Our round-up of what the nation’s restaurant critics were writing about over the holiday period up to 4th January 2026
The Guardian
Poon’s at Somerset House, Aldwych
Grace Dent was an immediate convert to Amy Poon’s relaunch of the family’s restaurant brand in the New Wing of Somerset House, declaring it simultaneously “sweet, confident, feminine, ballsy and glamorous – a lot like Amy Poon herself, in fact. This family has had restaurants in its bones for many generations, so why stop now?”.
The food was “refreshingly light, delicate and, you might even say, wholesome”, including crunchy house pickles and a bowl of crudites with a “pungent, funky, fermented tofu dip” that alone was worth booking a table for.
The only disappointment for Grace was a duck salad that “felt oddly drab; there wasn’t a lot of duck or soy dressing, and it was a bit heavy on the cabbage”.
*****
Daily Mail
Poon’s at Somerset House; Crisp Pizza, Mayfair
Tom Parker-Bowles was equally taken by the latest Poon’s, hailing it “a cracker… a new modern Chinese classic” that displays a lightness of touch “so often so absent in many British Chinese restaurants”.
‘Magic soup’, he said, lived up to its name and was “the most pure and gentle of broths, ‘to soothe, restore and nourish’. It has a mellow fruitfulness that makes you want to gulp it by the gallon.” Unlike Grace, he gave the cold roast-duck salad the thumbs-up as “light and lithe and lovely, with lots of crunch and bite, and a perfectly judged acidity”.
Tom also visited the new central London home of Crisp Pizza, having avoided the legendary Hammersmith original on the basis that a three-hour wait was “two hours and 55 minutes too long” for pizza.
He thoroughly approved of its new host venue, the Marlborough pub, freshly restored by the team behind the Devonshire. And did the pies live up to the hype? A resounding Yes: this was “exceptionally fine pizza, in the New York style but very much Crisp’s own creation. Meaning the base is crisp and crunchy, but never dry, the crust charred and splendidly brittle,” while the toppings were notable for “the sheer quality of the ingredients”.
*****
London Standard
David Ellis added his name to the fan club for Andrea Riva’s longstanding Italian spot, which has since 1990 seduced critics AA Gill and Fay Maschler, warblers Rod Stewart and Bryan Ferry, and gastrocelebs Rick Stein, Stanley Tucci and Simon Hopkinson.
The lavish greeting is part of the appeal and, noted David, “the clever thing is that newcomers are swiftly enveloped into the fold” – presumably he is talking about himself here.
But it’s not just about the atmosphere: “meals here are symphonies of simplicity”, David said, waxing lyrical over a plate of “astonishingly good langoustines”, some romanesco broccoli, and slices of richly spiced zampone sausages resting on lentils. “I have never eaten a bad mouthful here. Riva is Italian, only without the pizza, very little pasta, and tomato sauce hushed.”
*****
The Times
Giles Coren enjoyed a simple and rustic meal at a rather newer Italian outfit, while pointedly taking a side-swipe at such “hallowed examples of the 1980s/1990s London Italian restaurant boom as the River Cafe in Hammersmith and Riva in Barnes. Both so simple and rustic that you can eat in either for little more than a million quid a head.”
Casa Felicia, he said, “got everything right” from the outset – and at attractive prices: vitello tonnato was “a steal” at £17, while two “dreamy” pastas, spaghetti alla nerano and rigatoni carbonara, cost £18 and £19.
Giles could – perhaps should – have stopped eating there. The poached gurnard that followed “didn’t quite come off for me”, while his tiramisu “felt a little heavy, a little fridge-cold”.
*****
Financial Times
Rosi at the Beaumont, Mayfair; Maneki Ramen, Birmingham
Jay Rayner was thrilled by a retro-70s menu at the revamp of the Beaumont hotel’s former Colony Grill – pork pie, chipolatas with “British beer mustard”, seafood cocktail, steak served with onion rings, ice cream sundae to finish – hailing it as a “glorious northern insurgency” in Mayfair, “done with real panache” by chef Lisa Goodwin-Allen of Northcote in Lancashire in cahoots with fellow Lancastrian Stuart Procter, the hotel’s general manager.
The performance piece was the chicken Kyiv, “which comes with hillocks of buttery mash topped with white truffle, a choice of bone-handled steak knife, and a thick, black leather tabard” – this last ostensibly to guard against garlic butter splash-back, but to Jay’s mind “hilariously kinky”.
Jay also trod carefully into what he described as the nerdy world of ramen – where devotees fret over such details as broth viscosity and noodle bite, and whose most interesting examples in the UK are outside London. Among them is western-trained chef Pete Dovaston, who has Maneki Ramen operations in Worcester and now Birmingham.
His ramen bowls are “mostly very good” and “take the essentials seriously”, Jay reckoned. But “what makes the place sing is the quality of the dishes at either end of the meal”: smashed cucumber, squares of pork belly and battered chicken wings all show real attention to detail, while desserts are “a set of cartwheels and backflips”.
