Tanya Gold

In praise of character actors

20 August 2022 9:00 am

If you want real acting in films, forget the leads – it’s in the supporting roles that you’ll find true talent, says Tanya Gold

A great chef at his best: Lisboeta reviewed

13 August 2022 9:00 am

In 2014, Nuno Mendes, a chef from Lisbon by way of Wolfgang Puck’s kitchens and his own Viajante in Bethnal…

Escaping the memory of Liz Truss: Noci reviewed

30 July 2022 9:00 am

Sometimes this column has a guest reviewer: a dining companion. It was Liz Truss in late summer 2011, for the…

Civilisation in a sausage: River Restaurant at the Savoy reviewed

16 July 2022 9:00 am

When the Tory party set itself on fire last week a restaurateur told me: ‘Don’t worry, Tanya, we’ll still be…

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…

The cult of the convertible

12 March 2022 9:00 am

The earliest cars were technically convertibles because the technology to fit a roof did not exist. Now the dedicated retractable…

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 secrets of chicken soup

22 January 2022 9:00 am

Catherine Chicken is sickly. She has swollen up like a barrage balloon with an evil face and dinosaur feet. She…

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…

Anything for a laugh

8 January 2022 9:00 am

‘I went into show business to make a noise, to pronounce myself,’ Mel Brooks told Kenneth Tynan in 1977, in…

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…

How to get drunk on tiramisu

13 November 2021 9:00 am

You can get drunk on tiramisu. I have done it. It takes two portions at least. You drink (I mean…