Our round-up of what the nation’s restaurant critics were writing about in the week up to 21st June 2026
The Guardian
The Golden Tooth, Newington Green
Grace Dent welcomed the new venue from Matthew Scott – “one of the most interesting cooks around right now” – and wine merchant Charlie Carr, the duo behind Papi in London Fields and the Hot 4 U pop-up, which showed how fledgling talent can develop in a pub with “a proper dining room”.
She was particularly impressed by a “wobbly, voluminous slice of Montgomery cheddar tart to which I have pledged my eternal fealty… tall, quivering, eggy, creamy, rich and piled high with grated cheese, with a glorious and foamy walnut and onion soubise for good measure”.
A mustardy stargazy pie stuffed with shredded chicken and a handful of red prawns was “generous, deeply comforting” and “perilously delicious”, while a dessert of lardy cake served with Baron Bigod cheese and honey was “plump, glossy and possibly fatal if eaten in sufficient quantity”.
*****
Financial Times
Jay Rayner was in his element at this “Afghan-Texas BBQ mash-up” which, after years on the food festival circuit, has found its first permanent home in an old pub in “a less manicured corner” of Notting Hill.
Co-founder Mursal Saiq, who arrived in the UK as an eight-year-old refugee from Afghanistan, is dismissive of the whole idea of ‘authentic’ cuisine – much to Jay’s approval. The “star dish”, a lamb shank that undergoes eight-hours of Texan-style brining and smoking, “until the meat is not so much falling off the bone as waving it goodbye”, is served on a buttery and vegetable-rich Kabuli pilau, based on a recipe from Saiq’s mother.
British wagyu brisket is tender but “properly beefy”, while non-meat options include an Afghan stew of long-roasted aubergines in yoghurt and tomatoes, a “quality” tuna ceviche in lime and sumac, and baby salad potatoes boiled then burst open and deep-fried.
*****
The Times & Sunday Times
Giles Coren risked professional humiliation by asking AI – aka “the magic food fairy in my phone (and yours)” – to choose a restaurant for him to review. It came up trumps with a new spot whose menu offered “dish after dish of my favourite sort of thing: simple combinations sparely expressed; thoroughly British but with exotic grace notes; local produce, international expertise…; not entirely unpretentious but, rather, just pretentious enough.”
The cooking was certain to be good, given that it was from the team behind St Bart’s, so Giles suggested “we don’t really need me at all, do we?” Nevertheless, he confirmed that Tavern was “absolutely fantastic”, its black-and-white interior mixing “major Fergus Henderson vibes” with a touch of New York.
“The food simply rocked from start to finish”, and included huge pigskin crackers with tarama, shrimp to gobble whole, a pork and cuttlefish sausage “thick and fat and smooth as an emperor’s dong”, and a “properly meaty, almost gamey” tandoori quail.
***
Chitra Ramaswamy hailed the “sublime” food at the first Scottish branch and sixth in total of a canteen launched by Malaysian-born Sugen Gopal 12 years in a basement near London’s Euston station. It is, she said, “a vanishingly rare example of a street food stall that’s scaled up and stayed true to it roots. At least, so far.”
“The roti is, of course, king, a spiralling work of art requiring all the synonyms in the thesaurus for soft. Stretchy in place, crisp in others, served bunched up into dazzling eddies and flaky folds, it arrives perilously hot from the tawa.”
The supporting dishes are also “generous, layered, authoritative and incredible priced”: beef or chicken kari (curry), whose “flavours are so big and rounded, the spicing intense by not hot”; whole grilled prawns in a fierce, clingy sambal; curry laksa; “superlative dhal”; and a sweet roti to finish.
***
Camilla Long felt she had entered a “seductive, soothing, expensive, smoothly grinning money machine” as she was ushered into this grand art deco hotel dining room after what seems like its tenth relaunch since the departure of Gordon Ramsay – this time as an outpost of an Italianate café from Greenwich Village in New York.
The staff were ultra-solicitous, the senior ones “dressed like psychiatric hospital attendants, in high necks and long white Handmaid’s Tale sleeves”, creating an overall vibe Camilla summed up as “diminished responsibility”. Fittingly, the menu “feels as though it’s been decided by management consultants with degrees in psychology”.
As to the food, two dishes were “revelatory”: caviar tartlets and grilled chicken ‘alla diavola’, although the latter was “about as diavola as Kate Middleton’s hat drawer”, while the prawn cocktail tasted oddly sweet, as did the premixed martinis. But the real offence was the bill: Camilla reckoned almost £500 was a lot to pay for three people eating chicken, burger, Dover sole, some starters and drinks in a “clattery” place “among Americans whom the hotel only considers desirable because at least they aren’t Middle Easterners”.
*****
The Observer
Laura Goodman, the second to review Tavern this week, was impressed by its “monochrome elegance”, its “very London” mix of cool with “cosy bits, like shaggy sheepskins” – all of which suggested, “We’re stylish, but we’re up for a laugh.”
The food lived up to expectations, with highlights that included a ‘chunion puff’ – “a velvety, super-savoury bite, with a vast cloud of parmesan…. It’s my Greggs cheese-and-onion bake dream, refined and distilled to a puff.”
She also enjoyed a plate of mushrooms with roasted yeast and barley. “This looks like a fairytale on a plate – flamboyant funghi from Merit (a family-run, London-based mushroom farm) in a potion-like, bubbling, yeasty foam. It’s my favourite dish by miles.”
*****
London Standard
Christy Spring could not shake the sense that she was on the set of a television show at this “not particularly convincing” American interpretation of a French all-day café in Covent Garden – “the exposed brick reads Friends coffee shop Central Perk”.
Some of the food was excellent, including the “tender and succulent” rotisserie chicken and brilliant chips; some was merely so-so and some terrible. “Did the croque roque my world? Unfortunately not. I’ve had something similar in Costa. Seemingly assembled ahead of time and reheated.”
The venue “occupies an uncertain middle ground — too considered to be truly casual but too casual to be memorable”. Perhaps it works best as a “pit stop” – a place to grab “a glass of wine and a chicken salad, eaten alone, in an hour”.
*****
Daily Telegraph
Football-phobic William Sitwell was dispatched by his editor to watch England’s opening World Cup match at the largest of Boxpark shipping container food park, not far from the sacred turf of Wembley Stadium – and found himself swept up in the whole experience.
Things started well when, to his pleasant surprise, he managed to find some quaffable white wine to drink. Then he tucked into a Yorkshire Burrito from one of the food stalls – a huge Yorkshire pudding stuffed with a roast-beef Sunday lunch, rolled and wrapped in paper.
“God it was good. But not as tasty, fragrant, fresh and spicy as the Thai Express stir fry and a remarkably good pizza with buffalo mozzarella and Parma ham from Zia Lucia, cooked in their enormous on-site pizza oven.”
