Richard's Reviews

Basement bars are always difficult to get right, as there is little chance of passing trade. Dabbous is a wonderful bar, with a restaurant attached. I'm sure that's not the way it would want to be known, but, whilst the food is good, it is the fabulous cocktails whisked up in the basement that will get me back.

Whilst the upstairs dinning room is white and airy, the basement is an industrial bunker: exposed air conditioning ducts, bare concrete and metal (the loo is secreted away behind a wall of steel, marked by an almost hidden sign). The cocktails are terrific and inventive: the glass for the Accomplice comes rubbed with a sage leaf, the Thriller in Perilla has a shiso (perilla) leaf poking out of it and Cat Diesel is a rum based short, heightened with cigar syrup. On its own, the syrup is just another sweetener. When mixed with rum and egg white, the rich tobacco flavours come to the fore.

The restaurant is perfectly pleasant, without being outstanding. The chef (and owner) is ex-Texture, and it shows; the style being very modern and light. Small plates, lots of flavours, lots of interesting ingredients. Plates are all pretty as pictures. Jackson Pollock ones mainly. It is all well presented and well structured, without ever really being outstanding.

The menu structure is very a la mode, with a list of starters and mains, but no real differentiation. We were encouraged to take four or five of these, mixing and matching between the two lists, so between us we managed to go through most of the menu. And this really adds up: at an average of £11/12 a dish (and there is little difference either in cost or size of the starter/main dish), this can mount rapidly.

Steak tartar (with more cigar flavours, this time oil) was a lovely mouthful of meat. The fab egg was a hollowed out shell, restuffed with the yolk and a few mushrooms, nestling in a bed of hay, no doubt intended to invoke thoughts of the farmyard. Goose was terrific: a thin slice of breast, sweetened with… More

My favourite bar in the world is a small bar just off the Damrak in Amsterdam called In de Wildeman. It is small, just two rooms: in the days before the Eurocrats ruled otherwise, one was a smoking the other non, although the wafting Sumatran tobacco smells would as often as not reach the non-side. It is the very epitome of that wonderful Dutch word gezellig, a word almost totally untranslatable, but essentially welcoming, comfy, cosy, but much more than the sum of these parts.

Were it only thus, it would be one of my favourite bars in Amsterdam, which has a fine line in these types of bar. There are two things that set it apart: firstly, the food. Proper bar snack: hunks of cheese and salami, accompanied by a couple of tooth picks for the ladies to use and a smudge of mustard to dip your chosen fare in. Then there is the beer. Always at least 20 beers on tap and somewhere near 300 more in bottles, each different, each paired with a specific glass.

I mention this as Craft reminds me of the Wildeman: it isn’t, to be fair, a gezellig place. No; come a Friday evening, the throng in the street is matched only by the five deep at the bar trying to get served, although a half-an-hour wait does give you time to work out which of the myriad beers you are going to try next. I mention the wait not as an undue criticism (the bar staff are many and do their best, but the throng is even greater), but merely a warning.

No, it is the bar. A proper bar; long and with no room for anything on it other than the 30 odd pumps. Don’t fancy a draft? Then try one of the 200 bottles. And the bar snacks: scotch eggs and pork pies. What more could you want from a bar?

Great beer, great bar food and the whole just let down from being truly great by a lack of atmosphere and a half-hour wait to get served on a Friday night. My advice would be to go other than a Friday night when it is less heaving, take your time and work your way down the hand pumps. Maybe not all in one sitting mind.

My mate Andy claims that nobody outside of American knows how to cook a decent burger. He is American, so maybe he has a point. Then again, in all my many, many visits to the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave, I have only ever had one truly outstanding, memorable meal. The same number as I’ve had in Copenhagen. And several fewer than in Bray. So maybe American’s just don’t know how to cook.

There is always a queue outside Meatliquour, so we decided to brave it and find out why. Well it’s not the location, stuck as it is in the bowels of a concrete monstrosity of a sixties car park (land cleared thanks to the Luftwaffe) next to a strip club. Nor the décor, which is Berlin Bunker chic circa Glasnost by way of Camden market. Nor the service, which is relaxed to the point of incompetency.

It is the burgers: say what you like about any other aspect of the operation (and believe me, I shall), the burgers are quite spectacularly good. Forget GBK or any of the other pretenders to the crown of Best Burger in Britain, these are hands down winners. Just the right size to be grabbed with both hands, the meat the absolutely spot on texture, the perfect pickle, the juices (meatliquor maybe?) flowing down your arm, onion rings the size of donuts. Yes, this is burger heaven. Set in hell.

Of course I realise that I am getting old, but is it too much to ask for sufficient light to read the menu by? Maybe put some torches on the table? We had just about enough natural light seeping through to read the no-nonsense menu, which has succinct descriptions like: “bacon cheeseburger: bacon, cheese, meat, bread” and “chilli burger: nuff said”.

There are many other affectations, such as a set of bizarre (amusing?) rules, pinned to the bar (which include “no wanking, no dickheads, no freeloading, no shirtlocking and no gerbils”, although “guinea pigs are welcome”). Then there are the bar staff who all shout out “liquor” when a round is ready to be served. There is no cutlery, no plates… 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 crowds 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

In France the menu du jour is something of an institution. A cheap, set menu, offering reliably fine food at a reliably fine price. For some reason, it isn't something that we in London have embraced. Maybe, however, in this time of David Cameron (and his little poodle), we should think more closely about how our French colleagues survive. I mean other than by abusing the Common Agricultural Policy. And Cameron himself of course.

Marylebone may have (well actually does have) many fancier and more expensive places, but should you wish for nothing other than some good old fashioned, classic French nosh at really rather good prices, you could do a lot worse than try Ratatouille. So the restaurant isn't exactly in the most glamorous of locations, under an NCP and in front of the local council's street-sweeping HQ, but it could be worse. Well, ok it couldn't really, but forget all that and think about the food. And the price.

Think pipping hot snails in garlicky, parsley butter. Think confit duck leg. Think creme caramel. No, nothing is going to light up the Michelin guide, but sod it; in times of austerity who cares. If you want some good old fashioned Relais Routier, something that isn't going to worry the star guides, or even the posh London restaurant critics, but is going to fill you up and isn't going to cost an arm and a leg, there are few better places in this part of town than here.

If you have a bar that does not accept bookings, why would it be OK to allow somebody to book? Either decide that you can or decide that you cannot book. Frankly, I don’t care. What annoys me is to have one policy, then espouse another when we turn up.

“I’m sorry but we’re booked out” means nothing to me when you have a no booking policy. It is worse still when you seat two tables before me when I have been waiting, on a first come first serve policy. IT IS EVEN WORSE WHEN THE WINE IS SO GOOD.

Yes, forget the absurd seating policy, just love the wine. Vinoteca may have a schizophrenic approach to seating, but the wine list (with over 300 to choose from) is simply excellent. Well thought through, long and interesting, and the majority in the £20-£40 price range, with a few falling below that, which is no mean feat in this part of the world

The place is too cramped and crowded to make it my favourite City wine bar; only once have I managed to get a decent table and spend any quality time drinking down the wine list, and that was a mid-week afternoon after a “client” lunch.

So not the best wine bar in the City (see 28-50 or Planet of the Grapes for that), but definitely one worth finding.

Russell Norman is opening restaurants at a rate that is thicker and faster than an Irish sprinter. The latest, the fifth in the last year and half or so, is in Covent Garden, next door to the terrific Opera Tavern and opposite Shrek. The musical, not Wayne Rooney.

So does the fact that he has opened up five restaurants make this a mini-chain? Well, four of the five do have a bit of a theme, with a bar as the central point. They all serve small tasting plates and cocktails and all employ more tattoos and lower riding jeans than is strictly necessary. The music is rock/blue grass/country, and noisy, but only two could be said to be sisters. The others are all very different: the sisters (the original, Polpo, and the penultimate, Da Polpo) share an almost identical menu and look interchangeable. Polpetto is similar in menu, but very different in restaurant layout; crammed into the first floor of a pub, with no bar in sight, other than the one downstairs in the (separately owned) pub. Spuntino is American influenced and Mishkin’s, the latest of the quintet, is Jewish deli inspired.

In fact, it is very different in feel and style from any of the others. It has that US diner feel, with booths on one side of the room and a counter as you walk in. This is where the action is, so we forewent our reserved seating and sat at the counter/bar.

The menu is, if I am honest; odd. It starts with a series of sandwiches. These are big, and are heavy on the salt beef, but there are plenty of sandwich bars around here where you can get a salt beef on rye that doesn’t cost this much. So we passed on these, and instead settled for a nice bowl of duck scratchings whilst we sank our cocktail and spent time studying the menu.

The cocktail was lovely: gin based (as all are – there being a full bar of lovely gins, from Hendricks, through Sipsmith and Juniper, to Tesco’s Value), which came in a jug sprouting a crop of mint that would keep a mojito maker happy for a month, and with a couple of jam… More

Now I hate Jamie Oliver as much as the next person, but, whilst every time those grating Sainsbury commercials come on I just want to take something large and heavy and batter him around the head, he does have a great brand. This brand comes from actually being able to cook, plus being a great marketer. It is just a shame that the latter is now more important than the former.

Much like the boy himself, Barbecoa seems to divide opinion very neatly between really hate and really love. I wouldn’t put myself in the really love this restaurant category, but it is no where near as bad as, having read some of the reviews below, I thought it was going to be. Maybe they have upped the game since opening, but I actually kind of like this place. Not so much that I wouldn’t still batter the living crap out of the annoying little tic, but I’d eat at the restaurant again.

Many years ago my office used to be on the site of what now looks like the stealth boat from Tomorrow Never Dies. Our canteen, which was on the ground floor, directly under what is now Barbecoa, was nothing to write home about, but I did once have an office that shared the same magnificent view over St Pauls. And this is a great selling point: big wide windows, terrific view. Shame that the room is L shaped and we were at a table with a view of the table with a view of the table that had the view of St Pauls.

The place is cavernous, double height industrial chic; all bare metal, brick and air conditioning ducts. The kitchen is open (or at least glassed off), with views over the barbeque pit and the grill.

We just had mains, and they were all rather tasty: the Lamb skewer was a couple of kebabs, some so-so mushrooms, and a big slick of what was advertised as ‘wet polenta’, but I’d never have guessed. It was very pleasant. Even if I had wanted the special, which had run out by the time I’d ordered it. Never mind, lamb kebab is never a bad choice, and this was solid chunks of Baa Baa, pink on the inside, charred on the… More