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.
Est. India apparently offers “traditional, fine, urban” dining, per its website. Even if I would not necessarily choose to be so profligate with my descriptors, in summary Est. was a great venue with some impressively decent food.While there are some obvious classics such as the Korma and the Jalfrezi, it’s the novel that pushes the boundaries…
That there always seem to be queues outside every branch of Dishoom I have attempted to visit must surely be a sign that the operators of this now 7-strong chain must have hit upon a winning formula. Luckily enough my wait ended earlier this week when I lost my Dishoom virginity by visiting their Carnaby Street branch. There was no let-down, no anti-climax, just a desire to return.
Britain’s love affair with curry is well-documented and remains unabated. Restaurateurs therefore assume that it is a fairly safe bet opening yet more high-end Indian venues in swanky parts of London. Onto the scene late last year came Kahani – Hindi for story – backed by a top chef, formerly of Tamarind fame.
Passion and execution are two things that diners expect when eating out. Both were in spades at Patri, a small Indian restaurant located on a Hammersmith side street. Similar to the approach pursued by better-known Indian establishments such as Dishoom and Darjeeling Express, Puneet and his team at Patri are seeking to bring their home-based experiences of Indian cooking to the broader world.
Regular readers of the Blog will know that Gourmand Gunno can often be found in Indian restaurants. However, with a choice of some 150 such dining establishments in Edinburgh (a city with which Gunno is not at all familiar), how to choose? Luckily, fellow food Blogger Adele (aka ‘Tartan Spoon’) suggested a trip to Navadhanya. ..
‘No,’ was what I wanted to scream straight out when first I learned about Farzi Café. Everything about it struck me as wrong or offensive. The restaurant is subtitled as being a ‘modern spice bistro’ (what is that supposed to mean?), it is backed by ‘the Czar of Indian Cuisine’ (per the details on its website) and I learned through the Internet that farzi means ‘fake’ in Urdu. Add into this that London’s newest batch of Indian openings have all met with mixed reviews, and my expectations were certainly low heading to Farzi Café. The good news, however, was that they were comfortably surpassed…
Restaurants come and go in London, with around half shutting within a year of opening. I fear Kanishka may well fall into this category. Maybe I was negatively prejudiced towards the venue, having never rated chef Atul Kochhhar’s previous Benares venture, but I have no specific desire to return to Kanishka. The décor felt brash, the vibe wrong, and the food not quite good enough to justify the inflated price tags.
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
Four years is a culinary lifetime, particularly in London, but I have always retained fond memories for Ma Goa, a Putney-located Indian restaurant. Finding myself in the area on a recent weekend, the opportunity to return seemed too good to pass up. In summary, the restaurant has had a make-over, but the food remains as differentiated as before.
Visit-one to Jamavar in March for a work lunch filled me with the belief that this could be among the best Indian restaurants in London. A second visit, on a recent Saturday night sampling the full tasting menu reinforced the notion that Jamavar has a lot of potential; but, our experience was let down by the service.
The word Wapping generally brings to mind either images of dastardly deeds in the docks of Victorian London or Rupert Murdoch’s destruction of the British newspaper industry, not a place for culinary surprises. Yet this is precisely what experienced when seeking an Indian meal after a mini pub crawl in the area.
After my somewhat disappointing recent visit to Vineet Bhatia, it was a decided relief to eat at Jamavar. It reminded me once again just how good Indian cooking can be, when in the right hands. The pedigree of head chef Rohit Ghai says it all – having previously worked at Gymkhana, Trishna and Benares, he clearly knows what he is doing.
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.’
Our annual Christmas gathering of university chums and partners saw us in Putney on the Saturday before Christmas with Ma Goa as the venue. Modern and trendy it may not be, but in terms of food quality, this restaurant definitely deserves to be up there, ranking among some of the tastiest Indian food recently sampled in London.
