Critics' Reviews & Goodies w/c 8 April
Charlotte Ivers with a must-read on eating out. Grace Dent loves tripe. Jim Famurewa on London's first Scottish deli. And other tidbits including a threat to your local wineshop.
Critics’ Reviews
We start in Peckham this week, with a warming story from Tim Hayward (Financial Times) about a mentoring lunch at The Montpelier with his colleague Sam Wilson. “You need a story, a tight conclusion. Sam, a musician, got it bang on. They’re hitting pub-food notes with practised competence, but their improvisation around the standards is breathtaking.”
Grace Dent (Guardian) has been sent to the Tower of London, not for imprisonment, but for fantastic Chinese. Before Dream Xi’am arrived, the space “was a Gourmet Burger Kitchen. It’s a great location, with legions of tourist passersby, but maybe not the sort who’d rush, as their first option, to a spot selling chewy tripe, pig ear and beef tendon.” Grace enjoys all of these things.
I’d like to think that Tom Parker-Bowles (Mail on Sunday) was reading Professional Lunches this week when he decided to review the new taco joint in Notting Hill, but I suspect not. He visits Trejo’s Tacos, started by B-list movie star Danny Trejo (you know him from Machete). If anyone has been to Trejo’s, I’d love a first hand report before I venture to Notting Hill.
Jimi Famurewa (Standard) reviews The Shoap near Angel, which describes itself as “London’s first Scottish deli.” The review is a writers’s masterpiece, but the food sounds horrific, even if Jimi seems to have loved it. Among other notables, he describes “the gonzo glory of Scottish tacos: two Archbold’s potato scones, heaped with punchy veggie haggis and roused by blobs of hot sauce from Edinburgh’s Leithal.” Read the review. Avoid the restaurant. Unless you are Scottish. Or very drunk. Or both.
Tanya Gold (Spectator) visits Paper Moon in the OWO in Whitehall and is full of snark, but about politics, not the restaurant: “It’s rare for a high-end Italian restaurant to feel so relaxed.”
William Sitwell (Telegraph) finally arrives at The Arlington in St. James, which has now had so many reviews that I’ve lost interest. It’s a brasserie for famous people. The food is good. Critics think you should go. You’ll never get a table.
Andy Hayler (independent critic) posts two reviews this week. The first is for Hannah, an Omakese-style Japanese place in Southbank, and it gets his full endorsement. “Although this is not a cheap outing, the ingredient quality is very high indeed, the skill levels are considerable and the staff are a delight. This is the best kaiseki meal I have eaten in London. It is a little corner of Kyoto magically transplanted to the South Bank of the Thames. Do yourself a favour and eat at Hannah.” I didn’t know Hannah, but will try to check it out.
He also visits Josephine Bouchon, which Jay Rayner loved two weeks ago. Andy concludes, “this was a very enjoyable experience, the culinary levels here being a lot higher than most London attempts at French bistros.”
Jay Rayner (Observer) was in Birmingham.
And finally, we turn to Charlotte Ivers (Sunday Times) who reviews Fumi in Brighton, but also has a compelling piece that’s directly relevant to our cause: “Addiction to takeaways is eating our towns alive.” I’ve excerpted at unusual length, because I think her argument is essential reading:
Even if it does work out marginally more expensive, at your local restaurant they offer such luxuries as “the food being hot” and “putting the food on a plate for you”. Takeaway food is to restaurants what pornography is to sex. Sure, it’s satisfying the same basic need, but there’s an awful lot more dignity in one than the other.
Other indignities: last year, on average, Brits spent just four hours a month with their friends. We spent more time watching television, more time on social media and more time on email. More time, in short, doing pretty much anything other than sitting up at a restaurant table muttering, “Darling, have you seen what they’re charging for chardonnay here”, as God intended.
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Quietly and intangibly, the country becomes less vibrant, less fun. Pubs close early. Restaurants no longer open on Mondays, after 10pm or for lunch. Lunch! Ha! Remember lunch? How dare you want lunch? An unimaginable decadence. Nobody goes for lunch any more. How do I know? Because if they did, then there would be more restaurants open to take their money. (emphasis added)
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The problem is, if we want these places, we have to buy what they are selling. No amount of government funding for high street “levelling-up” will make a difference if nobody is actually visiting the businesses on those high streets.
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We can’t make perfect choices all the time. But we aren’t completely powerless. Our little choices add up. And it doesn’t take much to make different ones. Let’s be the change we wish to see in the world, as Gandhi supposedly said. I presume he was talking about going out for pizza. I hope so.
I couldn’t agree more.
Hits & Misses
New feature this week: Mini-reviews of places that were either (a) good, but not quite good enough to do a full review and add to the Guide or (b) Had a flaw or two. I don’t really want to write big negative reviews, but if a potentially interesting place fails to live up to expectations, I’ll try to point it out.
Hit: Dehesa (SoHo)
My first time to this tapas joint near Carnaby Street, and I really enjoyed it. Lovely service, great food, and excellent wine list. Dehesa is part of the fantastic Salt Yard Group, so I shouldn’t be surprised. The fried courgette, Cod fillet and ox cheek were particular favourites. Are there better, more authentic Spanish tapas places? Yes. Would I go back to Dehesa? Also yes.
Miss: 28-50 Wine Workshop & Kitchen (Marylebone)
I visited with James Whatley a couple of weeks ago. The name refers to the range of latitudes north and south of the equator where wine grapes are traditionally produced. And the wine selection was excellent. The food was perfectly fine, but sadly it was all just too slow. The waits were so long between courses that the manager offered us a glass of wine on the house. I appreciate that kitchens have tough days, so I’m not wishing to offer a definitive judgement, but I would be hesitant to return.
Politics Killing Wine in the UK
It’s good politics to raise taxes on wine. I get it. After all, wine taxes are just taxes on rich people, right?
Well, I don’t think so, but we can have that argument some other time, in a pub, where 40% of the takings are sales of cheap wine.
The wine industry is a massive contributor to the UK economy. For hundreds of years (thanks to Eleanor of Aquitaine and friends), UK merchants have acted as agents to help French wine reach world markets. Wine shops are important high street landmarks, usually locally owned and run.
Next year, there’s due to be a new tax regime for wine, and it’s going to be so complicated to implement that many merchants will have to reduce their selection, and the compliance costs will put great local wine shops at risk.
The problem isn’t the tax increase. It’s the complexity. Instead of a couple of tax rates on wine, there are going to be dozens, all based on the wine’s ABV, with a new tax rate every .1%. The thing is, you can have that much alcohol variation in ABV in the same wine from one year to another driven purely by the weather. Anyone notice the weather getting more unpredictable lately? So the paperwork for tracking all of these taxes is going to be hideous. And those compliance costs fall on your local wine merchants.
The FT has the full run-down, but this one of those political things that sounds okay at first but turns out to be really, really dumb.
Are Mondays the New Sundays?
I posed that question over on Notes and to a few friends this week. Truthfully, the answer seems to be ‘no,’ but maybe it isn’t quite ‘no.’
Maybe it’s ‘not yet.’
Our working habits have changed, and a lot of us are working remotely on Mondays. So, are we more likely to go out? Restaurants are running some great deals on Mondays. There’s Trivet’s La Bombe concept, and Hawksmoor’s £5 corkage to name just two.
What do you think? Are you finding yourself out on Monday evening more often? Hit reply and let me know.
Where have you been to lunch?
I’m looking for new-to-me places to try. Drop me a line and let me know a favourite or two? I’m eager to address the guide’s geographic shortcomings in the City and Shoreditch in particular. Thanks!
That’s it for this week’s wrap-up. The Wednesday review takes us to Clapham. Because from time to time, we should all go to Clapham.
If you’re enjoying professional lunch, please share it with friends and colleagues.
I’m going to lunch.