It started with a faint twitch, or nervous restlessness. There was an almost involuntary desire to pull out the phone and snap away. Your author even managed to resist the temptation to quiz the servers about what made their dishes special. As an (unintentional) experiment, Gourmand Gunno spent two consecutive nights in restaurants without a plan to review either.
Carthusian monks were onto a good thing 900 years ago when they settled in Priorat. Located in the foothills of Catalonia, this remote region was the source of a monastery called Scala Dei. Translate the Latin to English and you get ‘stairway to heaven’, an apt metaphor for the dining delights of the area. A burgeoning boutique food and wine scene is underway in the region, as your reviewer and his comrades discovered on a recent trip.
In a world where first impressions count, many diners might naturally be put off Satyrio. Not only could the exterior do with a face lift, but to get there, visitors must navigate liminal London. Located on Aldgate High Street, Satyrio feels like it neither quite swanky City nor trendy Shoreditch. Step inside, however, and there is a lot – even if not everything – to like about this venue.
Your reviewer really wanted to like Sagardi. He has been visiting the Basque region for over 20 years, had one of his best meals of 2024 there and fell in love with Ibai when it opened in London last June. Fronted by a chef from the region and with other successful Sagardi branches around the world, there was so much to like on paper. Walk into the Shoreditch venue and you will be wowed on first impressions. We were let down though by both food and service.
Every neighbourhood should have a good Indian restaurant. Colaba ought to be West Hampstead’s. Named after a district of Mumbai, its quality of cooking would put it close Dishoom. However, our quartet left Colaba feeling severely underwhelmed by its service. Improve this and the venue could be a local star.
When my dining comrade announced to me that he had booked a Greek restaurant for our planned get-together, the prospect sounded highly enticing. When there was a chance to swap a cold and damp November day in London for the warmth and charm of Greece – if even just for a couple of hours – then what could be more enticing? Sadly, promise and delivery at Estiatorio Milos were two very different things.
As most readers will surely be aware, two of your reviewer’s passions are food and books. Where better then to combine them than at The Cinnamon Club? Although the venue is currently celebrating its 20th anniversary and its founder (Vivek Singh) has become almost a household name, the sense of awe when entering the Grade Two-listed old Westminster Library never wears off. Two floors of books cover half of the available wall space. It was a nice touch too to see the bill delivered in a copy of Dickens’ Martin Chuzzlewit, perhaps appropriated from one of the shelves. In between, the food was also damn good.
You would be unlikely to walk past Briciole unless you happened to be lost. It is located on the corner of a small road in the no-man’s land between Edgware Road underground station and the borders of Marylebone. Your reviewer has, however, passed it almost every day for the last decade on his way to and from work. Briciole, which doubles as both a deli and a restaurant, has always looked so inviting, yet circumstance never somehow quite permitted for a visit. That was until recently. Having been, I am now smitten.
The former home of the London College of Music’s concert hall now comprises the site of Sucre, one of last year’s hottest openings. The duo behind the venue launched the original Sucre in Buenos Aires where it became an instant hit. For Londoners, Sucre offers a hip take on the decadence of old-world Argentina.
In the one mile stretch from Marble Arch to Little Venice, there are almost 30 different Middle Eastern restaurants. How to choose? One crude, but often successful, metric might simply to consider how busy are the venues. As a local, your reviewer was constantly struck by how full the Sarchnar Grill always appeared to be. Not only did it seem impossible to get a table, but often a queue would extend some way outside the restaurant. Good luck did eventually allow me and my dining comrade finally to secure a table on a recent weekday lunchtime. We were impressed but not wowed.
Hopes were high for dining in Chantelle Nicholson’s latest restaurant, Apricity. The chef had built a prior strong reputation for pioneering hyper-seasonal, local and sustainable approaches in her previous ventures in Earl’s Court and Hackney. Critics have mostly lauded her newest restaurant and its whole circular economy angle captures wonderfully the current zeitgeist. Despite such a backdrop, your reviewer and his dining comrade left somewhat underwhelmed.
Put a lower case d and e next to each other in a trendy font and – voila – it resembles a leaf. This is wonderfully convenient for the deliciously Ella brand, which can now be abbreviated just to ‘de’. For the unaware, the eponymous Ella has her products across many supermarkets, is the publisher of several cookbooks and has a restaurant in central London. Its name leaves no ambiguity over what it does: serving vegetarian food which would please even the most hardened carnivore.
When it comes to restaurants it seems as if the JKS Group, pioneers of Gymkhana, Hoppers, Bao and many more, has a Midas touch. Despite their venues representing cuisines from a range of different Asian countries, there is no let up in quality. Each combines great food and ambience; a winning combination for sure, if you can achieve it. Plaza represents their take on Thai. It is very good.
Rarely has the City been a destination for diners. Sure, it’s convenient for workers whose offices are nearby, but to make a journey there specifically for lunch or dinner and the venue would have to be pretty special. Ekte is not. It’s meant to be a showcase for Nordic food and has credibility in being backed by the owners of nearby stalwart 1 Lombard, but much like Scandinavia in general, your reviewer was left feeling cold by the whole experience.
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.
Vivek Singh, for many, is a household name when it comes to the world of Indian cooking. His flagship venture, The Cinnamon Club is now over 20 years old, he is a regular on BBC cooking programmes and has published 8 cookbooks. With such an esteemed background, Singh does not need to prove anything. Cinnamon Bazaar, his latest venture, is testament to this: it’s a fun and informal take on India’s culinary heritage. The menu sees Singh go to town happily with no shortage of experimentation.
For those unaware, ‘bubala’ is a Yiddish term of endearment, roughly translated as darling. No surprise then that the restaurant is a homage to Levantine food, located appropriately in east London’s former Jewish quarter, yards from Petticoat Lane. Such has been the success of Bubala that its backers have recently opened a second outlet in Soho. Securing a table here is almost impossible currently, but the original venue provides a wonderful insight into what can be expected.
Think of Manteca as the love child of St John and Boca di Lupo. Take Fergus Henderson’s nose-to-tail approach, apply it to Italian cuisine and you have Manteca. After the success of its pop-up ventures, Manteca has moved on to bigger and better, opening a permanent venue in Shoreditch earlier this year. Such has been its success that diners are packed in almost cheek by jowl, but they come for a clear reason: the whole experience is very good.
Diners in search of good food when visiting Brighton are not short of options. However, the Coal Shed should feature as a must-visit. Such has been its success that the venue’s backers have opened a second outlet in London which has been similarly praised. The Coal Shed represents a textbook study in simplicity combined with super execution.
The British have always had a love affair with beef. Think of William Hogarth’s famous painting in the Tate, “The Gate of Calais”, also known as “The Roast Beef of Old England.” It shows a man valiantly defending a side of beef from the perfidious French. In more recent years, the likes of Hawksmoor and Goodman have raised the stakes (no pun intended) in terms of what diners can expect from a good cut of meat. Into the fray has sprung Flat Iron, a mini-chain on a distinct mission – to bring steak to the masses. It mostly succeeds.
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.
Restaurant reviewers by their very nature tend to be a sceptical bunch, with high expectations and hard to please. Just as goalkeepers are often remembered for the bloopers they concede rather than the saves they make, truly bad service always trumps cooking of whatever standard. Even with such a jaundiced world view, Gourmand Gunno can confidently state that his curry at Manthan was one of the best he has enjoyed recently.
