Decorated in extravagant North African style, a bubbly bar/restaurant basement near Liverpool Street; its handy location and its style – suited to parties and, arguably, romance – has already made it a popular City destination, but prices (and the noise level) are very high, and culinary standards are ordinary in the extreme. The former occupant […]
An ambitious newcomer, just north of Oxford Street, where the personal touch of the co-owners – an ex-Manoir head chef and sommelier – is much in evidence; while we were charmed by the service (and wines), we were not convinced that the strikingly-plated dishes lived up to their high prices. Texture is an under-appreciated part […]
Handily located five minutes walk from Euston, a brightly-lit new hotel dining room (with its own entrance), where an ex-Zafferano chef cooks up a satisfying Anglo-Italian menu. Perhaps it’s the prospect of all those dapper ‘euro-types’ about to be deposited at the new Eurostar terminal at St Pancras – Bloomsbury has the feel of somewhere […]
In the heart of Mayfair, a very useful corner gastropub, open 365 days a year; sibling to the House (Islington) and Bull (Highgate), it offers similarly solid cooking, and – in this part of town – the prices demanded for it seem eminently reasonable! It’s not just in Mayfair that there are still – yes, […]
On the fringe of Covent Garden, a smart basement restaurant whose prices and style make it a ‘natural’ for business; on our visit soon after the summer-2007 revamp, the food veered – to an unusual extent – from outstanding to very ordinary. After a decade in business, Axis – the restaurant below the highly-regarded One […]
It’s not often you get to describe waiters as “looking like refugees from Star Trek”, but the styling of this hotel dining room (and its staff) used to be a case study in appalling design. After its recent revamp, we therefore approached it with some anticipation: would it be hilarious, or simply bad? But it […]
China is taking over. Well, if futurologists are to believed. But you’d be hard pushed to guess judged by the standards of your average Chinese restaurant. The clichéd chow churned out by so many native representatives of the People’s Republic gives little hint of the rich variety of one of the world’s greatest cuisines. The […]
It’s not just food quality alone, of course, which makes a good restaurant, Other top features include: an interesting location; cool design; and a maybe a sense of adventure. If those are the sorts of things that float your boat, hasten along to the South Bank, and seek out this newcomer on the second floor […]
Without much in the way of publicity, this new Mexican venture was already doing good business on the couple of weekday lunchtimes when we visited, soon after opening. Perhaps it had something to do with the handy West End location. Just one minute from the Strand, it’s only just far enough from Covent Garden Market […]
