The Langham’s second hotel bar in all but name I review relatively few gastropubs, not because I have any objection to them but due to a pair of far more prosaic reasons. For starters, many of the most interesting new gastropubs seem to be opening outside of London. As as a typical rootless cosmopolitan elitist, … Continue reading
Judging a restaurant on more than how good it looks on Instagram Update 31/7/2017 – added remarks about the bone marrow to the details of the goat curry An opinion column published on the newly launched London version of Eater caused a small stir among the capital’s restaurant watchers. The piece railed against the pernicious effects … Continue reading
Cheap as chips and almost as good Trying to find a restaurant for a large group of people is a royal pain in the unmentionables. Cramming a baker’s dozen around a table can be a logistical feat akin to the Berlin Airlift, especially when everyone has competing, conflicting demands. My own unruly posse of dining … Continue reading
Xu’s cheaper and more homely neighbour By accident or design, the sumptuously superlative Xu isn’t the only Taiwanese restaurant on Rupert Street. The West End’s most unlikely restaurant side street is also home to Old Tree Daiwan Bee. This oddly-named Taiwanese restaurant originally started out on a site in Golder’s Green and must be one … Continue reading
The gastropub cousin to Bocca di Lupo Most new restaurants launch in a blaze of publicity glory with press releases spamming inboxes, repetitively woolly social media chatter, oversubscribed launch parties, a Ryanair-style rush for reservations and fawning coverage from all the usual suspects. Plaquemine Lock, the new gastropub from one of the bods behind Soho’s … Continue reading
But doesn’t quite reach the summit. It’s odd watching the city of your youth gradually change and morph, almost imperceptibly, over the years. Commercial Street is a thoroughfare that links Hoxton and Shoreditch in the north with Whitechapel to the south, running right through Spitalfields and parallel to the City as it does so. It was until recently, and still … Continue reading
A review from someone who can tell the difference between chicken and pork tonkatsu Machi-ya is an odd name for a Japanese restaurant. A machiya is a traditional Japanese house that can be very atmospheric and are thus increasingly popular with tourists visiting Japan. Indeed, I briefly considered staying in one during my trip to Kyoto … Continue reading
Jewish soul food reasserts itself in the East End Update 16/8/2019 – this restaurant has now closed Jewish food doesn’t have much of a visible presence in London to the casual observer. But that’s before you realise that many dishes that we taken for granted in our everyday lives – from bagels and smoked salmon to hot … Continue reading
Japanese pork bone broth noodle soup in the capital gets better. And worse. Although the deluge of ramen restaurant openings in London has lessened since its peak a couple of years ago, a bowl of warm, rich and comforting tonkotsu ramen is still rarely far from my mind. Not only because it’s the perfect dish … Continue reading
TV CV only gets you oh so far I have little time for most TV celebrity chefs, but I’ll usually make an exception for Rick Stein. His genteel avuncular charm, childlike wonder and boundless yet measured enthusiasm make him far more watchable than the majority of his arse-clenchingly irritating peers. The big man naturally doesn’t cook in … Continue reading
The Picky Glutton 
You must be logged in to post a comment.