Pétrus
Giles Coren, The Times (Rating: 4.33/10)
“Every greige surface, padded leather menu, piddling free hors d’oeuvre and newly trained flunky makes me think of the corporatisation of the past 11 years. The decline of the human. Of how Gordon got bigger and bigger, moved out of the kitchen, became a television demigod of other men’s construction, and left us to seek his destiny in America, Japan, the Middle East…”
Another critic is less than impressed with Gordon's latest venture. A “horrid room with no good tables in it”, it is said to have a “unique air of grim functionality, loneliness, transience, drabness and itinerant greed”. Dishes sampled include a “drab little plate of sweetbreads with no crispness or nuttiness”, pigeon tasting of “playground nosebleed” and “brutally and unexpectedly nasty” beer chocolate pudding. All of this is served with “endless fiddle-faddle and interruption: every attempt at conversation cut dead by staff interjection”.
Although he does not mention him by name, incidentally, this review seems* to have been written on the basis of a dinner taken in the company of AA Gill, who similarly negatively reviewed Pétrus in the Sunday Times last week. It is to take nothing away from Coren’s basic analysis (with which we happen broadly to agree) to say that it is unfortunate that the two most prominent negative reviews of Pétrus have both been based on the same dinner. (*PS A little bird, not the man himself, later told us that Giles had in fact been at least twice.)
Lisa Markwell, The Independent on Sunday (Rating: 15/20)
“I can't find fault with Petrus, but I can't find it in my heart to recommend it either… for mere mortals, I'd advise you to keep your wallet tucked away and keep walking.” “[H]ead chef Sean Burbidge is clearly talented, but it feels as if he is following a generic posh-food template.” Extras bump up the bill too, contributing to “the distinct feeling of an operation that knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.”
“Gordon Ramsay's newest venture, is a terrific restaurant in search of a menu. It has many virtues; sadly, the food isn't one of them.” While the design of the dining room is “very clever” and “buzzes with the sounds of people having a good time”,the cuisine is just “ho-hum” and “safe”. “[W]hen the bill, courtesy of a shameful wine list, refuses to stick below £100 a head, you also want memories. Save for the few high points – a remarkable watercress soup, a clever scallop dish – mostly it's the culinary equivalent of beige: dull at worst, inoffensive at best.”
Bistrot Bruno Loubet
AA Gill, The Sunday Times (Rating: Food 4/5 stars, Atmosphere 4/5 stars)
More praise for the “modern, functional and crowded” Clerkenwell bistro, where dishes from the “short and brilliantly desirable” menu are “rustic combinations that grabbed you roughly by the ears and stuck their tongues down your throat”. “This was always Bruno’s brilliance, the ability to season not just expertly, but atonally; to join essences that are unexpected and unnervingly intimate”.
(The critic kicks off his review, incidentally, with a history of French restaurants. Needless to say, he doesn’t let ignorance of basic facts get in the way, repeating as he does the wretched canard that restaurants came into existence as a result of the Revolution. That this lazy fact is endlessly repeated does not make it true. Even the most cursory reading of the Larousse tells you that restaurants predated the Revolution by at least two decades, which view is endorsed by the leading academic work on the subject – The Invention of the Restaurant, Rebecca L. Spang, Harvard, 2000.)
Golden Day
John Walsh, The Independent (Rating: Food 1/5 stars, Ambience 1/5 stars, Service 1/5 stars)
Criticism all round for this Shaftesbury Avenue Hunanese, that looks like “a ghastly throwback to the Golden Egg chain, that byword in brash, cheap-eats vulgarity, that flourished in the late 1960s”. After disappointment in every course and largely absent service, the critic concludes: “[a]s an exercise in food preparation, display and restaurateurship, the Golden Day is frankly insulting.”
Dean Street Townhouse
Jasper Gerard, The Telegraph (Rating: 5/10)
A mixed review of the Soho restaurant; the interior is “dangerously fun”, but the traditional British cuisine is a “all a bit ration book” - special mention to “niggardly and chewy” chicken, bacon and leek pie and “clubland predictables” for dessert. All in all “[i]t’s smoothly done but tradition without a twist can be deadly”.
The Dogs, Edinburgh
A restaurant praised for offering “a list of sturdy British propositions at reasonable prices”. The interior “best described as a front room, with a pleasing, if eccentric, domesticity, dark wood tables, cream walls and a high ceiling” provides an appropriate setting for the British classics sampled, such as oxtail broth and boiled bacon, all of which please.
Follow hardensbites Follow hardensparty
Become a Harden's fan
