The Grill, Brown’s Hotel

Fay Maschler, Evening Standard
Rating: 4/5 stars

The Grill at Brown’s Hotel, in Mayfair, has been re-launched, notes Ms Maschler, under the direction of former Caprice boss Mark Hix. The menu is, appropriately, “very Hixy, meaning British ingredients carefully tracked down and prepared in a manner that suits their soul”. For example, when she saw Brown Windsor soup on offer, she thought “the new 'director of food’ was indulging in a spot of irony”. However, “it was a fabulous soup-plateful of meatiness with a back story of pot vegetables mercifully neither puréed nor rubbed through a sieve but served as an empire-building nubbly broth, rich and glossy as gravy”. And so the review continues as – largely – a hymn of praise.


Arbutus

David Sexton, Evening Standard
Rating: 5/5 stars (but only 4/5 online!)

Two swallows don’t make a summer, but surely the fact that a David Sexton review has followed one by Ms Maschler two weeks running must be telling us something. Has the Standard succession-issue really finally been decided? It’s very difficult to see any other reason for this unprecedented ongoing cohabitation. Anyway, whether or not he is Ms M-in-waiting, Mr Sexton is very much ‘up’ on this now-celebrated Soho bistro (which was awarded our Rémy Martin Excellence Award when it opened a couple of years ago). Lunch here is hailed as an “astonishing deal”.


Launceston Place (first major post-relaunch review)

Jan Moir, areyoureadertoorder.co.uk

The critic is bowled over by the D&D (fka Conran) group’s revamp of this Kensington townhouse restaurant, which a young ex-Petrus chef (Tristan Welch) “has turned… into one of the most exciting new places to eat in London” (as we suggested was likely to be the case in our 6 March news item).


The Mercer

Marina O'Loughlin, Metro
Rating: 3/5 stars

The critic flees a City newcomer called the Shêd, to find a nearby newcomer, The Mercer, which is “buzzing and bustling [and] offers everything The Shêd doesn’t” – “you immediately get a big welcome and a sense that, despite the City’s current financial tremors, all is right in the world”. The critic's review of the Mercer is rarther similar to that of Brown’s Grill by Ms Maschler. Here, the menu is mainly “masculine-Brit”, and the cooking is “mostly pretty much on the money, with the occasional slip”. And again, a soup takes a star role in the review (this time of a “too-salty, slightly thin” pea soup) – is this a trend coming on?


Le Cassoulet

Guy Dimond, Time Out
Rating: 5/6 stars

This Gallic newcomer is “the sort of restaurant that makes you want to move to Croydon (well, almost)”, says TO’s head man – “it knocks most new high-profile, central London restaurants into a cocked hat”. “It's got real joie de vivre, the prices are fair, and - above all else - it's a proper French restaurant with proper cooking”, says the critic.


Khoai Café

Jenni Muir, Time Out
Rating: 4/6 stars

A “spacious” amd “modishly utilitarian” North Finchley Vietnamese, hailed by the critic for its “punchy flavours and light, healthy dishes”.