Harden’s regular round-up of the restaurant critics’ meals, from the week ending 8 September 2019. Wun’s, London W1 For this week’s review, Jay Rayner for The Observer was tempted “to shove just five words at you and leave it at that: sugar skin Iberico char siu”. “The expansion of the Chinese food experience in the […]

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Harden’s weekly update of where the critics are eating, recommending and avoiding, for the week ending 25 August 2019. The Yan, Lake District Grace Dent for The Guardian loves the Lake District, and visits a lot, but is constantly “in search of a big, reasonably priced and, above all, welcoming place to take normal folk” […]

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Harden’s regular round-up of the restaurant critics’ meals, from the week ending 14 July 2019.  The Newell, Dorset Marina O’Loughlin for The Sunday Times celebrates the restaurants she calls “quietly wonderful” – not the “flashy and splashy and showy and spendy” places chased down (and sometimes closed down) by food critics and hordes of Insta-tourists, […]

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Harden’s regular round-up of the restaurant critics’ meals, from the week ending 30 June 2019. Tayer + Elementary, London EC1 Jimi Famurewa for The Evening Standard is on a roll; last week he discovered Gezillig, and this week he was in east London at the the new split personality venue from celebrated mixologists Alex Kratena […]

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Harden’s regular round-up of the restaurant critics’ musings, from the week ending 12 May 2019.  Scully, London SW1 Jay Rayner for The Observer was back in London this week after reviewing several remarkably low-priced restaurants across the UK. Scully is in direct contrast to those places – “the only way you can get out of […]

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EartH Kitchen, London N16 Jay Rayner leaped straight in to describing the food when reviewing EartH (not a typo) Kitchen for The Observer; stopping just long enough to explain that it’s “the restaurant of a major new arts venue in London’s Hackney”. Crispy pig’s cheek salad was “an adult bowl of food designed to make […]

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Jay Rayner Instead of a review this week, Jay looks back over his 20 years as The Observer’s restaurant critic in an article that ranges from 1999 (the year MPW retired, Jamie O debuted his Naked Chef show, Restaurant Gordon Ramsay hit its stride and The Fat Duck won its first Michelin star), through the […]

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Yeni, London W1 Jimi Famurewa for The Evening Standard has found his new happy place: after two hours at Yeni (” a new London sibling for one of Istanbul’s hottest restaurants”), all of his “contorting stresses and life worries had melted away”. He even compared the new Anatolian restaurant to a spa-break, “almost certainly the best place […]

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Gilpin Spice, Windermere Jay Rayner for The Observer was in Windermere, visiting Gilpin Spice at Gilpin Lodge in the Lake District, described as “an act of bravery, fashioned from raw wood, vibrant dangling lampshades, tamarind, garlic, ginger, noodles and open guttering flames”. The food is best described as “Desi-Chinese food, a venerable amalgam of Chinese […]

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Monsieur Le Duck, London E1 Jay Rayner for The Observer visited the nostalgic new pop-up from City worker-turned-restaurateur Richard Humphreys, who dreamed of Gascony, with its restaurants serving duck confit and red wine, and decided to bring his dreams to Liverpool Street. The result is “delightful in a low-key, sweetly romantic way”; the “narrow frame […]

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