Renaissance Girl's Reviews

I usually prefer this iteration of Nobu to it's posher sister up to road – it's much less formal, and ideal if you just want to grab some yummy sashimi.

The quality of the ingredients is crucial in Japanese cooking, and here raw scallops, salmon, squid etc just sing… The room is very much like a very upmarket canteen, and is always buzzing. The service can be incredibly fast, so it you're looking for a dining ‘experience’, you really do want to go to the other restaurant! Last week we were in and out within an hour, and that included about 10 dishes!

Make sure you try the rock shrimp tempura, the yellowtail and jalapeno sashimi, the blackened cod, the tamago (here stuffed with rice), the bento boxes, the wagyu – it's all going to be good! Oh, and it has a very moody and groovy bar downstairs – perhaps if you want to lengthen your visit you could go to the bar first, then move upstairs.

The Square is elegant, the service and the food are flawless, and it should be on every foodies list to visit at least once.

I've been several times and am constantly wondering why I don't eat here all the time – it has that effect of slipping from your memory. I think this is really down the the atmosphere in the restaurant – it feels a little too brightly lit, the clientele tends to include a high proportion of ‘suits’ too.

Having said that, if you can ignore those around you, the cooking is absolutely faultless, if a little unchallenging.

Depending on your sensibilities, Galvin either has a fabulous location, way up in the Hilton and with breathtaking views over London, or perhaps has dizzying effects on your stomach as you peer over the edge. The restaurant itself is very nicely laid out, and with a multi-tier effect, you don't feel the space so much. I assume it was laid out in this way to afford everyone a decent view out of the window…

The waiting staff are very attentive – the sommelier remembered having a little ‘discussion’ on burgundies with the Hubby the last time he'd been in – and the waitress brought us some piping hot bread straight out of the oven – yummy!

The amuse was a tomato water – just fabulous… Fabulous, fabulous – I'm definitely going to make the effort to make it having previously considered it too time-consuming.

I began with the pan-seared foie gras, spiced duck pastilla, confit lemon and date consommé. The foie gras was, yes, you've guessed it – fabulous. But actually the date consommé was even more incredible – I was spooning down to the last drop as the staff tried to take my plate. If I could have a flask of the stuff, I could climb Everest.

The Hubby had the terrine of foie gras, orange purée, spiced salt and toasted brioche. Now the Hubby is renowned in his search for a decent foie gras terrine – he's had it everywhere and is usually disappointed. Here he thought the flavour excellent, he loved the texture (it looked very smooth), he loved the orange, and even the brioche looked crisper and more robust than the usual offerings. I didn't even get a look in!

I then had the slow cooked fillet of beef, braised ox cheek, pomme purée and red wine jus. The ox cheek was deep and earthy, packed with flavour and a great contrast to the fillet. The mash was as smooth and silky as you'd expect, and the jus rich to the point of obsession. A proper ‘you can wipe your finger across it’ richness. And I did.

The Hubby had the real highlight though, Cotswold white chicken, tortellini, broad… More

With what has rapidly become the hottest London restaurant on Twitter, Roganic is something of a joyous enigma. Chef Patron Simon Rogan, Head Chef Ben Spalding and his team are able to turn out extraordinary food in what is essentially a tiny and cramped site. But the genius of the restaurant is that it recognises this restriction and turns it to its advantage.

Very few dishes are served hot, and as a result a number of the dishes are very pure, and incredibly scented. This is also the first tasting menu I've ever managed to get through without feeling faintly ill – a number of the elements are raw, soused, or barely cooked – the resulting menu is fresh, full of texture and flavour. Some ingredients, such as the chenopodiums, hyssop, sweet cicely, lovage and wood sorrel are sourced by a forager, others from their own Howbarrow Farm, located close to their parent restaurant, L'Enclume. Remaining ingredients are sourced as closely as possible, and only from the British Isles.

Although there is a six course menu, I would urge you to go for the 10 course, if you have enough time.

The restaurant itself is behind a discreet French gray facade, and is feels like a minimalistic seaside joint. To go with the more organic feel, the butter is served on stones collected by Ben and his family, the place-mats are coloured like a stoney beach, and the water glasses are an intense sea green. It's a very serene and relaxing room. The staff are very attentive, and very well informed.

We began our evening with a glass of apricot and vodka fizz, with a couple of shards of dehydrated apricot in the glass. The fizz is dispensed at the table in a creamer (and uses just one gas canister). It's a very lovely variation on a Bellini, and I think actually preferable – but I love a vodka martini, and this was also a very good and clean variation on that.

The bread is served warm, and we were offered pumpernickel, spelt, and buttermilk & potato. The butter is brought in from a farm and whipped… More

The Greenhouse – gosh – I hadn't been there for about fifteen years. The last time we'd eaten there it was still being run by Gary Rhodes – I had the most delicious plum tart tartin served with cinnamon ice-cream – yummy. When the Hubby said he'd booked it for us to take some chums as a celebration, I wasn't terribly impressed… ‘No’, the hubby protested, 'they apparently have a Michelin starred chef, who's doing great things…' Well allrighty then… Now, we did arrive a little the worse for wear, but the staff bundled us into the glass box that I assume passes as a private dining space, and I thought things looked really rather positive.

Our amuse bouche were rather good – cubes of salmon with horseradish, little cubes of fois gras, I think, in-between dark wafers of some kind… We ordered a bottle of champagne from the very extensive list, and then the Hubby noticed that there wasn't a bottle of red under about £250… Good lord – thank goodness I was on the white! I calculated the mark up at about 400%… 400%!!! One red was marked up by over 600%. I haven't see mark-ups like that for years! We buy Antinori wines direct from the wholesaler, so I know exactly how much a bottle of Solaia or Cervaro should be, and this was pretty far off the mark!

Now, I'm not going to bitch about how outrageous that is – we were celebrating, in very good company – and we were all having a very good time.

Gradually though, we started to notice a certain surliness in the lead waiter – I think he thought us oafish, and assumed that we weren't paying attention the food – actually we were all paying rather a lot of attention to everything going on around us… (The sommelier by comparison was prompt, courteous and attentive – as well he might have been at those prices.)

As a pre-starter we were given a little demi-tasse of white onion foam, with a herb liquor, exactly as it should be – a little explosion of tastes. Now I'm not a massive eater, so I chose two starters – I had a fois gras terrine with a… More

It's been some time since we at at The Ivy, and we'd remembered being distinctly unimpressed on previous occasions, but, you can get carried away with the hype of some restaurants and here we were again.

The doorman leapt to open our cab, but didn't really look at us and was on a mobile phone – perhaps someone inside the restaurant was giving him instructions? We encountered chatting staff at every stage until we reached our table. Little details like this niggle me – you don't get it in well-run restaurants.

We were actually given a decent table for The Ivy – I have often felt that there was a distinct division in the room – and this seemed less apparent last night. Gradually though it became apparent that there was no longer any division in the room, because most of the people in the room were food tourists… This is the second time in a month that I've been in a very well-known dining room and felt that I was part of some art installation – there were people in tracksuits (?), groups of girls who looked as though they were on a hen night (?), large Americans prodding their food, and random groups of business people openly talking about their deals… I distinctly remember the first time I went to The Ivy about 15 years ago – it really was full of luvvies. The food had been good, but we had been placed in Siberia and felt very much that we were on the outside looking in. Last night felt quite different. The atmosphere had really changed, there was no tinkling laughter, and chinking glass…

But enough of the room – how about the food? The staff knew that we were on a fairly tight schedule, and took our order promptly – we opted to go straight to mains, so that the 9yo could fit a dessert in. Drinks were ordered, some didn't arrive. The tables on either side of us managed to get through at least two of their courses and we sat patiently waiting for our main courses. After over 30 minutes, a member of staff said that dishes were just being plated up – now the 9yo had chargrille… More

I'm not sure why we hadn't been to MW@TB since the refit – it was fully booked for the reopening and I can only assume it just dropped off our radar. However the Hubby was bored of all of our favourites, and looking for inspiration. Well, inspiration he found: he described this as the best meal he'd had in years. It was all utterly delicious, but I do have some reservations. Did any of you eat at Tom Aitken's when it first opened? Well…

We booked a table at very short notice, and actually there was definitely capacity. The room is dark and moody, and full of wanna-be beautiful people. People were pottering about, and being shown the kitchen – the sort of food tourism I usually find irritating – but I was drawn in – what was happening behind that wall of wine?

I'm reticent to bow down before an effigy of Marcus because I'm uneasy about the endless exertions of the kitchen: this isn't food to scoff, this is food you're supposed to worship. The lovely Marcus has fallen foul of the Michelin Prostration Rule: the more desperately you want your Michelin stars, the more you have to prostrate yourself at the feet of fiddly little bits of twiddle and twaddle – all absolutely delicious in their own way, but there is something of the wafer thin mint by the time your reach the end of your meal. Marcus may have two stars right now, but if it went on effort, he'd probably be in a league of his own. Without doubt he has an excellent palate – but we all know that less is more.

Before I write-up a restaurant I sometimes check other reviews – not so that they can modify my opinion – but because the Giles' and AA's of this world are much better at documenting the little twiddly bits than me. Given how complicated the food is at MW@TB, I definitely checked them. I did note that despite saying that they thought Marcus was one of the best cooks in the UK, they both felt he was trying too hard.

The amuse consisted of a little mock cauliflower cheese: a cauliflower shot, cheese foam a parmesan… More