Seven Park Place
This review of a fine dining room in St James’s begins with a bit of a plug for – surprise, surprise – “Mark Hix's new place on Brewer Street in Soho”, in the basement of which “your perfect White Lady might come a bowl of Hix’s equally perfect still-warm pork scratchings”. Gosh, isn’t Hixxie’s place media central? (And, no that’s not his fault, and we’re not suggesting it is.)
Anyway, our hero was – instead – “destined to eat dinner in a room dressed like the inside of a 14-year-old girl's jewellery box; a deathly padded cell populated by Russian businessmen and their small children, and friendly but fearful waitresses who scrape crumbs off the table when there aren't any and take away your bread plate the moment you decline another roll, not because it makes sense to do these things but because that's what happens in restaurants that look like the inside of some 14-year-old girl's jewellery box.
The real tragedy of all this is that the food is good” (“[r]eally good”), but that does nothing to prevent the experience from being “essentially joyless”.
Galvin La Chapelle
Tracey MacLeod, The Independent (Rating: Food 4/5 stars, Ambience 5/5 stars, Service 4/5 stars)
“Chris and Jeff Galvin are shaping up to be Britain's most successful restaurant-owning brothers since Albert and Michel Roux”, says the critic. Their Shoreditch newcomer is “one of the few truly fabulous-looking restaurants in London”, and it “crackles with excitement and discreet glamour”. Indeed, her designer friend immediately identified the look of the place as “very Keith McNally” (“referring to the king of downtown New York dining”). (As fans of Mr McN, we’d have to say we don’t agree; some might say that the problem here is that the feel isn’t ‘downtown’ at all.) This, she concludes, “is a … place to celebrate a special occasion, and a place that would make any occasion special.”
Polpo
Zoe Williams, The Telegraph (Rating: 8.5/10)
The critic visits this “kicking” Soho Venetian tapas bar, and find almost everything about it pleases her.
Aqua Nueva
AA Gill, The Sunday Times (Rating: 1/5 stars)
“This week, a straight, professional restaurant review” – there’s a sentiment you don’t expect to find only half-way through one of this critic’s pieces. Reassuringly, however, he then spends much of the remainder obsessing about the “thousands of turned wooden things” that decorate the place, and concludes that “[t]his is the first restaurant for ages that has been seriously poisoned by its decoration.”
The Modern, Manchester
Oh dear, the critic goes all the way to Manchester – why?, one wonders, this restaurant has been there for years – to find a top-floor establishment that’s “sublimely charmless”. And then it gets worse… The service is “amateur hour”, his glass of wine was “the worst… I’ve ever lacked the strength to send back”, and the main course “a calumny”. (We then read of a motorway horror on the way back to London – why, pray, is a solo traveller from the supposedly green Guardian not letting the train take the strain?)
Llys Meddyg, Newport
Lisa Markwell, The Independent on Sunday (Rating: 15/20)
The critic seeks out an “elegant Georgian house” that nowadays trades as a restaurant-with-rooms, and it “charms” her immediately, and it turns out to be an all-round crowd-pleaser. “The combination of warm welcome, attractive room and excellent food makes me wish we had booked in for a night or two” – the bedrooms “look fab” too.
The Beckford Arms, Fonthill Gifford, Wiltshire
Giles Coren, The Times (Rating: 7.67)
The critic gets his fiancée effectively to write his review of this rural inn, which he seems to have found rather satisfactory.
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