Our round-up of what the nation’s restaurant reviewers were writing about in the week up to 18th January 2026
The Guardian
The first critic into print on Clare Smyth’s snazzy bistro, Grace Dent‘s appreciation of the Northern Ireland-born chef’s upmarket take on comfort food (complete with a potato menu and a Hibernian tiramisu flavoured with Jameson’s whiskey) was undermined by the relentless soundtrack of “British dad rock” that accompanied her meal, from Status Quo and the Stones to Clapton and Oasis.
Pitched as a cheaper alternative to Smyth’s flagship Core, where the seven-course tasting menu comes in at £265 per person, Corenucopia is still extremely expensive, Grace noted. A crispy veal sweetbread starter costs £32, Dover sole and chips or turbot with vin jaune sauce £52 and £64 respectively, and a single profiterole with Tahitian vanilla cream filling £22.
That said, the food is “a delight. This is cosseting, decadent, calories-be-damned cooking. Grilled olives on skewers with eel and timut pepper? Absolute bliss. An ornate smoked salmon paté topped with dill jelly and served with mini buttered crumpets? Wonderful.”
*****
London Standard
David Ellis was impressed, but not enraptured, by a new neighbourhood bistro in Putney from Callum Ross (ex-Forza Wine) and Ed Baillieu (founding head chef at The Hero in Maida Vale), with a “soothingly straightforward” menu of duck terrine, beef tartare, steak of the day, lemon tart and chocolate mousse. As at Corenucopia (see above), the experience was again marred by background music, in this case of the Berlin nightclub variety, so loud that “we didn’t make a single order without it being misheard.”
“Still, we ate well, at fair prices,” David reports. “You’d think this was par for the course but, well, have you been out lately?” The standout item was oysters on ice accompanied by chipolatas brushed with wholegrain mustard that felt “distinct. Playful. Unusual for London. A bottle of fruity white, a dozen oysters and a handful of sausages could make a beautiful winter lunch.”
Awarding Ruth’s a measley three stars out of five, David admitted that he would not cross town to eat there – not because of any shortfall in its quality, but because half-a-dozen places elsewhere are doing much the same thing.
*****
The Times & Sunday Times
Giles Coren ate an entire week’s worth of 30 veg varieties in one lunch at a health-conscious restaurant that describes itself as “chef-driven” and “plant-forward” – Hg stands for Honest Greens, he stressed, not the dangerous element mercury – although “shareholder-driven” would probably be more accurate given that the menu is a fixed roster of “market plates” and “garden bowls” that is “as far as I can tell, the same all over Europe”.
Giles merrily mocked the virtuous slogans on the wall – “EAT LIKE YOUR ANCESTORS. What? Barely once a day if I’m lucky, glatt kosher, basically just bony lake fish, turnips and moss? Wahay” – while agreeing with the basic premise that we should all eat huge plates of fibrous greens, nuts, seeds and legumes, plus small portions of protein.
As for the flavours… well, apart from the fresh hot falafels and the tahini sauce, Giles’s food was “minging”: “the seven-leaf salad felt like standard bagged stuff to garnish a dull pub sandwich”, while his mushroom risotto “tasted of nothing at all, just a big pat of wet carpet”. Esther, Mrs Coren, though, was most partial to her “Latin Lover with extra beef” (cue much sniggering from Giles).
***
Charlotte Ivers sampled both the New York Italian-inspired spots opened by Martin Kucsmarski within five weeks of each other before Christmas – Martino’s in Sloane Square, which she loved just as much as all the other critics have, and Dover Street Counter, which she loved just a bit more.
Everything here was wonderful, she said – a tribute to Kucsmarski’s “astonishing attention to detail… if you ponder over your martini for too long and the glass begins to thaw, the bartender will tip the drink into a new, chilled one.” More than that – more than good food and drinks – the place has what Jeremy King calls “The Fun. Everything else is secondary to that.”
And in a week when background music has taken a pounding, Charlotte approved of the exclusively Nineties and Noughties hip-hop soundtrack at Dover Street Counter – not so much Dad rock as “nice Jewish boy[friend] from the suburbs once again transported to his teenage reveries of running the mean streets of Baltimore”.
*****
Financial Times
Jay Rayner took a mixed view of Amy Poon’s revival of the family restaurant name, in a “beautiful space” in Somerset House that “reflects the elegance of Amy herself”, though to Jay it felt “like a Chinese restaurant for people who don’t always feel comfortable in Chinese restaurants”.
The food offering, unfortunately, was “as uneven as a cobbled track”, featuring both “great highs and thudding lows”. The highs included a whole steamed seabass which was “an expert piece of fresh and pearly fish cookery”, plus silky-skinned wontons, toasty chili paste and wind-dried meats that were in effect a “brand extension” of Amy’s mail-order business.
The lows ranged from “weirdly tasteless [and] extremely expensive” prawn toast, “sad, limp and lifeless” roast duck salad, and a dessert featuring “two shamefully bad pieces of mottled and fibrous mango”, to – possibly worst of all – a total absence of stir fries which left the restaurant feeling “like a joke without a punchline” (“perhaps”, Jay offered by way of excuse, “the problem is the building, where naked flame is banned)”.
*****
Daily Mail
Tom Parker Bowles was converted to the “throatily spicy, but utterly divine” flavours of Nepalese cooking at a restaurant owned by ex-Gurkha Tej Tamnag near the base of the First Battalion, Royal Gurkha Rifles, “one of the bravest and most formidable fighting forces on earth”.
He sampled a meal of thukpas and thalis, sekuwa, sandeko and chaats, most of which he had never tasted before but which struck him as a “joyous riot of tastes and textures” – “food to make the senses whoop, each bite a heady, intricately spiced revelation”.
Momo, “those famous dumplings that were probably born in Tibet, but grew up very much Nepalese”, are made fresh every day, the pastry neither too dense nor too thin. “You can get both fried and steamed versions. They are all immense. We order more to take away.”
*****
Daily Telegraph
Also on the south coast, William Sitwell was full of praise for Ryan Jacovides’s warm and beautifully lighted restaurant which, along with the stylish London & Paris Hotel nearby, is “doing [its] best to smarten up this ancient coastal town on the English Channel”.
The menu at Pomus takes culinary inspiration from across the globe, with touches of France and Spain as well as glimpses of Asia and Africa – “quite reasonably, just lots of tasty stuff that the owner and chef reckon will keep your taste buds alert while you pile on through an interesting wine list”.
The only fault William found was that some of the spicier dishes – marinated courgettes, chicken hearts in peri peri sauce, cassoulet – would have benefitted from a stronger kick. His dish of the night was a beautifully cooked plaice “in a rich buttery sauce, strewn with samphire and cockles”.
