Our round-up of what the nation’s restaurant critics were writing about in the week up to 24th May 2026
The Guardian
Grace Dent had a whale of a time, quite possibly against her better judgement, at a venue she says “will infuriate many”: the new “maximalist” Greek restaurant in the middle of London’s West End from Adam and Drew Jones, the Manchester-based brothers behind Tattu, an equally flamboyant Chinese mini-chain.
“A cross between an Aegean god’s haven and the White Company’s bedding department”, it is “fun and frothy” place – “big, bright, brash, dumbed down, shameless and open to all. There’s even a vanilla creme brulee on the dessert menu, for crying out loud… clearly from that famous part of Greece called, er, France.”
Despite its “fake Greek heart”, though, the food “feels serious” and aims higher than it needs to. Taramasalata, hummus and moussaka are all “great”, while calamari is “elevated: crisp, light and tempura-battered with coriander, a lime and olive oil dressing and some spicy mayonnaise”. Likewise, the tartare is “very good indeed: top-quality fish, beautifully chopped, though slightly over-egged on the truffle and caviar front”.
*****
Daily Telegraph
William Sitwell also enjoyed himself at one of London’s new-wave posh Aegeans, the third of its type from Adrien Carré and Christina Mouratoglou – although he complained that Greek cuisine’s newly fashionable status means tavernas in the Greek isles are no longer cheap and “slightly rubbish”.
Here in central London, he advised, you must avoid such dishes as sea urchin tagliolini (£50), grilled langoustine (£70) or lobster rice (£80) – “Mayfair bear traps (all further evidence of the taverna being redefined)”. So William stuck to dishes that reminded him of “the good old days” on holiday, like grilled octopus: “two dozen little round chunks on an oval metal plate, with charred skin and soft flesh and the simplicity of capers, lemon and olive oil, it’s a joy.”
Best of all was a “monumentally good” plate of grilled frigadelia – pieces of beef liver wrapped in caul fat and served on red peppers in a pool of olive oil. “These are rich, magnificent sausages, a rustic idea delivered as a delicacy. I’m sorry, but if Maza was on fire I’d rescue these before humans.”
*****
The Times & Sunday Times
Giles Coren revelled in the prices at the second restaurant (upstairs from the Grand Divan) at Jeremy King’s revived Simpson’s-in-the-Strand: starters under a tenner, several mains under £20, sides “almost comically cheap”, and a prix fixe menu at £21 for 2 courses, £24.75 for 3.
“It’s so cheap!” he crowed. “It’s the restaurant you’ve been waiting for me to review ever since the inception of the Great and Terrifying Restaurant Price Spiral of the past half-decade… And it’s brilliant. And really posh. Like, put clean pants on and brush your hair posh. And it’s right bang in the West End.”
The food – a blend of classic French bistro and modern gastropub – was also excellent, and included a chunky textured pork pie with plenty of jelly; an “elegant and brutal” celeriac remoulade; a generous fillet of smoked eel; faggots the were “three nice big bollocks of offal stuffed into (presumably) caul fat with a rich sticky gravy”; a veal and crayfish marengo dish “wonderfully exhumed from the dusty annals of 19th-century British restauration” and a crème caramel that “lingered long in the memory”.
***
Chitra Ramaswamy welcomed Scotland’s first Sri Lankan restaurant, previously a stall in Edinburgh’s Bonnie and Wild food hall, which took 2,500 bookings ahead of opening earlier this year.
Inspired by the street food of this “extraordinarily beautiful island”, the restaurant is named after a type of chilli – appropriately for a “notoriously spicy cuisine”. An opening salvo of cubed mango and pineapple in vinegar, spice and chilli numbed Chitra’s palate – “too hot for me.”
Hoppers are the crowning glory here, “all crisp laced edges, soft pillowy centres and profound fermented coconut sweetness”. Sri Lanka’s most famous street food, kotthu, was not quite up to scratch: the black pork curry was flavoursome and tangy but too mushy and lacking in crunch.
***
Camilla Long overcame her gastropub aversion to visit the new venue from a family she dubbed “the Kennedys of nose-to-tail cooking” – brothers Lorcan and Fin Spiteri, who ran the floating restaurant Caravel, their father John Spiteri, who helped set up St John, and their mother Melanie Arnold, co-founder of Rochelle Canteen.
Between them, she said, “they know how to do the most difficult thing in restaurants: underplay it.” The only false note are the “heavy monogrammed gilets” sported by the staff – “something you’d only really wear in Charlbury and, to be honest, they don’t really fit here”.
This isn’t a place that spends much time styling the food, but everything Camilla tasted – notably some velvety venison and an artichoke tagliatelle – was “great”, and the puddings attractively “simple and humble”.
“None of this is going to completely reimagine the pub restaurant,” she concluded. “What it does rethink is whether people really need to pay £250 for two for dinner. They could charge huge prices in this part of town, for this crowd, and they’d pay for it — or Daddy would.”
*****
Financial Times
Jay Rayner bagged himself a bargain in Mayfair, of all places, in the shape of lunch (2 courses for £29, 3 for £39) at which you get to sample chef Larry Jayasekara’s “rich neo-French cooking, with sudden outbreaks of spicing drawing on his Sri Lankan heritage: an airy hit of cardamom here, the warmth of cumin there” – for about the price of “two mediocre courses at Wagamama”.
“This man can cook,” Jay stressed, as he chewed his way through some extra bread – “and oh what bread” – some diced raw 40-day-aged beef with confit egg yolk, lobster in “five-denier-thin” pasta, braised and barbecued lamb shoulder with tiny pickled tomatoes and a crisp-skinned fillet of sea trout: all “luxurious but on the right side of opulent”.
“Every dish looks beautiful, for we are in a space that prioritises beautiful things. There are edible blooms, artfully place, anf swirls and dabs of sauce. The Cocochine is a lovely restaurant, and that lunch menu is a proper deal that everyone should know about.”
*****
London Standard
Joel Golby, last seen reviewing for the Observer, visited one of his regular haunts, a restaurant offering European plates and “spooky magic” where “Nick Bramham has quietly been one of the city’s most in-form head chefs for a while now”.
Melon and coppa in peppery olive oil was just right – “listen: there’s more coppa than melon and that correct excess is exactly why I come here”. Asparagus with tomato and anchovy beurre blanc “tastes like a neat little allotment a moment after a mist of spring rain” and comes with four slices of “London’s bubbliest focaccia”. The “blink-and-you’ll-miss-them showstopping mains” included a perfectly cooked whole John Dory with tzatziki and peppers and an “exquisite” Iberico dish.
Cannolo was the only option for dessert: “a single roll of thin-but-stiff, pig-fat enhanced dough, filled to not-quite-but-almost-bursting with a combination of cherry and chocolate creams,” which made Joel understand why these things were such a major aspect of Tony Soprano’s life.
*****
Daily Mail
Tom Parker Bowles throughly approved of a northern Thai barbecue that takes its place alongside the capital’s new breed of regional Thai places – Som Saa, Speedboat Bar, Smoking Goat and Kiln.
The raw beef larb was a hit, with the inspired addition of fresh bovine bile (“not the sort of ingredient you can pick up at the local Tesco”). “The dish has a deeply bosky appeal, sticky, dark and jungly in the best way, livid with chillies and the medicinal tang of galangal. Whole peppercorns provide tiny explosions of fragrant delight.”
Other “full-blooded, no-holds-barred” dishes included miang: “acidic shards of pomelo, fresh chillies and crispy rice, with a slick of tart tamarind, all wrapped in fresh betel leaf”; plump shan meatballs of minced chicken with lemon grass and garlic; fresh khanon jeen noodles with a coconut-heavy prawn curry; and khao soi, “a fantastically complex curry with a steadily building heat”.
*****
The Observer
Hotel patisseries, London’s West End
Laura Goodman and her six-year-old daughter conducted a two-day tour of the patisseries that have cropped up – she is not quite sure why – in some of the capital’s poshest hotels.
“The Berkeley, Claridge’s and the Connaught are all owned by the same group and they are all expressing the same idea in different ways, letting a renowned baker plant themselves among all that tradition. It works to an extent, but taking them in all at once gives me a theme-park feeling.”
Nicolas Rouzaud at the Connaught is “the loveliest to be in”, while the ham and cheese swirl from Richard Hart’s new Claridge’s Bakery is “so sweet I feel like they might have used the wrong dough”. Cedric Grolet at the Berkeley’s coconut-passionfruit tart “is a dream to behold” and “fantastic” to eat, combining “crumbly pastry, ethereal coconut mousse and and crunchy coconut praline”. Less enchanting is Albert Adria’s ‘golden egg’ from Cakes & Bubbles at the Hotel Café Royal: the innards are “perfect” but they are presented, off-puttingly, in an actual eggshell.
