Terroirs
AA Gill, The Sunday Times (Rating: 3/5 stars)
“[E]very year I travel to the south of France, principally for a peach”, the critic tells us. “There are worse lexicons to measure your life by than ripe white peaches.” Hmm. Turning to the restaurant of the week, he visits a new Covent Garden French establishment which has been quite a ‘rave’ for many reviewers. He finds that the food is indeed “really good”. The concept, though, he finds “confusing”, and “Spanish”. Really?
Marcus Wareing at The Berkeley
Tracey MacLeod, The Independent (Rating: 4/5 stars)
This is a review of that “special once-a-year occasion when I get to blow the Independent’s budget on a spectacular dinner with the winning bidders in our annual charity auction, raising money for aid projects around the world”. The subject is the restaurant of “one of the brightest stars on the London restaurant scene, his reputation only burnished further since his acrimonious rupture with former mentor Gordon Ramsay”. Overall, it “was a great evening… even though the food didn't quite earn the hoped-for five-star rating”.
Il Baretto
Giles Coren, The Times (Rating: 5.5/10)
The critic has a very up-and-down experience at this new Marylebone Italian. Or rather, he goes twice – always a mistake! – and finds the two experiences difficult to reconcile.
Comptoir Libanais
Zoe Williams, Daily Telegraph (Rating: 4/10)
“I’ve seen Comptoir Libanais described variously as the Middle Eastern answer to Carluccio’s, and as a smart, affordable, fast introduction to Middle Eastern food”, says the critic. “I suppose what I disagree with most, besides myriad quibbles with individual damp pouches of pastry, is the premise: this kind of exotic but cheap meze arrangement has been readily available, only tastier and more authentic, for years. All Comptoir brings to the table is the fact that it’s a chain… And, although more modish, it doesn’t look a lot more expensive than a McDonald’s, either (although it is)”.
New Yard Restaurant, Cornwall
Jasper Gerard, Sunday Telegraph (Rating: 4/5 stars)
The critic visits a “buzzy and breezy” restaurant in a 1000-acre Cornwall estate, where “sensibly, the small kitchen offers just a handful of options, with game and seafood prominent” (with wine supplied by the savvy people behind London's fashionable Terroirs). The cooking, it turns out, is “highly accomplished”.
More
Terry Durack, Independent on Sunday (Rating: 13/20)
Gosh, for once a critic self-summarises in just 140 characters. Here’s the result of his review of this new South Bank establishment: “More is a smart, bright little caff full of chatty people and friendly prices, currently struggling to come to terms with new technology.”
L’Anima
Nicholas Lander, Financial Times
More a business appraisal than a review, really, but the critic gives an interesting background to this City newcomer, which won the Rémy Martin Excellence Award last year – the best new restaurant award which Harden’s runs for the famous brand of cognac.
The Wine Theatre
Matthew Norman, The Guardian (Rating: 2.5/10)
“[T]he main courses soared above the gruesome hilarity of the starters to reach the vertiginous heights of the merely abysmal”. Not much quarter is given in this review of this inexpensive South Bank newcomer. It is in our view arguable whether such a slagging-off of an independent venture is really a suitable subject for a major national newspaper review – it is often said that the convention in such circumstances is for a critic to pass over such a visit in discreet silence.
Crabshakk, Glasgow
There may be “minor stumbles”, but this turns out to be a “seafood restaurant which knows exactly what it wants to be and [generally] does it very well”.
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