Chicago Rib Shack
AA Gill, The Sunday Times (Rating: 1/5 stars)
Like most reviewers to date, the critic really doesn’t like the relaunch of this Knightsbridge institution, or its “congealing and collapsing incinerated animal bits”. In response to a cheery query from the manager about the forthcoming review, he “smiled the smile of the apocalypse”. (How divine is that?) “No, it won’t be that bad, sonny. It’ll be on a whole new level of bad. This is bad from a bad place where the bad people live. This is a glutinously awful pig-swamp bad, out all on its own in the badlands. This is, to put it simply, just so you don’t forget, terribly bad food. And it’s terribly bad food from the bad past.”
Pantechnicon Rooms
Giles Coren, The Times (Rating: 7/10)
“Fun food. Jolly nosh. Terribly Knightsbridge. We’re all orf down the pub. Ha ha ha.” Our (north London) critic somehow seems to have lost track of the fact that Belgravia is mainly for rich Euros nowadays, not English nobs, but he likes this very smart new gastroboozer anyway. “There’s great choice, great ingredients, very accomplished cooking and a bill that reflects that.”
Elvey Farm, Kent
Jasper Gerard, Sunday Telegraph (Rating: 6/10)
Some elements are “comically bad”, and “if the quality of pub and restaurant grub were not so dire in this pocket of Kent, the joint might struggle”, but the critic finds enough “eccentric inventiveness” to “make it work - just”. “If it improved on delivery, this could become a fun haunt.”
Jamie's Italian, Oxford
Tracey MacLeod, The Independent (Rating: Food 4/5 stars, Service 3/5 stars, Ambience 4/5 stars)
“[T]he stakes are high”, notes the critic . Jamie Oliver is putting his own money to the “first serious commercial test”, with the opening of the prototype of his ‘neighbourhood’ chain, in a former pub on a “busy high street” (not some “trendy, studenty area”).
“The feel is modern and urban, despite the rustic tendencies of the menu, and downstairs, there's a moodier room whose graffitied brick walls positively cry out ‘you are too old to be here’”, and the menu comprises “the kind of user-friendly Italian food popularised by Jamie's books and TV series, made with decent ingredients and served at affordable prices”. Prices are “incredibly competitive”, and the food “largely lived up to the lovely-jubbly [menu] descriptions”.
This is a great little operation, she concludes, “far better than it probably needs to be to roll out as a successful brand”. (On a note of caution, though: “Jamie Oliver's friend and mentor Gennaro Contaldo has been in the kitchen over the opening period, and it's possible standards might slip once he moves on to the next launch. But the young staff generate such enthusiasm and excitement, and there's such a buzz about the place, that it's hard to imagine it going too wrong”.)
Terry Durack, The Independent on Sunday (Rating: 15/20)
“[C]heeky, practical, good-natured, unpretentious and quality-driven” – that, in short, is the critic’s take on Jamie’s newcomer. “Jamie's Italian redesigns and rewrites the chain restaurant in his own image: messy, eager, exuberant, family-oriented… [I]t shows you can mass-produce the flavours of Italy for the happiness of the high street”. Well, let’s hope, but an early-days prototype is rather different from a fully-fledged chain…
Hix Oyster and Chop House
Having mused on the question of whether the presence of a restaurant critic changes a restaurant – especially one where the patron is “mates with chefs and restaurant critics” – the critic decides he likes Mark Hix’s Farringdon newcomer, “because his brand of food is so damn pleasing”. On the basis mainly of hearsay, though, he decides that the service still needs sorting out.
Saf
Zoe Williams, The Telegraph (Rating: 5/10)
The critic does not seem to be spiritually in tune with this vegan Shoreditch newcomer, where everything is oversalted.
Aspinalls Club
“You need to make a reservation in advance and complete and sign a form at reception”, but it turns out that non-members can dine at this Mayfair gaming club, whose chef had two decades’ experience at nearby Harry’s Bar.
It turns out that Alberico Penati is a bit of a hidden star: “When Joël Robuchon, perhaps the world’s most respected chef, held a dinner in Paris for the 12 chefs who had worked with him most closely during his career, he asked Penati to cook the meal, which, surprisingly perhaps for such a renowned French chef, was predominantly Italian in content”.
Dinner “began and ended very impressively”, but the middle was a bit of a rush, leaving both a risotto and some fish a little too al dente for comfort. Highlight of the meal was “an apricot sorbet was the purest I had ever tasted, a thrilling essence of this fruit with just the right amount of acidity for balance”.
By Mayfair standards, the experience wasn’t especially pricey, either: “[o]ur dinner for two with wine but no coffee came to £157 including service (although annoyingly the credit card slip was not closed off), which was not excessive given the elegance of the room or the quality of most of the cooking and the ingredients”.
Morston Hall, Norfolk
We’ll spare you the details: the critic concludes that this seaside spot is “as close to an earthly paradise as a British hotel-restaurant will transport you”.
Follow hardensbites Follow hardensparty
Become a Harden's fan
