John Walsh reviews

Saturday, November 22, 2008 - The Mansion is a fantastic sight on the road from Dulwich to Crystal Palace. It's a great bulky lump of Victorian architecture, as solid as a fortress, and dominates the landscape. Once it was merely a boozer called The Paxton but, since it was bought by Ben Sowton (the guy responsible for the terrifically groovy White House in Clapham), it's been transformed. The ground floor's painted black outside, the first floor's all brickwork with black trim...

Saturday, November 01, 2008 - The Compleat Angler is…400 years old and sits perched on the riverside where, in summer, white cabin-cruisers disgorge well-heeled Home Counties couples to sit at the front lawn's white tables and chat the afternoon away. It's here that William Drabble has brought the décor and kitchen skills from Aubergine, the Fulham restaurant where Gordon Ramsay first made his name, and which won Drabble a Michelin star in 1998.

Saturday, October 18, 2008 - From outside, at the top end of Camden Parkway, standing aloof from the down-market boozers and fast-food joints of Camden Town, York & Albany looks like an exceptionally posh American bar. There's no name over the door, the bottles at the bar are gorgeously back-lit, indolent punters sprawl in fat leather armchairs, high-maintenance dames perch at the counter with their beaux and wish they could smoke. It's so cool, you feel pleased with yourself just walking in and ordering a gin and tonic.

Saturday, October 04, 2008 - The Town Bar and Grill has got itself a reputation as one of the grooviest. This is the place, everyone tells you, where Bono and The Edge from U2 took Bruce Springsteen for supper after a gig. The Irish Parliament is across the road, and this is where Irish TDs take each other to scheme and connive in the semi-darkness. Its owners, Temple Garner and Ronan Ryan, have converted the cellar of Mitchell's the wine merchant's into a dining-room, whose crepuscular gloom may be the last word in Dublin chic but is a little lowering to the spirits.

Saturday, September 06, 2008 - It was good, well-flavoured food – but we felt faintly disappointed. Was this what Ms Hartnett came up with, when given carte blanche to imagine and create? However classy the ingredients and subtle the vinaigrettes, we expected something more zingy, more original, more gasp-making. "It's not a courageous menu," said Rose severely. "It's strangely unadventurous for such a ballsy lady."

Saturday, August 09, 2008 - You couldn't accuse Mark Hix of resting on his laurels. Running hell for leather on his laurels, more like. Since he parted company with Caprice Holdings, owners of Scott's and The Ivy, barely a year ago, he's now opened three restaurants. It's true that in one of them – The Albemarle in Brown's Hotel off Piccadilly – he was more overseeing grandee than chef-proprietor. But in the other two, Hix Oyster & Chop House, and this fish house under review, along with money he has clearly invested his heart and soul. This man is unstoppable.

Saturday, July 26, 2008 - Lunch, when it came, was lovely. Isobel's calves' liver was as well-done as she wanted (she has a Girl Thing about not seeing traces of pink in the membranes) and meltingly tender on its duvet of mustard mash. My "pigs on toast" was trotter-meat pâté served on toast with rocket and Parmesan: very nubbly and dark and masculine, like eating woodland roots. The salt and pepper squid was lightly battered and delicious, until the taste was murdered by the garnish of raw chilli but, really, I should've seen that coming.

Saturday, July 12, 2008 - L'Anima is the Italian word for "the soul" or "the spirit", and it's unusual to find ethereal connotations attached to modern Italian cuisine. Restaurateurs like to emphasise the earthiness, the spicy peasantness, the down-home, hairy-armpitted, beans-and-pasta-soup-iness of vero Italian cooking. You may think it laughable that the River Café calls its fabulous dishes cucina rustica, when no actual rustic Italian could afford a tenth of their Hammersmith prices – but the image was seriously meant.

Saturday, June 28, 2008 - When you first visit The Botanist, you think to yourself: here is a place that needs absolutely no help from a restaurant critic. You can feel (and see and hear) its howling grooviness, its 24-carat trendiosity, from 100 yards away. It radiates heat. It palpitates with excitement.

Saturday, November 10, 2007 - So M. Bosi, I asked, are you in there with the molecular gastronomists, slugging it out with Heston Blumenthal and Ferran Adria? He waved a deprecating hand, as if to say, "Oh, that stuff – too simple." On the strength of my lunch, with its slightly over-ambitious brilliance, M. Bosi will go far.

Saturday, July 07, 2007 - The colossal bill arrived, aptly, in a black envelope, and I silently digested the fact that they charge £8.50 for a gin and tonic and £5 for filter coffee. A drinkable pinot noir at £35 was from the bottom end of the list. But dammit, it was worth it. The place is too churchy, the service over-respectful and the food so relentlessly smooth that you feel like going home and eating dry Rice Krispies0. But this is British cuisine at a high-to-sublime level and you must find someone rich enough to introduce you to it, pronto.