Our round-up of what the nation’s restaurant critics were writing about in the week up to 22nd March 2026
Financial Times
Restaurant Gordon Ramsay High, City of London
Jay Rayner ascended to the 60th floor of 22 Bishopsgate to sample the new offshoot of Gordon Ramsay’s flagship, whose £250 menu – just £10 less than the Prestige menu at the mothership in Royal Hospital Road, Chelsea – raised “huge expectations”. Alas, they were not met in a glossy glass box of a room devoid of personality or joy – and with views over Essex.
“The best that can be said of the experience is that achieves a certain adequacy,” Jay harrumphed. Some dishes were very good (a lovely warm gougère filled with “the riotous pong of Tunworth cheese”; a well-roasted piece of duck breast) while some were “actively poor” (shellfish ravioli in overworked pasta with an acidic sauce “that could shine up cutlery”; roasted shellfish and truffle consommé that “tastes merely of indistinct meatiness”).
He also complained that one of the toilet cubicles (shared with Lucky Cat brasserie next door) had a broken lock. “A small thing, perhaps, but not when dinner for two can easily cost upwards of £750. Ramsay has made much of the Bishopsgate project costing £20mn and of him needing ‘balls of steel’ to complete it; meanwhile, courtesy of a broken door, mine risk being on display.”
*****
The Guardian
Grace Dent gave a standing ovation to this new venture from opera singer-turned-sommelier Charlie Mellor, declaring it was “already worth singing loudly” about and “has all the makings of an institution…. good restaurants are an antidote to this cruel, grubby world”.
Rating it a “more adult affair” than the Laughing Heart in Hackney, Mellor’s previous gaff, she said Vibrato was “timeless”, with “gorgeous” flooring, dark panelled walls hung with eclectic art, and “a sexy little sit-up cocktail bar tucked away at the back”.
The food was equally gorgeous, including grilled sole with Pantelleria capers, amaretti baked to order, and “a white risotto that’s as close to heaven as I’ll ever get on Earth” – all backed up by a wine list running to about 300 bottles.
*****
The Times
Giles Coren was delighted by a menu of “Nordic-skewed brasserie standards” that promised something more original than your usual hotel restaurant fare in the newly opened Newman boutique hotel. It even features a “bespoke bloody wooden sandwich trolley, with a marble deck over an ice drawer and a glass top” – although, hold da op!, Giles admitted he prefers white-bread sarnies “with a lid” to the open-topped Scandi version on black-bread.
Like many meals, he said, lunch “started off brilliant and then flattened out a bit” after an “impeccable” herring plate of three different cures (sweet grain mustard, dill cream and curry sauce), which reminded him of the Wolseley under Corbin & King, for whom Angelica’s executive chef Christian Turner used to ply his trade.
The main disappointment was a Jansson’s temptation (“potato and sprat gratin”) in which the spuds were “barely parboiled so that they were woody like salsify. Not horrid at all. Just… not quite there.”
*****
London Standard
David Ellis was pleasantly surprised by the excellent cooking at this revival of the grande dame of London restaurants from Jeremy King, whose venues tend to prioritise atmosphere over cuisine.
The “bulging” suet pudding was “better than any I’ve had, the pastry light where often it is gloopy”, while broccoli and cauliflower cheese was another “best in class” which “showed someone in the building’s cavernous kitchens is making sure the small stuff isn’t overlooked”.
He also noted that the Grand Divan, its main dining room, looks and feels far better than it has in recent decades, now that “there is no flaking gold leaf [and] fractured woodwork has been healed”. The prices are generous, too, with starters from £9 and mains from £16 – which might explain why “the room is filled with all ages chatting furiously”.
*****
Daily Mail
Tom Parker Bowles sat on “the hottest stool in town” at this follow-up to The Dover next door, finding “a primal energy, a visceral, barely restrained joy. The whole place seethes and sizzles like raw steak on hot iron.”
The food is “far better than it needs to be”: “American diner meets high-end room service, fast food clad in Ralph Lauren”, while the prices are reasonable: you could have a tuna melt and a cocktail for under £35, which is “nothing short of a miracle” in this part of Mayfair.
“Restaurateur Martin Kuczmarski is the absolute master of giving people exactly what they want. And he’s done it again.”
*****
Daily Telegraph
William Sitwell was more than disappointed in this rooftop seafood spot at Guinness’s new ‘urban brewery’ (which strangely doesn’t brew Guinness – it has to come from Dublin), where the dining room “has been designed with all the lush wonder of a public lavatory”.
The £72 ‘Gilroy’s platter’ was “miserably small”, with mussels “which don’t pop with springy freshness, clams you wouldn’t write home about and a plate of raw sea bream that would have more worth if it was still swimming in the sea”, plus king prawns that were “properly awful – a mushy tragedy”. Only a plate of seafood linguine was “a delightful break of decency – excellent pasta cooking, the clams singing in a beer sauce.”
“Oh Guinness, where did the love go?” William lamented. “If the Irish get wind of this brand sublimation there’ll be a war.”
*****
The Observer
Eva Wiseman and her hungry family joined the queue at this roughly converted, 20-seat, cash-only snack bar, whose owner Dong Huang can be seen creating dumplings by hand in a “muted spectacle of skill, swanlike”.
His dumplings certainly hit the spot: “they were slippery and plump, and we attacked them with a new kind of lusty relief, plopping them in vinegar that activated some new borough at the back of my tongue.”
A vast bowl of wonton soup was “exquisitely savoury”, while the Shanghai xiao long bao soup dumplings were “lively and hot, disorienting in their delicacy”.
