Disney matter
The Disney Café is a gaudy hell on the fourth floor of Harrods, Knightsbridge. It is adjacent to the Harrods…
My little plutocrat
Rextail is a restaurant for billionaire children, such as Richie Rich. Its owner, Arcady Novikov, has already opened a restaurant…
Vienna without the Austrians
Fischer’s is Austria made safe for liberals, gays, Jews and other Untermenschen riffraff, because it is a restaurant, not a…
Escaping the Fringe
The Edinburgh Fringe Festival: the city is full of glassy-eyed narcissists eating haggis pizza off flyers that say Michael Gove:…
Rebooting the Snail
L’Escargot, or the Snail, is a famous restaurant on Greek Street, Soho, opposite the old Establishment club; the oldest French…
Stable conditions
The Chatsworth estate, Derby-shire. I am overwhelmed by marketing literature. I am prostrate. I am weeping. I am staying in…
Simple pleasures in Soho
Occasionally a critic must review a restaurant in which they are prepared to spend their own money. So here is…
Dinner with the paparazzi
Here then is Gatsby’s house, after an invasion by the Daily Mail. It is called the Chiltern Firehouse. It is…
The pall of the wild
Fera is in Gordon Ramsay’s old cave at Claridge’s. His red and yellow room, like a ripped-off arm, has been…
Old Harry’s game
Harry’s Bar is a dull pale box. This is remarkable in Venice, which is a hospice for dying palaces, held…
End of the rude
Wong Kei is a mad Chinese restaurant on Wardour Street, Chinatown. Until recently it was considered the rudest restaurant in…
Oxford blues
It is now two decades since I lived in Oxford. I was then a drunk and lonely puddle of a…
Relaxing with Marcus
In the ‘Chefs’ Last Supper’ in the National Portrait Gallery, Marcus Wareing is throwing a brie at Gordon Ramsay, who…
A far cry from Chelsea
London House is in Battersea, which some people call South Chelsea, but is more East Wandsworth to my mind; or…
Lamb rump without the prince
Highgrove is the country house of the Prince of Wales. I write about Highgrove because, although it is not a…
Dinner with the editors
Moro (‘moorish’ or ‘sexist’) is a Spanish restaurant on Exmouth Market, near the bones of the old Guardian and Observer…
Multi-story dining
The Fable is three floors high and two days old, a monster newly hatched on the Holborn Viaduct; deep below…
London for aliens
Lanes of London serves street food to people who hate streets; that is, it exists to soothe the still-curious mouths…
Dining with relics
Langan’s Brasserie announces its presence with a long, pink neon line of Langanses, tootling prettily along its façade, which is…
Meet the parents
Woolley Grange is a child-friendly country house hotel that seems, at first, entirely monstrous — a grey Tudor house in…
Winter horrorland
Winter Wonderland is a Christmas-themed playground that lands on the sorry part of Hyde Park in November; the part that…
The restaurant lobby
One Canada Square was the original glass house in east London’s Gotham City, a thrilling tower with a flashing pyramid…
French revival
Boulestin is a pretty restaurant on St James’s Street, between the posh fag shop (Davidoff) and the old palace, which…
Heston’s brown Dinner
Dinner by Heston Blumenthal, a brown cavern in the Mandarin Oriental hotel, Knightsbridge, has won a second Michelin star. These…
Towards the end of Gordon
The Union Street Café is in a dismal, dingy part of London; dismal dingy Southwark. Southwark, in fact, is almost…
