Our round-up of what the nation’s restaurant critics were writing about in the week up to 8th July 2025
London Standard
David Ellis has revised his opinion of a live-fire grill restaurant he dismissed on his first visit three years, declaring after a couple of recent meals that its B-movie “cult” branding, dubious location down an unmarked alley, and the fearsome appearance of bearded and inked founder Andrew Clarke added up to a misleading front.
Clarke “looks like the chef for a motorcycle gang who might also knock out Pantera covers on the weekends. His are tattoos on a teddy bear: he is among the most thoughtful, considerate chefs I’ve met.” Vegans, vegetarians, pescatarians and those on gluten-free diets are well looked after here.
Yes, David’s pork chop was “gorgeous”, but it was the fermented pumpkin hummus that was “revelatory”, while Marmite bread topped with pecorino and flooded with Acme’s homemade Marmite, made using leftover yeast from the 40ft Brewery next door, was “a triumph of umami”.
*****
The Guardian
Grace Dent headed to a new Parisian-inspired wine bar close to Carnaby’s dreaded Kingly Court with the lowest of expectations – and was delighted to find herself in a basement with a kitchen presided over by a “brilliant” chef in Giacomo Peretti, formerly of Le Gavroche, Temper, Firebird and the Culpeper.
“Surprise! This is actually, and quite unexpectedly, a restaurant with serious food; in fact, it might well be the most earnest, accomplished, imaginative food being served in this square mile right now.”
Some of the dishes sounded strange, even off-putting, but all were “truly, madly good”: among them, “gooey chicken liver ‘rocher’ – think rich, nutty, nibblable savoury Ferrero Rocher”; a “delicate and rather bizarre lamb tartare dotted with spring vegetables, goat’s cheese and a tiny fresh strawberry”; “a bowl of escargots with seaweed in a silky pinewood cream”; “a stinky, slightly warm piece of runny brie de Meaux served with lush fresh apricot”; and “tempura courgette, almost like cigars to look at, dotted with trout roe and rouille”.
*****
The Times & Sunday Times
Giles Coren beat a familiar path to a foodie corner of Somerset, to find himself in “a magnificent sort of steampunk Italian wood-fired kitchen” – part of the Artfarm hospitality outfit from global art dealers Hauser + Wirth – serving local produce from Durslade Farm and surrounding land and waters.
“The cooking is not ambitious, but it’s pretty good,” Giles thought – although the prices were pretty high for what was deliberately peasant food, such as canerdeli bread dumplings. He also felt the kitchen was a little heavy-handed with the salt in a couple of dishes, a pea and pancetta risotto and the Veneto classic bigoli in salsa.
***
Chitra Ramaswamy’s visit to this classic French bistro was a “joyous reminder” why we should not abandon classic institutions in chasing the thrill of the new. It was founded 16 years ago in Ediburgh’s New Town by chef-patron Fred Berkmiller, from the Loire Valley, and his wife Betty, who makes a “formidable and warm” maître d’.
“The munificent prix fixe — three courses for £65 — consists of all the right things: grilled snails, terrine with Armagnac, hake brandade, cockerel roulade, beef bourguignon. A vegan’s nightmare, true, but this is hearty, rustic French cooking we’re talking about.”
If neither the beouf bourguignon nor the shorthorn sirloin steak were as “meltingly soft” as Chitra might have hoped, the accompanying dauphinoise was “superlative, flawless, all the words for perfect”, while dessert was “the best course of all: a rich dark ingot of chocolate nemesis and île flottante — a towering block of airily soft meringue in surrounds of impeccable crème anglaise, rained on by flaked almonds.”
***
Charlotte Ivers headed to southwest London, where a local neighbourhood restaurant had been recommended by a colleague. Her meal left her in pretty thorough agreement.
The cooking had “all sorts of clever hints of Asian fusion, but none of them too ostentatious”. A shrimp burger was “a little too pub lunch for me, a starchy mush of white bread and breadcrumbs padding out the prawn patty. The lighter dishes are much smarter, more highbrow.”
The clincher, though, came at the end of the meal, when “some tiny, paperlight chocolate cream tarts arrive — courtesy of the chef and, as far as I can tell, off menu. I think every table got some that evening: one of those little touches that make you want to become a regular.”
*****
Daily Telegraph
Lore of the Sky, Compton Abbas, Dorset
William Sitwell visited the new restaurant from film director Guy Ritchie, a Texas-style smokehouse at an airfield near Salisbury that is the country counterpart to his Fitzrovia pub Lore of the Land. Unfortunately, William ate his “foulest lunch of the year” – and gave the place a lock, stock and two smoking barrels of a review.
His booking was misplaced, his table was dirty, and the kitchen ran out of both pulled pork and pork belly burnt ends – “Yes, a Texas-style smokehouse runs out of pig. It’s like Big Ben losing its bells or Margaret Thatcher without a handbag.” Nachos were “a splattered mess of stuff”; chicken was “like Epsom in winter – firm, too hard for this pony”; pulled beef was “dismal”; and the chips, Caesar salad sauce, croutons and ice cream were all, William reckoned, “bought in”.
“They call this dirty food. I’d say it was just filthy.”
*****
Financial 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.
*****
The Spectator
Tanya Gold was another critic to welcome this new arrival, singling out the sheer enthusiasm of the place: “it is so ebullient and desirous of being loved that it is impossible not to love it back”. Cue a couple of fittingly theatrical metaphors: “It is Judy Garland before the drugs won out and Max Bialystock of The Producers before he lost the pearl in his cravat pin and fell to shagging little old ladies to fund bad plays.”
