The curse of the gastropub is that decent, honest, shabby public houses get turned into dodgy restaurants. All over Britain there are pubs that should be home to cribbage tournaments and decent beer but find themselves regenerating boil-in-the-bag, catering portions of lamb shank in red wine jus. The great gastropubs are a joy but the vast majority of them disappoint. Ten years ago Sue and Roger Jones took over a pub in the Wiltshire village of Little Bedwyn and rather than opening a gastropub they turned the Harrow into a proper restaurant. On 27 September 2010 the Jones family and their restaurant staff collected the prize of "Restaurant of the Year 2011" at the AA Hospitality Awards.
As those viewers who caught his gig on the Great British Menu will confirm Johnnie Mountain is a lively and garrulous fellow. Although hailing from the North East of England he has been the mainspring of various North London eateries – one in what was once a chocolate factory; one by the canal; one in a water pumping station and all with improbably "far north" postcodes. Mosaica (in what was formerly a factory on the high plateau that is Wood Green) has been biffing out decent grub to a local clientele for a decade or more as the other ventures have come and gone. In early September Johnnie Mountain opened his first ever easy-to-find restaurant. The English Pig on Aldersgate Street in the lee of the Barbican...
There's an on-going game played by the foodie community. A favourite gambit is to open with "Where's good?" and the perfect return is to name a restaurant that the questioner has yet to visit – that's a kind of unofficial "one-love". To some degree we are all obsessed with what is new. One of our senior food critics used to observe that there were only a couple of thousand people who ate out in
It's a tad vexing to visit a restaurant, have a fine meal, pay a reasonable bill and then leave knowing that if you write the place up you will be sending your readers to join a lengthening queue. The good people of Islington have already spotted Trullo, most of them have been once, immediately adding this establishment to their "favourite haunts" list and returning whenever they can get a booking in the foreseeable future (which in the restaurant world means about a fortnight) and you'll be very lucky to get in. So this write-up may inspire you but it won't help you get a table, wouldn't it be nice if other less busy restaurants read it and learnt the secrets of Trullo's success?
You'll find Dishoom tucked in beside Jamie's Italian on Upper St Martin's Lane, three doors down from the exceedingly ordinary Cantina Laredo (see the article in Hot Picks "The Mexican invasion falters"). The theming of the new restaurant is precise, the proprietors explain that they are "bringing a Bombay Cafe to London". There's some winsome copy about these cafes "Their faded elegance welcomed all......opened early last century by Persian immigrants there were almost 400 cafes at their peak in the 1960s, Now fewer than thirty remain. Their loss is much mourned by Bombayites. Dishoom draws on their heritage, with our all day menu paying homage to the food of Bombay". So now we know the plan...
It's very worrying, earlier in the year I revisited Nayaab on the New King's Road and wrote a piece about the irritation attendant on never being able to find the time to revisit old and familiar restaurants. You see it raises doubts. Does all that hareing around from smart opening to smart opening skew your opinion of what makes a good restaurant? What about the old-timers? Are they quietly going about their business without much change, or have they been quietly getting better and better? A recent (and most enjoyable) foray into the odd world of pork scratchings brought me to Broadcasting House, home of Radio Four's Food Programme, it also left me seeking lunch in the vicinity. Without that kind of serendipitous nudge I would probably not have re-visited the Kerala restaurant, a long term favourite.
For an implausibly long time Rowley Leigh ruled the roost at Kensington Place. This was a restaurant known for long lunches and very honest food. Regulars were known to read the daily specials on the menu outside and providing the little ticket was in Rowley's hand-writing (proof positive that it was not Rowley's day off) venture in for a serious spot of lunch. Since November 2007 Rowley has been
There's never been a better time to be one of those loaded, elderly eccentrics who lives full time in a hotel. And there's rarely been a more suitable hotel to move into than the Berkeley. After rising late and cavorting in the splendid roof top swimming pool you could wander downstairs at lunch time and toss a coin to decide between Marcus Wareing's restaurant on one flank and Pierre Koffmann's newest venture on the other. Seldom have two such excellent restaurants been housed in the same building. Pierre Koffmann is back.
2010 has already qualified as an interesting year. We have been able to assess the effectiveness of a concerted PR campaign in raising the profile of a particular cuisine. Taste London played home to a row of Malaysian restaurants and also delivered a glimpse of Rick Stein saying how much he revered Malaysian grub. Gordon Ramsay published his recipe for a Malaysian chicken curry as journos were s
Since he emerged onto our screens following his big break (Pat Llewellyn, now the doyenne of food television and managing director of Optomen Television, spotted him at the River Cafe, then transformed him into the Naked Chef. Kerpow! Everything about food telly changed), Jamie Oliver has both irritated and entranced.
