Our round-up of what the nation’s restaurant critics were writing about in the week up to 18th October 2026
Financial Times
Jay Rayner dropped into one of the half-dozen handroll bars that have opened within a couple of hundred metres of Piccadilly Circus in recent months, where he enjoyed “one of those dinners which makes you feel like you’ve stumbled upon a gem”.
Founder Eliott Grabli is “a Frenchman who worked in finance, finding backing for restaurants until he realised he wanted to swap sides and run one of his own”. You sit at the counter watching the chef as he carefully fashions your chosen roll, which he then passes directly to your hand – a ritual that “feels especially intense” to Jay.
“The nori has a satisfying crack that gives way to the soft, slightly warm cushion of rice upon which everything else is heaped.” Other dishes include a scallop “the size of a baby’s fist”, sliced thin, squeezed in a tortilla press, then dressed with chilli paste, toasted garlic and sesame oil. “The dish is so good we order it twice.”
*****
The Guardian
Grace Dent found nice things to say about a New York import that has been lambasted by her fellow critics for the second time in a month, this time making what she admitted was a “plaintive case” for a cult NYC ‘gastrotheque’ that has failed once before in London (Notting Hill, 2020-24) and which was empty when she visited for lunch.
“It’s actually rather lovely,” Grace insisted: a “cute red frontage gives way to something heartstoppingly pretty inside: marble-topped tables, bentwood chairs, a zinc bar, good-looking, chipper staff.” The set lunch is “ridiculous value” at £23 for classic French food that “won’t scare the horses” (croissants, crocques monsieurs, grilled salmon with beetroot salad, mousse au chocolat).
“And maybe that’s Buvette’s problem. It’s so coy and cool that it scares away the normals, but it’s not cool enough to ensnare foodies who’d rather be chucking money at Fergus Henderson’s wine bar just across the way.” Perhaps, Grace suggested, it should reposition itself as a handy pit stop – much like Café Rouge, which traded successfully for years – rather than a backdrop for Instagram.
*****
The Observer
Tanya Gold found much to her liking at a Lebanese restaurant that has taken over a former bank building in a London district, Notting Hill, whose allure she has never understood.
Very fresh hummus, meat kibbeh of ground lamb and beef, and arayes kafta – minced lamb with cinnamon and Lebanese seven-spice wrapped in flatbread and sliced into spirals – were all “very fine”, and very filling.
So much so that she could barely manage a “wondrous dish” of spiced chicken with rice, part-steamed, part roasted in a celery, onion and chicken stock, with roasted cashews and almonds. But at least she could enjoy the gases it gave off: “I think no cuisine smells quite as good as this, except Thai possibly.”
*****
The Times & Sunday Times
Cloth Cornhill, City of London
Giles Coren thoroughly approved of this rebooting of 370-year-old Simpson’s Tavern, a legendary City chop-house, by the accomplished team behind Cloth in Smithfield, who have managed to improve on the original.
“Some people will be furious it’s not simple and honest and Cockney. But most will be delighted,” Giles reckoned.
The beautifully restored interiors and seating are now more comfortable than hitherto, and the whole joint is “jumping like never before”, with “a lovely sense of a big old party just getting started”. And “the food is much better” too, as if in a Dickens revival Scrooge was treated to a dry martini, devils on horseback, and a lovely lemon sole.
***
Gordon Ramsay at Sea Containers, Southwark
Camilla Long found the latest restaurant in a hotel from Gordon Ramsay to be a “proper kitchen nightmare”, and raised doubts about whether the chef had ever set foot in the space.
Ramsay managed to escape the scrutiny he famously hands out to other restaurants, she said, leaving his own multiple mid-market restaurants somehow “beneath rational criticism”. But her meal in this this vast, hangar-like restaurant left her “full of impatience, scorn and anger” (just like his) at the “inchoate nothingness” she encountered: the “bored sexy contemporary” ambience, the unengaged staff, and the overpriced, drab ingredients.
As for the food, “the nicest thing we eat” – yellowtail crudo served with pink grapefruit and jalapeño – was no more than a “plain dish of thinly sliced fish, garnished with herbs and chilies”. And the worst: undercooked chips – the kitchen could not even manage “a decent chip”.
*****
London Standard
Alasdair Gill, a chef himself and the son of late Sunday Times restaurant critic Adrian (AA) Gill, visited Elliot Kaye’s follow-up to Norman’s Café in Archway, which closed a year ago, and found himself worrying about its billing as a ‘cocktail-led fusion restaurant’ – “fusion is usually a one-night gimmick, something you try once and leave with a renewed appreciation for the original”.
Marrion’s fusion is between French bistro and American diner, “which at least feels a little more plausible”, and Alasdair found that the place “grew on me”, with dishes like moules-frites “as they should be”, and a cheeseburger “best described as how you’d expect an elderly Parisian to tart up a Big Mac. It retains the indecent nostalgia.”
The key to Marrion’s success, Alasdair felt, was the “restraint” with which it goes about fusing cuisines, which meant it avoided becoming “a restaurant about its own concept”.
*****
Daily Mail
Tom Parker Bowles had his high expectations triumphantly met at this “new Soho sort-of-Turkish mangal” from the “heaven-sent” pairing of David Carter, “an exceptional restaurateur and a man not overly concerned with ‘authenticity’”, and chef Sertaç Dirik, the man behind Dalston’s Mangal II.
“Service is sublime” and the starters proclaimed “food in glorious technicolour”, from lustily spiced and complex bluefin tuna ‘ezme’, to içli köfte, fist-sized beef mince dumplings “with a mighty, basso profundo roar”.
“Then comes the slow-cooked shoulder of kid, braised overnight in a clay pot with fig leaf, all spoon-soft meat and crisp burnished skin, the freekeh soaking up all those luscious juices. This is a dish of quiet majesty, the soaring high point of an already outstanding lunch.”
*****
Daily Telegraph
William Sitwell had a pretty miserable time at a Victorian village inn refurbished to an “off-the-shelf pub design – an AI rendering of clean and mismatched furniture”, with a dining room that “has all the charm of a new-build cafeteria at an old folks’ home – assisted-living chic”.
The menu aims at “finessed gastropub” food with dishes from around the world, which looked appetising enough but “in delivery lack punch”.
The highlights were the starters, sesame prawn toast combining good crunch and softness, and “delightful” beef brisket empanadas. Of the main courses, prawns were “a touch overcooked”, while a well-cooked piece of cod was drowned in a “vast and overwhelming pond” of orange romesco sauce.
