Have you brought us to a dump?’, asked one of my fellow diners asked as we approached this Hornsey newcomer. Its car park does admittedly have some not especially attractive railway-track views. But hey, at least you can park. And, as you approach the impressive Edwardian brick exterior, things start to look up. In fact, […]
Pimlico – so near, yet so mysterious. I’m not so much talking about the bit near Sloane Square which many people think of as an extension of Chelsea – where La Poule au Pot on Pimlico Green is one of the capital’s longest-running success-stories – but the bit over the railway tracks, in real (Passport […]
How do you PR a new restaurant? Having a really famous TV-chef as a backer isn’t a bad start: that Rick Stein is investing in one of his ex-employees at this Chiswick newcomer has drummed up a lot of interest from day one. Given Stein’s involvement, you might perhaps expect a seafood place, and one […]
Where do you lunch your editor? Should you – say, like us – find yourself writing a restaurant column for a daily business newspaper, and have the pleasure and honour of taking your editor out for lunch, where do you go? That was the question. Not somewhere too flashy – obviously, expenses must be kept […]
Some restaurants are just really worth knowing about. Not because they’re necessarily the brightest or the best – more that they’re in a handy location and reliably good enough. (They mustn’t be TOO madly popular either: no good if they’re always booked out.) Cocoon is such a place. On the location front, it’s difficult to […]
Some restaurant locations have a spirit all of their own, apparently independent of their owner. And most restaurant-owners have a style that shines through in all of their various locations. The latest incarnation of Cecconi’s, in Mayfair – now owned by the Soho House man, Nick Jones – is therefore something of a double-whammy: both […]
Great buildings and great restaurants can go together. New York’s famous Seagram Building designed by Mies van der Rohe, for example, has housed one of the world’s classic restaurants – The Four Seasons – since 1959. It is still at the heart of Manhattan’s media power scene today. London’s Gherkin is a great building, and […]
