Restaurants

By Jonathan Hatchman, Food Editor, @TLE_Food Having grown up in the 1990s, steak house restaurants are something that I’ve grown to constantly associate with the part of London that surrounds Leicester Square and The Strand. Harking back to early memories of eating overpriced, overcooked and underwhelming cuts at one of the many ‘Aberdeen Angus Steakhouses’ that the area has to offer - reeling in tourists with their neon red signage and a promise of offering the very best steak that...

By Jonathan Hatchman, Food Editor, @TLE_Food With plenty of exciting restaurant openings constantly taking place across the Capital, here’s our pick of the best new restaurants arriving in London over the coming month. Flat Iron – Covent Garden Ever since their initial inception as a pop-up restaurant, Flat Iron has become increasingly popular. So popular, in fact, that they’re set to open a third restaurant this month, in Covent Garden’s Henrietta Street. As is the case with the two restaurants already open in Soho,...

By Jonathan Hatchman, Food Editor, @TLE_Food For anybody that doesn’t live or work in the area - Canary Wharf is a strange place. Many people, in fact, are unaware that Canary Wharf – as an address – refers to an area, juxtaposed to just the building, the one that used to be the tallest in London before the Shard came along and ruined it for the most eastern of London’s skyscrapers. Then again, at least the name of London Bridge...

By Jonathan Hatchman, Food Editor, @TLE_Food London, at the moment, is witnessing a continuous increase in popularity surrounding American comfort food. The last few years have witnessed an uncountable amount of pop-ups becoming permanent that propel the trend even further, and there are now more gourmet burger stands, vans and shops than we can keep up with. And there’s no sign of the trans-Atlantic food craze calming down at anytime soon. What’s most exciting, however, is the growth in barbecue...

By Jonathan Hatchman, Food Editor, @TLE_Food Carnaby Street’s relatively secretive Kingly Court has all of a sudden turned into a very popular spot for new restaurant openings, within the past three months. What with recent openings of a new Dishoom, Shotgun from The Lockhart’s Brad McDonald, and the second opening of Dirty Bones. First opened in Kensington, the main focus at Dirty Bones is aimed towards quintessentially American comfort food. This focus has been carried on with the Carnaby opening,...

By Jonathan Hatchman, Food Editor, @TLE_Food With an increase in restaurants that focus on communal dining and sharing plates, Forge & Co. has recently launched a new ‘Modern Grill’ at its Shoreditch High Street restaurant. Along with the new menu launch, head chef Timothy Brindley has recently joined the team, having previously worked at Tom’s Kitchen and The Ivy. Inside, the restaurant’s décor is unsurprisingly contemporary and the atmosphere is resplendently casual – a breath of fresh air juxtaposed to...

By Jonathan Hatchman, Food Editor, @TLE_Food With hundreds of restaurants situated within London’s square mile, it seems that all of these institutions, especially the most grandiose, fall at drastically contrasting ends of the quality continuum. Be it a prominent building housed restaurant that crows an abundance of undiluted pretension and grossly underwhelming cooking, or the type that’s so brilliant we wish to return each and every night, if only our bank balances would accommodate such extravagance. It’s only very rarely...

By Jonathan Hatchman, Food Editor, @TLE_Food As far as household designer brands are concerned, few pride themselves on being so quintessentially British as Burberry. At the culmination of the 21st century, it's no secret that the brand’s signature plaid did suffer from becoming a Prole Drift staple in accordance with the birth of Chav culture, and as a result tawdry imitations of scarves, baseball caps and all sorts of tasteless reproductions soon became available on just about every British market...

By Jonathan Hatchman, Food Editor, @TLE_Food “Are you aware of our concept here?” our waitress asks as my heart begins to sink, during a mid-week lunch trip to Blanchette in Soho. “Our menu is mainly made up of French tapas dishes,” she explains. French tapas? Is there really such a thing? As far as restaurant concepts go, anything overly extravagant or contemporary is generally something that’s never appealed to this writer, having been paced through the rigmarole of many an...