What the Critics Say - a round up of the weekend's restaurant reviews

Wabi, a newly opened Japanese inspired restaurant in Horsham, West Sussex, leaves Simon Hattenstone of The Guardian feeling confused.

The food is not kind of light and elegant Japanese cuisine that he loves and the atmosphere lacks warmth, generosity and care. "Whereas most Japanese restaurants hum with quiet industry, here the (largely British) waiters hang around in a half-arsed manner, and the much feted Australian chef is invisible, despite it being Wabi's first week," he bemoans.

In The Independent, Tracey MacLeod writes about the Company of Cooks operated Table in Brighton, which she describes as looking like "the perfect modern restaurant". The food, too, is good, with well sourced local ingredients, dealt with simply and surround with big, punchy flavours. Why then, she asks, is it nearly empty when the nearby chain restaurants are full?

Matthew Norman, meanwhile, cannot understand why anyone would want to go to The Olde Bell Inn in Hurley, Berkshire. In his first review in The Daily Telegraph, the former Guardian food critic says that everything about the place is glacial, including the draughty room, the icy staff and sterility of the grey walls. While the food is passable, it fails to warm Norman's heart.

Joël Atunes's food at Brasserie Joël at London's Park Plaza Westminster Bridge is praised by Jay Rayner in The Observer for its French preciseness. However, he cannot understand how the chef, who in the 1990s made people swoon at the Michelin-starred Les Saveurs, can have ended up in a hotel that looks like it has been put together by designers who had watched too much Hotel Babylon. "Is a hotel on a traffic island at the wrong end of Westminster Bridge really the right place for a chef of this calibre?," he asks. "I'll answer the question myself. No. It isn't."

In the Sunday Telegraph, Elfreda Pownall has her feathers ruffled at the Michelin-starred La Becasse by a dish comprising undercooked chicken. "When I ordered 'chargrilled Bryn Derw Farm chicken' I anticipated a delectable golden bird, but the meat was pink on the breast, and pinker on the leg, whose stringy skeins of undercooked fat and skin hung ominously from my fork. I tried a small piece and my gorge rose (when it comes to undercooked chicken, I'm with Edwina Currie and her salmonella campaign)."

In The Times, Giles Coren goes for a walk in the country and reviews the Daylesford Organic Farmshop Café, where he has a light lunch. "The menu offered all sorts of heftier things: a burger, risotto, lamb casserole, Welsh rarebit, baked Blue Legbar eggs... All organic, all, I imagine, more or less faultlessly presented," he says.