Not nearly as cliched as you might think at first glance Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. A fine dining restaurant with a much-vaunted chef at the helm has opened in leafy, wealthy zone 1 West London and serves dishes based on seasonal British produce. If that sentence of postmodern London restaurant cliches … 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
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
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
Plus the most mumbling tasting menu ever The overall trend in London restaurant menus, for the past few years, has been brevity. A few dishes, done well. Avoiding the false benefit of ‘choice’ and focussing instead on quality has been a very welcome development, but not every restaurant believes in short menus. A Wong has … Continue reading
Simple doesn’t automatically mean good Visiting other countries and trying out cuisines in their place of origin is great, but it also presents a problem. It makes you realise just how badly many cuisines are represented here in the UK. Mexican food is one of the most badly affected victims, with Tex-Mex giving the entire … Continue reading
This review of a Cancun restaurant is a break from The Picky Glutton’s usual London-based coverage El Bulli, Ferran Adria’s famed modernist restaurant, must have employed half a continent’s worth of people given the number of chefs claiming some connection to that now closed Catalan institution. Benazuza is located half a world away in the basement … Continue reading
