Just bring me a boiled egg
The Connaught Hotel’s formal dining room was always, to me, a place of childish myth; more comforting for being mythical.…
Soho consolations
Soho is so gilded nowadays that even drug addicts look down on it. The wasteland without must match the wasteland…
Spanish gold
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 is a new hotel in what used to be Bow Street Magistrates’ Court: a preening piece of mid-Victorian classicism…
Tiramisu
You can get drunk on tiramisu. I have done it. It takes two portions at least. You drink (I mean…
Faking it
Whitcomb’s is in The Londoner hotel on the south-west corner of Leicester Square. The Londoner calls itself ‘the world’s first…
Totally bats
There is a Batman restaurant in London, or rather there was: Savini at the Criterion on Piccadilly Circus. Savini was…
The silence of the critics
A world without criticism is just advertising
The real Greek
Lemonia lives in the old Chalk Farm Tavern in Primrose Hill, which is better known as the set of Paddington.…
Giving the devil his due
The Sopranos – the greatest television show in history – far outshines its progenitors, says Tanya Gold
News from nowhere
The residents of Mayfair are misnamed: they do not really live here. They live in Mayfair like I live on…
Fit for a king
A French creole restaurant rises in the sullen ruins of London. It is called Louie, for French king or trumpeter,…
Ode to joylessness
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 is not a pig in possession of a country house, but I would be for…
Damascene moment
Imad’s Syrian Kitchen is an eyrie off Carnaby Street, a once-famous road which seems to exist nowadays to sell trainers…
Lobsters
Lobsters like to live in gullies on the sea floor, or under sand, and I understand how they feel. But…
Ritz assessment
The Ritz is still here, and still gaudy. No grand hotel in London feels quite so complete, if pink; as…
Hogwarts and all
Harry Potter is a fictional orphan locked in a cupboard by his aunt and uncle, after which he discovers a…
Noble art
Noble Rot sits in Greek Street, Soho, on the site of the old Gay Hussar, which squatted here from 1953…
Birds of a feather
This is not a novel about four chickens of various character — Gloria, Miss Hennepin County, Gam Gam and Darkness…
Paling into insignificance
The Roof Garden is a pale, Nordic-style restaurant at the top of the glorious Pantechnicon in Belgravia — formerly a…
Road trip notebook
Before pandemic I thought I might drive across America, or even France. Now — what about Kent, the garden of…
Fork in the road
You cannot have cars and dining tables in the same dreamscape: it doesn’t work, unless you think carbon monoxide is…
Transported
The St Pancras Brasserie and Champagne Bar by Searcys is as expansive as its name, but ghostly. It is an…
Back to the future
The west end of London is still pale and necrotic, but there are points of light. Hatchards the bookseller is…
