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…
Escaping the memory of Liz Truss: Noci reviewed
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
It is a truism that there is never enough schnitzel (‘slice’, German); or, rather, schnitzel does not get the attention…
Anything for a laugh
‘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
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
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
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
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
You can get drunk on tiramisu. I have done it. It takes two portions at least. You drink (I mean…
Dregs of fake Provence: Whitcomb’s reviewed
Whitcomb’s is in The Londoner hotel on the south-west corner of Leicester Square. The Londoner calls itself ‘the world’s first…
