The modern Turkish restaurant that’s far too good for Fitzrovia’s backstreets Update 29/12/2019 – this restaurant has now closed Although I only spent a day in the modern, nondescript Turkish city of Kayseri a few years back, the mere mention of this central Anatolian metropolis is enough to bring back fond memories. The city’s mod … Continue reading
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
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
Italian food from Wild Honey and Arbutus The Barbican Centre may be a supreme example of Brutalist architecture and a fine place to take in a film or exhibition, but it’s been a barren wasteland for food with branches of Benugo, Cote and other such dens of last resort as your only in-house dining choices up until … Continue reading
This review of an Oaxaca restaurant is a break from The Picky Glutton’s usual London-based coverage Oaxaca may be best known to Londoners, if it’s known at all, as the inspiration behind the name of London mini-chain Wahaca. But this city in southwestern Mexico has a rich culinary tradition that’s barely touched upon in Wahaca’s menu. … Continue reading
Fitzrovia French falls forwards While there’s hardly a shortage of expensive fine dining restaurants in London, there has still nonetheless been a general shift away from pricey, starched table cloth restaurants towards less costly, more informal eateries. In most cases, big name chefs and restaurant groups have been content to merely launch spin-offs, such as Dabbous … Continue reading
Every burger reviewed from beef to veal, chicken and mushroom too If you buy into the stereotypical caricature of French food as a rarefied haute cuisine that abhors any sort of perfidious Anglo-Saxon influence, then the very idea of French burgers is oxymoronic. That stereotype, like any crass over-generalisation, is of course untrue – evident to anyone … Continue reading
This review of a Rome restaurant is a break from The Picky Glutton’s usual London-based coverage Londoners love to complain about The Big Smoke’s public transport and traffic congestion, but they haven’t seen anything until they’ve tried getting around Rome. The Eternal City’s minuscule metro and rail networks (minuscule for a major European capital at … Continue reading
Independent Tottenham Court Road Italian There’s a small clutch of Italian restaurants on the western side of Tottenham Court Road in Fitzrovia, but most are either yawn-inducing chains or dreary places serving up massive menus of slop. One of the very few exceptions is Sardo, a long-standing restaurant specialising in dishes from Sardinia. Not to … Continue reading
This review of a Barcelona restaurant is a break from The Picky Glutton’s usual London-based coverage. Barcelona has more than its fair share of fine dining restaurants, but even in such a large city it’s possible to stumble upon some gems and Gelonch may well be one of them. It’s a small restaurant located on … Continue reading
