Restaurants

People often ask me for recommendations on where to get the best steak, and I’ll often reply with just three words: “your nearest butcher’s”. Because, let’s be honest, steak is generally best when it’s cooked (properly) at home. A completely subjective experience, everybody likes their steak to be cooked differently – even interpretations of ‘blue’, ‘rare’, ‘medium-rare’, ‘medium’ and ‘well-done’ can differ between restaurants. At home, though, you’re in complete control of the cooking – which isn’t too difficult, following...

In February 1946, George Orwell wrote an essay, The Moon Under Water, in which he outlined his ideal London pub. Sadly, the eponymous pub was completely fictitious (contrary to the belief of the JD Wetherspoon chain) and the essay concluded, somewhat bleakly, with the fact that the perfect pub doesn’t really exist. At the time, The Jugged Hare wasn’t yet operating. On the site of an old brewery, just across the road from the Barbican Centre, The Jugged Hare is...

I suspect it’s safe to say few, if any, Londoners consider themselves novices when it comes to dim sum. With an extensive number of Chinatown restaurants including it on the menu, we like to think there’s nothing that could possibly surprise us. Enter Courtesan. This restaurant, tea room, cocktail bar and events space in Brixton relaunched in September after an extensive refurbishment, promising not only a food menu designed and executed by an all-female chef team - under the leadership...

With great expectations often comes great disappointment. When Adam Handling opened The Frog near Brick Lane last year, the menu read like an absolute dream. Nonetheless, my expectations weren’t particularly high; I’d imagined The Frog might be one of those restaurants wrought by an overambitious chef who over-promises but under-delivers. I was wrong. The Frog E1 (as it’s now stylised) has since become one of my favourite restaurants, and when the announcement of a new, bigger central London space was...

With plenty of exciting restaurant openings constantly taking place across the Capital, we pick London’s best new restaurant openings taking place over the coming month.    Fiume – Battersea His third restaurant in collaboration D&D London (following Sartoria and Radici), Francesco Mazzei will launch Fiume this month. Literally translated as ‘river’, Fiume is situated on the bank of the Thames within Circus West Village in the eagerly anticipated Battersea Power Station development. A modern Italian restaurant, Fiume – with it’s picturesque...

With ‘concept’ and ‘rooftop bar’, ‘fusion’ is a term that generally fills me with patent trepidation, in terms of dinner. Since the introduction of the ‘F’ word, so many chefs have over zealously combined disputatious ingredients and cooking techniques, often creating the most absurd of grotesqueries. New Zealander Peter Gordon, a 'Fusion pioneer', has got it right, however, with The Providores and Tapa Room on Marylebone High Street - having been operating since 2001. Across two floors, the restaurant is...

Regrettably, I remember my first Chinatown dinner experience quite well. One summer evening during the late nineties (I could only have been six or seven years old), following a matinee theatre performance, somebody suggested we might visit one of those all-you-can-eat restaurants on the south side of Gerrard Street. Exciting at the time. The name escapes me, though I remember the gaudy décor with various stereotypical hues of gold, dragons, phoenixes and lanterns. I also remember the dingy staircases and...

On the ground floor of the Marriott Hotel, just off Edgware Road, The Pickled Hen promises a ‘selection of authentic British food and drink, with a pickled twist’. I enjoy good pub food and pickles as much as the next person, but the signature Pickleback (Jameson with a chaser of hen pickle juice) fills me with concern. Opened at the end of the summer, this new ‘gastro-pub’ is not this year’s first new opening with a name suggesting a heavy...

Of all the square mile’s high-rise restaurants, Angler seems alone without a sole selling point that harks on about the view. Let’s be fair - even when the windows are (rarely) clean - the only real scenes observable from the top of the South Place Hotel are into the dreary lives of office clerks, or skyscrapers with ballistic lifts that blast unlucky diners into some of London’s worst restaurants. At Michelin-starred Angler, however, the main focus is on the food...