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Restaurants du jour
The latest venture from the media-friendly Soho House group; includes a members’ club, natch, but also a large dining room open to all. Reviews – both other people’s and our own – have consistently lauded a formula that manages to be unchallenging and stylish, all at the same time.
Near Liverpool Street, a restaurant impressively housed in a former Victorian school hall that’s already a big hit with the City crowd. Most reviews have been quite a hymn of praise too. (The Standard and ourselves, however, were a bit disappointed that the culinary formula was so much more conventional than the space.)
Bit of a problem, this one. This new dining room in St James’s is the new home of William Drabble (the chef who succeeded Gordon Ramsay at Aubergine). Two well-respected reviewers (at the Times, and Metro) have sung the place’s virtues as one of London’s (surprisingly few) ‘serious’ dining rooms, but we were pretty unimpressed on our own lunchtime visit. The Observer thought the food was great, but didn’t like the room.
An Italian restaurant-with-a-heart, on the site of Passione (RIP) in Fitzrovia, that’s had numerous very positive reviews (including the Evening Standard, Independent and Time Out). We’ve been twice, and still can’t persuade ourselves that the food is especially remarkable – service, however, is undoubtedly very charming.
The Soho venture from media/art world darling Mark Hix (ex-Caprice group) continues to be a ‘scene’, even if the slightly self-conscious and noisy in-crowd ambience is not to all tastes. Cognoscenti head for the characterful basement bar (which seems destined be turned into a private club).
Not far away from Hix, and run by another Caprice alumnus (Russell Norman), a cosy and useful Venice-meets-Greenwich Village outfit, where the small-plate Italian dishes – if not quite amazing – come at very reasonable prices.
Also of note
Just off Kensington High Street, a grand new bistro where Philip Howard (star chef of the Square W1) masterminds the food – undoubted value, but there are some reservations about the atmosphere.
Mega-popular Gallic bistro near Charing Cross, in the news for recently opening a more spacious basement dining room.
Housed in the Tea Building, adjacent to Shoreditch House, and under the same (Soho House) ownership, a trendy star of the East… in spite, it seems, of the food. (But then that’s a trick that Nick Jones understands pretty well by now.)
Budget tip of the moment
Looking for a tasty lunch in Soho for a fiver? Try Mooli’s at 50 Frith Street W1.
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