Restaurants
Dear Mary: What do you do when your hostess licks your spoon?
Q. I have happily overcome many moments of diplomatic and social challenge, but was stumped by the case of the…
Dear Mary: How should one react when someone invites you to an expensive restaurant — then lets you pay the bill?
Q. Further to your advice about how to refuse invitations, I had a friend, who sadly died young, who disliked…
The devil eats Prada: Patisserie Marchesi 1824 reviewed
The Prada Café is both a cake shop and a historical inevitability. It sits on Mount Street, almost opposite the…
I didn’t know kosher food this good existed: Decks in Tverya reviewed
Decks is a restaurant built on the Sea of Galilee. It is Benjamin and Sara Netanyahu’s favourite restaurant (it is…
Soho hasn’t deteriorated – you have: Kiln reviewed
Each suburban soul yearns for the Soho of their youth. It isn’t that Soho was better in the 1990s when…
Germany’s economy is crashing – but its fall may help save us
This is no time for schadenfreude — but take comfort from the fact that the UK isn’t built like Germany.…
Pale pomp and £100 Beijing duck: Imperial Treasure reviewed
Imperial Treasure is a restaurant in the part of St James’s where Leopold von Hoesch, the German ambassador to George…
A temple to small food in a room for rich people: the Ledbury in Notting Hill reviewed
A serious restaurant for serious times: the Ledbury in Notting Hill. It’s a good time to do it, as the…
This is a restaurant for affluent halfwits: Bob Bob Ricard reviewed
In January, you could go to Bob Bob Ricard in Soho. I do not know why it is called Bob…
This is capitalism as its most gaudy: Fortnum & Mason reviewed
I admit I had a falling out with Fortnum & Mason a few years ago over its new brasserie on…
A cruise-ship menu inside a giant Venetian cake: Caffè Concerto reviewed
Caffè Concerto is a chain of Italian cafés sprouting, lividly, across London and the world. There is one on Piccadilly,…
It’s a Jewish homage to the Wolseley, and that is no bad thing: Tish reviewed
Tish is a new grand café in Belsize Park, north London, but kosher. There are not really enough Jews to…
It is essentially a crap Le Gavroche, and that is not an insult: Roux at Parliament Square reviewed
Politicians are having a terrible time of late, along with the rest of us — it’s not much fun watching…
I am served up a crime against breakfast: Sketch reviewed
Sketch is a restaurant and art gallery in Conduit Street, Mayfair. There is a photograph of the Queen in the…
Temper, a new pizza restaurant in Covent Garden, land of the itinerant rich
Temper is a new pizza restaurant in Mercers Walk, Covent Garden, and it is as glib and polished as you…
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…
