Evening Standard
David Ellis was first critic into Town, Stevie Parle’s expensively put-together new restaurant in Covent Garden – and gave his thumbs-up to “a Wolseley, reimagined for the modern age”.
“True, no one went to the Wolseley for the food, but I suspect they just might here”: for all the venue’s 60s ad-agency good looks, Parle is a “very good cook”, obsessive about his suppliers, and “Town has no theme other than to serve good food in a knockout space”.
David also noted some decent prices: wine from £8 a glass (including a good house white Bordeaux) and service at just 10 per cent – “especially as said service is extremely adept”.
David Ellis - 2025-05-25The Guardian
Given its Drury Lane address, Stevie Parle’s new restaurant might be considered suitable for pre-theatre dining. Wrong, according to Grace Dent: “the food is far too good to rush through in an hour” – this place is “Unmissable. Five stars”.
It certainly looks the part in “glitzy” theatreland – “a big, beautiful, ballsy, expensive-looking beast; a sleek, capacious, ever-so-slightly Austin Powers-esque, shiny-floored, caramel-coloured pleasure palace.”
It is also a “feeder” and “not for anyone with a meek appetite”, with generous dishes including a “sublime” Kashmiri saffron risotto with roasted bone marrow; a “huge” pork chop with onions, burnt-apple sauce and mustard; beef fat pink fir potatoes “that held good on their promise”; and “the star of the show, a hot-from-the-oven, damp, sticky cherry clafoutis served with much, much too much clotted cream”.
Grace Dent - 2025-06-01The Times
Giles Coren declared a “consensus” of critical acclaim for Stevie Parle’s new restaurant, noting that Fay Maschler (via her sister), Tom Parker Bowles and the Times food editor Tony Turnbull had all told him there were fans. (To which add Grace Dent, see above, and the Standard’s David Ellis, last week).
For Giles, the irresistible “showstopper” came at the outset, in the shape of “a small, warm loaf of potato sourdough with ‘Town house gravy’, which is a bowl of hot beef dripping”. This was “pure Nigel Slater in its acknowledgement that the lees of a Maillard reaction are the locus of ‘tasty’. That the best stuff in the kitchen is often that which never gets as far as the dining room.”
As for the Kashmiri saffron risotto: “What a dish! As per the dripping principle, this is osso bucco without all the boring shin meat. Just the risotto Milanese with a huge canoe of fat, salty marrow, to be capsized into the rice, stirred in, lapped up, inhaled, communed with…”
Giles returned a couple of days later for a second lunch, ostensibly to “fact-check”. He might do so “every day, if that’s all right with them.”
Giles Coren - 2025-06-01Daily Mail
Tom Parker Bowles declared Stevie Parle’s “vast, buzzy, glamour-drenched room” an “instant London classic” – confirming a judgement he had made public a week earlier via Giles Coren (scooping himself in the process).
“God, I love this place,” he expatiated. “The food, the service, the room, the cocktails, the seductively dim lighting…. Hell, this is a place where even the pot plants look sexy.”
As for the menu, it is “essentially European with a few global flourishes…. The cooking is both simple and sophisticated; a chef and kitchen at the very top of their game.”
Tom Parker Bowles - 2025-06-08The Times
Jay Rayner applauded the appropriately stage-set design of Stevie Parle’s new Theatreland venue, an “orgy of 1970s retro-futuristic glamour; a gilded people’s palace” that “really is a belter, an eclectic British brasserie serving smart, show-stopping dishes made from ingredients with a back-story”.
“Louche glamour” was accompanied by “good cooking and classy ideas”. If the occasional dish “teetered on the edge of overkill”, it was saved by “pure deliciousness” – a “stupidly rich” risotto made with saffron from Kashmir and served with roasted bone marrow was a case in point: “would you perhaps like some rice with your lipids?”
Jay also appreciated the wit of a wine list that follows the house wine in each section – red, white and rosé – with what is listed as the “Second Cheapest”: a joke he took personally.
Jay Rayner - 2025-07-06
