J Sheekey Oyster Bar
What is it about this new adjunct to London’s favourite fish restaurant that has critics running for their international comparisons? Time Out’s lady recently told us that it is “Like Paris’s Le Grand Colbert or Café Florian in Venice”, and now Mr Gill assures us it’s “part midtown Manhattan and part Left Bank Paris”. Wherever it geographically belongs, he likes it very much, and manages to imply – “[m]ost dishes were under a tenner; there’s an £8.75 lunch special, and I can’t fault it” – that it is a bit of a bargain too. [Our own review, for what it’s worth, noted how disappointingly expensive it was to eat here.]
Chez Bruce
Zoe Williams, The Telegraph (Rating: 9/10)
Regular readers will know that this south London legend is perennially Londoners’ favourite restaurant, according to the Harden’s survey, so it’s pleasing to note that the critic does indeed find it “remarkable”. “It was a beacon back in the days when to be a decent restaurant, selling good food, was something quite exotic. It’s still a beacon now.”
L'Absinthe
Matthew Norman, The Guardian (Rating: 9/10)
“At first glance, there is something a touch pantomimic about this cosy, flickering candlelit fin de siècle [Primrose Hill] bistro”, says the critic, “[b]ut soon it became obvious that the owner, erstwhile Marco Pierre White stalwart Jean-Christophe Slovak, is a total charmer with a neat sense of self-parody”. And, on the ultimate authority – that of the critic’s wife – its standards turn out to be “flawless”.
The Black Boy, Headington, Oxford
The critic visits an inn which turns out to have a selling point which is “not at all common” - “[i]t serves nice food which is cheap”. “Nothing on this menu will shock or surprise. The dessert list includes both bread-and-butter and sticky toffee puddings, but, like almost everything else, they deliver. It's good food at a good price”. “Gosh”, says the critic, “it just might catch on”.
Follow hardensbites Follow hardensparty
Become a Harden's fan
