Our round-up of what the nations restaurant critics were writing about in the week to 16th November 2025
The Guardian
2210 by Natty Can Cook, Herne Hill
Grace Dent enjoyed one of her best meals of the year at an “utterly classy” take on Caribbean cuisine from Nathaniel Mortley, a chef who worked at Oblix and Jason Atherton’s City Social before serving time in nearby HMP Brixton, where he “asked himself some big questions about how he’d ended up locked in a cell”.
The restaurant “isn’t by any standards cheap”, with starters at about £12 and mains around the £30 mark, but Grace was mightily impressed by the attention to detail in a menu offering the likes of confit pork belly with scotch bonnet mayo, lobster rasta pasta and carrot and plantain bhajis.
Highlights included a plate of thin, crisp roti served with a highly addictive scotch bonnet butter dip – “one shouldn’t drink butter, but in this instance it’s excusable”; an ackee and saltfish spring roll; elegantly flavoured jerk chicken; and seared pimento duck breast served with confit duck leg croquette and pumpkin puree.
*****
The Observer
Chitra Ramaswamy liked her lunch so much that she returned the next day for breakfast at this “one-off” café in a “great barn of a building” in the shadow of the Cuillin Mountains, on the well-trodden road to Talisker whisky distillery a couple of miles away.
Clare Coghill, the owner and self-taught chef, opened her first version 600 miles away in Hackney, returning during Covid to her native Skye, where she presents a seasonal menu of “elevated” café food such as langoustines caught that morning from Loch Harport. “Best of all? Jerusalem artichoke, pear and fennel seed soup. Sweet, nutty, and unforgettably good.” A stock pot in the kitchen roils away with the week’s discarded veg and peelings as a base for the daily changing soups. “What toothsome sorcery comes out of that frugal island cauldron.”
As for breakfast: “bright orange chanterelles gathered that morning from Skye’s sparse clumps of forest on note-perfect sourdough. Basically, take Skye in autumn, transfer contents to a plate, and gorge like Proust on the disappearance of time.”
*****
London Standard
David Ellis was puzzled – and deeply disappointed – by a lunch in the Beaumont hotel’s new restaurant from chef Lisa Goodwin-Allen that was “expensive”, at £230 for an alcohol-free meal for two without pudding.
“The problem with charging lots of money,” he said, “is that guests do have to get something in return. Fair’s fair. At Rosi, it’s not eminently clear what that is: the restaurant is dull to the point of vagueness. I could not tell you who it is for, what it is like or what its intentions are.”
The food seems “lost” – billed as ‘modern British’, it consists of trad dishes such as ‘old-fashioned pork pie, calves’ liver with bacon, and chicken (not steak) Diane, all unsuccessfully modernised, alongside those “dreaded hotel restaurant concessions, pasta and pizza to appease picky guests”.
On the credit side, beef tartare prepared tableside and hash brown bites were delicious, while service was “as good as any in London — attentive but not cramping”.
*****
The Times & Sunday Times
Giles Coren echoed David’s putdown in an even more damning review.
“Week after week I try to persuade you that such and such a wonderful place has to charge this sort of money because of what it costs to run a restaurant nowadays. But none of them takes the mickey quite like this. And none of them does it on such poor, poor cooking. I was, frankly, flabbergasted. Stay away, my friends. Stay well away.”
***
Charlotte Ivers headed to a two-up, two-down terrace on the high street of an old mill town in the Peak District, half an hour east of Manchester, where self-taught chef Luke Payne has created an “incredibly chic” little restaurant and cocktail bar on a shoestring budget, and serves food that is “knockout. Really top tier”.
Spiced mutton chop, from an animal reared and slaughtered nearby, came with pease pudding and spicy chermoula, in “a clever mix of tradition and innovation, local and exotic”. Also excellent were roasted whole carrots with ‘German garnish’, potatoes with garlic and anchovy bread sauce, the “best possible version” of duck leg with lentils, and dark chocolate sorbet drizzled with olive oil and salt – again, better than versions you’ll find elsewhere, “colder, smoother, lighter”.
“It’s a triumph of a dessert,” Charlotte concluded. “This is a triumph of a restaurant.”
*****
Daily Mail
Tom Parker Bowles was impressed by the lavish fit-out – “cash has certainly been splashed” – the muted acoustics and the high-grade Japanese cuisine at this new Soho hangout.
The sashimi and nigiri sushi – “pearlescent scallop, sweet as a first kiss, and three different cuts of tuna” – were “up there with the very best in town, no doubt about that”. Sardine tempura, “the light, burnished batter worn like a diaphanous silk slip”, beef tongue skewer, and whole bream in an intense langoustine sauce were all excellent, too. The only disappointment was a strange, rather slimy chicken and blood sausage tsukune.
Each dish was delivered to the table by head chef Nick Tannett, who was charming but his “interminable” spiel about each dish and its ingredients meant that any conversation was endlessly interrupted. “It’s a bore,” Tom admonished. “When the cooking’s this good, just bring us the bloody food.”
*****
Daily Telegraph
William Sitwell vowed never to eat Mexican food again after visiting a “hole in the wall” restaurant where he could not warm to the indistinct purées and heavy-handed use of hot sauce in the nation’s cuisine.
“If the world moves for you when someone says the words enchilada, burrito or chilaquiles, charge to Perro. Maybe they’ll forgive me for leaving the place and vowing never to eat Mexican food again.”
*****
Financial Times
Some people like hot spice though – and one of them is Jay Rayner, who tracked down a fine example of the highly spiced regional Chinese cuisine he adores, at a “mildly scuffed” venue in Surrey Quays whose name (spelt American-style) gives a clue to its culinary approach.
Directed by chef Tao Xu, formerly of Sichuan specialist Barshu in Soho, Fiery Flavors offers a mix of regional styles, but Jay advised diners to “embrace the opportunity” of sampling the rare delights of Hunan cuisine, with its emphasis on “pickling, curing and smoking”. Whether you choose chicken, pork, or perhaps fish head with pickled chillies and noodles, you find yourself “eating in a vivid Technicolor to match the pictures on the menu”.
But Jay warned: “Just as anyone who doesn’t like musicals shouldn’t go to see Les Miserables, on account of all the damn singing, those who don’t like spicy food shouldn’t come here for dinner.“ Perhaps William should give this place a swerve.
