The Times
To support his contention that you can eat well at both extremes of the hospitality marketplace, Giles Coren reviewed two London establishments this week: the new restaurant from Fancesco Mazzei, ex-Sartoria and “one of London’s two or three best Italian chefs”, and a “tiddly Korean joint in Greenwich” which started out a few years ago as “a shack by the station”.
At Mezzogiorno, he gorged on a menu that was “very Calabrian/Sicilian (spicy, ballsy, plenty of ’nduja) with the odd Roman interloper (carbonara, cacio e pepe etc)” – all of which was beautifully cooked. Set inside the Corinthia hotel, it was “a dazzling space, with regal service, a wine list as long and sexy as Boccaccio’s Decameron and top-flight Calabrian scran with a bill that could have your eye out”.
Equally “lovely” was lunch at Naru, consisting cold fresh and fermented vegetables, a raw fish plate of lean and fatty tuna, salmon and yellowtail sashimi, nigiri of squid and sea bass and inside-out rolls that were all very good and well priced (a nigiri set is around £25 for ten pieces), followed by a “compellingly crisp and squishy seafood pancake”, and skewers of grilled pork belly and ibérico shoulder.
Giles Coren - 2026-02-15
