Andy Lynes reviews

Thursday, April 25, 2013 - Navarin, a simple French country spring lamb stew, is subjected to maximum haute cuisine shenanigans but emerges with its dignity intact. Slices of perfectly pink roasted best end come with meltingly tender braised shank, confit breast and shoulder with more of that baby spring veg and an intense yet light lamb jus...If you want classical cooking and old-school service and you’re willing to pay for it, even the most trend-conscious hipster would have to concede it’s hard to beat.

Thursday, April 11, 2013 - Two plump scallops are roasted and come with puy lentils and more perfect tiny cubes, this time wild fennel-flavoured saucisson. They make for a stark and relatively dear (£13 and £14 respectively) start to the meal but are faultlessly cooked and delicious. The same can be said for everything else we eat. A shepherd’s pie, mixed and matched from the good value set-lunch menu, comes in a mini iron casserole and features perfect tiny cubes (have you spotted the emerging pattern yet?) of hand-chopped lamb topped with precisely piped and carefully browned mash.

Thursday, April 04, 2013 - The tunnel of a room, with its bare brick walls and candlelit booths is atmospheric. Service is eager and enthusiastic. ‘Gintonic’ is served in a balloon glass in the Spanish manner at the handsome wood-panelled bar...But, oh boy, does the food need work. Croquetas were burnt on the outside and gluey within. Pa amb pernil featured watery, unseasoned tomato pulp topped with very ordinary jamon served on barely toasted bread. Grilled leeks came with a split romesco sauce and solomillo was a travesty.

Thursday, March 28, 2013 - During a late lunch accompanied by a chorus of screaming babies (there’s a buggy at nearly every table) we eat some good, simple things. Sweetcorn fritters with roast tomato, bacon and avocado and a hash of chorizo, spinach and poached duck egg would make great hangover cures. But that £12 burger comes in a dry bun, the patty lacks flavour and is overpowered by the unwelcome inclusion of American mustard...It seems Maida Vale’s yummy mummies love the place. The rest of us would be best advised to leave them to it.

Thursday, March 21, 2013 - Don’t come expecting haute cuisine – this is a much more relaxed affair – but the classical training shines through. A finely textured chicken pork and pistachio terrine is expertly made with a spinach-wrapped chicken fillet embedded at its centre and is only let down by a lack of seasoning, while bone marrow, toast and shallot, parsley and caper salad is just as good as the St John original...Service from a young all-female team is beguiling and prices are keen. If I was a local, they’d never see the back of me.

Thursday, March 07, 2013 - A perfectly cooked risotto that's studded with chunks of lobster and dots of aromatic black truffle is given a savoury boost by a rich cauliflower cream. It's so good I clean the bowl with some of the superb brown sourdough from the adjoining Balthazar bakery. Duck shepherd's pie is the braised leg meat served in a deep gravy and topped with great mash...Dining here is genuinely fun but it's the serious attention to detail that makes Balthazar the real deal.

Thursday, February 28, 2013 - A whole cherry wood roasted Peking duck is ceremoniously carved by a chef in the dining room at the large central serving station. We’re served a couple of slices each and some of the shredded leg in a sesame pancake. The meat is meltingly tender but the fabulously crispy skin is the real treat...At £95 a head plus 13 per cent service charge for the food alone, you could rightly expect perfection and service-wise that’s what the numerous front-of-house team deliver. Although the kitchen might have a way to catch up, there’s enough stupefyingly good food on offer to make HKK A-OK by me.

Thursday, February 14, 2013 - We begin with a shared Kilner jar of meltingly tender potted smoked brisket that’s flavoured with parsley, garlic and lemon zest to great effect. Then comes a show-stopping crab and fennel salad served on huge curls of cured, dehydrated and deep-fried pork skin – think crackling with the texture of a prawn cracker. Poussin can be bland but not on Rankin’s watch. Impressive in its simplicity, the whole bird comes to the table beautifully bronzed with a honeyed glaze and topped with slices of green chilli.

Thursday, February 07, 2013 - I’ve come to try the chef’s Shoreditch special of lamb raan bun. The meat is marinated in chilli, garlic and ginger, slow cooked with spices then hand-pulled and served in a soft sourdough roll (it’s also served as a whole leg for two to share). It’s the Indian version of the sort of pulled barbecue meat buns you find at places such as Pitt Cue Co and it’s delicious. Go to Dishoom with a bunch of mates, get stuck in to the pricey booze (nearly a fiver for a bottle of beer) and order undemanding but appealing dishes and you’ll have a whale of a time – albeit in a high-street chain sort of way.

Thursday, January 31, 2013 - Kedgeree, the Anglo-Indian colonial classic of curried rice with haddock and eggs, is one of those simple yet unimprovable dishes. But the misguided chef here has decided otherwise, forming the rice into tasteless arancini (deep-fried risotto balls) that sit on a skid mark of curry sauce...Tender would be the last word I’d use about pork belly that’s crowned with an enormous portion of black pudding and accompanied by mash that tastes like something out of a 1970s school dinner hall. And a flavourless chunk of lamb, topped with overdone lamb’s liver, has the texture of wet cardboard.

Wednesday, January 23, 2013 - Most of what we eat is a real treat. A generous slice of smoked ham terrine and port jelly has great flavour and ‘beer onions’ prove a pleasingly rich foil to meltingly tender slices of Middle White suckling pig. But a crab salad is expensive yet meagre and two thin chops of blackface lamb are overcooked...Newman Street Tavern feels mournfully isolated. On the night we visit, it’s as under-stocked with customers as that raw bar is with fresh seafood. Hopefully that’s just down to a post-Christmas lull, as this celebration of native cuisine deserves an audience.

Friday, January 11, 2013 - Chunks of sea bream ceviche make for a refreshing starter, bursting with lime and fruity, piquant yellow amarillo chilli, with crispy corn lending texture. A version with yellowfin tuna, soy, sesame seeds and shrimp cracker is equally as good...But it’s the parrillada that steal the show. Costillas de chancho are pork back ribs flavoured with a tamarind glaze so bone-gnawingly addictive it should be a controlled substance. Chuletas de borrego prove how satisfying eating three beautifully cooked, tender lamb chops that have been marinated in dried chilli, ginger, garlic, rosemary and cumin can be.

Thursday, January 03, 2013 - Between 6pm and 8.30pm, it offers aperitivo – a buffet of freebie small bites to accompany a glass of wine or beer. When we visit, the selection includes gnocchi with home-made pesto; slow-roasted tomatoes with a herb crust; a vegetable gratin; and pies filled with ricotta and spinach and pancetta, courgettes and taleggio. It’s also worth paying for your food here. A sharing platter of meats and cheese includes some seriously delicious salamis.

Thursday, December 20, 2012 - You don’t eat off anything as mundane as a plate at Bo London. Instead, ‘bed and breakfast’ (smoked quails’ eggs set in a crispy nest of deep-fried shredded taro, topped with caviar) rests on the branches of a stainless steel bonsai tree. ‘Cloud’ is a white china spoon of mackerel, topped with a black sesame foam that’s served on a bowl that burps little puffs of dry ice...Having every course explained to you (and they need explaining) becomes tiresome but if you’ve got a spare few hundred quid, don’t let that put you off what is a true gastronomic experience.

Thursday, December 06, 2012 - A faultlessly executed lunch kicks off with a simple but effective salad of sliced breast of tender, pink wood pigeon with sticks of delicately poached baby rhubarb. Although the shtick here is British banqueting, a main of rump and slow-cooked breast of superb Kent lamb comes with a suspiciously Italian but delicious accompaniment of basil, fennel, artichoke and tomato...Londoners who leave cooking this good to the tourists should be sent straight to the Tower.

Wednesday, November 28, 2012 - The ‘slight hints of the Caribbean’ are nowhere to be found. Instead, there’s a list of familiar, mostly Italian dishes...A decent chunk of monkfish is wrapped in Parma ham and served on grilled peppers, courgettes (described as Provençal) and an aggressively seasoned tomato coulis. Two veal cutlets have been cut so thin there was never any chance of them being served medium as requested. However, my guest is satisfied with the generously filled wooden board that includes garlic mash and a melting disc of lemon and thyme butter.

Wednesday, November 21, 2012 - Eggs Benedict and salade Niçoise being served to another table look generous and appetising but I’m after something more substantial. The beautifully seasoned, expertly charred crust of a hulking roast veal chop from the list of ten ‘plats’ (main courses) gives way to tender, juicy flesh and comes with a limpid caramelised lemon sauce that’s so glossy I can almost see my greedy face in it. Service from immaculately turned-out staff is impressively friendly and on the ball. Each time the waitress refills my wine glass, she flashes me a great big grin.

Thursday, November 15, 2012 - A selection of eight sushi and susci make up an over-large, overwrought and overpriced starter, served in a posh glass version of a TV dinner tray and with foot-long cutlery that makes my lunch guest look like Edward Scissorhands. On the plus side, the fish and shellfish are wonderfully fresh and some of the decidedly un-Italian combinations, such as amberjack with leek and lemon grass sauce, pansy, basil and fried amaranth, are successes.

Thursday, November 08, 2012 - What could be more enjoyable than a thick slab of rough country pork terrine served with top-notch sourdough baguette from St John bakery? A simple autumnal assembly of girolles and artichoke sauced with a warm egg yolk and fragrant tarragon comes very close. Apart from the comprehensive wine list and a selection of half a dozen cheeses, the Loire theme is a bit on the vague side. But who cares when a fillet of perfectly cooked gurnard with shellfish vinaigrette or a pear, salted caramel and crisp sablé biscuit are this good?

Wednesday, October 24, 2012 - Preconceptions about the cooking you might expect from a group-owned restaurant are dispatched by a deeply flavoured and beautifully made game terrine and a dressed crab with precisely arranged and sparklingly fresh white and brown meat. A sirloin of West Country Black Angus is a stunning piece of meat (the best I've had since Goodman opened) that's cooked bang on medium rare and comes with exemplary béarnaise...It might be working to a familiar formula but with its slick and engaging service, New Street Grill is a class act across the board.

Wednesday, October 03, 2012 - Eating at the bar reserved for walk ins is the way to go. Then you can see your slab of foie gras with walnuts and sweet PX vinegar being grilled or your tortilla with salt cod (a must order) being fried in its cute blini pan and you can chat to the friendly staff...This is an upmarket, glossy version of a San Sebastian pinxto bar and inevitably lacks the sheer messy thrill of the real thing, but it nevertheless holds it own among the burgeoning number of top-notch Spanish restaurants in London.

Wednesday, September 26, 2012 - The idea of peas with mint as a starter might not set the heart racing but the dish itself is a real pulse-quickener. The small earthenware bowl of pea mousse topped with mint granita, fresh peas in the pod and pea shoots is a riot of intense flavour. The humble vegetable has never tasted as good as this...Making a clear broth from goats’ cheese sounds utterly bonkers, if not virtually impossible, but they pull it off with elan here, serving it with a pink-roasted veal rump, lightly cooked summer vegetables and chrysanthemum leaves. It looks unassuming but tastes outstanding.

Wednesday, September 19, 2012 - From a special of crispy ham fritters served in a summer vegetable broth packed with wild mushrooms, to a simple caramelised goat's cheese and candied beetroot sandwich, nearly everything we try is beautifully cooked and brimming with flavour. It isn't complex stuff but there's rustic delight to be had from a generous bowl of spiced sausage and lentil stew, simply embellished with a big scoop of tangy goat's curd and a handful of rocket.

Monday, September 10, 2012 - Plump frog’s legs (yes they do taste like chicken) are served with a creamy watercress sauce and a deliciously rich veal jus, while a parfait de foie gras is equally well heeled and just as pleasing. The skin on a meltingly tender confit leg of duck is so crisp that I’m convinced it must have seen the inside of a deep fat fryer, though I’m assured it hasn’t. A punchy mustard sauce adds just the right note of balancing acidity...There is much to love about Zedel but it’s not perfect.

Wednesday, April 18, 2012 - If you've never tried lamb brains, bheja fry is the perfect introduction. Three fritters with a crispy coating and yielding, almost melting interior, are served on a mildly spicy minced lamb curry, fragrant with green cardamom. It overshadows another starter of tandoori salmon with pea relish and an 'Indian pizza' of naan topped with cheese and chilli sauce...Rogan josh shepherd's pie sounds like a cross-cultural winner but disappoints on the plate with harsh spicing and ho-hum mash. Far better are the rich and creamy black lentils that take me back to Bukhara restaurant in New Delhi.

Wednesday, January 18, 2012 - Williams's version of French onion soup is like no other I've ever tried. In a martini glass, brown crab meat puree flavoured with paprika is topped with white crab meat, mixed with slow-cooked onion, which in turn is capped by a disc of jellied beef and onion consomme and a small lump of braised beef cheek. The waiter completes the dish at the table by pouring over a tiny jug of the soup. On the side are baked potato and Gruyere squares sandwiched with cream cheese...You could entertain a business client, your aged aunt or maybe even impress a first date. However, whether there is anything to tempt you back a second time is questionable.

Tuesday, September 20, 2011 - Unless you've got a business deal to shout about to your three besuited chums or are a group of ladies of a certain age who lunch, you'll need a very good reason to blow big bucks in this grand hotel dining room...The menu du jour goes some way to ameliorate these shortcomings. A top-drawer starter features slow-cooked pig's head and trotters formed into a crisply coated brick and served with a salad of finely sliced celery, sweet prune puree and marinated Agen prunes. A large rabbit leg has been both confited and grilled, rendering the meat a little dry, but a gloriously smooth, bright orange butternut squash puree and delicious Moscatel wine sauce adds the required lubrication.

Wednesday, September 14, 2011 - It was always going to take something spectacular to live up to those surroundings but our meal doesn't even come close...A main course fillet of red mullet is served sans sauce, completely unseasoned and is so criminally overcooked that I have to restrain myself from marching into the kitchen to effect a citizen's arrest. Three accompanying langoustine are meagre in size and woolly in texture and it's impossible to cut the single grilled spring onion and rather delicious (if wildly over-salted) treviso with the blunt fish knife I've been given. A fresh, meaty crab salad starter appears to have been served on a tasteless disc of Hovis soaked in water.

Wednesday, September 14, 2011 - The chicken lollipops at this good value, zeitgeisty diner will make a certain fast-food colonel green with envy. Half a dozen wings - the meat pushed up from the bone to create the 'stick' - deep fried in a cumin, fennel and chilli crumb and served with a punchy mint and coriander dip, this is the snack food of the gods...Samosas have a pleasing kick and come with a deliciously spicy chickpea curry. The spiced lamb chapli kebab served in a bun is in with a shout for the title of London's best burger.

Wednesday, April 27, 2011 - With a menu that includes a burger and brown ale-battered hake and chips, it's clear that Bosi understands pub food. But a vibrant and silky smooth wild garlic and potato soup served with buttery chopped snails on toast is Michelin-style cooking of the highest order, while some of the first English asparagus of the season gets a classy accompaniment of smoked hollandaise and pink grapefruit. But there is a slew of under-performing mains...There's not enough shrimp and caper butter to raise a perfectly pleasant roasted Cornish lemon sole above the ordinary; cauliflower and broad bean risotto is overcooked; a bavette steak with buttered green beans and Bearnaise sauce is declared 'the worst I've ever had' by my son.

Wednesday, November 03, 2010 - Although apparently specialising in food from the north, it's a Goan-style prawn balchao from the south-west of the subcontinent that's the stand-out starter. The only disappointing thing about the plump shellfish in a well-balanced sweet, sour and spicy masala is the stingy portion size...A karbahari fish curry is judged too creamy by its recipient, although the chef's wise decision to use dense, meaty halibut means the flesh hasn't overcooked in the coconut milk-rich, aromatic sauce. However, a venison bhuna is bang on the money; tender chunks of meat in a gloriously earthy, deeply flavoured marinade/sauce.

Wednesday, October 27, 2010 - There are two bite-sized jamon and chicken croquetas, deep fried to crisp perfection; a scattering of crunchy cubes of chicharrones Cadiz (slow-roasted pork belly with cumin and lemon) and four halves of patatas mojo (salt-crusted potatoes with green chilli and coriander sauce). There's not a duff dish...This may be the casual, buzzy restaurant of the moment but the efficient service, keen prices and cracking cuisine should ensure it'll be around for some time to come.

Wednesday, October 27, 2010 - The menu reads well and there's plenty of seasonal and delicious-sounding dishes. However, the reality is less pleasing. The shortcrust pastry of a woefully under-seasoned crab and saffron tart, which tastes mostly of egg and cream, is so short it turns to dust in my mouth. The pommes Anna potato cake accompanying a nicely cooked partridge is flabby and greasy, instead of crisp and buttery. And a tiny raspberry creme brulee with an undercooked, spongy topping and a rectangle of blueberry crumble contains enough sugar to send someone into a diabetic coma.

Tuesday, September 14, 2010 - You don't come to this handsomely made-over pub in a chi-chi Notting Hill back street for originality. But you can eat well, especially if you order 'Great British bar snacks' such as deeply flavoured, home-smoked salmon with a mini loaf of excellent soda bread, or a superior sausage roll...Chicken Kiev is a deep-fried ball of breadcrumbed chicken on a huge shallow-fried hash brown sitting on a bed of musty-tasting coleslaw; it's a clumsy dish that tastes mostly of garlic butter and grease.

Tuesday, August 31, 2010 - The deceptively simple-sounding 'rabbit salad, artichoke, basil' looks a treat in a 1990s stacked-up-tower sort of way and is a quiet riot of sophisticated flavour. Antunes bones a whole rabbit and stuffs it with a mixture of pancetta, Swiss chard, pine nuts, sun-dried tomatoes and mascarpone. It's then rolled and gently poached in a rabbit consomme. The result is a tender, juicy meat that has lost none of its delicate flavour...Antunes's food might be better suited to a stylish, intimate Mayfair restaurant but I'd happily crawl over Westminster Bridge to eat it again.

Wednesday, April 28, 2010 - A huge pile of zucca fritti (pumpkin fritters) sport a light batter that remains miraculously crisp to the last bite; San Daniele ham with shavings of Pecorino Riserva successfully combines ingredients of quality and distinction. Grilled sardines are beautifully fresh and dressed with a garlicky gremolata, while a perky mozzarella with grilled fennel is about as good as the cheese gets. Main courses are equally impressive. Pigeon is roasted to tender pink perfection and served on smoky chargrilled bread...If Zucca has a few rough edges, it more than makes up for them with that all-too-rare commodity: genuine hospitality.

Wednesday, April 21, 2010 - A nicely presented rump of Elwy Valley lamb is so severely undercooked that any collie dog worth its salt could have herded it back into the kitchen. An accompanying potato rosti would also have benefited from more time in the pan. A veal chop has been nicely grilled but is presented artlessly on top of some sprouting broccoli and comes with a pat of anchovy butter that tasted far more of butter than anchovy...A delicious bottle of Pouilly Fuisse from a concise, fairly priced and interesting selection raises our spirits but we struggled to find anything else about the experience that would draw us back.

Wednesday, February 24, 2010 - In theory, The Red Fort has a lot going for it. But it has a fatal flaw: its prices are outrageously high...If you've got 18 quid (plus 13 per cent service charge) to spare, you might want to pop in for the superb Welsh lamb and basmati rice with spices, steamed in a sealed pot; that's biryani to you and me. The perfumed rice and tender, fragrant meat was as good as anything I'd eaten in Lucknow, from where the dish is thought to have originated. Apart from that, you and your wallet might be better off at the local tandoori.

Wednesday, August 26, 2009 - More feels like a proper discovery. This converted greasy spoon on an unremarkable stretch of Tooley Street is currently serving some of the most exciting grub to be had in the city. There's an effortlessly creative feel to the pan-European food that harks back to the eclecticism of modern British cooking at its height in the mid-1990s...The concise, daily-printed menu reads like it's been written by a real pro too, with delicious sounding combinations such as sauteed chicken livers with broad beans, pancetta, baby onions, sage masala and rocket just begging to be ordered.

Tuesday, April 21, 2009 - With the help of consultant and Chinese regional cuisine expert Fuchsia Dunlop, the grazing menu of xiao chi (or 'small eats') at this atmospheric, labyrinthine restaurant brings Chinese street food to Soho with intriguing effect…Dishes are inexpensive but small portions mean the cost can soon mount up. But with so much flavour and casual dining-style fun on offer, it's a price worth paying.

Tuesday, April 21, 2009 - The USDA prime rib-eye fills my plate with meat and heart with joy. The charcoal-scented aroma (they cook their meat here in a fancy-pants Josper barbecue oven from Spain) is intoxicating and my scary-looking Tramontina steak knife cuts through the tender flesh as though it were butter. A New York strip, or sirloin, is a closer-textured piece of meat but equally delectable… 'So what don't we like about Goodman?' I ask as we head back to the Tube. The silence speaks volumes.

Tuesday, September 02, 2008 - As the main courses arrived, it became obvious that The Botanist wanted to be taken seriously. From two mini copper pans, our waitress poured fig wine jus over a seared duck breast, then finished off a plate of roast suckling pig with a Calvados sauce. Ooh, get you!

Tuesday, September 02, 2008 - If you only eat one restaurant dish this year, make it the starter of grilled quail at Mien Tay. Spatchcocked and quartered, the delicate meat gets a delicious flavour boost from a mixture of honey, garlic and some subtle spicing.

Tuesday, August 26, 2008 - If an address can have a personality crisis, then 33 St James's Street should seek help. Not so long ago, it was a sophisticated upmarket Italian called Fiore. Before that, it referred to itself as Fleur, spoke in a laid-back French accent and hung around with Gordon Ramsay. In an earlier, highfalutin phase it answered to the name of Petrus – but only if you were stinking rich.