Owing to the twin disruptions of the Bank Holiday and the publication of our new London guide, we have combined our national and London press reviews this week.
Murano
Fay Maschler, Evening Standard (Rating: 4/5 stars)
“Murano is the first GRH [Gordon Ramsay Holdings] enterprise in London, apart from the Royal Hospital Road flagship, to stand outside a hotel, notes the critic, but it was still designed by a company that specialises in hotels, and the overall effect is “international anodyne posh, not helped by being too brightly lit”.
The menu, however, is “an enticing read”. Presentation may “unfortunately” carry the “stamp” of Michelin-aspirational presentation, but the critic finds the cooking generally very good. The staff, she observes, “has (sic) yet to work as a team”, and she wonders if GRH works a system “like construction companies of old who would pick up workers each morning according to need”. “I rather wish that Angela Hartnett could find a sugar daddy who would back her in her own enterprise. Then she and her food could shine out in the sort of joyful context they both deserve.”
Murano
Jan Moir, Are You Ready To Order?
Have Ms Maschler and Ms Moir been talking? They both seem to be willing Angela Hartnett to free herself from her corporate shackles. Murano is “a tremendous new restaurant, a fabulous addition to the London dining scene”, notes the latter. “People will love it here, with its nicely spaced tables, friendly acoustics and forthright attitude to Italian food.” “The stately restraint, in both décor and menu”, however, “does not quite square with the Angela Hartnett we have all read about – “her own cookbook brims with simple, gutsy, family recipes”. “Perhaps one day she will open her own, independent restaurant, free of the constraints and strictures of a big company”.
Somehow, though, she doubts it: “in the starry galaxy that Angela Hartnett now orbits, celebrity chefs like her can only be the chefs they want to be, not the chefs we want them to be; increasingly, restaurants such as this one are launch pad for future corporate business expansion”.
Cinquecento
David Sexton, Evening Standard (Rating: 3/5 stars)
“Holloway Road isn’t pretty”, notes the critic, but this “spartanly furnished” Italian has a “happy, buzzy atmosphere, fostered by the charming service”. The food offers “straightforwardly great value” and is “generously served” too. “Cinquecento would be pretty much a neighbourhood dream anywhere. In Archway, though, it rates nearer a miracle.”
Modern Pantry
Guy Dimond, Time Out (Rating: 4/6 stars)
The critic visits Anna Hansen’s new venture (in conjunction with D&D), and finds uneven standards. The good, however, “outweighed the ill-judged”. “For vibe and novelty factor, this is most exciting place to eat in Clerkenwell right now, and it’s already filled with the area’s many self-consciously creative types”. He looks forward to next month’s opening of the “slightly fancier” restaurant, upstairs.
Saf
Giles Coren, The Times (Rating: Score: “pointless”)
This new Shoreditch vegan has “done very well in the reviews”, states the critic, and “was positively rammed to the rafters, on a lazy Monday night in high summer, with very thin people, mostly women”. It is a shame, he observes, “that the food most likely to help you live for ever manages simultaneously to deprive you of the will to live”. [W]hat a vicious circle meatlessness can generate”, he observes – “there was not a man among the weeds and waifs [present] who looked physically up to the job of killing a mammoth. Or even a mouse”.
The River Cottage Canteen, Axminster
John Walsh, The Independent (Rating: Food 2/5 stars, Ambience 4/5 stars, Service 3/5 stars)
Behind a shop that’s “humming with organic integrity”, the critic locates this canteen, associated with Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s famous cottage, where the “wooden tables and chairs are ranged severely, like a classroom in Dotheboys Hall”. “The wine was rather tart and short-pitched, but it was English and therefore beyond criticism”, and the food was “unadventurous to a degree” – the only highlight of lunch for two was a “massive wedge of apple and cinnamon cake [with] clotted cream”.
Brasserie St Jacques
Andy Lynes, Metro (Rating: 3/5 stars)
“If an address can have a personality crisis, then 33 St James's Street should seek help”, says the critic, reminding us of the number of incarnations it has been through of late. And when the critic ate on a quiet Tuesday night in a less-than-half-full restaurant, “the food was also suffering from identity issues. It was unquestionably French but couldn't decide if it wanted to be Charles Aznavour (rich and comforting) or Marcel Marceau (pale and uninteresting)”. If he “hadn't read in the press release that ‘Pierre Koffmann has taken full responsibility for the kitchens’”, he’s never have guessed that the proprietor of the (once) great La Tante Claire was involved.
Tendido Cuatro
Guy Dimond, Time Out (Rating: 4/6 stars)
The critic finds “faultless” quality of ingredients at the new Parson’s Green tapas bar spin off from Cambio de Tercio. Realisastion of some dishes was “faultless”, but “[o]thers seemed less well-conceived”. “Service was unfailingly smiling and attentive – and the restaurant was packed out with affluent Fulham folk on our visit, while nearby restaurants were having a quiet evening.”
Vyse Room, Stoke Place
Zoe Williams, The Sunday Telegraph (Rating: 7/10)
The critic visits “a gorgeous old William and Mary house with Capability Brown gardens” which “couldn't feel more like a treat if it tied itself in a ribbon and put a chocolate on its pillow”, and where the restaurant is “bright and cheerful”. Service was “speedy but very uncertain”, but the food generally seems to have been good. If you visit, though, it seems that it’s best to stop before pudding: this is “one of those kitchens where no one's interested in sweet things”.
Andrew's On The Weir, Porlock Weir, Somerset
Margaret Drabble, Guardian (Rating: 9.5/10)
From a novelist standing in as a critic, a ‘rave’ review of a restaurant-with-rooms, where she appears to be a regular.
The Seahorse, Dartmouth
The Observer’s man is less impressed than the Indie’s with this “smart bourgeois fish restaurant, which charges big bucks for unfussy food to a ready audience of mature, comfortably upholstered Devon locals who are delighted to have it on their doorstep”. It is currently “underperforming”.
Terry Durack, The Independent on Sunday (Rating: 15/20)
This “is not at all what I thought it would be”, says the critic. “Instead of a happy-go-lucky seaside caff, it feels more like The Ivy by the Sea”, and it offers a menu that’s “a slow tootle around the Med, stretching from clams with ham, Manzanilla sherry and jamon, to a fritto misto of local fish, with local lamb and south Devon beef also getting a look in”. Not all dishes equally succeed, but the critic is generally impressed. It turns out that the establishment “is extremely likeable, for its sense of place and for showcasing the produce of land and sea with such single-minded style”.
Gordon Ramsay, London Hotel, West Hollywood
S. Irene Virbila, LA Times (Rating: 2.5/4 stars)
“Just when it seems as if fine dining is going the way of the dodo in Southern California, this sophisticated Londoner arrives and dressing up for dinner seems fun again”. The lady from the LA Times rather likes the Sweary One’s new American outpost.
In the US style, this is a review based on multiple visits, and she notes that, on several of them, Ramsay was not in town. “But this time, three months after the restaurant opened, he is, and what a difference his presence in the house makes. The food didn't approach this level before. It was very correct, but somehow dull -- even though the ingredients and preparations were exactly the same”.
Overall, she concludes that “the restaurant may not be all there yet, but if the kitchen can get to the point where it performs every night the way it does when Ramsay is in town, L.A.'s best restaurants will have some feisty competition”. The particular snippet, we suspect, would be equally applicable to any of Ramsay’s outposts, anywhere in the world. And there, of course, is the rub.
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