Bloomberg, 2 October
Richard Vines visits York & Albany, 127-129 Parkway, London NW1

Talk to Angela Hartnett about her Italian roots and you can almost feel the tribal closeness of an emigre family trying to make its way in Britain, and visualize the generations gathered around steaming dishes of pasta. If it wasn't pasta it was probably battered plaice, because the Hartnetts owned chip shops, where Angela helped out. But eat in her London restaurants and you're unlikely to find much evidence of such hearty traditional fare, British or Italian. She often favors refined dishes that give no more than a polite nod to her roots while offering instead a bow and a ``bonjour'' to M. Michelin. That's very much the case at Murano, which she opened a couple of months back, and there are traces of the approach at the York & Albany, which opened this week.
York & Albany - review in full >>

Soseki, twinkling seductively under the lowering armpit of the Gherkin, is perfectly lovely, one of the most beautiful new restaurants I've visited in a long time. Like many restaurants in Tokyo or Kyoto, it looks very much like any old faceless modern block from the outside but climb the open-tread stairs and you'll find magic. Owner Caroline Bennett, creator of Moshi Moshi - Britain's first conveyor-belt sushi chain - has commissioned Japanese designer Yusaku Kaneshiro to recreate an evocative look based on the teahouses of early 20th-century Japan's Taisho period. It has worked gloriously, all dark wood panels and the gem-like beauty of embroidered kimono fabric (used to fabulous effect under glass tabletops), while ceilings are papered with the book covers of eponymous author and famously grouchy temporary Clapham dweller Natsume Soseki.
Soseki - review in full >>

Evening Standard, 8 October
Fay Maschler visits Avista, Millennium Mayfair hotel, 39 Grosvenor Square, London W1

Avista is one of those names on which corporations spend hundreds of thousands of pounds for the purpose of rebranding and then, after a while, go back to calling themselves something comprehensible like the Post Office. A quick trawl through the web reveals an American Avista utilities company in Spokane, Washington, and an Avista firm of private equity investors (still in business?) in New York City and Houston, Texas. Nowhere can I find an Italian connection. Michele Granziera, chef of the newly opened Avista restaurant in the Millennium Mayfair hotel, has worked alongside Andy Needham, chef of Zafferano, for the past six years. Unlike Andy, he is Italian, from the Veneto. Not only has Granziera — a keen-as-mustard, personable chap from brief acquaintance — come up with, or been saddled with, a meaningless restaurant name, but he’s got a concept.
Avista  - review in full >>

Time Out, 9 October
Guy Dimond visits York & Albany, 127-129 Parkway, London NW1

The cocktails are great, aren’t they? And this place is just so wonderful,’ said the friendly, tipsy blonde sitting beside me at the bar. The thought did cross my mind – was she a plant from Ramsay Holdings, there to talk up a bar heaving with press in the first week? ‘We’re local, you know,’ said her equally blonde friend, as if reading my mind. ‘And this place is just the best thing to have happened round here for years.’

They were right of course. Camden hasn’t seen anything like this new Gordon Ramsay Holdings hotel, bar and restaurant which just oozes glamour at the northern end of grimy Parkway. The building’s a former coaching house, designed by John Nash in 1826 as part of Regent’s Park. The York & Albany monicker is a reference to Prince Frederick, Duke of York and Albany – better known to most of us as ‘The Grand Old Duke of York’.
York & Albany - review in full >>

By Janet Harmer

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