Welcome to the weekly round-up of the national critics’ restaurant reviews by Oliver Thring.
Fay Maschler is at Wallace & Co., the new Putney venture from veg tycoon and Masterchef judge, Gregg Wallace. It’s a ‘gastronomically ambitious’ but ‘homespun’ operation: a home-made Scotch egg, she rightly remarks, is ‘no longer a thing of wonder’, while frittata was a ‘depressed soufflé … useful for lagging pipes’. A Knickerbocker Glory, though, ‘lived up to its name’.
Guy Dimond joins her (not literally), echoing a lot of her criticisms. Mackerel escabèche was ‘lip-smacking’, that frittata was ‘unappetisingly cold’, and puddings (‘the sort nanny might approve of’) are small.
Jasper Gerard finds The Ledbury ‘hugely impressive’. The signature ash-baked celeriac is ‘theatrical yet strangely domestic’, and the boar it came with ‘wildly irresistible’. But ‘[Brett] Graham doesn’t seem to give a XXXX … for pudding’. Gerard says nothing of Underhillgate, but comments on this week’s review certainly do.
Chilli Cool is an ‘exhilarating – and cheap! – way to beat the January chills’, says Marina O’Loughlin. Despite the ‘Sino-pop bleating remorselessly’ from the speakers, this is ‘one to check out’. Double-cooked pork is ‘great’, Chengdu dan dan noodles are ‘savoury’ if a bit ‘squelchy’, and fish hotpot is a ‘vast, seething cauldron of indeterminate’ fish.
John Walsh soaks up the ‘dim and churchy atmosphere’ of The Bingham in Surrey. Salmon with braised octopus was ‘meltingly soft’ and glazed veal cheek ‘voluptuously rich’, but there was ‘too much going on’ in the puddings, leading Walsh to remark rather sniffily that the chef ‘might consider … letting customers have what they actually want’.
Zoe Williams speaks for me when she says of Lutyens: ‘there’s absolutely nothing wrong with [it], and yet I walked in and felt underwhelmed’. Fish soup was ‘aromatic and classy’, Dover sole was ‘fantastically but justly expensive’, and duck confit was fatty and not especially tender. It just ‘doesn’t have that extra sparkle to distinguish it from its tasty mates’.
‘I see no reason ever to eat anywhere else,’ raves Giles Coren of the Dean Street Townhouse. He’s had several name-droppy meals there, along with a ‘fat and swaggering’ roast chicken, ‘impeccable’ duck eggs on toast and ‘great’ scallops. A dish of sweetbreads with onion tart was so over-salted ‘I nearly puked’, but this may be ‘the best restaurant in London’.
Jay Rayner is considerably more restrained. ‘There is,’ he says, ‘no excuse for taking peasant food and gussying it up to such a degree that it loses all sense of purpose’. A starter of deep-fried sprats wasn’t cheap but ‘the execution was spot on’, and Rayner had to wait a long time for his main course. Rhubarb and pear cobbler was ‘great’, though.
Midsumer House is an ‘extremely well run and likable restaurant’, says Matthew Norman. Amuses at the double-Michelin-starred Cambridge joint are so good ‘it’s like being on a different planet’: there’s pink grapefruit soda with champagne, pumpkin velouté with mushroom jelly, and, later, fennel mousse with black olive. By these standards, main courses were ‘a minor let-down’: turbot was ‘almost great’ but ‘oversalted’, and veal kidneys ‘tended towards the chewy’ – but the restaurant does sound terrific.
AA Gill is at Cliveden, Nancy Astor’s ‘idea of an English country house’. The dining room is ‘fun, in a moody, Sunday-drama sort of way’, and the food sounds pretty good. Salmon tasted ‘labial’, which is apparently a compliment, while venison was ‘bloody and loamy and slightly dank’, although a bakewell tart had ‘too much pastry’.
‘The continued existence of Tayyabs’ is Lahori Masala’s biggest problem, reckons Chris Pople of Cheese and Biscuits. And he’s right, of course: ‘Tayyabs is the benchmark for Pakistani grills’. Still, he gamely visits this vast newcomer, which can seat 600. Tandoori chicken wings are ‘superb, crisply charred and powerfully marinated’, but lamb chops are a bit ‘tame’, and dahl was ‘like eating yellow walpaper paste’. ‘At least you won’t have to queue’, is the last, somewhat lacklustre recommendation.