Vegetables finally get the barbecue treatment… or do they? Continue reading
Tag Archives: ox cheek
Coal Rooms Peckham review – a train station restaurant that isn’t a dreary chain
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
The Wigmore review – Michel Roux Jr’s Regent Street gastropub
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
Shotgun Barbecue review – sleek and inventive Kingly Street BBQ
I call shotgun Update 14/2/17 – this restaurant has now closed There’s been a small boom in American-style barbecue restaurants in London since I first started covering the cuisine in-depth. New openings tend to be fairly traditional though, at least in principle, in both cuts of meat and technique. They also tend to stick to all … Continue reading
Opso review – forget the Real Greek, this is the real deal
Marylebone Greek shows how it’s done You wait ages for a new Greek restaurant to open in London and then two arrive at the same time – first 21 Bateman Street, and now Opso. That isn’t strictly speaking true – ho-hum chain The Real Greek has been opening new branches at a fairly fast clip. In … Continue reading
Smokehouse review – Islington barbecue gastropub
Where there’s smoke, there’s fire? When I surveyed the state of American-style barbecue in London, one of the most common queries was ‘what about Smokehouse?’. However, despite its name Smokehouse isn’t devoted purely to barbecue. This joint venture between Neil Rankin, former head chef at Pitt Cue, and the people behind the nearby Pig and … Continue reading
Hawksmoor Spitalfields Bar review – new meat and cheese menu
Bar-gain or bar-baric? (Sorry.) I’ve eaten at and written about the Hawksmoor mini-chain of steakhouses at length before on this blog. What makes Hawksmoor so interesting, apart from the sheer quality of most of the dishes, is that each branch is a little different from the others. For example, the Air Street branch does some … Continue reading
Story review – a fairy tale or a shaggy dog story?
Tower Bridge gets a classy new neighbour A lot of new London restaurants have adopted some variant of the stripped back ‘industrial’ look common in Shoreditch – bare brick walls, exposed ventilation ducts and naked concrete floors. I’m thoroughly bored of this now cliched aesthetic, so I was pleased to discover that Story has opted … Continue reading
Cinnamon Soho review – British-Indian masala mash-up
Upmarket Indian aims for the masses. Sort of. Selling upmarket Indian food is a tricky business. Given the cheap and cheerful nature of most high street curry houses, convincing most people to pay more than £6 for a main is akin to asking for moon rock in your lemonade. Even if you do convince people … Continue reading