Bloomberg, 29 August
Richard Vines visits Murano, London W1
You'd be hard pressed to find anyone to say a bad word about Angela Hartnett. She's not only among the most successful women chefs in the UK: People actually like her. That means a lot in the restaurant business, which is as competitive as any other. While the front of house may be all smiles, cleavers come to hand in the kitchen. This week, Hartnett, 39, opened her new establishment in the heart of London's Mayfair, following her departure from the Connaught Hotel on 27 March last year. Murano is smart and chic, and generally as smooth as you might expect for the latest project of Gordon Ramsay Holdings, Hartnett's mentor.
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Time Out, 4 September
Guy Dimond visits Murano, London W1
This restaurant was hugger-mugger with Hartnett groupies, restaurant critics, PRs and food bloggers on our visit – and such is its instant popularity, we were lucky to be slotted into the only spare table they could find in Murano’s opening week. The reason? Angela Hartnett is behind it, and behind her is Gordon Ramsay’s PR machine. Anything from the Ramsay stable – good or bad – gets the kind of uncritical hype normally reserved for new Harry Potter novels and ‘sightings’ of Maddie. So I won’t bore you with: Angela Hartnett’s ‘Italian heritage’; that she’s been on telly; or that she’s that rare thing – a successful and high-profile female chef (this last fact responsible for many column inches) – because you know all this already.
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Evening Standard Magazine, 3 September
Fay Maschler visits Bibendum, London SW3
Back in 1987 an ambitious, young, chisel-cheeked man called Marco Pierre White became chef at Harvey’s restaurant in Wandsworth, where he went on to be awarded two of an eventual three Michelin stars. In the same year Rowley Leigh opened Kensington Place, a restaurant designed to look and be, quite literally, egalitarian — everyone was on view from the street and the necessarily shouted conversations were the property of all. And Terence Conran resumed his role as a restaurateur when, in partnership with publisher Paul Hamlyn and chef Simon Hopkinson, he opened Bibendum in the Michelin building in Chelsea.
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Metro, 2 September
Andy Lynes visits The Botanist, London SW1
As the main courses arrived, it became obvious that The Botanist wanted to be taken seriously. From two mini copper pans, our waitress poured fig wine jus over a seared duck breast, then finished off a plate of roast suckling pig with a Calvados sauce. Ooh, get you! It was a nice touch of theatre and showed a certain thoughtfulness on the part of the restaurateur. There was just one problem: this refined gastronomic scene was played out against the background of a gaggle of boisterous drinkers. That's not surprising when you learn The Botanist is the latest opening from Tom and Ed Martin, the team behind a string of successful gastro and dining pubs, including The Gun in London's Docklands and The White Swan in the City.
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