July 2011 Archives

Lee Bennett, executive chef at Le Pont de la Tour, is to leave the London restaurant to move to Singapore and join the Swissotel the Stamford.

Bennett, who has been at the helm of the D&D London owned restaurant near Tower Bridge for more than three years, will depart for Singapore at the end of August. His replacement has not yet been announced.

He will join the five-star Swissotel the Stamford as executive chef of its Equinox Complex, which includes five restaurants and bars as well as four private dining rooms with a total capacity of 900 covers.

In his new role Bennett will be in charge of the Equinox restaurant, which includes three private dining rooms, as well as the New Asia nightclub which also serves food.

Commenting on his move Bennett said: "I've been at Le Pont de la Tour for three and a half years and in that time have had lots of offers but it had to be something really special to get me to leave. This offer came out of the blue and it's a fantastic opportunity for me."

Bennett, who joined Le Pont de la Tour in 2008, has worked under three-Michelin-starred chefs including Gordon Ramsay, Pierre Gagnaire and Alain Ducasse. His first head chef position was at the Michelin-starred Savoy Grill, under executive chef Marcus Wareing, where he won the Craft Guild of Chefs 'Restaurant Chef' award in 2007.

Tickets to this year's London Restaurant Festival are now on sale.

The fortnightly festival, which will run from 3 to 17 October, will see a host of events take place across the capital including the restaurant on the London Eye, which this year will be manned by celebrated chefs including Jason Atherton, Simon Rogan, Hélène Darroze and Ashley Palmer-Watts.

Now in its third year, the London Restaurant Festival has been created by the London Evening Standard's food critic Fay Maschler and Simon Davis, who together run restaurant consultancy Private View, (pictured) and this year has the support of VisitBritain and tourism minister John Penrose.

It is a city-wide celebration of dining out and is designed to raise the profile of establishments involved and drive footfall, with around 800 restaurants participating.

A series of new events will be introduced this year including walking gourmet odysseys in Soho, Mayfair, Covent Garden and Clerkenwell where diners will walk between different restaurants from course to course; and a tapas passport allowing punters to enjoy a different dish and glass of wine at different tapas restaurants.

Other events will include gourmet odysseys on London buses; a food quiz held at the Criterion on Piccadilly as well as participating pubs; and the Great Food Debate. The festival will culminate in an awards ceremony to be held at the Old Spitalfields Market.

Ticket prices start at £110 and are available from the London Restaurant Festival's website.

Jay Rayner has called off his search for the perfect BBQ after dining at the World's End pub in Brighton.

The "dirty food" served by chef John Hargate features "meaty" ribs which are "proper, thick cut numbers" and "properly sauced", according to The Observer's food critic. He even discovered the closest thing to a Texan delicacy: a cream cheese stuffed jalapeno wrapped in sausage meat and bacon which is "outrageously moreish".

Writing for the Daily Telegraph, Matthew Norman is equally delighted, having dined at Jason Atherton's new venture, Pollen Street Social.

The former Gordon Ramsay chef's culinary expertise creates "solid gold in the mouth" in the form of delights such as oyster ice cream, escabeche of quail and the tiramisu with hot mocha-chocolate sauce being dubbed "one of the finest puds" Norman has ever tasted.

Ambience also proved key for the critics, with the Sunday Telegraph's Zoe Williams noting the St Pancras Renaissance hotel's super-high ceilings renders the Gilbert Scott too big and airy to feel comfortable, while The Independent's John Walsh gives Pebble Beach restaurant at Barton on Sea top marks for its atmosphere.

At the other end of the spectrum, the Independent on Sunday's Amol Rajan finds the feel at Gidleigh Park "abysmal", slamming it as "staid, oppressive and stuck in the 1990s".

Back in London, the Sunday Times' AA Gill finally gets around to eating at L'Anima to find that it does food for "corporates" better than expected, while the Metro's Marina O'Loughlin says tapas bar José's real excitement comes from its daily specials board - but its tiny dining room won't please everyone.

Peter Eaton, former head chef at the Dorchester Collection's Coworth Park, is joining the Feathered Nest country inn in the Cotswolds as head chef.

The former Acorn award winner, who also previously worked with John Campbell at the then two-Michelin-starred Vineyard at Stockcross, will join the pub in Nether Westcote, near Stow-on-the-Wold, in Oxfordshire on 1 August. He will replace former head chef Kevin Barrett.

The move comes just two months after Eaton left Coworth Park in Berkshire, where he was made redundant following former director of cuisine Campbell's decision to change his role to a consultancy one for the hotel's flagship Restaurant John Campbell.

Full story will be on Caterersearch.com soon.

Indian restaurant Moti Mahal is to host a special charity dinner next month, which will bring together six top chefs who will cook together in aid of the Fukushima 100 Mile Charity.

Chefs Anirudh Arora (Moti Mahal), Sriram Aylur (Quilon), Hayashi Daisuke (Sake no Hana), Jun Tanaka (Pearl Restaurant), Martyn Pearn (Peel's Restaurant) and Edd Kimber (Winner of BBC2 Television Series The Great British Bake Off), will host the dinner on 11 August.

The event will be held following Captain Bill Kawai-Calderhead and his sister Maia's attempt to run and cycle 100 miles around London in 24 hours. Starting on 10 August from the Japanese Embassy, the 100 mile route will replicate the Fukushima nuclear reactor exclusion zone and will be completed at 05:46am on 11 August - exactly five months on from the tragedy.

The charity aims to raise ¥10,000,000 (£76,000) for the British Red Cross Japan Tsunami Appeal and the dinner will be followed by a charity auction, where prizes will include a holiday to Shanti Maurice Hotel in Mauritius and a jet aircraft simulator experience.

The most memorable thing about Massimo Restaurant & Oyster Bar is not the food but the prices, according to AA Gill.

The Sunday Times food critic experiences a forgettable meal the restaurant at the Corinthia Hotel, which he describes as one of the most staggeringly expensive restaurants in London. The bill for two was £189, which is utterly undeserved," he complains.

Meanwhile Lisa Markwell, writing in the Independent on Sunday, is impressed by the perfectly judged menu at Roganic, Simon Rogan's two-year pop up restaurant in London's Marylebone, where a tasting menu is served only.

"One stand-out dish is Kentish seawater-cured mackerel with Regent's Park elderflower honey, broccoli - dehydrated and puréed - and shallots, which is a triumph of textures and flavours that plays on the tongue," she enthuses.

Scarborough may be down on its luck, but at least you can enjoy a life-affirming meal at Italian restaurant Lanterna, says the Observer's Jay Rayner, while the Sunday Telegraph's Zoe Williams finds the views more impressive than the food at Mark Sargeant's Rocksalt in Folkestone, Kent.

In London, the Metro's Marina O'Loughlin says Nuno Mendes's Corner Room at the Town Hall hotel in Bethnal Green offers the chance to experience what would otherwise be known as haute cuisine in pleasingly offbeat, informal surroundings.

The London Evening Standard's Fay Maschler says Galoupet, the first London restaurant by the owners of the Château du Galoupet vineyard in the South of France, brings a touch of Provence to Knightsbridge.

Restaurant booking website toptable has revealed its list of the top 50 French restaurants in the UK, based on the ratings of 500,000 diners who have booked through the site.

Some the UK's finest French restaurants are included in the list such as Martin Wishart and Le Gavroche sharing the top spot with Alain Ducasse and Gordon Ramsay's Petrus.

Out of London Alan Murchinson's La Bécasse in Ludlow, Richard Phillips' Kent restaurants the Hengist and Thackery's and The Waggoners in Hertfordshire featured high up in the top 50.

The list was based on feedback collected between July 2010 and July 2011.


The list in full:

Martin Wishart, Edinburgh                                  
Le Gavroche, London                              
Petrus, Gordon Ramsay, London                                 
Alain Ducasse, Dorchester, London                            
The Savoy, River Restaurant, London                        
Seven Park Place, William Drabble, London                         
The French Table, Surbiton, Surrey                             
The Greenhouse, London                                  
Sketch Lecture Room and Library, London                          
L'Escargot Blanc, Edinburgh                            
The Waggoners, Herts                             
Gauthier Soho, London                           
Pied à Terre, London                               
Orrery, London                              
Galvin at Windows, London                               
Roussillon Restaurant, London                        
Hengist, Kent                                 
Retro Bistrot, Teddington                                   
Petit Paris, Edinburgh                              
L'Ortolan, Reading                        
The Square, London                                
Hibiscus, London                         
Almeida, London                           
Pearl Restaurant & Bar, London                                   
Koffman's, London                                   
L'Atelier de Joel Robuchon, London                           
Thackeray's, Kent                         
Chez Roux, Rocpool Reserve Hotel, Inverness                               
Restaurant at The Bonham, Edinburgh                                  
L'Escargot Bleu, Edinburgh                              
La Becasse, Ludlow Shropshire                                  
Bel Canto, London                                   
The Savoy Grill, London                         
Edmunds, Birmingham                           
Le Pont de la Tour, London                               
Four O Nine, Clapham, London                        
Bellevue Rendezvous, Wandsworth, London                                  
Bellamy's, London                        
Le Cercle, London                        
Forbury's Restaurant and Wine Bar, Reading                                  
Maze, London                                
Chez Manny, Battersea, London                                  
La Vallee Blanche, Glasgow                              
Upstairs Bar & Restaurant, London                            
Brian Maule at le Chardon d'Or, Glasgow                              
Chez Tonton, Herts                                  
Bully's, Cardiff                               
The Box Tree - Marco Pierre White, Yorkshire                                
Ratatouille, Richmond, Surrey                          
Racine, London     

Alexis Gauthier, chef-patron of Gauthier Soho in London, has become the UK's first Michelin-starred chef to include calories on his menus. I caught up with him about his reasons behind the move

Why did you decide to list calorie counts on your menus?
Last October, my doctor diagnosed me with fatty liver disease caused by the fact that I consume too many calories on a daily basis. So even though I wasn't obese or anything the fatty foods I ate as a chef had an impact on my health and he told me that I had to decrease my calorie intake. I then went to the USA and most of the restaurants there list calories on their menus and on my return to London I decided to start doing this on my menu.

Do you not think that this will put diners off or ruin the fine dining experience?
Not at all. In this day and age most people dine out a lot more than they used to and it's not always a special treat and people don't always go out to stuff themselves. To be able to dine out as often as you want and understand the impact on your body is really important. Back in the 1980 when menus listing prices were first given to women, it was a big change. I'm convinced this is the future.

How do you accurately work out the calorie counts of the individual dishes?
It's not as complicated as you might think. We work out the weight of the foods of each dish - the content in grams of butter or fat for instance - and then input it into an online calorie counter which works it out pretty accurately.

What's are the most and least calorific dishes on your menu?
The heaviest is the Angus beef and black olives, which comes with bone marrow and is cooked in a pot with Italian lard, which has 565 calories. The lightest is a radish, fennel and crab salad at 242 calories.

Would you encourage other top-end chefs to follow in your footsteps?
Yes absolutely. I think this is the kind of information that customers will want to have in the future and therefore the top-end chefs have to be at the forefront of giving their customers what they want. At the end of day it's about providing information and in the future I think it'll be as important to list calories on your menu as it is to list the price of a dish.

Are calories on menus the future for restaurants?

French restaurant Medlar in London's Chelsea is reviewed twice this weekend, with AA Gill and John Walsh both agreeing that the food offer is excellent.

In the Sunday Times, Gill says that despite hideously bright light fittings the food is surprisingly good and offer great value. "The food is really unexpectedly good, and at £25 for three courses, for a lunch of this quality, the best value anywhere in Chelsea, which almost makes up for the lights," he says.

Meanwhile, writing in The Independent, John Walsh is equally impressed by Medlar but finds something constrained and buttoned-up, dainty and polite about both the food and service. "One can take formality too far," he says. 

The London Evening Standard's longstanding restaurant critic, Fay Maschler, reviews Roganic, Simon Rogan's two-year pop-up restaurant in London's Marylebone where a tasting menu is available only. She says: "Ten courses at £80 (despite intrinsically low food costs) seems too much money and too much time spent, though the kitchen will presumably speed up as it beds in more firmly."

The Sunday Telegraph's food critic, Zoe Williams, is underwhelmed by French bistro Chabrot. While it looks authentic and tastes authentic, a meal at the Knightsbridge restaurant is not entirely convincing, she says.

Finally, The Observer's Jay Rayner says global menu all too often ends up as a mess on the plate but Anna Hansen at the Modern Pantry makes it a virtue.

The food at celebrity chef Silvena Rowe's first solo restaurant, Quince at London's May Fair hotel, is not quite as grand as the restaurant's interiors, according to John Lanchester.

The Guardian's food critic says he "quite likes" the eastern Mediterranean-inspired menu but adds that due to Rowe's lack of professional kitchen experience, her food is more like that of a home cook. "There is something underwhelming about that if your expectations are keyed to Mayfair, grande luxe and beautifully presented plates," he says.

Another high end hotel restaurant in London, Massimo Restaurant & Oyster Bar at the new Corinthia Hotel, is reviewed by The Times' Giles Coren, who finds very expensive food, which overall, isn't very good.

"It is not that I mind expensive," Coren says. "I'm a sucker for grand and haughty Italian if it is done with passion and freshness and a bit of sex appeal, like at Locanda Locatelli, Theo Randall or Zafferano. But that's not what is happening at Massimo."

The Independent's Tracey Macleod says Rocksalt in Folkestone, Kent, is almost a fairytale come true for Mark Sargeant and Zoe Williams of the Sunday Telegraph says that the Corner Room may be a casual offshoot of Nuno Mendes' Michelin-starred restaurant Viajante, but inferior it most certainly isn't.

Writing for the Observer, Jay Rayner says a visit to US-themed barbecue restaurant Red Dog Saloon on London's trendy Hoxton Square is a complete waste of his time, while the Independent on Sunday's Amol Rajan has a truly awful meal at The Peach Tree in Shrewsbury, Shropshire, where he hopes the chef called in sick.

Finally, the Sunday Times' AA Gill visits the Old Vicarage in Ridgeway near Sheffield, which may be on a weird register, on the idiosyncratic edge of eccentricity but the cooking and the ingredients and the grasp of gastronomy are faultless.