Our weekly summary of what the national and local restaurant critics were writing about in the week ending 13 November 2022. ***** The Evening Standard “A hugely appealing endeavour.” Jimi Famurewa reviewed St John Marylebone, the “loveably irreverent” recent addition to the St John family (and their “first proper opening in seven years”). “Original founders […]
A natural wine bar in Shoreditch with food by guest chefs will mark its official launch next week, following a fortnight’s soft opening. Oranj occupies a 2,000 sq ft Victorian warehouse in Bacon Street, and will serve Belgian beers alongside low-intervention wines. Founder Jasper Delamothe, hitherto best-known as a bar designer, launched Oranj as a […]
London’s on-going love affair with handmade pasta has received a double boost with the launch of two new live-action operations offering slightly different takes on Italian comfort food. Spagnoletti, part of the St Pancras Hotels Group on the Euston Road, describes itself as an “Italian flour lab” over two floors, with chefs Manuele Bazzoni and […]
The Bleeding Heart Tavern in Farringdon on the edge of the City of London is relaunching next week as a wine-bar – with food at half-price for the first week to anybody who identifies themselves as a “friend”. The tavern was first recorded in 1746 in an area notorious for drunken debauchery, while Charles Dickens mentioned […]
Booking is now open for the 2023 edition of Obsession, the gastronomic festival hosted each year by Northcote hotel and restaurant near Blackburn in Lancashire’s Ribble Valley. The event runs over 17 nights from January 20 to February 5, and features 20 leading chefs. Star guest chefs include Portugal’s Ricardo Costa of the Yeatman Gastronomic […]
Record price rises at London’s most luxurious restaurants means that those charging merely £100 per head no longer fall into the top price category of the only print restaurant guide now widely stocked by London bookshops. The introduction to Harden’s London Restaurants 2023, now entering its 32nd year of publication (published today, Thursday 10 November), […]
Our weekly summary of what the national and local restaurant critics were writing about in the week ending 6 November 2022. ***** The Guardian “A very decent, experimental Japanese with a side of jazz.” Grace Dent was in Dalston, at mu, a live music venue where “the food is taken seriously” – to a surprising […]
Simpson’s Tavern, one of Britain’s oldest restaurants and London’s oldest traditional chophouse, is fighting for its life after its landlord changed the locks in an apparent row over pandemic-induced rent arrears. The City institution, which opened in 1757 and serves breakfast and lunch in a Dickensian interior, has called on supporters to contribute to a […]
New England seafood specialist Saltie Girl makes its international debut next week with its launch on North Audley Street in Mayfair. As the address might suggest, it will be a pretty upmarket offering – the original is noted for serving Martinis with a caviar-topped olive. Founder Kathy Sidell, a serial Boston restaurateur, says she was inspired […]
Celebrity chef Mark Hix is to make a come-back in the capital as food & beverage director of the Groucho Club – two years after losing his HIX London restaurant group to the pandemic and retreating to his native Dorset. The new appointment would seem to be a marriage made in heaven. Mark has been a […]
