London Evening Standard, 9 August
Fay Maschler checks out the High Road Brasserie in Chiswick, part of Nick “Soho House” Jones’s new venture hotel-cum-private members’ club in London’s leafy western suburb.
Tables on the wide pavement corralled behind a wooden fence lead seamlessly into the dining room and bar which Ilse Crawford, creative director of the group, has modelled on a French brasserie, complete with marble-top bar, bevelled mirrors on dark polished columns, globe lights, zinc-topped tables, high leather banquettes and a rustic colourful tiled floor. I ordered pea and pecorino risotto to start, and accepted the waiter's idea that time spent waiting could be gainfully occupied by sharing with Reg a slice of tuna carpaccio. This rosy disc was dressed with lime, oil, chilli and capers at a nearby trolley where a little rocket salad was tossed to accompany it - a nice bit of theatre, as was presentation of seafood platters and Châteaubriand on high metal stands for two. The risotto was perfect, [a] baked spider crab woefully over-salted. I kept dipping into different areas in the crusty asteroid surface but it was just too salty to be enjoyable. (Rating: four stars out of five).
The Guardian, 12 August
Joanna Blythman is pleasantly surprised by Kitchin in Edinburgh’s Commercial Quay in the city’s Leith district – and by the fact that it’s bucking the trend of quick-open-and-close restaurants in the redevelopment area.
I was amazed to find that the place was humming – and it wasn’t even the weekend. Thankfully, the name is not some naff play on words: the chef-proprietor is one Tom Kitchin. A tartare of mackerel flagged up that Kitchin is a serious, confident, capable chef. The fish was ultra-fresh, all clean-cut marine flavour, respectfully dressed with herbs and lemon, encircled by paper-thin cucumber and a dice of roasted beetroot. Along with curly Melba toast made from decent bread, it had everything you want from a summer starter. As did the rustic terrine, rich with liver and fatty pork, and punctuated by the bright green crunch of pistachios. (Rating: eight out 10. Around £45 a head with wine and service).
The Daily Telegraph, 12 August
Jan Moir treats herself to a meal with a view at La Fontelina on the isle of Capri in Italy.
To get here you must either take the steep path down the cliff, with occasional agreeable shade provided by maritime pines, or do it the stylish way and arrive by boat. The restaurant structure looks ramshackle, with a veranda made of weathered trunks lashed together under a straw roof, but look again and you will see a solid concrete building to the rear, housing a huge, professional kitchen. To begin we have the house antipasti. There are bowls of char-grilled artichokes, sweet peppers anointed with olive oil, spinach spiked with chilli and courgettes flecked with herbs. The choice is positively greed-making and everything s cooked so precisely that each dish retains its own beautiful texture and individuality. It is simple but fabulous. (Lunch for two, £100, including wine).
The Sunday Times
Kate Spicer braves the A303 traffic jam at Stonehenge for a meal at Bruton House in Bruton – where else? – in Somerset.
The bread was warm, open-textured and fragrant; the butter, a dream. Two pats, one salted, one unsalted; it was the sort of butter that smells and tastes of the farmyard, like sexy silage. A local farmer with a Jersey herd makes it for them. The food isn’t always spot-on, but you can tell it is an unfolding gastronomic story of two passionate young chefs, who work together, unassisted, in the kitchen. They were confident enough to do things such as use local edible flowers, not just for decoration, but to enhance a dish. Baby artichokes en barigoule came with perfectly soft-boiled halves of quails’ eggs and effervescent-tasting violet heartsease flowers. (Rating: Three stars out of five. Dinner £28 for two courses, £42 for four courses).
The Independent on Sunday
Terry Durack applauds Bjorn van der Horst’s cooking and the front-of-house service at La Noisette in London’s Knightsbridge.
I like the freshness here, in the attitude of the floor staff, and in the thinking of the kitchen. A refreshing watermelon “carpaccio” topped with pinches of light, curdy, goat’s milk feta, rocket and a crisp beignet of courgette flower is inspired, elegant simplicity. Meticulously trimmed grilled red mullet filets with tapenade and tubes of feather-light ricotta gnocchi is all about balance and poise. Van Der Horst ranks in the top handful of chefs cooking in London at the moment. (Rating 17 out of 20. Dinner for two, £170 including wine and service).
Time Out
Guy Dimond also drops in at High Road Brasserie in Chiswick and finds that urban cool is replacing suburban chintz.
A test of the kitchen was the choucroute alsacienne – a classic Alsace dish of choucroute (French spiced sauerkraut) with pork, frankfurters and potato. It’s a hard dish to get right, but ours would bring a smile to the lips of any Strasbourg sceptic. A pork chop of Pyrenean black pig was correctly cooked medium as requested, even though the kitchen was frantically busy at peak time on a Friday night. The dessert menu is a tempting mix of French and English, from caramelised lemon tart to summer pudding. Service was very professional, attentive and charming throughout – not mean feat in a brasserie that was clearly working flat-out. (Rating: five stars out six. Meal for two with wine and service, around £90).
London Metro
Marina O’Loughlin puts asides her prejudiced preconceptions of Nick Jones and says she would return to his latest venture High Road Brasserie in Chiswick.
He [Nick Jones] and his team are great at detail; freshly squeezed juices - even pineapple - arrived in cute little old-fashioned bottles; sweet, pungently garlicky moules marinière were served up in a lidded, cast-iron casserole; the bread that came with my rather fabulous suckling pig sandwich – squidgy meat, crisp crackling, Bramley apple sauce, a little jug of intense gravy – was kissed with the liquorice touch of caraway or fennel. (Rating three stars – meal for two with wine, water and service costs about £70)