The Times
Giles Coren took a rather different view of Nordic-inspired cheffery, using a visit to a new restaurant next to a vast building site as a vehicle to vent his spleen on “all the miseries of the Scandi kitchen”.
How Giles enjoyed himself conjuring up ways to insult the genre, starting off with its high priest, René Redzepi, whom he dismissed as a “mouse-faced misery guts”. “Yumminess is not cherished in the ‘Nordic kitchen’,” he declared – it “simply doesn’t translate out of Scandinavia, or the late Noughties”.
Course after course came in for the treatment: an oyster cut (cut!) into three; a dry sweetbread; a langoustine served with a “thin and irrelevant jus and some curls of turnip. Or celeriac. Or possibly orthotic insole. It was hard to tell.”
Finally, instead of coffee, he was served a hot water infusion of cocoa beans from Grenada. “It was the saddest thing I’ve ever put in my mouth,” said Giles. “And I have given CPR to a cat.”
Giles Coren - 2025-03-02The Guardian
Grace Dent enjoyed the “stridently finickity” Scandi-style cuisine she found at this restaurant in the Megaro hotel, while warning that “fine-dining refuseniks” might feel that a meal here is “like a trip to a weight-loss camp”.
Dinner consisted of a tasting menu of “painstakingly prepped gastronomical visions” from a chef who has worked his way through Le Manoir, Le Gacvroche, the Ritz, the Halkin, the Lanesborough and L’Escarxgot: “It takes thousands of hours in hot kitchens to cook like Simmonds does.”
The high point of Grace’s meal was a dish of cubed, salt-baked, roasted and fermented celeriac in celeriac broth. Yes, she said, “celeriac cooked in five different ways in a single dish is as time-consuming as it sounds, but it’s worth it for this level of vegetarian joy.”
Grace Dent - 2025-04-06
Drinks
Extras
