The Telegraph, 7 July
Mark Palmer visits The Compleat Angler, Marlow, Buckinghamshire

It's easy to scoff at The Compleat Angler and so here goes. The hotel, so named (and spelt) in honour of Izaak Walton's 1653 guide to the art of fly-fishing, is part of the trying-to-be-ever-so-posh Macdonald Hotels & Resorts group. Occupying an enviable position on the banks of the Thames, with Marlow's suspension bridge crouching to the left and the parish church of All Saints straight ahead, there's more than a whiff of genteel Englishness in the air, but it also reeks of corporate hospitality.
Compleat Angler - Telegraph review in full >>

The Independent, 7 July
John Walsh at Rhodes W1 Great Cumberland Place, London

Did you read the name as "Rhodes W.I."? It's tempting to imagine a marriage between Gary Rhodes, the spike-haired housewives' favourite, and the Women's Institute, collaborating to make post-punk apricot jam. But Gary's new London HQ is serious. Boy is it serious. So much money has been thrown at it, it doesn't seem like a restaurant at all. It doesn't even have a proper address. It's the posh end of the Great Cumberland Hotel, where Rhodes also masterminds the middle-range Brasserie.
Rhodes W1 - Independent review in full >>

The Guardian, 7 July
Matthew Norman visits The Hole in the Wall, Little Wilbraham, Cambridgeshire

In all my many years of writing about restaurants - and my first piece concerned the opening of the inaugural Lyons Corner House in 1909 - I have never written a review quite like this one. In fact, it isn't entirely a review at all, being as much a preview of what I suspect The Hole In The Wall is like on an average night as a report on a slightly disappointing meal.
Hole in the Wall - Guardian review in full >>

Are You Ready to Order?
Jan Moir at Wild Honey, London

Is grey mullet the last refuge of the scoundrel? My heart always sinks when I see its ugly head rear up somewhere in a restaurant, whether from the depths of a bouillabaisse or baked with herbs and tomatoes. Or with anything, really. Not so many years ago, few chefs would have dared put a cheap, bottom feeder such as grey mullet centre stage on a menu but now concerns about sustainable breeds and overfishing have legitimised its presence in dining rooms. Yet there’s a simple reason why fish such as grey mullet and pollock are not over-fished, and that is because they don’t taste very good.

Wild Honey - Ready to Order review in full >>

The Times, 3 July
Giles Goren at the Yew Tree Inn

Today, in my role as your local restaurant solutions operative, I am going to provide an answer to the most irksome of modern lunching problems, to whit: how do you break a cross-country drive with a nice meal in a pub without (a) being done for drink-driving after lunch and losing your licence, (b) killing a herd of cyclists while driving drunk and going to prison, or (c), and this is the true nightmare scenario, not drinking at lunch. The answer: a campervan.
Yew Tree Inn - Times review in full >>