INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY | TERRY DURACK
The Narrow
Rating: 12/20
Glenfiddich’s newly-crowned critic of the year is one of the few not to have got carried away by Gordon Ramsay’s new gastropub. “The Narrow hasn't got it right yet”, he concludes. “In spite of the low prices, I can't call it good value until the quality improves.”
• Read Hardens review for City AM.
GUARDIAN | MATTHEW NORMAN
Post
Rating: 5/10
A dose of “credit card cobblers” – number required to book a table – starts off this review of TV-chef Terry Tobin’s deli/brasserie/fine dining newcomer on a rather sour note. All the odder, then the mistake that ran through all the dishes was that they were “so over-sweetened was every dish that we began to wonder if Tobin had been misinformed that we were Type 1 diabetics on the verge of hypoglycaemic shock”. All-in-all, rather weird, just like “the presence of such a swanky, ambitious project nestling among the usual high street chains in commuter-belt Surrey”.
Telephone 01737 373839
Address 28 High Street, Banstead, Surrey
TELEGRAPH | MARK PALMER
Rhubarb
Rating: 2/10
The critic really doesn’t enjoy his trip to this would-be trendy country house hotel restaurant, just outside Edinburgh, which “tries so hard to be really, really absurd that it ends up looking plain daft”. The review is essentially a witty litany of disasters.
OBSERVER | JAY RAYNER
Great Queen Street
The critic finds this Covent Garden offshoot of the Hope & Anchor “swilling in self-confidence”, thanks no doubt to its “impeccable pedigree” (which also consumes much of the Metro review, below). Puddings, in particular, were “beyond reproach”, but “other things were less good”.
THE TIMES | GILES COREN
Great Queen Street
Rating: Meat/fish 10/10; Cooking 9/10; Green fingers 9/10; Overall 9.33/10
The critic starts by not reviewing Banners N8, Franklins SE22 and Cheyne Walk Brasserie SW3, which leaves just a few column inches to review the “bookable version” of the Anchor and Hope SE1 which this is. Fortunately, not many words are needed, as the critic seems to have enjoyed everything he ate.
SUNDAY TIMES | AA GILL
Semplice
Rating: 4/5 stars
The critic comes down on the side of the fans of this new Mayfair Italian: a place which is emerging as one of the love-it-or-hate-it openings of recent times. This is an “elegant little room”, he concludes, where the menu is “not cheap, but not expensive for this quality of food” (“and the set lunch, at £15 for two or £18 for three courses, is probably the best value in the West End”).
• Read Hardens review for City AM.
SUNDAY TIMES | MICHAEL WINNER
Foliage
Rating: Not rated
The critic has a “really terrible, terrible meal” and a restaurant which was a “catastrophic waste” of a lunchtime. On the upside, though, service was “exemplary”.
TIME OUT | GUY DIMOND
Cookbook Café
Rating: 3/6 stars
An “all-day brasserie with self-service buffet, set in a smart Mayfair business hotel”. As buffets go, “it’s very good indeed”, opines Mr Dimond, but: “Around us, grey-suited businessmen were feeding silently, like antelope and wildebeest around a watering hole. If this was central Soho, there would be queues out the door for a £25 buffet like this. But on Park Lane, the result is a soulless atmosphere that not even a good-looking taupe and parchment interior, appealing food or charming service could dispell”.
Brumus
Rating: 4/6 stars
Mr Dimond is rather more ‘up’ on this new West End hotel dining room than most critics have been, even though he notes that the catering arrangements at owners Firmdales’s other hotels tend to be “totally overpriced”: “Brumus is also expensive, but at least the food's better”. Or perhaps he was just carried away by the excitement of nearly bumping into Posh ’n’ Becs.
IN THE PREVIOUS WEEKS PAPERS
EVENING STANDARD | FAY MASCHLER
Fig
Rating: 2/5 stars
The menu may be “novel and also notably reasonably priced”, but “variable” execution dogs Mrs M’s meal at this quirky Islington spot (which has been a year or so in its current ownership). A lamb chump, for example was “so undercooked” that it “looked altogether too close to once having been mobile”.
Waterside Inn
Rating: Not rated
Mrs M dines – as a guest of her long-time friend Michel Roux – at the famous out-of-town restaurant (with rooms), which “for more than 20 years has sported three Michelin stars”. Fortunately, the dishes were “light, subtle, intuitive, the right size and weight within the context of a three-star meal and all its attendant treats”, as well as being “utterly delicious. As the critic sagely notes, however: “this is all easy to say without a bill to pay”.
METRO | MARINA O'LOUGHLIN
Great Queen Street
Rating: 3/5 stars
The critic begins by noting the antecedents of this Covent Garden gastropub, which include the Eagle (“inevitably-described-as-seminal”), as well as the new establishment’s immediate parent : the “unbookable and mobbed” Anchor & Hope. She goes on to imagine that “if you were invited to dinner at Hugh Fearnley- Whittingstall's”, it might be like eating here. Even with the occcasional duff dish, this place is – by Covent Garden standards – “a delicious surprise”.
HARDENS OWN REVIEWS, AS PUBLISHED IN CITY AM
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