The Daily Telegraph
5 June
Jan Moir finds Oliver Peyton's conceptualisation at Inn the Park, London, undone by chaotic service and careless cooking...
Boiled egg and soldiers feature cold, burnt toast. An adventurously priced Full English Breakfast (£9.50, without tea) hardly groans under the weight of half a mushroom, a tiny disc of black pudding, a scrap of tomato, one sausage (nice), one rasher of bacon and an evilly undercooked, glaucous egg. Meanwhile, a waiter puts up a velvet rope to stop those not having cooked breakfast from sitting on the front terrace. God almighty. (Lunch for two, excluding wine and service, £40)
The Sunday Telegraph
6 June
... while Matthew Norman is seduced by Inn the Park's summer sights and menu packed with English produce
Roast baby Black Feather was a plump and juicy poussin (£14.50), the skin that enticing hue known to the Dulux colour chart as "Brazilian beach volleyballer brown". Grilled skirt steak (£13.50) had a "really good, strong flavour" and came with green beans and a soft-boiled egg, while my well-crisped Gloucester Old Spot pork chop (£9) was terrific to the point at which sucking the bone seemed less a social faux pas than a moral obligation. (Score 8.25/10. Dinner for one with half a bottle of house wine, £31)
The Independent
5 June
Tracey Macleod joins the "super-rich" clientele at Cipriani in Mayfair, the offshoot of Venice's legendary Harry's Bar, but isn't wowed by the food
The menu features many of the standard Italian dishes you might get at your neighbourhood trattoria - though if you pay £17 for tagliolini with pesto you're living in the wrong neighbourhood. Harry's Bar invented both the Bellini (peach juice and prosecco) and beef carpaccio, so both of these were duly sampled. Neither was much cop and, at £20, the carpaccio, under-seasoned despite its trademark lattice of mayonnaise and lemon juice, was a scandal.
The Guardian
5 June
Matthew Fort is impressed by traditional virtues at Cyrus Todiwala's restaurant, the Parsee, in Highgate, north London
We had kicked off with a Parsee platter, in which eggs, of which Parsees are inordinately fond, figured prominently. There was a delicious mumbai no frankie (a kind of Parsee shepherd's pie) and a pretty clunking papeta na pattice (a superior potato cake with tomato sauce). Come to think of it, I was also in favour of the vengna nay tooria no patio - a gloopy, sweetish vegetable stew that put aubergines and courgettes to good use. (Score 15/20)
Timeout
8 June
Guy Dimond enjoys a taste of Sardinia at Sardo Canale in London's Camden Lock
Like most good Italian food, it's the quality of the ingredients that make Sardinian dishes shine. Romolu Mudu buys and imports many of his ingredients directly from Sardinia. Pane carasau, Sardinia's parchment-like crispbread, can't be made properly here, he says; he imports his part-baked and reheats it. Mosciame di tonno are thin slices of sun-dried tuna, which have a very salty and pungent flavour; here it's simply presented with French beans and some superfluous sun-dried tomato. In the north-east of Sardinia, the Costa Smeralda is where the super-rich moor their yachts and come to party. Camden Lock is hardly the Costa Smeralda, but Sardo Canale does offer a true taste of Sardinia in upmarket surroundings. Just don't try mooring your yacht outside. (Meal for two with wine and service, about £80)