Remarkable in location and setting – just two mins from Piccadilly Circus, and with a large terrace – the latest Firmdale Hotel offers the group’s usual dining formula; the establishment’s all-round charms, though, may well make it a real destination. You’ve got to hand it to Tim & Kit Kemp, the Londoners who’ve built up […]
Near Trafalgar Square, a stylish and welcoming offshoot of a Barcelona tapas bar/restaurant – particularly handy in a part of Theatreland where many establishments are still grimly impersonal. Anyone going to the theatre in the vicinity of the Haymarket still has a pretty unappealing lot of restaurants to contend with, so all hail to this […]
Hidden-away in Bayswater, John Burton-Race’s new restaurant offers quite a traditional formula which, our early-days visit suggests, is done well enough to be worth seeking out. There were a number of reasons we expected not to like this Bayswater newcomer. Most obviously, it is the creature of a ‘TV chef’ (John Burton-Race). It also takes […]
A supposedly informal revamp of Marcus Wareing’s grand Knightsbridge hotel dining room; the food on our lunchtime visit was enjoyable and quite good value, but the style of service remains as fundamentally ancien-régime as ever, and some may find the atmosphere oppressive. Marcus is the new name for Marcus Wareing. Not the man of course, […]
A contemporary-style update of a traditional Knightsbridge Italian; a good quality, if pricey, all-rounder, where service can sometimes seem jarringly formal. In a city without much in the way of living restaurant history, ‘Chelsea Italian’ is one of the few styles you could write a whole book about. In fact, someone did – it’s called […]
In the heart of Shoreditch, a surprisingly straight-down-the-line chicken shop, offering a good range of glazes and dips, without affectation. Given the street-credible location – actually under a railway bridge – what’s remarkable about this Shoreditch newcomer is how it’s really not trying that hard to be hip. Remarkably, no one has bothered trying to […]
In an up-and-coming part of Bayswater, a seemingly informal Japanese izakaya (tavern) where an ex-Nobu chef offers quirky and high quality dishes, at prices to match. It’s touted as a simple Japanese izakaya (tavern), and this hard-edged, bare-filament-bulb-lit room could indeed be described in some senses as ‘basic’. The informality of the service, too, is […]
Ollie Dabbous’s number two restaurant offers an approachable small-plate menu, often realised to a very high standard, at reasonable prices; the ambience is comfortable enough, though – for Fitzrovia – it does strive rather hard to be hip. Dried flower arrangements. How achingly ‘now’. And how very 1964 too, as you can see at Pimlico […]
Near Camden Lock, an edgy-but-smart American bar/diner de luxe; it offers good standards across the board, but not – to our mind – any particular reason to seek the place out. Visit the website for this anonymously-named American-style grill-restaurant, and what are you supposed to think? Edgy? Anarchic? Very, well, Camden Town? Or, if a […]
A grand Kensington brasserie on the former site of Zaika (RIP); it was already firing on all cylinders on our first-week visit. Goodness Gracious Me! Remember the TV skit where some Indians (in India) speculate on the virtues of ‘going out for an English’? Perhaps it planted a seed in the mind of someone at […]
