Andrew Staffell, Time Out Rating: 5/6 stars
“Sparkling tapas in Soho”, says the headline, and that’s certainly the gist of the long and very positive review of the the Salt Yard’s new offshoot.
Foxtrot Oscar
Richard Vines, Bloomberg Rating: 3/4 stars
The financial news service’s critic is impressed by Gordon Ramsay’s relaunched Chelsea bistro, where he finds “an accessible and enticing menu, good cooking, friendly service and the kind of buzz others might need chemicals to create”. (The news section of Ramsay’s own website, indeed, hails the “impressive praise” accorded in what it claims is the establishment’s “first review”. Can Gordon’s people really be unaware that Fay Maschler at the Evening Standard panned the place two days before?)
The Landau
Marina O’Loughlin, Metro Rating: 3/5 stars
“The Landau is unashamedly fine dining… and [Andrew] Turner is a stranger to simplicity. But the restaurant is designed to appeal to our inner sybarite and sometimes you just have to go with the show”. Ms O’M neatly summarises her own review of this ambitious tasting-style outfit at the Langham Hotel.
Quilon
Fay Maschler, Evening Standard Rating: 4/5 stars
Ms M hurries back to the Indian restaurant off Victoria Street that’s just been awarded a Michelin star. “Sitting among hotel guests and groups of Indian businessmen”, she finds herself ‘transported… to India and is probably the closest I will get this year to the country where I was born and which I love”.
Royal China Club, St John’s Wood
Fay Maschler, Evening Standard Rating: 2/5 stars
On a visit to the new club-class ‘upgrade’ of the former St John’s Wood Royal China, Ms M finds staff “beautifully groomed and plentiful”, a menu “packed with expensive dishes” and a “chef seemingly keen to show the direction in which upmarket dining in Hong Kong is going”. Unfortunately, however, “these efforts did not lead to a satisfactory dinner in terms of the food”.
31st January 2008
