Our round-up of what the nation’s restaurant critics were writing about in the week up to 30th November 2025, when reviews were thin on the ground as newspapers turned their focus towards seasonal features and end-of-year compilations
London Standard
Crisp Pizza at The Marlborough, Mayfair
David Ellis nabbed a reservation directly from founder Carl McCluskey (“perks of the job and all that”) at this new pizzeria/pub in Mayfair, a follow-up to the original in Hammersmith that many critics (including Harden’s respondents) rate as London’s best pizza venue. Normal mortals, David suggested, have to endure a long queue or chase an online reservation that never quite materialises.
The pizzas are pretty well unchanged from the OG – “why mess with a formula that so evidently works?” – and come in a narrow choice of eight flavours, with a thin, crisp crust that is close to the New York style and dough blistered as in Naples.
As for the pub part of the equation, there’s a sign reading ‘Come for the pizza, stay for the Guinness’, betraying the involvement of Charlie Carroll and Oisín Rogers of The Devonshire, while the dining room’s bare brick walls and steakhouse-red leather banquettes evoke New York and is “actually rather gorgeous. It hums and crackles with a babbling crowd”.
All in all, then, “a beautiful room serving the same pizza that made it so big in Hammersmith… Is it worth queuing five hours for? I can’t answer.”
*****
The Times
After moaning recently about the price of wine in restaurants, Giles Coren was delighted to have found one “with a short, elegant list, heavy on the Rhône, Loire and Languedoc…, but also with a bit of Burgundy and Bordeaux, with 17 whites starting at £30 and ending at £84”.
“The bad news,” Giles noted, “is… it’s in Canterbury. Although that’s not bad news if you live in Canterbury.” In fact, all the news was good about this new venture from Polly Pleasence (daughter of the great actor Donald) and David Hart, formerly of the Folkestone Wine Company, who are “making life liveable and the business viable by serving a great meal from a small kitchen, with one of the most approachable wine lists in the country”.
This wine bar with an upstairs dining room is set in the “gorgeous Tudor gatehouse to the St John’s Hospital almshouses”, and Giles plus two pals made a day of it with half a dozen oysters and “unbelievably sweet” Scottish langoustines accompanied by “impeccable aioli”; a plate of fat, peppery coppa; egg mayonnaise, split and topped with avruga caviar; some “superb, coarse pâté de campagne”; “excellent” scallops in a Bercy sauce, a no-choice main of halibut (it was a Friday), and a rich chocolate marquise.
***
Chitra Ramaswamy enjoyed some “simply delicious” oysters and scallops along with the sea views at this “institution” with a “stunning setting” overlooking Aberdeen harbour. Service, though, was “patchy”.
*****
Daily Mail
Tom Parker Bowles lunched at a Thai restaurant in the Lanes that is a “definite cut above your average over-sweet, under-powered Siam-style crowd-pleaser”, having started out under lockdown as a delivery service from chef-owner Bookie’s home kitchen.
The grilled chicken, grilled beef and fried squid he sampled showed a “mellow subtlety”, a “sly, dry heat, a good lime kick and sweet herbal sigh”.
“The food at Namo is not about blowing one’s head off or overdoing the funk, rather skilled, resolutely modern Thai cookery that manages to meld the traditional with the more personal. Prices are reasonable, the service lovely and the dinner menu looks more interesting still. I cannot wait to come back.”
