The Brunello restaurant at the Baglioni Hotel, facing London's Hyde Park, is slammed by Michael Winner in The Sunday Times as "the most miserable example of mismanagement, décor and dreary food" he has ever encountered.
He says it is one of those pretentious places that thinks it is chi-chi but is, in fact, beyond belief abysmal.
Winner was upset by being offered a "pathetic, small table" when he arrived and even more so when the wine waiter addressed him as "Mr Winter". Then the champagne was not cold enough, and his main course was lifeless and bland while the vegetables were "ludicrous".
The memory, he says, lingers with him like a bad dream. Brunello, adds Winner, is a waste of space.
The Observer food critic Jay Rayner was underwhelmed by the food at new Spanish restaurant Camino in the Regent Quarter at London's King's Cross. It is, he says, all so nearly but not quite, while the £3 bill was "a lot of money for fine".
He may return once the newspaper's office is relocated to the area, but it "will only be out of laziness". As endorsements go, adds Rayner, they don't get much more limp than that.
Terry Durack, of The Independent on Sunday, was also disappointed when he ate Spanish-style at Pinchito Tapas in Shoreditch, east London.
For a start, they had run out of pinchos, or pinxtos, the Basque form of tapas which are bite-sized snacky things on bread.
But they served a creative sangria by the jug, a good range of sherry and pretty pink aperitifs.
Other diners, though, seemed to be enjoying themselves. Durack mused that maybe it was his fault for comparing Pinchito with the pinchito bars of northern Spain instead of the drinking bars of Shoreditch.
The Sunday Times 19/08/07 (Review) page 4.14
The Observer 19/08/07 (Magazine) pages 58 & 59
The Independent on Sunday 19/08/07 (The New Review) page 49
