Any pub that employs a chef with credible restaurant CV now feels it has the right to append the prefix ‘gastro’ to its name. Many have installed josper grills or wood fires to buttress their claims. Renovate on old boozer may earn extra points. The Baring doesn’t try too hard. It doesn't need to either. This neighbourhood venue lets its quality speak for itself.
Your reviewer’s only previous visit to a Georgian restaurant was a disappointment. The passing of time and a desire to be open-minded provoked a recent visit to a new venue purveying Georgian cooking. It was well-conceived, but ultimately underwhelming.
It is a truth universally acknowledged that Oxford students will take every opportunity to show off their erudition. With this maxim in mind, when your reviewer and eight of his chums returned recently to their Alma Mater for a reunion weekend, he was reminded of the famous line of Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr: “the more things change, the more they stay the same.” In simple terms, the places where we dined some thirty years ago have stood the test of time.
Harrow is famous for its school, perhaps its eponymous hill, but little else. Although it is located less than ten miles from where this reviewer grew up, he was not aware of its dining options – until recently. Step forward Jay Rayner. I have long been a fan of the restaurant critic of The Guardian and have enjoyed several of his books, including My Dining Hell. This is a summary of his most damning reviews. 19 of the 20 places subsequently have shut. Fortunately, his recent piece on the incongruously named Panda’s Kitchen was praiseworthy – and rightly so.
People love to make lists, however arbitrary they may be. KOL is one of only two UK restaurants to rank in the World’s 50 Best Restaurants, placing at number 17. It must, therefore, being doing something very good. Your reviewer had written two highly praiseworthy pieces about KOL in the past (see here and here), but a recent visit to the venue demonstrated to our group of four – all of whom were previously familiar with KOL – just how much it had raised its already strong game.
If you were a chef, what would be your dream? A fair guess might be that once you had a built a cult following, open your own place on your own terms: an intimate venue, decorated just the way you would like it, with your own tunes playing on the sound system. One iteration of this vision can be found at Scott Hallsworth’s Freak Scene in Soho…
For those not familiar with the lower end of the Edgware Road, which heads north from Marble Arch, it is home to the largest Arab population in London. Unsurprisingly, therefore, it is crammed full of restaurants purveying food from across the Middle East. Having been a resident in the area for close on twenty years, I have sampled food from many of the establishments here and have also, separately, been lucky enough to have travelled across quite a lot of the Middle Eastern region for work. In my humble – and obviously subjective – opinion, the Beirut Express beats almost all the competition. It is certainly the best on the Edgware Road.
