Science Loves Lunch. New Rosettes Pinned. Green Shoots. Critics & More.

Colwell loves and laments Chez Bruce. Sitwell gags at Grill bill. Larman fancies Franco's. Dent thrilled at Trillium.

Well, that was an interesting week. Oil is up, the markets are down, and there’s an impending shortage of fertiliser. [Insert favourite politician joke here.] Perfect. On the other hand, I had a delightful trip to Folkestone last weekend, and I’m trying the remade Simpson’s-in-the-Strand this evening. There’s a metaphor about green shoots a few stories down, so keep reading. But I’m putting a lot of faith in green shoots at the moment. I hope you’re finding your own hopeful metaphors to go with a few excellent lunches. Speaking of which, The Standard has found a few excellent lunches. Let’s get started.

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Ellis Gets PhD in Long Lunch

Standard Going Out Editor David Ellis goes deep on the science behind lunch, citing psychologist Dr. Jim Coan and Social Baseline Theory to argue that, “Biologically speaking, we need our friends, lovers, mates down the pub. Go to lunch, it might just save your life.”

I agree.

So Ellis and his team go crazy this week, suggesting that London is the best place in the world for a long lunch, then backing that assertion with loads of evidence and examples.

There’s a list of new London restaurants that deserve to live for ever, a compilation of nine of London’s greatest all-time restaurants, and a list of London’s best steak houses co-written by the excellent Sam Wilson.

Lunch at the Ritz, one London’s best all-time restaurants according to The Standard.

This week’s critics wrap-up also includes lots of nods to London’s eating institutions. There are reviews of Franco’s, Chez Bruce, and The Angler.

All of this is driven by the imminent re-opening of the ultimate institution, Simpson’s-on-the-Strand, with the backing of London restaurant legend Jeremy King. More on that very soon.

For now, go to lunch. It’s a helluva lot better than eating at your desk, no matter how much you like a salad bowl. And it might just be the right antidote from existential dread. No science on that yet, though.

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New 3- and 4- Rosette Places

I’ll confess: I don’t understand AA Rosettes. First, what the hell is a rosette? Some sort of ribbon, I think. An award? Like what a cow gets for best in show?

Since 1956, the AA has — between towing our cars and changing our tires — awarded them to restaurants. Their website describes them as, “The first nationwide scheme for assessing the quality of food.” About 10% of the UK’s restaurants qualify for at least one rosette.

That means that there are lots of one- and two- rosette places around the country. But the fun begins at the next step. Three rosettes go to “restaurants that achieve the standard that demand national recognition.” Four rosettes are awarded to places that demand national recognition and “demonstrate a passion for excellence. And five rosettes are, “where the cooking compares with the best in the world.” There are eighteen five-rosette places in the UK.

Last week, the AA made its bi-annual announcement of new three- and four-rosette awards. I’ll be honest: I missed it.

In his review of 74 Charlotte Street (see below), Andy Lynes wonders why there isn’t more coverage of the rosette announcements and, moreover, why restaurants don’t push the news harder. I hope Andy will forgive me being mildly flippant, but, I’m sorry to say… it’s the cow thing. An award that’s most common at an agricultural fair isn’t going to get pulses racing. Michelin’s stupid ‘grapes’ awards have a similar problem. Stars are heavenly. Rosettes are for the guy who finished 7th in a by-election.

More seriously, the UK-only nature of AA rosettes makes them feel limited and provincial, where Michelin’s stars allow diners (and chefs) to measure against the best around the world. Legitimate arguments about quality dilution notwithstanding, Michelin’s star system is an international metric for a globally intertwined industry.

Snacks at The Cocochine, awarded 3 Rosettes by the AA.

Bad branding and positioning to one side, AA rosettes are backed by professional reviewers operating at high standards. They are certainly notable in the UK, and we shouldn’t walk past successes for some great restaurants.

Last week’s announcement included two new 4 Rosette places:

• Home by James Sommerin in Penarth in the Vale of Glamorgan

• Sorrel in Dorking, Surrey

There were also twelve new 3 Rosette awards. The London recipients were:

• 74 Charlotte Street by Ben Murphy

• Bonheur by Matt Abé

• The Cocochine

• Michael Caines at The Stafford

Congrats to all, and especially Chef Larry and the team at The Cocochine, who were unjustly passed over by Michelin last month.

You can see the full lists of 3 Rosette places, 4 Rosette spots, and the best-of-UK 5 Rosette restaurants on the AA website.

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Ancient, Historic Oak Was Alive When Chopped Down

I appreciate that the headline might be from a Monty Python sketch. Let me explain:

Last April, I covered the story about a branch of Toby Carvery taking the knives to an ancient oak tree to make more room for a parking lot. This all happened in Whitewebbs, near Enfield in North London.

It seems that the manager of the Toby Carvery was told by someone that the tree was dead.

It wasn’t.

The Times reports. “An investigation by the Forestry Commission at the end of 2025 found ‘green shoots’ — meaning the tree was, and remains, alive.”

The current stats of the Whitewebbs Oak.

To add to the heartbreak, “After the tree was cut down, experts were able to get a more accurate estimate of its age because they could see its growth rings. It is thought to be about 450 to 500 years old.” So, it first took root in the midst of the reign of Henry VIII, in the early days of the Protestant Reformation, and during the rise of the Mughal Empire in South Asia.

The local Council is now trying to evict Toby Carvey, but the company is challenging in court, and the case won’t be heard for months. So naturally, they are also ducking the press, claiming that they are unable to comment due to the legal proceedings. As a communications professional with 30 years of experience in crisis management, I can tell you that this is never, ever true.

Still, the metaphor is irresistible. Some idiot came along and chopped down a great icon. But in spite of that, the thing lives. There are green shoots. Hope. A promise for the future. And a council-imposed protective order to keep other idiots away.

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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.

• David Ellis (Standard) doesn’t quite vibrate for Osteria Vibrato, the new place from Charlie Mellor in Soho. “Risotto though? One evening, rather good; the week before, chalky and undercooked. Salad both times was indifferent. Courtyard ragu was grim. I marvelled at the work that had gone into ricotta tortelli with tomato and butter, the pasta folded like knotted rope, but the dish had the sting of a lazy Sunday supper about it, the shops-are-shut kind. Both times, friends made the effort to remark that the meal was unremarkable.”

  • Ben McCormack (Wallpaper) has a better experience. “It’s little surprise Osteria Vibrato is already the talk of the town.”

• William Sitwell (Telegraph) loves the food but hates the bill at the new Chelsea Grill. “It’s a new place that sounds like an established old place, which is done with such taste and style and natural flair that it feels like an old place, too. A place that comes with such an astronomical bill that I can’t think of it without considering its cost.”

• Tom Parker Bowles (Mail on Sunday) dislikes the Wembley branch of Estadio Lounge. “There’s no trace of either salt or pepper in the ‘salt and pepper’ squid. It’s dull, but edible. Everything goes downhill after that.”

  

  Delectable duck dances of your palate at Bonheur in Mayfair.

• Nick Lander (jancisrobinson.com) checks out Bonheur, which I reviewed a few weeks ago. “Bonheur is French with Australian warmth. I wish it a long life.”

• ✍🏻 🍽️ Slutty Cheff (Hot Fat) takes a date to Tiella in Hackney, the new Italian trattoria from Chef Dara Klein. “Beyond great cooking, could the secret ingredient to a great restaurant not just be a safe pair of hands, but also a pair of Italian tits?”

  • Catherine Hanly (Hot Dinners) has a less colourful take on Tiella. “Not only is the food really good, but the staff are little rays of sunshine.”

• ✍🏻 Andy Lynes (Smashed) graces us with a proper restaurant review, digging into 74 Charlotte Street, which I wasn’t wild about. “There wasn’t a duff dish at any point in the £95 seven course ‘journey’.”

• ✍🏻 Angus Colwell (eponymous Substack) revisits the legendary Chez Bruce in Wandsworth. “Chez Bruce comes from a time of heady liberation from French fine dining. Wandsworth Common was prosperous, Tony Blair had brown hair, and you didn’t have to put duck with orange anymore. The food at Chez Bruce is tasty, and the service is amazing, so people will keep coming here. But for how long? The social class that frequents it is on the way down. What replaces it, who knows. Wincing in the winter weather while my friend lit a cigarette, I looked at the rain falling down Chez Bruce’s maroon façade. It wasn’t hard to imagine it shedding a tear.”

• Lauren O'Neill (Dining Out) loves the fantastic and cheap set-lunch at Quality Wines in Farringdon, which I reviewed a while back. “Quality Wines is just always good, but more than that, in my opinion, it has become an era-defining and almost quintessential London restaurant.”

• Gavin Hanly (Hot Dinners) test drives Amamoto, the new place in Mayfair from sushi supremo Shogo Amamoto, taking over the space that was previously Taku. “One of London’s great omakase restaurants right now.”

• Mei Bai (Vittles) reviews the mysterious Dong Yuan, “a Hunan-style restaurant specialising in xiao chao cooking on the Park Royal industrial estate in North Acton.” … “Dong Yuan could have easily been an exercise in authenticity chic, the kind of place people visit to signal cultural fluency. However, the cooking resists that framing, as the food is, simply, very good.”

• J.A. Smith (Palate) is the latest to try Mezzogiorno in the Corinthian Hotel in Whitehall. “Perhaps when pronouncing ‘mezzogiorno’ the emphasis should be on its beginning: ‘meh’.”

• Nick Harman (Foodepedia) revisits The Angler in the City. “Thirteen years a star, not fifteen minutes of fame, Angler is a Michelin restaurant that’s clearly no flash in the pan.”

• Alex Larman (The Arbuturian) is also on patrol for a classic, heading to Franco’s in St. James. “It simply continues to do what it has done superbly for 80 years. In an era of fleeting pop-ups and Instagram-driven concepts, that steadfast excellence in all its regards is something to cherish. One leaves feeling not just fed, but restored.”

• Abi Alibhai (The Sauce) reviews below-the-radar Riviera in St. James. “When you go to Riviera all you really need to know is, have the f**king bouillabaisse.”

Beyond London

• ✍🏻 Giles Coren (Times) ventures to Bamburgh in Northumberland to try the Potted Lobster. “Then even as we sat there, one of the waitresses came in and rubbed out the soufflé and wrote, “Amble landed langoustines, garlic and parsley butter — £18”, presumably because they had literally just arrived that minute from Amble, which is half an hour down the coast.”

• ✍🏻 Deepak Unnikrishnan (FT) fills in for Jay Rayner this week, with a timely review of Notebook, a Keralan chain restaurant in the UAE, now under fire. “There is joy to be had.” I am relieved to hear it.

• Grace Dent (Guardian) goes to Birmingham to check out Trillium, “a genuine attempt by a Michelin-starred restaurateur to translate some of their best bits into a semi-rowdier yet still upmarket stage. … Miraculously, [Chef Glyn] Purnell seems to have pulled it off.”

• Chitra Ramaswamy (Times) visits Angeethi in Glasgow. “It’s heartening to see cookery like this included in the Michelin Guide, but I thought there would be more regional specificity and personality. Instead, the menu is almost identical to many others of its ilk; in short, it’s a little safe.”

• Rebecca Nicholson (Observer) reviews Dongae, a Korean spot in Bristol, and the guy in the paper’s photo is wearing a Philadelphia Phillies hat. “Eating at Dongnae feels like a discovery. It means ‘neighbourhood’ in Korean, and while this isn’t priced to make it a regular haunt for most, it is casual about its excellence, as unstuffy as its name suggests.”

• Camilla Long (Sunday Times) heads to Leeds to try Bavette, a French bistro. “What of the cooking? Well, it’s gorgeous, confident, surprising. The menu isn’t too long. It’s filled with sturdy, noble dishes, whiffing mightily of the sea and the soil.”

• Meg Houghton-Gilmour (Bristol Sauce) reviews the Gourmet Warriors pop-up at The Gallimaufry. “The menu now reads like a Race Across the World challenge.”

• ✍🏻 🍽️ Sabrina Goodlife (Palate) braves Wales to try Ynyshir. “Working through the menu, I felt in awe of the Gareth Ward method. It’s fiercely utilitarian: you’ll find no wafer thin tuiles or artful blobs of puree here. Instead, everything on the plate has an irreplaceable role.”

Thanks for checking out this week’s update. I hope you have a great week. Please let me know what you think in the Comments.