Restaurants

As we approach the middle of 2017, the list of objects attainable with change from just one polymer fiver is slimmer than ever. A bottle of supermarket brand Prosecco, or a day’s bus pass might return a mere handful of shrapnel. That same note will be enough to pay for an average of just 4.27 litres of petrol. If you’re very lucky, that same plastic portrait of Sir Winton Churchill might even stretch to cover a pint of Continental lager...

By Maggie Majstrova, @foodstrova For weeks now, on my way to and from one of my client’s offices, I’ve been passing The Brookmill – its windows shuttered, its façade hidden by scaffolding. These are the unmistakable signs of refurbishment that fill me with equal measures of excitement and dread. How will it turn out? Will it be somewhere fabulous, or somewhere utterly horrendous? Before Christmas, The Brookmill finally re-opened, premiering the final result. It's a 19th Century Victorian corner pub,...

In addition to having become a pioneering figure in London’s ‘pop-up’ movement, Stevie Parle is a chef renowned for both his innovative take on ‘Modern-European’ food, as well as selecting a string of relatively obscure sites to open restaurants. The chef’s first permanent restaurant - Dock Kitchen, for instance, was opened in 2009 inside a converted Victorian Wharf building on the Grand Union Canal in Ladbroke Grove, renovated as part of an urban generation project. Five years later, Rotorino was...

Flicking through photographs of London’s skyline just before the turn of the millennium, it’s now impossible to overlook the colossal number of skyscrapers that have popped-up over the past seventeen years. A clear sign that London is a city dead-set on keeping up appearances with the likes of New York, Hong Kong and Shanghai. These buildings are structures of power, of wealth, of luxury – so it’s hardly surprising that so many high-end, high-rise restaurants have opened across the capital....

When I first started writing about restaurants, the whole concept of posting food photographs on Instagram irritated me beyond belief. I'd rant obstinately about the whole concept until the sloshed, fondled Wagyu cows came home. Most jobs, however, make it completely necessary to leave certain beliefs at the door. Hate it or love it, social media sites are the future. Instagram in particular has become so food-focused that (as a food writer) it's impossible to avoid getting involved. And with...

It would be quite fair to say that the discovery of poke (pronounced ‘poh-kay’, not like that thing your weird Uncle keeps doing on Facebook) is relatively fresh here in London. Until around 18 months ago, the Hawaiian dish would only have been known to the most food-savvy of city dwellers, but quite thankfully that’s beginning to change. Literally meaning “section”, or “to slice or cut”, poke is a Hawaiian salad, of sorts, traditionally focussing on cubes of raw fish...

Even the absolute best food isn’t necessarily memorable, all of the time. Yet food that does standout as being memorable, is not always remembered for the right reasons. A combination of the two, however, is an extraordinarily rare occurrence. From hundreds of dishes sampled over the past two years, less than half of my top ten most memorable dishes have been particularly desirable. Most, in fact, have been so deplorable, so utterly grotesque they’re borderline offensive. At the top of...

Have you ever robbed a casino? No, nor have I. But after visiting the Heliot Steakhouse at The Hippodrome, I found the outstanding value enough to make most anyone feel like a member of the Rat Pack in Oceans 11. Quite honestly, I had my doubts about the restaurant before visiting. Although having heard nothing but praise, my partisan preconceptions of the place included an unsavoury concoction of Leicester Square, men in polyester suits vaunting their wealth while supping dry...

With plenty of exciting restaurant openings constantly taking place across the Capital, we pick the best new restaurants arriving in London over the coming month. Lupins - Southwark Named after the English garden flower, Lupins is the latest project from Lucy Pedder and Natasha Cooke – set to open this month in Flat Iron Square near London Bridge. Having previously worked together in the kitchen of Medlar in Chelsea, The Sand’s End, and having opened The Cross Keys together in 2015 –...