About three or four years ago, restaurants offering robust, butch British fare in clubby surroundings (gentlemen’s rather than night) were the height of fashion, Dean Street Townhouse being the first and I would still argue the best of the bunch. It was a fashion I was very happy with, this being exactly the kind…
Location, location, location are, as every estate agent and Channel 4 property show addict knows, the three critical factors in determining the desirability of a property. The same cannot be said for restaurants, which can thrive in the oddest places – both under and atop multi-storey car-parks, for example – yet fail in seemingly…
One of the very first restaurants I wrote about when I started the TwelvePointFive blog was The Cinnamon Club, chef Vivek Singh’s magnificent haute Indian in Westminster. Since then I’ve eaten out countless times and that meal still stands out in my mind as being one of the best. Expectations were…
Although it was purely a coincidence that I arranged to have lunch at Yauatcha on the day when all of nearby Chinatown was celebrating Chinese New Year, it felt rather fitting that I should be eating there on a day when all thoughts were on new beginnings. I’d been to Soho’s swankiest…
For anyone operating a restaurant specialising in the cuisine of a particular country or culture, being considered ‘authentic’ by experts and ex-pats can be both a blessing and a burden. While a reputation for the truest tapas, realest rendang or mostverisimilitudinous Vietnamese usually results in a clamour for tables and healthy profits, get things wrong and…
I had to admire the chutzpah of the marketing guy who sent me, unsolicited, a pretty-generous gift voucher to spend at the newly-opened Soho branch of growing Indochine canteen chain Banana Tree. “We would like to invite you personally to come and try out our new restaurant in Soho!” went the accompanying email; “If…