⦿ Jay Rayner of The Observer hit the jackpot with a visit to Riley’s Fish Shack, “two full side-access shipping containers fitted out steampunk-style” overlooking St Edward’s Bay in Tynemouth, near Newcastle, which he declared “the eating experience of the year”. “It is the pristine quality of fish cookery you always hope to find in one of those fancy, raised […]
⦿ The Observer’s Jay Rayner reviewed Foley’s in Fitzrovia, a restaurant taking inspiration from the Near and Far East under former Palomar sous chef Mitz Vora. “Individually each dish really does deliver a thrilling whack. But tasting six in a row starts to feel like being shouted at repeatedly by the kitchen.” ⦿ Grace Dent of ES […]
⦿ Fay Maschler of the Evening Standard reviewed Elystan Street 4/5, Phil Howard’s new restaurant in Chelsea, where she ate some “sublime” dishes but gasped at the prices and missed having a tablecloth. “Smoked mackerel velouté with Porthilly oysters — from the River Camel estuary — with leek hearts and eel toast is a secular […]
⦿ The Observer’s Jay Rayner reviewed the Bull & Ram in Ballynahinch, Co. Down, which opened in a Grade 1-listed former butcher’s shop in June and excels in “tear-inducingly bloody lovely” cuts of Northern Irish short horn beef. “They know what they’re doing here. And what they’re doing is an utter joy. “The beef and the pork are […]
⦿ Jay Rayner in The Observer truffled out Umezushi, a 14-seater Japanese restaurant under a Manchester railway arch, with cooks from Korea, Spain and the Czech Republic, which he found “really very good indeed and, at the price, a bit of a miracle”. “Slices of wagyu, sensitively flamed, almost justify the £10 price tag that accompanies […]
⦿ Jay Rayner of The Observer sweated his way joyfully through a chilli-spiced dinner at Thai pop-up-turned-permanent Som Saa near Spitalfields Market, which he described as “an action movie full of crash, bang and wallop.” “The food wanders restlessly from north to south. It is a deliriously fearsome bash of fire and sour and salt and smoke.” ⦿ The Guardian’s […]
The Observer’s critic-in-chief Jay Rayner asks himself the all-important question at Cliveden House’s new casual operation, The Astor Grill – would he return here and spend his own money? At £196 for two, the short answer to that question is a resounding ‘no’. “The wine list is short and more shameless than a 1960s pool […]
The Guardian’s Marina O’Laughlin once dismissed Balham’s Chez Bruce as ‘ultra-bourgeois and a little dated… onefor the Bufton-Tuftons, with their florid, claret-hoofing faces and fear of the new, I sniffed”. Not so anymore. The critic now seems to understand why it has been Harden’s reporters’ favourite restaurant for the past decade – “I’m forced to suspect […]
AA Gill heads out to The Woodford in search of Ben Murphy’s cuisine (a young chef of just 25 who trained under Pierre Koffmann) and finds that The Only Way is Essex is in fact a real way of life and not, as the Sunday Times’s columnist previously thought, simply a ratings-courting fiction. Incidentally he loves […]
Five stars for food from AA Gill?! A rare occurrence indeed. The first British spin-off (in Covent Garden) of Les Halles restaurant Frenchie wows the Sunday Times critic… “Frenchie is that thing I’d almost given up hoping I would see again: a really, really good modern French bistro. Not nostalgic or revisionist, but a sensible, […]
