Time Out, 2 October
Charmaine Mok visits Soseki, London EC3
It’s a curious tribute. Natsume Soseki, the late Japanese novelist after whom this new kaiseki-style restaurant is named, may have lived in London in the early 1900s, but he loathed this city and its excesses. He was also a firm critic of the wealthy upper-middle classes of his time, whose frolics and frivolities he satirised in his popular series of short stories called ‘I Am a Cat’. He was a man whose concerns, reflected in his writing, included the economic hardships faced by ordinary citizens. His startlingly modern observations of human eccentricities and class distinctions seem very relevant today, when the gap between rich and poor appears greater than ever.
Soseki - review in full >>
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Evening Standard, 1 October
David Sexton visits York & Albany, London NW1
York & Albany is a handsome old coaching inn, part of John Nash’s scheme for the whole of Regent’s Park, carried out in the 1820s. Unfortunately, Parkway, on which it stands, is now a roaring six-lane highway and the building had been derelict for 20 years before being bought by Gordon Ramsay Holdings. The original plan had been simply to turn it into another of Ramsay’s gastropubs but, when it was found that the building could offer much more, the scheme was enlarged to become the first GRH hotel, with 10 “boutique suites”, a delicatessen in the old stables — and two restaurants overseen by Angela Hartnett with Colin Buchan as head chef.
York & Albany - review in full >>
Bloomberg, 26 September
Richard Vines visits Giaconda Dining Room, London, WC2; Ciao Bella, London W1; Kerala, London W1; & Gourmet San, London E2
Picking four places to dine in London for about £20 a head can't be too difficult. Let's see: McDonald's, Burger King, KFC and Pizza Hut. If you fancy freshly cooked food with a little wine, that ceiling may be a little low, but let's give it a go. Here are some eateries where you can eat well, enjoy a glass or two and have enough money for the bus home. Bon appetit! Giaconda Dining Room looks like the cafe it once was, on Denmark Street, London's Tin Pan Alley. David Bowie used the Giaconda as an office in the 1960s and met his then band, the Lower Third, there.
Bargain eateries in London - review in full >>
Metro, 30 September
Marina O’Loughlin visits Tierra Brindisa, London W1
I didn't mean to go to Tierra Brindisa at all. What I wanted to tell you about was a little place called Kokeb in an unlovely street behind Pentonville prison where owner and chef Gete doles out some genuinely splendid Ethiopian food – all those thrillingly zingy, berbere-laced wots and firfirs and tibs (my favourite dish name: derek tibs, which sounds like the boy at school with his glasses Sellotaped together). And, of course, the acres of flannelly, slightly sour injera bread ('If you don't take a doggy bag,' says Gete, 'I charge you double').
Tierra Brindisa - review in full >>
By Janet Harmer
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