What’s the point of all this? Fine dining used to be so easy to identify. The opulently decorated dining rooms, the tablecloths, the suited and booted staff – and that was just the physical environment, never mind the hushed aura. Then there was the food, itself a world apart from what most of us ate … Continue reading
Half of the mains are red meat and vegetarian dishes, yet I love it anyway ‘I don’t like seafood’ is a common refrain that all of us will have heard at some point in our lives. In an odd twist for an island nation, we will all have at least one friend or family member … Continue reading
Grouse sausage and a mussels flatbread in Hoxton ‘We’ll need the table back in two hours’ is a familiar phrase for restaurant-going Londoners, but is utterly alien to many foreign visitors – especially those from the Continent. For many of our European cousins, the notion of table time limits is utterly incompatible with the very … Continue reading
This review of a Bath restaurant is a break from The Picky Glutton’s usual London coverage While it’s highly unlikely I’ll ever become a vegetarian, I have a great deal of sympathy for people who are and want to eat out. While it’s easy to assume that the recent surge in vegetarianism (and veganism) means … Continue reading
The West End’s other Italian restaurants should be pistachio green with envy. You’d be forgiven for thinking that London’s recent spate of pasta-only Italian restaurants materalised out of thin air, but it’s actually just another chapter in the long history of Italian hospitality and catering in the capital. Soho in particular, as well the areas … Continue reading
Picklery not gimmickry. The sweet life. Keep it sweet. A sweet deal. Sweet as honey. Sweet as pie. Our understandable preoccupation with sweetness and sweet foods is so deeply ingrained that the word itself has become a synonym for all that is desirable and good in the English language. But this has also blinded us, … Continue reading
Defies both easy categorisation and expectations If there’s been one defining cultural aesthetic in the West over the past 20 years or so, then it has to be minimalism. Paring back everything to their essentials is, depending on your point of view, either the ideal way to show off something’s true nature or a stark, monotonous … Continue reading
This review of a Mexico City restaurant is a break from The Picky Glutton’s usual London-based coverage Biko is a glossy and sleek fine dining restaurant decked out in refined and soothing shades of beige and brown. It really could be anywhere in the world, but what it lacks in aesthetic distinctiveness it more than … Continue reading
Fitzrovia French falls forwards While there’s hardly a shortage of expensive fine dining restaurants in London, there has still nonetheless been a general shift away from pricey, starched table cloth restaurants towards less costly, more informal eateries. In most cases, big name chefs and restaurant groups have been content to merely launch spin-offs, such as Dabbous … Continue reading
Cheap (ish) Cambridge Circus cuisine Marketing is a magical thing. It can transform the mundane into something much more wondrous and exotic. Vico, an Italian restaurant that has taken over what used to be the Pizza Hut on the corner of Cambridge Circus and Charing Cross Road, is basically a fast food joint. Or a canteen or cafeteria if … Continue reading
