Our round-up of what the nation’s restaurant critics were writing about in the week up to 27th September 2026
The Observer
Tanya Gold hailed the new restaurant from chef Tom Sellers overlooking “the most pristine and eerie beach in Cornwall” at the Carbis Bay Hotel, host to the world’s leaders for the G7 meeting five years ago, where she found cooking of perfection and honesty behind the headline luxury.
“Sellers has done what great chefs do,” Tanya declared, “he has made a new reality, as transient as it is lovely”, with plates including “exquisite” tomato salad, “simple and wondrous” cuttlefish that’s “southern Italy in a dish”, and bass that “tastes glorious, because Sellers has done very little with it”.
“Lamb is, guiltily, my favourite meat, and this tells me why: no other meat has this sweetness – I almost wrote innocence but recoiled from myself – and bloody wetness.” The madeleines are baked to order and look like apples from a fairy story, being green (seaweed dust) and red (blackcurrant powder). “They are still warm as if living; they deserve to be a famous dish.”
*****
Financial Times
Jay Rayner was one of two critics this week who reviewed the new venture from acclaimed duo David Carter (Smokestak, Oma) and Sertaç Dirik (Mangal II), describing it as “very London, 2026…. the place that annoying friend of yours with the worrying Instagram habit wants to eat at right now.”
For all the fuss about it, and despite its “brilliant and also utterly opaque” wine list, Jay was resolutely unimpressed. This is “a Turkish restaurant in Soho for people who don’t fancy the schlep to Dalston”, he said. Its cooking is built around “fire and the fattier cuts and the bigger flavours”, and is really no better than that found in the brightly lit Turkish restaurants of north or east London from which it takes inspiration.
The move to Soho was “the equivalent of moving from an indie record label to a major,” Jay said. The dark and moody interior was engineered in a way that “recalls the psychological trick of serving a standard whisky in a heavy-bottomed glass, to make guests think better of the booze… It’s diverting and fun. But don’t mistake it for some stunning improvement on the restaurant culture from which it evolved.”
*****
The Times & Sunday Times
Camilla Long also noted the noise around a restaurant that arrived “on a petrol-driven magic carpet of hype”, and whose Instagram feed “reads like an Oscars acceptance speech”. But “in spite of all this – in spite of its immense silliness and self-regard and its desperation to be liked – I loved it. Kid slaps.”
The atmosphere, she said, is one of “controlled anarchy for men who like GQ”, while the menu lists “Biblical trains, offal kebabs, ancient Syrian wheats, flatbreads and the goat – literally Jesus food… the bony ass Last Supper to the self-appointed messiahs of media land”.
If the meze (“boring old hummus”) is unexciting, the meat (lamb belly kebab, sweetbread kebab, kofte) is “more impressive”, and the signature kid goat served in a huge pot is “a sensational dish, lamby and velvety and comforting”. In short, the founders have managed to create a confident and upmarket restaurant that is both “slightly dirty and sexy”, “exclusive and filthy”.
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Zonda at the Halfway, Kineton
Lardon, Elkstone
Giles Coren returned to his old weekend stomping ground, the Windrush Valley in the Cotswolds, where one of his favourite pubs is now serving “the best pizza is Gloucestershire. Or frankly anywhere within 50 miles”, from Cameron Kelly, who used to run a match-day pop-up at Stow-on-the-Wold Rugby Club.
HIs pizzas are “just phenomenal”, with “fine, puffy yeast dough” bases and “fantastic toppings with “rather cheesy Italian frat-boy names like ‘Diablo’, ‘Battista’ and ‘458 Speciale’”. The supporting dishes are well up to par, too: salt and pepper squid with harissa emulsion, rare-breed pork belly bites and courgette fritti.
Giles also enjoyed lunch at Elkstone Studios, a new ‘lifestyle, retail, work’ development whose “predictably wood-fired restaurant was excellent” (if “quite pricey”), with a “brilliantly realised” Basque/Tuscan/southern French menu.
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Chitra Ramaswamy visited a long-established family-run Greek taverna on the “sleepy” edge of the New Town, frequented some of the Scottish capital’s brilliant chefs on their days off.
“The vibe is lively, twinkly, warm, relaxed and joyously slow-paced,” with a packed house one midweek evening. Chef Christos Bampalis and his family do justice to what Chitra describes as “one of the original ‘fusion’ food cultures, with myriad influences from Persian, Levantine, Arabian, Turkish and Byzantine traditions”.
A “pleasingly heavy-on-the-garlic tzatski” and a fresh and smoky melitzanosalata are the pick of the dips. Prawn saganaki comes in a rich, gently spiced tomato sauce; chicken souvlaki is “juicy, smoky and garlic-redolent”; and “best of all is the calamari, supremely fresh and soft with even a suggestion of rubberiness, coated with a very light batter.”
*****
The Guardian
Grace Dent headed to a Glasgow basement venue with a psychedelic rock soundtrack (“it’s as if the Big Lebowski took up cooking”), where she tasted “the best pakora in Britain – “thoroughly crisp outside with a gloriously squidgy interior, paper-thin onion that’s properly fried through, and all dotted with creamed piccalilli and blanketed in grated sheep’s cheese”.
Downstairs from stablemate Margo, Sebb’s offers a menu that’s a “delicious bombardment of continents, cuisines and cultural trickledowns”, from a chef who has “learned little bits of loveliness from Sauchiehall Street to the Silk Road, and who wants to deliver maximum joy”.
Further “stonking triumphs” include ‘coronation cauliflower’ and rump fillet with cowboy butter that is “a riot of unbridled tastiness with a huge nod to French gastronomical technique”. She ended her meal with a chocolate sorbet that was “one of the best things I’ve eaten all year”.
*****
London Standard
Mina Holland wondered whether the successor to long-time local favourite Franklins would carry on as a bistro or lean into its pub roots. The welcome news is that it remains a place where “good cooking and hungry locals happily collide…. The Victory does what a good neighbourhood restaurant should, with a talented kitchen to boot.”
High points of her meal included a starter of raw English tuna, shallots and capers and main dishes of cod served with tarragon-flecked chanterelles and a “genius sweetcorn puree”, and generous malfatti pasta balls with ricotta and green herbs in cavolo nero sauce.
The only disappointments were the “throwback” slices of airy white bread: “in London 2026, bread is an easy thing to get right; I can’t help but feel that failing to do so is a disservice to the restaurant’s cooking — those oily juices deserve better.”
*****
Daily Mail
Tom Parker Bowles cheered the opening of the “most ambitious project yet” from the team behind The Beckford Bottle Shop and Beckford Canteen in Bath (both of which he loved), a handsome neo-brasserie with 11 bedrooms, in what used to be the local Lloyds bank.
He declared it a “brand new classic”, serving starters like fresh crumpets with anchovy butter and a “reassuringly bosky pig’s head fritter” with gooseberry ketchup, or “joyously squeaky” deep-fried Westcombe cheddar curds with Marmite mayo.
The finest dish of the day was halibut cooked in chicken jus with peas, while the burnt butter ice cream was “sublime”. There was just one dud dish to “avoid”: Devonshire crab salad, where the freshness of the meat is smothered in overpowering remoulade.
*****
Daily Telegraph
William Sitwell enthused about a new Irish-American jockey-themed pub-restaurant that he feels should become a “famous institution”.
The dining room was “beautifully designed”, the wine (a pinot noir from Oregon) “a revelation”, and the food uniformly “delicious” all the way through from snacks of salmon tacos and corn ribs, via a starter of “exuberant” Irish beef tartare, to main dishes of Kentucky fried chicken and a “belter” of an Iberian pork chop.
