The Daily Telegraph, 6 September
Jasper Gerard visits Murano, London W1
Stuck in an unequal relationship for years, many women would demand a divorce. It's either that or having another baby in the hope that it saves the marriage. Luckily for Gordon Ramsay, Angela Hartnett remains committed to their culinary union and the other night I bowled along to the christening of their latest creation, Murano. As well as being Ramsay's mild-mannered partner in the TV series Hell's Kitchen, Hartnett was chef-patron under him at the Connaught, hitherto about as welcoming to women as White's. She won a Michelin star influenced by her Italian grandmother but, for reasons unexplained, Hartnett and Ramsay parted company with the Connaught, letting Hélène Darroze move in. Watch Angela Hartnett's video interview on the Murano opening here.
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The Guardian, 6 September
Simon Hopkinson visits Le Gavroche, London W1
I first ate at Le Gavroche in 1974, seven years after Albert and Michel Roux opened their doors to the public on Lower Sloane Street in Chelsea. I was entertaining a young lady I knew from Wales who had moved down to London. She worked in parfumerie at Bentalls, in Kingston (is Bentalls still there?). The lady looked very glamorous, which was particularly apt for Le Gavroche. As for me, I was nervous enough already, being only 20 at the time and quite terrified as to what the dinner was going to cost, not to mention the all-out French swishness of it all. Would I understand the menu? Would there be someone there to translate it for me if I didn't? But this was the finest cooking in the land, I had been told, so be brave...
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The Independent on Sunday, 7 September
Terry Durack visits Tayyabs, London E1
If there is one thing this country knows how to do, it's queue. Our automatic social reflex is to take our place at the end of the line. But this particular queue is not for wartime rations, Wimbledon tickets, the Harrods sale or an iPhone. It is for curry. Tayyabs is a frenetic Pakistani-Punjabi restaurant tucked away in a back street in Whitechapel – not far from Brick Lane, but far enough. It does a particularly good line in queues, and at eight o'clock on a Friday night, I count 65 people in line, including me. It starts inside the larger of two big, bright dining-rooms, then congas backwards past the private room, around the corner, and down a few steps, stopping at the girls' loo. Ah, but then it picks up again at the Indian sweets counter, snaking its way through the middle of the second room and out another door into, and down, the street.
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The Sunday Times, 7 September
Rachel Johnson visits Woods, Dulverton, Somerset
One of the many glories of Exmoor, a rugged landscape where shaggy little ponies nibble on heathered uplands, where plashy streams burble through hidden valleys and sheep safely graze on plump green hills, etc etc etc, is that there are no restaurants. I’ve lived on Exmoor on and off all my life, and I’ve never eaten in a restaurant there, not once. Nor do I know anybody who has. My grandparents farmed on Exmoor, and not only did they never once go to a restaurant, they never went to a dinner party either. Exmoor is about horses. It’s about hunting, shooting and fishing, and it’s a place where a friend in tweed is a friend indeed. So when it comes to food, it’s all been about staying in and great sporting pubs.
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areyoureadytoorder.co.uk
Jan Moir Club 55, St Tropez
So this is what happened. It all began in 1955, of course, when Brigitte Bardot and her then husband, director Roger Vadim, were shooting And God Created Woman on the beach. They mistook a fisherman’s hut for a bistro and asked if the owners would mind cooking for the crew. The owners, Monsieur and Madame de Colmont, didn’t, so they did. When filming was finished, the Vadims liked it so much they kept on going for lunch and Club 55 was born. It started as an invitation only restaurant – ‘for people we like’ says Patrice de Colmont, the son of the original owners, who still works in his family’s restaurant today. Then somehow, it evolved into one of the most famous restaurants in the world.
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