Restaurants
Dear Mary: How will Joan Collins introduce herself now she’s a dame?
Q. We enjoyed the Christmas University Challenge series featuring mature graduates, some of whom were more in the public eye than…
The real reason there’s a queue outside the Cereal Killer Café
The Cereal Killer Café is a temple to cereal on Brick Lane, east London. It serves only cereal — and also…
The most preposterous restaurant to have opened in London this year
Somerset House, a handsome Georgian palace on the Thames, was once the office of the Inland Revenue, and the courtyard was…
Dear Mary: Do I really have to take my shoes off indoors?
Q. There has been a marked increase in the number of people who have pristine flooring and are so keen…
The hotels trying to turn Cornwall into Kensington
Mousehole is a charming name; it is almost a charming place. It is a fishing village on Mount’s Bay, Cornwall,…
The real French embassy is a restaurant
Semper eadem. There is some basement in a Mayfair street that is forever France. It is not far from the…
A buffet in an Egyptian tomb
Atlantico is a vast buffet inside the Lopesan Costa Meloneras Resort Spa and Casino in Gran Canaria. The Lopesan Costa…
Barry Humphries’s diary: The bookshop ruined by Harry Potter
Do fish have loins? Last Tuesday, in a pretentious restaurant, I ordered a ‘loin of sea trout’. It looked just…
Want to shake hands with your dinner? Beast is your kind of restaurant
Beast is next to Debenhams on Oxford Street and it is not conventionally beast-like; rather it is monetised and bespoke…
Gymkhana is morally disgusting – and fortunately the food’s disgusting too
Gymkhana is a fashionable Indian restaurant in Albemarle Street. It was, according to its natty website, ‘inspired by Colonial Indian…
Dear Mary: Can I run out on an apprenticeship for my dream interview?
Q. I have been trying to get an apprenticeship in fashion for over a year without success. I just had…
Today’s Disney princesses look like Russian mafia wives. This is their café
The Disney Café is a gaudy hell on the fourth floor of Harrods, Knightsbridge. It is adjacent to the Harrods…
Rextail: a restaurant for billionaire children
Rextail is a restaurant for billionaire children, such as Richie Rich. Its owner, Arcady Novikov, has already opened a restaurant…
Fischer’s is like visiting Vienna without having to go to Austria (thank God)
Fischer’s is Austria made safe for liberals, gays, Jews and other Untermenschen riffraff, because it is a restaurant, not a…
Rhubarb has the loveliest, craziest dining room I have ever seen
The Edinburgh Fringe Festival: the city is full of glassy-eyed narcissists eating haggis pizza off flyers that say Michael Gove:…
L’Escargot is Soho as Soho sees itself
L’Escargot, or the Snail, is a famous restaurant on Greek Street, Soho, opposite the old Establishment club; the oldest French…
At the Chiltern Firehouse, smugness should be on the menu
Here then is Gatsby’s house, after an invasion by the Daily Mail. It is called the Chiltern Firehouse. It is…
Harry’s Bar, where a slice of cake costs €32 – and is worth it
Harry’s Bar is a dull pale box. This is remarkable in Venice, which is a hospice for dying palaces, held…
The rudest restaurants in London
Wong Kei is a mad Chinese restaurant on Wardour Street, Chinatown. Until recently it was considered the rudest restaurant in…
After visiting the Cherwell Boathouse, I might spare Oxford from burning
It is now two decades since I lived in Oxford. I was then a drunk and lonely puddle of a…
Dear Mary: How can I escape the tyranny of teacher presents?
Q. It’s only April and yet I am being emailed by parents who have already taken charge and are drumming…
Gordon Ramsay joins in the posh invasion of Battersea
London House is in Battersea, which some people call South Chelsea, but is more East Wandsworth to my mind; or…
So is Moro a Tory restaurant now?
Moro (‘moorish’ or ‘sexist’) is a Spanish restaurant on Exmouth Market, near the bones of the old Guardian and Observer…
The Fable would do better as an American Psycho theme bar
The Fable is three floors high and two days old, a monster newly hatched on the Holborn Viaduct; deep below…
Dear Mary: What do I do now I haven’t sent a thank-you letter?
Q. Over New Year I stayed with a man who combines being a generous and exciting host with a punctilious…
