Our round-up of what the nation’s restaurant critics were writing about in the week up to 1st February 2026
The Guardian
Guinness Open Gate Brewery, Covent Garden
Grace Dent was both puzzled and “underwhelmed” by a visit to Guinness’s new “multi-multi-million-pound” visitor centre – complete with a craft brewery, a gift shop, a pie stall from Calum Franklin and two restaurants from Pip Lacey – that somehow made her love the brand less instead of more.
She ate in the ground-floor Porter’s Table, where the Guinness soda bread “tasted wonderful: soft, crusty, scone-like”. The rest of the food – cheeseburger, ribeye steak and half chicken – was “good, but unmemorable”, although a Guinness-themed dessert called the Three Stouts was “absolute ‘will-this-do?’ nonsense”.
The biggest problem – that the loos for this ground-floor restaurant are on the fifth floor, and are only reachable by lift – provided Grace with the perfect punchline: “Guinness, let the record show, cannot organise a piss-up in a brewery.”
*****
The Times & Sunday Times
Saltwater Fish Company, Newcastle
Giles Coren followed up a tip from “a fat man at the football” to visit a “reet canny” fish counter owned by veteran Newcastle chef-restaurateur Terry Laybourne and set inside a fish shop in the new food hall at Fenwick’s flagship department store.
Set up like an Andalusian tapas bar, it offers a “damn good value” menu of fish and seafood that is “mostly local or British, and dayboat where possible”, but “they’re not afraid of a southeast Asian warm water shrimp farm either”.
Giles feasted on oysters from Lindisfarne, “just up the road”; a “gorgeous little snack” of crispy sushi rice sticks under spicy tuna and ginger; a main course of grilled halibut that was “a lovely fat cushion of firm fish, browned evenly and drenched with foaming butter”; and both rhubarb sponge and Basque cheesecake for pudding. His verdict: “Delicious, delicious, delicious.”
***
La Masa, Glasgow
Chitra Ramaswamy experienced a “mixed bag of meal” at a taco bar in Glasgow city centre that is often recommended by aficionados of Mexican food. The tacos were, as promised, “outstanding: thick, the uplifting pale yellow of freshly shucked corn, hand-pressed on site daily”, and the tostadas were equally “fresh, carefully constructed, beautifully balanced”.
But the barbecoa was disappointing, with greasy and “unfinishable” hispi cabbage and a picanha steak that was “chewy, its flavour obliterated by too much raw garlic in the chimichurri”. Presentation was also weak. The venue was “messed with to look a bit Mexican … It wouldn’t take much to make it look a lot cooler, more Mexican”; while service is “lacklustre: hands off to the extent that I have to get my own fork from the next table”.
In short, “Come for the tacos and tostadas. Make sure you order two of the ones you both want to eat.”
***
Charlotte Ivers announced her departure from the role of Sunday Times restaurant critic – “I’m moving on… For me, being a journalist is like being a shark: if you stop moving, you die’ – with a return trip to the first “fancy” restaurant she ever visited, almost a decade ago.
She did not say much about the 30-course, £220-a-head ‘Collections of China’ tasting menu she clearly relished, beyond noting that the presentation has changed since her first visit: the dishes arrive in groups (the “collections”) from each region (Hunan, Sichuan, Canton etc) and “you sit like a Qing emperor, surrounded by plates”.
Charlotte also offered an overview of what she has learned in her three years on the eating beat: “I’ve become aware of quite how precarious restaurants like this are, how many things have to go right for them to work, how obsessive their owners are, how many tiny, imperceptible choices they have to get right”.
*****
London Standard
David Ellis was delighted by his meal at a “treasure” – Catherine Parisot’s 47-year-old “institution”, little-known outside NW8 but a bastion of excellence where traditional standards are “fiercely maintained. Champagne is offered on arrival. Waiters wear crisp white shirts and black jackets, black ties too.”
To David’s apparent surprise, the cooking was excellent, and served in portions of “a generosity rarely seen elsewhere since L’Aventure’s earliest days. Huge meaty snails arrived under a cap of puff pastry, in a stock stew of garlic butter perfumed with star anise — beautiful, and not often seen in London”. To follow, a rack of lamb, halibut and tarte tatin were all “masterfully done”.
“Bills are handwritten. Everyone is a regular. I don’t suppose L’Aventure was ever groundbreaking, even in 1979, but it stands as a reminder of a charm the industry sometimes forgets.”
*****
Daily Mail
Tom Parker Bowles visited another institution, this one a survivor from 1964 – named after the alias used by the late Princess Margaret when eating among the plebs – that has risen from ashes following a fire last year.
“Better still, she hasn’t changed one bit,” Tom added, so the interior is still “slightly shabby”, the prawn cocktail still “distinctly average”. But on the credit sided, the shepherd’s pie is “excellent, with crisp topping and gloriously rich lamb filling”, sirloin steak is “very decent”, and “service is lovely”.
“What really matters is that Maggie Jones is still here, doing her thing. And for that, we should be eternally grateful.”
*****
Daily Telegraph
William Sitwell confessed to having a “crush” on the “overwhelmingly fabulous” latest addition to the Public House Group (joining The Pelican in Notting Hill, The Hero in Maida Vale and The Bull in Charlbury).
“The Hart is so fiendishly cosy and so full to the brim of wintry respite you feel like you’re on a theatrical set. At this posh pub the owners know what they’re doing. They feel they are the bee’s knees, the dog’s you-know-whats – and, quite frankly, they are.”
As for the food, he enjoyed “gorgeous British morsels” including mince roll, beef tartare, kedgeree and a bun that was a “fat sandwich of chocolate, cream, brittles and nuts” and “blissful, great-value, extravagance”.
*****
Financial Times
Jay Rayner was the latest critic to rave over the third of Martin Kuczmarski’s Italian-American joints – this one a Los Angeles-style counter restaurant off Piccadilly that delivers on its promise with a “delicious, thrumming vibe”.
“It’s the late-night hideaway London needs; the place you want to slip into when you’re a few drinks down, so you can pull up a stool at the woozily lit bar… like you’re the obligatory louche character in Edward Hopper’s ‘Nighthawks’,” Jay mused, before reminding himself that the place will be rammed, unlike the 40s diner.
Menu highlights included an LA classic sandwich, the ‘French dip’ – thin-sliced steak with pulled beef, taleggio and pickles in a sourdough baguette that you dip into a silver boat of gravy: “It’s a lot of stupidly satisfying, wonderfully messy sandwich for £19”. Also noteworthy was the deliberately charred spaghetti all’assassina, “the edible equivalent of a long 1970s Al Pacino close-up”.
