Recently in The Restaurant Category

Gordon Ramsay's latest restaurant, Bread Street Kitchen, is the kind of place only its mother could really love, according to Jay Rayner.

The Observer's food critic says that while the restaurant at the One New Change development in the City of London may be big, brash and bold, the penthouse pricing, dysfunctional service and pedestrian cooking are a letdown.

Meanwhile Giles Coren, writing in the Times, says Lussmann's Fish & Grill in St Alban is everything a modern restaurant should be, serving great food and having a serious commitment to sustainability.

The interior but definitely not the food at Busaba Eathai in Bicester Village, Oxfordshire, dazzles Zoe Williams of the Sunday Telegraph, who says the Thai menu simply isn't good enough. 

The Sunday Times' AA Gill leaves Hedone in Chiswick with a rounded sense of satisfaction and replete wellbeing, scoring Mikael Jonsson's cooking a perfect five, while the Independent's John Walsh utterly, utterly, utterly, utterly loves the old-fashioned virtue of Rules in London.

Fay Maschler of the London Evening Standard doesn't enjoy her lunch at Assemblage in Shoreditch but applauds James Knight-Pacheco, a former TV star from the Restaurant with Raymond Blanc, for opening up on his own.

Finally, Time Out's Guy Dimond enjoys the tapas at Copita in Soho, the second outlet from the team behind Barrica, so much, he eats his way through the entire menu.

Everybody loves Raymond Blanc but his latest tirade has left even one of his biggest fans (moi) slightly bewildered.

To grab a few headlines and promote his latest cookery show, Raymond Blanc's Kitchen Secrets which kicked off on the BBC last night, the French chef has lashed out at the TV industry for sensationalising food.

The two-Michelin-starred chef patron of Le Manoir aux Quat'Saisons in Oxfordshire said he had refused offers to appear on reality TV shows including ITV's Hell's Kitchen and the BBC's Strictly Come Dancing.

"I did a lot of shows in the 1980s, but I chose to stop because TV started sensationalising food," he told the TV Times.

"I don't want to be remembered as a prima ballerina; nor do I want to beat people around the head. That's not cuisine - it's sensationalism!"

Raymond clearly has a point here but has he forgotten his very own TV show The Restaurant which gives people with absolutely no hospitality training or experience the chance to run their own restaurant?

Isn't that just a tiny bit of sensationalism too?

Raymond Blanc's The Restaurant winners JJ and James unpopular choice

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.