Test Drives

When sloaney Chelsea favourite, the Admiral Codrington got a makeover and a new Head Chef to boot last year, Hot Dinners was right in there in the first few weeks to check out this new gastropub restaurant. So far so good. Until it transpired over the intervening months, that we'd made a huge tactical error in not trying chef Fred Smith's burgers...

Shoreditch was buzzing last night for one of the first nights of the British Airways pop-up dining lounge Flight BA2012 which fuses art, cinema and food. Open until April 17, the gallery, cinema and dining lounge features the work of three competition winners who've been mentored by Heston Blumenthal, Tracey Emin and Richard E Grant. While anyone can...

Michelin starred Danish restaurant North Road has just started cooking lessons.  We popped along to try our hand in its kitchen.

Mele & Pere has Andrea Mantovani as its chef, who has worked in Arbutus, Wild Honey and Les Deux Salons. We went along to see how he fares in his own restaurant in Brewer Street.

Popular South Kensington restaurant L'Etranger is expanding downstairs with the opening of its new lounge bar and fusion restaurant, Meursault. We head along to see how it compares to the original.

As Quilon's Sriram Aylur has taken over Bombay Brasserie in South Kensington, we popped along to see what the really posh Indian restaurant could pull off.

We try out a new all-day diner in King's Cross, to see if its American influences are enough to impress the throngs of commuters..

We try out the new vegetarian restaurant from the people behind Vanilla Black, Orchard in Holborn, and see what the team can do when they step away from their fine dining original.

We head to the Odeon at Whiteleys in Bayswater to check out their brand new luxury cinema, with food created by Rowley Leigh.  Can fine dining and film watching go well together?

What can you tell me about Quo Vadis? TV and film folk, media luvvies, foodies of all shapes and sizes all congregate here - Quo Vadis is a venerable canteen for Soho's movers and shakers that's been a restaurant since 1926 and was the former home of Karl Marx. Between 1996 and 2007 it was co-owned by Marco Pierre White and Damian Hirst, and then...

What can you tell me about Roti Chai? It's an Indian restaurant nestled in the heart of Mayfair - but with a difference. Roti Chai's main speciality, and one you'll see as you enter the brightly lit first floor, is of Indian Street food. So the restaurant is split into two - the upstairs mainly focuses on the street food aspect, but the...

Splitting opinion in the food community like a oyster, Tom Aikens' Chelsea restaurant has recently opened with a brand new facelift. Hot Dinners went along to check out whether this particular comeback kid could really pull it off. What can you tell us about Tom Aikens? Having been closed since summer for a makeover that included both decor and...

What can you tell me about Dabbous? The restaurant is named after its chef, Ollie Dabbous, who was Head Chef at Texture and began his career with Raymond Blanc at Le Manoir au Quat Saisons (who has been a big supporter of this new restaurant). He's also spent time working at the Fat Duck, Noma and NYC's WD-50. This is his first solo venture and...

What's Novikov all about? It's the first restaurant outside Russia for Moscow's biggest restaurateur Arkady Novikov. Where is it? On Berkeley Street - opposite Nobu Berkeley, it takes over much of the corner spanning three floors. The ground floor is the Asian restaurant on the corner of Berkeley and Mayfair Place, then there's an Italian...

What can you tell us about Kitchen Joel Antunes? In the 90’s one of the most popular dining destinations in London had to be Les Saveurs in Mayfair. Run by the impressively trained chef Joel Antunes, Les Saveurs couldn’t seem to get a bad review if it tried. After an extended trip to the US where he launched the highly acclaimed Joel in Atlanta,...

What can you tell us about Pitt Cue Co? The brainchild of Tom Adams and Jamie Berger, it sees the BBQ trailer folk who created a storm under the Hungerford Bridge last summer, transferring to bricks and mortar accommodation just off Carnaby St. Where is it? On the corner of Newburgh St and Ganton St. Who’s it suitable for? Carnivores in all...

Ever since it reopened its doors after 36 months and £220 million of refurbishment, the Savoy has been busy pushing its future, whilst never losing sight of its heritage. The American bar, for example. has been sensitively given a gentle push into the 21st century but still retaining all of its original allure. Hot Dinners popped in just before...

What can you tell us about Mishkin's? It's the latest in Russell Norman's slowly burgeoning Soho/Covent Garden empire, following in the footsteps of Polpo, Polpetto, Da Polpo and Spuntino. While it retains many of the features of its predecessors (counter dining, sharing plates, and a bare-brick Lower Manhattan vibe), this time the restaurant is...

What can you tell us about Aurelia? In 312 BC, as part of the ongoing Roman expansion, the construction of the Via Aurelia road began. Over the following few centuries, what started out as a road that ran along a portion of the northern coast of Italy, was extended and now stretches as far as northern France and Spain. We imagine this historic...