Funny lot, foreigners: in a nice way, of course. London’s indigenous restaurateurs often come up with rather ‘safe’ restaurants. ‘Elegant’, ‘understated’, perhaps even ‘cool’? But if you’re looking for a touch of ‘joie de vivre’ enlivened with a soupçon of ‘je ne sais quoi’ or even the surreal? You often have to look across the […]
Vietnamese cooking has yet to hit the big time in London. This is still mainly a world of ‘ethnic’ East End cafés. There is a ‘smart’ Vietnamese – Fitzrovia’s Bam Bou – but it’s very much ‘evolved’, offering a cuisine reflecting colonial French influences. It’s no criticism to say it’s probably as known for its […]
Big Name chefs are pretty keen to put their names on things these days: chocolates, frying pans, even supermarkets’ Less so restaurants, and for good reason. If any old product with a chef’s name on it turns out to be unremarkable, who’s really going to care? But if it’s their ‘core’ business? Gary Rhodes knows […]
It’s curious how few kosher restaurants there are in London. Once-famous Blooms, near Aldgate, threw in the towel in the late ’90s, as did the wonderfully quirky Kosher Luncheon Club, nearby. For a while there were no kosher restaurants in the City, until this venture – also near Aldgate – opened two years ago. It […]
As the wise and good man who distributes our guides is fond of observing: there is a very thin line between creating a smash hit and a dead loss. This observation pops into my head as I eat at this new City-fringe gastropub (a summer opening from the team behind Exmouth market’s well-regarded Easton). Though […]
Maurizio Vilona’s new Mayfair restaurant is authentic to a fault. A real fault. The austere and slightly gloomy design of his new premises screams I-T-A-L-Y, in a bad way. You can have too much understatement. The oddly ‘foreign’ feel of this small and poorly-proportioned room – exacerbated on my visit by throbbing air conditioning – […]
It’s old rich people who keep top restaurants going. Right? Not on the basis of a visit to Mayfair’s new £80-a-head Nobu Berkeley, where your reviewing team (average age 42) were very amongst the more senior citizens present. Are we just getting on a bit? Did that explain why the noisy ‘cavern’ of a bar/holding […]
Even the most dedicated advocates of Canary Wharf would be hard put to place ‘diverse range of quality eating-places’ at the top of its list of attractions. ‘Chain hell’ might be closer to the mark. Indeed, the worse and more ‘commercial’ the chain is, the more prominently its premises seem to be sited. All to […]
Portugal. What springs to mind? Golf and beaches rather than haute cuisine. It has its Port industry, of course — and produces half the world’s cork (used mostly for’you guessed it). And in fact the name for this excellent Smithfield newcomer comes from a family-owned wine-maker in the Douro Valley. Drink is a theme – […]
