Blog Reviews from The Hedonist

Her latest wheeze is to partner up with Howard for a refurb and relaunch of Sonny’s as Sonny’s Kitchen as a restaurant, cafe and delicatessen...

I had been to the restaurant not long after it had opened in 2000 for a private event but only had a faint memory of the place, so I was keen to return. I had been struck by its quirky interior-stuffed tigers and hanging handbags displayed in a reconditioned Victorian pub-more than its food. Of course back at the turn of the century the trendification of Shoreditch had hardly begun and the Old Blue Last Pub wasn’t a venue for rock n roll wannabes but a proper East End boozer with bands on the weekend...

Beagle is a restaurant and bar situated in a couple of railway arches right next to the station. It’s the baby of Danny and Kieran Clancy who are music promotors and in the kitchen is James Ferguson, who used to run the kitchen at Rochelle Canteen, Margot Henderson’s (wife of St. John’s Fergus) critically acclaimed East London joint...

I turned up at 214 with her Ladyship who commented as we came down the stairs into the dark and rather sexy basement space that it felt a little like entering a 50s styled speakeasy. To get things going we started with a Tom Collins...

Chef/patron Sabbir Karim had told me that he was keen to refresh both the decor and menu at Salaam Namaste bringing in more of the kind of dishes that he was serving in Camden and moving away from the more traditional curry house menu that the restaurant had been serving...

Run by the “rhubarb’ food consultancy and situated in an attractively bright and airy space dotted with artworks, Gallery Mess offers more than the cafe/bar tag suggests with a full Modern European menu on offer along with the cocktails and cakes...

But now as part of the new wave of French joints opening in town (see our reviews of Zedel, Chabrot and Garnier) we have Little Social, le petit bistro brother of The Hedonist’s fave-Jason Atherton’s Pollen St. Social, handily placed over the road from his home base in a site that housed a short-lived and often empty Italian restaurant. Now I may have a fickle heart but I know when it’s love at first sight. So if Balthazar is Katie Boyle, then Little Social is Juliette Greco. If you don’t get it go and read another blog!...

The interior is a symphony in beige, calm on the eye, and staffed by charming if slightly over eager Iberians. The room is very comfortable with the chairs being as well stuffed as the clientele. The menu is £42.50 for three courses with a generous seven options at each stage. It reads very attractively-modern European bourgeois comfort food with a few eastern touches for good measure...

Islington’s The House of Wolf describes itself as a ‘multi-functional, multi-sensory pleasure palace, dedicated to the creative pursuits of dining, drinking, art and entertainment.’ What that means in practice is a ground floor Victorian-era styled pub area known as the Music Hall Bar serving superior bar snacks, an experimental cocktail department, located in The Apothecary on the first floor run by cocktail maestro Stephen Quainton and his team, and a fine dining restaurant on the top floor...

Sam Harrison is a restaurateur with a mission. He is slowly building a group of Modern European Brasseries in the London suburbs delivering something more idiosyncratic and better quality than the chains can manage whilst keeping prices at a reasonable level...

If Ametsa with Arzak Instruction is going to win any prizes, the gong for unlikeliest name is theirs for the taking. It is the London outpost of 3 Michelin-starred Arzak, the San Sebastián restaurant co run by Elena Arzak – voted Veuve Clicquot World’s Best Female Chef in 2012 – and her father Juan Mari Arzak...

Parkway is the main food hub in Camden. It is a pulsating thoroughfare full of restaurants, pubs and clubs.. Namaaste Kitchen sits about half-way down and the interior is an oasis of calm in brown and white after the hurly-burly of the street.

There is no pretending-Balthazar is the hot table du jour. To get a table I had to go on repeat dial for an hour as the booking line opened and the restaurant was packed to the gills with food bloggers like moi and celebrities such as …Heston Blumenthal wearing specs that somehow made him look like Atom Ant. Now London is not short of faux French Brasseries and with Zedel, Colbert, The Wolseley and The Delaunay at the top end of the market there is definitely competition for McNally. However Covent Garden is undergoing something of a rebirth as a gastro-destination and there is nothing quite like this in the area and certainly nothing that has McNally’s transatlantic pulling power...

Harrison’s is an all day brasserie that is the new baby sister of Sam’s, a joint in the much more upmarket West London suburb of Chiswick, which seems to mostly populated by lawyers and media types these days. It’s my guess that Sam Harrison, who owns both operations with the backing of mentor Rick Stein for whom he ran front of house in Padstow, is taking a punt on Balham and certainly the lunchtime we were there we spotted enough yummy mummies to keep the place afloat...

La Hedonista and I visited the Thai restaurant Mango Tree in Belgravia on a cold and snowy February day hoping for authentic flavours and some chilli heat to warm us up. She grew up in Thailand as an American expat and on entering the room commented on how the restaurant felt like the kind of place you might find in a top end Bangkok hotel. This is not meant as a criticism as the best food is to be found either in the hotels or at the opposite end of the spectrum on the streets at the vendor stalls.The original Mango Tree is in Bangkok and there is another outlet to be found in Harrods. The executive chef is an Australian called Ian Pengelly who specialises in pan-Asian food and whose C.V. includes E&O and Gilgamesh. There was the smell of jasmine in the air and the sound of Miles Davis playing on the sound system as we ordered drinks. The cocktail list was very tropical-80s retro with Piña Coladas, Mai Tais and Sex on the Beach on the menu...

Tags Arjun Waney D@D Fringe Theatre Josper London London-Unattached Mayfair Peru Peruvian Pisco Ramen Restaurant South American South Place Hotel The Angler Theatre The Hedonist Tonkotsu Tony Fleming Wendy Vera What to see Recent Posts Review-Mango Tree Review-Pescatori Review-Copita Review-Hawksmoor Air St. Review-Coya Search Review-Pescatori February 19, 2013 By Adrian Pescatori Fitzrovia 57 Charlotte Street, London W1T 4PD 020 7580 3289/http://www.pescatori.co.uk/charlotte_street.php Pescatori Pescatori Charlotte St and its tributaries are full of restaurants feeding the media and advertising types who frequent the neighbourhood. From the hip (Bubbledogs) to the stylish (Roka), from chain restaurants such as Zizzi to the cutting edge (Dabbous), this part of Fitzrovia contains a real cross-section of what’s happening in the London restaurant market today. Pescatori is a Charlotte St family-owned Italian fish restaurant with a sibling in Mayfair’s Dover St. The interior, with its white tiled floor, arches and rough white plasterwork, is something of a throwback to the Mario and Franco trattorie that so revolutionised the London in the 1960s but the menu is more contemporary, offering some interesting and sometimes unexpected dishes...

I love Copita. I’ve being going there since it opened and it really feels as if its owner Tom Luther has brought a little corner of Seville to Soho. The menu features a decent range of fifteen sherries, a strong wine selection and delicious and often creative small plates most of which are hits rather than misses...

The group behind the three Hawksmoor steak restaurants (Guildhall, Seven Dials and Spitalfields) have opened their new operation in an Air St site that has traditionally seen restaurants fail and fail quickly. You have to go back to 1995 when Bruno Loubet ran the site as the urbane brasserie L’Odeon for it to have been seen as anything approaching a destination. But the Hawksmoor team have a strong track record and their mini-chain of butch British steakhouses have struck a chord with critics and punters alike...

When I grow up I think I want to be Arjun Waney. He is the restaurateur behind many of London’s more glamorous joints, creating stylish spaces with food that takes a concept and then runs with it-all perfectly attuned to the wealthier end of the London market. Whether it’s Japanese at Zuma and Roka, Provençal at Le Petit Maison, Italian at Banca and now Peruvian at Coya his locations and menus are grown up and sophisticated without being stuffy in any way...

The restaurant scene in the City has changed radically since Conran (now D&D) restaurants opened Coq d’Argent in 1998. Before then most places would be closed by 9 p.m.. The city gents would scurry off home to the suburbs or to the West End for some action. Coq d’Argent stayed open late, had live music and a postmodernist design aesthetic . D&D’s new City establishment South Place Hotel, reflects the new social geography of London. The cultural centre of gravity has moved eastwards and the hotel reflects this. It has a hip metropolitan New York feel with a sprinkle of Hoxton edge. There are seven bars and two restaurants and up on the top seventh floor sits The Angler...

In a post Xmas haze my interest was piqued by The Park Plaza Sherlock Holmes Hotel’s restaurant Sherlock’s Bar & Grill 500 calorie 3 course meal offer and when an invite arrived to sample it I was happy to oblige. Could 500 calories really be spread over three courses and would they be tiny? This was the mystery that we were hoping to solve. I say I was happy to oblige but in reality this meant my dining partner Dr Watson-sorry I meant to say Fiona from London-Unattached .com-was doing the obliging going for the Lo Cal option whilst I went for the Hi Cal full fat menu-well I had been for a run that morning. We opened our investigation over a delicious bottle of Sauvignon Blanc Vidal Estate. New Zealand. (£32) which was crisp and floral with an Elderflower nose and distinct Melon note which we decided wouldn’t count as real calories as it was liquid…

In the last couple of years Marylebone has become home to a number of significant restaurant openings. Donostia and Roganic have brightened up London’s food landscape and are now joined by Zoilo, the new kid on the block that is making considerable waves. Chef Diego Jacquet and his team at Zoilo are offering an alternate take on Argentinian food, showcasing a greater diversity of food and wine than the steak and Malbec that dominates the menus of many of London’s pampas pitstops. Small sharing plates are what is on offer at this sister restaurant to Jacquet’s other venture, Casa Malevo, which is situated in Connaught Village. There is steak on the menu but it’s not the main event here; instead you are presented with octopus, mackerel and sweetbreads, with sides of endive and pomegranate or beetroot and goat’s curd. It’s enough to make any self-respecting gaucho cry, but for the refined inhabitants of Marylebone it hits the spot...

It’s always fun to check out the latest Soho opening. Disiac is marketing itself as an informal Italian seafood and champagne bar with a emphasis on oysters- hence the name…aphro-Disiac… The rather cool interior feature grey brick walls and white leather seats and counters surrounding an open kitchen. Discrete photos of people engaged in various bondage related activities adorn the walls-well we are in Soho after all! We opened proceedings with an enlivening glass of Tenuta Santome prosecco (£6.50) tasting of almonds and peach. Disiac has a very reasonably priced lunch and early evening set menu at £11.50 for two courses and £15.80 for three. We opted for the a la carte which features an oyster/raw bar with half a dozen Colchester Rock Oysters at £10.75 and a Plateau de Fruit de Mer at £32. Because of the chill October weather we opted for the warmer climes of the starter, pasta and mains menus...

SUDA has been open for just over a year and is a sister outlet to the already well-established Soho restaurant Patara. Handily positioned off Longacre in Covent Garden, my guest and I went on a busy Wednesday lunchtime and were intrigued to see if the self-styled Thai Cafe Restaurant could deliver the authentic flavours that she,as someone whose early years were spent in Bangkok, finds so irresistible...

I have been meaning to go to Trullo for quite a long time now but somehow the schlepp up to North London never quite happened, so when I received an invite from Fiona Maclean of http://www.london-unattached.com/. I hopped onto the overground, put on my thermals and hoped for the best. It has been on my radar as a ‘cheaper than The River Cafe‘ option, along with Zucca in Bermondsey, for those of us who like our Italian food to be ‘sophisticated rustic’ but at a price point that isn’t going to break the bank...

For those of us who have been knocking around the London restaurant scene for the last few decades, seeing Eric Garnier controlling the front of house has always been a reassuring sign. Whether expertly directing platoons of staff at mega-brasseries Quaglinos and Bank in the 90′s, or working on a more human scale at Koffman’s and Racine more recently, you always felt that you were watching a master of his art. Racine was all about returning to the roots of French bourgeois cooking (racine means root) and it is this style, which is now almost an endangered species rather than the mainstream, that Garnier offers in his eponymous Earl’s Court restaurant. Heading up the kitchen is Andreas Engberg who ran the kitchen at Racine for many years and fans of the Knightsbridge stalwart, where some critics have noted a decline in standards since Engberg’s and Garnier’s departure, will love Garnier...

Tucked away in a hidden bijou alley off Knightsbridge sits Chabrot Bistrot d’Amis, an unpretentious gem of a restaurant that ticks most of the boxes that you could hope for from your fantasy local bistrot. The tablecloth is red and white, the chairs are darkwood and bowbacked, the seating intimate and the menu reads like a greatest hits of bistrot classics. In fact it is only the clientele, the usual international Knightsbridge mix, that breaks the illusion that you aren’t in a prosperous bourgeois little town somewhere indeterminate in Southwest France. There’s a couple of wealthy looking blonde women speaking in Spanish checking out the men in the room; an older chap from somewhere in the Levant sports an unlikely toupee and has a much younger woman as his dining companion, she is nodding far too attentively to be his daughter; and then there is an English couple. The husband is showing off. He shouts his order in an exaggerated French accent as his wife looks away. She has a dead look in her eyes.The waiters, displaying considerable sang-froid, reply in English just to wind him up...

Modern European, eclectic, seasonal, neighbourhood and informal. Those words promise so much, but to deliver the formula successfully takes a clarity of vision and sense of integrity too often lacking from restaurants that use them as buzzwords. However two recently opened Soho joints have managed to join those dots together. In Dean St DUCKSOUP opened in a flurry of new media hype; cramped, noisy and with a byov (bring your own vinyl) policy it wowed the hip young Soho crowd as well as the critics. A few weeks later chef Cameron Emirali (The Wapping Project) and his partner Luke Wilson opened up 10 Greek St. The restaurant shares DUCKSOUP‘s no evening booking policy and the ubiquitous white tiling shared by most of the recent new Soho openings but is marginally more sedate though in no way lacking in energy which radiates out from the open kitchen...

Restaurateurs Chris Corbin and Jeremy King are not natural revolutionaries. Their other outposts, The Wolseley and The Delaunay, are grand, conservative and exclusive. However with Brasserie Zedel they have come up with an offer that combines retro glamour with a much more democratic vision. Situated on the site of the old Regent Palace Hotel and in the space occupied by the long departed Atlantic, Brasserie Zedel is a loving distillation of all that is fine about the Parisian grandes brasseries, think La Coupole meets Bofinger, combined with an additional cafe, jazz bar and cocktail bar...

I love going to Marylebone. There is something very feminine about the High St and the roads that criss-cross it, the way it nestles between the commercial vigour of the Marylebone Road to the north and the retail horror of Oxford St to the south. The shops are like the well-heeled women who inhabit this oasis of metropolitan charm, good looking with well maintained interiors and an understated and individual chic. Amongst all this good taste sits Roganic, the clever, creative country cousin who has come to London to make her mark...

Mari Vanna is a mythical Russian hostess who welcomes you into her pimped up fantasy dacha and then stuffs you with pancakes, dumplings, cream and cakes, washed down with intensely flavoured vodkas. You submit because she is utterly charming and seductive; as you leave you realise that not only has she emptied your wallet but also that your trousers don’t seem to fit anymore...

Camden has long been known as a centre for live music rather than as a food destination but with the opening of The Foundry, Camdenites, as well as visitors from outside the borough, now have somewhere they can visit safe in the knowledge that they can eat well. Attached to the arts venue The Forge, The Foundry offers an unpretentious yet civilised space for eating amongst the urban buzz. The space itself is modular and can be split into a variety of configurations with the front section hosting the bar, a restaurant section in the middle and at the back, a concert area with pride of place going to a rather sexy looking Steinway grand. There is also a more formal restaurant space upstairs that is only open in the evenings. The bar has a cocktail menu featuring botanically infused drinks using homemade marmalades, infusions and cordials created from plants and herbs grown on the restaurant’s wall, however my guest and I opened proceedings with a well-sourced glass of prosecco from the wine list...