Our round-up of wha the nation’s restaurant critics were writing about in the week up to 20th September 2026
The Guardian
Grace Dent gave her seal of approval to the “distinctive, delicious” cooking at one of the year’s most anticipated new restaurants, from ex-Mangal II chef Sertaç Dirik and restaurateur David Carter of Smokestak and Agora.
The signature kid and freekeh for two (£65) looked “heavy and somewhat intimidating” when it arrived in a clay pot. It left “picked completely clean, as did the pickles alongside: fat, richness, sharpness, all in perfect balance”.
But the “undoubted star” of the show – the dish that makes you “understand the point of all this live-fire hoopla” – was a huge butterflied mackerel with skin crisp from the grill, “its flesh all soft and meaty, and stuffed with a carrot-based slaw cooked in what tastes like rich, deep shellfish liquor”. It was followed by “one of the finest desserts I’ve eaten all year”, mountain tea rice pudding infused with sideritis, a wild Anatolian herb, and finished with a crunchy brulee top.
*****
London Standard
Joel Golby also loved Kid, although he had trouble getting inside because “their window looks like a door and their door looks like a wall” – a problem other guests may well encounter.
The smoked aubergine and muhammara dips, served with pide blackened on the grill, were both “laugh-with-surprise brilliant”, but Joel saved his highest praise for the “must-order” kid goat to share.
“It’s an amazing dish: rich without being over-indulgent, refined without being particularly pretty, and heavingly filling in a way that undoes the past decade of small plates…. A lot of people are going to lie about having had it just to sound a bit cooler.”
*****
The Observer
Tanya Gold braved the throng to review a fashionable new venue from prolific chef-restaurateur Jackson Boxer (of Brunswick House in Vauxhall and Dove in Notting Hill), warning that “I tend to approach fashionable restaurants with caution.”
Her caution was not misplaced. She found the interior both self-consciously undecorated and packed, with insufficient space for a human to squeeze between the tables or for plates to sit on the table – which, she said, “would be fine, if the food were better. But it isn’t as good as it thinks it is.”
The “already blog-famous” crisps were OK, “but the problem with over-exposed crisps is that they can never live up to their billing because they are crisps”. Fried potato pizzette was a “cold almost-pizza of the damned”, and baked saffron and crab-fat rice was “sullen, over-cooked and squat”. A rare triumph, chicken that was “marvellously sticky, vital and beautiful”, could not undo the damage.
Tanya concluded: “I am not a fashionable person, but I know what I have eaten: spin.”
*****
Financial Times
Jay Rayner was reassured that “everything would be just fine” as soon as a plate of summer dips landed in front of him, at this tribute to the cuisine of Monterrey in northern Mexico from Indian founders Rishad and Benaisha Mehta – a project named after Rishad’s grandmother’s Mexican friend Mirtala.
The guacamole here is “light and textured, rather than gloopy, and has proper zip”; fried chicken thigh is “dark, undulating” and “quite fearsomely spicy”, tacos arrive with “perfectly grilled” Black Angus beef, and huge Argentinian prawns are “pleasingly messy. We are having fun”.
The restaurant is “still a work in progress” – they are buying tacos in because their press needs to be fixed, and there’s a “curious preponderance of wagyu” (which in Jay’s view “always feels like an unnecessary attempt to announce specialness through the medium of a pampered cow”) – but the founders and their “brilliant young staff” have “done Mirtala proud”.
*****
The Times & Sunday Times
Giles Coren mistimed his visit to a heavily publicised new Afghan/Texan barbecue, which he found empty on a Friday lunchtime, presumably because everybody in Notting Hill is on “the Weggy” (as they call Wegovy round here) these days and has no appetite.
As a result, all the delicious food he ate – including a bass filet “with the dimensions of a size 10 Odor-Eater, sweet and juicy with a crisp charred skin” and wagyu brisket that was “impeccably tender, wonderfully fatty, [and] beautifully smoke-embalmed” – arrived luke warm.
Food does not need to be served piping hot, Giles acknowledged. “But this isn’t long resting, I don’t think. It’s pre-barbecued food, at least in the case of the beef. I mean, obviously… I guess I’m just saying, for hot food, vibes and good times, go in the evening.”
***
Chitra Ramaswamy was entertained and fed well at “one of the most hyped bar counters in Glasgow”, where she found further proof that the rowdy spirit of San Sebastian and the Basque Country “just works” in Scotland’s “biggest, boldest, rainiest city”.
It’s a fun and fast-paced operation from the team behind the nearby Kelvingrove Café, best enjoyed from the “sexy” concrete bar while watching “tattooed young men cooking over fire”.
Pintxos included clams tossed with skinny txistorra sausage – a “gorgeous dish, full of gigantic flavours, smoke, sensory pleasures and a big Basque Country heart” – and gildas with hot guindilla peppers that “smack you about the chops”. There was a Portuguese bifana sandwich that “looks and smells fantastic”, while from the asador she chose a nicely charred pork ribeye that was served with slightly overcooked girolles and a fresh, herbaceous salsa verde.
***
Camilla Long was “gagging” for some of the famously good local crab when she arrived at the Norfolk coastal resort’s “first posh – for which read London-style – bistro/restaurant, tucked away on one of its Mr Whippy-strewn steets” – a venue that has been greeted locally “like a double rainbow”.
To her disappointment, the crab was hidden away on the menu and served with chilli (“I guess that’s globalism for you”), while “we are told, by contrast, by name, exactly where its snails come from: Burgundy.”
This was not the only shortcoming, but the panzanella and the mains (Norfolk beef with Café de Paris butter and halibut) were good, Camilla declared, adding: “Places outside London, the ones like this, are usually better than those inside” – a view that puts her squarely at odds with her stablemate, The Times’s Giles Coren, who said the exact opposite after a trip outside the capital a fortnight ago.
*****
Daily Telegraph
William Sitwell heaped more praise on a new seaside restaurant that has notched up a string of rave reviews, urging readers to cheer themselves up by lunching here on a wet midweek afternoon in winter.
The starters were all terrific, including “smoked cod’s roe so good it shames all Greeks”, although “the only dish you need” is mussels on toast “because, in truth, it’s so good, with the crunch of toasted sourdough, milky creaminess of the molluscs and butter sauce”. Mains included “the most magnificent pair of grilled lamb chops. They were like lollipops for Goliath, charred on the outside, heavenly pink within.”
“If every tired, studiously average, wine-averse pub that pollutes so many of our towns were swapped with a Keller,” William urged, “Britain would be a far better place.”
