Restaurant reviews in London and beyond
Before I was able to assess the authenticity or otherwise of the food at Khao Bird, I could at least appreciate the ambient temperatures in the dining hall were at genuine Thai levels. It's not really their fault that we visited during one of the hottest day's of London's seemingly endless heatwave, but it really is getting to the stage that if your place doesn't have actual AC (or if it's not…
The St Katharine Docks are a very pleasant, picturesque and pedestrian-friendly part of London that deserves much, much better restaurants than they has hitherto been blessed with. Banquet 88's immediate neighbours are Café Rouge, Côte and Slug & Lettuce and though I can sense some of you bristling with indignant contrary defences of this particular rogues gallery ("The Côte lunch menu is actually…
I'm acutely aware that a review of a (hitherto) obscure restaurant in a small town in Spain isn't going to be one of my most read posts of the year. Back in the days when I was doing 6 or 7 posts a month, slipping the odd leftfield location in now and again just made things a bit more interesting for me - perhaps if I was lucky would provide some kind of inspiration for one or two readers, but it…
At first, you can't quite believe what you're seeing. Right in the middle of a cluster of modern high-rises, behind a large neon-lit casino and steps away from a giant ugly motorway junction, is a beautiful little brick-built pub that seemingly has no business being there. How it's managed to survive presumably several attempts to raze it over the years I don't know, but it stands there proudly…
I have often come across menus that read better than they deliver - full of interesting ingredients and clever techniques on paper but not living up to the promise when the actual food starts appearing. This makes sense from a certain point of view - it's all very well writing the word 'bouillabaisse' on a menu but quite another having the knowledge and skill to serve it. Much more unusual is to…
We were incredibly lucky with the weather on a mini-break to Somerset, in that it only rained some of the time, not all of the time. I am a huge advocate of tourism in rural UK, and have yet to find a part of the country I didn't get on with at all (and I've been to Blackpool), but the fact is it really really helps if you get a bit of sun. Pootling around the back lanes of Batcombe in the morning…
I am never really in my comfort zone talking about regional Chinese cuisine. I have next to no knowledge about the skills or practices involved in making it, the different use of ingredients or techniques that distinguish one region from the next, and I am the last person you should ask if any particular dish is cooked "correctly". All that said, having never cooked in a professional kitchen or…
First of all, apologies - to Dover Street Counter and readers of this blog alike - for the atrocious state of the photos in this post. What's strange is that I don't remember the lighting in the room being particularly subdued - each generously spaced table had a decent spotlight on it, and I could read the menu clearly enough, but for whatever reason they've all turned out looking like they were…
Sablé occupies the handsome 1930s public house that, most recently at least, was home to Neil Rankin's Smokehouse. I spent many happy times in Smokehouse back in the day but such are the fickle whims and fashions of London food that, in 2026, low-n-slow American BBQ seems strangely dated. I don't know why this is - they're still very keen on it in America, as far as I can tell. Anyway the site now…
This time last year, potential sites for an upcoming work lunch had been whittled down to a choice between Lita in Marylebone, or Dorian in Notting Hill. Both places, on the face of it, looked fairly similar - a crowd-pleasing list of modern bistro dishes with an emphasis on premium seafood and seasonal game, and both had received fairly unanimously positive reviews. Purely because Lita was a bit…
If it sometimes feels like Liverpool is short on quota of restaurants of sufficient quality befitting a city of its size (something that, fortunately, is increasingly improving), then it can never be said that there are a shortage of beautiful buildings to potentially host them in. The School for the Blind on Hardman Street is a stunning spot - an elegantly proportioned, early Victorian honeyed…
In an ideal world this would be a post about the 'proper' upstairs restaurant at the Hart, a serious (though not by all accounts stuffy) dining room serving seasonal British food in the heart of Marylebone village. Unfortunately, due to a combination of my own lack of organisation and the wild popularity of the Hart (despite it only being open a couple of months), the 'proper' dining room was…
The tradition of exciting, regional SE Asian food appearing above or behind unassuming pubs in London is alive and well. The first time I encountered such a thing was all the way back in 2011 at the Heron in Paddington , where you could demolish fiercely authentic laab ped and tom yum soup while downstairs oblivious locals sipped on pints of Stella and ate crisps. More recently, Khun Pakin Thai…
Lots of potentially very well-respected global cuisines have an unenviable, constant uphill battle against the enshittification of their brand by High Street UK. If your only exposure to Mexican food is Las Iguanas, or Zizzi's for pasta, or Domino's for pizza, or Nando's for... whatever-the-hell Nando's are trying to do, then you can be excused (though perhaps not completely forgiven) for thinking…
It's often very difficult to stand out from the crowd in Restaurant London, especially when - as in Firestarter's case at least - you appear to be serving the same kind of live-fire, internationally-ambiguous, ingredient-led menu that began to pop up all over the place after Acme Fire Cult showed there was a market for it. If this sounds cynical, it's not meant to be - everyone needs to make a…
It's important to point out about Janda Diner that it's a very different restaurant at lunchtime than at dinner, and if that you only go for the short small-plates selection in the middle of the day you're not really getting the full experience. I admit I have only been to Janda Diner once, and it was for lunch, so there's much more about the place that deserves attention than I can report on.…
I spent most of last month in Spain (see previous post) and although I'm happy enough to be back in cold, wet London town (honest), as the evenings really closed in I was in dire need of a reminder of sunnier times and brighter places. And after scrolling through my holiday photo stream just made me more depressed, I thought I might have more success with Mediterranean food. Elephant is a…
Compartir, a restaurant in the seaside village of Cadaqués, has lots going for it. The most obvious thing it has going for it is Cadaqués, a tourist town but not troublingly so, with its own unique identity - bohemian, somewhat eccentric, traditionally popular with artists and writers - and its own architectural style - grey slate walls, irregular oblong cobblestones and whitewashed narrow…
The comparisons with my last post won't be immediately obvious, but within the context of their own chosen cuisines Josephine Bouchon and Dalla are doing rather similar things. Both have a very strong and educated sense of what it means to cook French or Italian food. Both do so with skill and flair, showcasing said cuisine at its very best. And - crucially - both leave you wondering why so few…
Last week, and for most of the week, there was a tube strike. A more lazy, and let's face it, less greedy me would have probably cancelled any dinner plans until things were back to normal, but reservations at Josephine Bouchon are hard enough to come by at the best of times and I didn't want to let an old friend down that I hadn't seen in years. So, I came up with a plan. I was going to walk the…
It's very often the case about the very top London hotels that despite the amount of money they have at their disposal, and the pick of whatever celebrity or otherwise feted chefs they can choose from, the restaurants end up being rather mediocre. Partly this is due to the unique demands placed on a hotel restaurant, who have to cater for all kinds of requirements at all times of the day, and…
This was actually my second visit to Belzan. The first, according to my iPhone photo history, was on 8th May 2020, but was a little bit tricky to review as the building was operating as an improvised deli, with boxes of fruit and veg arranged amongst the booths and benches that would normally be hosting paying customers. Like so many restaurants during the first national Covid lockdown Belzan had…
There's a part of me knows, deep down inside, that it probably is possible, if you try really, really, really hard, to have a bad meal in Spain. Burger King exist there, for a start, and although they sell alcohol as a concession to their European location I somewhat doubt they also do an arròs negre special or platter of Iberico ham to keep local sensibilities happy. And I'm sure if you went to…
There are many things about 8 by Andy Sheridan that might rub you up the wrong way. The name, for a start - I've never really been behind the idea of any restaurant being purely "by" anyone; except in very rare cases , these things are surely a team effort, particularly as on this occasion, the titular chef wasn't even on site. And there are few things more off-putting after committing to an…
This is not going to be a long post. Not because Luna - a cosy little new wine bar from the people behind Legare just over the road - isn't good, but rather because it really isn't going to take me long to describe why it's good. Because it's really not rocket science - take an lovely old converted Shad Thames warehouse building, put a good-sized open kitchen on the ground level and a light (if…