Our mission is remarkably simple. To tell it how it is!
Jay Rayner in The Observer is more than able for Soho institution L’Escargot – seeing as he “bloody loves a snail” and all. It is the critic’s first article as part of the launch of Observer’s new magazine… “L’Escargot is your stylish auntie, the one who knows how to grow old gracefully. Oh, and it does snails, […]
Jay Rayner in The Observer reviewed Manchester’s German-themed restaurant Albert’s Schloss where the “waiters aren’t wearing lederhosen and slapping each other’s thighs manfully, but they might as well be”… “If you didn’t pay proper attention, you might dismiss Albert’s Schloss as Dante’s third circle of hell, only with less glamour. The music is so loud it could dislodge a […]
Jay Rayner in The Observer loves Stevie Parle’s Roman restaurant in Clerkenwell – Palatino – so much he doesn’t want to leave… “I don’t want to leave. Ever. I am very happy here in my lunchtime booth, as deep winter daylight falls, the lovely things keep arriving at my table and a fug of contentment settles. I […]
Giles Coren in the Times revisits Restaurant Gordon Ramsay (the original on Royal Hospital Road) and finds the three Michelin star level service to be just a bit much… “Smartly redone a couple of years ago in the art deco style, it must look great when empty, but it was so rammed with waiters that I […]
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 […]
