North of Liverpool Street, an understated (to a fault) bar/restaurant offering the cuisine of Kyoto; despite the best efforts of the charming staff, and the beautiful presentation of the dishes, our early-days lunch was very dull. We were rather excited by the idea of Chrysan – the first non-Hakkasan-branded outlet of the group founded by […]
The fourth member of Belgravia’s own Italian restaurant group; on our visit, steak and service were highlights of an experience that was otherwise rather lacklustre. Within living memory, Belgravia didn’t really exist. It was known more as ‘Knightsbridge’ to the north, and ‘Victoria’ to the south, possibly with a bit of ‘Pimlico’ thrown in to […]
A monumental triumph of hype over experience? – we visit the Fitzrovia restaurant where you can’t generally get a table until 2013′ and totally fail to understand the excitement. As we write, we have in front of us a bill, for two, for £162.55, which included a bottle of basic wine, and two cups of […]
The ground-floor dining room of the D&D (‘Conran’) group’s first solo hotel venture, near Liverpool Street; the venture as a whole generally impressed on our early-days visit, but this particular restaurant struck us as lacking in inspiration, both culinarily and on the design front. We go back a long way with the D&D Group, or […]
A tiny and crammed Fitzrovia parlour, specialising in hot dogs and champagne; we couldn’t quite rationalise the appeal on our early days visit, but it was certainly already drawing in the punters. A small neon sign above an unimposing street frontage announces the name of this discreet newcomer. Might we be in Greenwich Village? Er, […]
In an impressive former granary north of King’s Cross, a (much larger) offshoot of the popular Clerkenwell café/bistro; an impressive all-rounder, it has quickly become surprisingly busy. The crowd at this King’s Cross newcomer – in the same former granary premises that Central Saint Martins now occupies – came as a bit of a disappointment. […]
A smart and understated international-crowd Mayfair Italian, with some similarities to La Petite Maison (with which it shares a co-owner); it’s a high-quality operation all-round but, at least in the early days, we found it somewhat unengaging. Mayfair these days is not for the likes of you and us (NFLYU). Sorry, that’s presumptuous. Perhaps you […]
Thirty-eight floors above the City, one of the world’s most ambitious indoor/outdoor elevated restaurants; prices are high, but the place was already into an impressive swing on our day-one visit – even though the trendy Japanese/South American cuisine is rather incidental, this will surely be one of 2012’s major talking points. Destination dining is a […]
In a busy Earl’s Court location, a surprisingly bourgeois French restaurant whose classic style will come as no surprise to those who’ve followed Eric Garnier since his Racine days; quality is good, but prices are high. Eric Garnier, co-founder (with Henry Harris, now sole patron) of Knightsbridge’s celebrated Racine, is a man who knows a […]
Despite its downmarket name, this rather tacky heart-of-Soho bar/restaurant offers quite ambitious Asian small plates at equally ambitious prices; we found it difficult to disagree with the seeming market view that the formula doesn’t really ‘gel’. Couldn’t we go somewhere better? Thus, rather rudely, replied a foodie friend to an invitation to lunch at this […]
