Evening Standard, 2 July
Fay Maschler finds the food at Sir Terence Conran’s latest eaterie - Lutyens Restaurant, Bar & Cellar Rooms, 85 Fleet Street, London EC4 - to be competent but prosaic
Frisée aux lardons was overpowered by the dressing in such a way that the skimpy number of curly leaves were robbed of their springiness. And even though the lardons seemed cut from pancetta or similar and the egg was successfully mollet, £8.25 seems a lot for a first-course salad. Lobster mousse with slices of lobster and tomato concassee in sauce Nantua was rich in the old-fashioned way that can seem excessive to a modern sensibility, but it was a classic dish beautifully made. Snails are more or less as good as the garlic butter and breadcrumbs around them and the half-dozen for £7.50 were fine. Too thick a coating of flour, egg and breadcrumbs encased the meat and ham of veal cordon bleu. It was a wodge of a wrap. (£25-£45 per head. Rating: 3/5)
Lutyens Restaurant, Bar & Cellar Rooms - review in full >>
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Metro, 8 July
Marina O’Loughlin really wants to like Planet Hollywood, 60 Haymarket, London W1, but is appalled at the ugly decor and the awful food
'Today's sushi selection' is, according to our server, California rolls made with salmon. I struggle to do justice to their ghastliness: fridge-cold, mulchy rice – the texture is almost ready-chewed – filled with grey avocado and elderly crabstick; no salmon. It's like eating food that has been sat on by a very fat man for several days. And it gets worse: ribs that lurch off the bone like zombie flesh doused in a sauce that tastes like tooth decay. 'Home-made manicotti': pulpy pasta with too much spinach in an impenetrable carapace of nuked mozzarella. The steak sandwich tastes of little other than its 'bleu' cheese topping. The burger? Not actively awful but lacking the depth of flavour of quality meat and offering the unwelcome accessory of a human hair. Puddings – strawberry cheesecake and Key Lime Pie – are stomach churningly sweet, like ingesting solidified condensed milk. (A meal for two with wine, water and service costs about £90. Rating: 1/5)
Planet Hollywood – review in full >>
Time Out, 9 July
Guy Dimond is impressed by the succession of beautifully made classical dishes at Lutyens Restaurant, Bar & Cellar Rooms, 85 Fleet Street, London EC4
To head up the kitchen, Lutyens has recruited a safe pair of hands in David Burke, once of Pont de la Tour. The cooking’s bedded in classical French dishes, with a few nods to Burke’s Irish heritage. A starter of lobster mousse is firmly in the classical camp, and resembled a very rich custard, moulded then garnished with a creamy sauce and slivers of lobster meat and tomato. It looked, and tasted, like something from a bygone age, but was beautifully made. At last, the surprise factor came in the form of the ‘bourride’. This wasn’t the sloppy fish stew we now associate with the name, but the deconstructed version that you might find around Sète (near Montpellier) – that is, with monkfish served as one intact piece virtually ‘dry’, the shellfish and sauce as accompaniments. This Lutyens take is tamer and less garlicky than the Languedoc version. (Meal for two, with wine and service, around £100. Rating: 4/5)
Lutyens Restaurant, Bar & Cellar Rooms – review in full >>
By Janet Harmer
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