Our round-up of what the nation’s restaurant critics were writing about in the week up to 8th November 2026
Financial Times
Jay Rayner talked up a Greek restaurant “we need” in order to counter the notion current in London that Greece’s culinary tradition must be “buffed and polished like it’s a 25-year-old going out on a hot date with an octogenarian billionaire”.
This opening, from Athens-born chef Nick Molyviatis (who was also behind Borough Market’s Oma and Agora) is a notch – “but only just a notch” – above the Greek-Cypriot tavernas from the 1980s that it celebrates; the sort of place where TV execs used to have long lunches in Fitzrovia, and which lives on still in the form of Lemonia, a well-known “old stager” in Primrose Hill.
Zylia’s star turn is the grilled fish of the day. “Apparently, it’s always a sea bass. But that’s fine, because, by God, they know how to grill it,” Jay said. It’s also “very good value” at £28 for two.
*****
The Observer
Le Beefbar at Dear Jackie, Soho
Tanya Gold seemed to enjoy herself at what she described as “the gaudiest hotel in London”, the Broadwick Soho, where the founder, casino boss Noël Hayden, has grafted a new branch of a Monaco-based steakhouse brand into the hotel restaurant named after his mother.
“The food is for itinerant rich children”, jaded after having “been everywhere”, she said. Its “closest cousin” is the Dover, “another high-end burger bar for the mournful rich”.
Tanya worked her way through fried chicken (prettily served Wolseley-style in silver pots lined with paper, but “still fried chicken”), a burger that was “edible if not amazing”, and a steak that was “very fine”, considering it cost only £32 when fancier cuts on the menu were as much as £115 a pop. The do-it-yourself sundae – a wooden board laden with cups of vanilla ice-cream, cherry, toffee and chocolate sauces, and chocolate crumb – was “delightful… if childish”.
*****
The Guardian
Grace Dent dined solo at a 140-cover Chinese “mega-restaurant” in St Katharine Docks opposite the Royal Mint – site of the proposed new Chinese embassy, if the plan survives court challenges: “Perhaps then they’ll finally get to use the 50-person private dining room.”
Tiptoeing her way through a 200-item menu leaning towards Cantonese cuisine, but also taking in dishes from Sichuan, Shanghai, Teochew and Beijing – even Malaysia and Vietnam – Grace particularly enjoyed a plate of “hugely satisfying” vegetarian dumplings wrapped in dragonfruit that looked “like little pink, puckered and almost translucent boobs”; hot-and-sour sesame aubergine that was “sweet, rich, fiery and moreish”; “gloriously red mapo tofu” with a “nice rolling burr of heat”; and a pudding of mango and pomelo sago that was “an unexpected total delight: not too heavy, just a little treat of sugary, tropical joy.”
“This is a vast restaurant just waiting to be populated,” she concluded. “I’m more than happy to have made a start.”
*****
The Times & Sunday Times
Sale e Pepe Mare, Portland Place
Giles Coren was ignored when he arrived in a dripping raincoat at the seafood outpost from a long-established Knightsbridge Italian that opened earlier this year in the space previously occupied by Roux at the Landau in the Langham hotel.
Service clearly fell well short of acceptable for a venue that “thinks it is terribly swish” – but things improved with the meal itself, in which “the food simply rocked from start to finish”, with a “good little parmigiana di melanzane (£19) in its own wee skillet, nice and hot”, and excellent fish dishes like sea bass baked in salt.
But Giles balked at the expense, including the high mark-up on wine, at a venue behaving too much like a luxury money pit. “My bill was £446.20 for two. In return for which, I would expect a little more service at the top of the experience.”
***
Muna’s Ethiopian Cuisine, Edinburgh
Chitra Ramaswamy was thrilled to discover a “tiny treasure trove of a restaurant” featuring “top tunes, marvellously messy dishes — and a chef you’ll never forget” in Muna Dent, a “force of nature” who cooks, serves, and bustles around in traditional Ethiopian attire in a dining room decorated with Ethiopian hats, flags and blown-up photos.
The menu consists of “bold, hearty and sumptuously spiced Ethiopian home cooking,” including berbere-spiced stews, slow-cooked vegetarian pulses and fresh ayib (curd cheese) that are served with “spongy” sourdough injera bread.
You can wash it down with Muna’s “legendary homemade honey wine” (tej), a little cloudy and funky with a “rounded sweetness and naughty home-brewed vinegar tang”.
***
Orrery by Pierre Minotti, Marylebone
Guest reviewer Adam Kay urged readers to “save up, book up and don’t have lunch that day” before heading to a relaunched restaurant that “like the best amuse-bouches and the worst anaesthetists, left me wanting far more”.
It offers “the very best kind of fine dining — unsnobby and never taking itself too seriously,” with standout dishes like a Cheddar and black truffle beignet, lovage sorbet with galangal jelly and Chartreuse, pumpkin ravioli, foie gras-stuffed poached quail and a chocolate opera cake dessert.
“Orrery has far eclipsed its 1990s glory,” Adam declared. “It’s rare to find French fine dining of this quality on these shores, particularly in such an unstuffy, enjoyable environment and with first-rate service.”
*****
London Standard
Christy Spring had a mixed experience at the new restaurant from the venerable Gennaro Contaldo, now aged 77 and best known as Jamie Oliver’s mentor. The offer “sounds enticing enough: antipasti, seven homemade pastas and two desserts”, and “you can get a demi of his feted bolo (bolognese) with tagliatelle for a mere £7 — about the going rate for a pint in Zone 1”.
The ’nduja meatballs were “excellent: fat, coarse-ground and yielding, with a ripple of warmth” and a concentrated sugo, while the conchiglioni al forno (shells stuffed with ragu and mozzarella then “given a proper scorch” in the oven) were “solid and perfectly tasty”.
But a rocket and radicchio salad was “made with no love”, and two different pasta dishes – the Jamie, “named after you know who”, with sausage and chilli bolo, and orecchiette with octopus and ’nduja – were ruined by the sauce being diluted so liberally with pasta water that it barely clung to the pasta. “A few fine plates do not a trattoria make.”
*****
Daily Mail
Tom Parker Bowles is often asked which is his favourite restaurant, so this week he issued his answer: it is always somewhere close to home “where basic hospitality, rather than cutting-edge cuisine, is the main attraction”.
“That place, for me, is The Bird In Hand, a ‘pub and dining room’ in Brook Green, west London. I’ve been coming for nearly a decade…. It has a proper bar, a scattering of tables and the best lighting in London: low, louche and sultry.”
He doesn’t bother to explore the menu – “that’s for the day job” – but always orders “Diavola pizza and a bottle of rosé. Or red, if it’s Arctic outside.” The pizza is “broadly Roman in style”, made with ingredients of “excellent quality”, service is “eternally joyous”, prices eminently reasonable and, “perhaps best of all, I can totter back home in three minutes flat”.
*****
Daily Telegraph
William Sitwell admired the chutzpah of Aktar Islam, “the munificent gastro-overlord of Birmingham”, in deigning to offer the masses of London the experience of his cuisine – a case of “reverse levelling-up”.
His meal began with an “unexpected treat: the best negroni of my life, a quite wonderful sip where the vermouth is touched by saffron”. The only fly in the ointment was the apparently “provincial” habit of the wait staff to explain each dish in painstaking detail, when “the folk of the smoke just want to pile in and merrily trough”.
Soup, lamb kebabs, chicken, goat and dal arrived in “a cascade of tasty mouthfuls”. The finest dish – bheja, or lambs’ brains – was “epic indeed, a plate to shout about until the end of time … a miracle of delicate meat and a swirl of colourful spice, the soft offal eaten with the crunch of onion and a throw of green herbs and a lovely kick of chilli.”