Gallery Mess, Saatchi Gallery
Jasper Gerard, The Sunday Telegraph (Rating: 2/5)
The critic wonders why, in a gallery known for its ability to shock, the food served is “bland, bland bland”. This Kings Road café has prices that “scream ‘restaurant’”, but “boring food and bored waiters” which do not justify them. He finds the place has “clinical” feel, is frustrated by the “monotonous” food, and “exasperated” by the slow service. “[G]o elsewhere”, he tells us, “try a new diet, starve a bit, but don't eat here.”
Veeraswamy
Zoe Williams, The Telegraph (Rating: 5/10)
An up-and-down meal is reported at this long-established “gourmet Indian” in Mayfair. Some dishes please with “fresh, lively and evocative” flavours, but others are not tasty enough to warrant the price tag. Ultimately, the critic seems to be paying for the prime location (on Regent Street) and her verdict is that “this establishment is nothing like as superior as it thinks it is”.
Chez Marcelle
Giles Coren, The Times (Rating: 7/10)
Trying to find a Lebanese restaurant to rival his favourite, Al Waha, the critic is directed to this café in Olympia. He finds a hectic place, with “erratic” service, and his meal “takes for ever”. It is worth it though; the food is “[j]ust brilliant”, and “prepared to order with great expertise, experience and love” by Marcelle herself. (It’s never entirely clear why critics find it so difficult to locate new places. If Giles consulted his copy of the new Harden’s for example, he’d find Chez Marcelle duly listed at the top of the recommendations for Lebanese cuisine.)
Kensington Wine Rooms
John Walsh, The Independent (Rating: Food 3/5 stars, Ambience 4/5 stars, Service 4/5 stars)
The “instantly welcoming” dining room of this recently-opened Notting Hill establishment, wins over a rather drunk critic. The “determinedly international” menu is “full of butch flavours” that are not always well-executed, but fortunately “each dish comes with a suggestion for an appropriate wine”. He indulges in “reckless experimentation in the wine menu”, making it an expensive meal, but advises that – for those able to restrain themselves to a single bottle – the lunch menu is “tremendous value”.
Vanilla Black
Lisa Markwell, The Independent on Sunday (Rating: 16/20)
This City fine-dining vegetarian “doesn’t make life easy for itself”, says the critic, with its “bland name, an odd location and an uncompromising menu”. Her starter is a “symphony of flavours” and the pudding is “totally scrumptous” but her main – “the real test for a committed carnivore” – “feels like a cast of supporting actors without the lead.” She would, however, recommend this place as “it has a gravitas and elegance missing from the rest of the ‘brown rice brigade’”.
Rhodes South, Christchurch Harbour Hotel, Christchurch
There is something “incongruous” about Rhodes’s restaurant for the critic, and not just the fact that it’s a “shimmering postmodern shed” in the middle of Christchurch’s “bungalowed suburbs”. It’s “all very professional” and he “can admire the technique” demonstrated in the (mainly seafood) dishes but it all seems to lack soul. Although the critic is not so naive as to expect Rhodes himself to be there, for £120 for two, he “did want to feel his presence”, but didn’t, “and that was the problem”.
Karachi, Bradford
This “most venerable of Bradford's myriad subcontinental joints” made an “upmarket lurch” following a visit from Rick Stein seven years ago, we are told. The result? The introduction of menus and a picture of the great man himself on the wall. Apart from that, this inelegant restaurant is much unchanged and is “still churning out good and at times great food at incredibly low prices”. On the critic’s visit, it is basically “self-service”, and “such fripperies as napkins, cutlery and plates” are missing, but he finds food “so blisteringly good that basic good manners demanded it be shovelled in with bare hands.”
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