Restaurants

Over the past eighteen months, I’ve visited Mayfair’s 8 Mount Street on three different occasions – eating at a different restaurant each time. In June 2015, Le Chabanais opened on the site (named after a French brothel) and closed soon after. A few months later, the restaurant re-opened with a new name (8 Mount Street) and under new management. Though the menu of Modern-European food was fine, everything was completely let down by dining room; a narrow dining space embellished...

Just a stone’s throw from Paris’ Champs Elysees, Two-Michelin-starred Le Taillevent has become an iconic staple of French gastronomy since opening in 1946. The opening was later followed by a wine-focused sister restaurant, Les 110 de Taillevent, which crossed the channel at the end of 2015, opening in central London. Taking over a location previously occupied by a branch of Coutts bank, Les 110 de Taillevent has a feature-wall of green bottles matching rich green leather banquettes that make the...

Of London’s various ills, the tube’s Central line is amongst the ugliest. Though the trains aren't succumbed to constant disruption and the seats harbour less dust than the Bakerloo, the choice of devil-red as the line’s colour key does not appear coincidental (generally associated with heat and rage). Over crowded, under-lit and hotter than the filling of a McDonald’s apple pie; each train is a 272-seat anxiety attack, rattling through tunnels so deep that a collision with the Earth’s core...

When opening a new restaurant in an area that’s surrounded with competition, balance between the space’s food and ambience is of immeasurable importance. Instead of contrasting with harsh discordance, each of these elements are (generally speaking) best when purposely designed to intricately work in harmony with one another, but without being too overworked. Chef Shaun Rankin’s Ormer in the basement of Flemings’ Hotel in Mayfair, for instance, is a prime example of a new restaurant to strike that balance with...

Let’s face it, 2016 has been less than brilliant. Something to be thankful for, however, is the overwhelming number of remarkable restaurants to have opened in London over the past twelve months. We’ve compiled a selection of some of our favourites. Eneko at One Aldwych The first London restaurant from three Michelin-starred Eneko Atxa, Eneko at One Aldwych is an intentionally different entity to Azurmendi in Bilbao. Of course, the chef’s culinary expertise is delivered here, yet the ambience is...

Of all the central London neighbourhoods, none vaunt quite so many eating and drinking establishments as Fitzrovia. Though there are perhaps more restaurants, cafes, coffee shops and wine bars than there are people – the direct area has very little to offer in terms of other entertainment. Yes, Oxford Street is nearby but for any self-respecting Londoner the busy thoroughfare is a strict ‘no-go’ zone between mid-November and the end of January, once Christmas and the January sales have befallen....

For all the wonderful simplicity single menu demi-chains offer they are the anathema of fresh, seasonal and diverse cooking. In most instances you sense a replica version of the menu is likely stapled to the freezer to itemise the frozen boxes of readymade meals that line the shelves, and so it is that I have come to both be thankful for the straightforwardness but simultaneously cautious of the quality of any restaurant that champions such a system. Little Smoke is...

The problem with the term ‘Pan-Asian’ is the somewhat stereotypical model of a restaurant that often takes various dishes and techniques from the likes of Japan, China, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam and crams them all into the same shallow pigeonhole, often ending up with a result that’s less than authentic. Opened on the ground-floor at the back of Oxford Street’s huge Debenhams store, with an entrance directly opposite MEATliquor, Chi Kitchen is a ‘Pan-Asian’ restaurant with a menu that’s overseen...

With two successful restaurants already open on the west-side of the city the Gladwin Bros have already proven that people will travel (albeit only a short tube journey or bus ride from everywhere else in London) for good food. Yet with their latest opening - Nutbourne – it seems as though the team behind Rabbit and The Shed have set themselves their biggest challenge to date, in an attempt to entice customers to visit their new neighbourhood restaurant. Battersea is...