A table for one, please’ – hardly had these words had time to echo around this almost totally empty restaurant, that I was shown to the very worst seat in the house, bang opposite the open kitchen entrance. So today, we review plate-stacking technology. Just kidding: the theme is nouvelle Indian’s this week. And after […]
The traditional curry house may now be the UK’s favourite restaurant format. Asian entrepreneurs not being a bunch to stand still, though, this week we review some of the modern ‘nouvelle Indian’ formats that continue to spring up around town. As an offshoot of Mayfair’s famous Tamarind, the opening of this Soho newcomer came with […]
How often do you go somewhere perfect – somewhere that totally lives up to all your expectations? Maybe we’ve been restaurant critics for too long, but we’d say: ‘almost never’. Most of the time, you can come away with some legitimate beef or other (and all too often, at least in this town, it has […]
Is picking a good restaurant just a matter of personal taste? If so, our job would be pretty pointless, so it is lucky that – after 15 years’ market research – we’ve pretty conclusively found that most people agree about most restaurants most of the time. There is a ‘Right Answer’. There are however a […]
How’s your Valentine’s booking coming along? One excellent choice – though for next year I’m afraid, given that it was fully booked by the end of January – is the subject of today’s review. From the outside, Maggiore’s gives every impression of wanting to ‘fit in’ alongside the mass-market outlets of Covent Garden. By looking […]
Rocco Forte’s mission to re-establish his family name as a force in hotels goes from strength to strength. He has snapped up some great continental properties, and opened top-level newcomers in British cities that previously had none: in Manchester or Cardiff, chez Rocco is the best place to stay. Not, however, the top place to […]
The Conran group is an enigma. Having masterfully ridden the restaurant boom of the ’90s, it remains by far the largest operator of ‘quality’ restaurants in town (and now also has operations in New York, Paris and Stockholm). It has achieved all this despite having developed a reputation in many quarters for ‘conveyor belt dining’. […]
The Victorian aristocracy regarded trade with horror, so Belgravia’s vast main squares contain only houses and churches. No restaurants, of course, as gentlemen dined in private houses or their clubs. No pubs, either: strictly for the servants, these were pokey places hidden away in the mews. And point of all this social history’ is that, […]
