Food
Big Little Bavaria on Thames: Bierschenke bierkeller reviewed
I am not sure the vast Bierschenke bierkeller in Covent Garden is successful, even if it is skilful: I worry…
A taste of 1997: Pizza Express reviewed
As the government withers this column falls to ennui and visits Pizza Express. As David Cameron, who left the world…
As good as pub food gets: The Red Lion, East Chisenbury, reviewed
The Red Lion, East Chisenbury, is in the Pewsey Vale on the edge of Salisbury Plain. Wiltshire’s strangeness surpasses even…
Home cooking, but idealised: 2 Fore Street reviewed
The restaurant 2 Fore Street lives on Mousehole harbour, near gift shops: the post office and general store have closed,…
Wuthering Heights in Devon: the Pilchard Inn, Burgh Island, reviewed
The Pilchard Inn sits at the entrance to Burgh Island, a minute tidal island off the coast of south Devon.…
A themed restaurant done right: The Alice, Oxford, reviewed
The Alice lives in a ground-floor room of the Randolph Hotel in Oxford, which venerates the fantastical and the savage,…
Faultless food with the promise of vengeance: The Trough, reviewed
Lady Bamford’s Cotswold fairy-land Daylesford Farm has sprouted leaves. It is no longer a farm shop, which should be a…
Serious about its whimsy: Sessions Arts Club reviewed
The Sessions Arts Club is a restaurant inside the Old Session House in Clerkenwell, a pale George III building where…
Eat here now: Darjeeling Express reviewed
Darjeeling Express lives at the top of Kingly Court, just off Carnaby Street, which was once the world-famous embodiment of…
All mirrors and monochrome: Mister Nice reviewed
Mister Nice is not so much a restaurant as a pre-dawn thought flung into the drag between Piccadilly Circus and…
Too perfect for Instagram: Cédric Grolet at the Berkeley reviewed
The Cédric Grolet at the Berkeley lives in the shiniest hotel in Knightsbridge, though I prefer the Mandarin Oriental, because…
An innate contradiction: Mount St Restaurant reviewed
The Mount St Restaurant lives above the Audley Public House on Mount Street, ‘a traditional neighbourhood pub, carefully restored, and…
Still thrilling: the Wolseley reviewed
Restaurant and dog years are similar, and so the Wolseley, which is 20 this year, seems as if it has…
Better than the original: Scott’s Richmond reviewed
Scott’s, Richmond, is a fish, champagne and oyster bar, and a new branch of Scott’s, Mayfair. The original Scott’s was…
Rich pickings: Alex Dilling at Hotel Café Royal reviewed
Alex Dilling at the Hotel Café Royal is a minute restaurant above Regent Street, which has the type of British…
Beyond satire: Richard Caring’s Bacchanalia reviewed
Bacchanalia is the new restaurant from Richard Caring – I sense he would like me to call it a ‘landmark’…
The best Ukrainian restaurant you will find: Mriya reviewed
Mriya lives at the end of Old Brompton Road where South Kensington turns into Earl’s Court and, as if by…
Another wasteland lost: Battersea Power Station reviewed
The rude fingers of Battersea are repointed, and barely rude at all. The power station by Giles Gilbert Scott and…
Theme of despair: Drop’N Chicken at Chessington reviewed
Chessington World of Adventures sits in a bowl near the A3. I went in the 1970s when it was a…
Echoes of John Lewis: Piazza at Royal Opera House reviewed
The Piazza is not a piazza – a realisation which is always irritating – but a restaurant in the eaves…
If Blairism were a carvery: the Impeccable Pig reviewed
Labour is 30 points ahead, and in honour of this I review the Impeccable Pig in Sedgefield (Cedd’s field), a…
Fine food in a sinister Weimar wine cellar: Bardo St James’s Restaurant reviewed
Bardo St James’s Restaurant – a name which reads like a map – is a vast new Italian restaurant in…
What Soho House has got right: Electric Diner reviewed
Electric Diner is from the Soho House group, which has done terrible things to private clubs, luckless farmhouses, domestic interior…
Among the best puddings I’ve ever eaten: Richoux reviewed
Cakeism is offering the voters everything they desire, knowing you will never give it to them because you live in…
A great chef at his best: Lisboeta reviewed
In 2014, Nuno Mendes, a chef from Lisbon by way of Wolfgang Puck’s kitchens and his own Viajante in Bethnal…
