Our round-up of what the nation’s restaurant critics were writing about in the week up to 20th April 2025
London Standard
Tom Brown at The Capital, Knightsbridge
David Ellis gave a qualified thumbs-up to the latest seafood offering from ex-Cornerstone chef Tom Brown, a 28-seater boutique hotel restaurant where Brian Turner, Gary Rhodes, Éric Chavot and Nathan Outlaw made their names in London.
“Brown is operating at a level rarely witnessed,” David said, citing complex dishes including oysters cooked at precisely 67 degrees and bass rolled in leeks and stuffed roast with chicken. “Showing off? Sure. The thing with Brown is, showing off suits him, he’s good at it. His creativity is commercially attuned: ideas he pioneered, like crumpets topped with seafood, are now on menus across the country, and at least three supermarkets have ripped off his fish Kyiv idea.”
Every now and then, though, David felt restraint would have helped. A crab custard was “close to stirring, but only once pointless frozen flecks of grapefruit were nudged aside”, while “a perfectly cooked scallop, as soft and thrilling as a longed-for kiss, was ruined by a cracked tile of hazelnut. Who wants shellfish that tastes of Ferrero Rocher?”
*****
The Guardian
Grace Dent welcomed the arrival of new Ukrainian restaurant that is “already most definitely a highlight of 2025”. Co-founders Alex Cooper (who remains in Ukraine) and Anna Andriienko (who looks after the London end) have created a venue that is both “charmingly rustic” and “a confident, expertly staged, rather sexy dining spot with flattering, soft peachy lighting, Bessarabian wagyu on the grill and Black Sea yafe nagar” wine by the glass.
Grace pointed out that in modern London, actually feeding your guests comes second to creating an “experience” for many restaurants. “Then along comes Tatar Bunar and its luscious lamb chops with show-stopping spicy pickled tomatoes. Oh, those tomatoes … so sweet, so powerful…. No faff, no fuss, no lecture with each course, no long-winded explanation as to the cooking techniques involved, and no hovering or unwelcome input at all. Just dinner, and lots of it.”
*****
The Observer
This week’s guest reviewer, fashion designer Bella Freud, admitted she is a tricky customer to cook for given her host of “verbotens”, ranging from garlic, onion and chives to butter. But she still found plenty of “tantalizing delicacies” at Jackson Boxer’s replacement for Orasay (of which she was a fan).
To her designer’s eye, the “simple and elegant” décor was just right, with light from the windows at the front providing a “soft, flattering, European-style ambience”. Attentive, efficient, friendly staff also passed muster – “and no one asked us whether we were enjoying our meal”.
The “pièce de résistance” from an inventive menu, a coffee cardamom caramel, elicited a description that was itself a masterclass in evocative phrase-making: “the texture like a memory from a 19th-century novel. It hit the heart and woke up your appetite all over again. It made you crazy with desire.”
*****
The Times & Sunday Times
Giles Coren enjoyed Sunday lunch and later breakfast more than he expected at a pub recently taken over by Heath Ball of the nearby Red Lion and Sun – he had never before seen the point of eating breakfast or Sunday roast out because they are easy to do well at home,
The Angel hardly bothers with being a pub any more, he said – it “feels more like a boathouse in the Hamptons (albeit with views in all directions of 17th-century London brick), and all the better for it”.
The roasts were delicious – beef “blackened at the ‘bark’, running through a rainbow of pinkness to an almost red centre”, pork “dense and rich”, with crackling “crisp and treacly” – and came with “impeccable gravy” and “brilliant Yorkshire (with all the roasts, not just the beef, to prevent jealousy)”. Breakfast starred a “sensational kipper” and a “thick, creamy croque madame the size of a Bible, which deserves to go fully viral when the influencers get in”.
“We may never bother to go home again,” Giles concluded.
***
Chitra Ramaswamy made a long-delayed visit to a restaurant that rotates its menu every six months to focus on the cuisine of a specific region of India, arriving to coincide with a new 10-course taster menu showcasing the food of Punjab in northwest India. “For just £29.95 you get an exceptionally generous amount of food,” she said. “And almost every single one of my dishes is outstanding.”
Typical was dal panchranga, a soup Chitra had never encountered before made with five lentils and five pickles that was “a masterclass in balance and eking out the utmost flavour from the most humble ingredients”.
“As far as I’m concerned Dunfermline can officially add to its status as Scotland’s eighth city ‘the home of some of the best Indian food in the land’.”
***
Charlotte Ivers sang the praises of a restaurant that is “little more than a tiny, bare-floored, white-walled room”, dominated by a blackboard with the day’s set menu.
“That changes frequently, because most of it was grown by the team ‘at our little farm out by the airport’, says our waiter.” There are no tablecloths or pretensions here, but crucially, the food is good.
“’Delightful’, in fact, is the word that keeps coming to mind. The room is delightful. The staff are delightful. They clearly care so much about what they are doing here.”
*****
Daily Mail
Tom Parker Bowles braved what was once “the crappiest nightclub in Bath” to partake of a long lunch of “heartily refined cooking, confidently straightforward, with service to match”.
It is a “vast, breezily cavernous space”, with plants in the steel rafters, “banquettes clad in a fetching shade of teal”, and a menu that mixes English ingredients with French technique to pleasing effect.
“There’s a boozy, swaggering Cornish fish soup, rich and rust coloured…. A ‘scrumpet’ of pork belly and black pudding holds that porcine heft in a crisp breadcrumb embrace, a bracing mustard and apple sauce ensuring things don’t get overwhelmingly piggy. Every detail is immaculately executed.”
*****
Daily Telegraph
William Sitwell was pleasantly surprised by a hearty Greek meal in Kensington Church Street – “all bold flavours and no-punch-pulling bravura” – although a plate of “wild goat from the mountains of Greece” was a little too authentic for his liking.
“Unquestionably this was goat. Goat in all its goatiness. By which I mean it ponged. It reeked. It was musty, earthy and truly goaty. It had everything except the bell.”
Other, tamer dishes were more to William’s taste, including a dozen rich rabbit livers “that enhanced my love and admiration for the cooked bunny”.
*****
Financial Times
Jay Rayner discovered the solution to the problem of where to eat before a concert at the Royal Albert Hall “hiding in plain sight” a nine-minute walk away: an old-school Italian that’s a “living landmark from London’s first postwar restaurant wave”, run today by Marco Molino, son of its late founder, Mario.
The ground floor and upstairs dining rooms are “thrillingly kitsch” – “swooningly mad and, for being so, utterly delightful” – with their painting of Princess Diana (who used to sneak in from Kensington Palace to share pizza with the young princes), religious icons (Buddha, a Thai goddess and Jesus), portraits of Saudi Arabian kings, weirdly ornate ham chiller cabinet and “Poundshop Eden Project” of faux foliage around the windows.
“Most importantly the food is exactly what you want it to be,” enthused Jay, whose highlights included perfect and good-value pasta, “thumb-thick prawns” and tiramisu “so light it can practically be inhaled”.
