The Daily Telegraph, 15 November
Jasper Gerard visits Northcote Manor, Lango, Lancashire
I've just eaten at Britain's best restaurant – near Blackburn. Or so Harden's UK Restaurant Guide 2009 tells us. Hmm. If anything gets the boys at Harden's salivating more than a good lunch, it is the prospect of the press making a meal of its latest guide. They claim to spot gastro-trends where no one else would dare look. Every year, just in time for publication, they announce some jaw-dropping discovery: that you can now eat in the North Country without fear of contracting the Plague, say, or that Middle Wallop boasts the finest Sino-Bulgarian fusion food east of Alaska. The guide's latest proclamation is that some of our best restaurants are in the north. Yes, I laughed at that too. Oop north - ha! Sure, it has become fashionable to coo over rustic restaurants, but actually, if you want great food, shouldn't you just explore the byways of Belgravia-shire?

The Guardian, 15 November
Matthew Norman visits Le Bouchon Breton, London E1
Of the myriad humiliations I've known in this job, the least forgettable concerned a place in Hampstead, the eerily well-named New End, which stuck up the "closed for business" signs the day before my rave review was published. That fiasco floods back to mind as we turn to Le Bouchon Breton, an impeccably credentialed newcomer to the handsomely redeveloped Spitalfields market on the frayed edges of London's traumatised City, because it shares two weaknesses with the late New End. It is slightly but discernibly overpriced (by some 20% no less), and it sits on what strikes the naked eye as an archetypal graveyard site. So anonymous is it, indeed, on the upper floor of a food court and surrounded by down- to mid-market chains, that it took me 40 minutes to find. In fact, I never did find it, but stood pitiably outside a nearby Carluccio's until a very sweet waitress (grazie, Grazia) came to fetch me.
Le Bouchon Breton – review in full>>

The Independent on Sunday, 16 November
Terry Durack visits L’Anima, London EC2
Out there, it's the City – bleak, cold and windy. Men hurry home with news of cancelled bonuses and stock options, the biting wind a stark reminder of how cold the immediate future could be. Inside, all is warm and light. Jackets are off, yellow ties loosened, blue shirtsleeves rolled up, red braces tweaked, Château Latour poured. It's Thursday night in the City, and the bonhomie volume is turned up in defiance. It was not my intention to review L'Anima. When Francesco Mazzei opened in June, I was desperate to find restaurants where two could eat for less than £80, not more high-end Italians of the calibre of Locanda Locatelli or the River Café. But in spite of its pre-crunch prices, L'Anima has been hard to ignore: reviews have been practically evangelical, and it was recently named best new restaurant of the year in both Square Meal and the Harden's UK Restaurant Guide.
L’Anima – review in full>>

The Sunday Times, 16 November
AA Gill visits The River Café, London W6
The River Café — Tuscany in Fulham — was closed by a fire seven months ago. It has just reopened with a makeover, and, rather like Italian food, I wanted it to be inventively new and improved, but also exactly the same as it always was. Depending on the delicacy of your own social digestion, the River Caff either fills you with syrupy feelings of excitement, warmth and nameless intellectual superiority, or it makes you want to join a nihilist terror cell and buy a length of rope. It represents everything you hate: peasant food made absurdly chic and expensive, served to smug, parasitic liberals. Well, I know where I stand. I know where I belong. I’m on the inside, smirking out. On the way there, as we ignored the tramps and junkies sleeping rough, the Blonde said that it was just about the last restaurant that gives her a real sense of occasion: “I’ve been excited since lunch.” And, let me tell you, that is a considerable commendation.
The River Café – review in full>>

areyoureadytoorder.com
Jan Moir visits Corrigan’s, London W1
Here we are at the new Richard Corrigan mothership, hunkered down in Corrigan central with a glass of champagne, some goatsy cheesy beignets and a menu that has S’s oyster eyes whirling in their sockets with joy. ‘This is,’ he says, ‘my perfect menu. It’s the best one I’ve ever seen. Anywhere. Ever. In the world.’ Well, I can see where the old boy is coming from. Here at Corrigan’s in Mayfair, the emphasis is on game, wild fish and seafood, shot through with the kind of rootsy Irish sensibility that is the hallmark of this chef’s brilliant cooking. There are dishes such as game broth with livers on toast; saddle of hare with roast pumpkin and sprout tops; roe venison in pastry with pickled cabbage; poached turbot on the bone, game terrine; plaice with almond crumb and mallard a l’orange with chicory – they all tell their own story of proper tradition married to shrewd skill and a deep understanding of what will work and what will not.
Corrigan’s – review in full>>

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