The Daily Telegraph, 8 December
Mark Palmer visits Sevendials Restaurant, Brighton
'Would you like to be my guinea pigs?" asks the busy restaurant manager, as we examine the predominantly New World wine list. It's a pleasure, especially when she makes it clear that any experimentation will be on the house and that we can be as rude as we wish. So, we start with an Italian white that we compare with a Muscadet, the wine I would have ordered had we not been granted guinea-pig status. I love Muscadet and can never understand why people are so sniffy about it. There's no better drink in summer and it goes wonderfully with oysters at any time of year, as I am about to confirm.
Sevendials Restaurant – The Daily Telegraph review in full >>
The Guardian, 8 December
Matthew Norman visits Patio, London W12
If there is one thing that links the myriad constituencies that form this country, that thing is the glib belief that every last one of us could run a restaurant. Even those few souls as yet unpersuaded that they could write a novel to make Nabokov look like Archer, and the even tinier minority who suspect that they might not be up to running the country, are sure of this. Well, it looks so easy, doesn't it? And such fun, too. Should you be among the 99.93% of British residents who share this conviction, and are therefore currently contemplating putting your money in the vicinity of your mouth by actually opening a restaurant of your own, allow me to offer an antidote before it's too late. Take a lunchtime stroll along the Goldhawk Road in west London, erstwhile home of Steptoe & Son, and glance through the window of this little Polish place I know.
Patio – The Guardian review in full >>
The Independent on Sunday, 9 December
Terry Durack visits The Fountain at Fortnum & Mason, London W1
Barbara Cartland could not have designed it better. David Collins' impertinently pretty makeover of The Fountain restaurant is so chic, so darling, and so pink that it's my new favourite dining-room in London. Fuddy-duddy old post-war Fortnum's has returned to a gilded age of crinolines and reticules, perfectly matched bays and phaetons, and coquettish ways with fans. Everything is grandmotherly delicate, the pink edged with the palest of blues. Grandmother's best porcelain is on display behind glass, the chandelier drips with crystal, the columns are of antiqued mirror and the come-hither bar is of pink marble. It is a room that is designed to turn women into duchesses and men into gentlemen.
The Fountain at Fortnum & Mason – The Independent on Sunday review in full >>
The Sunday Times, 9 December
AA Gill visits Le Café Anglais, London W2
Whiteleys was a grand department store once, with floors populated by spooky dummies in drip-dry shirts and basements full of net curtains. Then it was radically rejuvenated into an uncannily faithful replica of the gorgeous city-centre redevelopment leisure complexes you can find in places as luscious as Rotherham, Swindon and even Ipswich. The sit-down eating options are chains of Mexicans, pizzas, chilli chicken and infantile syrup-flavoured milk froth. But now Rowley Leigh has been induced to open his new restaurant, where he’ll actually be cooking, in this caravanserai of cheap and cheerful culture set on the great bazaar of Queensway, the heart of Levantine London. It’s fair to say that no new restaurant has opened on such a wave of professional goodwill and best wishes as Le Café Anglais.
Le Café Anglais – The Sunday Times review in full >>
areyourreadytoorder.co.uk
Jan Moir visits Sake No Hana, London SW1
Oh, London society loves nothing more than sucking up to a Russian billionaire, especially one who is going to throw some of his small change in the direction of a restaurant. At the opening party for Sake No Hana, stars and royals queued up to kiss the knee-high leather boots of Evgeny Lebedev, the Muscovite socialite who has helped fund this glamorous, new Japanese restaurant in St James’s. Now that all the stardust, free drinks and Elton John have vanished back into the shadows, S and I venture forth into this two-tier temple of oriental delight, where every dish is crafted like a work of art and £1,000 bottles of champagne are not uncommon.
Sake No Hana – areyoureadytoorder.co.uk review in full >>
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