In the impressive new King’s Place arts-and-office building, a good-all-round British brasserie, occupying a bright canalside site. Only the French ever really seem to have had particular success at elevating the big-city, semi-formal dining experience they call a brasserie to anything resembling an art form, It’s such a useful, all-purpose concept, we’ve often wondered why […]
An instant smash-hit, this convivial Parisian-inspired steakhouse, on the site of the old Stock Exchange building, offers an excellent all-round fixed-price formula. Rarely have the massed ranks of Britain’s finest national restaurant critics talked such unadulterated tripe as they did on the launch of London’s original outpost of a Parisian steakhouse, back in 2005. Very […]
A large and spacious Bayswater operation, pitched half-way between brasserie and gastropub, offering good-quality food and notably pleasant service; a month after opening, the formula was still settling in, but we suspect they will get there in the end. The major junction where Notting Hill indisputably becomes Bayswater has seen a lot of restaurant action […]
Physically little changed from its days as Mosaico, the third successive Italian restaurant to occupy this Mayfair basement site remains a pricey place for what it is, and still seems mainly to attract a clubby band of regulars. Our visits to new incarnations of this Mayfair basement restaurant – recently re-branded as an offshoot of […]
A very good all-rounder, this money-no-object conversion of a grand Georgian house, near Canary Wharf, offers Indian cuisine of high quality, and efficient service, in an elegantly contemporary setting. There have been a couple of attempts at turning this very grand Georgian house into an Indian restaurant. Neither lasted very long, but – undaunted – […]
A large tapas restaurant, near Great Portland Street tube, where the chef has an impressive cv – he may perhaps have been absent on the day we visited. Something approaching a ‘rave’ review elsewhere drew us to this large but otherwise unremarked-on tapas bar-cum-restaurant. It opened six months ago, and sounded as if it might […]
Opposite the new Home Office building, a Westminster Italian from one of London’s leading serial restaurateurs, Claudio Pulze; the cooking is of notably high quality, but service can be slow, and the setting signally lacks electricity. It’s a little-known fact that Claudio Pulze has opened as many London restaurants as Sir Terence Conran – they […]
Opposite the big Pimlico Sainbury’s, a no-nonsense Brazilian buffet affair, offering tasty food at reasonable prices; its rather bare design, however, makes it more a practical stand-by than an obvious party destination. [Capsule review only – not much we can really add to the above, and, despite our best efforts, we’ve been unable to obtain […]
On the Regent’s Park fringe of Camden Town, Gordon Ramsay’s glamorous conversion of a palatial boozer; food and service are good (rather than anything more), but the overall experience is highly suited to a celebration or romance. Many people have been a bit mystified by this Gordon Ramsay group restaurant, bar and small hotel, in […]
Is the restaurant god a Sloane? Chelsea’s three historic shrines to Sloanedom – Dan’s, Monkey’s and Foxtrot Oscar – have all been pillaged in recent years, and in each case the vengeance has been terrible. Most obvious is Monkey’s, which became Tom’s Place, which quickly became Aikens’s ex-place when it was shut down for being […]
