Food

Pub food, Disney-style: the George reviewed

2 July 2022 9:00 am

The George, Fitzrovia, was Saki’s local, and a pub for men talking about cars when Great Portland Street was called…

More spectacle than food: Ave Mario reviewed

18 June 2022 9:00 am

Ave Mario looks like Clown Town, a soft-play centre in Finchley with a ball pit so large you could drown…

Where to take Jubilee tea: Fortnum & Mason reviewed

4 June 2022 9:00 am

I went to a garden party at Buckingham Palace once. It is coloured in my memory like childhood. There are…

The perfect restaurant for the Labour party: Arcade reviewed

21 May 2022 9:00 am

I should know better than to visit restaurants assembled as if from disparate bricks, like thrift-shop Duplo: but the ever-credulous…

A cake shop from the time of the Profumo affair: Maison Bertaux reviewed

7 May 2022 9:00 am

Amid the bronze cladding of Soho, with its pop-up, suck-down restaurants – the Cadbury’s Creme Egg Café was a nadir…

The Harrods disadvantage: Em Sherif reviewed

23 April 2022 9:00 am

I am never bored with Harrods, only disgusted, and it is disgust of the most animated and exciting kind. It…

£120 steak that looks like a M&S meal deal: The Maine reviewed

9 April 2022 9:00 am

Last week Chris Corbin and Jeremy King lost controlof the restaurant group they founded: Corbin & King, which made theWolseley,…

The best lamb in London: Blacklock reviewed

26 March 2022 9:00 am

Blacklock is the fourth restaurant of that name – there are others in Soho, Shoreditch and the City of London.…

Food ruined by an existential crisis: Fallow reviewed

12 March 2022 9:00 am

I was going to be jolly this week, for variety and denial, but I changed my mind. Instead, I wonder…

A victim of its own mythology: Langan’s Brasserie reviewed

26 February 2022 9:00 am

Langan’s, a brasserie off Piccadilly with curling orange neon signage calling its name, is under new management after it fell…

Pass on Piggy’s, head to Hide: central London breakfasts reviewed

12 February 2022 9:00 am

The centre could not hold, at least for Piggy’s. The drama of being the only greasy spoon in the West…

A ghost at the feast: The LaLee at the Cadogan hotel, reviewed

29 January 2022 9:00 am

The Cadogan hotel, Chelsea, is where Oscar Wilde was arrested for sodomy and gross indecency in 1895, in Room 118,…

The best schnitzel in London: Schnitzel Forever reviewed

15 January 2022 9:00 am

It is a truism that there is never enough schnitzel (‘slice’, German); or, rather, schnitzel does not get the attention…

The torment of a tasting menu: Hélène Darroze at the Connaught reviewed

18 December 2021 9:00 am

The Connaught Hotel’s formal dining room was always, to me, a place of childish myth; more comforting for being mythical.…

The best Greek salad I’ve ever tasted: INO Gastrobar reviewed

11 December 2021 9:00 am

Soho is so gilded nowadays that even drug addicts look down on it. The wasteland without must match the wasteland…

A small victory in a bad year: José Pizarro at the RA reviewed

27 November 2021 9:00 am

Piccadilly is losing its patina of dirt, its cadaverous character. It is overpriced and over-renovated,a meeting place for luxury goods.…

Sentenced to chicken: NoMad reviewed

13 November 2021 9:00 am

NoMad is a new hotel in what used to be Bow Street Magistrates’ Court: a preening piece of mid-Victorian classicism…

Dregs of fake Provence: Whitcomb’s reviewed

30 October 2021 9:00 am

Whitcomb’s is in The Londoner hotel on the south-west corner of Leicester Square. The Londoner calls itself ‘the world’s first…

The Batman restaurant that’s totally bats: Park Row reviewed

16 October 2021 9:00 am

There is a Batman restaurant in London, or rather there was: Savini at the Criterion on Piccadilly Circus. Savini was…

The real Greek: Lemonia reviewed

2 October 2021 9:00 am

Lemonia lives in the old Chalk Farm Tavern in Primrose Hill, which is better known as the set of Paddington.…

Dining in nowhere: Bar des Prés reviewed

18 September 2021 9:00 am

The residents of Mayfair are misnamed: they do not really live here. They live in Mayfair like I live on…

Scarface’s lair with nibbles: Louie reviewed

4 September 2021 9:00 am

A French creole restaurant rises in the sullen ruins of London. It is called Louie, for French king or trumpeter,…

‘Lifeless and necrotic’: Native at Browns is an ode to joylessness

21 August 2021 9:00 am

Browns is a famous fashion boutique in deepest Mayfair. It occupies a curved cream townhouse on Brook Street, which seems…

High on the hog: The Pig at Bridge Place reviewed

7 August 2021 9:00 am

The Pig at Bridge Place is not a pig in possession of a country house, but I would be for…

A Damascene moment in London: Imad’s Syrian Kitchen reviewed

24 July 2021 9:00 am

Imad’s Syrian Kitchen is an eyrie off Carnaby Street, a once-famous road which seems to exist nowadays to sell trainers…