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.
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.
Your author has been travelling to Portugal for over 20 years. It’s one of his favourite countries: great weather, places to visit, people to hang out with and food to eat. Even if London can’t quite deliver a Portuguese climate with any consistency, the good news is that Nuno Mendes has created in Lisboeta a venue that pays homage to the food in his home country.
Founder chef Saransh Goila doesn’t lack ambition. Rather, he may be suffering from a case of severe hubris. Read his website and it boldly claims that he has turned butter chicken “into a religion” in India. Enter his first London outlet and the sign that greets diners asserts that they will receive “quite simply the best butter chicken in the world.” With the bar set so high, disappointment is inevitably the only outcome.
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.
Much (if not all) of the fun of being a restaurant reviewer is having novel experiences. It was therefore quite anomalous that Gourmand Gunno had never paid a visit to Archipelago until earlier this week. The venue has been a fixture in Fitzrovia for over twenty years and has a very clear mandate: to “explore the exotic.” From alpaca to zebra, Archipelago dishes up options that are far from mainstream, but perhaps ought to be more so.
Does London need yet another Indian restaurant? Well, if it’s as good as Pali Hill, then yes. Indian cuisine in the central part of town is a highly crowded and competitive market and so restaurants really need to be doing something either very good, very different, or ideally both in order to make a mark. When two comrades and I dined recently at Pali Hill on a midweek evening, we came away impressed.
Diners around the Charlotte Street/ Goodge Street nexus have an ample range of dining opportunities. Ampéli – open since January – does, however, bring something new. Eastern Mediterranean (a nice broad catch-all, encompassing everything from Italy to Israel) is definitively on-trend while Greek food and wine – Ampéli’s angle – is both overlooked and underappreciated.
Barrica offers a masterclass in sherry and tapas pairing . Similar to Bar Pepito, both venues share an ethos of trying to create an eating-drinking space that would not feel out of place in Spain. Barrica is a light and spacious as Pepito is dark and cramped (in a good way). In Barrica, take in the chequerboard floor, marbled counter and swinging jamons…
Ask most people to come up with expressions they typically associate with Italy and you might find ‘good food’ and ‘chaotic organisation’ mentioned. It would, however, be relatively rare to see both used in the same sentence. As far as Norma – a new Italian venture is Fitzrovia is concerned – where it excelled in food, it failed in service.
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…
It is possible to feel slightly dizzy from the constant rush of new restaurants opening their doors to the public in London. Tyranny of choice sometimes spring to mind. However, based on the success of Portland, which I thoroughly loved when it opened last year (and won a deserved Michelin star), Clipstone definitely merited a visit.
