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.
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.
Has 28-50 had its heyday? Your reviewer initially encountered this inspirational and wine-democratising concept in the late-2000s, around its inception. Its Marylebone outlet received a Blog entry within the first six months of Gourmand Gunno’s website. The title of a 2015 review of the Mayfair branch – “Gone downhill” – perhaps tells readers everything they need to know. Nonetheless, 28-50’s backers have persisted. Its latest opening launched just post-pandemic and occupies an impressive site just north of Oxford Circus. Location notwithstanding, were your reviewer in the business of formally scoring restaurants, then 28 out of 50 would be a fair assessment.
It’s a difficult feat for any restaurateur to pull off. Intrepid diners constantly want to be surprised by the novel, to boast that they are eating cutting-edge, boundary-pushing cuisine. The sub-Saharan African dining scene, especially at the high-end, has been long-neglected in London. It also provides a fertile ground for experimentation, where even more seasoned and sceptical diners such as your reviewer can be impressed. Look no further than Akoko.
Your author has been travelling to Portugal for over 20 years. It’s one of his favourite countries: great weather, places to visit, people to hang out with and food to eat. Even if London can’t quite deliver a Portuguese climate with any consistency, the good news is that Nuno Mendes has created in Lisboeta a venue that pays homage to the food in his home country.
Founder chef Saransh Goila doesn’t lack ambition. Rather, he may be suffering from a case of severe hubris. Read his website and it boldly claims that he has turned butter chicken “into a religion” in India. Enter his first London outlet and the sign that greets diners asserts that they will receive “quite simply the best butter chicken in the world.” With the bar set so high, disappointment is inevitably the only outcome.
The bartender who made the Martinis with which we began our recent experience at Mere provided the perfect metaphor for the evening. The venue’s vodka or gin base of quinoa makes for an interesting talking point, but the assembly of the drink stressed aiming for a comfortable middle ground. In Mere’s view, Martini should be made neither too dry nor too wet. Put another way, Mere is full of good intention but never did quite enough to make the evening truly memorable or outstanding.
Much (if not all) of the fun of being a restaurant reviewer is having novel experiences. It was therefore quite anomalous that Gourmand Gunno had never paid a visit to Archipelago until earlier this week. The venue has been a fixture in Fitzrovia for over twenty years and has a very clear mandate: to “explore the exotic.” From alpaca to zebra, Archipelago dishes up options that are far from mainstream, but perhaps ought to be more so.
Does London need yet another Indian restaurant? Well, if it’s as good as Pali Hill, then yes. Indian cuisine in the central part of town is a highly crowded and competitive market and so restaurants really need to be doing something either very good, very different, or ideally both in order to make a mark. When two comrades and I dined recently at Pali Hill on a midweek evening, we came away impressed.
Diners around the Charlotte Street/ Goodge Street nexus have an ample range of dining opportunities. Ampéli – open since January – does, however, bring something new. Eastern Mediterranean (a nice broad catch-all, encompassing everything from Italy to Israel) is definitively on-trend while Greek food and wine – Ampéli’s angle – is both overlooked and underappreciated.
Barrica offers a masterclass in sherry and tapas pairing . Similar to Bar Pepito, both venues share an ethos of trying to create an eating-drinking space that would not feel out of place in Spain. Barrica is a light and spacious as Pepito is dark and cramped (in a good way). In Barrica, take in the chequerboard floor, marbled counter and swinging jamons…
Ask most people to come up with expressions they typically associate with Italy and you might find ‘good food’ and ‘chaotic organisation’ mentioned. It would, however, be relatively rare to see both used in the same sentence. As far as Norma – a new Italian venture is Fitzrovia is concerned – where it excelled in food, it failed in service.
Restaurants with Michelin stars know what they’re doing, right? Especially those that have held at least one since 1993. You would assume so. We, however, encountered one of our least promising starts to a restaurant visit at Pied à Terre. Fortunately, things improved from there. Overall, the experience was positively memorable, if more so for the ambience than the food…
It is possible to feel slightly dizzy from the constant rush of new restaurants opening their doors to the public in London. Tyranny of choice sometimes spring to mind. However, based on the success of Portland, which I thoroughly loved when it opened last year (and won a deserved Michelin star), Clipstone definitely merited a visit.
