Fay Maschler reviews

Wednesday, November 26, 2008 - Cinnamon Kitchen, in the Devonshire Square development near Liverpool Street Station that was once East India Company warehouses, is the sibling of Cinnamon Club in Westminster. Executive chef Vivek Singh has moved over to the City for at least the next few months…Singh is a gifted cook and we found the dishes here more striking and exciting. Spiced sweetcorn soup accompanied by a kebab fashioned from chargrilled smoky corn kernels had vehement spicing which balanced the natural sweetness in an inspired way.

Wednesday, November 19, 2008 - Chef and partner in the business is Ed Wilson who spent some formative years with Chris Galvin. His menu is divided into sections of bar snacks, charcuterie and cheese — champion for wine browsing — plus small plates and plats du jour. Either start very hungry or eat with friends to maximise the pleasure of sharing as much as possible… Terroirs, with the sort of pictures, posters and chansons that spring to mind when the phrase French bistro is uttered, is a loud, joyful place where the enjoyment of wine is considered utterly natural.

Wednesday, November 19, 2008 - To provide competition for yourself on your front door is perhaps dopey but the owners of one of my favourite Italian restaurants in London, Ristorante Semplice, couldn’t resist the emptiness of the pub around the corner. Their trattoria and bar, dominated by a huge photograph of hills near Siena, is devoted to specialist regional salume and cheeses and the sort of dishes like spaghetti con pomodori that started our love affair with Italian food.

Wednesday, November 12, 2008 - Rural sensibility and an appreciation of simplicity shines through in the dishes at Corrigan’s. Late autumn is a grand time for the launch. The game season is in full flow and the potential of wild birds is seen not just in their roasted glory but also as game broth with chopped and seasoned game livers spread on accompanying toasts, as the basis for a terrine and in a salad of various birds with Catalan romesco sauce. A little canny housekeeping is also in evidence.

Wednesday, November 05, 2008 - The bar and restaurant follow the curve of the building where it meets the Regent’s Canal and Battlebridge Basin. The walls are glazed and in fine weather the windows will open on to the terrace but last Tuesday sleet and snow were suddenly flying past, almost horizontally, covering barges moored alongside with a white cloth of icy lace. It made dishes such as cottage pie served in a cast-iron casserole and braised neck and shoulder of lamb with hot-pot potatoes seem the obvious and, as it turned out, good choice.

Wednesday, October 29, 2008 - When GRH bought Foxtrot Oscar with the aim of rolling out bistros in that name, the publicity was keen to mention that the head chef was Gemma Tuley…After all that and still only a tender 25, Gemma has suddenly popped up in Waterloo at a restaurant and bar called Arch One opposite the main entrance to the station. It looks and feels like a place for after-work drinking. When I rang to book a table — to the seeming amazement of the chap on the other end of the phone — he said I would probably want to be on the mezzanine level.

Wednesday, October 22, 2008 - The front of the menu says: “Tsunami is about sharing and when you share you are giving.” Yadda yadda yadda. The mood at the moment is not about sharing. It is about getting your paws around what you can and hugging it closely to yourself. And in a Japanese restaurant there never seems to be that much of anything anyway. Furthermore, there is the resonance of this restaurant’s name. Monster waves smashing everything in their path seem not a precise evocation of generosity.

Wednesday, August 27, 2008 - It was the first day of service. “Gordon’s been on the phone but he’s not coming. He’s in LA,” said Angela Hartnett with a faint look of relief. Hartnett is the chef who joined Gordon Ramsay’s brigade at Aubergine 14 years ago when he worked in one kitchen full-time, 24 hours a day probably. It was pre-history: before he became a TV celebrity and started swanning around the world. The lady is a loyal survivor and possesses, as fellow chef Marcus Wareing has observed, true grit.

Wednesday, August 20, 2008 - This food is so delicious!" I exclaimed, sitting in the ground-f loor café of the newly opened Modern Pantry. "Well, she's had four years to prepare it," said a good friend of chef Anna Hansen, rather mordantly. When I went to dinner last week it was, in fact, almost seven years to the day since I visited the Marylebone restaurant Providores, where Hansen was one of a quartet of owners who included the New Zealand chef Peter Gordon.

Wednesday, July 30, 2008 - The arrival of The Giaconda Dining Room in Denmark Street turns out not to be gentrification. It is elucidation. Would that there were more such straightforward restaurants run by a passionate chef with a healthy appetite, especially in the surrounding Soho area. Maybe not another in Tin Pan Alley. We would not want it to become Stainless Steel Alley.

Wednesday, May 21, 2008 - The 400-seater Quaglino’s cost £2.5 million to build, a pretty penny 15 years ago and still a sum to conjure with. Conran had always admired the huge brasseries of Paris, establishments such as La Coupole, Lipp and Bofinger, and wanted to install in London the same air of matter-of-factness and lack of class consciousness these dining engines display.

Wednesday, November 14, 2007 - Poor Marcus Eaves was trotted out by David Moore not just to talk to me but also the restaurant critic for Bloomberg.com who was sitting nearby. My lunching companion said to the young chef: "I thought this was going to be more of a bistro." Marcus looked horrified. "I couldn't do that," he said, "it is not what I was taught." Quite so.