Our round-up of what the nation’s restaurant critics were writing about in the week up to 29th March 2026
Financial Times
Jay Rayner hailed “one of the most impressive openings in a long while” at this East/West hybrid from Romanian-born chef Alex Craciun, last seen in London 10 years ago as head chef at Jason Atherton’s Sosharu. Having worked at “the highest of high-end” restaurants in Kyoto and Tokyo as well as in serious European kitchens, he “has found a way to mix Asian and European aesthetics like they were meant to be together rather than in an arranged marriage”.
Asian-derived dishes included a crisp prawn dumpling “which would be a star turn on any dim sum menu” and a pocket of tempura-ed nori filled with rice, salmon and spicy mayo that is “finger food of the gods”. The most theatrical of the European dishes was a whole cabbage hollowed out with a pre-carved quail crown inside – a dish that was “absurd and silly. But it’s also in service of stupendous cookery.”
Don’t be put off by the menu writing (‘A French Man in Japan’, ‘Japanese Man in the Basque Country’, ‘English Man in Edo’ etc), which Jay admitted could be “profoundly give-it-a-rest annoying” were it not for the fact that the food was very good indeed. “The dishes are witty, texturally complex and, most of all, delicious”.
*****
The Times & Sunday Times
Camilla Long approved hugely of a Vietnamese-Chinese(ish) place in a railway arch down an alley opposite the Young V&A which “gets the effort/coolness ratio right” and offers a menu that is “short and authoritative. Can we just pause for a moment on the luxury of not having much to choose from?”
The shrimp toast is the “Big Dish… a swaggering brick of deep-fried dough not dissimilar to confit potatoes in appearance, with a lash of bright green chilli sauce, actual prawns embedded like treasure inside”, while cheung fun consisted of “great succulent chunks of chewy noodle with 10/10 mouth appeal, sloshed together with peppercorns, biquinhos and gossamer shavings of endive.”
And “Oh God — the puddings”, Camilla swooned, “there’s nothing more Vietnamese than madeleines, especially pimped ones like these… with hot butter, honey and a slug of salt.”
***
The Rat Inn, Anick, Northumberland
Giles Coren and his family dropped into a “lovely” old drovers’ inn where they enjoyed “good, hearty, locally sourced, homecooked food” that was “all one asks for, but so rarely gets”.
Steak is the main attraction here – there is a running score on the wall of the number of Chateaubriands consumed since 2012 – but Giles chose instead “three hefty cutlets from a rack of overwintered lamb, grainy and dense, with sweet, yellow, buttery fat”.
Noting that this was his third positive review from the North East in two months, Giles stressed that the food is by no means universally good in these parts. He was staying in the “poshest hotel in the county” – which he did not identify (“they know who they are”) – whose three restaurants were uniformly terrible, while the “delightful” Twice Brewed Inn, a “stonking” beer pub in the village of Once Brewed, served only frozen food from the microwave.
****
The Guardian
Grace Dent found perfect shelter from a freezing day on the “south-east Riviera” inside a toasty “old warhorse” of a one-time coaching inn which has been revived by chef Billy Stock (formerly of nearby Sete and London’s The Marksman and St John) and “front-of-house queen” Ellie Topham.
“The ever-changing menu is a paean to things that make me happy: cep cream vol-au-vents, plump salted hot fresh rolls with good butter, chunks of brill with glossy peppercorn sauce, plates of chunky chips with hollandaise sauce for dipping.”
Best of all are the pies, “a thing of splendour and ever-present on the menu in different guises”. The lobster and cod pie contained a liquor “rich as a thermidor sauce or bisque and thick with lobster meat and perfect flaky cod. It was the type of sauce you weep about as you fear you’ll never taste its like again.”
*****
London Standard
David Ellis was impressed by founder Karan Gokani’s “brilliant” updating of his 11-year-old Sri Lankan concept for the new fourth branch in the former Lyle’s premises, the interior now beautifully kitted out to resemble an Indian mansion or palace.
“It feels, really, more personal — as though Gokani has opened a restaurant for himself, not to appease an accountant.”
There are new dishes on the menu, too, from south India as well as Sri Lanka, including ‘crab kari omelette’ which is “three dishes eccentrically but brilliantly pulled together as one”; a plate of squid fried with garlic-chilli butter to a perfect softness; and a short rib biryani in which the beef was slow-cooked “to complete acquiescence, sticky, heavy and gorgeous”.
*****
The Observer
Chitra Ramaswamy enjoyed the intimate and communal atmosphere at the first Japanese do-it-yourself barbecue restaurant in Scotland, opened last year by a Singaporean hairstylist “because it’s the food he craved most and he couldn’t get it in Edinburgh”.
The meat and seafood arrives in 100g portions or ‘combo sets’, and is “brilliant value considering the quality of the produce”, which ranges from premium A5 Japanese wagyu and Scottish ribeye, skirt and flatiron, to richly flavoured acorn-fed Iberico pork from Spain and Scottish seafood. “The house sauces are fantastic: a bright soy mixed with lemon and apple; fiendishly slushy garlic; a spicy chilli oil.”
The grilling instructions were not always helpful – two-and-a-half minutes per side was too long for the scallops – but Chitra and her family soon got the hang, most successfully with whole prawns in a soy marinade: “judging when to pluck it from the bars, then prising off head and tail, dunking the sweet charred flesh into each sauce, and gobbling it when it’s almost too hot to handle is pure sensory joy”.
*****
Daily Mail
Tom Parker Bowles had his suspicions about an Italian restaurant that promises ‘a joyful escape to the sun-drenched coastline of Amalfi’ but takes its name from a Piedmontese town 30 miles inland – and famous for its white truffles.
The decor confirmed his fears. “Money hasn’t just been lavished on the place, but splashed and flashed and frittered and thrown”, resulting in an “over-designed… Berlusconi boudoir where the rococo lap-dances the baroque, while kitsch and camp whoop from the wings… a place so over the top that it makes Sexy Fish look like St John.”
Dishes arrived slathered in caviar or those truffles, and langoustine tartare is embellished with foie gras, so “the fatty liver detracts from the purity of the pristine crustaceans”. Simpler dishes – pizza Margherita, parmigiana, sea bream – are dull, forgettable and decidedly average.
“‘Alba Ristorante delivers indulgence in every mouthful,’ coos the website. Urgh. Indulgence il mio culo.”
