Mackerel Sky review – this seafood bar achieves lift-off, but doesn’t quite soar
★★★☆☆ / Seafood

Mackerel Sky review – this seafood bar achieves lift-off, but doesn’t quite soar

This review of a Newlyn/Penzance restaurant is a break from The Picky Glutton’s usual London-based coverage. For an island nation, the UK is collectively quite neurotic about what it does and doesn’t eat. Despite the prominence of fisheries in the UK’s increasingly bitter relations with its continental neighbours, we’re a surprisingly seafood-averse bunch. In 2017, … Continue reading

Trap Kitchen review – affordable seafood swims into Balham via Instagram
★★★☆☆ / Eclectic / Seafood

Trap Kitchen review – affordable seafood swims into Balham via Instagram

This crab dinner has legs, but it’s running before it can walk The potential of Instagram to power and propel businesses from mere photographic ideas into actual money making businesses is well known. It’s one thing to read about it though and quite to another to sit in a restaurant that has its origins in … Continue reading

Siren at The Goring review – seafood that isn’t fit for a Queen
★★☆☆☆ / Seafood

Siren at The Goring review – seafood that isn’t fit for a Queen

Overstuffed and underwhelming Update 17/06/2020 – this restaurant has closed as a result of the novel coronavirus pandemic Seafood, like many things in life, is subject to the cyclical, ever-changing whims of fashion and finance. Although the details often depend on the specific seafood in question, seafood has – throughout the long history of these … Continue reading

Pescheria Assunta review – there’s nothing at all fishy about the London branch of this Rome seafood restaurant
★★★☆☆ / Italian / Seafood

Pescheria Assunta review – there’s nothing at all fishy about the London branch of this Rome seafood restaurant

The Italian seafood restaurant that moved from Mayfair to Earl’s Court I had eaten my fill, but I was not satisfied. As the hapless staff flailed at even the most basic tasks, the feeling started to drain from my numbed backside and legs from sitting for so long, while my phone – my only bulwark … Continue reading

St Leonards review – meat and fish thrills on the backstreets of Shoreditch
★★★★☆ / Eclectic / Seafood

St Leonards review – meat and fish thrills on the backstreets of Shoreditch

This restaurant is my new Vice It takes balls to open a restaurant like St Leonards. Fulsome, dangly ones that sway and jiggle with every sigh and cough. It’s either that or the proprietors’ first choice property was out of reach for whatever reason. Few other reasons can seemingly explain St Leonards, a restaurant located … Continue reading

Rick Stein Barnes review – celebrity chef serves the only seafood in the village
★★★☆☆ / Seafood

Rick Stein Barnes review – celebrity chef serves the only seafood in the village

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