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.
Walk two blocks north of Bond Street underground station and you will encounter one of London’s best-kept artistic secrets – the Wallace Collection. Located on Manchester Square, it houses an extensive collection of fine and decorative arts, and is free for anyone to visit. If this were not reason enough to visit, then the restaurant too is worth checking out…
First impressions count. This is a basic life lesson and one does not need to have much experience of visiting restaurants to know that there is a right way of doing things and a wrong one. The Gate did it the wrong way. It’s not a lot to ask the front of house to greet guests with a modicum of enthusiasm. It’s also not unreasonable to expect that the menus don’t have previous diners’ food stains on them. You can guess what happened to my dining comrade and I on a recent Saturday night visit. Our evening at The Gate was therefore off to a bad start and it would have taken some amazing food or vastly memorable service to have revised this negative impression. Neither was forthcoming.
Dining at Les 110 is an experience for grown-ups. The London sibling of the two Michelin-starred Paris original is housed in a fine yet somewhat austere Georgian building on Cavendish Square. The venue imbues a sense of expectation, but also one of reverence. Full marks for the food and its pricing; less praise for the service and overall ambience…
A trip to Peru was one of the most memorable holidays I ever undertook. On returning, I lamented for many years how there was a dearth of Peruvian dining options in London. In the last five, however, the city has gone mad for all things culinary from South America. While thoroughly enjoyable, a recent visit to Pachamama yielded nothing new in terms of discovery...
For a mid-market restaurant looking to tick all the right boxes, look no further than Delamina. Like many of the eateries of Tel Aviv from where the team behind this venture hail, the atmosphere is distinctly informal, but buzzing with life. Food-wise, the emphasis is on healthy and nutritious, combining the freshness of produce from the Mediterranean with the spiciness and cooking techniques (especially grilling and roasting) of the Middle East. If the Palomar and the Barbary led the way in this respect, then Delamina represents a natural evolution...
It’s a puzzle trying to decide how to describe the Harcourt. Maybe as a first stab, it is a traditional English pub with Scandinavian influences offering food from the region with a modern European twist. The venue’s website (un)helpfully has the catchy moniker, “old, but new.” Confused? So were my comrade and I when we dined at the Harcourt on a recent weekday evening. There was a great atmosphere, but the food was not sufficiently impressive to justify the prices charged
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.
In the debate about what may be the best formal Italian restaurant in London, I have consistently made the case for Locanda Locatelli. It was therefore highly pleasing to revisit it for the first time in three years (during which time the décor has received a minor makeover) and find that the very high standards for which Locanda is duly renowned are showing no signs of slipping.
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.’
Think of Argentine cuisine and the typical response is steak. Zoilo, a small and intimate restaurant on the northern edge of Mayfair, proves this claim wrong. The food my comrade and I sampled on a recent weekday lunchtime certainly impressed, as did the ambience, even if the service was something of a let-down.
