Tag: Restaurant
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Coopers, London: The Restaurant Equivalent of pH 7
So here’s the thing. If you’re a restaurant in London, you have to have a thing. You have to be different, or exceptionally good, or have a stunning venue, or a bit of history behind you. You need amazing produce, a kitchen that can do something extraordinary with it, or at the very least one…
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Oz & Isle, Cambridge: All the Looks, Not Quite the Cooking
Australia gets a lot of things right. Beaches and work-life balance are near the top of the list. Sure, they have their issues. An alarming abundance of deadly snakes, for one, and a rather questionable grasp of Olympic breakdancing. But we can overlook those things because anyone who has visited knows that when it comes…
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Coppa Club, Sonning: Cool Without Trying Too Hard
There’s a fine line between somewhere being modern and cool and somewhere being so desperate to convince you it’s modern and cool that you want to leave immediately. Thankfully, Coppa Club in Sonning sits comfortably on the right side of that line. It’s stylish, contemporary and has a nice atmosphere, but without the sort of…
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Green Street Sandwiches, Bristol: A Case of Pork Envy
You know how much I love a new place that an influencer has decided to tell the internet about. You can generally guarantee it’s going to be one of two things: the best thing that has ever happened to mankind, or an unmitigated disaster involving a £19 plate of eggs and a queue that stretches…
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Bravas, Bristol: The Greatest Hits and One Hell of a New Track
There is a particular moment at a concert when a mega-famous rock band, having spent two hours rattling through their greatest hits in front of 50,000 people, announces that they’re going to play something new. The crowd goes quiet. Someone goes to the toilet. A bloke at the bar orders another pint. It’s not that…
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Flat Iron, Bristol: Less Choice, More Steak
I know Flat Iron is a chain. I know. You don’t need to email me. But what they do is very, very good. And I’m slightly surprised more restaurants haven’t figured this out. Because your average restaurant menu these days is basically a small novel. It wants to be all things to all people. Fish.…
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Ständige Vertretung, Berlin: Pork, Politics & a Very Large Lump of Germany
Helmut Kohl and Angela Merkel are probably the only German politicians I can name without having to Google them. Well, I mean, there are others, obviously, but let’s not make this a political science essay. The important thing is that neither of them, particularly, makes me think: lovely, I could murder a schnitzel. And yet…
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Kush, Clifton: A Curry With Delusions of Grandeur
I’m exhausted by reviewing fine-dining Indian restaurants. At one end of the scale you’ve got the really interesting ones, like Gymkhana and Quilon in London, doing something genuinely exciting with the food, backed up by great service. At the other, you’ve got your standard High Street Indian: a decent enough masala, a pint of Cobra,…
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The Three Horseshoes in Batcombe – Where London Escapes to the Country
The Three Horseshoes in Batcombe is the sort of pub that makes you wonder whether someone has built a witness protection scheme for Londoners fleeing Zone 2. It’s deep in Somerset, but feels reassuringly insulated from too much actual Somerset. The locals are there, of course, but they seem carefully curated, like extras who’ve been…
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Maistrali – A Lesson in Human Behaviour (and Overcooked Chicken)
I always feel sorry for restaurants in resort towns. Imagine the predicament. Every evening a river of holidaymakers shuffles past your front door, peering at menus laminated sometime during the Ottoman Empire, trying to decide between five or six almost identical tavernas. The food is probably broadly the same, the prices broadly the same, and…
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