Restaurant reviews are often much like diving into that annual tin of Christmas chocolates – you'll find an assorted bunch with some crowd-pleasing favourites, where one man's dud is another man's diamond (although if you're a strawberry cream fan we can never be friends). With this lot, however, we’re confident you’ll be satisfied with whatever you claim in your sticky paw – be that 1970s chicken Kievs, çemen-glazed Turkish lamb cutlets or a metropolitan menu in the sky. So perhaps our latest round-up of restaurant verdicts is rather more like that luxury truffle selection you hide in your bedroom for (strictly) solo consumption. Except you'll be wanting to tell everyone about these, including the in-laws...
Coin Laundry, Exmouth Market (above)
The interior is suitably retro – wooden school-desk style seating and a beat-up TV complete with Test Card – and the menu follows suit. Classics such as chicken Kiev with Romanesco cauliflower cheese, and sardines on toast (fresh butterflied fish: no cans in sight) focus on quality ingredients and are pulled off brilliantly. Yorkshire profiteroles for dessert are a triumph, as is the cocktail list, which features a Snowball, Sodastream mixers and a Porn Star Martini made with Babycham. To complete the experience, finish off with a game of Connect 4…
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Oklava, Shoreditch (above)
Following rave reviews for Selin Kiazim’s residency at Trip Kitchen & Bar, we had high hopes for her first restaurant – and weren’t disappointed. Oklava’s menu shows off Kiazim’s flair for fusion cooking (she has worked with Peter Gordon at The Providores) as well as honouring her Turkish-Cypriot roots. We began with moist courgette, feta and mint fritters: their fresh filling backed by subtle, warming spice. Vibrant flavours also characterised a dish of simply grilled shell-on prawns with punchy garlic, chilli and fennel-seed sauce…
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Urban Coterie, Old Street (above)
Despite the Franglais name, this 17th-floor restaurant at the M by Montcalm Hotel – a collaboration between Searcys (of The Gherkin and St Pancras Grand) and Anthony Demetre (of Arbutus and Wild Honey) – celebrates all things British. To start, flakey-white Brixham crab gave a fresh taste of the sea, cut by sour apples and celeriac; plump roasted scallops stood proud in their salty XO sauce. A generous slab of rose-pink beef with earthy Jerusalem artichokes and ceps was a soul-nourishing winter main course… For pud, a good old sticky treacle tart.
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This article was published 9 December 2015