A Marylebone offshoot of Pied à Terre, offering high-quality Gallic dishes and friendly service in a stripped-down contemporary bistro setting. A glass half full, or a glass half empty? That’s the critical dilemma in trying to assess the new Marylebone offshoot of the celebrated Pied A Terre. Take the staff issue. We know that it […]
A couple of minutes walk from Borough Market, a very welcoming Indian restaurant, offering fairly standard fare consistently realised to a high standard; the only real downside is that it is rather noisy. A business meeting took us – late in the day, in restaurant-reviewing terms, as it opened in the spring of 2007 – […]
Near the Old Bailey, an externally somewhat unprepossesing Italian restaurant, with friendly and efficient service, and offering cooking that’s above the norm. Never over-estimate the power of the reviewers. Two days before we lunched at this City Italian, it had been favourably (if not ravingly) appraised by Marina O’Loughlin – a writer highly regarded by […]
A former Bayswater boozer, impressively – and surprisingly convincingly – made over as a smart Art Nouveau restaurant; our overall impression was pretty favourable, but we found the Gallic cooking enjoyable rather than anything more. Thierry Thomasin – formerly manager of Aubergine in Chelsea – has made quite a splash with Angelus. And in Bayswater […]
From Claude Bosi – a chef who gained a reputation as among the UK’s best when his restaurant was in Ludlow – a charming and understated Mayfair dining room, if one perhaps rather lacking in electricity; in these early days, it is not clear whether the occasional wackiness of the menu will be perceived as […]
Overlooking the ‘Wobbly Bridge’ and Tate Modern, a discreet and unusually welcoming City restaurant offering a tempting and elegantly realised English menu at reasonable prices’ and a view too! There’s very little not to like about this new City business-restaurant, which occupies the space – looking across the Thames to Tate Modern – formerly occupied […]
In the heart of Chinatown, a much-above average Chinese newcomer (with some Sichuan specialities), of particular note for its exceptional-value set lunch. It’s not often that a small new Chinese restaurant makes waves immediately on opening, but this one’s been making an early claim on critical attention, and quite rightly too, if our experience was […]
On a difficult Theatreland site (most recently home to Dune, RIP), a somewhat tacky bar offering some surprisingly good oriental snacks at very reasonable prices. In most industries, a good site is a prominent site, but it doesn’t necessarily work that way in the West End bar/restaurant world. The site of the Electric Birdcage had […]
From part of the team that built Strada, the Wimbledon prototype of a Gallic bistro chain; unlike most press reviewers, we found standards generally unimpressive. One of the big fears of the restaurant critical world is just not ‘getting’ it. You go along to a place that’s been unanimously well reviewed – in respectable publications […]
A much-heralded no-nonsense British newcomer, in Bayswater, heavily influenced by owner Tom Pemberton’s experience at St John Bread & Wine; though the food is generally sound, the overall experience fell short of our expectations. Michael Winner sometimes notes how, to many in the ‘hospitality’ industry, a smile is as ‘a silver cross to a vampire’. […]
