Tenore
David Sexton, Evening Standard (Rating: 3/5 stars)
This Barnsbury restaurant, run by two Sardinian brothers, has an “immediately friendly and courteous” atmosphere, notes the critic, with a stream of “Italian friends-cum-customers” giving the place an “authentic” feel. There is a “dual menu” that offers “mainstream Italian dishes” as well as “Sardinian specials”. The portions are “almost over-generous” and “[a]bsolutely satisfying” and he seems consistently impressed by the quality of the food and the execution.
Guy Dimond, Time Out (Rating: 3/5 stars)
The critic likes the Sardinian specialities he tries at this former pub in Barnsbury, and is impressed by the “high-quality ingredients” on the stone-baked pizzas. He notes “a good all-Italian wine list”, but it is the “too sweet” service that lets the place down… particularly on his visit, when a “belligerent drunk” is allowed in to wreak havoc.
Green’s Restaurant and Oyster Bar
Marina O'Loughlin, Metro (Rating: 2/5 stars)
The new outpost of the St James’s clubby restaurant, housed in a former Lloyds banking hall, is, for the critic, an “intimidatingly vast” space where “[a]cres of marble echo spookily”. The mezzanine restaurant is “altogether more manageable” than the ground floor bar but “[s]till stuffy”, and the atmosphere is not improved by the punters, who are “few, sober and middle-aged.” The food is “pretty conservative stuff”, and she seems irritated by the “foofy” presentation, as well as the servers’ attempts at upselling.
Time Out (Rating: 2/5 stars)
The “very grand art-deco style” of Simon Parker Bowles’s City venture impresses the critic. (Well, he’s quite entitled to his opinion, but this isn’t in our view really an Art Deco building; it would better be described as ’30s-bombastic with the odd Deco flourish.) The restaurant, itself, however, he finds “a bit fuddy-duddy and lacking any thrills”, and the menu offers “nothing to challenge the palate of a jaded business diner”, and all at prices that “hail from a time when the markets were more bull than bear.”
The Luxe
Guy Dimond, Time Out (Rating: 4/5 stars)
The critic visits the ground floor café and basement bar of John Torode’s new Spitalfield venture (the main restaurant not yet being open). The restaurant will focus on poultry, and the chicken paillard he samples downstairs is a “tasty free-range bird, juicy and simply served”. He is impressed by the other dishes he tries too, and likes the “large and light and airy” space.
Pix Pintxos
Andrew Neather, Standard Lite (Rating: 2/5 stars)
The concept of this Notting Hill pintxos bar, is one that, according to the critic, “deserves to succeed”. It is “[p]rimarily a bar” but “laid out more like a restaurant”, offering an “array of different pintxos”, all priced at £2.50, for grazing. Unfortunately the food he samples “just doesn’t cut it”; it’s “some of the least-Spanish-tasting Spanish-inspired food” he’s had: the kind you’d eat “if a neighbour served them up at a drinks party” but not that he’d be happy paying for.
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