The Daily Telegraph
24 July
Jan Moir forgives the table turning at Rainer Becker's new venture ROKA, and reports that it is "potentially fabulous"
Absolutely brilliant things we have to eat include a tuna tataki salad - the tuna seared so perfectly I suspect it was dipped in iced water after cooking - with a pungent apple-mustard dressing with a carpet of wonderful wild herbs whose delicate appearance belies their rootsy flavours; ...skewers of juicy scallops glossed with butter and spritzed with ponzu - a kind of citrus fruit - and salted shallots, which are grilled in their skins and turned into pretty flowers before your very eyes. Less successful is home-made tofu (more like medicine than food), rock shrimp tempura - a bit like pub scampi, to be honest - and a sea bream fillet glazed with ryotei miso but hopelessly overcooked. (Meal for two, excluding drinks and service: £55)
Timeout
27 July
Kei Kikuchi also visited Roka and, though impressed by the food, did not think much of the portions
The food, though very good, is much trimmer. Rather slight, in fact. Basic set lunches (such as prawn and vegetable tempura on rice), matched by basic prices (£9), are filling, but ordering … la carte can send the bill rocketing when, for instance, succulent hotate in butter and ponzu (£8.90) numbers a mere two scallops, and "skewered tiger prawns with yuzu chilli paste" proved to be just the one critter - steep at £14.30, even if it had been painstakingly prepared. (Meal for two with drinks and service: around £85)
The Independent
24 July
Caroline Stacey isn't sure about the crockery, but loves the meal at Rasoi Vineet Bhatia
Main courses, for around £20, arrived with everything on the same plate, Western-style. Luxurious European cooking tends to mean wanton quantities of expensive protein. Rasoi offers lobster and prawns, but also a lamb shank rogan josh and chicken biriyani; then it makes them extraordinary with layers of spice that spark off in new directions, and add depth and mystery to even the humble lentils, which made a sauce for smoky barbecued lamb on marsala mashed potatoes. Grilled duck, marinated in spices of course, came with a clever spiral of fried red onion, pebble-dashed with onion seeds, like a witty take on a bhaji.
The Guardian
24 July
Matthew Fort finds French haute cuisine at the Vintners Rooms, Edinburgh
I had escabéche of sardines with peppers and pistou sauce, which came as a kind of sandwich, the layers of vegetables lying between fillets of fish. It was as exhilarating and delightful to eat as it was to look upon, the firm texture of the fish still intact after its wine bath, the peppers and pesto adding a vegetable richness to each mouthful. Even the rather cutting-edge pudding of strawberries with olive confit and thyme sorbet had the cultured and sophisticated air of haute cuisine rather than outr‚ modernism. (Score: 17/20)
The Sunday Telegraph
25 July
London's Camerino impresses Matthew Norman with top-notch Italian cooking and a pleasingly modest approach
The service, for one thing, is a potent antidote to the tendency of smart Italian restaurants to staff themselves with nonchalant young bleeders, whose minds are palpably elsewhere (on the back of a Vespa, in fact, wolf-whistling at Scandinavian tourists). Here, were you to order kidney and the kitchen had run out, I suspect they'd give you one of their own. (Score: 9.25/10. Dinner for one: £33.75, with coffee and half a bottle of wine)