The Daily Telegraph, 14 June
Matthew Norman visits Ma Cuisine, London SW13
Out of all evil, there cometh good. This is not an original point - countless theologians and philosophers have posited it in the past, while Tom Baker's Doctor Who made the observation far in the future to justify his refusal to destroy the Daleks at the moment of their creation by Davros. Yet originality isn't everything. On this page, in fact, it is nothing. So I make the point again in regard to dining en famille at Ma Cuisine in the moneyed, west London suburb of Barnes. Had we not been to this "petit bistro", I would never have made a major discovery about my mother-in-law, Mirabelle, and Richard O'Sullivan.
Ma Cuisine - Daily Telegraph review in full>>
The Independent on Sunday, 15 June
Terry Durack visits Saf, London EC2
It's the energy that hits you. Everyone at Saf is full of it. They're off their faces with it. Waitresses can barely stand still long enough to take an order, bar staff shout cheery greetings to everyone who walks in and chefs happily chat to customers who stop by the open kitchen. So that's what happens when you ditch meat and dairy, stick to plant-based foods and add alcohol. Wow. Saf is Turkish for "pure", but there is nothing too pure or innocent about a room full of twenty- and thirty-somethings tucking into lethal-looking cocktails, organic wines, sweet-potato latkes and mint-chip ice-cream sundaes. They just look as if they are enjoying themselves. And so am I. At. A. Vegetarian. Restaurant.
Saf - Independent review in full>>
The Observer, 15 June
Jay Rayner visits the Old Vicarage, Ridgeway, Derbyshire
The greeting we received at the Old Vicarage in the Derbyshire village of Ridgeway was sweet and welcoming. This was interesting, because we were the only diners that lunchtime. Generally when I've occupied the only table during the lunchtime service, which happens occasionally, my arrival is greeted with the sort of jollity usually reserved for when the plague ship ties up in port. You get the sense that if there was to be so little custom, they would prefer there to be none at all; that if I had died unexpectedly in a road traffic accident en route or been abducted by aliens, it would have been for the best. Sure, they do the thing: they bring the menus, take the orders, fetch food. What they won't do is look pleased about it.
The Old Vicarage - Observer review in full>>
The Sunday Telegraph, 15 June
Zoe Williams visits the Kingham Plough, Kingham, Oxfordshire
Kingham was voted England's favourite village by the readers of Country Life magazine, and the Plough is roll-over pretty. It's more than quintessential; I want to tell Jilly Cooper about it, so she can write a book where a sweet, delightful restaurant has an affair with a brassy London gastrobar. Inside it's new but old; salvaged beams and stone floors balance the chichi jangle of a recently gutted interior. The chef and co-owner Emily Watkins worked under Heston Blumenthal and has brought all sorts of uptight food science from the Fat Duck, and, more to the point, the attitude of Blumenthal's pub, the Hinds Head: 'Why have a nice pub, when it can be just lovely?'
The Kingham Plough - Sunday Telegraph review in full>>
areyourreadytoorder.co.uk
Jan Moir visits L'Anima, London EC2
Every time I read that a new restaurant is opening where the chef wants to cook "contemporary Italian cuisine" in "chic, minimal surroundings", something inside me dies. For I know what that means. It means eating overpriced pasta with an inappropriate sauce, while sitting on a chair made out of scrap iron with spaghetti metal legs. There will be cheap abstracts on the wall, Coldplay on the sound system, courgette flowers stuffed with snail porridge, bad desserts, warm prosecco, bread that is either incredibly long, long, long or thin, thin, thin and a bill that is always far too big, big, big.
L'Anima - areyoureadytoorder.co.uk review in full>>