Our round-up of what the nation’s restaurant critics were writing about in the week up to 27th April 2025
London Standard
David Ellis was completely seduced by the new upstairs restaurant above the recently reopened Knave of Clubs pub, hailing it as “E1’s answer to The Dover, Mayfair’s wood-panelled, come-hither martini den”.
“This is an easy place to adore,” he said, hailing “the best drinks list I can remember: sharpeners of £10 negronis; four types of martini; a Hemingway daiquiri,” alongside a food menu that “matches the mastery of the cocktail list. It is Paris spied through a New Yorker’s telescope”, with such delights as “French onion soup thick enough to eat with a fork and as sweet and rich and comforting as a wealthy, elderly aunt writing you into the will”.
It’s also very good value. “No one’s being taken for a ride. It’s as though they want their customers to actually enjoy themselves. Can you imagine?”
*****
The Guardian
For Grace Dent, this “beautiful” and “dreamily restored Grade II-listed Georgian townhouse” opposite the Natural History Museum is “one of London’s loveliest new places to eat”; indeed, it is “by no small margin the new emperor” of the Mediterranean small plates style that has become ubiquitous in recent years.
The “wholesome, rustic, yet semi-decadent modern European cooking” makes it a perfect venue for fans of the River Cafe (chef Yohei Furuhashi’s former haunt), she suggested – and at a fraction of the price.
Grace’s favourite dish came last: a chocolate mousse with Agen prunes that was, she said, “one of the most delicious things being served on Planet Earth right now. This plump, puckered, glossy quenelle of joy with two fat, boozy prunes makes every other chocolate mousse in the UK taste like Instant Whip.”
*****
The Times & Sunday Times
“The little boss is bossing it,” Chitra Ramswamy quipped (she couldn’t resist the temptation) of this “Italianish” spot in the New Town that has defied the downturn of trade in restaurants around the world to be rammed every night. “At 18 Howe Street, the apocalypse has not come — it’s all negronis and plates of pappardelle with ox cheek ragu at teatime on a Monday.”
Not every dish is perfect. Charred broccoli and kale on a bean puree was over-salted, pappardelle needed more bite, and ricotta gnudi were too close to an Indian dessert for comfort, while service slowed down once the place got busy.
But excellent cocktails, keen prices, an easygoing confidence in its own cool status and “young, absurdly enthused servers” combined to good effect, making it “the sort of restaurant you think is a commonplace in cities until you realise you can’t name another quite like it”.
***
Charlotte Ivers advised neophites against developing a taste for Japanese food, given that it is so expensive in Britain – it “really is an opportunity to eat your way out of solvency,” she warned. “It’s like developing a taste for expensive whisky: save yourself the bother.”
But for those (like herself) already in its thrall, she would recommend this new izakaya where she and a guest ate (and shared a bottle of sake) for a total of £216: “you’re not eating Japanese food like this for the money anywhere else in the UK.”
With a counter and a sunken back room “decorated in a manner somewhere between a Norwegian sauna and an industrial-chic hotel bar”, Himi provided plate after plate of dishes distinguished by umami – “that wonderful, earthy, brothy taste to it. If you aren’t a disciple of the fifth taste, eat somewhere else. If you are, this is paradise.”
*****
Daily Mail
Tom Parker Bowles was an instant convert to the delights of the Philly cheesesteak (created, it is said, by Philadelphian Pat Olivieri in 1930) when he tried it for the first time at the latest London branch of this growing US sports bar chain.
First, though, a plate of Buffalo wings that were “really very fine indeed, with crisp crust and juicy flesh and lashings of that sharp, buttery, mildly spicy sauce” (although beware the fiery ‘Insanity’ wings: “I just about get through a half dozen before my lips swell up like a lilo and my tongue transforms into a lump of throbbing gristle”).
As for the cheesesteak – it’s “a mass of shaved ribeye ‘wit’ (with onions), drenched in a flood of warm, neon-yellow cheddar Wiz (their own take on the gloriously artificial Kraft Cheez Whiz liquid cheese) and piled into a long torpedo bun”. That may not sound appetizing, but Tom pronounced it “bliss” – “a soothing symphony of savoury, salty and soft.”
*****
Daily Telegraph
William Sitwell was disconcerted by the 80s soundtrack, Whitney Houston’s voice dredging up traumatic memories, at this semi-industrial-chic Harborne restaurant, and by a multitude of dishes arriving simultaneously – although friendly service and a “modernised, pared-down version” of the traditional Italian culinary repertoire cheered him up.
Not every dish hit the spot: there was too much rocket; burrata was confusingly over-decorated; the pricey ‘wild red prawns’ were “without any remarkable discernment of high-quality prawniness”; lamb livers were a let-down, “too much grey, not enough pink”; and the dark chocolate sorbet was unfortunate proof that such a thing is inevitably rich and dark and watery.
On the credit side, the pastas were decent; sea bream was “soft and lovely with a nice acidic crunch from tiny cubes of apple”; and octopus was “splendid…, lying charred and lush and tasty on a bed laden with goodies”.
*****
Financial Times
Jay Rayner appreciated “fluent Korean” cooking with a “French twang” at this new restaurant from chef Joo Won – a “tribute to the value of a mixed career”.
As head chef at the Galvin Brothers’ former Windows at the Hilton Hyde Park, Joo had “completely nailed” the emulsified froth of classical French cuisine. A “transformative trip” to his native Korea led to Calong (meaning “hip” or “cool” in the slang of Busan, his home town).
A case in point from its daily blackboard menu: parjeon, or Korean spring onion pancake, is topped with both a sesame oil-dressed rocket salad and “an artfully spooned quenelle of whipped fennel puree which could have wandered in from an Alain Ducasse bistro… It feels less like an interloper and more of a considered addition.”
