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Review of the Reviews - London

Keelung

David Sexton, Evening Standard (Rating: 3/5 stars)

“[G]utsy street food in soigné surroundings” wins quite a hymn of praise for this “sophisticated” – even “faintly showbiz” – Chinatown Taiwanese, where the service is “friendly and attentive”, and the food “delicious” and “extraordinary value”. This is a restaurant which “goes high on to the list of places I’d recommend to a friend”.

Rasa Sayang

Andy Lynes, Metro (Rating: 2/5 stars)

Metro’s regular stand-in critic is baffled by his meal at the “recently opened hole-in-the-wall Malaysian/ Singaporean restaurant in the heart of Chinatown”. The food he samples is “wildly inconsistent” – a Malaysian curry puff (which should be “a delicious cross between a samosa and a Cornish pasty”) is “an inedible mess”, yet some roti canai is “a warm, buttery and flaky delight.” The service is only “perfunctory” but, on his visit, the restaurant “was packed with mostly Asian customers.” He discovers that the appeal is that “they're serving dishes eaten on a daily basis in Penang and Kuala Lumpur but rarely offered in London”, and suggests the inconsistency is a result of a kitchen that “simply isn't capable of executing all the items on a long-ish menu to the same standard”.

More

Guy Dimond, Time Out (Rating: 4/5 stars)

In the light of the track record of at least one of the owners of this new South Bank joint – who, in turn, created and sold The Real Greek and Livebait – the critic suggests you “visit More before there’s a corporate, soulless branch rolled out on a high street near you.” This “open-all-day café-bar-restaurant” is “a little place, quite loud with shouty City types”, serving up “well-judged” and “visually arresting dishes.” He likes the “jolly staff and a feelgood buzz” but doesn’t “want too many More – it’s perfect as it is, and we’ll rue the day it’s ‘rolled out as a concept’.”

Cadogan Arms

Feargus O’Sullivan, The London Paper

The critic finds this King’s Road pub, recently “tarted up” by the Martin brothers, to be “pretty generic”. “[E]verything on the menu has been road-tested by poshed-up pubs all over town” and the “lack of invention is dull”. The cooking is “decent”, but the only thing that seems really to stand out in this review is the “animal lover’s nightmare” décor, “complete with stuffed buffalo, fox and rabbit heads and a bevy of deer skulls”.

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