Our round-up of what the nation’s restaurant critics were writing about in the week up to 15th March 2026 Daily Telegraph Simpson’s in the Strand William Sitwell hustled a table for the first night of full trading at “the hottest ticket in London”, earning bragging rights as the first national critic into print on restaurateur […]

Continue reading

Heston Blumenthal is to shut down his London restaurant Dinner by Heston at the end of next January, on the 16th anniversary of its launch. Describing the closure as “sad and bittersweet“, he said the project had “run its natural course“. Set in the Mandarin Oriental hotel overlooking Hyde Park, Dinner was Heston’s follow-up to the […]

Continue reading

Our round-up of what the nation’s restaurant critics were writing about in the week up to 8th March 2026 The Guardian Trillium, Birmingham Grace Dent warmed to a “weird, bold, silly restaurant”, where high-profile Brummie chef Glyn Purnell has “miraculously” managed to translate Michelin-style cooking for what she called a “semi-rowdier yet still upmarket stage”: “there’s […]

Continue reading

Chef Conor Gadd, co-owner of Italian neighbourhood trattoria Trullo in Islington, has opened his first solo venture, taking over the venue previously occupied by Petersham Nurseries in Covent Garden’s Floral Court. Burro (meaning ‘butter’) is billed as a “part Irish country house kitchen, part Italian fifties bistro“, serving “warm, evocative and creative food” that expresses […]

Continue reading

The City of London’s notorious appetite for red meat shows no sign of abating, with the opening of two new steakhouses within 10 minutes’ walk of each other this week. The Four Seasons hotel at Tower Bridge has replaced La Dame de Pic, its highly rated French restaurant from visiting star chef Anne-Sophie Pic, with […]

Continue reading

From an impoverished childhood in Sri Lanka, chef Larry Jayasekara has completed an extraordinary journey to running The Cocochine in Mayfair, where guests feast on immaculately prepared European cuisine accented with South Asian flavourings. HARDEN’S caught up with him at the restaurant as its second anniversary approaches this month.  Larry grew up in a small […]

Continue reading

Our round-up of what the nation’s restaurant critics were writing about in the week up to 1st March 2026 The Guardian Pavyllon, Mayfair Grace Dent, a proud member of the early-rising “5am Club”, followed a heavily hyped trend to sample an upmarket power breakfast at the Four Seasons hotel on Park Lane, suggesting: “Perhaps now […]

Continue reading