Near Finsbury Square, a trendy club dining room that welcomes outsiders for lunch and dinner, and makes a congenial place for a friends’ rendezvous; the food has no great ambitions, but it is competently realised, and complemented by an interesting range of New World wines. We don’t usually review clubs, but this one opens its […]
The main dining room of the revamped St Pancras Station; our (very) early-days visit found an unusually glamorous room and welcoming service, as well as food – from a long and varied menu – of some promise. There’s some dispute as to when is the ‘right’ time to review a restaurant. Like many discussions about […]
From the same backers as Chelsea’s excellent The Painted Heron SW10, an exemplary contemporary-style budget Indian, by Waterloo Station. Before we visited this excellent new Indian by Waterloo Station, we weren’t aware that it was a spin-off of the excellent The Painted Heron in Chelsea. Once you know that, however, everything become clear. Like its […]
Off the Embankment, near the Savoy, a vast new pan-Asian bar/restaurant, modelled on (and run by the same team as) the original Paris establishment of the same name; on our early-dog-days-of-August visit it was not yet buzzing, but showed much potential as a romantic/party venue. They claim that the original Paris Buddha Bar – tucked-away […]
A stylish and buzzy Hoxton spot, with good cocktails and a buzzy atmosphere, but where the vegan fare is a decidedly acquired taste. ‘How about a trip to Hoxton’, we said to our friends, brightly. ‘There’s this new, er, vegan restaurant we’d like to check out. And they pride themselves of barely cooking much of […]
A case-study in ‘how not to do a restaurant opening’ (and that was leaving aside the ultra-mean portions); the design of this City newcomer is great, but is the current environment going to be receptive to this ostentatious spin-off from a West End original that was never such a ‘rave’ in the first place? How […]
A dull Gallic re-launch of the Mayfair dining room until recently tenanted by Angela Hartnett; the food on our early-days visit impressed only by its enormous prices. More mature readers may recall that the dining room at the Connaught used to be considered a truly great restaurant, with an unbroken tradition going back to the […]
Handily located near St Paul’s, a rare new-build restaurant (Norman Foster) offering surprising good Italian food on a number of levels. We weren’t frankly expecting much from this new City Italian – an offshoot of a fashionable Chelsea restaurant whose main virtue we’ve always thought to be its nicely-located al fresco tables. First impressions, however, […]
On the former South Kensington site of Lundum’s, an ambitious Gallic newcomer from a Lyonnais chef (Jean-Christophe Ansanay-Alex) of considerable repute; on our visit, food that was somewhat below expectation formed part of an experience which, taken as a whole, was rather bizarre. The French and the English are never going to understand each other. […]
Near Liverpool Street, a large new bar/brasserie in the Devonshire Square (re-)development, whose only real distinguishing feature appears to be that it has a large number of tables, many of them semi-al fresco. Once upon a time – 20 years ago, say – it was almost impossible to find a decent meal in the City. […]
