The Times
Giles Coren was surprised and impressed to discover that this revival of an old stager of a hang-out – he characterised it as a “sex restaurant” back in the decadent day – now “serves unexpectedly good food at staggeringly fair prices”.
In terms of atmosphere, the biggest change was the new focus on eating in the upstairs dining room, “where it used to be all about dark sticky corners in the mazey downstairs, which is a bar now with some cosy booths in which a couple or even a threesome could easily, if they wanted to…”.
The best dish was a lobster soufflé at £39 – “expensive, yes, because it’s a lobster bloody soufflé!” – that was “a beautiful eggy cloud, free floating on a black iron skillet of the most compelling fricassée, rich with gruyère, sleek and peppery with leeks, bustling with chunky lobster”.
Giles Coren - 2024-06-30Evening Standard
Was Dylan Jones pulling rank, or rolling up his sleeves to show the guys on the shop floor how it’s done? Either way, the editor-in-chief of the Evening Standard cropped up as restaurant critic, heading to the revival of a famously louche left-over from the boho 60s and 70s where, under the old regime, he had once “managed to lose my wallet, my job and my girlfriend in the space of six hours”.
Julie’s has been resuscitated by Holland Park resident Tara MacBain, who has brought in ex-Brawn and Pelican chef Owen Kenworthy “to turn it into an urban version of a neighbourhood French brasserie”. The relaunch has been a success, in Dylan’s judgment. “By which I mean it’s chic without being annoying, and welcoming without having been dumbed down. It’s not arch, not fiddly, not overdone, but just somehow right.”
The air of luxury, with dozens of staff on hand to look after you, combined with an interesting and ungreedy wine list and very good cooking, to make it “the kind of restaurant where you are almost required to have a good time”.
“I can’t wait to go back”, Dylan concluded, before adding a gratuitously back-handed compliment: “And guess what? It’s almost as good as The Park.”
Dylan Jones - 2024-07-07The Observer
Jay Rayner followed the throng of critics who have paid their respects to this revival of a veteran from the 1960s, whose reputation always relied more on its celeb clientele and their louche shenanigans than its cuisine.
He found a place that has been expensively refurbished – “It’s an orgy of padded floral fabrics and wildflower-printed wallpaper. Think Country Living for people who hate mud” – where it is already all but impossible to book a table between 7 and 10pm, and where the menu of comfort food is delivered superbly by chef Owen Kenworthy, previously of Brawn and the Pelican.
What’s more, it is not ridiculously expensive (apart from a few bottles of wine listed in case Mick Jagger drops by “for old times’ sake”.) “A big bowl of mussels in a brilliantly stinky Roquefort cream sauce, then heaped with matchstick fries, is an awful lot of dinner for £15…. When Kate Moss [who once celebrated her birthday here] said that guff about skinny feeling better than anything tastes, she clearly hadn’t tasted something like these mussels.”
Jay Rayner - 2024-07-21
