Our mission is remarkably simple. To tell it how it is!
Marina O’Loughlin in The Sunday Times gives kudos to the kitchen at Brixton pop-up Smoke & Salt (formerly in Islington) for serving food with bravura… “We order almost everything from the short menu. (There are only two choices of red or white wines, too: I ain’t glugging prosecco during dinner, so we have a surprisingly lush […]
Jay Rayner in The Observer reviewed Salt, a small but perfectly formed restaurant serving flavourful food with incredible attention to detail in Stratford upon Avon… “Paul Foster is living other chefs’ fantasies. He has the thing they all want: the small but perfectly formed restaurant where he can be himself. “A hobbit’s space, tucked into one […]
Marina O’Loughlin delivers her final review for The Guardian before moving onto her new role at the Sunday Times. She heads to an old favourite, Clerkenwell’s Quality Chop House, where the chicken liver parfait is as rich and luxurious as an expensive pot of night cream from Selfridges… “Shaun Searley: that rarest of creatures, a supremely talented chef […]
Marina O’Loughlin in The Guardian is the latest critic to give Soho’s new Flavour Bastard a good bashing. “Not so much flavour bastards as thoroughgoing, unremitting, absolute taste tossers.” “Staff appear to be less amused and more terminally embarrassed… when they’re not explaining the concept to us at ludicrous length. The dishes are, apparently, bastardised in a tedious, […]
When Grace Dent reviewed The Langham’s new ‘pub’ The Wigmore, she decided she never, ever wanted to go there again. We would hazard a guess that The Guardian’s Marina O’Loughlin would be quite happy to go back any time…“Silly? A bit. Delicious? Oh yes.” “Creative cocktails in their own weeny tankards… pies and roasts and toasties… reimagined […]
This week Jay Rayner reviewed Notting Hill’s family-run Italian, Da Maria, in the Observer, remarking that it’s the kind of place that ‘keeps London human and, more to the point, humane’. A shame then that it may be demolished to make way for an expanded cinema foyer. You know who’s side Jay is on… “Da Maria […]
Jay Rayner in The Observer keeps things on The Straight and Narrow, a piano bar and restaurant in east London’s Docklands… “Food and music are meant to go together. Jazz, which is what I have spent most of my adult life at the keyboard wrestling with, was born in restaurants like this. “The Straight and Narrow has […]
Jay Rayner in The Observer reviews Jean-Georges at The Connaught, where prices are as stupid as Donald Trump, but at least the food is good… “I try to avoid the flouncier excess of chef worship and napkin sniffing, but with Vongerichten I fail. I have spent atrocious amounts of my own money at his flagship high-end […]
Jay Rayner in The Observer doesn’t so much review Marylebone newcomer Fancy Crab as eviscerate it… “Fancy Crab isn’t good. It’s a terrible waste of their money and our money and everybody’s time. “The restaurant’s shtick is the enormous red king crabs, fished from the cold waters of the North Pacific around Alaska, which can […]
Marina O’Loughlin in The Guardian reviews Pascere, a new Lanes restaurant from the food and drink editor of Platinum Business magazine, Amanda Menahem. “Brighton is having a bit of a moment restaurant-wise; like Bristol, another beneficiary of the financial pain of attempting to launch any kind of indie in the capital. “The most exquisite thing that […]
