Restaurants
Wedge salad in the shadow of the Tudors: Sargeant’s Mess reviewed
Sargeant’s Mess (2018) is a tourist catcher’s net in restaurant form by the Tower of London (c. 1078). It has views…
Food that’s prettier than you are: The Petersham reviewed
The Petersham is a fading hotel on Richmond Hill. I went to a bar mitzvah there in 1986, which gives…
Dear Mary: As best man, can I seduce the groom’s sister?
Q. We often take friends to what my husband calls a ‘poncey’ pub which has won numerous awards and where…
Too good for the kleptocrats of Knightsbridge: Harry’s Dolce Vita reviewed
In 2007 Mikhael Gorbachev starred in a Louis Vuitton advert. He was driven past the Berlin Wall with Louis Vuitton…
As restaurants go, it’s important – and it knows it: the River Café reviewed
Jilly Cooper’s fictional hero Rupert Campbell-Black has ‘never been to Hammersmith’. I have but I wish I hadn’t. I love…
A new addition to north London’s underwhelming restaurants: Café Hampstead reviewed
Café Hampstead is a new café in — big reveal! — Hampstead, the gaudiest of the old villages on the…
It’s survived universal suffrage and two world wars: restaurant Rules reviewed
Rules looks as if it voted for Brexit, and now finds itself inside an eternal Christmas Eve, where it is…
Farmacy’s food is the worst I have eaten in London
Farmacy, which opened last year, is London’s most fashionable ‘clean eating’ restaurant; it is, therefore, a restaurant for people who…
The queen of hotels
Jean-Georges at the Connaught — formerly the Prince of Saxe-Coburg Hotel, but it was renamed during the first world war,…
Elle Decoration meets pub food
The Mandrake is a new ‘design hotel’ in London, which means it is for people who treat Elle Decoration magazine…
In silent misremembrance
Foxlow is near Golden Square in west Soho, where drunken hacks used to take long drunken lunches before having stupid…
Tapas but no phantom
I am always surprised to remember that Andrew Lloyd Webber has taste; it must be remembrance of Cats. I was…
Dear Mary: What can you do when your new neighbours stiff you on a restaurant bill?
Q. We moved recently and new neighbours invited us to join them for dinner at a nearby restaurant. I planned…
The RA’s new restaurant prioritises its art over its customers
The Keeper’s House sits in the basement of Burlington House, a restaurant in disguise. It is quite different from the…
Word of the week: 'concept'
‘It was nothing special, but it was a pub,’ said my husband, looking up from his copy of Bar magazine…
Nicholas Soames’s Twitter account is a miracle (and so is his diet)
Miracles are not ceased. A few years ago, a kindly educational therapist took pity on John Prescott and set out…
The horrors of Soho House’s country outpost
It is summer and the listless metropolitan thinks of grass. It cannot afford to stay at Durslade Farmhouse, Somerset, a…
Meet London’s senior mayor (no, it’s not Sadiq)
London’s other mayor How many people could name the capital’s other mayor, the Lord Mayor of London? The office, officially…
The most beautiful restaurant in London – from the outside
Batman owned the Criterion in The Dark Knight, but could he do anything about British Telecom? Savini at Criterion, an…
Would you like to buy an American’s vote?
Killing time in a Heathrow first-class lounge, I notice how many men adopt an unmistakable ‘first-class lounge’ persona. They stand…
The new Wheeler’s is the worst thing Marco Pierre White has ever done
Wheeler’s is such a dreadful restaurant that I wonder if Marco Pierre White even knows his name is on it.…
Pharmacy 2 makes me like Damien Hirst
Pharmacy 2 is the reanimated child of Damien Hirst; it lives inside the Newport Street Gallery in a forsaken patch of…
Sartoria: the home of Savile Row’s men who lunch
Sartoria is a pale grey restaurant on Savile Row. As evidence that this is London’s destination street — if menswear…
Le Caprice is trying to bring back the 1980s (unsuccessfully)
Le Caprice is a monochrome patch of the 1980s behind the Ritz Hotel, in the part of St James’s that…
Meet Feng Shang Princess, the (lousy) Chinese restaurant in a boat
The Feng Shang Princess is a floating Chinese restaurant on the Regent’s Canal in north London, which flows from Little…
