Hugh Wright – The Cultural Exposé

Somewhere you should eat… Reform Social & Grill, Marylebone

Hugh Wright — Wed, 29 Aug 2012 10:00:20 +0000

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 of food I like to eat and the kind of place I like to eat it in.

Fashions change however, with each new restaurant opening now seemingly contending to be more niche and novel than the last, so just as I was thinking we’d all moved on to places serving only hot dogs and champagne or authentic pork-bone ramen, it came as a not-unpleasant surprise to hear about somewhere as resolutely – one might say wilfully – old-school as Reform Social & Grill.

Located in the Mandeville Hotel in Marylebone, Reform consists of a bar area (the Social) serving some pretty spot-on cocktails – they got my vodka Martini exactly right – and the Grill, a large room which with its bare-wood floors, dark Edwardian colour palette and studded leather banquettes and booths is attractive but almost oppressively masculine. On the night Alyn and I visited we were the only diners for almost the entire evening, word having clearly not yet spread that Marylebone, an area well-served for high-end eating establishments but less so for good everyday options, now has exactly that…

To read the rest, click here to visit Hugh Wright’s blog twelvepointfivepercent.com

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Somewhere you should eat… Ora

Hugh Wright — Wed, 08 Aug 2012 10:00:23 +0000

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 sure-fire sites.

Ora is a fantastic smart Thai restaurant cursed with an abysmal location (location, location). Little Portland Street is an alleyway in the unlovely area north of Oxford Street that property developers have tried unsuccessfully for years to rebrand as Noho. The previous occupant of this site was Annex 3, the short-lived West End off-shoot of Shoreditch favourite Les Trois Garcons.

Ora’s owners are clearly unperturbed that the eponymous three boys, with their pedigree, couldn’t make a go of it here. Money has been spent to good effect on giving the long, large dining room and adjoining cocktail lounge a sleek, dark, Christian Liaigre-ish makeover, and an elegant interlocking design rather like a curvy Union Jack runs across staff t-shirts, embroidered leather place-mats and menus. There’s confidence as well as incense in the air….

To read the rest, click here to visit Hugh Wright’s blog twelvepointfivepercent.com

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Somewhere you should eat… Cinnamon Soho

Hugh Wright — Wed, 23 May 2012 10:00:14 +0000

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 understandably high then when I went along to try out Cinnamon Soho, the second, newly-opened casual offshoot of the SW1 original (the first, which I’ve not been to, is Cinnamon Kitchen in the City). As he’d been my date for that first memorable meal at The Cinnamon Club, best friend Anders was the obvious and only choice to come with me.

Located in a somewhat dark, fairly bland but inoffensive two-floor site on Kingly Street, home to both the estimable Wright Bros and execrable Fornata among others, Cinnamon Soho isn’t without competition for the stomachs and wallets of the price- and quality-conscious diners it’s aiming to attract. Based on what we ate, Vivek Singh isn’t taking the competition lightly, because there’s some seriously brilliant food coming out of the kitchen…

To read the rest, click here to visit Hugh Wright’s blog twelvepointfivepercent.com

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Somewhere you should eat… Yauatcha

Hugh Wright — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 10:00:33 +0000

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 dim sum restaurant before, on a couple of occasions, but due to no fault of theirs always left with a sense of melancholy; I won’t labour the point but let’s just say unrequited romance was involved and I’d come to feel that Yauatcha and I were jinxed. This time I was with my purely-platonic pal Eliot, so there was no danger of me leaving with a heavy heart, and could appraise the experience rather less partially than on my previous visits.

Opened by uber-restaurateur Alan Yau – he of Wagamama and Busaba fame, as well as Hakkasan and Sake No Hana – in 2004, Yauatcha is a sleek, sprawling two-floor space designed by French king of cool Christian Liaigre. The ground floor tea room (although to call it such is rather like calling Harrods a corner shop) is a light, bright room done out in minimalist grey and black with accents of blue including the glass front wall; downstairs is a dark, sexy jewel-coloured dining room with acres of lacquer and a twinkling ceiling. We were seated in the former; the unsuitability of the low-slung seating for two chaps both 6’3″ and over is all I can find to fault about the design…

…To read the rest, click here to visit Hugh Wright’s blog, Twelvepointfivepercent.com – London Restaurant Reviews Of Real Discretion.

Follow Hugh on Twitter: @HRWright

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Somewhere you should eat… Mishkins, Covent Garden

Hugh Wright — Wed, 29 Feb 2012 11:00:23 +0000

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 your faux French or ersatz Asian will make you the object of every food snob’s opprobrium.

Only a restaurateur with the supreme confidence and chutzpah of Russell Norman would dare to open a restaurant as wilfully, joyously inauthentic as Mishkin’s, described on its website as ‘a kind-of Jewish deli with cocktails’. Even as I write this, I can’t help but wonder if from conception to delivery Norman wasn’t chuckling knowingly to himself at the froth some critics would work themselves up into at just how un-kosher the place is, not only in the sense of the food not adhering properly to kashrut – there’s a pork hotdog on the menu for G_d’s sake – but also in the liberties it takes with Jewish culinary tradition.

I make no claims to any level of expertise in this area (hell, in any area) so I really can’t tell you if the matzo balls are dense (or light) enough, if the salt beef has enough (or too much, or too little) fat, or if the oxtail cholent needs more or less seasoning. But to judge the food qua Jewish food is to completely miss the point of Mishkin’s, the point made by that all-important ‘kind-of’: this isn’t meant be an authentic Jewish deli, this is Norman’s own playful take on one – and oy is it fun…

…To read the rest, click here to visit Hugh Wright’s blog, Twelvepointfivepercent.com – London Restaurant Reviews Of Real Discretion.

Follow Hugh on Twitter: @HRWright

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Somewhere you should eat… Banana Tree, Soho

Hugh Wright — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 10:00:08 +0000

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 you like us, blog it! – if you hate us – let us know, as we are all about improvement and value all opinions, especially yours.”

Flattery will get you everywhere with me, and where it doesn’t get you bribery usually will, so an offer comprising both was always going to be pretty compelling. If I felt the slightest hint of righteous indignation at so flagrant an attempt to curry my favour, it was swiftly dispelled by the mischievous knowledge that even if I did love the place I didn’thave to write about it, and if I hated the place, I didn’t have to not write about it – the very opposite of their desired outcomes and more fool them for sending out money willy-nilly. Talk about sticking it to the (marketing) man.

But such an expensive and potentially risky marketing strategy must have been backed up by as much confidence in the product as money in the budget and sure enough, Banana Tree was, well, pretty top banana…

…To read the rest, click here to visit Hugh Wright’s blog, Twelvepointfivepercent.com – London Restaurant Reviews Of Real Discretion.

Follow Hugh on Twitter: @HRWright

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Somewhere you should eat… Bread Street Kitchen, St Paul’s

Hugh Wright — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 10:00:36 +0000

Say what you like about Gordon Ramsay – and boy oh boy, people do – but while he’s had a few hits and misses in recent years, and been in the public eye more for his extra-culinary activities than for anything he’s done at a stove, his roll-call of restaurants and protégés is undeniably impressive.
His flagship Restaurant Gordon Ramsay in Chelsea remains one of just four in the UK to hold three Michelin stars and he retains one star at both Petrus and Maze. Meanwhile, chefs who came to prominence under Ramsay – Angela Hartnett, Marcus Wareing, Mark Sargeant and Jason Atherton – have harvested stars and critical acclaim in their own rights and whatever the degree of acrimony with which they might have parted ways with Gordon, none of them denies his influence.
Mindful perhaps of the restaurant-going (and wider) public’s ambivalence to their nominal figurehead, Gordon Ramsay Holdings seem to have played down his involvement in Bread Street Kitchen. His name is nowhere to be found on any of the branding or menus, and unlike all of his other restaurants, BSK has its own website (the others just have sub-sections on www.gordonramsay.com) which tellingly describes the new venture as being ‘from the team at Gordon Ramsay Restaurants’ rather than from the man himself. No matter; there’s plenty to recommend about the place whoever’s name is – or indeed, is not – above the door…

…To read the rest, click here to visit Hugh Wright’s blog, Twelvepointfivepercent.com – London Restaurant Reviews Of Real Discretion.

Follow Hugh on Twitter: @HRWright

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Somewhere you should eat… Jose, Bermondsey

Hugh Wright — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 09:00:32 +0000

I’ve never been particularly superstitious, but I did reach a point recently where I wondered if I was fated never to make it to Jose, a new tapas bar in Bermondsey from the eponymous Mr Pizarro.

First I had to miss out on being a friend’s plus-one to the opening party when a course of medication I’d started caused some unpleasant and unpredictable side-effects including spontaneously passing out – never a good look when you’re trying to network over patatas bravas. Then a scheduled dinner date with two pals had to be called off when first one cancelled because both his kids had the lurgy, and then the other because he had it. Jose seemed by all accounts to be under a bit of a jinx.

But thank goodness the jinx broke and, third time lucky, I finally got to experience Jose; I’m pleased to report that it was worth the wait. It’s by no means original – great tapas and sherry bars are springing up all over town at a very pleasing rate – but Jose is more than just a great tapas bar, it’s a great restaurant full stop, turning out some of the best food I’ve had of any type, anywhere, recently.

Jose occupies an attractive curve-fronted corner site on Bermondsey Street, spitting distance from Borough Market where Pizarro made his name at Brindisa. It’s a tiny little place, seating probably no more than twenty at the tiled bar and at counters in the centre of the room and along the windows, with some additional standing room at a couple of up-ended sherry barrels. By day, light pours through the tall windows making the space feel bright and welcoming; as night falls and the room fills up – and boy does it fill up – it gets buzzier and more intimate…

…To read the rest, click here to visit Hugh Wright’s blog, Twelvepointfivepercent.com – London Restaurant Reviews Of Real Discretion.

Follow Hugh on Twitter: @HRWright

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Somewhere you should eat….@ SIAM, Soho

Hugh Wright — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 09:00:59 +0000

The @ symbol (or to give it its proper name, the ‘at symbol’) has had a number of uses in its 111-year lifetime. Originally conceived as accounting shorthand for ‘at the rate of’, with the arrival of email in the 1990s the humble @ came into worldwide(web) usage as an integral part of every email address. Since 2006 however, the sign has acquired a new prominence as the opening character of every Twitter username; other means of communication are old hat – these days Twitter is where it’s @.

Don’t go looking for smart new Thai restaurant @SIAM on Twitter though; the username does exist, but it’s not them – in fact it’s one of the thousands of dormant accounts which include, frustratingly, @hughwright, an Evangelical Christian in the US who’s not tweeted since May last year. And not that you would, but don’t go looking for it in Siam either – you’d have a job to, as no such place exists, the Kingdom of Siam having become Thailand for good in 1949. Do however go looking for it on Frith Street, slap-bang in the heart of Soho, where you will find it, especially if what you’re looking for is some really very good Thai food at not-too-hideous prices…

…To read the rest, click here to visit Hugh Wright’s blog, Twelvepointfivepercent.com – London Restaurant Reviews Of Real Discretion.

Follow Hugh on Twitter: @HRWright

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Somewhere you should eat…Quaglino’s restaurant, St James’s

Hugh Wright — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 09:00:46 +0000

Quaglino’s in St James’s was imbued with an indelible glamour the moment when, in an early episode of Absolutely Fabulous, Patsy set out to Eddy their itinerary for the day as:

“…a little mosey down Bond Street, a little sniff around Gucci, sidle up to Ralph Lauren, pass through Browns and on to Quag’s for a light lunch.”

Patsy’s choice of lunch spot was understandable; in its Nineties heyday, under Sir Terence Conran’s ownership, Quaglino’s was about as fashionable as restaurants got. It will come as no surprise that it was the first place I rushed to eat at when I moved to London in 1994 and loved it.

These days, Quaglino’s is part of the vast D & D London restaurant empire and is, if not exactly unfashionable, unlikely to figure on many a Londoner’s must-go list. This is, I have to say, a terrible shame, as it’s still, well, absolutely fabulous.

…To read the rest, click here to visit Hugh Wright’s blog, Twelvepointfivepercent.com – London Restaurant Reviews Of Real Discretion.

Follow Hugh on Twitter: @HRWright

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