Evening Standard
David Ellis suffered a “night of glitz, glamour and ennui” at the latest branch of a New York-based global group which is the headline restaurant of the swanky new Mayfair hotel that he informed us is cruelly nicknamed the “Chancery Premier Inn”.
With its celeb clientele (“Victoria Beckham with her brood sat on the next table”) and low-lit interior of red leather and velvet, there is “no denying its glamour. It feels like dining in an outtake from the Rat Pack’s Ocean’s Eleven”. But service is “patchy”, as is the staggeringly expensive Italian-American food – a plate of lasagne costs £98, while the famous spicy rigatoni vodka comes with “a tomato sauce I think I last had with spaghetti hoops… But no one is coming here for the kitchen, which is best for everyone involved.”
David made clear he won’t be coming back. “In the end you remember you’re in a chain, Pizza Express with the lights down. I longed to be dining at the Dover instead, which is half the price but twice as good.”
David Ellis - 2025-09-21The Times
Charlotte Ivers also dined at the week’s big opening, on the same night as David (see above) – either that or the designer fka Posh Spice is already a regular.
“We are sitting at the bar when Victoria Beckham walks in. I immediately choke on my cocktail, tequila cascading down my shirt. I don’t know why I’m so surprised. A couple of evenings ago, Leonardo DiCaprio was here. Kate Moss too.”
But if Charlotte seemed more excited than David by Carbone’s celeb count, she was more brutal than he was about its cooking: a chicken dish was simply “inedible”.
Charlotte Ivers - 2025-09-21Daily Mail
Tom Parker Bowles was impressed by the room and the “sheer ambition” of this retro New York-style “red sauce” restaurant in the basement of the old US Embassy – but ultimately condemned it as “overhyped, overpriced and over here.”
He had no real issue with the exorbitant prices – “to complain about huge bills in Carbone is to miss the point. Huge bills are the point” – or with the food, which veered between the “excellent” (tortellini in broth), via the merely “decent” (rigatoni vodka), to the “plain dull” (veal parmesan).
“But Carbone really isn’t about the food. It’s about being the sort of person who wants to be seen dining at Carbone.”
Tom Parker Bowles - 2025-12-14The Times
Camilla Long had fun skewering the pretensions and patrons of this New York-Italian restaurant import, just as her predecessor Charlotte Ivers did when it opened less than six months ago. The only surprise was that her Sunday Times editors thought the venue warranted such a speedy revisit.
Whatever the reason, Camilla set to with relish. The food was “bastardised mafia Italian”, she said, and came in “huge, Desperate Dan” portions “to be picked at by thin, confused, plastic women”. The keynote was “compulsive excess”: “TGI Fridays” with “34 types of grappa but … hardly a decent thing to eat”, for an audience that included Kim Kardashian’s hairdresser and plenty of “small cigar men and their enormous, decorated wives”, who like the food are “huge and orange”.
“If they want to throw away hundreds of pounds on cubes of malodorous sog, I won’t stop them,” she concluded. “But I will say you can’t do food this bad at these prices.”
Camilla Long - 2026-03-01
