Our weekly round-up of what the nation’s restaurant critics were writing about in the week up to 18th May 2025
London Standard
The first reviews have been published for Claude Bosi’s highly anticipated follow-up to last year’s smash hit Josephine Bouchon – and so far, it’s a split decision.
David Ellis was unconvinced by it, declaring that the new place “looks good, but is light on feeling; Café Rouge with a bit of lippy on”. Noting that the Lyonnais ‘bouchon’ (a traditional restaurant for the city’s silk-weavers) has been dropped from the name, David felt the “heart” of the original was also missing (even if the cooking was generally “okay”).
“This is the first step of Bosi following the money. And fair’s fair, it would have been remiss of him not to. The man already has credentials … so why not chase the cash? This is a chain waiting to happen. It will not have escaped Bosi’s attention that the Ivy group is on the market, yours for a billion quid.”
*****
The Times & Sunday Times
Giles Coren agreed with David (see above) that Claude Bosi’s Marylebone opening heralds the launch of a new chain, but took a very different view of it. “I think it’s marvellous news. The more of these precious pearls that can be strung together across Britain the better. God, how they could use a couple up north. And out west. And down south. And right here.”
He heaped praise on its “great cooking, serious staff, top-class looks and real personality. Which is why it is going to be such a terrific chain, possibly the best we have ever had. And it is going to be a chain, so don’t bother saying it’s not. I would even go so far as to say that it already is one, if a chain can have only two links, and I don’t see why it can’t.
Giles also noted that the word “bouchon” has now been quietly dropped from the Chelsea original, so both describe themselves as ‘bistros’: “The differences between the two menus are small, by the way. The new bistro is a little more Parisian than the former.”
***
Chitra Ramaswamy revisited Finnieston’s “ur-example” of the casual restaurant – the sort of place that is “universally loved” and sets the trends others follow. Ox and Finch opened 10 years ago as the debut from the Scoff group (which now has Ka Pao, Margo and Sebb’s to its name), and has reopened after a six-month refurb with a “talented” head chef in Craig Nelson (returning to the kitchen after a stint at The Ledbury in London), and “a brand-new, smoking hot, soon to be replicated up and down the country, menu”.
Its best plate is cod on wild garlic salsa verde “with hen of the wood mushrooms that have been compressed and dressed in some sort of umami vinegary sorcery to make them taste like the mushroomiest mushroom of your life… I can’t stop thinking about this dish. I’m obsessed.”
“What a perfect restaurant,” Chitra concluded. “What a comeback. Bring on the next ten years.”
*****
The Guardian
Grace Dent acknowledged that the launch gambit of this “hidden” upstairs pub – opening by invitation only to celebs and Notting Hill trustafarians – was a red rag to the Guardian readership, and she joined in the class war by taking a pop at her fellow diners as “huddles of posh, thin, joyless women discussing society wedding calendars”.
She also noted with wry amusement the emergence of a new breed of London pubs – the Hero at Maida Vale, the Devonshire, the Knave of Clubs and now the Fat Badger – that are “selling gen Y the concept of ‘going to the pub’ as if it were a deliciously edgy, new thing. People mill around, drink booze and talk! In real life! All the glorious grot that was once so commonplace is being rebranded as the epitome of decadence.”
Having got these gripes merrily off her chest, Grace thoroughly enjoyed her £85 set four-course dinner from an ex-River Café chef. “If the Fat Badger has gained an early reputation as something of a party palace for the Notting Hill set, that sells the cooking here very short. The scallop was seared yet still yieldingly soft and the peas tasted as if they’d only just left their pods. Produce here clearly comes first.”
*****
Daily Mail
Tom Parker Bowles wanted to love this family-run Japanese with “utterly charming” service, sibling to Sakuras in Southampton and Portsmouth. Sadly, the cooking made that impossible.
Things began well enough with prawns in “gossamer-light” tempura, “the best I’ve eaten for months”, but soon “descended swiftly into mediocrity, with a dreary, claggy mess of tuna and salmon, piled into a cheap, hard taco shell”. Sukiyaki was a “dull, homogeneous bore”, while “unagi-don is worse, the eel flabby and muddy-tasting”.
“With a little work, Konjiki could be a really decent local Japanese. Let’s hope it’s just teething problems, and the best is yet to come.”
*****
Daily Telegraph
Tom Brown at the Capital, Knightsbridge
William Sitwell stuck his boot gleefully into a plush hotel restaurant he characterised as a “monument to the dull and misconceived”.
Undressed salad leaves were “a waste of the toil of cultivation and a spot on God’s earth”. Fish ‘charcuterie’ was “horrid”, “rank”, “fishy mush which looked like squashed goldfish and smelt like the stuff you feed them with”. A chocolate, caper and olive oil pudding “was just that – a flavour combo so offensive it should be banned under the Geneva Convention”.
William’s best line? “Undercooked white asparagus looked like a dead man’s protuberance – and it wouldn’t suit a morgue let alone this dining room”.
*****
Financial Times
Jay Rayner suffered from “cultural whiplash” as he sat in the bar of this revamped pub, with football on the huge flatscreen TV and a menu of own-brand caviar costing £280 for 125g. “What in god’s name is the Prince Arthur trying to be?” he wondered.
“The issue isn’t the food,” Jay emphasised. Basque-born chef Adam Iglesias, formerly of Brat, “has a live fire grill and knows how to use it” on top-class ingredients. “The problem is context. The Prince Arthur is a beaky sliver of a corner pub”, where the waiter’s explanation of the “concept behind the menu” boils down to the single, capitalized word “CAVIAR”.
“Is this a restaurant to which I would return to spend my own money? The honest answer is no.”
