Restaurants

By Maggie Majstrova, @foodstrova The London food scene is ever-changing, with restaurants focusing on one food type having become a popular choice over the last year or so. Alas, this choice introduces added pressure: if you decide to keep your menu simple, punters will inevitably expect (or at least hope) each item will be cooked to perfection. Part of Whitebread PLC, owners of Premier Inn and Costa Coffee, Bar + Block Steakhouse on York Way is one of these restaurants....

Every year as the great British summer begins to draw to a close millions of people descend on Notting Hill to embrace its vibrant Caribbean heritage in Europe's biggest street party. Amongst the vibrant costumes and traditional dances two facets that are guaranteed to pull big crowds is the carnival atmosphere and plethora of West Indian food on offer - but you don't have to wait until August to get a taste of that. Founded by Jamaican Josh De Lisser and...

Regardless of the fact that Jamie Oliver was instrumental in making my generation’s school dinner’s inexplicably bleak, I’ve always respected the chef’s devil-may-care approach to cooking. Still, I’d trade all of the champagne and caviar in the world for just one last turkey Twizzler, no matter how disgusting they really were, on reflection. When he The Naked Chef was first broadcast, almost 20 years ago, I was too young to understand the appeal. But when I first began to cook...

Operating from a site towards the Regent’s Park end of Great Titchfield Street, Mac & Wild’s first bricks and mortar site is possibly the most honest restaurant I’ve ever visited. Stylised as a Scottish restaurant but without any gimmicky tartan check, bagpipes or tam o’ shanter caps, Mac & Wild has a prominent focus on game meats (sourced from Ardgay Game, run by the restaurant founder Andy Waugh’s Father and Brother), and serves enough whisky to wash an elephant. And...

Have you ever been to a high-rise restaurant so bad, so incomprehensibly grim, that you’ve genuinely considered jumping from the top floor, if only to spite them? Madison, owned by D&D London, is a rooftop restaurant and bar on the top of the One New Change shopping centre in the heart of the city, boasting astonishing views of nearby St Paul’s Cathedral. It is less of a restaurant than a place to grab an after work drink and bite to...

In a similar vein to Marco Pierre White, Jamie Oliver and Gordon Ramsey – Marcus Wareing has become a TV chef personality whose equal parts loved and loathed. Over the past three years, the chef has perhaps become best known as the second toughest judge on MasterChef: The Professionals, but he’s also the name behind three London restaurants. At one end of the spectrum, Marcus at The Berkeley in Knightsbridge is the chef’s two Michelin-starred mother ship, offering one of...

For as long as I can remember, I’ve always been succumbed with an irrational fear of snails. It’s embarrassing. More common, less hilarious fears (spiders, snakes, rats, death) have never phased me, but something about those lettuce-munching bogies in crash helmets would always plague me with fear. As somebody who dedicates such a portion of my life to writing about restaurants, I appreciate that it’s crucial for me to eat just about everything. So much so that over the past...

"Ramen," somebody recently probed as I gushed adoringly about the food of Japan (again), "that's just noodle soup, isn't it?" Like a besieged tom cat ready to challenge the neighbours' pit bull, my back arched instinctively and I cascaded into an explosive rant. Ramen is far more than just noodle soup. The exact origins or ramen are unclear. There’s a great deal of speculation that links ramen to China, gastronomically speaking, but its Japan that’s generally regarded the rightful home...

Though so many of London’s Thai restaurants are unapologetically bad, the popularity of Thai food (as well as Vietnamese) is currently booming. So, considering London has one of the world’s most diverse restaurant scenes, it’s astonishing that Laotian food has taken so long to become established throughout the city. It’s undeniable that Lao cuisine has contributed significantly to Thai food becoming an international phenomenon, yet so few menus throughout Europe give the landlocked country between Thailand, Vietnam and Cambodia any...