Our round-up of what the nation’s restaurant critics were writing about in the week to 14th September 2025
The Times
Giles Coren was the first of the critics into print on the merits of Spanish chef Nieves Barragan’s eagerly anticipated follow-up to her phenomenally successful Sabor. His verdict: “Legado is set fair to be the big hit of winter 2025.”
The stand-out plate for Giles was milk-fed baby lamb, slow-cooked with just a little salt and water, which matched a dish he ate 24 years ago at El Soportal in Padraza, an hour’s drive from Madrid – a “formative dining experience” that is now his benchmark for restaurants.
“I have never even seen such a dish on a menu in England. Not until yesterday,” he said, and Legado’s “amazing” version passed the test: “Truly, you need nothing else in your afternoon (or your life) except something green and a glass of wine.”
With a trio of mates (including Gary Lineker, eating his first lunch out on a Saturday during the football season for 25 years) Giles worked his way through “a million” other courses including more lamb in the shape of both breaded sweetbreads on orzo and kidneys, “the best gazpacho I’ve had this summer”, the ‘Legado sandwich’ (chard filled with cecina and smoked cheese, breadcrumbed and fried), pig trotters with romesco sauce, and a “historic” crema Catalana. There were just a couple of fails along the way: brioche was “stodgy”, deep-fried piglet’s head “really a bit much”, and chocolate cheesecake merely “meh”.
*****
London Standard
David Ellis, pipped to the post by Giles, was more reserved in his praise for Nieves Barragan’s latest, declaring it “a triumph waiting in the wings” after a meal consumed at “the best seats, in front of the kitchen at the 16-seat counter, a wooden bar with its front carved like the fluttering tail of a kite”.
He enjoyed grilled piparra peppers “as long and curling as winklepickers (squat padróns are creepers)”, a mini “three-sip” cocktail – “the tomato and gin is a beautiful, savoury thing” – and a suckling pig worth “five stars for the skin alone”.
But his meal was “not perfect”: pig trotter came with a “bloodless” romesco; orzo with sweetbreads “offered nothing but garlic”; jamón dashi with mackerel meatballs “felt like it belonged to another dish”. Still, he’ll be back to work his way through much else that he fancied on the “mad” menu: quail, rabbit shoulder, squid stuffed with prawn and girolle mushrooms to name a few.
*****
Financial Times
Punjabi food was another theme this week, with Jay Rayner heading at the behest of Jikoni founder Ravinder Bhogal to a Southall restaurant (the name means ‘Our Punjab’) that serves the “best Amritsari kulchas”, a tandoori-baked flaky bread stuffed with spiced mashed potato and served drenched in garlicky, herby ghee. “It truly is a marvel”, drooled Jay, “one of Greater London’s greater dishes.”
The restaurant consists of a narrow dining room with room for just 20 guests and a wall lined with photographs of chef Inder Mehemi with the Bollywood film stars he has fed on their trips to London: “That’s the real story here. In its own world this small, unassuming restaurant is a very big thing.”
The long menu has Nepalese-style momos and Indo-Chinese dishes labelled ‘Manchurian’, but the “real action” is with Punjabi dishes such as “khasta” (a crisp samosa); a mixed grill of chicken and lamb chops that have been “treated with uncommon care and attention, verging on the subtle”; and slow-cooked black-and-yellow lentil “Dhaba” daal, finished with hunks of cold butter.
*****
The Observer
Grilled by Ajay Kumar, Glasgow
Chitra Ramaswamy, adding an occasional review for the Observer to her regular slot with The Times in Scotland, visited the latest opening from a Glasgow “curry king” who grew up in Punjab and opened Glasgow’s game-changing Swadish in 2019. Kumar, she said, “is the only South Asian chef north of the border I’ve heard raving about the country’s bountiful larder, taking pride in cooking with Shetland mussels, Loch Fyne scallops, roe deer from the Ardverikie estate and lamb from East Dunbartonshire”.
His new Grill has its disappointments: a naff 1990s interior and music (“does anyone want their chicken tikka to come with a side of Rhythm is a Dancer?”); no open kitchen for visual theatre and geeky chat; and a grill menu that is too concise – although on the credit side there are three different chicken tikkas on offer.
The cooking is brilliant, though, and “sings with flavour, story and integrity”. Highlights are tandoori chicken tikka that is “wonderful… duly scorched at its gnarly, warmly spiced extremities, and left moist and pearlescent in the middle”; and “divine” blackened lamb chops on a skewer that come with “slurpable” rogan josh served as a sauce on the side.
*****
The Guardian
Grace Dent had a puzzling lunch at a large, semi-formal restaurant attached to a natural wine vineyard in “breathtakingly pretty countryside” near the Romney Marshes. Doubts set in early, with “stale focaccia” that had clearly been cooked the previous day and citrus-cured halibut that lacked “zing”, while the “amateur-hour” service made no mention of the wines being made on site.
This was a pity because there was some “great cooking” displayed in the main dishes. “Lobster linguine came topped with half a native lobster, with a good, rich, slightly piquant, glossy tomato sauce, [and was] impossible not to love.” A lamb dish was “complex”, while a “nicely cooked skate wing with brown shrimp sported a delightful beurre noisette.”
“This is a restaurant that seems to be currently working to a fraction of its potential”– a view confirmed by Grace’s dessert, a cheesecake that was clearly pre-made, with a base of digestive biscuits.
*****
The Sunday Times
Charlotte Ivers found the new restaurant at the Francis Hotel – where chef David Hazell cooks over charcoal in an open kitchen – “camp, elegant and a little bit fun”, and its food “better than it needs to be”.
The chargrilled padron peppers were “some of the best I’ve ever had”, while burrata and tomato salad with pumpkin seed pesto was the “standout of the meal”, despite her habitual burrata indifference.
“We leave feeling as if we’ve just had a rather chintzy treat — like tea at the Ritz or cocktail hour at the house of a glamorous aunt.”
*****
Daily Mail
Tom Parker Bowles welcomed an “instant neighbourhood star” from his “old friend” Angela Hartnett, the fourth Cafe Murano and “to my mind the best yet” – with a dining room dominated by a portrait of her Jack Russells Alfie and Betty and “the sort of contented hubbub that is born, not made”.
Lamb and pea arancini were very much to Tom’s taste, while the tomato risotto was “magnificent”, even “historic”. “But it’s the rigatoni that is best of all, the fennel sausage specially made for the restaurant, heavy on the spice. Dear god, they’re good – so good, in fact, that we order another large plate”.
*****
Daily Telegraph
William Sitwell enjoyed a “multitudinous, glorious lunch” at a new restaurant from the family behind London’s longstanding Patara quartet – this one from Parama “Nam” Raiva, whose her aunt Khun Patara Sila-On founded the group.
“Platapian is utterly, delectably, mouth-wateringly, sweat-inducingly, taste-bud-explodingly fabulous,” William gushed, singling out for praise a “heavenly surf-and-turf combo” of stuffed snub-nose chilli with chicken and shrimp.
He enjoys teasing vegetarians, and slipped in a little quip as he extolled a plate of crispy chicken skin: “if I were a chicken, I’d be lining up to demand this destiny.”
