Wallace & Co
Guy Dimond, Time Out (Rating: 3/5 stars)
The critic visits a “large, all-day café that’s been prettied up in a pleasing mix of rationing-era nostalgia and beach house looks, with a bit of Sydney café menu thrown in”. Not the most remarkable place to get such speedy reviews in both TO and the Evening Standard, you might have thought, but it turns out that it’s associated with… a TV personality. An inspection reveals “a handy local café-brasserie, [that’s] already hugely popular with young parents looking to distract kids”. Rather like lots of other Putney places, then?
Fay Maschler, Evening Standard (Rating: 3/5 stars)
“We arrived and there he was: Gregg Wallace of Masterchef fame, the chap who someone — most probably himself — described as ‘the cooking woman’s crumpet’”. No messing about in setting the scene in Ms Maschler’s review. And how these starry names stick together. “The company Gregg keeps in this new restaurant venture is Vernon Mascarenhas, his partner in the wholesale vegetable business Secrett’s Direct, and chef Tim Payne who for seven years was executive chef for Marco Pierre White’s establishments, consultant chef to Oliver Peyton”. Fortunately, the food at this proto-British chain turns out to be pretty good.
Hunter 486
David Sexton, Evening Standard (Rating: 2/5 stars)
Always tell people something they don’t know. “For the first 24 years of its life, Marble Arch stood in front of Buckingham Palace”, the critic informs us. Why, thank you Mr Sexton. Anyway, he visits a new hotel near the current location of the aforesaid monument, and finds a restaurant that’s “part of a big open room with a ‘salon de champagne’ at one end and a glossy cocktail bar in the middle… where we rashly chose to eat”. The whole experience proved rather “uncomfortable”, not least as his party was asked if things were alright “a dozen times” – “that’s harassment, not hospitality”. The food, though, was “fine”, but “at the moment, the place feels a little too fussy and effortful for that atmosphere to come off, for actual Londoners at any rate”.
Chilli Cool
By the bye, the critic tells us why she can’t really be bothered to review the The Princess Of Shoreditch (“the review would have struggled to achieve more than a handful of words: nice place, vintage pics, pleasant staff, unremarkable food, tiny portions, upstairs posh, downstairs full of iPhones and funny specs”). As she concisely notes, “hey it’s a tweet” (not a fully-fledged review). So on to Plan B, which turns out to be a bloggers’ favourite, near UCL, where the food offers “some fiery adventure” – “exhilarating”, and “cheap” too.
Dean Street Town House
Richard Vines, Bloomberg (Rating: 3/4 stars)
He has the odd gripe, but the critic is generally impressed with the new Soho outpost of the Soho House group, where “the menu is refreshingly unchallenging if you are familiar with British food, and the prices are as friendly as most of the staff”.
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