Kitchen W8
Giles Coren, The Times (Rating: 9.33)
“From now on, I shall always order the vegetarian option, wherever I go, starter and main”, says the critic. Gosh, it will be interesting to see how long that lasts. (“Probably not for ever, but for a while”) And that’s not all: “from now on I’m going to be scoring restaurants on the quality and variety of their non-meat cooking.” “I want balance”, says the critic, and “I want to see meat used for flavour and variation, or as a focus, but I want most of the plate to be other things”. Well, if nothing else, this looks set to be an interesting corrective to the carnivocentricity to which we have all generally become accustomed.
Fortunately, it’s not just for its veggie quality that the Kensington restaurant recently relaunched with the help of the chef at Mayfair’s Square stands out. “[T]his always pretty good place has leapt, at one bound, into the premier league” – “a stunning way to sign off on my first decade as a restaurant critic”.
AA Gill, The Sunday Times (Rating: 4/5 stars)
Like his Murcoch stablemate who got there the day before, the Sunday Times’s man concludes that this Kensington newcomer offers food “far better than anything else you can eat in Kensington”. He does caution, however, that “[p]lates can become overwhelmed by good ideas and taste association”, and the room has been decorated “with energy rather than élan”.
Mennula
John Walsh, The Independent (Rating: Food 3/5 stars, Ambience 2/5 stars, Service 3/5 stars)
This Fitzrovia Sicilian is “the kind of the place where you feel the chef is personally devoted to surprising and pleasing each of his customers”, says the critic. “Much care and intelligence has gone into planning a menu that combines granny's-recipe Italian dishes with clever new flavours. Not everything comes off as planned – but it won't just be the London-Sicilian foodie chapter that beats a path to Signor Busciglio's small but succulent eating-house in 2010”.
Polpo
Correctly cutting through the flannel about this being a Venetian-style restaurant, the critic correctly notes that it is “exactly the sort of place you'd find in New York's Soho [sic], even down to the staff who are skinny and bed-haired, and look like they kick back after service by doing the sort of things they would never dream of telling their mothers about.” In short, it is a “highly studied, minutely finessed urban restaurant”. Fortunately, though, it is “one which shrugs off the burden of the poseur – being branded all style and no substance – by dint of the food”.
Brompton Bar & Grill
Toby Young, The Independent on Sunday (Rating: 13/20)
Well, whoever knew that Quentin Crewe’s first ‘Queen’ review, some four decades ago – often hailed as the birth of modern restaurant criticism – noted that the prices at Wilton’s, in St James’s were “so exorbitant they resembled death duties”. Isn’t it great they’ve been able to keep up the same trick for 40 years!
The peg for this fascinating factoid is the critic’s visit to new restaurant on the site of Knightsbridge’s former (and eponymous) Brasserie St Quentin closed in 2008, which is owned by the son of St Quentin's noble proprietor. The décor and menu may have changed somewhat, but the critic still discerns “a raffish, aristocratic air”, and an atmosphere which is “modern without being trendy”. (“Judging from the average age of customers, many are the same people who came to the opening night of Brasserie St Quentin 30 years ago.”) The food, though, pleases only intermittently.
My Old Place
“An aesthetic triumph it is not”, but in every other way the critic is very pleased indeed by this Sichuanese restaurant, near Liverpool Street station.
Pizza East
Zoe Williams, The Telegraph (Rating: 7/10)
The critic visits Richard Caring’s Shoreditch pizzeria, and concludes that she “genuinely think[s] it reinvigorates the genre”.
The Kitchin, Edinburgh
Jasper Gerard, The Telegraph (Rating: 4/5)
“Quaintly, for [Tom] Kitchin it is still all about the food”, says the critic of a chef who still sees his job as cooking, rather than marketing. He visits Kitchin’s restaurant “in Leith's dockyards, [where] container ships have been replaced by cavernous restaurant space, most of it empty and going nowhere”… But entering The Kitchin you exclaim: ‘Oh, so this is where the life has been hiding.’” This is, he concludes, a “great” restaurant, not least because it offers “what must be Britain's best set lunch for under £25”.
Follow hardensbites Follow hardensparty
Become a Harden's fan
