Launching a Reader Survey. Plus, How Buzz Turns into Bookings. Soho at Risk. Critics & More.
Vittles on the Pasta Boyfriend. Rayner loves City yakitori joint. Ellis dines in a Câv.
Hello everyone! After a year of Professional Lunch, I’m really eager for your help making it better and more relevant for you. So, could you take a moment and complete my Reader Survey?
It’s only a few questions and should take about 2 or 3 minutes. It aims to understand what you like best about Professional Lunch, tests a few ideas for future features, and explores your own lunch habits. Please do take a moment and complete it. I will be very grateful.
To sweeten the offer slightly, if you complete the survey this week, I’ll put you in a draw to win lunch with me at highly regarded Cabotte in the City. Though I do realise that lunch with me may not be an incentive.
Data Shows Forces that Drive Bookings
As part of launching its new dream team of restaurant writers, the FT’s vaunted data group dug into restaurant bookings. This one is so good that I’ve created a Gift Link for you, so you don’t even have to subscribe to read it.
Working with booking data from a number of notable restaurants in locations across the UK, the FT analysed the impact of a national newspaper review and compared it to a Test Drive from Hot Dinners, recognition from Michelin, the viral Tik Tok treatment, and good, old fashioned word of mouth.
Interactive graphics show, for example, how reviews from the FT, Observer, and Times put high octane behind Cloth’s bookings. And revealed the scale of impact on bookings from Hot Dinners and Top Jaw. But the biggest impact on bookings was still Michelin. Chishuru’s star drove huge impact.
I’m a huge nerd for data like this, and I wish the booking sites would release more of it. For now, it’s interesting to see that a winning communications strategy for any restaurant probably includes a blend of techniques.
Council Set to Ruin Soho
Westminster Council is consulting on proposals to pressure Soho pubs, bars, and clubs to be quiet. According to the Telegraph, “The council is also looking to hit businesses with a so-called late-night levy, a tax on businesses which supply alcohol late into the evening.”
So, just as restaurants and bars are facing huge growth in costs thanks to NI increases, the council wants to layer on still more costs.
James Raynor, the chief executive of Grosvenor’s property company, which owns much of nearby Mayfair, told The Telegraph: “If you start to limit those sorts of activities, you’re going to put a lot of businesses out of business. Which is going to make a lot of people unemployed, which is going to cost the country money and not generate tax revenue.”
Ronnie Scott’s owner John James told the paper that “proposals for pubs and clubs in Soho to host more ‘quiet nights’ threatened to ‘kill an international city’ and would put the capital far behind rivals such as Paris, Milan and New York.”
Soho is a gem and a vital heartbeat in London’s evening scene. And no resident can or should be surprised by the vibrancy of nightlife in the neighbourhood. These proposals should be dropped.
Hit: The Portrait by Richard Corrigan
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.
In a year of writing Professional Lunch, I’ve made quite a few mistakes.
But none were quite as bad as my series of mistakes at The Portrait by Richard Corrigan. I was having such a great conversation that I didn’t take any notes at all. And I forgot to take a photo of the menu. And by the time I looked up the online version, it had changed over to spring. So I have no earthly idea what I ate. Thus, writing a proper review is, annoyingly, impossible.
What I can tell you is that it was excellent. Tailor made for a Professional Lunch.
The Portrait rebooted last year under Corrigan’s supervision.
It’s located on the top floor of the National Portrait Gallery, and has a commanding view over Whitehall.
The food was excellent, and there’s a great wine list. There’s also a reasonably priced set-lunch, so even with a glass or two of wine, you can escape for well under £50 per person.
I’m glad to recommend The Portrait in its new guise. It’s a particularly good place to take guests who are visiting from abroad.
And I would happily put it in the London Guide, if only I had done a better job and could write a proper review. Sorry. I’ll try to do better.
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.
✍🏻 Hester van Hensbergen (Vittles) has the review of the week this week, hilariously exploring the Pasta Boyfriend via a review of Isla. “We have reached peak Pasta Boyfriend. The Pasta Boyfriend is Brooklyn Beckham gouging the creamy heart out of an entire parmesan wheel and filling it with spaghetti for his lactose-intolerant fiancée.… The Pasta Boyfriend wants his spaghetti at a little place he’s just discovered, which is called Regency Café.”
✍🏻 Jay Rayner (FT) raves about Hotori, a yakitori joint in the City. “Hotori, which means ‘in the neighbourhood of’ in Japanese, is as good as any yakitori restaurant I have tried in Tokyo, and better than many there. It’s rich in precision and attention to detail. There is balance and poise.”
✍🏻 🍽️ Grace Dent (Guardian) debates whether Cálong in Stoke Newington is or is not a Korean restaurant. “Can you really turn Korean kimchi into crisp fritters, in much the same way as the French make beignets with courgette flowers?”
Charlotte Ivers (Sunday Times) takes her editor to the Waterman’s Arms in “cut-off” Barnes. “Inside, we could be in a rural French bistro: dark wood, wine bottles lining the walls and a chalkboard offering various cuts of beef and fish specials (skate and gurnard).”
Tom Parker Bowles (Mail on Sunday) heads to the Dover in Mayfair. “Food is far better than you might expect, the menu listing clubby comfort-food classics with an Italian-American burr: cheeseburgers and lobster rolls, spaghetti with meatballs and grilled Dover sole.”
David Ellis (Standard) tries Tasca at Câv in Bethnal Green. “It’s as if someone opened The Dover in their garage, using pocket money.” … “Câv is draughty, needs laying out properly, and could do with a few prints somewhere. But gumption has gone a long a way.”
Giles Coren (Times) heads to Mr Ji. “It’s not your usual, common or garden local Chinese, this Mr Ji. It’s a wild ride through the foodie backstreets of an imaginary EuroTaiwanese wonderland that somehow starts in Camden Town.”
- (Braise) visits Solis in Nine Elms. “Despite centring around two dishes, Solis claims influences from across Spain, Portugal, Uruguay, and Argentina.”
Andy Hayler (independent critic) has a mixed experience at Voyage with Adam Simmonds, in the Megaro Hotel in Kings Cross, which Giles Coren positively hated a few weeks ago. “The standard of dishes was too variable at this price point. In particular, a rethink of the desserts is in order.”
Nick Lander (jancisrobinson.com) is the latest to try Don’t Tell Dad in Queen’s Park. “Don’t Tell Dad succeeds as a neighbourhood restaurant in a characterful street.”
Gavin Hanly (Hot Dinners) test drives Victor Garvey at the Midland Grand, which I tried a couple of weeks ago. “It's easy to see why this should prove to be a big success.”
Catherine Hanly (Hot Dinners) checks out Nina, a new hotspot in Marylebone. “The team here have managed to create something quite special with Nina.”
Kitty Bovaird Postiglione (LOTI) loves The Brave, a gastro pub in Islington. “If you’re craving comforting pub grub, but still want a touch of luxury, this is the spot.”
Chris Pople (Cheese & Biscuits) heads to the Cadogan Arms in Chelsea and finds “a place that both knows its audience and tries to do things well.”
Hilary Armstrong (The Glossary) enjoys Fonda, the buzzy Mexican spot in Heddon Street. “The diner should prepare for a luxury experience, where tostadas are finished with seaweed oil and elderflower vinegar; quesadillas come with Wiltshire black truffle; and it is lobster, not pork, that’s given the al pastor treatment.”
Alex Larman (The Arbuturian) revisits Amaya, the Michelin-starred Indian place in Belgravia. “Twenty years on, Amaya is still the connoisseur’s pick of choice, and is likely to remain so for another two decades or more, too.”
Beyond London
Ed Balls is the Observer’s guest critic this week, travelling to Norwich to eat at Shiki where he enjoys “the staggering sight of my 86-year-old father, chopsticks tightly gripped, preparing to stab his fish – a technique unusual, not very Japanese, but not at all hesitant.”
William Sitwell (Telegraph) visits Newbury to try Goat on the Roof. “I got depressed by a plate of flageolets. They had too much bite and the dusting of herbs on top was too thick.”
Edible Reading is also in the Newbury area and checks out The Pot Kiln. “If you want tapas, I think you might be better off heading just down the road to the Goat On The Roof. If you want ludicrously good meat cooked beautifully on an amazing piece of kit, you should go here.”
- (Bald Flavours) is still working through his Copenhagen trip, and this time gives us a review of Silberbauers. “Although demonstrably passionate about classic French cuisine, Silberbauers Bistro talks with an Italian affectation.”
Marina O’Loughlin (FT, via Instagram) concludes her train adventure at Caffe Parisi in Catania.
Thanks for reading Professional Lunch this week. A reminder to please complete the reader survey and subscribe if you haven’t already.
very cool to see reservation data like that! I've been meaning to dig into restaurant booking and marketing tech more deeply — you've inspired me to do it sooner rather than later!
Also survey complete ✔️