The Times, 15 December
Giles Coren visits Fountain at Fortnum & Mason, London W1

Too many restaurants, too many restaurants. Big, major, huge deal restaurants opening every week, every day, every hour. I can’t cope. My old pal Tom Ilic, the great Serbian chef, phones to say that he has finally got his own place, down in Battersea somewhere, and will I come down and check it out, and I say, “Yes, yes, love to, can’t wait, soon as the diary’s clear…” But how do I clear it? In the past four days, I’ve been to Rowley Leigh’s Café Anglais (the project for which he left Kensington Place after 20 years), L’Autre Pied (the new Marylebone bistro from Pied A Terre), the refurbished Fountain restaurant at Fortnum’s and the Dorchester roll-out from the world’s most famous chef, Alain Ducasse.

The Guardian, 15 December
Matthew Norman visits Hibiscus, London W1

Where do you stand on the question of eating trees? Given what head-in-the-clouds types we liberal lefties tend to be, you may never have devoted a moment's thought to the matter. If so, you have about 500 words to get thinking. Hibiscus is a stellar foodie name, having long been one of the trinity that made the little Shropshire town of Ludlow fabled for having three Michelin-garlanded joints. Whenever I rang to book in its Salop days, when its husband-chef/wife-manager team of Claude and Claire Bosi had two stars, the first available table was always months away. So on the old "If Muhammad will not go to the mountain..." principle, it was good to find Hibiscus coming to me. Or, more precisely, coming to a street off Oxford Circus in the pancreas, if not the very heart, of London's unlovable Mayfair.
Hibiscus – The Guardian review in full >>

The Independent on Sunday, 16 December
Terry Durack visits Le Café Anglais, London W8

If there's one thing Rowley Leigh should know, it's how to write a menu. As head chef of Kensington Place for the past 20 years, this seasoned pioneer of modern Anglo-French cooking wrote a new set menu for every lunch and dinner, every day of the week. By my reckoning, that's around 7,000 menus. Small wonder, then, that the menu at the newly opened Le Café Anglais is a blinder – a virtual roll call of seasonal produce intelligently worked in familiar, Elizabeth Davidian ways. It starts by reclaiming the aperitif and the hors-d'oeuvre, so you can match a gin fizz or a white lady with rabbit rillettes or salsify fritters. There are 18 first courses, such as warm smoked-eel salad with bacon, six fish choices, such as grilled Dover sole with sauce vierge, and seven roasts from the mighty French rotisserie, from partridge to rib of beef. There are also 10 vegetable side-dishes and an agreeably stupendous number of desserts and ice-creams.
Le Café Anglais – The Independent on Sunday review in full >>

The Observer, 16 December
Jay Rayner visits 22 Mill Street, Chagford, Devon

The Devonshire village of Chagford is aghast. You might not know that to look at the place. The old stone cottages with their thatched roofs still cling stoically to the narrow lanes, and at dusk the air still smells of wood smoke. Behind its carefully painted front doors, however, there is tutting and consternation. The reason? 22 Mill Street, the restaurant in this neighbourhood that isn't the double-Michelin-starred Gidleigh Park, has changed hands. Nobody is entirely sure what happened. All they know is that Duncan Walker, who worked first at Gidleigh before opening 22 Mill Street, has had enough and sold out to the owners of a hotel and restaurant in Tavistock called Browns.
22 Mill Street – The Observer review in full >>

areyourreadytoorder.co.uk
Jan Moir visits Northbank, London EC4

When I see truffle oil on a menu, I have the same reaction as, say, a coastguard sighting an upturned boat in his binocular lenses. Uh oh, methinks. Shipwreck straight ahead. For truffle oil is the last resort of the scoundrel; the lazy chefs who can’t be bothered to introduce proper flavour into their dishes by time-honoured methods such as hard graft and long craft. Braising, straining, skimming, browning, slicing, dicing, steaming and dreaming? These activities are alien to the truffle oil pro, who splashes it about like a brute - and probably has some Easy Squeeze Lemons to hand as well.
Northbank – areyoureadytoorder.co.uk review in full >>

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