The Guardian, 7 March
Matthew Norman visits Tendido Cuatro, London SW6
In the unending quest to target demographic groups as precisely as possible, today's review is aimed at super-philistines who would, like me, struggle to tell a Titian from a Turner; and who, though by and large convinced that Manet and Monet were separate individuals, can't entirely shrug off the nagging fear of a mischievous typo calculated to expose us to quiz-night ridicule. We may know nothing about art, and we may not even know what we like, but we do at least know what we don't like, as a visit to Tendido Cuatro will console. What we don't like are paintings in a Hispanic style that Brian Sewell would struggle to name, but which we will call Faux Naif Repellent.
Tendido Cuatro - review in full >>
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The Times, 7 March
Erica Wagner visits Le Bouchon Breton, London E1
Eating and reading have much in common, though I don’t recommend you do both at the same time – if you do, neither book nor meal gets the attention it deserves. Both are quotidian activities; both can be either mundane (“Mind the gap”; the sandwich you grab as you’re waiting for a train) or sublime (Madame Bovary; oysters on a sunny day in Whitstable). When it comes to restaurants, the reader and the diner hope for similar experiences: the reader hopes that when she must close her book because some other task awaits her, she will be eager to return; the restaurant-goer – at least, one such as I am – hopes always to find a place that might be added to the list of favourites, especially if such a place is in easy reach of home. We’d just got back from one such favourite place when four of us headed off to Le Bouchon Breton, at Spitalfields market in East London.
Le Bouchon, Breton – review in full >>
The Independent on Sunday, 8 March
Terry Durack visits Piazza by Anthony, Leeds
There you are, the brightest young chef to come out of the north of England in years, cooking up everything from classy risotto with espresso and Parmesan air to fig-and-olive tarte tatin with brie ice-cream. Your restaurant, Anthony's, wins Best Restaurant at the 2005 Observer Food Monthly Awards. A crockful of reviewers – including this one – rave. You wait and wait for that first Michelin star, but the skies above Leeds remain dark, with not a star to lead the food lover to your door. Had it been me, I would have turned to drink. But Anthony Flinn went forth and multiplied, opening a patisserie in a glorious Victorian city arcade, and a swish, loft-style restaurant in the upmarket Flannels fashion store. Now he has launched his most ambitious project to date, a £500,000 gastrodome in Leeds's Grade I-listed gem of a Corn Exchange building – all while still nurturing the excellence of his signature restaurant Anthony's. So, not much time to hit the bottle, then.
Piazza by Anthony – review in full >>
The Observer, 8 March
Jay Rayner visits Goodman, London W1
Moscow in the late autumn of 2006. Beneath a sky the colour of galvanised steel, I am being driven in a 4x4 with tinted windows and a front seat full of men with barn-door- width shoulders, to the outskirts of town. A Russian businessman has to catch a private jet to somewhere else, but first he wishes to meet me, in a supermarket café, so he can tell me about his new brand of steakhouses, which he hopes to take international. I am told he has "almost unlimited funds" which, when I meet him, is scary because he looks 12. He has curly blond hair, blue eyes and the sort of cheeks you want to pinch. But don't, on account of the men with shoulders like barn doors. For half an hour, via a translator, he talks enthusiastically about Goodman, which he says is his answer to the New York steakhouse, only using beef imported from Australia. Why? Because it is the best. I ask him about the name. Where does it come from? I expect some riff on the jazz great Benny Goodman. Instead, he says: "Because they are good steaks for good men."
Goodman – review in full >>
By Janet Harmer
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