On a prime site for Soho people-watching (the former Boheme Kitchen & Bar, RIP), a bar/diner in inevitable Brooklyn style, offering decent bites and drink, rather swiftly. As a money-making machine, you have to admire this Soho newcomer – the former Boheme Kitchen & Bar site, given the full Brooklyn-Distressed look, and turned into an […]
A Berni Inn for our times; in the heart of Theatreland, an inoffensive midmarket steakhouse – a useful enough place, but we couldn’t really see it as becoming any sort of ‘destination’. How many things can you forget when you open a new West End restaurant? OK, let’s rephrase the question, how many things would […]
On the elegant former site of the Notting Hill Brasserie, a French/Spanish/Portuguese establishment which looks set, like its predecessor was for a time, to become a ‘destination’, albeit of an informal type. This new Notting Hill restaurant is backed by venture capital money. And we all know what VCs want, don’t we? ‘Formula’, ‘roll-out” the […]
On the former Kensington site of Timo (RIP), a new mid-range Italian of some ambition; there were some real highlights on our early-days visit, but many aspects of the operation were still very much in need of ‘tightening up’. Celebrating a birthday, we headed to this new Kensington Italian whose charms – of cuisine, if […]
On the 33rd floor of the Shard, an ambitious Chinese restaurant that was still giving a slight impression of settling in on our visit; we had an enjoyable lunch, though, and prices are not unreasonable, considering. It used to be easy. High-rise restaurants in London were few, small and expensive, and everyone knew they were […]
In the former King’s Cross wasteland, a notably welcoming (if slightly themey) warehouse-conversion, where Bruno Loubet offers an innovative and thoroughly satisfying vegetable-heavy cuisine of very high quality. He may be Bordelais by birth – and an absentee Down Under for nearly a decade – but Bruno Loubet is really a London chef through and […]
In a setting that’s practically part of the railway station, this first-floor King’s Cross dining room is a remarkable ‘oasis’ – it offers a very pleasant setting in which to enjoy British staples which, even if they have no great ambition, are realised with impressive consistency. One of the least likely restaurants we’ve encountered in […]
Oddly situated on an island site near the south end of Tower Bridge, a singular first solo venture by a young chef who worked with Tom Aikens; it offers dishes as interesting and attractive as we have found in London in recent times, and very charming service too. It’s fortunate that this island-site Borough restaurant, […]
In a side street not far from Sloane Square, a snugly-scaled but ambitious venture by a chef from New York; on our visit, the staff were charm itself, but the excitement sometimes associated with the City That Never Sleeps was notable by its absence. This discreetly-located Chelsea newcomer is your classic ‘proper’ fine dining restaurant. […]
On a prominent Covent Garden corner, a grand brasserie with plenty of Paris-meets-New York buzz; early days reviews have been decidedly mixed, but our visit a couple of months after opening was an all-round success. Only those recently returned from Mars will need much reminding about the back story of this prominently-sited brasserie – the […]
