Whisper it rather than shout it, and certainly don’t tell everyone, but something very exciting is happening in the Gredos region of Spain. Drive two hours northwest from Madrid, where diners lack no shortage of plush restaurants, to encounter a truly different experience. Three days in the region left your reviewer and his group of five dining comrades swooning for both more of its food and wine.
From its name onwards, there is knowing coolness, a certain intentionality to what COR is seeking to achieve. It’s a place to watch in an upcoming district of Bristol. And if COR is seeking to ape what is arguably the best restaurant in England (Clare Smyth’s Core in plush Kensington, London), then why not? The team at Michelin have already awarded COR a Bib Gourmand; stars may beckon.
Just moments from Cardiff’s Principality Stadium, central train station and main shopping street, diners can imagine themselves transported to Spain. Parador 44 is a wonderfully conceived venture, set up by an enterprising couple of brothers. Visitors can sip sherry, eat top Basque-influenced nosh and then sleep upstairs in a handful of boutique hotel rooms. There is every reason to do all three.
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.
Tom Sellars has been a name to watch in the restaurant industry for some time. Few have sufficient talent to open their first restaurant at the age of 26. To then go on and garner two Michelin stars is an impressive feat. Dovetale, located at the heart of the 1 Hotel in Mayfair, represents the next chapter in his story. Throughout, there has been a consistent emphasis on combining class with playfulness. Both were on show at our recent visit.
Say German cuisine to most people and the image that will likely form is one of sausage, served with some form of dense starch, either bread or potatoes. Say fine German dining and you might get a wry smile, raised eyebrows or the suggestion that you’re talking wurst (as the locals would say). Consult the Michelin guide though, and what it shows is that Germany commands ten restaurants with three Michelin stars, a comparable number to the UK (eight), given its larger population. Our group was lucky enough to visit Schanz, one of Germany’s most-garlanded restaurants, last week. We came away mostly wowed.
Copenhagen does not lack for outstanding eating, garlanded chefs or Michelin stars. Anyone who is interested in food and has not heard of Noma must probably have been living in a cave for the last decade. The challenge for any chef in Denmark’s capital city is to do something genuinely noteworthy, that guests will remember fondly, start talking about and just might become the next big thing. Mielcke & Hurtigkarl is not new – it first opened in 2008 – and does benefit from being housed in a stunning 17th century building, but it represents one of the most exciting things happening in Copenhagen cooking currently.
Have no doubt, Caia is cool. Certainly if you’re young and trendy, but even your mid-40s reviewer could appreciate its zeitgeist. Maybe it’s the perfect 2020s venue; a mix of cocktail bar, restaurant and music lounge cum nightclub. While it was hard to fault the atmosphere, this is not a place that lends itself naturally to dining. Food is just part of the experience. A future visit would likely see your reviewer having a pre-dinner drink here and then moving on elsewhere to dine, perhaps even to next door Maramia.
London restaurant goers have notoriously short attention spans and nowhere more so than in Soho. Barely a week seems to go by without some new venue opening in search of the next cool thing. The fact that Ember Yard has been going for almost a decade speaks to its success. Your reviewer’s first visit in seven years served as a reminder that if you have a winning formula, then don’t try and change it.
A neighbourhood restaurant in Covent Garden sounds like an oxymoron. Crowds of tourists are likely to deter even the most hardened Londoner from having to visit this part of town – unless there is good reason. A trip to the 10 Cases would be one such excuse. Since its founding just over a decade ago, the restaurant has stuck to its knitting and gained a justifiably loyal set of followers.
Every neighbourhood needs one. The eponymous Vins has created a gem of a community restaurant, which – appropriately enough – has a superbly composed wine list as well as a kitchen that serves up solid grub. One thing the pandemic has taught us all to value is our local area. Why bother going in to central London if you live in Canonbury, when you can simply visit Vins?
The bartender who made the Martinis with which we began our recent experience at Mere provided the perfect metaphor for the evening. The venue’s vodka or gin base of quinoa makes for an interesting talking point, but the assembly of the drink stressed aiming for a comfortable middle ground. In Mere’s view, Martini should be made neither too dry nor too wet. Put another way, Mere is full of good intention but never did quite enough to make the evening truly memorable or outstanding.
If the website of L’Oscar is to be believed, it is “a food lover’s lair.” On reading this, I reached for my dictionary and was reminded that lair means “a place where a wild animal, especially a fierce or dangerous one, lives” and alternatively, in Scotland, “a burial plot in a graveyard.” Neither is perhaps naturally associated with a dining venue. Sure, there was wild animal – in cooked form – to be consumed. Meanwhile, the combination of a low ceiling with oppressively dark lighting did bear some resemblance to a mausoleum. It’s hardly an enticement to dine.
One year on from my previous visit to Core and the venue goes from strength to strength. The quiet confidence exhibited by Clare Smyth and her team remains firmly intact and certainly not disrupted by the pandemic. Certainly if you want to be treated, then there are few better places currently to visit in London that rival Core…
Hush represented a great place to begin the experiment of dining in the COVID-19 era. The venue remains a well-kept secret, tucked away in a discreet Mayfair courtyard. It was mostly business as normal at the restaurant. Hush has been around for over 20 years simply because it has continued to deliver consistently good - even if far from ground-breaking - food….
Chandos Road, in Bristol’s Redland area, has become one of the city’s culinary destinations. Nearby Wilks boasts a Michelin star and I loved my visit to Wilsons last year. Boutique seems to be the unifying principle behind all these restaurants, working on the premise of small and intimate equals good. This is the angle pursued too by Otira, and while there were several notable positives, it was hard to escape the idea that its owners were perhaps simply just trying too hard. Thought of another way, if you asked most people – regardless of their culinary bent – what Argentinean tapas and rustic New Zealand cooking had in common – then the answer would probably be something along the lines of ‘very little.’ This hasn’t stopped the proprietors of Otira from trying to cram the above two concepts into one venue.
For someone carrying the burden of expectation as being ranked one of the very best restaurants in the country, Clare Smyth cuts a remarkably relaxed figure. Indeed, as we descended the stairs to Core (her first restaurant since parting ways with Gordon Ramsey), Clare was positively beaming, as she greeted us with a friendly wave from the glass-fronted kitchen. The moment captures all that Core is about: this is a relaxed venue that is confident in the knowledge that it will deliver an exceptional experience.
Reputation and hype combined often breed excess expectation. At Hide, take a highly talented chef, an alleged £20m investment, a wine joint venture with nearby Hedonism and anticipation levels can quickly become stratospheric. Gain a Michelin star within a year of opening and you’re in a whole different galaxy. Reviewers need to be sceptical by nature, but not since Sexy Fish have I been so underwhelmed by a London venue.
Beyond a handful of restaurants, several books, a regular Guardian column and the now-guaranteed presence of zaatar in every self-respecting middle-class larder, Yotam Ottlolenghi has spawned a generation of professional chefs. Ramael Scully is one of these, now plying his trade under a restaurant in his own surname. If his mentor became famed for successfully combining genuinely eclectic ingredients from across the Middle East, then Scully goes one step further. Scully is a celebration of joyful and inventive cooking…
The doors of Wild Honey have been open for 11 years during which time I have been a regular visitor. A recent lunchtime return visit to the venue reminded me just how good this place is and why it continues to pull in the crowds. Put simply, what Wild Honey does is offer impressively good comfort food in a lovely venue, albeit at Mayfair prices.
Restaurants with Michelin stars know what they’re doing, right? Especially those that have held at least one since 1993. You would assume so. We, however, encountered one of our least promising starts to a restaurant visit at Pied à Terre. Fortunately, things improved from there. Overall, the experience was positively memorable, if more so for the ambience than the food…
Amidst its jungle of skyscrapers, Canary Wharf has many dining options, but few high-end ones. Plateau is therefore a welcome relief, even if the formula is a familiar one. This is perhaps unsurprising given it is part of the D&D restaurant group. Even if the food pleased and service could not be faulted, it still did not take away from the fact that places sorely lacks atmosphere, or even a sense of joyfulness
“Voted best restaurant in Northern Ireland” runs the caption on Ginger Bistro’s website. Similarly, when we mentioned in passing to the receptionist at our hotel that we would be dining there, we were greeted with a response along the lines of ‘wow, how did you get a table?!’ Inevitably, therefore, expectations ran high for our visit. Sadly, they were disappointed...
