“The lobsters are the most generously proportioned I’ve ever seen. They sit in huge tanks in the centre of the restaurant, beautiful and languid and blissfully unaware that there’s a small Chinese man coming towards them with a portable net in his right hand…”
The Hampshire Hog. The name resonates with Englishness. You feel like it should be said by some portly, ancient chap wearing a cravat and a smoking cap as he reminisces about misspent student days in ‘The Hog’.
Italians do it better. I could have told you that myself, yet last time Pret…
“You are sitting in Lady Thatcher’s seat madam: tonight you are the Iron Lady. And there, across from you, that’s the table Princess Margaret always booked.” It could only happen at The Ritz…
“As soon as you step through the doors, it’s obvious that there is an architect or two hanging in the wings. The restaurant is light and airy, with a clean, simple aesthetic and industrial edge.”
“The Victoria in Richmond manages to straddle a number of hospitality guises in a way that I’ve never encountered before; it’s a local-friendly pub, a restaurant, a café, and a hotel, all rolled into one effortless whole.”
“Viajante, meaning traveller in Portuguese, is an apt name for Nuno Mendes’ Michelin-starred restaurant at the converted Edwardian Town Hall Hotel, which has brought a much-needed dose of glamour to Bethnal Green.”
“Fillet is the French caviar,” crisply alliterates Thierry Thomasin, the author of Angelus restaurant. Sitting in the cosy, couth dining room, I struggle to recall a lovelier mouthful.
“We arrive as the sun begins to wane and are shown to a spot by the stage. The tables by the elongated, convex windows that fill one entire wall of the restaurant are full of bankers negotiating lobster claws and oversized steaks.”
“Jonesy and I make our way through the reception area of The Mandeville and slip into the low-lit cocktail bar. Fresh from the book, I immediately feel like Ripley. My recent reading is having a palpable effect on my state of mind, my sanity.”
“Recently, I happened to mention Bermondsey Street as a gastronomic hotspot to an old family friend – he scowled and looked at me like I was speaking in tongues.”
When Sake No Hana first opened several years ago, I thought it was the headquarters of some murky secret society; it looked so mysterious from the outside. The external walls were almost entirely black and disconcertingly opaque…