Our round-up of what the nation’s restaurant critics were writing about in the week up to 24th August 2025
The Guardian
Grace Dent hailed a 20-seat counter venue “tucked away in a quaint West Suffolk market town” and serving a set menu from two “relatively unknown chefs”, married couple Ruben Aquilar Bel and Gabriella Fogarasi, as one of her top five openings of the year.
Notably cosy and homespun for a well-honed tasting-menu outfit, Bellota is financed by Linda Keenan, who has also backed London’s Noble Rot and Clove Club. After only three months it is already getting difficult to book a seat because “there’s something hugely beguiling going on here, and even verging on swaggering”.
Everything Grace ate was “fabulous”, from “hot, crisp, truffled croquetas, better than many I’ve tasted even in Spain”, via “masterful al dente raviolo stuffed with roast sweet red pepper and aubergine with just a touch of sherry vinegar, all dressed in a heavenly manchego sauce”, hake with squid ink, and Creedy Carver duck, to Gabi’s Thai green curry ice-cream with warm pistachio cake and confit apricots. “Yes, you read that right: I did say Thai green curry ice-cream. And, yes, it works. Don’t try this at home, people.”
*****
The Times & Sunday Times
Chitra Ramaswamy welcomed a “fun and flamboyant” – if “eyewateringly” expensive – addition to the Scottish capital’s Italian dining scene, in the West End’s new Hoxton hotel. The design is “pure baroque maximalism: all striped awnings, fake foliage tumbling down every vertical surface, mirrors, blue velvet banquettes, vibrant Amalfi style hand-painted crockery, dusky pink walls, and, at its heart … a little Italian water fountain. It’s ostentatious, absurd, not remotely my thing, and I love it.”
Much of the food is “lovely”, most notably a main dish of deboned and butterflied sea bass with smoked butter, which is “sensational in the simple, understated, approaching unreviewable way of great Italian cookery. The flesh is soft and gleaming as velvet.”
Chitra’s only complaint was that a couple of dishes – Orkney scallop; tagliolini with shellfish bisque – are lacking in acidity, “which is a shame considering Patatino’s identity is built around the southwest Italian coast’s bountiful lemon groves”.
*****
London Standard
David Ellis was charmed by a “gloriously proper pub” – once frequented by Dylan Thomas and George Orwell, and neither a gastropub nor a boozer – that has been relaunched with “handsome terracotta flooring, lots of dark stain panelling, litres of postbox red paint. There are candles, silver tankards, old posters. The cutlery is heavy and ornate; the wine glasses have thick stems.”
Food and drink are simple and attractively priced: pints for £7, mixed drinks £10 and wines from £26 a bottle. Starters cost £9 at most – including half a pint of pink prawns served in a glass tankard on a doily with Marie Rose on the side – and the main courses are exclusively pies: “done properly — pastry all over, not just a stew wearing a cap — with the top blackened and heavily peppered, and the meat inside slow-cooked to its point of surrender”.
“This is pub dining the way I remember it growing up, when people went out for fun they could cheerfully afford. It’s nice to know someone else hasn’t forgotten about that, either.”
******
Daily Mail
Tom Parker Bowles had nothing but praise for the food at the second iteration of this bistro from “the great Claude Bosi” – a place “as handsome as you’d expect, all Belle Époque whimsy”, whose “menu eats just as well as it reads”.
Oysters, Dorset snails “(the best)”, pâté en croute (“an elegant, meaty mosaic surrounded by tremulous jelly…we fight over the last bite”), soufflé au Camembert (“light as a whim, and gently oozing”), whole roast Landes Black Leg chicken served in a cast iron pot, and a chocolate mousse “that wafts across the tongue” all hit the spot – “Joséphine is not a place for the calorie averse.”
But Tom had stern words for the harsh evening lighting, which should “should flatter and cosset, smooth away wrinkles and bathe a rather battered visage in sweet, sympathetic tones. Hell, I need it. Here, it’s too bright by half.”
*****
Financial Times
Jay Rayner enjoyed his lunch at the latest venue from Mary-Ellen McTague (formerly of Aumbry in Prestwich), who is “not just a terrific chef. She’s a skilled restaurateur who knows how to create spaces that people want to be in” – this time in the unlikely setting of a hotel on an “unforgiving Salford corner”.
“Her food always has high-end finesse, but it’s never prissy,” and here it lived up to Jay’s expectations, starting with snacks that included her ‘split pea chips’ – or as he described them, “mushy peas that have got tired of knowing their place and are making a successful stab at greatness”.
Lancashire hotpot, a “sticky mess of long-braised lamb and onions”, is served with pickled red and buttered green cabbage and “the masterstroke, an oyster mayo”, which harks back to old recipes that suggest adding an oyster to your hotpot. “Desserts include the stunning treacle tart McTague first developed at the Fat Duck on Heston Blumenthal’s watch, which is like re-meeting an old friend.”
*****
The Daily Telegraph
William Sitwell mentioned en passant that he had cycled to an Italian restaurant in Highbury, which we can only guess was the recently opened Lupa. But he was apparently deflected from reviewing it by the announcement of his own proposed “chic hotel and Italian restaurant”, Casa Wivey, at the White Hart in Wiveliscombe, West Somerset (see report in Harden’s News).
