Felix's Guide's Reviews

Dinner after the theatre is a well-desired treat. If the play is good you can discuss the inner meanings and if it is bad you have earned your supper.

Kopapa is ideally situated for a post Donmar meal and last night, after having seen Harold Pinter’s Moonlight, I had earned supper for the next millennium. The play was an insult to my intelligence and as my guest said ‘you might as well tape record you conversations at home and pretend that is a play’. I am a great fan of the Donmar but this was a complete waste of time.

So our 9pm table could not have come quick enough. I’m of an age that I can still get goose bumps remembering the opening week of Sugar Club and the arrival of the term ‘Fusion’ cooking to the London scene by Peter Gordon.

Kopapa’s informal, café style atmosphere works well and on the whole he delivers with some interesting cross-border-combos – the ‘Master stock pork belly on shiitake & ginger congee with sweet chilli glaze’ was delicious although I could have done with a bigger portion. Good set of summery salads that are livened up with various ingredients. Mains are a tenner so worth ordering a few and share. Good list of new world wines, as you would expect. All in all most enjoyable and we concluded, after two bottles of Kiwi Pinot, that we would return to Kopapa but never to Pinter.

This is a little gem and just like the little surprises one gets down a back street in Italy or Spain. Unassuming doorway, dodgy stair , above a pub and walls that need painting – but to paint them would kill the place. As I hit the male menopause this is the type of place that makes me feel young. A place for your lover not for your mistress – the later just wouldn't get it.

The food matches the surroundings – good ingredients worked simply, there is no pretense here. Chciken liver pate, duck meat balls, superbly salty zuccini frites, chilli prawns, pigeon breast and great olive oil drizzilled toast. Didn't think the battered soft shell crab worked – batter soggy under the top crust but didn't hold it against them.

Wines by the carafe and prices reasonable.
The real pain is that you can not book in the evenings but then either arrive early or take it easy and have a drink down stairs. I went pre theatre as I need to be gastronomically satisfied before I taking on Arthur Miller.

The other views are fair – both the negative and positive ones. A set menu of salad, steak frites and pudding. It is quick, almost too quick and too prepared. The salad was over dressed and dressed too early leading to wilted leaves. My rare steak was cooked correctly and when seconds arrive you can have pretty well as much as you want. The frites, in my opinion, should have been salted more but were classic ‘allumettes’. If you want a quick meal, where you do not even have to waste time looking at the menu, and the service is more 'gentlemen's club/Oxford College' than top restaurant, this is your place.

Situated in an old bank at the heart of the City this is a massive space to fill. I ate in the upstairs restaurant which looks over the street one side and the carvenous bar area the other.

A classic Green's (Mayfair) menu focusing on seafood / fish but with plenty of meat options. With us oysters preceeded simple, well presented dishes executed with good ingredients – fish and chips (folded, battered plaice, neat stack of chucky chips, mushy mint peas) and haddock, mash and poached egg. Puddings did not disappoint except that the Eton mess had too much cream and not enough bashed-up meringue. Prices pretty fair for that part of the City.

Wine list in price order (bit annoying) has a good amount in the sub £35 level. Service still beding in with some friendly, ‘English as a second language’, unexperienced staff. Management seem to know what they are doing and so should improve this with time.

The groundfloor bar is pretty empty at the moment but hopefully will fill up. There is a rather odd raised private dining area in the bar which I doubt will work – better for pole dancers or a band. Two better, glassed fronted private rooms in the main restaurant.

All in all a brave move that I hope succeeds.

Oh what a disappointment. I love Zuma so much and was wanting the same sort of execution, the same thought of style and the same ‘out of the box thinking’ but all I got was a normal Italian with carpaccio, pastas and pizzas in an ‘OK’ basement. Whilst I understand that they are targeting executives from the nearby dreary Baker Street offices as opposed to the beautiful Chelsea crowd, with pizzas at £12 you need to deliver a lot more. The service whilst keen is simply not trained. Multiple waiters and waitresses came to our table asking the same thing or removing or replacing items (sugar for coffee came and went twice). I’m afraid it is the bar at Alloro for me any time or to sum it up…I would walk over mountains for Zuma but just a block for Il Baretto.

This has always been an awkward room for a restaurant – Petrus only just got away with it. Brasserie St Jacques has ripped out the formal features and fittings and replaced them with a rather artifical Parisian brasserie interior – you get the feel that the designer has read the books but never been to Paris. The orange 'effect' makes for a rather sterile atmosphere.

The menu has all the old favourites that you would expect from a brasserie menu (steak chips, Dover sole, steak tartare, creme brulee etc ) and to a large extent delivers OK on quality when the food arrives. But prices reflect the location rather than the quality – it's a posh cafe rouge in a posh part of town. Doesn't have the buzz of Galvin Bistrot de Luxe which, to me, is a great top end brasserie where you want to have a long winter business lunch finishing at about tea time when it has got dark already.

I just do not get why Sake No Hana has got a following from some celebs – it taking a space that has never really worked for restaurants, you have to go up in an escalator to the room and then down in a lift to the loos! Avoid the sunken seats if you do not want to take your shoes off or suffer backache.

New Japanese restaurant are in a difficult position as they are immediately compared with Zuma or Nobu – while Sake No Hana tries to deliver more traditional Japanese dishes I don't think it beats them for an overall experience. Or maybe it is just that I prefer the 'modern' twist to Japanese food. Service at the beginning was decidedly average but I hear it has improved now. Very expensive – probably just geared at Russians.