Test Drives

Backseat Batalis rejoice! A new chef masterclass series - otherwise known as culinary bootcamp for beginners - has been launched at Gordon Ramsay’s plush Belgravia eatierie Petrus. Diners are taken straight into the heat of the kitchen in full lunch service swing in a class designed to take the chef’s table experience up a notch. Hot Dinners was...

Hot Dinners tries out the New York inspired restaurant in Fitzrovia.

The past year or so has been something of a magic makeover for Covent Garden as it gradually transformed from being a culinary wasteland where only those who thought a tofu burger or Cornish pasty were the giddy heights of what the food world could offer would enjoy eating there, to something of a dining destination in its own right. Recently...

It's a lazy shorthand we know, but there's something to be said for eating in a restaurant where a majority of the customers hail from the same part of the world that the cuisine originates from. It does make you feel that the kitchen must be doing something right. So, when invited to try out the Santino Busciglio's Mennula in Charlotte Street,...

Inamo, the Oriental fusion dining brand which blends sushi and sashimi with iPod-style touch ordering, has been thumbing its nose at traditional London high dining for over a year with its Soho outpost. Flushed with success, the duo behind this innovative concept recently added to their stable with Inamo St James, perched appropriately enough,...

It’s been referred to as ‘the Japanese tequila’, but has never really found its feet in the capital. With very few dedicated tastings, bars or shops, how much do we really know about sake? Saki, a Japanese restaurant/shop/tasting room hybrid tucked unobtrusively behind Smithfield market, offers an authentic taste of the Japanese nectar. Hot...

Fifteen, Jamie Oliver's restaurant which sets out to give a leg up to youngsters, is one of those places that Hot Dinners has always intended to go to, but were put off by the alleged difficulty of getting a table. It hadn't even occurred to us to try the place for breakfast until we were recently invited to try the morning service out with a...

The recent relauch of the Savoy Hotel got so much press that another major London hotel revamp seems to have gone almost under the radar. The Four Seasons Park Lane closed n 2008 for just over two years for a £125 million overhaul using Pierre-Yves Rochon, the same designer as The Savoy to propel it into the 21st century. If you've been before,...

Movers and shakers in Primrose Hill may recall the past few years of Odette’s, the bar and restaurant set snugly amongst a row of Victorian houses, with mixed feelings. Its chequered past has involved a history stretching back to 1978, and most recently was under the leadership of Mark Powers (allegedly an uninspiring era). Now under the...

It must be emotionally draining to open a restaurant burdened with the high expectations that Dinner by Heston has had, and certainly Blumenthal and head chef Ashley Palmer Watts looked both exhausted and elated when we dined there on opening week. As well they might - for this restaurant has clearly been a labour of love for the pair of them...

Quo Vadis has always been a favourite Hot Dinners haunt (particularly whenever we manage to gain access to the members' club upstairs) so when we were invited to try out the new QV Bar, we may have reacted with rather unseemly haste. The QV Bar launched in January and occupies a space previously taken by part of the main restaurant. As owner Sam...

January can be a tough month for the food lover. Whether or not you’re facing the dreaded detox, or even braving an alcohol ban, there’s certainly a heaped serving of guilt that goes along with each decadent meal after a bloated Christmas period. Luckily enough, a few restaurants this month are proving that detoxing can be more pleasure than...

Opening a Danish restaurant in London just now could rightly be considered a stroke of genius. Not only have the British crowned René Redzepi King of Chefs by voting his Copenhagen restaurant Noma the World's Best Restaurant™, but London's foodies are also big fans of some of Noma's many London-based alumni - namely Ben Greeno of Hackney's Tudor...

We're always partial to good sushi here at Hot Dinners and on a freezing winter's night, we're not inclined to go too far to find it. So we were happy to take up the offer of a free sushi-making class from Sushi Academy London who are weeks away from launching their new restaurant and academy just off the Holloway Road. Pained, or as they more...

Hot Dinners' baking efforts have, in the past, been varied to say the least. We may be able to bake a mean brownie - but could always do with some decent training. So we were particularly pleased to be invited to be among the first to try out the new Waitrose Cookery School on the Finchley Road. Situated above an enormous Waitrose, we were...

This week, London had a sweet and creamy answer to those tired out by the hedonistic pleasures of London cocktail week – the simultaneous celebration of London Chocolate Week. Some enterprising bars chose to combine the two with chocolate flavoured cocktails and liqueurs, but for the true cocoa lover, there was only one place to head – your local...

There was a frisson of excitement at last night's launch of the Savoy Truffle Club's London Restaurant Festival pop-up when chef Gavin Billenness's heavily pregnant wife (who'd greeted us all at the start of the evening) went into labour. She rushed off to hospital, closely followed by Gavin who, total trouper that he was, had stayed until the...

After last year's hugely successful launch of Polpo - the immediately popular Venetian bacarro by way of New York - there was almost immediate speculation on what restaurateur Russell Norman would come up with next. The answer eventually came that he was going to be opening Spuntino in Autumn, when suddenly Norman surprised everyone when he...

The foodie equivalent of the once-popular Beaujolais Nouveau run, the race to get the first grouse down from the first shoot on the Glorious Twelfth to restaurant tables here in London has become a big deal. Now while we certainly weren’t the first to try grouse in London, we did think it worth while celebrating the first grouse in style, so we...

We’d heard a lot about Min Jiang from other London foodies who’d praised both the views and particularly the restaurant’s famous Peking duck. But we were invited to try out something a little different last month at Min Jiang’s Summer Sake Pairing Chinese Food Dinner. Situated at the top of the Royal Garden Hotel in Knightsbridge, Min Jiang was...