Our round-up of what the nation’s restaurant critics were writing about in the week up to 25th January 2026
The Guardian
Responding to a tip from a reader, Grace Dent found herself at a hugely popular café and bakery attached to a huge garden centre, where she ate alongside “pensioner ladies who lunch, dating teenagers, couples with babies grabbing fresh air and the partners of green-fingered types bribed to carry top soil by a promise of eggs florentine and a round of berry financiers”.
Its success (and queues), Grace suggested, were evidence of a shift in social habits whereby such “wholesome eating spots” meet a need for sober, early, multi-generational meals out at modest prices, while the likes of Pizza Express and local pubs are begging for daytime trade,
While “not earnest, po-faced dining; it completely lacks that Petersham Nursery-influenced pretension where small plates come strewn with petunia leaves”, the Tin Roof offers fish finger baps, doorstep Burnham Bangers sarnies and “very good five-cheese toasties on sourdough” – all in generous proportions. The Basque cheesecake and bakewell tart are “pretty damn good”, while the billionaire’s shortbread is standard millionaire’s “with an extra layer of caramel decadence”.
*****
The Times
Giles Coren lavished the highest of praise on an “absolutely brilliant” northern Thai barbecue restaurant that began life in Brighton, popped up for a year on the edge of Borough Market and has now – in “a damned ballsy move, if you ask me” – opened a few doors up from Kiln, “the best northern Thai barbecue restaurant in the world”.
Giles was “blown away from the outset” by two starters. Shan meatballs of minced chicken in a sticky pork membrane were “just so thrillingly rustic, so not civilised, so unbearably delicious”, and were followed by “chips and curry sauce for the gods. No, for God”: a dish of fat chips “fried many times” for the thickest crunch he had ever encountered, topped with a rich and fiery Burmese mutton curry, then slathered with sour cream. “And that’s £11.70, by the way.”
Giles will be back to do justice to the rest of the “sexy, spicy” dishes on the menu, including a juicy char-grilled onglet steak served over a thick white curry sauce perfumed with ‘rose liquor’ – “a bit of a dislocation, the sweetish floral curry under my steak instead of a load of chips, but it was fascinating and new and absolutely not disgusting”.
***
Chitra Ramaswamy purred over an “indulgent and deeply pleasurable” meal at the latest venue from Stuart Ralston, currently “the most influential chef-restaurateur in Edinburgh”. On the former site of Fhior (RIP), Vinette is a candlelit Parisian bar à vin with a cocktail bar downstairs named after a belle époque lesbian poet, and an upmarket bistro menu of “recherché classics like foie gras parfait and duck hearts au poivre”.
“This is not a restaurant for vegans, teetotallers or the lactose intolerant. If none of these apply, you will have a ball”, dining on the like of “devilishly good” crumpets smothered with Baron Bigod; a “faultless” barbecued monkfish tail with a brown shrimp sauce; and “the best tartare you’ll ever encounter”, made with venison – “delicate, herbal, earthy and smoky like a Perthshire forest in midwinter, packed with cranberries, beetroot and capers, tracked with forensically neat lines of tarragon”.
Head sommelier Stuart Skea “is nothing short of a genius”, and his selection of old world wines by the glass “may be the feather in Vinette’s chapeau. Each one we tried was sublime”.
*****
London Standard
In a strong week for southeast Asian food, David Ellis found “much to adore” and nothing to deplore in the Cambodian-inspired cooking of former Kiln chef Tom Geoffrey in the Borough Market pub premises previously occupied by Khao Bird – now moved to permanent digs in Soho (see Giles Coren’s review above).
Barang means “foreigner” in Cambodia, and David admitted that he has no idea if the cooking is authentic. “In dinner party shorthand, Cambodian is similar to Vietnamese and Thai food, only with fewer chillies. At Barang, it feels like the very best of, say, Speedboat, only without any fear of the morning after”.
The absence of chilli heat allows the aromatics to roam – and on two trips during which David sampled every dish on the menu “not a dud appeared”. All that’s missing, he said, was “the sense it’s sticking around… They would do well to settle here permanently.”
*****
Daily Mail
Tom Parker Bowles found “the sort of local restaurant that fills one with faith in mankind” at this four-year-old venture from owner Patrick Vaughan-Fowler and head chef Sam May.
“Divine” skewer starters were followed by ham and cheese croquettes “of subtle beauty, the shell as crisp and delicate as spun sugar, the centre a molten morass of oozing delight”. Mains were “joyous in every way” – a great hunk of pork belly with brittle crackling; a “brilliant” pheasant schnitzel in a sprightly cider sauce; sides including “unforgettable” whole carrots slow-cooked in a sweet-and-sour sauce.
“This is clever, generous modern cooking. Never arch or pretentious, rather elegant, sensual and unashamedly voluptuous. An occasional crack or crunch – of roast pig skin, radish or breadcrumbs – reminds one that life is not all sybaritic softness.”
*****
Financial Times
Jay Rayner celebrated a revamped red-brick boozer set amid modern blocks of student accommodation, but not aimed at students. Instead, it’s a magnet for “an older crowd of romantics… a place for joyfully falling off the wagon” rather than pursuing January’s good intentions.
Along with Timothy Taylor’s and Three Swords from the Kirkstall Brewery on tap, the bar offers champagne, oysters and a sausage roll that is “a dense meaty cylinder of porkiness, wrapped with a sort of pastry lamination, ribbed for extra pleasure”. Vindaloo devilled eggs are “a 1970s classic with the safety catch off”, while a “purely comforting” broth of garden peas with white beans and cabbage is “extraordinarily meaty for something not involving meat”.
Jay’s “must-have” was the lyrically described ‘Sliced ham from the fire, dinner roll, butter & mustard’ – the latter to be chosen from a mustard menu. “It is a dish ripped gently from the pages of The Darling Buds of May and made heavenly reality.”
