Divo

Matthew Norman, The Guardian
Rating: 7.25/10
Orignally he was put off by “monstrous” opening reviews, but the critic finds himself eating at this Eastern European restaurant in the West End, and discovers that it has been transformed: “gone are the folksy costumes worn by staff, gone the tourist films playing on gilt-framed plasma screens, and gone the other grimly laughable, thematic touches. Even the chicken Kiev that drew such brutal derision has vanished from the menu”. “In fact, at first glance it seemed they had almost entirely abandoned the regional cuisine in favour of one of those studiedly inoffensive, pan-continental menus (hither a dash of feta, thither a boudin blanc) that tend to presage disaster.” What follows, however, he finds oddly pleasing.


Maze Grill

Giles Coren, The Times
Rating: 7.67/10
“[S]teak-twats”, apparently, are “even worse than burger-twats” – “[t]hey’re always just back from New York or Argentina or Pope’s Eye in Hammersmith and are just desperate to describe the nuttiness, the juice and twang of grass-fed Charolais, the cordite whiff of griddle lines and the rich egginess of the fat”. “They have this dream of anthracitic external blackness and minerality, of coarse saltiness, of a deep, juicy redness revealed when the cut halves of the meat are peeled open and pushed apart; an internal, blushing ripeness, ethereally tender to the touch, yielding a little moisture under pressure, smooth on the tongue, pale in flavour but strong in scent, seeming almost to swell as it enters the mouth…”

If you have the misfortune to be a steak-twat, the latest concept from “GordonRamsayGlaxo WellcomeSmithKleinwortBenson&Hedges UK (International) Holdings Corporation Deutsche Group Plc” turns out to be a pretty good place to go.


Apsleys at The Lanesborough

AA Gill, The Sunday Times
Rating: 2/5 stars
For reasons unexplained, the critic devotes most of his review to Washington DC. He finally gets around to visiting the new restaurant at the grand hotel at Hyde Park Corner, which he finds “remodelled from a mad Victorian conservatory into a grey, depressed space of timid modernity and muddy light”.

Almost all reviews to date have found the food here to be in peasant style, but Gill pronounces it “Italian, of the sort that’s rarely seen in Italy: chic, decorative, refined and dextrous”. Sadly, however, “everything tasted as if it had wasted too long doing its make-up: overcooked, overwrought and overseasoned”. Apsleys, it turns out, is exactly what the critic would expect from “an opulent grand hotel in central London catering to rich tourists”.


Royal China Club

Tracey MacLeod, The Independent
Rating: 3/5 stars (for each of Food, Ambience and Service)
“[M]ore expensive, yes, but much less stressful”, the critic visits one of the “more luxurious” sister restaurants to the celebrated Royal China group. The meal, however, “just didn't quite come together”, and the “overall impression was of competence, rather than brilliance” (“with none of the vivid flavours delivered by Hakkasan, probably the RCC's nearest equivalent”).


Bord’eaux

Jay Rayner, The Observer
“[A] great lunch, just in the wrong room and at the wrong price” – all you really need to know about the critic’s view of the new Gallic brasserie at the Grosvenor House hotel.

The Foragers, Hove

Terry Durack, Independent on Sunday
Rating: 14/20
“Hove and Brighton locals have been getting quite fluent in forage-ese, since former Due South sous chef Bek Misich and ex-Groucho Club manager Paul Hutchison took over a sticky-carpeted local pub called The Stirling Arms and turned it into The Foragers”, says the critic.

“The lovely thing about this place is that it hasn't been transformed into a paint-by-numbers gastropub… There's a big beer garden, a DJ on weekends and a comedy night on Tuesdays, but Misich and Hutchison are hoping that it's the food that will draw the crowds”. There are no pretensions – “[n]apkins are paper, tables are bare, no bread is brought, wine isn't poured, and food presentation is generally plonk-it-on-a-plate… but it's a pub with the sort of fresh, generous, home-cooked food best described as tasty, made from intelligently sourced local produce, served by nice-as-pie staff, ending in a bill that slips easily under my self-imposed budget for the next three months of £80 for two”.


Railway Hotel, Faversham

Jasper Gerard, Sunday Telegraph
Rating: 7/10
Foraging is clearly ‘in’, for the Sunday Telegraph’s man also visits an establishment where foraging for local fare is a key part of the proposition. The place may not look much but it's “packed”. The reason is some “excellent” dishes, produced by two London chefs: “Anthony North, late of the Connaught, and Johnny Butterworth of the Bluebird”. This, however, is not an “oh-so-cleverly urban” package. The critic approves of the way “they haven't merely transported some London blueprint down the A2 [and they are] manifestly still learning and loving it”. The wine list, though, is “as disrespectful to the chefs as it is to the customers”.

“The Dining Room doesn't deserve a Michelin star. Not yet, anyway. But how encouraging to find, in a dank station hotel, chefs with such roaring ambition.”


Bath Priory Hotel, Bath

Zoe Williams, Daily Telegraph
Rating: 7/10
The critic finds the full country house effect at this famous hotel “slightly comical” – “you can't do English Country House properly unless you take yourself pretty seriously. “Within those parameters of weirdness, this is about the best executed Total Englishness I've encountered, and I say that despite the fact that the chef seems to have some kind of eating disorder”. Said disorder, it seems, is evidenced by the fact that he has “‘reduced harmful fats, dairy products, gluten and sugars to negligible levels’”.