The Daily Telegraph, 14 July
Mark Palmer visits Wild Honey, London W1

This used to be Drones Club, where you didn't have to be called Rothschild, Guinness or Goldsmith to become a member, but it might have helped. Launched when Marco Pierre White was spending a lot of time, and a lot of money, hanging out with Zac, Ben and the rest of the gang - and when he needed more wall space on which to hang his paintings - it petered out with rather less fanfare than was heard when it began. Now it's home to Wild Honey, a sister restaurant to Anthony Demetre's much-lauded, Michelin-starred Arbutus in Soho.
Wild Honey – The Daily Telegraph review in full >>

The Times, 14 July 
Giles Coren visits The Wellington Arms, Baughurst, Hampshire

So, last week you left Rachel and me in the car park of a pub near Newbury. Thanks a lot. It would have killed you to give us a lift? Ha ha. No, but seriously. At the end of last week's review, we were kipping in our extremely classy campervan, sleeping off a boss lunch at Marco Pierre White's Yew Tree Inn before heading on to the 25th birthday party of a friend of Rachel's. It was, you will remember, to be a fancy-dress-bring-a-sleeping-bag party, and so I had hired something I could sleep, change and ablute in, to give me at least some chance of getting into the spirit.
The Wellington Arms – The Times review in full >>

The Independent, 14 July
Tracey MacLeod  visits East Beach Café, Littlehampton, West Sussex

Summer in the Hamptons. The pristine acres of white beach and shingled oceanfront mansions shimmer in the Atlantic sun. P Diddy unloads his hamper from the back of his summer Hummer, while media billionaires eat lobster roll and compare suntans. Summer in Littlehampton. The English Channel scuds under a lowering grey sky. A few dog walkers brave the wind on the promenade, and the odd family straggles into the flyblown funfair, or thrashes around the miniature golf course. Fruit machines blink from the dark interiors of beachfront cafés, while teenage girls eat chips and compare tattoos.
East Beach Café – The Independent review in full >>

The Guardian, 14 July
Matthew Norman visits Geales, London W8

The eruption had been coming from the moment we arrived at Geales, a venerable Notting Hill fish and chippie recently revamped and reopened under new ownership, and when it came, it did so with the livid outrage of Charlton Heston at the end of Planet Of The Apes. "You maniacs, you blew it," hissed one of our friends with such anguish that a piece of haddock flew from his mouth. "Ah, damn you. Damn you all to hell." The catalyst for this outburst wasn't the discovery of the Statue of Liberty poking up through the sands of the Forbidden Zone, but a pea. "That's the final straw, that is," my friend went on. "The mushy peas are like bullets. This isn't a refurbishment or a reinvention. This is a desecration."
Geales  -  The Guardian review in full >>

Are You Ready To Order?
Jan Moir visits The Leaping Hare, Wyken Vineyards, Stanton, Suffolk

Even on a wet weekend, Suffolk drips with damp loveliness. Shafts of watery sunlight spear through the leafy shadows of sodden, ancient woods, while raindrops glisten on hedgerows and barley fields. In a tranquil spot, near a pink Elizabethan manor house with soaring chimney pots and a hornbeam hedge, racks of lamb are being roasted and lobsters split and served with potato salad, while the crispest, freshest summer vegetables, all locally grown, are tended and served in a building that was standing here when King Charles 1 was on the throne. Are you ready to order a lunch that comes complete with sparkling English wine, the soothing, mossy hues of heritage paint and, just to remind you that you are in modern-day England, a psychotic waiter with an attitude problem? Then come with me now to the Leaping Hare, a restaurant located in a fabulous 16th century barn deep in the Suffolk heartlands.
The Leaping Hare – Are You Ready to Order? review in full >>