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Review of the reviews – London

Gordon Ramsay au Trianon, Versailles

Fay Maschler, Evening Standard

Rating: 3/5 stars

Oh heck! Trouble at t’top of London restaurant scene. In Time Out, Gordon Ramsay dismisses Fay Maschler’s reviews (and those of AA Gill) as “all personal’, and – on the same day – she gets her retaliation in first with this review of his new gaff outside Paris. In a mixed account, she dismisses his pressed Vendée chicken as looking like a “tumour” and at least one of the menu conceits as “distinctly vieux chapeau”. Where will it all end?

The Orangery

David Sexton, Evening Standard

Rating: 2/5 stars

A rather odd review of a tourist attraction where mass-caterer Digby Trout presides. Having trashed the food, the critic concludes that he likes being in this room “so much that there are always days when I’d rather have lunch here than almost anywhere else in town”.

Launceston Place

Marina O’Loughlin, Metro

Rating: 4/5 stars

“From the moment I phone to book, I'm love-bombed … The food is a terrific collision of finesse and fun and the environment is luxurious and cosseting. Really, what more could you want?” – the top and tail of this review of the recent D&D relaunch of the Kensington institution tell you everything you need to know about it.

Osteria Stecca

Guy Dimond, Time Out

4/6 stars

TO’s senior critic has a good time at this “lively” new St John’s Wood spot, where the dishes taste “properly Italian” (if not beyond improvement), and where the service is “hospitable if somewhat disorganised”.

Hix Oyster & Chop House (First major review)

Jan Moir, Are You Ready To Order?

The noveltly-fixated Ms Moir must have been battering down the door of ex-Caprice supremo Mark Hix’s very personal new outfit, on the former Smithfield site of Rudland & Stubbs – as she notes, it is “so new that this lunchtime, the proper light shades have yet to be fitted, the downstairs area smells of fresh paint and dry goods are still being delivered through the front door”. Novelty, however, provides no obstacle to forthright conclusions. This is “a proper chophouse”, she says, and her review is larded with terms such as “faultless” and “brilliant”.

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