Richard's Reviews

If a meal is eaten in a restaurant and nobody tweets a picture of it, did it have any taste?  I don't know what the fascination with taking pictures of food comes from and, whilst the shoulder of deer at the Harwood was a delight to behold, I'm afraid I just don't get why, when it arrived at the next door table, everyone got out their cameras and iPhones to take pictures of it.

I know some restaurants ban photographs (after all, the food porn shots taken for a restaurant's website take an age to line up and a fortune to get right, so who wants a badly lit snap going viral?), but you shouldn't have to.  What makes people think that an evening of eating, drinking and good conversation can be made even better by taking pictures of the food?  Sure, capture the fun by taking pictures of each other (I find that this often helps fill in gaps in the evening), but the food?

Some septic friends of ours were in town, and wanted a gastropub experience. In fact, it seems that most of our fellow diners were from across the Pond.  The Harwood is a pub. It serves beer and scotch eggs (more of which later). It also has a Michelin star. On balance, I think that this is a good thing; Michelin moving with the times, and the tastes, where gastropubs are doing what inns of old used to do, by serving good quality food with which to accompany an ale or two.

Ok, so the wine list is good here too, but the idea of a less formal setting than a restaurant to get great nosh is one innovation going the other way across to the US.

The Harwood is a real pub too; along with the diners there are the drinkers, equally as welcome.  It is stuck on a back road off Fulham Broadway, around the corner from the home of the worst team to win the Champions League since Porto.  So cheap it is not.

We started with some of those scotch eggs. A scotch egg used to be a slab of sausage meat wrapped around a solid hen's egg coated in orange breadcrumbs, served straight from the fridge. Now you find them on every trendy… More

If imitation is the most acceptable part of worship, then Tom Pemberton must worship Fergus Henderson. He used to work with the great man, and it shows, with Fergus’s influence being felt across everything in Hereford Road. Well, almost everything: whilst all three outposts of the St John’s Empire are minimalist white-on-white, HR has gone for a splash of colour. Not much of course, but the banquettes along one wall are red, and the walls ivory, rather than just white.

Entry to the restaurant, which is just off Westbourne Grove, is alongside the open kitchen, where Tom and his crew do not so much seem to be slaving away, as enjoying themselves. A huge rib of beef sits resting. Pans are ready, the grill is fired up and the room is starting to fill. There are tables along this alleyway, but the main restaurant is at the end, sunken down a few steps, light playing on the walls from the circular skylight.

Being May it is cold and wet, so any thoughts of light dishes or wines are out the door. Looking at what others have said, I really must come back in the game season. Today, however, is a day for red wine and a slice of that rib of beef.

The service is the only thing that didn’t really quite work for me, a complaint that I have had before about St John’s. It isn’t rude, it’s just a bit slow; a bit too relaxed, with not enough attention for so many tables. Having got our order in (eighteen minute wait for the quail, we are told), we cracked open the wine list.

Like too few restaurants these days, the wine list is short and on the cheaper side. Nothing standout, no trophy wines, but some good regional French reds. Just what we were looking for: a cheeky shiraz/viognier to start, some serious Portuguese and a classic claret to round off. All in the twenties.

The menu is as you’d expect from Modern British; short on description, big on fresh, seasonal produce. Nettle soup, beetroot and asparagus on the starter list, guinea fowl, rabbit and lemon sole on the main. If you want… More

Tiny, cramped with magnificent sherries, Bar Pepito is as fabulous a place to grab a slice of jamon, some quesos and a manzanilla or pedro ximinez as you will find in London. In fact, it wouldn't be out of place in Catalunya.

So there are only three tables, but do the Spanish thing and stand up, grab a nibble and a glass of something chilled and have a great time.

When San Pellegrino anoints its 50 Best Restaurants In The World later in the month, it is a fair bet to assume that 10 Greek Street will not make the list. Good for them: this is one of the new group of places (Duck Soup, The Ten Cases etc.) springing up in Soho and Covent Garden that are not Michelin Star chasers, but want to provide good, honest cooking, in a pleasant atmosphere. And they succeed marvellously.

That they take bookings was always going to make it a plus for me, as it meant that I could be sure that I could meet my companions at a certain time and we would get a seat. Call me old fashioned, but that sort of works best for me.

So a lovely sunny lunchtime found us at a small table, some hunks of bread, some salt and a bottle of peppery olive oil laid out before us. Why do some places assume that you are going to want balsamic vinegar with the oil? I don’t. It ruins the taste of the oil, so top marks to 10GS for not making that mistake.

The menu is chalked on boards around the walls, with a daily changing line up. And what a line up: I could quite happily of had everything on the menu. Instead, we started with some lovely potted crab and an under seasoned steak tartar. Raw steak, with some gherkins, capers and an egg yolk nestling on top, generally needs a little kick of mustard, with perhaps some Worcestershire sauce and some lemon too, to give it some tartness. This had none and, whilst perfectly fine, was not as zingy as it might have been.

Mains picked up where the crab left off and were terrific: a simple old spot chop, nicely cooked, a slick of polenta, some greenery and a nice, crisp piece of crackling. Spaghetti came with dried tuna roe (bottarga), which worked a treat, although maybe we should have tried the silver mullet, a fish that I have never seen on a menu before (or indeed in a fishmonger’s).

The chocolate and pear pecan tart and fine plate of cheese that followed rounded off a really pleasant lunch.

Wines come by the glass, carafe and… More

I don’t know if it is because the City is full of red blooded, thrusting macho types, as opposed to the West End, which is full of media, arty types, but whilst I’ve had decidedly average experiences at steakhouses out west, those at the City outposts of Goodman and Hawksmoor have been uniformly exceptional.

Hawksmoor Guildhall looks just like the Seven Dials room: big, high ceilings, wooden bits, no windows. The food is similar too, with steaks to the fore, chips with everything and a bit of green stuff thrown in for show.

Having made the mistake of ordering one of the sharing steaks at the Seven Dials, here I went straight to the back of the beast: a 55 day aged D-rump. Rare. With triple cooked chips. And some green stuff, just so it looked better.

Maybe it was because the steak was just so bloody good, juicy on the inside, charred on the out, but everything just seemed better here than out west. The waiting staff, the wine, the chips, the bone marrow gravy. It was all as near to bovine-based dining perfection as I have had for a long, long time.

Not cheap mind, but bankers still need to be relieved of their bonuses after all and, if Osborne won’t do it, fair play to the team behind Hawksmoor for taking a crack at it.

When does individual dress sense become a sartorial disaster? Sitting outside Riverfront, under Waterloo Bridge on a sunny Sunday lunchtime, watching the thighs, leggings, wobbling bottoms, joggers, tight jeans, slack jeans, boots, mums with prams/strollers/buggies, tramps and more leggings stroll by the South Bank Book Market, gives you plenty of chance to reflect upon this question.

The stretch of the South Bank from Westminster Bridge along to Waterloo Bridge is great on the weekend if the sun is out: people dressed as characters from Disney, statues, even Johnny Depp seems to come out and mingle with the tourists, locals and the more sartorially challenged. Riverfront sits directly under Waterloo Bridge and has both a restaurant and a bar area.

Outside, to get the sun, you have to sit the bar side, which is great: bar snacks include sausage rolls, ham hock and salt beef with gherkins. There are a dozen or more beers on tap and a number more by the bottle: not a Carlsburg or Fosters to be seen, but some interesting wheat beers and some seriously strong Belgium numbers.

Service is relaxed and friendly, although did draw the line at bringing food to the person who decided that sitting on the river front, rather than at the tables of the Riverfront, which seems perfectly sensible.

A splendid people watching place.

Just as certain locations are said to be haunted, certain ones seem to sound the death knell for restaurants. In the space of just a few years, Eat and Two Veg and Café Luc have passed through without, in cricketing speak, troubling the scorers. Now it is the turn of an Italian to have a go. Heaven knows Marylebone Village is crying out for a good Italian, with only the likes of the woeful Getti, the throwback to the fifties that both Anacapri and Casa Becci represent or the chain stylings of Carluccio's, Zizzi and Strada, thank goodness for a new top cozza to pick up the mantle dropped by Caffe Caldasi.

The layout of the restaurant has changed little from its previous incarnation, with banquettes along the middle, a bar on one side and the odd scattering of tables throughout. The menu, however, has changed considerably. Out has gone afternoon teas, in has come solid Italian fare.

Not that the menu is particularly user friendly: rather than being separated into starters, pasta, mains etc, it is split by food type. As well as the tasting menu, there are three main headings: meat, fish and vegetables. As was explained to us (and I am sure that they are going to have to do this a lot), each section is itself invisibly split, with the first two dishes in each section being starters, the next two pasta and the last two mains. Obvious when you know, but pointless all the same.

Having worked out how to order, it was all much simpler and easier. The food itself is very well put together, very well cooked and really very nice, without sparkling. There was no “wow” dish. The amuse bouche of deep fried salt cod balls was satisfyingly deep fried and cod tasting; a pasta parcel was al dente; the truffled eggs, three of which nestled on a bed of hay, were lovely; and the lamb cooked pink as advertised. All good, no coruscation.

The wines too are a fine selection of (mainly) Italians, from reasonably priced to trophy, with glasses of prosecco to kick off the evening.

It is early… More

We were greeted with a friendly “have you been here before?” (much like the Harvester ads used to show: “have you been to a Harvester before?”). Well no, but how hard can it be: this is a restaurant, you serve food and I am guessing something to wash it down with?

Yes, seems to be the answer, but the question is posed as there are only three things on the menu: whole lobster, burger or lobster roll (made from young lobster, or chick, meat). The lobster comes either boiled or grilled and the burger with or without bacon and cheese. And that is about the limit of your choice when it comes to food, as all dishes come with chips and salad. A sort of up market Relais de Venise.

The crowd on a Saturday afternoon was an eclectic bunch, the place packed with families, an Elvis lookalike, some Essex facelifts (complete with scouse brows and sale bags from most of the shops along Bond Street) and a couple of gym bunnies, comparing pec’s. The place doesn’t take reservations (although our terribly nice but ditzy waitress thought that this might be changing, once they got the reservations system working), so you line up and take your chances.

We sat at the bar for a while, cocktail in hand, waiting our turn. And there is no messing around here; not that you are rushed, but once you are out, the table is prepared in seconds, so that the next group can be seated. Rather than eat at the bar, we decided to take a table, and were given a banquette at the back, with a perfect view of the room, not to mention the kitchen door, so that we could see the bucket loads of lobster being transported from the holding tank in the basement to the warm bath that awaits them.

In the interests of completeness, we opted for a lobster and a burger. Both are transported to the table on enormous platters, laden down with the main article, a big bowl of chips and a pretty pointless side salad. The lobster, grilled with lemon and garlic butter, was fantastic: a big, juicy bug, cut in half, the claws cracked… More