Our round-up of what the nation’s restaurant critics were writing about in the week up to 22nd June 2025
London Standard
David Ellis enjoyed himself at a new venture from a quintet of Vietnamese siblings – a daytime café that morphs by night into a canteen full of cool kids on dates. With its colour scheme of butter yellow and 1950s diner bright red, it looks like the set of a Wes Anderson film standing out against “the dilapidation of Peckham”.
“Lai Rai’s speciality, it turns out, is food you cannot get enough of,” David decided after loading up on prawn lollipops; ‘rice paper salad’ that was far better than it sounded; mussels with chili, lemongrass and mint; and beef patties with betel leaf and coffee-flavoured sauce, whose “antiseptic spice … felt thrillingly unfamiliar”. The only duff note was a very ordinary twice-cooked chicken leg.
“Lai Rai may do what it perceives as basics — Vietnamese street food doled out with lagers — but it is executed with an expertise that feels precociously innovative… It could even be a movie star.”
*****
The Guardian
Grace Dent evaluated a new restaurant whose DNA she could trace from its predecessor at this address, Leroy (2018), back to its progenitor Ellory (2015). The three have the same “no-frills decor, bare-brick walls, earnest small plates” designed for sharing, and even personnel.
“Clearly this ‘things on plates, served sporadically’ concept isn’t broken, and Duchy don’t need to fix it, because by 5pm on a Tuesday night, this new/old restaurant is filling up nicely, and by the time we leave two hours later, it’s absolutely heaving.”
But if the punters are not tired of the approach, Grace certainly is. She worked her way with little enthusiasm through small plates including “a bowl of fresh spaghetti with sage [that] is as memorable as the chorus of Britain’s last Eurovision entry” and Duchy’s “puzzling” signature dish, “very damp smoked trout on a bowl of vivid green spätzle that have been cooked until mushy”.
The final main course rescued things a little: poulet au vin jaune “served on a silky buttery pomme purée with a scattering of outstanding morels. Delicious.” But Grace didn’t want to share it.
*****
The Times & Sunday Times
Giles Coren was thrilled by a “brand new, single-dish schnitzel joint named after a fictional sausage dog” that has replaced a “satanically awful Starbucks” amid the “dismal chains” on the main drag of Belsize Park, “the saggy arse of Hampstead”. Not a promising address, then.
The “huge” schnitzels – chicken, veal, beef and aubergine – are fried in “a lovely, dry, golden, quite large-grained crumb” that seals the juices in nicely, and served with a choice of mash, parmesan fries or Tenderstem broccoli.
Giles’s favourites were the aubergine, to his surprise – “beautifully squashy, sliced through, fanned out and the tail left on prettily” – and a chicken schnitzel challah sandwich with “an almost perfect bite, down through the cake, like snuggling into a duvet, then cracking through the schnitzel crust, into the juicy hot flesh, then that sexy garlic mayo on the tongue, a clang of fermented lemon, just delicious. And for £14. A steal, my friend. A downright burglary.”
Just one failure: “I remain of the opinion that beef wants to be cooked naked, briefly, and eaten red; schnitzelling was designed to add a bit of interest to sweet, bland chicken or veal. I applaud Von Crumb for the effort, but will pass in the future.”
***
“Oh my, is this outlier cool,” cooed Chitra Ramswamy, before even venturing inside the “tall and sexy” reclaimed door of this outfit in the “Syrian/Lebanese golden triangle” around Glasgow Cross. “If you want to see why Glasgow is one of the most exciting cities for eating out in the UK right now,” she said, this is the place to go.
A former artisan bakery that graduated to serving dinner earlier this year, Outlier has no signage, no website (find it on Insta) and no alcohol licence (many diners bring their own natural wine). Inside, the “stunning” space is all exposed sandstone walls, mustard tiles and stripped wood floors, dominated by a vast open kitchen where “a gaggle of young male chefs sporting facial hair as fabulous as their denims are working the grill and the big bakery ovens”.
The menu is “achingly now”, hitting the target again and again with “zingy, intense flavour bombs” – even “lettuce has been preserved into the most exciting lettuce imaginable”, while raw mackerel is served with slivers of rhubarb and matchsticks of radish in a punchy Thai nahm jim sauce made with strawberries.
Chitra’s meal ended memorably with a “genuine first for me: black garlic ice cream. Which tastes exactly as you’d think garlic ice cream would taste … and is utterly delicious. Astonishing!”
***
Guest reviewer Adam Kay opened with a confession – that his wedding reception was at the Ivy back when there was only one Ivy. “Now, with an Ivy on every high street, it’s like announcing we got married at a Zizzi.” (Sorry Adam – when you got married in 2018 the multiplication of the Ivy was already well under way, so the set-up to your punchline does not quite work.)
Adam had “loved” Bubala when it opened six years ago in Spitalfiels, offering a “vibrant take on Middle Eastern food that was delicious, quietly vegetarian and deeply hip”. Its Soho sequel, he said, “proved even better”. It was clear, though, where things were heading at Bubala no 3.
His meal opened will with “10/10” falafels and “glossy hummus, pimped up with nutty burnt butter” – then went downhill fast. Charred haloumi had been “punished with half a jar of marmalade”, rendering it “sickly and dissonant”; spanakopita “looked fantastic… but was polystyrene dry”; leeks were unforgivably tough; and the carrot main was “so underflavoured… I almost took a Covid test”.
“Maybe these were all teething problems — the restaurant has only been open a month. (‘Ask your server about our daily wine specials!’ screamed a box on the menu. I asked a server, who asked another server, who told us there were no wine specials.) Maybe we caught them on an off day. Or maybe this is a moment for Bubala to take a beat, hopefully before branches start to take hold across the country like knotweed. Or Ivy.”
*****
Daily Mail
As self-confessed “regional Thai food freak”, Tom Parker Bowles wondered why he had missed this specialist in the food of southern Thailand, “where chilli, turmeric and shrimp paste (gapi) rule supreme”.
The unusual venue is run by Wichet Khongphoon, who hails from the southern province of Trang and is “a man of many talents. Hotelier. Florist. Chef. Restaurateur. It wouldn’t surprise me if he had a sideline in nuclear fission.”
Tom was more than satisfied with his meal, which was full of “heat and depth and heart and soul. And leaves the tastebuds craving more. This is cooking that makes the senses holler in lusty delight.”
*****
Daily Telegraph
William Sitwell enjoyed his “dish of the year” at this restaurant above a bakery: fettucine with a sausage and porcini ragu that was “most fabulously delicious, gracefully homemade, perfectly cooked and gloriously un-Instagrammable” in “various shades of brown”.
This colour scheme matched the “sepia tones” of the place – wooden floor, wooden slatted divides, shelves with ancient bottles and candles on pewter dishes, ivory white walls. “Even the staff are dressed in beige aprons.”
“It’s my kind of mood board,” purred William. “And my kind of food. It’s British with a hint of Med, a well-crafted offering of ingredients given gentle pushes towards greatness, rather than smothered in a cheffy muddle.”
*****
Financial Times
Jay Rayner celebrated a humble and unlicensed new venture (note the old spelling of Beirut in its name) near the Edgware Road which has no charcoal grill and no baklava: instead, owner Hussein Salloum cooks his own and his mum’s recipes, “served the way I ate them at home in Lebanon”.
The starters were happily “vegetable-led” until the arrival of a dish of “small, rough-ground spiced sausages in a sweet-sour broth” that would “clean up at any canapé party”, followed by a “muscular lamb shank, gently roasted for four hours, which tumbles away from the bone with a nudge into the bed of softly spiced long grain rice, with toasted almonds and cashews.”
In the absence of baklava (“because they don’t have the space to make it”), there was a good range of home-made desserts, including “what they call their Beirut cloud: divine layers of crushed pistachio and ashta pudding, a sweetened cream cheese, topped with tufts of white candyfloss. It’s one of those puddings that forces you to grin… I’ll be surprised if I come across a better dessert this year.”
