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Gastroblog Restaurant review charts Restaurant review charts - week ending April 01
Gastroblog Restaurant review charts Restaurant review charts - week ending April 01Search Hot Dinners
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Restaurant review charts - week ending April 01
Our latest fortnightly (with a bonus week as we're catching up) round-up of the latest London restaurant reviews from the top UK critics as they are added to our reviews section. This week, there are a host of new entries, including La Bodega Negra, Sticks n Sushi, The Jugged Hare and more... Alyn Williams at the Westbury - overall score 8.5/10 (no change)
 John Lanchester - Guardian Choice quote: "In a richer vein, but also very impressive, was a tiny dollop of onion soup with a miniature wafer of gruyère and finished with the inspired addition of crabmeat. It was everything you want from an onion soup packed into one small flavour-bomb." The Greenhouse - overall score 8.5/10 (no change)
Zoe Strimpel - City AM Choice quote: "Foodwise, all the usual suspects are here: foie gras, lamb, scallops, but they’re presented in stranger, more imaginative ways than normal." Burger & Lobster - overall score 8/10 (no change)
 Marina O'Loughlin - Metro Choice quote: "...If (smaller menus are) going to be one of the food scene’s favourite things, a ‘trend’, I can only applaud. Sometimes, lack of choice is an excellent thing." Dukes Brew & Cue - overall score 8/10 (new entry)
Euan Ferguson - Time Out Choice quote: "Everything else was as close to genuine as you'll find in this city. The meat was tendrilous, sweet, smoky, with crunchy ends and yielding middle." La Bodega Negra - overall score 8/10 (new entry)
Guy Dimond - Time Out Choice quote: "La Bodega Negra - 'The Black Shop' - is as much of a bar, hangout and nightspot as restaurant. It's also about as Mexican as 'The Three Amigos', and just as full of beans." Tacita Vero - View London Choice quote: "La Bodega Negra may follow a familiar formula but it refines it ever so slightly. An impressive venue, with great food, drinks, service and location." Sticks n Sushi - overall score 8/10 (new entry)
Guy Dimond - Time Out Choice quote: "To their credit, the sushi rice was excellent: warm and of fine quality. The sashimi, too, was fresh enough to serve in Japan. Presentation was consistently beautiful, with excellent use of colour contrasts." 10 Greek Street - overall score 7.5/10 (no change)
 Marina O'Loughlin - Metro Choice quote: "The night we visit there are some stellar choices: a properly made risotto, rich with silky shreds of wild boar and fragrant with new season’s garlic; baby squid stuffed with that Mallorcan smoky and spreadable chorizo, sobrasada – like a play on tapas classic, stuffed piquillo peppers, with the ingredients reversed." Bistro Union - overall score 7/10 (down 1)
John Lanchester - Guardian Choice quote: "If the pace of Bistro Union were to pick up a little, and the kitchen does its best work more of the time, this place will be a real boon for its neighbourhood, but it hasn't yet hit its stride." Ceviche - overall score 7/10 (up 0.5)
 Tracey MacLeod - Independent Choice quote: "Whether Ceviche authentically reflects the scope of Peruvian cooking, I'm not the person to ask. But with its buzzy atmosphere, reasonable prices and emphasis on big, bold flavours, it's a very welcome introduction." Chris Pople - Cheese & Biscuits Choice quote: "Apart from the steak, then, the food at Ceviche is good. Service was pitch-perfect too, not too friendly and not too stuffy, all young and enthusiastic and trendily-attired in that New Soho informal way pioneered by Polpo and Spuntino... but at nearly £70 for really not that much food, this is not a restaurant that either produces anything with enough of a wow factor to justify the prices..." Richard & Peter - Harden's Choice quote: "A colleague who followed in our footsteps at dinner time the same day, opined that prices – perhaps a consequence of a menu which is of necessity heavy on the protein front – were on the high side. Given the novelty and the overall high standards of the place, however, she was able to endorse our favourable overall impression." Soif - overall score 7/10 (up 0.5)
 Marina O'Loughlin - Metro Choice quote: "The succinct, daily changing menu is as butch as a barrelful of cage fighters: trotters and scratchings, tête de veau and black pudding." Novikov - overall score 6.5/10 (no change)
 Richard Vines - Bloomberg Choice quote: "If you are affluent, Novikov is a lot of fun. Millions of pounds have been lavished on the decor. It’s glamorous. It’s rich. If it were a private club, I’d be trying to get in." Colchis - overall score 6.5/10 (down 0.5)
 Giles Coren - Times Choice quote: "Of the mains, I loved the chanakhi, a fatty, sticky stew of rich lamb, aubergine and potatoes that held on to the Greco-Turkish vibe in a cosy wintry way. But then there was disappointment in another area where some Greco-Turkish skill would not have gone amiss, with skewers of grilled lamb, pork and veal, which were tight and bouncy and feebly flavoured, which means neither marinated, nor grilled over charcoal, nor properly rested." AA Gill - Sunday Times Choice quote: "There are kebabs, pork, veal and lamb with a plum sauce. Excellent, even by the exalted, multinational standards of Londonistan’s serried meat on sticks. I had a lamb stew with aubergine that was as gripping as a kulak’s kiss." The 10 Cases - overall score 6/10 (up 0.5)
 Matthew Norman - Telegraph Choice quote: "“Nothing clever or showy, just excellent wine and nice, rustic food served by nice, friendly people,” said my friend as we finished the albariño. “Which isn’t the worst formula in the world.” I nodded..." The Jugged Hare - overall score 6/10 (new entry)
 Fay Maschler - Evening Standard Choice quote: "Pot-roasting is a cooking method usually applied to meat that needs to be rendered tender. Quails can just be smacked in a pan or slid under the grill, so it was an odd, and not wholly successful, idea to cook them in a covered casserole with bacon, mushrooms and potatoes." Sarah Guy - Time Out Choice quote: "Game is a feature; a perfectly cooked wood pigeon (from the rotisserie) was helped to star status by accompanying lentils with dripping." Cotidie - overall score 5/10 (new entry)
 AA Gill - Sunday Times Choice quote: "The trouble with all this not inexpensive stuff... was that, while it was commendably crafted and carefully served, it doesn’t savour of much, and what it does taste of is fawning and mumbling and monotone." Fay Maschler - Evening Standard Choice quote: "Indeed, there is generally something rather old-fashioned about this enterprise despite apparent effort with importing ingredients and ideas. But there is a place for old-fashioned. It just shouldn’t cost so much." Richard & Peter - Harden's Choice quote: "But the only real justification for this being almost certainly the most expensive restaurant on this swanky shopping street is some hint of genius. And of that we’re sad to say we could frankly discern none at all." Guy Dimond - Time Out Choice quote: "...we couldn't fault another dish of perfectly-cooked beef sirloin, served with chard and béarnaise; or any detail of the ingredient quality in the entire meal." Kitchen Joel Antunes - overall score 5/10 (down 0.5)
 Giles Coren - Times Choice quote: "Of the mains, I loved the chanakhi, a fatty, sticky stew of rich lamb, aubergine and potatoes that held on to the Greco-Turkish vibe in a cosy wintry way. But then there was disappointment in another area where some Greco-Turkish skill would not have gone amiss, with skewers of grilled lamb, pork and veal, which were tight and bouncy and feebly flavoured, which means neither marinated, nor grilled over charcoal, nor properly rested." Gregg's Table - overall score 2/10 (new entry)
 John Walsh - Independent Choice quote: "If the MasterChef judge can't offer anything more exciting than this, the locals will continue to eat where they're eating now – in Antiko, Pissarro, Zucca, and the dozen other Bermondsey restaurants where you don't feel you're being fed mediocre tat with a celebrity name attached to it." Marina O'Loughlin - Metro Choice quote: "This really is one of the worst meals I’ve eaten since I was regularly forced to eat leathery custard by a variety of particularly sadistic nuns." David Sexton - Evening Standard Choice quote: "It is simply potty that a man who makes his living by appearing as an expert and implacable judge of other people's cooking should put his name to such inadequate delivery of such unambitious dishes."
The Rainforest Cafe Chris Pople - Cheese & Biscuits: "This is an Olympic year - it is not just depressing but potentially incredibly damaging that, with the world's spotlight on London, places like this continue to trade." Rocca di Pappa Kara Dolman - Evening Standard: "Given that Rocca is housed in a building that is formerly part of Christie’s auction house, I was expecting something different from Brixton market-based Manca’s, where diners cram onto basic benches. I just wasn’t expecting Rocca to lack its sibling restaurant’s flavours and charm." Incanto Jay Rayner - Guardian: "Incanto is an attractive space, with bare-wood beams and skylights and a deli at the front that looks rather pleasing. The staff are attentive if a little off the ball... It could be a lovely restaurant, if everybody behind the kitchen door just learned to calm down. Right now a meal there feels like something to be endured." Yipin China Jay Rayner - Guardian: "Those of you who are serious about their food will love it. At the very least go online and have a look at the pictures. It's the kind of visual filth for which the web was invented." Ume Giles Coren - Times: "The dumplings were flabby and plain, with no depth or fire. I ate half of one and left the rest. The laksa was a big hot paper tub of thin soup, not very coconutty, with flavourless shreds of chicken breast, teeny-weeny pointless little shrimp, little cubes of used bath sponge and a lot of the wrong type of noodles." Chisou AA Gill - Sunday Times: "And then we had dumplings that looked like sumo wrestlers’ gum guards and tasted faintly of fat boys’ bad breath. There was a plate of barely grilled and slivered beef in a watery brown sauce that was perfectly unobtrusive, and sidled down the gullet with a little bow and a whispered “Excuse me”." The Empress Zoe Williams - Telegraph: " I'd be here ceaselessly if it were my local; you'd have to hose me out. I'd take the slight undulations of quality as part of life's exciting roulette."
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