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Review of the Reviews - London

Lutyens

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

“What Lutyens lacks... is the surprise factor”, opines the critic of Sir Terence Conran’s latest venture, in Fleet Street. “[I]t’s a formula restaurant” – but a formula which seems to appeal. The building, designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens, is a “classically proportioned beauty that works well with the Conran look”. His meal is a “homage to repasts past”, of “classical French dishes, with a few nods to [head chef David] Burke’s Irish heritage”, that are “beautifully made”.

Criterion

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

In spite of the touches of “dodgy oligarch taste” that have been introduced to the interior of this Piccadilly Circus “icon” by the new Georgian owners, the critic still finds it “Drop. Dead. Gorgeous.” The “camp” service is so “super-shmoozing” that the food “fade[s] a little into the background”. It is mostly good, though, and “infinitely better than the food we endured during Marco Pierre White's reign”, so all in all, “it's now somewhere [she] would comfortably recommend to anyone looking for a showstopping room and a reasonable dinner.”

Keelung

Charmaine Mok, Time Out (Rating: 2/5 stars)

The critic admires the “dark, dim and sexy” interior of this Chinatown Taiwanese, and it’s “impressive display of wines and fresh seafood.” The standards of her food, however, suggest that the owners “are banking on the relative novelty of Taiwanese food to lure in the punters.”

The Restaurant at St Paul’s

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

Despite his misgivings about eating in a historical building (“the ropiness of the food” often being at odds with the “splendour of the surroundings”), David Sexton has a “thoroughly enjoyable” experience at the new restaurant within the crypt of this famous cathedral, one corner of which has been “pleasingly converted” into a small dining room for the first stand-alone venture of caterering firm Harbour and Jones. An “absurdly British” and rather “mannered” menu produces some “quite gutsy stuff”, which he finds “very simply enjoyable”. The “British thing” extends to the wine list (a mistake), but not to the staff, who are “not British at all”, and so quite “charming”!

1001 Nights

Feargus O’Sullivan, The London Paper (Rating: 3/5)

The critic visits the “cheaper, more informal, sister restaurant” to the Piccadilly Lebanese restaurant Fakhreldine (above) and likes the “Dubai-style bling” of its interior. “The food see-saws between reasonably good and great” and, though he concedes that there are cheaper Lebanese options around, he considers the “care and freshness” make it “worth a look-in”.

Monkey Bar, New York

Frank Bruni, NY Times (Rating: 1/4 stars)

A “fabled 1930s hot spot”, in Midtown, recently relaunched by Vanity Fair’s Graydon Carter, with the help of our own Messrs Corbin and King (of Wolseley fame). It’s more a “clubhouse” than a restaurant, aimed at “a certain fame-focused, power-obsessed sect of Manhattan society” – a place for “back stratching and social climbing”. In its Big Apple sort of way, the Monkey Bar turns out to be rather like the Wolseley: it is one of the city’s “best-looking restaurants”, and the food, though “intentionally unimaginative”, is mostly well-executed.

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