gnocci which “had all the texture of those swabs used by dentists” is deemed a “travesty”. “The shame is that, like the faintest of pulses on a dying patient, there are signs of competence here...[t]hey can actually cook. Right now they are trying to cook the wrong things.”
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