Welcome to the second weekly round-up of reviews from the national restaurant critics by food writer and blogger Oliver Thring.
The Review of the Week is undoubtedly Zoe Williams’s touching and funny description of dinner at La Rueda. The Telegraph critic and her partner had their first date in the restaurant several years ago, and despite its ‘mainly awful tapas’, ‘rubbery’ calamari and potatoes cooked ‘perhaps weeks before’, she’s ‘fond’ of it, and it’s easy to empathise.
Richard Vines is impressed with Kitchen W8, a new and informal outpost from the highly-rated Philip Howard of the Square. Of a game consommé with bacon cream and a miniature hot-dog, the Bloomberg critic raves: ‘I’m not sure where I last had so much pleasure for eight pounds’. Vines is delighted with the ‘reasonably-priced’ menu, and concludes by astutely comparing Kitchen W8 with the brilliant Harwood Arms in Fulham.
Guy Dimond (Time Out) visits Barrica in Goodge Street, for its ‘relatively orthodox’ food and ‘carefully-chosen all Spanish’ wine list. Some jamón tastes of biltong, while sweetbreads and artichokes have ‘mild farmyard flavours’ and Padrón peppers are ‘delish’. It’s ‘not the place for a quiet meal,’ he warns.
AA Gill takes his Sunday Times column to ‘humming’ Polpo, perhaps the most over-reviewed restaurant in the western hemisphere. He likes the atmosphere: ‘relaxed and friendly, but also funny and welcoming’, and enjoys chicken liver, and mortadella, gorgonzola and walnuts, and a ‘particularly good’ duck with peppercorns and olives. There isn’t a better ‘cheap, good, fun date restaurant’ in London, he declares.
Giles Coren has ‘the lunch of my life’ at Riverford Farm in Devon. Given the setting, it’s mainly about the ‘brilliantly colourful’ veg (beetroot, cauliflower, corn, celeriac), and it doesn’t ‘matter a jot’ that veal is ‘a little fibrous’. He finishes with ‘the best traditional puddings I have ever seen’: plum crumble, sticky toffee pudding, lemon tart and clafoutis. At £16 for two courses it’s all ‘stunning value’.
Jay Rayner of the Observer has ‘dinner and cabaret’ at the Pigalle Club, finding a ‘sloppiness’ to its ‘bizarrely patchy’ food: ‘claggy’ smoked salmon terrine, ‘underdone’ rack of lamb and cod that tastes of ‘fishy toothpaste’. He admits that ‘the Pigalle is really not that bad’ compared its competitors, adding wryly ‘but that’s not the same as good’.
Marina O’Loughlin visits the ‘gastro-theme park’ Aqua, with its twinned Spanish and Japanese restaurants. She’s booted into the latter, for a ‘pretty OK’ meal. Sushi is ‘fresh’, and seared beef tataki with chilli ponzu ‘astonishingly good’, though soft-shell crab is ‘flabby’. It’s an ‘expensive, upmarket chain,’ she says, ‘with a curiously outmoded feel’.
Fay Maschler heads to Made in China in Monck Street, by the Home Office building. ‘There is nothing on the menu to frighten civil servants’ she says. Roast black cod is ‘precisely timed’ and dumplings are ‘finely drawn and delicate’. The restaurant features ‘reasonable prices and gentle service’, and the Standard critic tells us she’ll be adding this to her ‘short list’ of preferred Chinese restaurants.
Jonathan, of the blog Around Britain with a Paunch, has ‘a very decent curry for hardly any money at all’ at Punjab House, Balham. The owner ‘doesn’t care where his produce comes from’ and the ‘hygiene track record is far from squeaky clean’, but a vegetable curry is ‘rich and filling’ and lamb with ginger is ‘frugal’ and ‘authentic’. Remarkably, the owners ordered Jonathan to stack his plate after dinner, an experience that leaves him with a ‘bizarre new addiction’ to the place.
In other news, Tracey Macleod has named Terroirs Restaurant of the Year in the annual Independent Food and Drink Awards. As well she might: it’s bloody brilliant.