Our weekly roundup of what the nation’s restaurant critics were writing about in the week up to 2nd February 2025
London Standard
Don’t Tell Dad, Queens Park
David Ellis headed to the new bakery by day, restaurant by night from Coco di Mama founder Daniel Land that TikTok and his own paper have designated the “hottest table in town”.
“But the heat of busyness is not the same as the heat of brilliance,” he said. “Things are just not quite right” across the board here, from the décor of corduroy-clad banquettes to the “concertina service, of elongated waits and then everything crammed in at once”.
The food conformed to a similar pattern. David’s truffle and Cheddar beignets had an unpleasantly dense texture; his cod cheeks were over-salted; his partridge was chewy, with an over-sweet carrot and date puree. “To go on may be boring and cruel, though this would at least be an accurate reflection of the experience.”
To cap it all, his bill arrived with the prices bizarrely listed in dollars.
*****
The Guardian
Krokodilos, Kensington
Grace Dent stepped out of the concrete and cold of a London winter’s day and into a “movie-set Greece hewn in tones of dappled, early evening Athenian sunshine, all bronze, peach, tan and gold” at a new restaurant currently “flying way under the radar”. “Before I walked in, I was just a woman in thermals with a flaky nose,” she wrote. “But then – bang! – I’m suddenly Christina Onassis sipping a mulberry mournoraki in a rustic yet dashingly chic taverna.”
Thankfully, the food – a “moderately fancy celebration” of “wonderful” modern Greek cooking and ingredients from ex-Connaught chef Angelos Togias – was more than a match for the setting.
Grace began with a tasting of five olive oils in tiny bowls with house flatbread. To follow, the “apparently predictable taramasalata is miles away from the pink, whiffy mush to which we have somehow grown tolerant as a nation”. The mains – rabbit stifado, monkfish fricassée, grilled octopus with a vierge emulsion, lamb dolmadakia, prawn saganaki – and a dessert of Greek yoghurt with quince and cardamom oil – were all “equally enthralling”.
*****
The Observer
Yemen Heaven, York
Jay Rayner was drawn to this converted Walmgate pub by Yemeni-born proprietor Muna Al-Maflehi’s backstory – her “determination to maintain her family’s traditions; to free the country of her birth from a single narrative of war and hardship, however overwhelming that narrative might seem right now”.
He found plenty of familiar Middle Eastern “bangers” on the menu: hummus, baba ganoush, fattoush, tabbouleh and falafel. “Try them by all means,” Jay advised. “But as ever, it makes more sense to order the things you don’t recognise.”
His pick was chicken mandi, a quarter chicken slow-cooked on the bone with aromatics that have penetrated every fibre, served with a timbale of rice. “It is just a plate of chicken and rice, but it is the best chicken and rice.”
*****
The Times & Sunday Times
The Fordwich Arms, Kent
Giles Coren was “very, very impressed” by lunch at this country pub near Canterbury from ex-Clove Club chef Daniel Smith and his wife Natasha, declaring it “a crowning jewel of my winter, and I’ll bet eating outside here in the summertime is one of the glories of the world”.
Giles worked his way through the tasting menu plus a supplementary quail course, and found cooking that was “beautifully precise, wonderfully composed for colour and tone, visually restrained but then full throttle in the mouth“.
“This is a wonderfully situated, friendly local restaurant with an absolute master in the kitchen (or telling some other very good people in the kitchen what to do).”
***
Tide & Thyme, Kames, Tighnabruaich
Weekending in a holiday cottage on the Cowal peninsula on Scotland’s west coast, Chitra Ramaswamy feasted on a “mouthwatering Saturday night takeaway as good as any I’ve had in Glasgow or Edinburgh. No, better.”
Tide & Thyme is a bistro run by a Glasgow couple, Marie and Lauren Burke, and backed by Celtic investor and advertising tycoon Chris Trainer, a regular customer. Since the pandemic, it has offered themed weekend menus – tapas, Middle Eastern or Asian – of which Chitra was lucky enough to strike a Thai-Chinese weekend, a special interest of self-taught chef Marie.
Her Thai green curry of aubergines and prawns was “superlative”, while the enormous lamb shank massaman was “a real showstopper” and the “gai tod would put many a hipster fried chicken pop-up to shame”.
***
Khao Bird, Borough Market
Charlotte Ivers enjoyed some inventive Thai-fusion cooking upstairs at Borough Market’s Globe pub – “the precise location of Bridget Jones’s flat in the films”, she pointed out.
But, she advised, you have to pick and choose your dishes carefully. Pluses included mutton curry, poached white fish, pork hung ley curry and “pleasingly hot” Shan meatballs. Not so successful were chilli margarita, coconut choc-chip bao bun and white corn ribs with coconut relish, all of which were too sweet, while Sussex veg som tam was too wet.
Charlotte was also amused at the menu’s description of the Shan meatballs as “Ikea-style” and “cola-glazed”: “Is it not the ultimate triumph of globalisation to sit in rainy Britain and eat Coke-glazed Thai chicken balls inspired by a Swedish furniture shop?” she mused.
*****
Daily Telegraph
Alchemilla, Nottingham
William Sitwell returned to the “ashes of abandonment that characterises the modern city of Nottingham” to discover a restaurant of “grand troglodyte glory” set in the vast red-brick cellar of an old Victorian coach house.
Famously averse to multi-course tasting menus – “my only dietary, my single unremitting intolerance” – he opted for a three-course menu, although various petits fours and “optional” courses, including chicken skin, caviar and cheese, bulked this up to 14 dishes.
He was thrilled by chef Alex Bond’s skill at “marrying natural flavours (lamb, aubergine, olives), but achieving it with such finesse that you can’t accuse him of stating the obvious”. The meal was a “mesmerising, highly enjoyable and great-value triumph of flair, confidence and professionalism”.
*****
Daily Mail
Upstairs at the Grill, Chester
Tom Parker Bowles found great service at this grill, although the food was “something of a mixed bag” – mainly to do with problems of timing.
Cheese scones, served with Marmite-infused butter, were ”joyously light”; a searingly hot French onion soup was “eminently respectable”; and a prawn cocktail was decent, he reckoned – although “I do wish kitchens would step away from the tiger prawns. Expensive is not always best, especially when those traditional small pink commas are packed with so much more piscine punch.”
Of the main dishes, a bone-in sirloin steak had “depth and heft and grunt”, and beef dripping chips were excellent. But a porterhouse “comes medium rare, rather than blue. It has also been sitting on the pass too long, meaning the meat is on the cooler side of lukewarm and the fat has congealed.” A similar wait had left French fries “cold and flaccid”.
*****
Financial Times
Ambassadors Clubhouse, Mayfair
Tim Hayward wasted “an absolute age” besieging the fortress that is the SevenRooms booking service trying in vain to secure a table at the latest hit from JKS. Finally succeeding, he walked into a dining room that, far from being packed, was absolutely empty – leading him to coin the term “antihospitality”.
Once there, it was every bit as good as he had hoped, starting with a Tamatar Martini that was “one of the best cocktails in which I’ve ever bathed my uvula”.
This was followed by a meal so good that it prompted Tim to formulate a theory as to why JKS Indian restaurants are so good: “They dig down to that part of the British amygdala where lurks an atavistic passion for the flavours and textures of the curry house, then shamlessly exploit them with Michelin-standard cooking and high-grade ingredients. It’s culinary psyops and really not fair.”
