Our mission is remarkably simple. To tell it how it is!
Marina O’Laughlin in The Sunday Times is baffled by the existence of Beach Blanket Babylon in Notting Hill (as are we all). The venture, with sites in W11 and Shoreditch, has never scored above a 1/5 for food in our survey and has long since been dropped from the pages of the guide… “Today, the […]
Jay Rayner in The Observer reviews Lewisham’s outpost of Sanxia Renjia, a three-strong group of restaurants “celebrating the food of Sichuan and Hubei”… “Sanxia is on a different mission… the staff, like the rest of the menu, are eager. They want you to march across unexplored territory. “The room isn’t much of a looker… Pay attention instead to what is […]
Jay Rayner in The Observer wants to love the newly refurbished Simpsons in the Strand, but the booze prices (“a maniacal laugh in the face of sanity”), “calamitous” Beef Wellington, and lack their infamous breakfast rather spoils his fun… “I want to love Simpson’s in the Strand. I want to adore it, in the way I once […]
Jay Rayner in The Observer says the decor at Gul & Sepoy is so distressed it needs a hug. From reading his review it sounds like Jay could use one too… “Sometimes it just doesn’t matter how good individual dishes are… If, at the end of the meal you feel baffled or let down or short […]
Jay Rayner in The Observer reviews The Kitchen, Inverness (after a bad meal at Boath House, Nairn)… BOATH HOUSE: “I’ve had more fun at the chiropodist, getting my corns removed. I left the Boath House with my will sapped. It is a brilliant opportunity wasted. “A narrow, gummy strip of treacle-cured salmon arrives, with cubes of bitter, […]
Fay Maschler in the Evening Standard, heads to another of London’s many ‘baby roll-outs’ as she samples the second Smoking Goat… “’Nu-Thai’ is what the cool kids call it, I am told, food from white boys who have travelled widely in South-East Asia. “New place, groovy food, stripper ghosts, Shoreditch, buzz, buzz, buzz. Drinking Foods — the […]
Jay Rayner in The Observer reviewed Fishers in the City, Edinburgh “Fishers in the City could be a truly terrific fish restaurant, if it weren’t for the small things that aren’t terrific. All the essentials are here: there are oysters, left unmolested, or grilled with a bone-marrow crust… soup is a cream-ballasted chowder, made with salmon and smoked […]
We already know that The Sunday Times’s Marina O’Loughlin isn’t the biggest fan of the great British pub (read her Eater article here). So what will she make of the food at Spoons’ newest outpost in Ramsgate? We would guess not much… “’Fried buttermilk chicken burger’ (598 calories) delivers a flat, damp sandwich secured with a wooden […]
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 […]
