Greenwich – the ‘home of time’ – is possibly London’s most attractive something-for-all-the-family destination. Not wholly coincidentally, this World Heritage Site has also long been a pretty vile place to eat. (It doesn’t help that most of the more prominent local restaurants are under the common, and rather complacent, ownership of a local Mr Big.) […]
Clerkenwell’s Exmouth Market somehow manages to be perennially cool. Restaurant-goers know it best as the home of Moro: an establishment that has managed to combine good food, fashionable appeal and relatively reasonable prices for a fair number of years: a rare triple-act. Indeed, such has been its success, that one might have expected to see […]
The dreaded word ‘restaurant’ is absent from self-description of this ‘bar and food emporium’, so – naturally – the largest part of the establishment turns out to just such function. For what it is, this ‘secret’ dining room – dominated by a large, square black marble dining bar – tries a bit too hard. Solo […]
Some new restaurants are promoted so far in advance of their launch that the professional critics are almost bored with them before they open. Others save everything for a big launch ‘push’. The canniest ones prefer to wait to get their product sorted out, and then wage the big PR initiative. And others just sneak […]
In its former incarnation – can you use that word about a fish restaurant? – this long-established Clerkenwell site often seemed to want for custom. Its new proprietor, Raymond de Fazio, knows a bit about quiet restaurants: he backed Osia, in the Haymarket, which was critically acclaimed, but quickly closed for want of custom. Fortunately […]
For restaurant critics, offbeat formulas make for easy copy. Reviewing this ambitious-looking new Clerkenwell venture – which prominently advertises its ‘Thai-Indian cuisine’ – therefore looked set to be a cinch. My old friend obligingly set about ordering a Thai set lunch to complement my Indian one. I began to congratulate myself on how easily the […]
Did you know that there is a Bermondsey ‘Village’? (It even has its own website – bermondseyvillage.org.uk.) Presumably this helps explain the name of this new bar/restaurant. The ‘East’ bit is still fractionally puzzling. Presumably it’s supposed to evoke Manhattan’s Bohemian East Village. To us, however, it just smacked of ‘trying too hard’ – an […]
Location, location and location – if anything, restaurants are even more subject to the estate agents’ mantra than houses. Unless a particular establishment is very grand (think Gordon Ramsay in Chelsea) or has the potential to be a fashionable magnet in its own right (Hakkasan, say), a wise restaurateur will usually want to ‘cluster’ with […]
Is it any surprise that London can baffle visitors? On the one hand, the US foodie-bible Gourmet proclaims it ‘the best place on the planet to eat right now’. But, on the other, it’s still nigh on impossible to find a really delicious and inexpensive lunch (unless you ‘go Indian’, ‘go Chinese’, etc). Part of […]
In the days of my father’s National Service, recruits only needed to know one thing: ‘If it moves, salute it. It if doesn’t, whitewash it’. Perhaps Shaun Clarkson – designer and co-proprietor of this new gastropub – has military blood, because he seems to have taken the second part of this advice to heart. Walls, […]
