London Restaurants by category
When I was a young man, there was a weekday evening TV programme that reviewed computer games. This was back before gaming became mainstream 'popular culture' and were just the thing that little boys did after they'd graduated from Panini stickers but before they had discovered Rebecca Burley's cleavage and the intense joy of illicitly obtained cigarettes.
One of the many features I remember from the show, other than the venerable Patrick Moore as the titular Gamesmaster dispensing advice on how to reach previously unachievable levels and slay end of dungeon bosses, was the hilarious Viewer Reviewer section. Each week a pasty faced young limb from the provinces would be given the first play of a new game before reporting back in the way of any normal twelve year old confronted with adults and a TV camera: "I liked this game, it was good." they'd intone nervously. "The graphics were good and the sound was, um, good". Warming to the theme, "overall this game is recommended. If you like that sort of game". Hardly Giles Coren, but then who am I to talk?
The Blues Kitchen on the Camden High Road makes all the right noises, and some of the things it tries, it manages to pull off perfectly. On a Wednesday evening at 7.30pm, it's slick, reclaimed brick and artfully themed interior is packed out and booked out, so much so that we're told by the chipper and efficient front of house that there isn't a table until 9.30. We slink back across the road for another pint before being called with a cancellation.
Staff are universally friendly, funky and devoid of the 'tude one might expect given the locale (and the crowds). Beers from a slim list of US crafts are pricey, but a wonderful set from house singer Katy Anderson and her band the Rumours is as deliciously well done as it is unhyped. In hindsight, I'd have opted to sit nearer, have a couple of beers and enjoy the set more.
The menu is, unlike the bar, a pretty straight summary of good ol' Louisiana stylings. And the selection of burgers, fried or BBQ'ed goods and gumbo certainly fit the design theme. Like the teen reviewer of my youth though, I can't get round the fact it was all good, but 'just' good. Despite the potential to be so much better. A shared platter of sliders were fair enough, perfectly adequate support to the band and the beers, though the new house special of deep fried alligator tail fillet could have been chicken or pork given the level of cooking it had endured in it's panko crumbed prison.
The mains were united in three aspects; great ingredients, cooked well but woefully underpowered with their seasoning. My St Louis pork ribs were perfectly juicy and tender, cooked perfectly over (allegedly) aromatic wood chips, but just didn't have any flavour to them. Lovely meat, but someone had totally missed the marinading stage. Cooked nude, without the thick umami kick and spice a good sauce should have brought, they were just 'nice', sadly no more than that. The same, even less forgivably, was true of the gumbo… A deep slow cooked stew of seafood, meats and spices shouldn't need to be liberally salted and peppered just to render it edible, especially when otherwise it was so well prepared. It was puzzling though maybe that's 'fine' if you're not a big fan of the duurty BBQ experience.
Sadly, despite the stunning rhythm 'n' blues and the friendly staff, I can't see that I'd be back in a hurry for the food. It's a great option if you are unlucky enough to find yourself trapped in Camden of an evening and more than adequate for a night of music and drinks, but the food feels very much ancillary to that. "Overall this place is recommended. If you like that sort of thing".
Or - 'If Jamie Oliver had a grandmother called Muriel'...
Arranging to meet a colleague in London's museum quarter, I tiredly stumble into the first place I come to, folksy new brunch and lunch place, Muriel's Kitchen.
Named after some venture capitalist's grandmother (who obviously had a smart eye for a roll out and a chain concept). It's as British as only South Kensington can be, like a plastinated theme park recreation of a fictionalised remembrance of a bucolic rose tinted past. See also Irish pubs in airports and Michael Gove's education policy.
The look goes for Farrow and Ball country kitchen, the menu farmer's market chic. If there's a limit to the number of times they can reference fresh and local and 'fun' I can't find it. It's been designed by a focus group consisting of the wives of Tory grandees and former prison guards.
The staff are joyless and borderline scary as they contemplate table turn and space yield in a way that would impress the most ruthless of bankers. We're all crammed in closely and efficiently despite the space being less than half filled. I pitied the poor sods who followed after me and, unhappy with their allocated seating at the apex of two, cold windows attempted to move. "All of the chairs are assigned to a table... Please don't move them. No, no. Those tables are for four people only". This is 'fun'... with deliberate quotation marks.
Despite that oh so jolly treatment, the food genuinely isn't that bad. My cheese omelette was borderline undercooked (in true French style) but fresh, light and creamy with a good hit of sharp cheese. The chutney alongside is just as I remember from my mother's WI days. Poached eggs are blisteringly golden, melting across acres of blushing toast that crunches with seedy goodness. Only anaemic coffee lets it down, I could be taking the line on parsimony too far but it tastes like the second time the beans have been used.
It's generally a fine breakfast, with fine ingredients, albeit for a fairly 'fine' price. As it is removed we are upsold more tea, coffee or additional pasties. Declining, we are immediately presented with the bill and practically cleared with the table. Despite a decent breakfast, sometimes you remember why eating out is not just about the food...
It's the squatters, street artists and DJs of Hackney who made Hackney the hotbed of creative cool it is today. Unfortunately where they led followed the city trendies, design agency wonks and sub Nathan Barley meeja types all clamouring to claim that they've been here since, you know, since it was anything cool and now pack the restaurants and pubs (if not the bars and factory parties) for their fix of foods grown in locavore's allotments and on the factory rooftops of experimental urban gardeners.
It's more likely the latter camp and the Bugaboo bound broods of the latter camp, who pack the reclaimed wood tables of Mare Street eatery Lardo and next door cafe Unpackaged. The crowd is crowded with middle-aged men in clean designer trainers and trendy Kate Moss style mums who lunch. There's nothing wrong with that per se, especially if they're encouraging eateries like this to spring up.
Exposed brick (yawn) and upcycled furnishings might be last years trope, but it 's hardly out of place in this old factory and arts complex with its beautifully restored Crittal windows, daily menus on a clipboard (of course) and humming central bar and kitchen. Delightfully arch staff flex their tattoos as they twist through the tables straight out of hipster central casting.
There's gold on them there menus though. As you'd expect given the name, they go a bundle on meats here and digging on swine is what we came to do. It's a short but pleasing selection of sharing plates (yep, them too) of meats and veggies, small salads, pastas and pizzas from the wood fired oven in the centre of the kitchen.
'Lardy loin' came, as hoped, as the melt in your mouth thin strips of nutty fat that can only come from a happy pig. Impossible to stop eating. Arancini weren't large but were delightful, packed with morcilla and oozingly appropriate Italian cheeses like an advert for lactose and a ravishingly beautiful Pecorino, broad bean and mint salad was truly greater than the sum of its parts, if not quite enough to cope with the local yoot questioning its credentials.
We followed that with a shared salamini pizza. Fudgey soft button sized discs of picante salami pressed into a fresh sourdough base and covered with lashings of chilli oil. Mighty fine. There was nothing special about the tiramisu that finished the meal, but I suppose you can't have everything…
Next door is the slightly less easy to pin down Unpackaged. The hipster equivalent of those fresh goods stores that your Nan used to take you to. One half of the room is given over to an enormous and oh so eco selection of dried food bins. There's no way you could run out of spelt pasta or steel milled muesli round here, thankfully, there's no way you could run out of gorgeous looking breads and pastries either.
Only there for a quick breakfast, it was enough to make me brave the granola. Squidgy black beans came with dollop of sour cream, avocado and the welcome spike of raw chilli. Generously and pleasantly spiced and served with some of that sourdough bread, it kept me going till the evening. Who says vegetarians have no fun?
So you've heard about the big name chef, who made his name working under Ramsay, opening up in the refurbished grandeur of a once iconic King's Cross hotel. The yesteryear venue name, the appropriately quixotic decor, the confidently egalitarian food and the bar, well, at least a couple of steps up from the Weatherspoons you'd normally find in a location like this. You've heard about it? Which one, because now there's two of the buggers...
Next door in the Great Northern Hotel and hot(ish) on the heels of Marcus Wareing's grand St Pancreas dining hall The Gilbert Scott comes Mark Sargeant's Plum and Spilt Milk (an indecipherably odd name unless you're a train spotter - P&SM the oddity obviously, Mark is still fairly common). The name refers to the site's railway heritage, evoked through colour and artfully referenced design rather than by slavish recreation of a buffet car thankfully.
And it is a truly, truly scrumptious design. As understatedly elegant as any of the grand dining rooms of the city. A ceiling mounted forest of light dapples elegant cream (or spilt milk) banquettes and warm golds provide a link to classily Deco black lacquered table tops. The little touches are the best. A darling milk bottle top mosaic lines the lofty period staircase up from the decadently deco bar and wall mounted sets of sockets provide handy USB and continental plug charging points over each table. Just don't leave your mobile on the handy shelf above the seating in your rush to get to the platform.
The staff handbook also looks like it's taken a leaf out of the Caprice Holdings service bible - sassy, clued up and personable, you get the feeling that they'd remind you of your departure time if you didn't manage to rouse yourself after a tussle with the carnivore's dream that is the short, sweet menu.
Starters are trad, light(ish) and often fishy. My thickly and thrillingly creamy smoked haddock soufflé glistened richly under a blanket of cheese sauce in an individual Staub pot bed, a little poached quail's egg perched on top like a candied fruit on a posh chocolate. It certainly gives the Dean Street Town House's version a run for its money. Other than that little piscine pearl, there was potted shrimp, dill cured salmon and delightfully moreish, gravy soaked lamb sweetbreads that we couldn't help but share among the table.
It's not exactly ground breaking cuisine, but I don't get the sense that this restaurant is meant to be that. It isn't a light and casual snack before travelling. This is a big meal before you hunker down into your first class seat on the way to Brussels for that meeting.
Mains are similarly (and for me agreeably) old-school macho. They've got 3 or 4 hefty meat focussed options, a 'house' pie, and a couple of club lounge style fish dishes as well as a 'grill section'. For the real food nerds, the latter are cooked in (under? over??) a razzy new Inka Grill - a competitor to the Josper Grills that have been springing up in meat heavy kitchens over the last few years
Loin of pork was enormous. A genuinely shocking hunk of pig. tasty, but heavy going towards the end and being long and slow cooked to avoid the drying out that could have occurred with a piece this size it was a little bit too one dimensional and, dare I say it, a little bland. Another couple of those Staub dishes filled with fine beans, darling slivers of heritage carrot and a fair spicy apple chutney saw it through though.It was hard however to avoid the food envy watching one fellow diner demolish a soft plate of silken deboned Jacob's Ladder Ribs with accompanying turnip mash and the other plough through a peerless fish pie of buttery richness.
Puddings were in the same gentleman's club vein, though thankfully not served in the same Staub pots (they must have an amazing deal with the company that provides them). While a shared Tarte Tatin defeated two at the table, I ploughed on manfully through my chocolate fondant with malted milk creme, succumbing to the food coma only on leaving the restaurant. If you find it difficult to doze off on trains, here's your answer.
Despite costing a deal less to dine there, on this showing it's certainly no poor cousin to The Gilbert Scott next door. Sure it's simpler, but in this context that's unequivocally a 'good thing'. So we've now got a brace of ex-Ramsay chefs cooking up a storm in newly reinvigorated N1. Come on Angela Hartnett, how's about a hat trick?
When you get collared into giving a sympathetic ear to a tale of work woe, I've found that the only thing to do is to take them for a spicy lunch to blast past the doldrums. It's my version of chicken soup for the soul and on that basis, the new Chinatown diner advised by spicy Sichuan specialist Fuchsia Dunlop (a critical part of the successful Bar Shu and Bar Shan) should have been a slam dunk.
Positives first, the food is pretty good. Mapo Dofu, that gunpowder spiced tofu wonderment, wasn't as spicy as I'd prefer but definitely hit the spot for my guest (it was also randomly twice the price of my main). My bowl of Dan Dan noodles, slow cooked pork mince in a powerful rich sauce, another dish that Ms Dunlop has brought to prominence, was umami powered perfection with a slow build of the numbing pepper and chilli heat as you moved towards the base of the bowl. If I still worked round here, that'd be lunch. Daily.
A fine, cheap and large portion of five spice roasted duck on the side tasted as expected but could have done with a dip of some sort and maybe some pickle or cucumber spears to counter the slightly dry meat. The only real disappointment came with aubergine fritters, one of my favourite veggies (particularly when dealt with by the Chinese) but a slippery critter once cooked, stuffed here with a frankly slimy pork and green veg mix, the thin fried coating offering little protection.
Worker's canteen seating, a patriotic martial soundtrack and 'We All Go Gloriously Together' propaganda posters of shiny tractors and bucolic peasantry with bulging biceps evoke the early optimism of the Communist revolution - Think back to the first days of Tony Blair and everyone dancing outside to D:ream in 1997, now multiply it by several million...
Optimism aside, I'm not entirely sure they've really thought the naming concept though... Those up on their 20th Century Chinese history know of the Big Leap Forward as an unmitigated collectivist disaster that caused the death by starvation of over 18m Chinese in the following 4 years - about as inviting as an abattoir themed all you can eat BBQ place or a bakery and cake shop called Marie Antoinette's Place. Try googling the place and you get pages and pages of famine references, hardly an optimal pre-dining experience...
For this quality at a tenner a head in this part of town, I'll be back. It's a good little option opposite the stage door of the Hippodrome. I'm not sure it's special enough to warrant a trip on it's own though.
There are now three rooftop restaurants in Leeds… That's right. Three… Turn up looking for the declining North and you'll miss it for the Gucci swinging models navigating staircases with their micro skirts.
Obviously that's not entirely true. The great cities of the North of England are decidedly less great than they have been in recent years and the less fashionable ones (sorry Hull and Bradford) are genuinely, sadly moribund in places, with threadbare tatters swinging where once a city centre was. Leeds is at least putting on a show for visitors, particularly those that arrive into its great arched train station.
Turn right and you'll pass the thankfully shuttered Majestyks Nitespot (sic, sic and thrice sic) once home to trashy, fighty footballers and the effluvia that worshipped them, now 'undergoing redevelopment'. Turn left and you've got delightful bar and charcuterie, The Friends of Ham where once there was only a tanning salon next door to the mighty fine Brewery Tap, itself once a grotty, soulless pre-commute waiting room serving booze, now a trendy little microbrewery and home to the delightful Leodis Lager. And to top it off, there's a shiny new shopping centre with (whisper it oh incredulous Southerners) an Urban Outfitters, Armani and a Victoria's Secret. Truly the Northmen have arrived, the poor sods.
Sat atop this slightly monstrous consumer trifle like a smug cherry are two floors of D&D (formerly Conran) restaurants, the only city to be so graced with a brace other than the capital. Packed at 8pm on a Thursday, already a regular hit with the locals it would seem...
As you'd expect from their heritage, the room is an head turner. Sure, it's blowing a force 8 gale when we arrive but there's still a hardy few taking in the views over the redbrick roof tops of the city. There had been a hollow laugh from the GM when I'd tried to book for the terrace, "that won't be a problem, but we'll save you somewhere inside as well shall we, see how the weather goes", a canny lass…
After eventually navigating a bizarre set of lifts and elevators, we walk out into the open plan atrium, its centre point a beautiful circular zinc bar packed with choppy haired mixologists. It's almost so pretty that you miss the raw bar at the back of the room. The decor is undeniably classy and understatedly mid-Century modern. With deep felt covered easy chairs, it's comfortable too, unlike the volume of the music, ear-bleed easy listening makes for a shouty experience, not a problem for the raucous groups of affluent professionals crowding the place dressed for a 'big night out'.
The menu raises a smile. There was a time when the concept of Yorkshire tapas would have suggested nothing as exotic as a bag each of salt'n'vinegar and prawn cocktail (the king of crisp) with an accompanying salted peanut or two - at first glance the menu of sharing bites at Angelica is at first a thoroughly refined departure from those dark days. We go for four or five, each arriving as they are ready. Other than a handful of items from the raw bar it's difficult to rustle up a coherent meal here. Snacks and nibbles aren't a problem in somewhere seemingly so set for a drinking crowd, but they're currently a restaurant too and it's hard to know whether they're trying to be Arthur or Martha.
The best thing that arrives on the table is a hearty salad of Swaledale blue, walnut, (tinned) pear and chicory. There's a Sichuan beef dish served in that slightly cringey 90's way on a few leaves of lollo rosso. It's tasty enough, but the only flavour is the overpowering iron tang of ground Sichuan peppercorns and served on a chilly plate it's entirely lacking in any sort of heat. Triple cooked chips were nice enough but the accompanying 'day fish' goujons were straight out of the Berni Inn cookbook. At £12.50 it's priced to be a solo main and four small, overcooked bits of fish don't cut the tartare sauce in a Northern town.
None of it is cheap mind, we spent £50 before touching the weighty drinks menu, and why for God's sake do they charge £2.50 for a 'bread basket'?! Management aren't stupid enough to charge for bread at the D&D London restaurants, even at Coq D'Argent, home of the £1000 Coq au vin...
Desserts and drinks are more successful, a shared plate of mini 'seaside donuts' is obviously destined to become a house special, the hot sugared treats elegantly presented and ripe for dunking in the accompanying chocolate and vanilla sauce. It's a fun conceit even if it doesn't add anything to global gastronomy. Full credit for a decent range of Yorkshire bottled beers and some quite excellent cocktails.
Given the success of Antony Flynn, the Leeds version of Rick Stein, over recent years, the people of Leeds are ready enough for a few more decent premium bistros, but on this showing Angelica isn't one of them. A lazy meandering menu with no sense of place colliding with a cocktail bar that goes straight to the top of the city's list. I'd be tempted to cull the kitchen and focus on the booze.
