Netflix Hit with Chef Legends. M Closes. Kudu to Marylebone. Critics & More.
Ellis & Coren at loggerheads on Josephine. Sitwell & Lander clash over Tom Brown. Preston goes tacos. Dent adores the Badger.
Hello! I’ve decamped to Kent for the weekend, and had a fantastic dinner at the Sportsman on Friday evening. I’ll do a proper review on that soon. Saturday, we managed Angela's and Seté in Margate. All a reminder of just how excellent the Kent food scene is these days.
I’m on the cusp of another significant milestone in subscriber numbers. Could you take a moment and share Professional Lunch or this update with friends and colleagues?
It’s a very busy week — and indeed, I’m going to hold over a few things for next week — so let’s get right to it.
Netflix Nails It with Chef’s Table: Legends
Although I love food television, I’m not a huge fan of Chef’s Table on Netflix. For the most part, I find it over-written and over-produced.
But for its tenth season, the producers raised their game, creating a “Legends” season with moving films about Jamie Oliver, Thomas Keller, Jose Andres, and Alice Waters, mostly in their own words. All four have made huge impacts in both the culinary realm and the wider world.
Andres is now leading a global NGO that turns up in disaster areas and war zones to feed people. Oliver has changed how British school kids eat. Waters invented the farm to table movement, then changed how American school kids eat. And Keller has changed how we all eat, with his perfectionist tendencies and brilliant judgement.
There’s a nice promotional interview on the Netflix blog that gives a good flavour of what you’ll find in the films. And there’s a fantastic interview with Keller about making the series and his experience in food on the Michelin Guide’s website. Read, then watch. You’ll enjoy it.
Have you already watched? Let me know what you think in the comments.
Apple Backs Series on Chasing Michelin Stars
Speaking of foodie documentaries, Deadline reports a new one in development. Hosted by Topjaw founder Jesse Burgess, it will go behind the scenes at restaurants in London and Los Angeles as they pursue Michelin Stars.
Interestingly, it sounds as though they may also have behind the scenes access to Michelin itself, which could finally be a step towards a bit more transparency in the traditionally ultra-secret reviewing and selection process.
Gordon Ramsay’s production company is behind the project. Sounds like we’ll see it next year.
Swanky City Spot M Restaurant to Close
City AM broke the news.
City AM understands new chief executive Baton Berisha, who assumed the role in March following spells at The Wolseley Hospitality Group and The Ivy Collection, is focused on the core Gaucho brand. There is speculation that a rent review on the Threadneedle Street premises also influenced the decision. The group will also close the Crane Tap pub in Twickenham next week, leaving only the Gaucho brand in Rare’s portfolio.
This is only the second restaurant from the Guide that has closed, and the review has been updated to reflect its closure.
Kudu & Kudu Grill Moving to Marylebone
Last week’s update had a bit an accidental of Peckham theme. I visited the Peckham Cellars.
reviewed Cafe Mondo. Charlotte Ivers checked in from Janda Diner. And I made the point that there were five Peckham restaurants in the Michelin Guide.Sadly for SE Londoners, that’s about to change.
Shortly after I hit “send,” the founders of Kudu announced on Instagram that they are closing both restaurants and moving to Marylebone. It sounds like that the existing places will shutter in roughly August. The new opening date in Marylebone hasn’t been announced.
Hot Dinners reports that, “They'll be taking over the old Aubaine restaurant site on Moxon Street, right opposite La Fromagerie in the heart of Marylebone.”
I wish them huge success, but it’s a tremendous blow for the SE London food scene. And it underscores the challenges of trying to run a first-rate neighbourhood restaurant in the current climate.
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.
🍽️ Two very different views of Josephine Marylebone from David Ellis and Giles Coren.
✍🏻 Ellis (Standard) wasn’t impressed. “Chasing the mass market has corrupted the original’s charm. Are accountants to blame? Probably. It looks good, but it’s light on feeling; Café Rouge with a bit of lippy on.”
Coren (Times) loved it. “Great cooking, serious staff, top-class looks and real personality. Which is why it is going to be such a terrific chain, possibly the best we have ever had.”
I’ll be visiting in a couple of weeks and will endeavour to break the tie.
Another difference of opinion on Tom Brown at The Capital.
✍🏻 William Sitwell (Telegraph) hated it. “Half-starved and fresh out of captivity, I would still swerve this monument to the dull and misconceived.”
Nick Lander (jancisrobinson.com) enjoyed Brown’s “precise” cooking, although the service was a bit “slow.”
🍽️ Gavin Hanly (Hot Dinners) test drives newly-opened Duchy, in the old Leroy space in Shoreditch. “Every single dish we had here was fantastically well put together and built up into a truly excellent meal.”
Grace Dent (Guardian) loves the Fat Badger in Notting Hill. It “may have been sold to me as one of the naughtiest new places in London, but I think this wonderful, calories-be-damned ice-cream was easily the lewdest part of the entire evening.”
Jay Rayner (FT) is mystified by the Prince Arthur in Belgravia. “There is a test I have long applied to places like this, where the quality of the cooking cannot be denied: is this a restaurant to which I would return to spend my own money? The honest answer is no.”
Tom Parker Bowles (Mail on Sunday) is underwhelmed at Konjiki, a new Japanese spot in Kensington. “Things then descend swiftly into mediocrity, with a dreary, claggy mess of tuna and salmon, piled into a cheap, hard taco shell. There’s an excess of mayonnaise and not enough seasoning.”
🍽️
() reviews Comalera, a Mexican joint in Walthamstow. It was “compact, simple, and turning out excellent food that expands London’s understanding of what ‘Mexican’ means.”Dom also gave us a list of his favourite taco places. You’ll want to bookmark.
Nick Harman (Foodepedia) heads to historic Newman Arms in Fitzrovia. “A proper pub lunch in a proper pub, so we do what seems right for louche Londoners without proper jobs and have some more pints standing outside in the sunshine, enjoying the Fitzrovian atmosphere.”
He also visits the Winter Garden restaurant in the Landmark hotel next door to Marylebone station. “Head Chef, Brian Hennessy has recently joined, after sous-cheffing at The Ritz, bringing his style of ‘Modern European’.” … “The golden age of rail travel may be over, but The Landmark keeps the Grand Rail Hotel tradition alive with very good cooking in a superb space.”
Jules Pearson (LOTI) also goes to the pub. In this case, The Kerfield Arms. “Camberwell residents can count themselves very lucky to have The Kerfield Arms in the ‘hood. And for the rest of us, it’s absolutely worth the journey.”
Catherine Hanly (Hot Dinners) tries Mr Porter, which has gone into the old Trader Vic space in the basement of the Park Lane Hilton. It “comes from the Entourage Group who also have Mr Porters in Amsterdam, Barcelona and Ibiza.” … But she concludes that, “There are some people for whom Mr Porter will not be their kind of place at all.”
Anna Selby (The Arbuturian) suggests Sloane Place as a good spot to eat if you’re headed to the Chelsea Flower Show. “Sloane Place is not, though, just the go-to spot for the Flower Show. It’s just as nice the rest of the time – a little oasis of calm in the heart of Chelsea.”
Jonathan Nunn (Vittles) reviews “the best and worst of London suya.” “Suya – thinly-cut meat, barbecued once to doneness, blasted again to crisp it and then dusted in a spicy, aromatic powder called yaji – has the same reviving qualities on the tongue that a 12-volt battery and jumper cables do to a broken-down car.”
Charlotte Ivers (Sunday Times) was displaced by the Rich List this week.
Beyond London
The Observer’s “celeb” guest review series continues with BBC journalist Kirsty Wark reviewing Cafe St. Honoré in Edinburgh. “There is no showing off here, neither within the restaurant nor by Forbes himself. Just a passion for serving fine food, finding joy in making customers happy, again and again, in many different ways.”
Thanks so much for reading this week’s update. I’m approaching another substantial milestone for subscribers, so I’d be really grateful if you would share this week’s update with friends and colleagues.
I've started 'shaping' what my end of month newsletter includes content-wise and I've got a bit about the Chef's Table Legends series. I think I like this silo less than the classic Chef's Table and I'm trying to work through in my mind whether it's them or whether it's me that's the problem. Broadly, I found this series to be quite sanitized and, perhaps, that's an outcome of working with such vaulted figures in the industry (and their PRs and lawyers).