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Review of the Reviews - London

The Salisbury

Fay Maschler, Evening Standard (Rating: 3/5 stars)

The Standard leads its weekly restaurant coverage with a full-page review of a new pub in the backstreets of Fulham. It’s worth finding, she concludes, as it has “a menu (and a drinks list) for our times”.

The Meat & Wine Co

David Sexton, Evening Standard (Rating: 2/5 stars)

“Some of the restaurants in Westfield are now clearly working better than others”, says the critic – who sometimes gives the impression of spending his waking hours watching and besetting the new west London shopping centre. “While the familiar, big chains — Nando’s, Pizza Express — are doing OK”, he reports, “a few of the more innovative ‘culinary counters’ in the ‘Balcony’ appear less busy”.

The Meat & Wine Co turns out to be an “international steakhouse chain founded in 2000 by South African restaurateurs Costas Tomazos and Bradley Michael”. The concept is a “pretty standard issue steak and burger menu, presented with maximum bling”. (Just like the awful Cape Town Fish Market, then?)

Fino

Marina O'Loughlin, Metro (Rating: 4/5 stars)

Having mused on the current travails of celebrity chefs, the critic decides she likes the hands-on involvement of the Hart brothers in this Fitzrovia tapas restaurant, recently relaunched. Their involvement leads you to feel “like a treasured customer, not a groupie”.

Nude Espresso

Guy Dimond, Time Out (Rating: 4/6 stars)

Sounds as if Whitechapel has a contender to oust Flat White in the Antipodean coffee house stakes. Time Out‘s head man tells us that “Nude Espresso – bad name, good coffee – has a Kiwi owner and is staffed by a bunch of Aussies [who are] using Monmouth Coffee to make flat whites” (“the down-under name for a variant on the Italian caffè latte”). The version here is “near-perfect”, and the place has a “good vibe” too.

The Brill

Guy Dimond, Time Out (Rating: 4/6 stars)

The critic visits a new canteen near King’s Cross, and finds that “for decent British grub at a fair price, Brill fits the bill”.

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