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
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
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
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
Plus a beast of a bacon sandwich Salvaging, reusing and repurposing old fittings and furnishings to adorn new restaurants is nothing new; it’s been an ongoing trend in the English-speaking world for at least a decade, if not more. Renovating old buildings, while judiciously paying homage to their original purpose, has received less attention but … Continue reading
Oxford Street’s eating options get a kick in the pants The little patch of shops and restaurants adjacent to Selfridges known as St. Christopher’s Place used to be one of London’s dining out black spots. Full of tourist traps fronted by touts wielding laminated menus either the length of the Bible or full of badly … 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
The Pidgin sequel takes flight but doesn’t quite soar Update 10/04/2019 – this restaurant is now closed I once wrote that it’s rare for a restaurant to relocate inwards from the suburbs to the centre of town, rather than other way around. Recent events are proving me wrong, showing that such a move (or sprouting … Continue reading
The Picky Glutton 
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