The Daily Telegraph’s Jasper Gerard was so enamoured with the look of his starter of sea bass sashimi, dressed in chillies and baby asparagus, at The Park Terrace at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in London’s Knightsbridge, that he says it should be on permanent loan to the National Gallery.
Eating, he says, should be an aesthetic as well as a culinary experience. Fortunately, it also tasted as well as it looked, and had Gerard swooning. His main course of marinated Alaskan black cod with Japanese ginger, bamboo leaf, sliced lemon and miso sauce maintained the high standards, even if it isn’t carbon-friendly to eat black cod south of Hyde Park.
Head chef Chris Tombling learned to cook on a cruise ship in Asia and later worked at Mandarin Orientals in Hong Kong and Bangkok. No wonder, adds Gerard, his Asian dishes are largely excellent, although the European fayre “sounds a bit snoozy”.
The Princess Victoria in Shepherd’ Bush, London, is a highly distinctive and atmospheric venue, says Financial Times’s Nicholas Lander. Chef James McLean has produced an elegant, short menu that offers strong flavours and excellent value for money.
Australian-born owner Matt Wilkin looks after his customers and is “obviously such an inspiration to his team”.
Giles Coren, of The Times, admits he broke what appears to be the restaurant critic’s cardinal rule. On learning that Jamie’s Italian in Oxford did not take bookings, he phoned the PR company and got them to make him a reservation.
Coren is full of praise for Jamie Oliver, whom he describes as a funny, modest, charming and very, very nice person who understands both food and people.
The restaurant, the first in a planned nationwide roll-out, is cleverly-designed, mixing a modern mega-dining room with rustic Italian folksiness. It is, adds Coren, big, loud, jolly and “unbelievably good value”.
The food was good too, with exceptional spaghetti bolognaise and Welsh lamb chops “as chubby and sweet as Oliver himself”.
Coren concludes that the place is “streets ahead of any Italian chain I can think of anywhere in the world”.
The Guardian’s Matthew Norman dined at The Gun, across the Thames from the 02 Arena. It is, he says, a proper old boozer where upstairs Lord Nelson “used to give Lady Hamilton a jolly rogering”.
He enjoyed the food on the Brit/gastro-pub menu, describing it as “very slick operation”, although not the bill, which came to £82.23 for two, and awarding the place 7.5 out of 10.
But much of his column is given over to explaining why his companion, Observer music reviewer and writer Anthony Holden, did not vomit.
The Daily Telegraph 09/08/08 (Weekend) page 18
Financial Times 09/08/08 (Life & Arts) page 4
The Times 09/08/08 (Magazine) pages 55 & 56
The Guardian 09/08/08 (Weekend) pages 64 & 65
