Restaurants
Jeremy King has done it again: The Park, reviewed
The Park is the new restaurant from Jeremy King, and it sits in a golden building to the north of…
If you can stand the stress, The Bear is still possibly the best thing on TV
The Bear has been called ‘the most stressful thing on TV’ and I think that’s probably a fair description. It’s…
Why do people make excuses for surly staff?
‘You grab that table, I’ll get the drinks.’ I did as bid. A couple of minutes later, Paul was back,…
‘The food is as good as you will find in London’: Saison at Raffles London, reviewed
The Old War Office (bad acronym OWO) on Whitehall is now a Raffles hotel: you can stay in Winston Churchill’s…
‘They do better spaghetti bolognese in Hampstead for a tenner’: The Lobby at The Peninsula, reviewed
The Peninsula is a new hotel at Hyde Park Corner. It is part of the trend for absurd expense: rooms…
Revised Criterion
There are cursed restaurants and cursed women, and this makes them no less interesting. One is Maxim’s in Paris, which…
Market values
Origin City is a good name for this restaurant, whether it knows it or not. It is at West Smithfield,…
A pastiche pub
Poundbury is the King’s idealised town in Dorchester, built on his land to his specifications: the town that sprung out…
Et tu, Bruton?
At the Chapel, Bruton, is a restaurant and hotel in a former chapel in Bruton. This was once an ordinary…
Homage to Hobbiton
Sarehole Mill is four miles south of the centre of Birmingham. If this were a fairy tale, and it should…
Plainly perfect
The BBC made a very odd documentary about the renovation of Claridge’s: The Mayfair Hotel Megabuild. They filmed, agog, as…
First draught
I am not sure the vast Bierschenke bierkeller in Covent Garden is successful, even if it is skilful: I worry…
Museum pizzas
As the government withers this column falls to ennui and visits Pizza Express. As David Cameron, who left the world…
Roar of approval
The Red Lion, East Chisenbury, is in the Pewsey Vale on the edge of Salisbury Plain. Wiltshire’s strangeness surpasses even…
Strangeness and charm
The restaurant 2 Fore Street lives on Mousehole harbour, near gift shops: the post office and general store have closed,…
No mucking about
The Pilchard Inn sits at the entrance to Burgh Island, a minute tidal island off the coast of south Devon.…
Alice in gastroland
The Alice lives in a ground-floor room of the Randolph Hotel in Oxford, which venerates the fantastical and the savage,…
All muted
The Piazza is not a piazza – a realisation which is always irritating – but a restaurant in the eaves…
