Harden’s regular round-up of the restaurant critics’ meals, from the week ending 11 August 2019.  Pilgrim, Liverpool Marina O’Loughlin for The Sunday Times had very little time for the marketing “tripe” surrounding the new Duke Street Market flagship restaurant she visited in Liverpool – one of the many new additions to the UK’s food scene, […]

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Harden’s weekly round-up of the restaurant critics’ reviews, from the week ending 4 August 2019. Little French, Bristol Marina O’Loughlin for The Sunday Times was in Bristol checking out the brand-new (and first solo) venture from Freddy Bird (formerly of the city’s Lido restaurant) – with a challenge, no less: “there are four of us […]

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Harden’s regular round-up of the restaurant critics’ meals, from the week ending 28 July 2019.  Heritage, London W1 Jay Rayner for The Observer made some sweeping generalisations about Switzerland to start his review (“it’s expensive, tooth-achingly polite, efficient and profoundly committed to dairy fats”) but only to point out that Heritage manages just three out […]

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Harden’s regular round-up of the restaurant critics’ meals, from the week ending 21 July 2019. The Kensington Arms, Bristol Grace Dent for The Guardian is “acutely aware that I’m the last face any kitchen brigade wants to see over a long bank holiday weekend” but she’d heard great things about the “dependably brilliant Sunday lunch” […]

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Harden’s regular round-up of the restaurant critics’ roamings, from the week ending 23 June 2019. Darby’s, London SW11 Grace Dent for The Guardian was the first critic to beat a path to Battersea to sample “Robin and Sarah Gill’s new project” near the peculiarly placed new American embassy at Vauxhall (“a gargantuan, purpose-built, space-age fortress… […]

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Harden’s regular round-up of the restaurant critics from the week ending 2 June 2019. The Sea, The Sea, London SW3 Marina O’Loughlin for The Sunday Times has “stumbled across the living definition of the word “precious”: a seafood restaurant, a fishmonger and a champagne bar in — where else? — Chelsea”. From the people behind […]

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Harden’s regular round-up of the restaurant critics’ musings, from the week ending 5 May 2019.  Bross Bagels, Edinburgh Grace Dent for The Guardian has nothing but love for the “Canadian-Jewish bagel bakery owner Larah Bross” and the Montreal-style bagels served at the three Edinburgh branches of Bross Bagels: “a whirlwind of perfectly judged brashness and thoughtful, […]

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Peg, London E9 Jimi Famurewa from The Evening Standard is the latest critic to pay a visit to Peg; it reminded him of LA restaurants he’d visited (mostly because of the feeling of “smugness and nagging inadequacy” it engendered), but he soon admitted that his first impressions were quite wrong. The “no-reservations arrowhead of a […]

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Angelina, London E8 Jay Rayner for The Observer visited Angelina despite the “acute flashbacks” he suffered when told it was a fusion of Italian and Japanese food; it took him right back to the “unmitigated disaster” that was Shumi in 2003. Luckily for him, and us, Angelina avoids any such disaster: it “feels like a […]

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The Crown, London W4 Jimi Famurewa for The Evening Standard went out to west London to try out the latest of chef Henry Harris’s “expanding stable of amiable new-wave gastropubs” – The Crown in Chiswick. He was expecting “a sort of cosy, creaking coastal tavern that had been magically airlifted on to a corner in […]

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