Our round-up of what the nation’s restaurant critics were writing about in the week up to 19th October 2025
The Guardian
Grace Dent thrilled to a “dark, daunting, uncompromising” but “never boring” venue in Digbeth’s Custard Factory development, from former Purnell’s and The Man Behind the Curtain chef Kray Treadwell – a place of “kitsch crypt décor” where a meal begins with drinks in a lobby that “feels a bit like being in an exclusive 1980s Soho hotel during a power cut”.
It’s not somewhere to go hungry, looking for meat and two veg, Grace advised. “Rather, it is very clearly a journey, an exploration, a culinary art exhibition or a high-concept dining experience… where chefs cook at a sublime level, but dish up such minuscule amounts.”
Over six or 12 courses, the menu is “a cascade of small, meaningful bowls, all of which just ooze flavour and, like all the best superheroes, turn up with an origin story.”
*****
The Observer
Guest reviewer Chitra Ramaswamy headed to a former architecture office where self-taught chef Anna Hedworth – herself a former architect who once worked in it – runs the “buzziest neighbourhood restaurant” in Newcastle.
“The menus are locally sourced and so seasonal that they’re printed daily… Everything’s made in-house, from sodas to an exemplary kimchi so funky it brings me out in a sweat to admit we almost didn’t order it. (It also, like great kimchi, brings me out in an actual sweat.)”
Hedworth’s “genius” is “to not give you the flavour your palate expects, but something so perilously close to it that you get a jolt of pleasure, then go: ‘What the heck was that?’.” A case in point was the blackberry ice-cream choux bun with cream spiked with salt, vanilla and basil, which “brings out floral notes in the herb we think we know so well. In essence, it’s the best ice-cream sandwich you’ve ever devoured.”
*****
The Times
Giles Coren made a return visit to a restaurant he raved about 18 months ago, when it occupied a “wheelie bin off the A61 that you entered through the bogs”. It has now graduated to a converted Victorian paper mill with high ceilings, views over the Peak District and a spacious open kitchen – a fitting showcase for chef Luke French’s inspired cooking.
“There is a Nordic/Japanese serenity to proceedings, which is of a piece with the Nordic/Japanese edge to the cooking. By which I mean the embrace of rawness, charcoal, fermented things, foraging, leanness and a deep awareness of produce and terroir.”
Giles was bowled over by an experience that clearly merited a much less jokey review than is his norm. “This was a great and serious meal from a chef in his pomp and a brilliant back-up team. It’s a vibrant, game-changing space in a rare and unusual location. To be honest, the Michelin star it so obviously merits would dignify Joro much less than it would the silly red book itself.”
*****
London Standard
David Ellis fell for a bistro in Mayfair’s Shepherd Market billed by his paper as “the best restaurant you have never heard of” – one that has been plying its trade for more than 80 years and, having been taken over in the Seventies by a Canadian-Polish owner who hired a Mexican chef, serves an eccentric combination of Polish and Mexican food.
There is only one approximation of a fusion dish (nachos with Polish sausage). “Instead — and probably for the best — there are Polish plates or Mexican plates. You might start with nachos and move to pork knuckle, or do borscht, then beef enchiladas.”
But what appealed to David had little to do with the food – “which is decidedly above serviceable, but not spectacular” – and every thing to do with the atmosphere. “It is dark and coddling; in here it feels safe, away from everything. This is somewhere run by people, not a corporation.”
*****
Daily Mail
Dave’s Hot Chicken, Shaftesbury Avenue
Tom Parker Bowles thought he was man enough to brave the Tik-Tok sensation ‘Dave’s Hot Chicken Reaper’, a fast-food dish of such intense chilli heat that you have to sign a disclaimer before eating it.
Bad idea – “Sweat soaks my brow, tears stream down my face and my heart thumps like a Berlin techno beat. Even thinking hurts. At one point, I fear for my very life, as my vision blurs, my body shudders, and my whole being is enveloped in an infernal inferno. For this is no mere chicken tender, rather deep-fried devastation.”
Reader, you have been warned: “One bite is all it takes, and there is no pleasure here, just pain. I ate it, so you don’t have to.”
*****
Daily Telegraph
There was no holding William Sitwell back in his admiration of the new restaurant from Nieves Barragan: Sabor, her first solo venture, in Mayfair, celebrated the food of the Basque Country, while her new Legado (meaning legacy) “is the chef’s offering of her complete Spain and, frankly, it’s a masterpiece”.
Everything William and a greedy friend tasted was delicious, but best of all was “the gorgeous novelty of black fideua (squid-ink pasta), with rock shrimp and alioli. The rich, dark pasta, with the crunch of batter, softness of the shellfish and gently coaxing nature of the mayo, truly make this a strong contender for dish of the year.”
The superlatives did not end there, with William declaring Legado “one of the finest, grandest expositions of Spanish food in the world. In a concrete jungle, in east London.”
*****
Financial Times
Jay Rayner was not the first critic to have trouble finding this new venture from chef Adam Byatt (of Trinity in Clapham), hidden away behind bored-looking security guards in the new stand at Fulham’s Craven Cottage stadium – nor was he the first to admire it, as an “exceedingly professional, reassuring restaurant that deserves to succeed”.
Once inside, he found a place of comfort and “civilised calm”, with views of passing Thames rowers “shovelling the waters furiously as if working up an appetite on your behalf” and cooking that “draws on a reassuringly unchallenging Anglo-French tradition” – with more than one reference on its menu to coronation chicken, a dish co-invented by Constance Spry, the post-War cook and florist who lived nearby and gave the restaurant its name.
It is billed as a neighbourhood restaurant – as Jay noted sardonically, “for the sort of neighbourhood where almost every house has recently been repointed, extended and finished with bi-fold doors”. Service is extremely, and sometimes overly solicitous, and works best when delivering dishes such as “smoked salmon carved tableside from a trolley with a garnished flourish, (or) the terrific baked Alaska at the other end of the meal.”
