Restaurants
The Old Vic’s Pit Bar has fallen to the hipsters – Penny reviewed
Penny is an all-day café in the former Pit Bar in the basement of the Old Vic, a famous and…
I went to Pedro’s Tex Mex Cantina to claim my racist sombrero
Pedro’s Tex-Mex Cantina is a fantastical shack near a ring road in Norwich. It was recently asked to stop handing…
Manchester has marvellous wines, and it’s not finished yet
It will seem an ungrateful comment after the lunch which I am about to describe, but Manchester has some way…
Smith & Wollensky doesn’t even serve the best steaks in Covent Garden
Smith & Wollensky is a restaurant from The Shining: a terrifying American steak joint by the Thames, four months old,…
Finally, a foodie restaurant that isn’t pretentious, overpriced or insulting to the intelligence
I cannot review the Gay Hussar every time the Labour party behaves like a self-harming teenager (‘I don’t want to…
Where comics find their Edinburgh comfort food
Mum’s, or to use its full title, Mum’s Great Comfort Food, is a restaurant in Edinburgh designed to soothe itinerant…
A fake fishing village, and the nastiest thing I’ve eaten as a restaurant critic
Selfridges is skilled at making things that are not hideous (women) look hideous (women dressed as Bungle from Rainbow or…
Venetian restaurants know I’m English from the back
The Gatto Nero — or ‘Black Cat’ — is in Burano, a tiny island in the Venetian lagoon. It is…
The joy of an empty Gordon Ramsay restaurant
The Maze Grill is on a sinister street in Chelsea, between a small Tesco — a boutique Tesco? — and…
The new Ivy doesn’t have the old magic (if there ever was any)
The Ivy is a Playmobil-style faux-medieval restaurant in a triangular building opposite The Mousetrap; of the two, The Ivy is…
A fantasy world with its own perfumed air: the Colony Grill Room
The Beaumont Hotel is a bright white cake in the silent part of Mayfair, where the only sound is Patek…
Fenchurch in the Sky Garden – like going for dinner in Total Recall
Fenchurch is a restaurant that is scared of terrorists. It cowers at the top of 20 Fenchurch Street, a skyscraper…
Dear Mary: How can I make my shy friend’s generosity plain?
Q. I have a friend who can be shy and inhibited. Recently, he was invited to stay on a Caribbean…
There’s only one place to mourn another Labour loss
Ed is a plank. He was always a plank — and now he is in Ibiza being a plank. Plankety–plankety-plank:…
The Portrait restaurant: a secret glade of stone and brick, suspended above Trafalgar Square
The Portrait Restaurant lives at the top of the National Portrait Gallery, London. It is fiercely modern, but likeable. You…
Dear Mary: How can I stop friends calling without warning?
Q. I have moved from London to the centre of a historic market town, now becoming famous as a foodie…
The Ivy Chelsea Garden: Richard Caring has finally built a restaurant I admire
The Ivy Chelsea Garden is a restaurant inside an Edwardian house disguised as a Tudor house on the King’s Road;…
A cemetery with cocktails: La Coupole and the spirit of the brasserie
La Coupole, Montparnasse, is the grandest and most famous of the old pre-war Parisian brasseries; that is, if you have…
Dear Mary: What can I do to make couples split the bill fairly?
Q. I’m a single bloke now and for various reasons don’t foresee any change to that status. I have moved…
Kitty Fisher’s: proof that the PM has good taste in restaurants, if not in friends
David Cameron is too cowardly, or too cynical, to debate with Ed ‘Two or Possibly Three Kitchens’ Miliband — which…
Is the Dorchester the designated grand hotel for fat people? The portions at its new grill say so
The Dorchester Hotel, Park Lane, is a cake floating in space. All grand hotels create a parallel universe in which…
Rowleys is Did Mummy Love Me Really? food – and it’s perfect
I think Rowley’s is the perfect restaurant; but I am really a gay man. Rowley’s is at 113 Jermyn Street…
Rivea: a London annexe to the world’s maddest expensive restaurant
Rivea (stupid name) is in the bowels of Bulgari in Knightsbridge, a hotel which looks like a vast Virgin Upper…
Quaglino’s, the vampire brasserie
Quaglino’s is an ancient subterranean brasserie in St James’s, a district clinging to the 18th century with cadaverous fingers. It…
Panic, profiteering and a mysterious girl in a Mini: notes from Moscow
Moscow Here we go again. The rouble slides, then tumbles, and slides again. For those of us who remember the…
