Recently in Mandarin Oriental Category

Brett Graham's two-Michelin-starred restaurant the Ledbury in London has won yet another award after being named the top restaurant in the UK in the Sunday Times Food List.

The award comes after the Ledbury recently topped both the Zagat and Harden's surveys for best food in London and after Graham earlier this year won the prestigious Chef of the Year Catey.

The Sunday Times Food List is based on food quality alone, chosen by 8,000 restaurant goers from across the UK and compiled by Harden's Restaurant Guide in conjunction with Rémy Martin.

Graham commented: "It's a huge honour to top the list, especially as it comes from such a broad base of customers. This is a testament to everyone in the extremely talented and energetic young team here at the Ledbury."

Raymond Blanc's Le Manoir aux Quat' Saisons in Great Milton, Oxfordshire, came second in the Food List while last year's winner, Gidleigh Park, placed third. 

Gidleigh Park also won the Rémy Martin X.O. Excellence Award for Best All Round Restaurant, while Marcus Wareing at the Berkeley picked up the Coeur de Cognac Award for Best Dessert, and Heston Blumenthal's Dinner at the Mandarin Oriental received the Rémy Martin V.S.O.P Best Newcomer Award.

Other findings from the Sunday Times Food List, which will publish the top 100 restaurants in Britain in full on Sunday (30 October), include that half of the top 100 restaurants are outside London (up from 40% last year); while Asian restaurants have fallen by half; and there are 31 new entries.

Three-Michelin-starred US chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten's new London venture Spice Market deserves to bomb, according to Matthew Norman.

The Daily Telegraph's food critic finds only grey gloop and vegetable slurry at the South East Asia-inspired restaurant housed in the W London Leicester Square.

"Awaiting us in the valley of death was steamed pollack with shiitake mushrooms and ginger, the ugliest dish I have ever seen," Norman complains. "Mounds of drab white fish were adorned with a hideous grey-green spring onion and tarragon gloop, while the mushrooms were as stone cold as the fish."

Writing in The Independent, Tracey MacLeod finds something disorientating about Nopi, the new all-day brasserie from Yotam Ottolenghi, with its unfamiliar ingredients, unpredictable meal structure and unclassifiable décor.

She says: "That disorientation intensified after a visit to the loos, a nightclub-style hall of mirrors which makes it hard to avoid catching unexpected views of yourself mid-act. I'll do anything for lunch, but I won't do that."

Meanwhile the Sunday Telegraph's Zoe Williams finds the food at Dinner by Heston Blumenthal a bit unsurprising but adds that even when playing it safe the chef still manages to spellbind.

The Observer's Jay Rayner says Vietnamese eatery Café East is the best kind of cheap restaurant while The Independent's Lisa Markwell finds Meateasy so trendy it hurts but adds that it does serve the very best of fast food.

Finally writing in The Guardian, John Lanchester enjoys the Iberico pork at Opera Tavern, the latest venture from tapas specialists Salt Yard Group.

The opening of Heston Blumenthal's eagerly awaited London restaurant has been delayed.

Dinner by Heston Blumenthal, which was set to open at the five-star Mandarin Oriental hotel in Knightsbridge on 1 December, will now not open until the end of January.

Booking lines, which were meant to open today, have also been delayed and the restaurant will now start taking reservations from 1 December on 020 7201 3833.

Dinner is Blumenthal's first restaurant venture outside Bray, where he runs the three-Michelin-starred Fat Duck and the Hind's Head and the Crown pubs.

The kitchen will be headed up by the Fat Duck group executive chef Ashley Palmer-Watts, with the menu celebrating the best of British produce and inspired by recipes dating back to the 16th century.

Dishes will include bergamot cured mackerel salad; slow cooked short rib of beef; and scallops with cucumber ketchup and peas; with a set lunch menu priced £25 for three courses and dinner starting from £55 for three courses à la carte.

Blumenthal's restaurant will be housed in the space formerly occupied by the Mandarin Oriental's Park and Foliage restaurants with expansive windows offering views over Hyde Park.

Interiors will be developed by US-based designer Adam D. Tihany, who said the restaurant will reflect the chef's modern take on tradition. Features will include floor to ceiling glass walls between the kitchen and dinning room as well as a pulley system modelled on a 16th century design for the Royal British Court's kitchens resembling an oversized watch, mechanically rotating a spit over an open fire.

Dinner by Heston Blumenthal will be the second high profile opening at the Mandarin Oriental, which earlier this year opened renowned US-based French chef Daniel Boulud's Bar Boulud.

Heston Blumenthal has unveiled the name of his highly anticipated London restaurant at the Mandarin Oriental hotel which will be called Dinner by Heston Blumenthal.

The restaurant, which is set to open at the luxury Knightsbridge hotel in November, will serve a menu centred on contemporary British food based on historical concepts.

The kitchen will be headed up by the Fat Duck group executive chef Ashley Palmer-Watts, who will showcase some of the dishes at Italian chef congress Identità London next week.

Blumenthal said the name Dinner reflects the concept the restaurant is based on. "I wanted to find a name that encapsulated the concept, which has a strong focus on dishes inspired by historic British gastronomy, but was also a bit of fun," he said.

"There has always been confusion in the UK over the names of our midday and evening meals and their origins, so researching this, I discovered the word dinner comes from the old 13th century French word disner, which initially stood for breakfast, and developed to the main meal of the day."

Blumenthal's restaurant will be housed in the space currently occupied by the Mandarin Oriental's Park and Foliage restaurants with expansive windows offering views over Hyde Park.

Interiors will be developed by US-based designer Adam D. Tihany, who said the restaurant will reflect the chef's modern take on tradition. "It will be relatively classic - wooden floors and coffered ceilings - but it'll have some quirkiness to it, too, to give a sense of Blumenthal's creative way of thinking," he said.

Dinner by Heston Blumenthal will be the second high profile opening at the Mandarin Oriental, which last month opened renowned US-based French chef Daniel Boulud's Bar Boulud.

French-born US chef Daniel Boulud's first European venture, Bar Boulud at London's Mandarin Oriental hotel, is the focus of the weekend's restaurant reviews. And luckily for the chef, the restaurant does not disappoint the critics.

Writing for The Sunday Times, AA Gill finds the best burgers at Bar Boulud, which he otherwise considers a mediocre restaurant albeit with excellent service.

"Burgers, for all their mythology, are monoglot food," he says. "These ones manage to retain their oafish, redneck muscle, but have an added French je ne sais quoi. A bit of wit. A good pick-up line."

Meanwhile John Walsh of The Independent experiences faultless flavoursome cooking at Bar Boulud and says both the chef and his bar are "hugely welcome in the metropolis".

And although The Observer's Jay Rayner gets annoyed during the booking process at Bar Boulud, once he dines there he is impressed with the menu and value for money it offers.

Meanwhile in The Independent on Sunday Toby Young is impressed with Michel Roux Junior's co-venture with Compass' Restaurant Aossociates, Roux at Parliament Square. He declares the restaurant, where former Roux Scholar Daniel Cox is head chef, more of a classy coalition than culinary compromise.

Matthew Norman, writing in The Guardian, discovers a menu of inconsistent quality at Viajante, where Portuguese chef Nuno Mendes is fighting an "internal battle between technical excellence and plain foolishness".

Jasper Gerard of The Daily Telegraph says Paramount atop London's Centre Point building, which last month opened to the public, is tough on prices and tight on portions but the view is worth stomaching the food.

In The Times Giles Coren is experiencing the post-honeymoon-blues but says former Roussillon chef Alexis Gauthier's new restaurant at Lindsay House in Soho offers unarguably great cooking worth two Michelin stars.

So it was true after all. Following months of speculation and denial, Mandarin Oriental has finally confirmed that three-Michelin-starred French chef Daniel Boulud will open a restaurant at the luxury hotel.

The announcement follows that of fellow three-Michelin-starred chef Heston Blumenthal opening his first London restaurant at the Knightsbridge hotel next autumn.

Boulud will launch French restaurant Bar Boulud in the space of the former Grill restaurant of the luxury hotel. It will be modelled on the Bar Boulud in New York and will offer a French bistro menu with signature terrines and pâtés made on site under the direction of acclaimed charcutier Gilles Verot.

Located at street level with a separate entrance, the 165-seat restaurant's interiors will be developed by renowned designer Adam Tihany and will feature contemporary references to French wine making culture.

Interiors will include a bar lounge, red leather banquettes and chairs, a bar topped in zinc with a cork panel coating and an open kitchen as the focal point of the main dining space. There will also be a charcuterie bar featuring a glass counter displaying the restaurant's signature terrines and a selection of cheeses.