Evening Standard
Jimi Famurewa was impressed by the latest expansion of the East London-based Crispin brand, which “cements founding restaurateur Dom Hamdy’s HAM group as one of the capital’s most nimble and influential young hospitality operations”. A few paragraphs later, he reckoned it “cemented the feeling that Hamdy and his team have done the unthinkable: brought cool, swagger and weapons-grade restaurant sexiness to an area that even locals are prone to decry as a culinary tundra.”
Cement repetition aside, Jimi’s prose purred as he conjured up “an elegant, candlelit life raft … [where] you are in the presence of something quietly seismic and subtly miraculous” – a place offering “sanely priced, effortless dining glamour”.
On the food front, head chef Michael Miles, formerly of Manteca, is “channelling something of Fergus Henderson’s gutsy restraint, stark aesthetics and gleeful British revisionism”, accompanied by “uniformly excellent draught wines”.
Jimi Famurewa - 2024-04-21
