Our round-up of what the nation’s restaurant critics were writing about in the week to 28th September 2025
The Guardian
Grace Dent had “easily the weirdest restaurant experience” of the last six months at a new venture its website presents as a pastoral riverside homage to the post-War cook, florist and potter Constance Spry that turned out to be “essentially a souped-up corporate box inside Craven Cottage, Fulham Football Club’s ground”.
Grace and her guest had the dining room to themselves when they arrived, but were soon surrounded by fellow-“customers” of twenty-somethings apparently dragged in from the marketing offices next door, who proceeded to mime eating a meal. “As we finished dessert and I paid the bill, each table emptied one by one, all seemingly chuntering ‘Rhubarb, rhubarb’ as the extras – sorry, diners – wandered back to their offices after a fictitious lunch. This is how Kim Jong-un must feel every time he leaves the house.”
No such problems with the food, which was “everything you’d expect of an Adam Byatt restaurant: fine produce, meticulously deliberated over and, largely, cooked with serious aplomb.” Highlights included skate knobs with tartare sauce; a round of “delightful” corn and green chilli tarts; an “outstanding” Dorset crab vol-au-vent with curry remoulade; claypot chicken with a herby barley sauce; a “joyous” Russian salad; and a “hulking great slice of delightful and moist treacle, date and walnut tart”. Just one disappointment: the signature coronation chicken paté en croute was “a tad dry”.
*****
The Observer
Jimi Famurewa hailed a “gastronomically ambitious Afro-fusion restaurant in this Gail’s-coded market town”, where Sierra Leone-born chef Maria Bradford has “pretty much minted a new culinary language” and created a “celebration of culture” through her “dazzling skill and sheer force of personality”.
Jimi’s lunch opened with a series of snacks, “each one an intricate spring-loaded revelation”: cubes of lamb belly with a piquant tomato salsa; deboned mega-nuggets of stuffed chicken wing with hot sauce and a blue-cheese crema; yam croquette with shreds of leek and pancetta; cassava chips “dusted in a housemade version of kankankan – the fittingly kicky, hot-sweet marinade that is a close cousin of Nigerian suya spice”. There followed a blowtorched fillet of mackerel with plantain purée; griddled spatchcock poussin with “nutty, mouth-coating spiced palm butter sauce”; grill-blackened king prawns with a bracing lemongrass gel; and “puffed-rice bone marrow – a ragged caveman luge of intensely charred, bottom-of-the-pan socarrat – alongside a buttery span of fermented chilli-honey flatbread”.
“Go to Shwen Shwen because the food is unforgettably delicious,” Jimi urged. “Go because it is also surprisingly affordable. And especially go because, at a time when loose gangs of ‘patriots’ deliberately seek to undermine multiculturalism, this is exactly the kind of enterprise that those of us who are dismayed and unsettled should be supporting.”
*****
Financial Times
Jay Rayner sampled this collaboration between “seafood maven” Tom Brown (ex-Cornerstone and Pearly Queen) and the “carnivorous” Brad Carter (ex-Carters of Moseley), who “stick resolutely to the idea that surf and turf don’t merely have to cohabit; they can mount each other rigorously.”
Hence dishes like squid stuffed with sobrasada salami; kofta of duck minced with mussels; and beef flank mashed with whitebait and deep-fried – “brash” flavours on a menu that is “the edible equivalent of a Roy Lichtenstein canvas. It’s all ‘Wham!’, ‘Blam!’ and ‘Pop!’.”
If these “flavour bombs can become relentless”, Jay conceded, the venue is aimed firmly at a younger crowd and is “all huge fun and also completely bonkers” – while he also ventured to suggest that “a little inebriation” might help one’s enjoyment of the experience.
*****
The Times & Sunday Times
Giles Coren thoroughly enjoyed a family Sunday supper at a former chippy serving Spanish-style fish and seafood that he washed down with “tumblers of fino over ice with a slice of lemon, which they do for a saintly fiver”.
“Best dish of the night was a couple of very young squid sliced into narrow rings and griddled on the plancha with lots of good olive oil and parsley. So sweet, so fresh, so delicately, naturally crisp.” A “fine tortilla… warm, golden, round as a doubloon” was also up to scratch, patatas bravas were “a perfect vector for the rocket-fuel aïoli and paprika sauce”, and panisses came “with a loose tonnato sauce, capers and dill that make them absolutely worth your time”.
Having failed to join in the critical chorus when Tollingtons launched 15 months ago, Giles said: “I’m delighted I got here at all, love what they are doing and wish them all the joy in the world.”
***
Supawan, King’s Cross
Charlotte Ivers noted that we are living in a “golden age” of Thai restaurants, from Long Chim and AngloThai to Speedboat Bar, Kolae and Kiln – and Supawan, though “neither new nor famous” and “amid absurd levels of competition — seems to be winning a guerrilla battle for our hearts and minds”.
It is “one of the prettiest small restaurants I’ve ever been to”, with shelves filled with luscious green plants, jars of pickles, assorted vases and other Thai ephemera, and pretty well everything on the menu is delicious. She particularly liked the fat king prawns in wheat noodles, deep-fried and served with a tamarind and chilli dipping sauce; pad kra prow gai: minced chicken stir-fried with chillies, green beans, garlic and Thai basil; moo hong: slow-cooked pork belly in a sauce of Chinese five spice and dark soy; and morning glory, “to hammer home how fresh and vibrant the ingredients here can be”.
*****
London Standard
David Ellis enjoyed a quick-service meal of Sri Lankan street food in a former Franco Manca on Maiden Lane that could be considered “the best fast food in the city, perhaps without intending to”.
“Dishes arrived almost as soon as they’d been ordered, as though merely uttering the names aloud had supernaturally summoned them.” Among his recommendations were breadcrumbed mutton rolls “rightly richer and sweeter than they were hot”; vada dumplings that “look like deep-fried doughnuts, and don’t taste dissimilar”; chilli prawn toast; masala curry dosa served flat and unwrapped like a pizza; and waffles folded around strips of fried chicken.
“I am not sure any of this is food of staggering authenticity,” he said, “but throughout was clever, detailed spicing that suggested the kitchen genuinely cares.”
*****
Daily Telegraph
William Sitwell gave a thumbs-up to this Roman-inspired restaurant from actor Theo James and Carousel founder Ed Templeton, saying “the carbonara was sublime: a heavenly mix” (behind paywall).
