The Times, 23 June
Giles Coren at London’s Barrafina

If you’ve ever read a review of a Spanish restaurant, then you’ll think you know the origin of tapas already. You will have been told, many times, that bartenders in Spain were wont to put little plates on top of drinks when they served them, to keep the flies off (“tapa” meaning, literally, “lid”). That they thought this looked a little bleak, and so started putting a few olives on. An anchovy here and there. A slice of ham. Sautéed chorizo. A giant paella with a pig’s head in it. Until a tradition developed whereby a drink always came with a free little morsel. Hispanophiles then usually go on to lament the modern habit of paying for tapas, and then they’re into the long passage about how tapas bars only work where there are a lot of them to walk between, where the weather is warmer and the licensing laws looser, where people are not enslaved to the ritual of the formal meal, where the natives have afición for this and a pasión for that, where the bulls are nobile and the girls are cha cha cha, until you want to prick them with a million cocktail sticks and watch them die screaming.

Barrafina – Times review in full >>

Telegraph, 23 June
Mark Palmer visits Common at Cannizaro House, London

Never mind the second week of Wimbledon, Timbo won't make it much further than the second day, while Andy and his mum might not be seen at all if the flying Scotsman's wrist cuts up rough. But Cannizaro House will go the whole hog to the final, as it always does. In between the big matches, it's here that you'll find Pat Cash and John McEnroe signing autographs in the car park when Wimbledon begins on Monday. Martina Navratilova will be conducting interviews on the terrace and the private dining-room will be booked solid for corporate jollies at breakfast, lunch, tea and dinner. Quite remarkable, as the great Dan Maskell would have put it. But, then, there's not much by way of competition in this part of SW19, certainly nothing commanding such a privileged position overlooking Wimbledon Common.

Common – Telegraph review in full >>

The Independent, 23 June
Terry Durack at Rhodes W1 Restaurant, Great Cumberland Place, London

The grape - half a grape, actually - has been caramelised with cognac and a little sugar, before being finished with sherry vinegar and Sauternes. It's a lot of work, just for a grape - half a grape - that is going to perch on a button of foie gras on a crisp slip of fine gingerbread. And that's just one of the appetisers. I could end this review of Gary Rhodes' ambitious new restaurant right here, because this one dish says it all. It says high craft and due diligence; it says richness and lightness; and it says eat me. It isn't even my favourite amuse-bouche - that honour goes to a baton of juicy, gently smoked, brioche crumb-coated eel that renders all other smoked eel in this country irrelevant. Nor is that my favourite course. A "double oyster ragout" pairs freshly opened Maldon oysters with tender chicken oysters cloaked in rich, buttery, chickeny, oystery juices and strewn with a flotsam of emerald-green samphire. It's hard to imagine more complementary flavours and textures.

Rhodes W1 – Independent review in full >>

The Guardian, 23 June
Matthew Norman at Sat Bains, Nottingham

This one you have to do, enthused a friend calling in a state of near hyperventilation a couple of months ago. "It's the most eccentric restaurant in history ... a Sikh guy cooking this astonishing sous-vide stuff on an industrial estate in Nottingham. You simply have to go." Given this friend's record for reliable tip-offs (he once rang in an even more animated state to report a psychic acquaintance's conviction that terrorists would sail a stolen Soviet nuclear warhead up the Thames and detonate it at Greenwich on New Year's Eve 2003), I tended towards the sceptical. The law of averages being the legislative powerhouse it is, however, even he gets it right now and then. There is indeed a Sikh guy producing some incredible cooking on what's admittedly the more rustic end of an industrial estate in Nottingham. His name is Sat (Singh) Bains, and despite recent success on BBC2's The Great British Menu, in which chef cooked against chef for the right to cook at a banquet in Paris, he even answers his own phone. "Stand by for the ultimate Sat Nav," he said with practised ease when I rang in a familiar state of navigational bewilderment.

Sat Bains – Guardian review in full >>