As an integral part of the HQ of Allied and Morrison – a top architectural practice – this smart Southwark café is an unusual venture. It’s not without precedent, though: The River Café originally started as the canteen for a firm of architects (Richard Rogers), a tie-up that doesn’t seem to have done either business […]
Tuesday night, 10pm. I’d just staggered out of a wine bar near London Wall. My judgement dulled by drinking on an empty stomach, I decided this was the time to check out that new Mexican bar and cantina I’d heard about. Even if it was in Shoreditch. Arriving on a forlorn stretch of highway north […]
Oliver Peyton is often hailed as a visionary. Restaurants he has launched ‘ahead of their time’ include Mash & Air (Manchester), Coast, Isola and the Atlantic. None of these endured, not least because – once the novelty had gone – the basics of a good-value dining package were often absent. Presumably those who run the […]
Mrs Harden was not happy. Like her sister-in-law (also Mrs Harden) she knows by now that restaurant critics don’t just spend their lives checking out the latest Knightsbridge hotspots. But trekking to Brixton on a cold and windy night? Well, really. The many clouds overhanging our visit darkened further when the restaurant didn’t seem to […]
The Royal China group’s first venture on this Marylebone site was a luxuriously minimalist Japanese restaurant called Michiaki. It didn’t last. Now they’ve turned it – essentially unchanged – into a sort of club-class Royal China. Many readers will know that Royal China is widely regarded as the capital’s leading Chinese chain, so you might […]
Tips from City AM readers about hot new openings that might otherwise slip below the radar are always particularly welcome. One such message – to mail@hardens.com – alerted us to this newcomer on the Isle of Dogs. The walk to the restaurant from, say, Canary Wharf tube is a little bit under ten minutes, but […]
You would have to be a very gay cowboy indeed to dream up this new Broadgate branch of the Argentinean chain. Vast, semi-subterranean, upholstered with cowhide and lit with many chandeliers (style cliché of the moment), this is a steakhouse as might have been conceived by Liberace. My visit did not start off well: the […]
By 1873, Piccadilly Circus was the hub of the greatest empire the world had ever known – a suitable location a truly extraordinary restaurant interior. Remarkably, that neo-Byzantine fantasy still exists in pristine form today. The tenant of the site in recent years has been Marco Pierre White. His upscale venture called The Criterion was […]
