The Guardian, 19 January
Matthew Norman visits The Griffin Inn, Fletching, near Uckfield, East Sussex

One of the few drawbacks to life on this cushiest of journalistic outposts is the passionate recommendation of friends. "You've got to try this brilliant restaurant that's opened up round the corner," one might enthuse. "The chef's from Tromsk, and he does this Prussian-Szechuan-Amazon Delta fusion thing with Sino-Albanian influences. It's incredible." So you trudge dutifully along and at the end of the meal, with half the room cordoned off to allow medical teams to operate in privacy on diners suffering multiple organ failure induced by a virulent new strain of salmonella, the proselytiser gazes at you with puppy dog eyes, and says, "So, what do you think?" In the case of the particular friend who recommended the Griffin Inn, the fear was especially acute.

The Daily Telegraph, 19 January
Mark Palmer visits Urban Turban, London W2

They're all at it. Gourmet Gordon slips out of the kitchen and becomes a pub landlord (and telly celeb, of course); Michelin man Marco bans customers from asking for salt and pepper one minute and opens a chain of pizzerias the next; and now Vineet Bhatia is rolling out the first of what he calls "street food eateries" similar to those he experienced growing up in Mumbai. Diversification is a dish served any which way you can after making pots of money early in your career. Let's not begrudge Bhatia. Urban Turban is a great name and the venue, in Notting Hill, isn't bad, either. True, Bhatia hasn't yet been asked to do Dancing on Ice, but he arrives in this trendy part of London with considerable form.
Urban Turban – The Daily Telegraph review in full >>

The Sunday Telegraph, 20 January
Diana Henry visits The Rosendale, London SE21

Like the Queen, I never carry much cash. So I set off, weighed down with nothing more than a bank card, for the Rosendale, which I'd been dying to try, having been told it was 'just two stops from Victoria'. It is just two stops from Victoria, in West Dulwich, but that's like saying Manchester is a bit north than Watford - indeed, Manchester would have been easier, even if the cash machine at the station hadn't eaten my card. After dashing home to raid my son's piggy bank and leaping in a cab, I was frantic about getting there before the kitchen closed. Usually, a kir and an unfamiliar menu is my idea of bliss, but it took me a while to breathe normally. The manager treated me as if I'd suffered a mild trauma, bringing me a New Zealand pinot gris that made me feel better than if he'd administered oxygen.
The Rosendale – The Sunday Telegraph review in full >>

The Observer, 20 January
Jay Rayner visits Le Café Anglais, London W2

A restaurant is more than a menu. A restaurant is the menu and the room in which it is eaten, the glassware and the napery, the waiters and the buzz, and the sense of wellbeing you get from being there. Or at least most restaurants are. Le Cafe Anglais is different. It really is first and foremost a menu, a beautifully written one. It is poetry in four dozen dishes. If all you had to guide you were the words on the card you would want to be there. It is swoon- and dribble-worthy. Or, to put it another way, if I showed you the menu and you didn't do at least a little swooning and dribbling I would know we could never be friends.
Le Café Anglais – The Observer review in full >>

areyourreadytoorder.co.uk
Jan Moir visits The Seafood Restaurant, St Monans, Fife

The most amazing thing about The Seafood Restaurant in St Monans is that it exists in the first place. Existing is the thing. It takes a certain kind of brave lunacy to buy a pub in this chilly, winter-bleak corner of east Scotland and convert it into a…what? Snooker hall, crèche, Pilates studio, Spar grocery, greasy spoon, recycling centre, borstal unit, posh fish restaurant? No one would have put money on the latter until 1995, when The Seafood Restaurant opened its doors for the first time. What lay within was pearly turbot, dressed oysters, pretty views across the Firth of Forth and a kind of cooking the owners optimistically described as ‘modern Scottish’. They even added a sun terrace, the kind of restaurant accessory which is essential in Porto Fino but practically unheard of in this part o’ Fife.
The Seafood Restaurant – areyoureadytoorder.co.uk review in full >>

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