The Milroy. 'Apart from The Ritz dining room, I don’t think there’s anything else like it in London.'
Welcome to the weekly round-up of national restaurant critics by Oliver Thring
Marina O’Loughlin loves the ‘fabulous’ Milroy building, the restaurant inside posho gambling club Les Ambassadeurs. ‘Staff are very much of the old-school’ and the food is ‘fine enough’. Beetroot and goat’s cheese salad was ‘sensational’, though a chateaubriand was ‘overcooked’.
John Walsh finds Chapter One in Farnborough ‘relaxed, nostalgic’. Smoked eel with beetroot and bacon was ‘delicious’, as was a langoustine raviolo. ‘When were carrots ever so tasty?’ he ponders. ‘Chapter One is my top gastronomic find of the year so far.’
Yet another pasting for Atul Kochhar’s beleaguered Colony, this time from AA Gill. It’s a ‘smirky room’ which was ‘empty’ when Gill visited; the tapas-sized portioning doesn’t work either. Sea bass came ‘in a sauce of rendered Pritt Stick’ and veal in ‘boot polish and Oxo ooze’. ‘On every single level or measure you care to mention, Colony is an ethnic bastard.’
‘It’s a temple of gastronomy,’ enthuses Guy Dimond of Gauthier Soho, ‘not the sort of place you’d come for a wild night out’. But ‘the cooking’s first rate’: beef was ‘sublime’ and amuses were ‘lovely’. Service was ‘a bit stiff and awkward’, though, and the room was ‘quiet’.
Amol Rajan takes the Sindy to Bar Boulud, whose setting ‘combines spaciousness and intimacy’. Grilled octopus didn’t ‘taste fresh enough’ although a ‘Yankee’ burger was ‘punchy’. Chocolate mousse with raspberry jam was ‘superb’.
Matthew Norman, however, finds Bar Boulud a ‘mediocrity’. The charcuterie (extensively hailed elsewhere as the best in London) was ‘nice enough’ though portions were ‘measly’. The ‘piggie’ burger was ‘a bit nothing’.
Giles Coren is at Roux at Parliament Square. The room, as expected, is ‘corporate superbland’ and there were ‘rude, disrespectful’ people there with the gall to photograph their food. ‘But what a meal it is’: ‘marvellous’ foie gras, ‘astounding’ sweetbread and terrific mash. ‘I cannot praise this perfect, precise, strangely effortless cooking enough.’
Liz Hoggard finds the choices ‘limited’ at El Camino, but reckons ‘the emphasis is on … zinging flavours’. Mains were ‘exceptional’: tacos were ‘crispy’ and burritos ‘were really something’. ‘Colourful and unpretentious, El Camino is great for a pre-theatre date’.
The Curlew is ‘elegant, simple and reassuring’, says Jay Rayner. It does indeed sound lovely: there’s a starter of slow-cooked duck egg with smoked haddock, capers, brown shrimp and hollandaise; and a main of glazed veal short ribs cooked for two days and served with chips. ‘The food is great’.
‘Lots of innovation, no personality’ is Zoe William’s verdict on the appallingly named Time & Space at the Royal Institution. ‘It feels a bit cheap’: crayfish cocktail was ‘cold’ and ‘didn’t taste of anything’ though asparagus panna cotta ‘worked beautifully’. ‘Puds lifted the mood’ somewhat.
‘My top two London restaurants,’ says Helen Graves, are ‘the Ledbury and Chilli Cool’. As she says, they ‘couldn’t be more different’ – one is a two-Michelin-starred Notting Hill gastrotemple and the other a ‘cheap, slightly scruffy and oil-slicked … Sichuan joint in King’s Cross’. But both have ‘accessibility and heart and most of all, fun’.