2017 has been an incredibly hectic year for London restaurants, even by the frenetic standards of this city. Despite the closure of some much missed favourites, new restaurants have continued to open at a dizzying and surely unsustainable pace. Some of that has been driven by a modest influx of celebrity chefs from abroad – … Continue reading
Southwest London doesn’t know how lucky it really is Menus may look like an innocuous list of dishes and prices to most people. But, unless they’ve been written on the fly by a sleep-deprived proprietor teetering on the edge of alcoholism, they can be a far more calculated, insidious instrument designed to subtly serve the … Continue reading
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
Like a regenerated Doctor Who, what’s old is new again. I tend to review new restaurants and Claude Bosi at Bibendum does technically count as a new restaurant, having only just opened at the beginning of April this year. Except, in some ways, it is more of an amalgam of restaurants that have gone before it. Most … 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
In defence of the tasting menu. But not necessarily *this* tasting menu. There’s an unspoken rule that reviewers shouldn’t openly criticise each other’s work. This isn’t a conspiracy – we’re too competitive and too inept for such a concerted undertaking – but an acknowledgement that half-arsed writing and lapses in judgement can affect us all. … Continue reading
What’s old is new again. Indian restaurants in London have tended to go through periodic and repeated rebirths over the past few years, with numerous attempts at moving the cuisine on from the curry house clichés that it’s fallen into with varying degrees of success. The most recent wave in the capital have tended to … Continue reading
Farringdon Britalian is a mash-up in more ways than one Although there are Italian restaurants of every shape and variety in London for all budgets, it’s the expensive ones that I’ve always found most amusing. Along with French and Japanese, Italian restaurants can easily get away with charging high prices that would be harder for … Continue reading
Curry that makes you feel at home. Sort of. Update 12/3/23: this restaurant has now closed I’ve never understood the compulsion for restaurants to describe dishes as ‘home made’. When eating out, I want professionally made dishes – culinary delights that I couldn’t make at home. That conceit is slightly different at Calcutta Street though. … Continue reading
Warm your cockles with blue cheese and dumplings Most suburban and semi-suburban high streets have to make do with a string of chain restaurants, but the denizens of Woolwich doesn’t have to put up with such dreary, unimaginative, repetitive and frankly tedious slop. The streets branching off from the town centre host a string of interesting restaurants … Continue reading
The Picky Glutton 
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