You couldn’t pay me to eat here again. People like to sneer at hipsterish restaurants and bars in Shoreditch and Dalston. They’re seen by many as faddy, shallow trend-chasing establishment serving up fare that’s incomprehensible and inedible to ‘normal’ folk. I have little time for such half-baked nonsense, preferring to judge each establishment on its … Continue reading
In this case ‘casual’ means ‘cheaper’. Sort of. It’s always fascinating to see what happens when a lauded, Michelin-starred fine-dining restaurant launches a ‘casual’ spin-off. When Dabbous attempted it, the result was the very different and somewhat odd Barnyard. Both of those restaurants have now closed and, in retrospect, Barnyard felt a somewhat patronising, phoned-in … Continue reading
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
Disclosure: I contributed to Santo Remedio’s crowd-funding campaign on Kickstarter with a modest donation in the region of £75-200. Updated 25/02/19 – added details of 2019 revisits Arrogant. Cocksure. Overconfident know-nothing. Snooty elitist. Those are just some of the epithets slung my way in the hatemail that I try to ignore (usually quite successfully). That … Continue reading
Hong Kong in the shadow of the Shard Update 07/01/2020 – this restaurant has now closed It’s very easy to take things for granted and Cantonese food is one of those things. London has been fortunate enough to benefit from some respectable and credible Cantonese cooking for several years now. And yet this venerable style … Continue reading
Look beyond the marketing spin at this Gunpowder threequel Update 12/3/23: this restaurant has now closed As the end of the year approaches, so does the anniversary of this website and so my feeble mind inevitably ponders all that it has accomplished. While I would like to think that I’ve helped at least a few … Continue reading
It’s better than Tex-Mex. Just. Reviewing restaurants means I meander all over London, seeing firsthand the disparate boroughs, villages and neighbourhoods that make up this sprawling metropolis of ours. It’s tempting to think that once you venture outside of the capital’s core restaurant areas (Soho, Islington, Shoreditch and The City, or thereabouts), you would have … Continue reading
Hoxton tacos worth travelling across town for Update 27/1/2019 – this restaurant has now closed The phrase ‘Hoxton restaurant’ has become a joke to many. Whatever it may once have meant, prosaically or otherwise, it has now become a byword for shallow, self-indulgent and self-absorbed trend-chasing. Although there may be an element of truth in … Continue reading
It’s both different from the original Soho Temper and reassuringly similar too Update 25/8/2018 – this restaurant’s menu has changed drastically. It now closely resembles the one at the original Temper Soho. I try not to write too much about the industry goings-on in London’s restaurant scene. Such gossipy navel-gazing is often transient in its importance, … 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 Picky Glutton 
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