It was not the most auspicious of starts. When my dining comrade and I descended on Bellazul it was pouring with rain. We arrived soaked. Welcome to England in April. It’s about as far from the Mediterranean as one could imagine. Open only for two months, Bellazul has the laudable intention of transporting diners to the sunnier climes of southern Europe. The venture is well-intentioned but does not totally succeed.
If New Quebec Street in Marylebone were my local high street, then I would be delighted. Luckily it is close to where your reviewer both lives and works. Zayna has been a long-standing favourite for curry. There’s also a great wine shop, a fishmonger and more. In addition, Boxcar is located on this street. Open since 2017, Gourmand Gunno corrected a long-standing anomaly by visiting it recently. Billed as a ‘neighbourhood restaurant’, it certainly constitutes a wonderful addition to the street, for both food and vibe.
From a modest café that opened over a hundred years ago, to a Michelin-starred celebrity hang-out, the history of the Ivy has been both varied and colourful. The brand remains an enduring one in the culinary world despite having opened Ivy spin-offs across the country, in towns such as Guildford. Its most recent venture has been to create an Asian sub-brand. Trading partly on its name, the ethos at Ivy Asia is full-on decadence with decent enough food to match.
A visit to Horma Ondo is an experience. Take in the views, enjoy the food and wine. This is the sort of place where one could comfortably spend a whole day. It’s located in the hills outside Bilbao and easy to miss if one does not know the way. Fortunately my host was a local to the area and successfully navigated the winding road up to the venue. Once there, we relaxed and enjoyed the restaurant to the full.
Reviewers that see any restaurant describe itself as “eclectic” have good reason – often through bitter prior experience – to be sceptical. When your venue has an absurdly pretentious name and is located on an expensive street in Mayfair, then the trepidation should mount further. MiMi, named with yet more absurdity in homage to a fictional empress who travels across China, is however worth a visit. There is substance behind the show.
It was not the most auspicious of starts. When my dining comrade and I descended on Bellazul it was pouring with rain. We arrived soaked. Welcome to England in April. It’s about as far from the Mediterranean as one could imagine. Open only for two months, Bellazul has the laudable intention of transporting diners to the sunnier climes of southern Europe. The venture is well-intentioned but does not totally succeed.
If New Quebec Street in Marylebone were my local high street, then I would be delighted. Luckily it is close to where your reviewer both lives and works. Zayna has been a long-standing favourite for curry. There’s also a great wine shop, a fishmonger and more. In addition, Boxcar is located on this street. Open since 2017, Gourmand Gunno corrected a long-standing anomaly by visiting it recently. Billed as a ‘neighbourhood restaurant’, it certainly constitutes a wonderful addition to the street, for both food and vibe.
From a modest café that opened over a hundred years ago, to a Michelin-starred celebrity hang-out, the history of the Ivy has been both varied and colourful. The brand remains an enduring one in the culinary world despite having opened Ivy spin-offs across the country, in towns such as Guildford. Its most recent venture has been to create an Asian sub-brand. Trading partly on its name, the ethos at Ivy Asia is full-on decadence with decent enough food to match.
A visit to Horma Ondo is an experience. Take in the views, enjoy the food and wine. This is the sort of place where one could comfortably spend a whole day. It’s located in the hills outside Bilbao and easy to miss if one does not know the way. Fortunately my host was a local to the area and successfully navigated the winding road up to the venue. Once there, we relaxed and enjoyed the restaurant to the full.
Reviewers that see any restaurant describe itself as “eclectic” have good reason – often through bitter prior experience – to be sceptical. When your venue has an absurdly pretentious name and is located on an expensive street in Mayfair, then the trepidation should mount further. MiMi, named with yet more absurdity in homage to a fictional empress who travels across China, is however worth a visit. There is substance behind the show.
Legend, simply, would be the word to describe Dominque Crenn, the eponym behind this venue and its neighbouring Atelier Crenn. For those unfamiliar, she was the first female chef in the US to gain three Michelin Stars and currently commands a total of four. For those without the reservation skills or budget for her main restaurant, Bar Crenn – the one Star holder – is far from shabby.
It is hard not to fall in love with the St Pancras Renaissance Hotel, a landmark of Gothic Revival and High Victorian architecture. First opened in 1873 as the Midland Grand, the hotel received a new lease of life in 2011. The main dining room – now in its second iteration since the hotel’s reopening – is worth a visit, both for the décor and the food, even if atmosphere is a bit harder to come by.
Like Londoners say of buses, you wait for one and then two come along. By virtue of fortuitous coincidence, your reviewer visited a pair of Thai restaurants on consecutive Tuesday evenings. It was an obvious opportunity to compare and contrast. Think of the experience as a two Thai taste-off. Both had strengths and weaknesses, but there had to be a winner: Supawan beat Kolae.
Countless column inches have been spent pondering the question of what gives a restaurant atmosphere. This reviewer’s two cents on the debate is simple: when you walk into a venue, you know almost instinctively whether or not the vibes are good. York’s Ambiente, a Andalucian-inspired tapas venue, hit all the right notes.
Brits have a well-known love for both curry and Chinese cuisine. What happens then, when you mix the two? India and China share a border and so some crossover must be inevitable. There has also been a long history of migration, with the Hakka of Canton having moved to Kolkata, bringing along with them many of their cooking techniques. It is this vein that Fatt Pundit happily taps into. Others should follow.
The restaurant trade is Darwinian. Only the fittest should survive. How Dim-t has endured for since the mid-2000s and expanded into a mini chain of half a dozen outlets is an absolute mystery to this reviewer. He and his dining comrade visited the Hampstead original and were mostly disappointed from start to finish.
It’s a difficult feat for any restaurateur to pull off. Intrepid diners constantly want to be surprised by the novel, to boast that they are eating cutting-edge, boundary-pushing cuisine. The sub-Saharan African dining scene, especially at the high-end, has been long-neglected in London. It also provides a fertile ground for experimentation, where even more seasoned and sceptical diners such as your reviewer can be impressed. Look no further than Akoko.
There is little more comforting than a proper pub, especially on a bitterly cold day in early January. Since its reopening in late 2022, Mayfair’s The Barley Mow – a venue with history dating back more than two centuries – has, once again, become a firm favourite among locals. Rightly so. Both the downstairs pub and the more formal dining room above deserve a visit.
What a wonderful year for eating! 2023 has been the first since 2019 when there were no travel or eating restrictions anywhere in the world. Your reviewer made the most of it, visiting 14 different countries (several, on numerous occasions) and adding close on 50 new reviews to his website. The actual total of meals eaten in restaurants over the past 12 months would probably be double this number. Below follows some of the dining highlights from the period.
Beware of heavy and ostentatious doors, noted one of my dining comrades when we arrived at Bossa, a new Brazilian restaurant on the edge of Marylebone. Bossa’s is big and brassy and requires a certain effort to open. However, don’t be put off. Enter into the venue and diners will immediately be struck with its sense of class. The cooking matches the décor too.
Mayfair lacks neither glamorous restaurants nor private members clubs. Into the fray comes the Twenty-Two, located – you’ve guessed it – at 22 Grosvenor Square. Tucked into a listed Edwardian building, there is a restaurant upstairs and club below. There are also rooms to stay. It is a welcome addition to the existing plethora of similar nearby options but could be summarised more as accomplished than ground-breaking.
It was hard not to enter or leave the Devonshire without a broad smile. Open for only four weeks, it has become one of the hottest tickets in town. Even early on a Monday lunchtime, the front of house told us that she had already had to turn away six parties. Your reviewer felt justly smug, having booked when the Devonshire first opened. Two happy hours later, our group of three all left well sated and could comfortably have stayed for longer, had the real world not intervened.
Diners would perhaps be surprised to know that “the ultimate destination for the best Indian food in London” is tucked away on an unprepossessing side street in what could only generously be described as St John’s Wood. The hyperbole does speak to the ambition of the Three Falcons. If not quite an ultimate destination, the venue has certainly hit upon a winning formula that deservedly should be repeated elsewhere in London.
