The Times
22 January
Giles Coren uses his new food provenance system to rate the Bluebird Dining Rooms in Chelsea, London

We had the full range of the winter menu to explore, and oh my word, the meat/fish rating promised to be huge. The slow-roast pork was from a Middle White, the bacon from an Old Spot. A Charolais from Oxfordshire had spared his rib and the lamb's former home was a salt marsh (which is a good thing for a sheep, however inhospitable it may seem to you). Smoked salmon came from the Severn and Wye smokery; some of the lobsters came from Dorset, some got a lift up from Cornwall with the crab; the brown shrimps came, of course, from Morecambe. As for the cooking, it was very good again.

Score: 8 (meat/fish 10, cooking 8). Price £100 for two without booze


The Scotsman
22 January
Gillian Glover finds life after Christmas at Blue Bar Cafe in Edinburgh

This is one of the very few casual dining spaces in the city where airy minimalism has not begun to look stark, clinical and dated. A boisterous little brother for the Atrium, its short mix-and-match menu spans a maximum range of tastes and budgets. Jim ordered fishcakes (£8.95) and potato wedges, which sounded a bit Irish to me, while Big Brother chose breast of chicken with boulangŠre potatoes (stovies to you and me) and I aimed for full-scale [diet] penitence with sea bream. Unfortunately, the saintly chargrilled fish was perched atop a mound of truly scrumptious spring onion and wasabie mashed potato.

Dinner for three excluding drinks, £44.45


The Sunday Times
23 January
AA Gill finds nothing new at Cocoon in London's Regent Street

Cocoon is on the site that was once the BA office on Regent Street. It was converted, at huge expense, into the Odeon restaurant. Bruno Loubet cooked here briefly. Now, it's had a makeover, both cosmetic and exclamatory, like one of those nonsurgical face-lifts, which has left the room looking like a cross between a Miami health spa and an Austin Powers set. The dining experience is all concept. It's leapt on the back of the already overcrowded bandwagon of cosmopolitan holiday Orientalism. It's a bit Nobu, a bit Roka and a touch Hakkasan. The menus seems to have been designed by a committee, for whom the most important consideration seems to be what has worked somewhere else. Rating: one star out of five


The Observer
23 January
Jay Rayner experiences the same phenomenon, with better food, at Simpson's in Edgbaston, Birmingham

I have no criticisms of the technical ability on display here. The kitchen knows how to cook its lumps of well-sourced animal protein. The monkfish was firm without being dry, and the oxtail ravioli which accompanied it had been precisely manufactured. The sweetbreads were handled sensitively, ditto the beef fillet and duck. The problem is the total absence of character. This is a safety-first menu, engineered for the Audi and Beemer drivers of this leafy Birmingham district. Meal for two including wine, £120


The Sunday Telegraph
23 January
Matthew Norman encounters a cold dining room but loves the cooking at Chiswick's Le Vacherin in west London

The man cooks like an angel and before long we were beaming like lunatics and ready to congratulate him on keeping the room so refreshingly bracing. My wife's borderline scowl was swiftly dissolved by a very generous serving of foie gras (£7.95) served with a good strong onion chutney and some lovely brown melty brioche. My own metamorphosis... was launched by a warm salad of sweet, juicy, diver-caught scallops with excellent black pudding and crispy, smoky Alsace bacon (£6.95) - a classic dish perfectly rendered. Score: 7.5 out of 10