No sniggering in the back The vast majority of Vietnamese restaurants in London have very traditional menus and tend to be clustered together in Hoxton and Deptford, with smaller concentrations in other places such as Hammersmith. Soho’s House of Ho is a very different affair. The exposed brick walls, moody lighting and odd contemporary art … Continue reading
Hotel food with a twist Hotel restaurants are very different from restaurants in hotels. This may seem like a minor semantic difference, but there’s actually a yawning gulf between the two. Hotel restaurants are identikit eateries serving up a large menu of lowest common denominator dishes designed for weary travellers too tired to care and … Continue reading
A cosy North London neighbourhood restaurant Until recently I’d largely become bored of Italian restaurants in London. They were either underwhelming, needlessly fussy or old-fashioned and just plain awful. What restored my faith wasn’t a glitzy haute cuisine restaurant in Mayfair or Chelsea, but a small bistro near Finsbury Park called Osteria Tufo. Osteria Tufo … Continue reading
High-tech but low brow food? London’s restaurant scene is very crowded to say the least, so newcomers often need a gimmick just to get noticed. Inamo’s trick is that instead of ordering via a human waiter, you order using a computer with the screen beamed onto your table from a projector sitting above each table. … Continue reading
Cheerful Continental Covent Garden Comfort Chow There’s no shortage of mock French-style brasseries and bistros in London from chains such as Cafe Rouge and Cote to independents such as Les Deux Salons. This two floor restaurant is a mere stone’s throw away from Covent Garden, Charing Cross and The Strand. Les Deux Salons is owned … Continue reading
Was the food at this easy going East End eatery riveting or rotten? As you can probably tell from this blog, I’m fairly anal about eating out. I like to plan things as much as possible, from booking reservations to deciding who eats what (ahead of time if at all possible), so it was with … Continue reading
The empty vessel makes the loudest sound. Meza is a long-standing bar in London’s Soho and it’s the last place I’d expect to find an Indian restaurant. Nestled in a corner of the bar itself, eating at Carom late in the week is a cacophonous experience – the loud, buzzy music, including a live sitar … Continue reading
This review of a Barcelona restaurant is a break from The Picky Glutton’s usual London-based coverage. Los Caracoles is one of those Barcelona restaurants that tends to crop up in all the guidebooks, so it wasn’t surprising that the place was heaving with tourists on the weekday evening of my visit with The Jolly Giant … Continue reading
Will I come back here thyme and thyme again? Much to Wicket’s horror I’m not a huge fan of Christmas. It’s not that I have anything against it, I just never got into the swing of celebrating a traditional Christmas with all the trimmings. Even so, I ended up having a Christmas dinner of sorts … Continue reading
Whatever you do, don’t be late. Update July 2013: this restaurant has now closed. One of my favourite pieces of professional restaurant criticism is written by The Times’ Giles Coren. Now only available to Times subscribers, the entirety of the review is dedicated to an excruciating account of the poor service he received at the … Continue reading
