INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY | Thomas Sutcliffe
The White Bull, Ribchester, Lancashire
Rating: 3/5
If there’s one word which sums up the review of this promising-looking inn it is “niggles”: while “the theory is in place”, the “execution still leaves something to be desired” [in which context the awarded rating seems rather high].
The White Bull, Church Street, Ribchester, Lancashire (01254 878303)
GUARDIAN | MATTHEW NORMAN
El Faro
Rating: 8.5/10
The latest of a recent flurry of reviews for this tapas restaurant “at the plug-ugly end of the Isle of Dogs” [which was first reviewed by Hardens for City AM last June]. Matthew Norman finds “authentic and sparkling” Spanish food which “deserves a far better, more accessible spot”.
• Read Hardens review for City AM.
TELEGRAPH | MARK PALMER
Melton's, York
Rating: 7/10
An account of an enjoyable visit to the celebrated local fixture. It may just look like “a neighbourhood restaurant outside the city's walls”, but thanks, perhaps, to the presence of ex-Gavroche chef it’s hailed here as “an unexpected culinary tour de force well worth a longish journey”.
OBSERVER | JAY RAYNER
Luso, Manchester
From “satisfying” to “downright awful”, the critic has a mixed meal at a Portuguese restaurant whose interior looks like that of a “transplanted Cape Cod beach house”. The cooking “isn't subtle cooking and it certainly isn't pretty”, but, at its best, it is “powerful and gutsy”.
THE TIMES | Ginny Dougary
One Paston Place, Brighton
The stand-in for Giles Coren doesn’t find much to praise at Kemp Town’s grandest restaurant. She also includes a useful round-up of some recent Brighton developments.
SUNDAY TIMES | AA GILL
Inn the Park
Rating: 2/5
Gill ventures to “the park no Londoner ever goes to” (St James’s). His meal was rather up and down, but it was the service that really struck him: “They ran out of cutlery, then patience, then any clue and the will to live, but remained surprisingly charming and, if not helpful, then helplessly optimistic”.
SUNDAY TIMES | MICHAEL WINNER
The Ivy
Winner hails this “serious gem in the West End firmament”, which is “frayed at the edges but with a heart of gold’.
IN THE PREVIOUS WEEKS PAPERS
EVENING STANDARD | FAY MASCHLER
The North Star
Rating: 3/5
After musings on why gastropubs have become a “heavily compromised endeavour”, this handsome boozer is said to generally satisfy.
Graze, Hove
A mixed, but generally good account of a meal at this restaurant which offers a menu of small dishes (many of which were felt to suffer from the inclusion of elements which had not been advertised).
La Famiglia
Rating: 3/5
“I can tell that I haven't been to a place for a long time”, Fay notes sagely, “when what I always thought was a pricey menu seems suddenly rather reasonable”. She has a pretty good time at this place “celebrated for its glitzy Chelsea clientele, its good cop/bad cop service and the big tented garden”.
METRO | Andy Lynes
Haiku
Rating: 3/5
Like everyone else who’s written about it, the critic finds the choice on offer at this moodily dim pan-Asian restaurant bewildering: as he worked through the 207 menu items, he was “beginning to lose the will to live”. He finds “something faintly ridiculous” about the place, and when it “inevitably closes” he doesn’t think its miscellaneous formula will be missed.
HARDENS OWN REVIEWS, AS PUBLISHED IN CITY AM
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