Here’s our weekly round-up of what the nation’s restaurant critics were writing about in the week up to 3 July 2023. ****** The Evening Standard Jimi Famurewa was in Notting Hill to review Empire Empire, the new Indian restaurant from Gunpowder founder Harneet Baweja, and found several “nettlesome issues”, not least the “small, awkwardly configured […]

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Here’s our weekly round-up of what the nation’s restaurant critics were writing about in the week up to 26 June 2023. ***** The Evening Standard “A few doors down from the East End’s beigel shops and Bangla curry houses — we have an all-new, affordable institution, built upon principles of soulfulness, succour and the timeless […]

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Here’s our weekly round-up of what the nation’s restaurant critics were writing about in the week up to 18 June 2023. ***** The Guardian Grace Dent reviewed Lilienblum, the “most recent opening” from Israeli chef Eyal Shani that had Jimi Famurewa at The Evening Standard impressed but perplexed last week; did Grace feel the same? […]

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Here’s our weekly round-up of what the nation’s restaurant critics were writing about in the week up to 4 June 2023. ***** The Evening Standard “A brutally brilliant destination in its own right.” Jimi Famurewa visited the new National Theatre restaurant, Lasdun, and wondered what he’d done wrong when every other customer left at exactly […]

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Cantor’s Food Store, Manchester Jay Rayner for The Observer found “Ottolenghi with a Manc accent” (and a pizza oven) in Manchester, at Cantor’s Food Store. It’s run by Eddy Cantor: the food “draws loosely on his Jewish roots”, and is “a happy place, where you could mislay an afternoon or a morning”. Although apparently it’s […]

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Jay Rayner  for The Observer waited for 20 minutes at Restarant 92 before any food arrived on the table – and that was just bread. He’d been delayed on the train and was very cold – not the best start. Luckily, Micheal Carr’s cooking won him over, with its “fun ideas”, “enthusiasm” and “admirable risks”. […]

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Grace Dent for The Guardian visited yet another home-from-home seaside location, this time in Kent; where she had to invent a new term for the “imperfectly perfect” (so much so that she wanted to “ditch the review to protect it from idiots”) type of restaurant she found there – the “Snuffly-Ligget”. It’s a “small, 26-seat, […]

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The Little Chartroom, Edinburgh Marina O’Loughlin for The Sunday Times warily reviewed “small neighbourhood bistro” The Little Chartroom – it’s just the sort of place she’d hate to slate. Luckily, with all credit to chef Roberta Hall and her husband, Shaun McCarron, she didn’t have to. “Exciting soup” to start (“two words I didn’t think […]

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Grace Dent for The Guardian visits The French House in Soho with some reluctance: it’s a “hollow task to review a restaurant that has tottered on already… for more than 100 years”. But with Neil Borthwick freshly installed at the reigns, she felt obliged to check that he was respecting this last bastion of Soho’s […]

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