December 2009 Archives

One of London's longest-standing and most consistent of restaurants, La Poule au Pot in Belgravia, impresses The Guardian's food critic, Matthew Norman, with its delightful décor and familiar French bistro cooking.

He takes fellow journalist Simon Heffer and together they tuck into a selection of Gallic favourites, including moules marinières and boeuf  bourguignon. "There can't be a more charming, cosy, nook-and-crannyish restaurant," he says of La Poule au Pot which has been welcoming customers since 1962.

A more recent arrival on the capital's dining scene is the Dean Street Townhouse, in Soho, which is the first major venture between Nick Jones, founder of the Soho House Group, and Richard Caring, the owner of Caprice Holdings which operates top London restaurants including Le Caprice, The Ivy and J Sheekey.

Toby Young says in The Independent on Sunday that during dinner there he found a restaurant that has the appearance of a luxury gentleman's club with a menu that is "like a stripped-down version of The Ivy's, with plenty of modern British staples".

Raymond Blanc last night named JJ Goodman and James Hopkins as the winning couple in the third series of The Restaurant.

But while the pair, who ran the Summer House restaurant during the show, were over the moon, the public reaction to their win has been less than kind.

JJ and James, whose restaurant concept is food paired with cocktails, beat Christopher Hackett and Nathan Gooding to the title of The Restaurant. During the series' final both couples were asked to serve a banquet for Lord and Lady Arran and their guests at their stately home in Devonshire.

While Chris's menu went down well with the Arrans' guests, JJ's lack of experience in the kitchen proved a disaster, with his risotto tasting like "wallpaper paste" according to judge Sarah Willingham, and his unset sorbet being turned into a Champagne cocktail.

However, Blanc praised the pair for their consistency. "One of you has got something, something which kept you consistently in the competition," he said announcing they were the winners.

"It is the idea which truly excites you. And even in the final, concept saved you."

The public reaction to JJ and James winning The Restaurant has been anything but supportive, with the Twitter brigade having a real moan about the results.

Indian chef Atul Kochhar, chef-patron of the Michelin-starred Benares in London, has teamed up with restaurateur Carlo Spetale, owner of the First Restaurant Group, to launch a new venture in the capital.

Called Colony, the new restaurant will be modelled on the bars and clubs of the British Raj region in India and will open in Marylebone Village, west London, in February.

It will serve tapas style dishes inspired by Indian street food with Kochhar, who also runs Vatika on Hampshire's Wickham Vineyard, overseeing the menu.

What's the deal with entertainment-themed restaurants at the moment?

After the not quite good enough South African outfit Madame Zingara, which was forced to abandon its London outpost next to Battersea Power Station after it went bust, and the car crash that was Bel Canto, the UK offshoot of the Parisian restaurant which combines French food with opera-singing staff, one would've thought operators would think twice before throwing themselves into the abyss of amusement-led restaurants.

But as always, people don't seem to learn from other people's mistakes and recently there has been a string of entertainment-themed ventures hitting the capital.

There was the launch of the too-cool-for-school Blues Kitchen in Camden, the über-cheesy Proud Cabaret (in the former Bel Canto site) in the City, and Eurotrash flagship Supper Club which has made the move from Amsterdam to Notting Hill.

Now there's another. Circus, due to open in mid-January in Covent Garden, will be a surrealist-inspired venue designed by ex-Habitat creative director Tom Dixon, "with entertainment at its very heart".

To make things even more obscure (inline with its surrealist theme one imagines), is the fact that the entertainment is top secret. All that is revealed is that "the acts are guaranteed to entertain", which is reassuring since that's kind of the point of entertainment.

What ever happened to the concept of focusing a restaurant on the food?

 

London restaurant Aqua Nueva, the first UK venture of Hong Kong-based group Aqua, received a scathing review this weekend by AA Gill.

The Sunday Times' famously acerbic food critic says that he can't imagine what induced anyone to open the Spanish restaurant atop the former Dickins & Jones building on Regent Street. 

"This is the first restaurant for ages that has been seriously poisoned by its decoration," he says.

Equally unimpressed by Aqua Nueva's food offer, he adds: "I started with an egg yolk in jelly; it was like a big wine gum of pus, only not that nice. It was cheek-puffingly foul."

The Guardian's Matthew Norman finds the experience of eating at The Modern in Manchester to be the complete antithesis of comforting, with charmless décor and poorly executed and over-priced food.

Meanwhile, The Observer's Jay Rayner reports that William Drabble at Seven Park Place at the St James's Hotel in Mayfair, is cooking some fabulous food but is let down by the restaurant's over-formal setting and fearful service.

"It sucks the very life out of you," he says.

Lastly, The Times' Giles Coren lets his fiancé review the Beckford Arms in Wiltshire, as his own memory seems to be clouded by a haze of inebriation.

Cult Japanese stadium cooking show Iron Chef is set to come to the UK next year.

The show, which has been a major success in the US, is based on a stylized cooking competition featuring accomplished guest chefs battling one of the show's resident Iron Chefs in a timed cooking battle.

UK producer and distributor the Television Corporation has just signed a deal with Fuji Television to bring Iron Chef to the UK. The deal gives the company the option to produce the show in the UK and work with Fuji in building the brand across Europe.

Each episode of Iron Chef UK, which is expected to air on Channel 4 next summer, will see four guest chefs challenge the yet-to-be-named resident Iron Chefs in a cooking competition built around a specific theme or ingredient.

If you're a "confident and charismatic" chef and are available for filming between 4-26 February 2010 here's your chance to get your 15 minutes of fame.

Contact producers by emailing possible.contestant@iwcmedia.co.uk before the 9 January deadline. 

London restaurateurs Christopher Corbin and Jeremy King are closing their West End restaurant St Alban.

The duo's company, Rex Restaurants Associates, which also owns The Wolseley, has sold the site on Regent Street to concentrate on other projects in London and overseas.

St Alban, which serves a Mediterranean menu, will hold its last service at lunchtime on 24 December.

A spokesman for St Alban confirmed that the restaurant was closing. "We will hold our last service at lunch time on Christmas Eve," he said.

"The owners have sold the premises to new owners who will continue to run it as a restaurant but it will be a completely different concept."

Corbin and King, the former proprietors of Le Caprice, The Ivy and J Sheekey (now owned by Richard Caring's Caprice Holdings), launched the 130-cover St Alban three years ago with Francesco Mazzei as head chef.

Located at Rex House on London's Lower Regent Street, the Stiff and Trevillion designed restaurant took its name from St Alban's Street, which runs along one side of the building.

Corbin and King are planning to launch a new restaurant in London in 2012 on top of the proposed the Bishopgate Tower development in the City of London.

The duo have agreed to take over a 13,000sq ft site on levels 58 to 63 of the 288m high tower which is also known as The Pinnacle.

I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here! winner Gino D'Acampo says he doesn't regret killing and eating a rat on the programme, despite being charged with animal cruelty.

The TV chef, who was crowned King of the Jungle after winning the reality TV show on Saturday, has been presented with a court attendance notice for 3 February 2010 after he and fellow contestant actor Stuart Manning caught, killed and cooked the rodent.

The RSPCA in New South Wales, Australia, said it was "not acceptable" that a rat had been killed as part of a performance.

Chief Inspector David Oshannessy said: "The allegation is that an animal was cruelly treated on the set. It was a rat that was killed. There is a code of conduct in New South Wales that dictates how animals can be used. The killing of a rat for a performance is not acceptable."

However, the D'Acampo said he has no regrets.

"I don't regret one single thing I did in the jungle to feed my campmates. It was the best recipe I ever did. It was beautiful," he told The Sun. 

Seven Park Place by William Drabble at the St James's Hotel and Club in London "is perfect", according to Giles Coren.

The Times' food critic says that ex-Aubergine chef Drabble's carefully executed top-end food and the restaurant's  grand furnishing and accommodating staff make him love everything about the place. 

"This is a grown-up, serious restaurant for people who eat out a lot and want a treat, who can afford it, and won't be intimidated by its elegance," Coren says.

"It's not a first-date place. It's not for teenagers. It's not for clench-arsed, sour-faced lefties or fin-haired hipsters manqués. But it's absolutely perfect for me."

The Daily Telegraph's Jasper Gerard is immediately impressed by the look of Chris and Jeff Galvin's latest venture, Galvin La Chapelle in Spitalfields.

"It's hard to think of another London dining room more awe-inspiring," he enthuses.

Meanwhile Italian restaurant Mennula impresses Toby Young in The Independent on Sunday, who says it is the place in town to find good tasting, simple Sicilain food. 

The Observer's Jay Rayner enjoys a fabulous breakfast at the Farmcafe & Foodmarket in Woodbridge, Suffolk.

"There are many reasons for going to Suffolk. The Farmcafé surely has to be one of them," he says.

AA Gill reviews the Winter Wonderland in Hyde Park in the Sunday Times and says that while it wasn't quite the worst koch he's eaten it was still pretty awful.

TV chef Gino D'Acampo has been crowned King of the Jungle after winning the final of I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here!

The Italian chef beat television presenter Kim Woodburn and snooker star Jimmy White to second and third places after three weeks in the Australian jungle.

During the course of the reality TV show D'Acampo was forced to eat rotten eggs, cockroaches, a crocodile's tongue and rhino beetles to win a dinner for his fellow contestants.

the chef told presenters Ant and Dec he was excited to be getting back into "some kind of civilisation very soon".

"These three weeks have been crazy, up and down. I don't think there's ever been a day when I've thought, 'what am I doing here, I should be at home doing something else' - I really enjoyed every bit of the experience," the chef said.

D'Acampo is the third celebrity chef to have appeared in I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here! after Antony Worrall Thompson (2003) and John Burton-Race (2008) whose wife famously shut his New Angel restaurant in Dartmouth while he was on the show.

Surprise, surprise Gordon Ramsay Holdings (GRH) has sold another overseas restaurant.

The celebrity chef's company has stepped back from the day-to-day involvement in its two-Michelin-starred restaurant at the London Hotel in New York.

The restaurant, which includes the London Bar and Maze restaurant concept as well as the eponymous fine dining restaurant, is the fourth overseas venture GRH has sold this year.

It follows Maze in Prague, the two-Michelin-starred Gordon Ramsay restaurant at the Trianon Palace hotel in Versailles, France, and the Michelin-starred restaurant at the London West Hollywood hotel in Los Angeles.

The move comes after nasty reports earlier in the year that the Manhattan restaurant was being pursued by creditors and was forced to deal with a serious food hygiene breach.

The restaurant has been sold to the owner of The London hotel, LXR Luxury Resorts, and a spokeswoman for GRH said the move was inline with GRH's international restructure.

Selfridges is planning a permanent restaurant on the roof of its London department store following the massive success of Pierre Koffmann's pop-up restaurant.

The iconic store on Oxford Street has revealed it is looking for a chef to head up the potential venture.

Koffmann, the former three-Michelin-starred chef patron of the famous La Tante Claire restaurant, was initially scheduled to run his temporary eaterie for one week as part of the London Restaurant Festival. But it was extended for 39 days following the huge number of requests for bookings. 

Selfridges food and restaurants director Ewan Venters said demand far exceeded expectations, with the restaurant catering for 8,000 diners in total.

"We created an environment that equalled the quality of food produced by Koffmann, which led to so many guests say that we ought to have a permanent feature on the roof of Selfridges," he said.

"So much so that the search has begun to find the right chef and concept for a future project, whatever that might look like."

It's not often that we get a story sold to us that leaves us lost for words.

But a new nightclub-cum-restaurant set to launch below Gilgamesh in Camden next spring has done just that.

Called Shaka Zulu, the £5.5m venue is a joint-venture between Camden Stables Market and Roger Payne, proprietor of The Cuban bar and restaurant in Camden and nightclub Sound on Leicester Square.

Spread over two floors, the 850-cover venue will be themed around Zulu culture from South Africa from the time of Shaka Zulu in the 19th century. Interiors will include £2m-worth of vast murals and wooden panels depicting Zulu culture as well as a 45ft bronze statue of Shaka himself presiding over the entrance.

The owners are even in contact with King Goodwill Zwelithini in South Africa to get things totally right.  

There will also be two South African themed restaurants: a fish restaurant offering seafood inspired by the Cape, as well as a grill restaurant serving speciality meats from South Africa.

"This is obviously a rather unique venture," concedes a spokesman.

"And we expect it to attract, apart from day to day clientele, a regular sprinkling of celebrities and movers and shakers."

I bet the Big Brother crowd will love it.

French chef Eric Chavot wants to launch an informal brasserie next year.

Chavot, who left his role of head chef at the two-Michelin-starred Capital after more than decade earlier this year, said he wants to launch a new venture that has "nothing to do with Michelin".

"It's still early days but I want to launch a more informal restaurant next year, a brasserie or bistrot de luxe," he said.

"I've spent my whole career cooking Michelin food and 22 years is enough - it's time for another life."

Chavot, who is looking for an investor to go into business with, added that the new venture would be a simple restaurant with a relaxed atmosphere but great service.

"It will be a restaurant version of Le Pain Quotidien and it will feature large tables and an open kitchen," he said.