Best of 2024, To-Do for 2025, Disappointments, Critics & More

Grace looks forward to AI. Andy wrapped up in Cord. Tim contemplates attire.

The end of 2024 is nearly upon us. Tomorrow, we’ll send out the old and usher in the new.

It was an epic year for London restaurants. We lost some favourites: La Gavroche, Pollen Street Social, Galvin at Windows, Leroy and Delhi Grill were notable closures. There were some major departures, too. Ollie Dabbous leaving Hide perhaps the most significant. There is no question that running a restaurant is more difficult than ever before. Finding great talent is harder thanks to Brexit. Higher taxes and increased costs are eating into margins. I suspect we will see more surprising closures 2025.

But we also welcomed some great new places in 2024 that will be with us for a long time to come.

Indeed, this feels like a transformative year. Jason Atherton’s move to shut so many of his classic places and reinvent virtually everything he’s doing could be a microcosm of the bigger trend in London. A turnover from established places and chefs to newcomers.

So many notable, new spots arrived in 2024 that it’s almost impossible to believe, and I thought I would reflect on the biggest openings and name a few favourites.

One caveat: As I’m not a professional critic and, you know, have a day job, I haven’t managed to try everywhere I might have liked to. More on that below. And the usual Critics Wrap-Up follows at the bottom.

---

My Favourite Meals of 2024

The best food and best experiences I enjoyed over the last twelve months.

1. Single Thread, Healdsburg, CA. By far my best single meal of the year. I can recall the Suimono — “clear soup” — course made from fresh crab and crab broth, as though I’d eaten it five minutes ago. Epic wine pairings. And a simply wonderful evening in their care.

   

   Lamb at Single Thread.

2. Moor Hall, Aughton, near Liverpool. Their black pudding snack was the best single thing I ate all year, and the whole experience was so generous, gorgeous, and fun, that I’ve had to revise my all-time best list. (See below.)

3. Trivet, London Bridge. My favourite restaurant in London. I had several great meals there this year, but the best was to celebrate my birthday at the height of summer. Wonderful lamb, cooked perfectly, and served with a 50 year old California Cabernet Sauvignon. Unforgettable.

4. Rubens Ruebens, currently Nine Elms. Food so good that it made me homesick. Ruben’s skill and quality are undeniable. So good that I could happily eat there every day. He’s currently doing a residence at Darby’s.

5. Roe, Canary Wharf. Eating at Roe was a voyage of discovery. An opportunity to marvel at the cleverness of the people in the kitchen. A place so thoughtful that I found myself smiling like an idiot through our whole meal.

Dessert at Roe.

Top for Fun

Places where friends and I enjoyed a laugh or lost ourselves in the fun.

1. La Trompette, Chiswick. Can a white table cloth place with a Michelin star be fun? Like, laugh out loud, sides hurt at the end of the meal fun? When the sommelier is Donald Edwards, it can, and it was. He took our measure, educated us about our own wines, jousted appropriately, and gave the single best and funniest advice of the year: “When you’re five bottles in, I’d go for the cheap one.” Oh, and the soufflé.

   

   Soufflé at La Trompette.

2. Quality Wines, Farringdon. It’s impossible to go wrong in Quality Wines, which makes it the perfect place to let go of everything. Order literally anything on the menu, and you’ll be happy. Give a short brief on your preferences to the team, and let them pick a wine from the brilliant list. Lose yourself into total relaxation. You are in good hands.

3. Camille, Borough Market. There was a reason we were so noisy. The food was brilliant, the staff up for a laugh, and the atmosphere so convivial, it was easy to embrace the spirit. It was like we were eating at a village spot in rural France on a Friday afternoon. If I’d closed my eyes, Camille could have been full of farmers drinking red wine, laughing, and smoking Gauloise. Camille would have made the top meals list but for the wine list.

4. Ave Mario, Covent Garden. Fantastic, over-the-top Italian dishes. A superb wine list. Garish, over-sexed decor. Too much for a Professional Lunch. But a perfect place to enjoy yourself and laugh a lot. A hedonist’s dream.

Cocktails at Ave Mario.

Top of To-Do List for 2025

A bunch of places that I didn’t quite make it to visit this year.

• Bouchon Raccine. I’m pretty good at booking restaurants. This has proved impossible. If you’ve got an in, let me know!

• Josephine Bouchon. I have a booking, and am looking forward to trying it in a few weeks.

• The Pearly Queen. Fresh oysters and delightful seafood. Sounds right up my alley, and eager to get there.

• Lita. Mediterranean in Marylebone.

• The Hero. Elevated pub grub in Maida Vale.

• Row on 5. Another new Atherton spot, with high-end tasting menus.

• Cornus. Important new high-end spot.

• The Dover. NY-style Italian in a pub atmosphere. I’m in!

And some openings that I’m watching for 2025:

• Simpson’s in the Strand. A favourite of my parents and grandparents, I can’t wait to see it get the full Jeremy King treatment.

• Le Caprice. Opening in the new Rosewood Hotel that’s being built on the former site of the U.S. embassy in Mayfair, Richard Caring brings back a London classic.

What else should be on my to-do list in 2025? Let me know in the comments.

Most Significant Openings

New openings from this year that we’ll still be talking about — and enjoying — in ten years’ time.

• Cloth. Its location on the edge of the City and its amazing atmosphere make it timeless, and its hospitality, great food, and excellent wine choices make it easy to return. My sure bet to secure a Michelin star.

  

  Mozzarella and peaches at Cloth.

• Ibai. Similarly, location plays a role. So does its inviting space. Great Basque cuisine will never go out of style. Neither will superb cuts of meat.

• Josephine Bouchon. Lyonnaise is the ultimate classic cuisine. By all accounts, it is done masterfully here.

• Bouchon Raccine. I haven’t yet been, but places that can sustain buzz and bookings at this rate are bound to have longevity.

• Cornus. Another place that’s still on my to-do list, but seemingly another shoe-in for a Michelin star.

Biggest Disappointments of 2024

A few misses were inevitable in a year that was mostly excellent.

• The disgusting Sandwich Sandwich sandwich.

• The terrible, awful, dreadful wine list at Camille.

• Our shambolic dinner at High Road Social.

• The comedic decor, grocery-store food, and poor wine at Quill.

• The spotty service and weird menu at Sael. (I wrote off some of the problems at Sael to newness, and included it in the Guide despite some slight misgivings. But I’ve heard from friends that it continues to struggle with these issues, and I intend to revisit it in the new year.)

Updated Best Ever List

I first volunteered my best ever list in June after my visit to Single Thread, which went straight to number two. For the latest edition, I’ve brought in Moor Hall, and had to let Peg Leg Pete’s drop out of the top 10.

1. The French Laundry (first visit): Yountville, CA, USA

2. Single Thread: Healdsburg, CA, USA

3. Noma (second visit): Copenhagen, DK

4. Piazza Duomo: Alba, IT

5. Kadeau: Copenhagen, DK

6. Arpege (second visit): Paris, FR

7. Core by Clare Smyth (second visit): London, UK

8. Moor Hall: Aughton, near Liverpool

9. WD-50: New York, NY, USA

10. Da Terra: London, UK

What’s in your top 10 all-time? Let me know in the Comments.

---

Reflections on Professional Lunch

I launched this newsletter on 17 March 2024. Since then, I’ve written 42 proper reviews of places in London plus 10 in Margate and a few dozen more that I’ve covered as Hits & Misses. I’ve interviewed three major food critics, and I’ve summarised hundreds of critics’ reviews.

My most-read reviews have been of A. Wong, Kolae, and Ibai. That’s mostly a result of subscriber growth over the past few weeks since I was in the FT. The most-read piece overall remains my interview with Sunday Times critic Charlotte Ivers.

All of this has been tremendous fun for me, and I’m incredibly grateful that so many of you have subscribed and actually seem to read Professional Lunch on a fairly regular basis.

There’s a lot more to come in 2025.

---

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.

• Andy Hayler (independent critic) tries Cord, the restaurant connected to the Cordon Bleu cooking school in Fleet Street. “Although there were one or two dishes that could be tweaked to improve a little, this restaurant is already operating at a level that is at least as good as many places with Michelin stars.”

  • Andy also visited the Soho branch of Noble Rot. “Noble Rot offers an appealing menu, capable cooking, a fairly priced and carefully thought-out wine list and charming service. No wonder it is busy.”

• ✍🏻 Grace Dent (Guardian) offers a wonderful reflection on 2024, highlighting Sete in Margate, Camille in Borough Market, Cloth in the City, and the Dover in Mayfair, among others. And she concludes: “Don’t listen to restaurant critics. We are cosseted, overfed babies, carting our cellulite and wine-fed rosacea around eateries to find fault in dirty cutlery and split sauces while half the world is hungry. I’ll no doubt be replaced by AI by next Christmas, but while it lasts, it’s a hell of a ride.”

• Jay Rayner (Observer) also wraps-up 2024. “Stage [in Exeter] is my restaurant of 2024 and I can’t wait to see what they all do next.”

• ✍🏻 The FT’s panoply of food writers and editors collaborated on a year-end wrap-up summarising the best new places in London.

• ✍🏻 Tim Hayward (FT) has been thinking about “proper attire” for restaurants. “It seems fitting … to dress with just the right level of effort for celebration.”

• Tom Parker Bowles (Mail on Sunday) reviews The Spärrows in Manchester and discovers that cheese is good.

• David Ellis (Standard), Giles Coren (Times), William Sitwell (Telegraph), Charlotte Ivers (Sunday Times), Nick Lander (jancisrobinson.com), Marina O’Loughlin (independent critic), Dominic Preston (Braise), Sam Wilson (Bald Flavours), Hot Dinners, Vittles, and LOTI all took the week off.

Thanks for reading Professional Lunch. We’re nearing another big subscriber milestone, so I’d be really grateful if you could subscribe, if you haven’t already.