Croque Comp. Dead on Friday? A Hit on the River. Critics & More.
New posh vs. cheap feature from The Independent. Lander loves Polish. Preston bites bagels. Ivers hates NY.
Welcome to this week’s update. Anyone else enjoying the sun?
Many thanks to everyone who filled in the Reader Survey last week. For those of you who haven’t — and let’s be honest, that’s most of you — I’d really appreciate it if you could take a moment and complete it.
A reminder: I’ll run a draw in a couple of weeks, and anyone who has completed the survey could win lunch with me — on me — at Cabotte in the City.
It will only take about 3 minutes to complete. I’ll wait.
Thank you. On with the show.
Crowning the Top of the Croques
I had the pleasure of attending a fun event last Monday at Marceline in Canary Wharf. The restaurant brought together five of London’s most interesting chefs to see who could produce the best croque.
Marceline Chef Davide Toro led off with the restaurant’s own signature Croque Monsieur, which pushes beyond traditional boundaries with the addition of homemade pickles and Roquefort cheese.
Sandwich master Ruben Dawnay of Ruben’s Ruebens offered a pastrami-based Monsieur Rueben, which was a great concept, but sadly lacked sufficient dressing and sauerkraut. Freddie Janssen delivered Mortadella and Kimchi Croque Monsieur, but it didn’t quite sing.
Nomadic maestro Ana Da Costa gave us a Macau and Portugese-inspired Bifana Croque Monsieur, which was made with pork neck, spicy mustard, excellent ham, and a more structured cheese, then topped with fried potato bits. It was my personal favourite and nearly the winner.
But the title went to Chef Nirmal Save from Gunpowder, who brought the heat in his Goan-spiced Monsieur Fuego. It boasted rich chorizo, amped up with a dash of malt vinegar.
The event was to benefit The Felix Project, which “works with the food industry to rescue high quality surplus food, that would otherwise have gone to waste.”
London Really is Dead on Friday
It’s not your imagination. The Centre for Cities analysed a heap of credit card data and discovered that bar and pub spend in down substantially in London and other city centres compared to pre-COVID levels. Thursday is, fact, the new Friday.
Interestingly, they also assessed whether that city centre decline was driving a spending increase in neighbourhoods nearer to peoples’ homes. It isn’t. Spending in bars, pubs, and restaurants in local areas is down since 2019.
Hit: River Café
Hits & Misses are mini-reviews of places that were either (a) good, but not quite good enough to do a full review and add to the Guide, (b) had a flaw or two, or (c) that I revisited following a prior review.
Before you say anything, I freely acknowledge the absurdity. I accept that disclosing this fact may undermine my credibility.
Here it goes: Until very recently, I had never eaten at the River Café.
I know it’s famous. I know half the important chefs in the UK have trained there. I know it’s spawned a whole generation of similarly excellent places. I know.
Happily, I have now been able to rectify this error.
And it was brilliant. There was Agnoli stuffed with veal, prosciutto, and sage. There was perfect spaghetti with sweet crab and chili with a little hit of fennel. And there was whole Anjou pigeon lusciously prepared and served over potatoes.
The wine list was stunning, full of my favourite Italian choices, including the amazing La Rocca from Pieropan, very reasonably priced.
I was there for a work dinner, and we ate in the private room behind the kitchen. Sometimes, service struggles with that sort of set-up, but not at the River Café. The service was flawless, attentive, and swift.
I realise that recommending the River Café is not exactly breaking news. On the other hand, remaining at the top of its game after so many years is surely a feat worth noting.
Critics Wrap-Up
✍🏻 indicates a review that you should read for the writing.
🍽️ indicates a place that sounds excellent and is probably worth a try.
✍🏻 Grace Dent (Guardian) reviews Voyage by Adam Simmonds in Kings Cross. Giles Coren hated it. Andy Hayler disliked it. And Gavin Hanly landed on ‘meh.’ Grace isn’t bowled over. “Like all fancy hotel restaurants, Voyage’s clientele included several guests who had possibly ambled in hoping for a caesar salad and a side of fries and were now knee-deep in a Noma-style nosh-up.”
David Ellis (Standard) checks out 27 Old Compton Street, a new throw-back Italian in Soho. “Unlike the old guard, these plates are all genuinely good. Very good. 27 is not excusing poor quality with the low price.”
Catherine Hanly (Hot Dinners) was there, too. “At a time when eating out in London can be a stratospherically expensive affair, it's like a warm hug from an Italian nonna to find somewhere in London that offers great food at genuinely reasonable prices.”
Hannah Twiggs (The Independent) launches a new feature called Fine and Dine, which includes reviews of 27 Compton Street and Gordon Ramsay High, the new place at the top of 22 Bishopsgate.
On the Soho joint: “It’s just pasta – quick, fresh, delicious – and in a postcode stuffed with pretenders, ease and honesty might be the only luxuries that matter.”
On the posh City spot: “For a restaurant that ticks every box of modern fine dining, High still manages to delight. It plays the tune, but inverts it. Where others lean on formality, High has fun. Where others go heavy, it finds lift.”
Andy Hayler (independent critic) returns to Gordon Ramsay in Mayfair. “The technical skill on display in the kitchen is high, and the staff here are very welcoming.”
Charlotte Ivers (Sunday Times) goes to Dorian in Notting Hill. “Dorian styles itself as young and cool, but not many people who are young and cool can afford it.” … “In this sense, the whole of London is becoming like New York. I hate it.”
Tom Parker Bowles (Mail on Sunday) raves about The Prince Arthur in Belgravia. “The food takes its inspiration from the Basque country, and flavours move from the soft and subtle to the strutting and swaggeringly macho.”
Nick Lander (jancisrobinson.com) reviews Ognisko, a Polish place near Albert Hall. “The quality of the hearty cooking [is] better than one might expect from a basement kitchen connected to the restaurant via a series of dumb waiters, inconveniently placed.”
✍🏻 Mohammed Ali Salha (Vittles) digs into Cham Kampung Boy, the Malaysian market in Bayswater. “The weathered, utilitarian building reduces the barrier to entry and, with fewer commercial imperatives, allows innovative chefs and cooks to try something different.”
🍽️
(Braise) dives into It’s Bagels in Primrose Hill. “Bagels are available in a range of coatings, including sesame, garlic, onion, and everything, with a sweeter cinnamon and raisin variant too.”Hilary Armstrong (The Glossary) enjoys Ledi, a new Turkish spot in The Hyde London City hotel. “This is food for talking and laughing over, as you swipe fresh bread through jammy, smoky tomato ezme, rip into spicy lamb lahmacun and scoop up cool, yoghurt cacik.”
Jules Pearson (LOTI) checks out Hora in Mayfair. “The kitchen is led by Executive Chef John Skotidas, whose unique Asian heritage, South American roots, and Greek upbringing, somehow come together into one coherent, tasty menu.”
Kitty Bovaird Postiglione (LOTI) reviews The Lavery in South Kensington. “The food has substance too thanks to former River Cafe chef Yohei Furuhashi.”
🍽️ Alex Larman (The Arbuturian) loves the Silver Birch in Chiswick. “Restaurants this good do not grow on trees, and [Chef] Cornwell is a remarkable talent. Let us hope that … Michelin see sense and acknowledge this superb place next year.”
🍽️ Amanda David (Chatting Food) tries Sanjugo, which “has long been a bit of a foodie secret” but has moved to a new location. “Now that Sanjugo is no longer hiding its light under a bushel, I can only imagine it's quickly going to become a favourite spot.”
Chris Pople (Cheese & Biscuits) checks out The Duke in Henley. “I think [it] is incredibly reasonable for the amount of skill on display and the thoughtful, seasonal ingredients used.”
Nick Harman (Foodepedia) navigates The Three Gorges in Fitzrovia. “This is billed as Chinese Fine Dining, a phrase that many might find an oxymoron, but eating at 3 Gorges should change those minds.”
Beyond London
🍽️ William Sitwell (Telegraph) follows Tim Hayward and Tom Parker Bowles to Stroud to try much-lauded Juliet. “It turns out my plan to order the lot was one of the great decisions of our age. Because it is an absolute marvel of non-poncey, unfussy, simply presented, classic great-value dining.”
✍🏻 Jay Rayner (FT) is in Manchester to try the Chinese offering at The Harcourt Pub. “It’s not refined. It’s not delicate. It’s solid and comforting; cooking that makes a damp and difficult day so much easier. It’s precision engineered to go with a pint, or after you’ve accidentally downed six of them and forgotten to eat.”
Giles Coren (Times) heads to Fish & Forest in York. “As for the cod collar and chimichurri, that was a triumph the memory of which I shall carry with me to my dying day.”
Marina O’Loughlin (FT, via Instagram) was in Sicily. “This was an inspired menu, from frittatina to biancomangiare - a particularly floral and delicate number made with almond milk.”
Katy Wix provides a celebrity guest review for the Observer this week, visiting Giovanni’s in Cardiff. Sadly, these guest columns really aren’t working. For starters, I had look up who Wix was. (Ted Lasso, apparently.) But more broadly, the reviews are all about the celebs rather than the restaurants. And the writers’ knowledge of food and restaurants has been lacking in every review. I appreciate that the impending transition to Tortoise may be complicating things for the Observer, but there are lots of great food and restaurant writers out there. It would be better to cycle through guest contributions from people who know their subject.
Thanks so much for reading Professional Lunch. Please do subscribe if you haven’t already, and let me know what you think in the comments.
Katy Wix's review of Giovanni's in Cardiff did give me one of the most important pieces of information I seek.
Would I like to try this place?
No thanks.
The River Cafe’s Winter set lunch is one of the best fine dining ‘bargains’. £65 for two courses plus desert - slightly smaller portions of the day’s menu - with limited availability but always worth booking. We went last week with our 18 year old for a fabulous lunch in the sunshine.