Our round-up of what the nation’s restaurant critics were writing about in the week up to 20th July 2025
London Standard
David Ellis was pretty impressed by the latest opening from Dominic Hamdy, the “savvy operator” behind three Crispins and Bistro Freddie, which serves what “might be called London Mediterranean” – plus an “incongruous burger” that is the only clue that this is in fact a hotel restaurant, inside London’s third Mason & Frith.
“Liking olive oil is a requirement for liking here”, David reckoned – and he certainly liked most of what he ate, including ricotta-filled tortelli with lemon and courgettes that “smelt of perfect summer lunches spent by the Amalfi sea” followed by brill in a bouillabaisse sauce billed as something for two or three to share, but which would be plenty for four or five. “I would go back for that alone.”
It is a not a “knock-your-socks-off restaurant”, or somewhere that will set the world on fire – “it is not built to do so, the flavours are too familiar, too sweetly soft for that”. But it is perfect for Notting Hill, “somewhere for Saturday afternoons in a haze of summer sun and going with all your mates”.
*****
The Guardian
Grace Dent did something most serious restaurant critics studiously avoid by reviewing the latest opening from Paris-based Big Mamma Group – which like the others is “unashamedly focused on big, sexy, silly and Italian-inspired fun”, this time with “a large scoop of Gaga does House of Gucci”.
“Why are clever food people so sniffy about Big Mamma, despite its restaurants being full to the brim every night?” Grace wondered rhetorically, before providing the answer: “let’s cut to the chase – the food in all of these restaurants isn’t always terribly good and is sometimes actively awful.”
Perhaps you have to be “a bit tipsy” to enjoy them, she suggested: “Lunching here stone-cold sober is a real eye-opener.” “Barbarella, like all of these places, is about escapism, boisterous group dining and being swept up in the moment” – with someone else paying the bill.
*****
The Times & Sunday Times
Deacon’s Bank, Chapel-en-le-Frith, Derbyshire
Giles Coren was strong-armed to Derbyshire by former Tory minister Edwina Currie, now a colleague of his at Times Radio, to test her insistence that the county is “the fine dining capital of the civilised world”.
He may not have conceded her point, but was happy enough with his lunch at a restaurant that opened two years ago in a derelict bank dating from 1830.
“Best thing was probably the hot, puffy flatbread with salt and pepper cod cheek, chilli, lemon and herbs, which was pretty to look at, well balanced and tasty. Although a bit salty, Edwina thought. Only eight quid though. Don’t think I’ve seen a single digit price on a menu since before lockdown.”
***
Chitra Ramaswamy was bowled over by a restaurant in unfashionable Tollcross which was “the stuff of which ‘hidden gem’ legends are made” – originally a spin-off from Kanpai, its city centra sibling, which it is now surpassing. Owned and run by Taiwanese chef Max Wang, who trained at the Sushi Chef Institute in Los Angeles, its “intimate downtown New York vibes” makes it “all very sexy — the perfect restaurant for a high-stakes first date”.
Dish after dish showcased the “immense skills” of the chefs: an “exceptional, silky” chawanmushi savoury custard was followed by chicken karaage that was both crunchy and juicy, wagyu tataki, and a succession of “sensational” shashimi. The sakés were likewise “superlative”.
Yamato “belongs to that special category of restaurants that for the duration of dinner make you feel like you live in one of the coolest cities on earth”.
***
Charlotte Ivers beat a path to a new neighbourhood Roman osteria co-owned by Theo James, “the handsome 40-year-old Brit you’ll have seen in The Gentlemen, The White Lotus, The Time Traveler’s Wife or the Divergent trilogy”. “The famous face behind it clearly hasn’t hurt publicity-wise,” she said – indeed, it seemed to be the main reason she was here, although co-owner Ed Templeton (of Carousel) was mentioned.
“The food is pretty authentic but they’ve made the recipes a bit lighter to appease fragile London palates”, while the tiramisu has “properly bitter” coffee but remains “sweet and comforting”.
The best dish is the porchetta: “It’s remarkable — the sweetest, juiciest meat surrounded by astonishing crackling. Nobody else in London does porchetta this well.”
*****
Daily Mail
Tom Parker Bowles welcomed “one of the most thrilling West London openings for years” on his home turf, once a grim boozer called The British Queen (!) at the Shepherd’s Bush end of Uxbridge Road, now relaunched under a new name by “master Cotswold publicans and restaurateurs” Peter Creed and Tom Noest.
“There’s good draught beer, and one of the finest bar snacks menus in town, featuring charred, buttery toast topped with fat anchovies, a bowl of molten rarebit (like an English fondue, and pure genius), and a vast, smokily magnificent Coombeshead sausage.”
The English theme is maintained through dishes of “plump, pert devilled kidneys on toast, up there with the best I’ve ever tasted”; lamb scrumpet with a pot of homemade tomato ketchup; and hake, “a fish that demands absolute freshness, topped with potted shrimp brown butter”.
*****
Daily Telegraph
William Sitwell has a new favourite Indian restaurant, the first London branch of Dishoom’s spin-off brand, which excels for “fabulous staff, serene bedrooms (they call them lodgings), a wonderful bar (epic negronis…)” and, best of all, a menu of colourful dishes “which are solidly mainstream Indian but just epic examples of them”.
A deep, dark lamb curry – tender and modestly spiced – was so moreish “I wanted lashings upon lashings of the glorious stuff. Even better was a bowl of black daal, stewed for 24 hours – a dish I’d like to eat at least once a week for the rest of my life (even if the amount of ghee in it would, I suspect, limit the rest of my life to mere weeks.”
*****
Financial Times
Jay Rayner was entertained and at times delighted by a performative meal from Henry Dobson, a Ballymaloe and Noma-trained chef whose restaurant sources “almost everything: not just meat and veg but also the wood from the tables, the ash for the paint on the walls” and the clay for the “rough-hewn crockery” (made by his Japanese ceramicist wife) from his family’s farm near Dundee.
“The food is clearly the product of obsession, but never loses sight of the imperative to feed,” Jay said. “Dish of the night is a wonderfully gamey smoked pigeon breast, served rare with a crisply roasted leg, complete with claw… Over the top is a cage of a dizzyingly delicate coal-black tuille made with potato and cuttlefish ink. Salted fermented rhubarb and blackberries bring acidity.” Smoked venison on a caramelised cream sauce with white carrot puree was almost as good.
Both dessert and the meagre and pricey list of low-intervention wines were disappointing, but “the highs at Moss are so very high – oh, that pigeon dish; gosh, the venison – that near misses can be forgiven.”
