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.
Say the word paradise to most people and they envisage some sort of idyll. Think of it as an end point, or something we all strive towards. For any restaurateur to choose this term for their venue is a bold move. Culinary paradise for me would not specifically be an opportunity to dine at a small on-trend Sri Lankan venue in Soho, although there was much to like about this restaurant.
Walk into Zayna and the first thing that hits you is the smell: roasted spice – cumin, cardamom, coriander, black pepper and more. It’s the sort of welcome you want, time and again. The venue opened in 2009 and your reviewer stepped through its doors very soon after. Over the years, he has been back with a fairly high degree of regularity, although a visit earlier this week marked the first time in a while. The good news is that even with a slight revamp to the décor, the quality of the experience remains undiminished.
The joy of new discovery – or serendipity – is one of life’s pleasures. So it was with Kolamba, a newish restaurant serving Sri Lankan food on the edge of Soho. Maybe no coincidence, but Sri Lanka was, of course, once known as Serendip. The premise behind Sri Lankan cuisine is a harmonious merger of sweet, savoury and sour flavours. It’s mostly executed very well here.
In many ways, Jikoni is the perfect place to go for a meal in these strange times. Consider that the restaurant’s name means ‘kitchen’ in Swahili. The emphasis is – and always has been – on informality; almost as if one were stepping into the proprietor’s kitchen. There are no airs and graces here. The principle of style over substance is almost inverted at Jikoni – an appropriate mindset, perhaps, for the COVID-19 world…
Any restaurant that not only opened in 1972 but has expanded its premises since then must clearly be doing something right. That there are often customers queuing (an hour’s wait is apparently not abnormal) is further testament to Tayyabs. Based on our recent week night visit – which fortuitously did not involve any queuing – the reason is very apparent. It has nothing to do with the insalubrious venue/ décor, and everything to do with the food: which was top-quality and delivered at compelling prices
Do you know your hopper from your dosa; your kothu from you kari, or your chutney from your sambol? What’s the correct number of all/any of these dishes to order? And should you combine these with some ‘short eats’ or maybe a ‘rice and roast?’ By now, readers have probably got the story: Hoppers has one of the least comprehensible and potentially most unwelcoming menus in London. That said, once you do eventually get to the food, it’s pretty damn good.
The Sheesh is a Leeds institution, established for over 20 years and run by the Chaudhry family throughout. When the place had to shut for at the end of 2015 owing to the nearby river flooding its premises, there was a local outcry. Jubilation then greeted the recent re-opening of the Sheesh and my recent visit there found the standards to be as high as ever.
My visits to Zayna stretch back over almost ten years and I can think of no occasion when I have been disappointed by this restaurant. It is a small, intimate setting on a side-street near Marble Arch that cooks up some of the most interesting and flavour-intense cuisine from the Indian sub-continent that can be found in London
The appetite for the new and the slightly different seems almost insatiable when it comes to restaurant openings. And so onto the scene comes Jikoni, which could arguably claim to be London’s first restaurant that is Swahili-influenced. Indeed, the restaurant takes its name from the local word used in the Great Lakes area of Africa for ‘kitchen.’
