Richard's Reviews

Goodman looks like it has been transported whole from Lower Manhatten. Dark wooded booths, attractive and attentive waiting staff, and big, thick, USDA prime beef. All things that wouldn't be out of place in the Big Apple.

What is out of place is the wholly British drunk. Having a bar in a restaurant makes perfect sense: you can sip a martini before dinner and then move on to your table. Here, a group that had clearly been going since lunchtime hogged the place, leaning over the tables unfortunately too close to the bar. The polite but firm waitress tried to get them to keep to one side and not disturb people, but to no avail. It is rare that I find myself thinking that they've got something right in the US, but here I do: there is no way that this situation would have been allowed to happen in NYC. It isn't that our American cousins are any less prone to getting drunk, it is just that an up market restaurant wouldn't allow them to get to this stage in the first place and, if they had, wouldn't have politely asked them not to get in anyone's way, they'd have thrown them out.

Before people think I'm getting too sniffy about people having fun, I really don't mind, so long as their enjoyment doesn't translate to misery for other. Remember that this place isn't cheap. In fact, at around £30 a steak, it is expensive compared to other, serious meaty competitors. It is upmarket. It is in Mayfair. There are families. There is a time and a place for getting rowdy in a bar. This isn't it.

That said, we were moved from the bar to the dark wooded etc. table at the back and the serious business of devouring steak began. I had always thought that vegetarian hell would be St John, but that is just too light and airy. No, if you want to make a vegan cry, this is the place to do it. The steak is introduced to you like a Hatton Garden jeweller bringing out the wedding rings: laid out on a silver platter, from the 250g grass fed Irish fillet (the single carat, internally flawless, D, round… More

No matter how good the starters on the menu are (and there are always some tempting offerings), nothing can compare to the bone marrow on toast, and it gets me every time. I know that I should try something else, but once again I failed. Four pieces of melting bone marrow, encased in burnt bone, with a parsley and caper salad. There is truly no finer single signature dish in London. OK, the great Piere Koffman is back with his pigs trotter stuffed with thyroid glands. That is hard to beat; but Fergus has been doing this for fifteen years without a break, and it never tires.

Why though is it every time that I go that Mr H is sitting eating here? Surely he should be behind the stove? I remember not too long ago that this was the case: you would see the great man in his apron, directing traffic. Now he sits and eats. Maybe this is like going to a Chinese restaurant full of Chinese: go to a restaurant where the chef is eating.

There is nothing fancy on offer here (even if it does now boast a Michelin star); if the menu says Old Spot, that is what you get: one perfectly cooked pork chop, perhaps accompanied by its cooking juices. If you have the time (and the numbers), I recommend the whole sucking pig. Not the tiny little fellas that grace the tables at Segovian restaurants: all single servings, cut with a plate. No, a slightly bigger version, ready to feed ten or more, served whole. Head on (alas no apple though). If you don't have ten, nor have you ordered the day before, there are always good specials, as well as the staples.

Today it was grouse. I love grouse. It is probably my single favourite dish, and the reason why I love autumn above all other seasons. I am always pleased when St Johns has it on the menu as it is one of the finest there is in London. Here and Rules. Unlike Rules, however, you get proper bread sauce. Yum. The season has just started, so the grouse, whilst flavourful, is not as strong as it will get by December. My companion had the aforementioned Old… More

Whilst Mayfair may have two Nobu's, Marylebone has some of the best sushi counters in London, with both Dinings and Defune being amongst the Capital's best places to watch the artistry of the Itamae.

Dinings, which bills itself as Japanese tapas, shares a fair amount with Nobu in the style of food, with more inventive use of sashimi than just a few lumps of perfectly fresh fish and some daikon and wasabi. Sauces are light and each perfectly suited to the type of fish being used. Rolls are inventive, although call me old-fashioned, but I'm not sure that foie gras ever deserves to be wrapped in rice, no matter how amazingly cooked it is.

We started this time with tar-tar chips: basically, these are crisps with a small dollop of fish or meat filling. A bit like tiny tacos. The special was a wagu beef one. A single delicous bite of beef and wasabi; crisp on the outside, melting on the in. Like so many things, one is never enough, so a beautiful toro with jalapeno followed. Another sensational mouthful.

Sashimi came in the form of yellow tail with a yuzu garlic sauce and a toro with yuzu ponzu. No I don't have a clue what a yuzu is (let alone a ponzu), but I'd guess it was a citrus, so making the dishes a bit like ceviche, with the acid of the fruit “cooking” the fish ever so slightly. The effect is a sharp sauce that adds bite to the perfect raw fish in a more subtle way than the wasabi and soy sauce staple. I do love this about Japanese food: finding something that you don't know what it is, but finding it is amazing.

A spider roll was excellent. I once managed to convince a dining companion that this was actually a spider: this is clearly made easier when the legs are sticking out the top of the roll, very much like a tarantula might. I am sure that, could they get hold of a reliable supply, Dinings might actually try this. Eel sushi and a California roll were both lovely too. I don't usually go for the California roll, but this was like no California roll I have ever seen… More

There seem to be two sorts of two star Michelin star establishments in London now: the formal, grand ones, often found in big hotels, and the more intimate ones. The Ledbury falls within the latter.

No grand hotel lobbey to fight through, but straight to the front desk, bottle in hand. Yes, a two star Michelin restaurant with a BYO policy. Given how much top end restaurants make from the wine list, it is refreshing to see such a sensible approach being taken. Maybe this is because the Ledbury started as a neighbourhood local or maybe it is becauses the chef is Australian: in Australia, almost all restaurants seem to be BYO. In this country, the concept seems stuck with Brick Lane curry houses. Whatever the reason, I applaud you.

As an added bonus, throughout August the Ledbury has an arrangement with Bordeaux Index that provides for clients of BI to have the otherwise £25 corkage charge waived. How could we resist?

After the obligatory amuse bouche, we started with the snails (from Hereford, of course), enveloped in a herb mouse and wild boar with baked celeriac. Both were gorgeous. The latter was a deep fried disc (a kromeski, no less) of chopped boar, but the theatre was in the celeriac. I have been to restaurants where whole birds are carved at the table, or the cooked fish is presented before being whisked away to be filleted, but I have never before been introduced to a celeriac. Until now. The root, borne to the table on a wooden board, is encased in a salt pastry crust. It looks like a baked potato. This is then sliced in half, and one half of the ash coated root popped out, for the table to inspect. The next time you see it, it is thinly sliced and under the boar. Does seeing how it was cooked add to the taste sensation? No, but it says a lot about the restaurant's style.

Of the mains the suckling pig was probably the least interesting dish that we had. It was a perfectly fine piece of meat, perfectly cooked, with a properly crispy skin and moist meat, but is was… More

Forget any preconceived notions that you may have of conveyor belt sushi: this is nothing like Yo Sushi or Moshi Moshi. In fact, the only thing that these all have in common is the conveyor belt.

Unlike most other like sushi places, at Kulu Kulu the sushi is freshly prepared. Not here pre-made sushi and rolls kept in the fridge for the rice to solidify. No, the rice is kept in a tub at room temperature as it should be and used as and when needed. The classics are all here (tuna, salmon, eel, squid, softshell crab etc.), as well as tempura, hand rolls and various other dishes; this is what is so great about Japanese food. Whilst so much of it is now familiar (thanks, it has to be said, in no small part to Yo and Moshi etc.), there are always wonderful looking dishes, that I have no idea what they are. The fish is beautifully fresh, in big, thick chunks. The tempura is light and again, comes out freshly cooked.

Another distinction between here and other conveyor belt places in London, is that there are a fair number of Japanese here too. Being in soho, there is also a fair collection of tourists. Etiquette in conveyor belt places is pretty simple: don't put a dish back once you've taken it off the belt and don't lean over somebody to get to the food. Perhaps they should have a note to this effect up. In French would be helpful here.

I've said before that Kurumaya is one of the better conveyor belt sushi restaurants, and I still think it is (although I think standards there have slipped recently); Kulu Kulu is, in my view, even better.

I really don't mind spending good money on top restaurants. I don't even mind the meal taking hours, but here the bill was stratospherically high and the pace at which the food arrived was more dead slug than live snail.

When it did arrive, the food was gorgeous; the Kaseiki menu offers lots of small, beautifully prepared, beautifully presentated and subtle tasting morsels. The trouble is, you need a hamburger between each course to stave off the hunger pangs, and could easily have time to go and get one from the nearest Burger King, which is, I am reliably informed, in Barnes. Matching with wine too was a mistake – it seemed like such a good idea at the time; lots of different wines and sake to go with the different flavours to which they are perfectly suited. The trouble is, the wine for the next course came immediately after the previous course had been cleared away, so you either sat there thirsty as well as hungry, or drank it in the interminable wait and then had nothing to complement the food.

Yes, we could have come on an off night, but at these prices you cannot afford to have an off few minutes, let alone a whole night.

Unlike some places where the whole experience puts you off, the food was just so good (and the Calpis Martini so unlike it sounds as though it should be), I would go back. this time, I'd sit at the sushi counter though and order as I went along. That way I could make a swift exit if the food was not so swift in arriving.

Oh My God [or, for the twittering classses: OMG ;-))))!!!]. Wow: this is seriously grown up food, served in a seriously grown up restaurant with SERIOUSLY grown up prices.

Yes, let's start with what everyone seems surprised at. The prices. Alain Ducasse is a famous French chef. His restaurant has three Michelin Stars. His restaurant also happens to be located in one of the most expensive hotels, in one of the most expensive areas of one of the most expensive cities in the world. Of course it is going to cost a lot. But maybe here a little perspective is called for: the tasting menu at Alain Ducasse is £115. Not cheap. Anne-Sophie Pic has a tasting menu at €320, with a starter on the a la carte at a mind alteringly €145. So the eponymously named Maison Pic has a starter that is more than a seven course meal at Alain Ducasse.

You might expect that Maison Pic would have to be in Paris, maybe in the 8th, maybe in the George V, for that would be a fair comparison. Maison Pic is in Valence. For those of you who don't know where that is, it is a industrial truck stop of a town, about an hour-and-a-half south of Lyon on the Autoroute du Soleil. It is nowhere. Blink and you miss it. It is an afterthought of a town on the race to the beaches of the Cote d'Azur. Yet it has a restaurant where a starter costs more than a seven course meal at one of the most expensive restaurants in London. Go figure.

So it is expensive. But is it worth it? Well the restaurant was packed. It was clear by the number of people getting deserts with candles in that there were a lot of birthdays being celebrated, and this maybe what M. Ducasse is going for: a destination restaurant. Somewhere you go once, for a seriously special occasion.

The restaurant is, as the name suggests, in the Dorchester hotel. It doesn't have its own entrance, so you come through the overly oppulent, overly ornate, Hello! magazine/footballers wives hotel lobby, to be ushered into a calm, understated, almost plain room. This is… More

If there is a better value restaurant in London, then I have to find it: forty notes for four people; BYO vino; the best lamb chops ever. What is there not to like?

Well, judging by the complaints about the waiting staff, there is clearly that. But come on, this is a curry house in the heart of the east end; what do you expect? It is noisy, cramped and hot. It buzzes. The Ritz it ain't. If you want fancy curry, with fancy waiting staff and a (fancy) tablecloth, Rasoi Vineet Bhatia would get my vote. Mind you, it's not really a curry house is it; I mean, its in Chelsea. If you don't know that when you arrive, boy do you find out when they present the bill. And its not really curry either; yes it has lovely spicy flavours, beautifully cooked, perfect proportions etc, but really, where's the chicken tikka? No, if you want a true London curry experience, Tayyabs is very hard to beat.

The other niggle seems to be the queue. Now I know that this may be odd, but if you call their telephone number beforehand, you can make what is called a “booking”. Very hi-tech and slightly off-beat, I know, but give it a whirl. It works. Then you get the chance to swan to the front of the queue and wonder at the people who hadn't thought of it. Makes you feel all superior. Always a good way to start dinner.

The food itself is standard curry fair, but at a much higher standard than you'll find down the road in Brick Lane; the aforementioned chicken tikka is there, the tandoori terrific, the chops legendary and the keebabs just fine. And it is BYO, so you can have a Corton-Charlemagne Grand Cru should you desire. I'd stick with something from Alsace myself mind; whether that is an Adelscott or a Trimbach is really down to taste.

A final word of warning: do not, under any circumstances go for a romantic dinner a deux. The couple next to us last time had done this. Mistake. Big, big mistake. This is a four-of-you-or-more kind of place; lots of dishes, lots of sharing, lots of fun.