Bloomberg, 7 March
Richard Vines at Alan Yau’s Sake No Hana
Alan Yau, millionaire restaurateur, founder of the Wagamama noodle chain, is also creator of the Hakkasan and Yauatcha restaurants for which Abu Dhabi is paying more than $60m for a stake. So where did it all go wrong?
Sake No Hana - Bloomberg review in full >>
Time Out
Guy Dimond visits Gordon Ramsay’s Warrington
New gastropubs are always popular, but seldom this popular. I rang The Warrington on the day it opened (6 February), to book dinner the following week. ‘We have a table at 9.30pm Tuesday after next,’ I was told. ‘If you want 8.30pm, you’re looking at March. But if you just show up, you may get a cancellation."
The Warrington - Time Out review in full >>
Evening Standard, 5 March
Fay Maschler's at Côte
Nine years ago, Andy Bassadone, formerly MD at Caprice Holdings, and Chris Benians, who had worked as a chef at that company, launched the mid-market Italian-themed restaurant chain Strada. Five years later and 26 restaurants down the line, they sold their company to Richard Caring for £56m. (With 20 more branches added, Strada was later sold to Tragus, owners of the woeful Café Rouge chain, for £140m.) Instead of kicking their heels in the warm waters of the Indian Ocean as you or I might do, Bassadone and Benians, backed by Caring, almost immediately set about devising a French equivalent of Strada. In the autumn of last year Côte opened in Wimbledon Village.
Côte - Evening Standard magazine review in full >>
Metro, 5 March
Marina O’Loughlin at the Greenhouse
Look away now if you're lacking a robust expense account or vast disposable income. The Greenhouse costs a lot of money: live with it or leave it. I'd choose to live with it whenever possible: it's that good
The Greenhouse - Metro review in full >>
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