Our round-up of what the nation’s restaurant critics were writing about in the week up to 11th May 2025
London Standard
Stepping in as guest reviewer, fashion designer Jasper Conran welcomed the opening of this venue of “restrained glamour” in an area that has been a “gastronomic wasteland” since the demise of Henry Harris’s Racine several years ago.
The team here have previously worked at the River Café and Rochelle Canteen – influences felt in every dish Jasper tasted. Star of the show was tortelli, a pasta he usually finds “a doughy mouthful” but here “as light as a feather, and the flavour of the nettle absolutely and miraculously in evidence. It is worth going to The Lavery for this alone.”
Last but far from least came ‘Lavery Mess’ followed by chocolate mousse with Agen prune – “These were again as delicious as all the other dishes but containing a sort of forbidden, dirty sexiness that only really good desserts do.”
*****
The Guardian
Grace Dent was quietly impressed by the restraint of the first overseas flagship of a restaurant founded 270 years ago in Souzhou, near Shanghai, which showcases regional Jiangnan cooking. It is a big venue over three floors, but there’s “no neon, no bunting”, and the décor is understated both outside and within.
“Jiangnan cuisine has been dubbed China’s best-kept secret, and I wonder if Song He Lou’s rather subtle and reserved nature means that will endure. Westerners who have found the rise of, say, Xi’an cuisine across the UK thrilling, thanks in no small part to its blistering chilli heat, the girth of the noodles and the sheer abundance of alliums, may well find the food of Souzhou a little elegant and aloof by comparison.”
The signature dish here is pale and whispy soup noodles in broth, a “comforting” dish but “less showstopping than somewhat medicinal, non-wasteful and humble”. Grace concluded that this was a rather “maternal” place to dine solo, taking refuge from the “rumpus” of Chinatown.
*****
The Times & Sunday Times
Victor Garvey at the Midland Grand, King’s Cross
Giles Coren renewed his acquaintance with Victor Garvey, Barcelona-born with a “Californian surf-dude accent” – “my favourite kind of chef: big-hearted, full of love and enthusiasm for the game, bouncing off the walls” – who made his name in London with a string of Spanish restaurants followed by the Californian Sola.
Now installed at the Midland Grand, “Victor is doing fancy French, and quite brilliantly”. Giles was reminded of Heston Blumenthal or Ferran Adrià in the trompe-l’oiel dishes on the seven-course tasting menu (“the à la carte was a bit limited and not really the point here. Or markedly cheaper”).
“A pair of crimped tartlets presented as beautifully as anything I have ever seen inside a restaurant or out of one. The leaf-shaped, alabaster-white plate was dressed with a garland of spring flowers and the two tartlets sat inside… the gastronomic realisation of Titania’s wedding corsage, a still life in spring colours.”
***
Chitra Ramaswamy cheered the arrival of a “vibey” new venue in “Edinburgh’s coolest neighbourhood”, the debut from chef Barry Bryson, well-known in the city for private events and pop-ups. “Barry Fish is exactly the sort of hip, unpretentious mid-range restaurant you expect to find on The Shore but up until now never have. Scotland’s top foodie destination has the seafood restaurant it deserves. What a triumph.”
With moss-green velvet banquette seating and fish-themed illustrations, it is “at once glam yet approachable”, and has a “concise, accessible menu” – “for dinner, it’s just five dishes, including hake with sauce soubise (a nod to the first fish dish Bryson mastered in catering college), a beef bourguignon pie, and whole sea bass with shrimp chicken butter, and greens… This is about a small number of chefs (just Bryson and Robbie Johnstone on the night I’m in) cooking a small selection of carefully considered, unfussy dishes, for a small number of diners.”
***
Charlotte Ivers raved about the brilliant Malaysian cooking delivered by a bunch of “talented south London hipsters with shaggy mullets and studied moustaches” at a diner that has just moved (to Charlotte’s slight regret) from a tiny byo “tin can” of a room beside a pub into larger premises, now with a licence to serve alcohol.
Dishes included mee goreng noodles “so deep and rich it’s like eating squid ink pasta”; rendang daging beef curry that is “a sticky joy, so sticky it manages to remain in a self-contained dome on the plate”; and a sago dessert that is “one of the most bonkers things I’ve eaten. Bright green tapioca, some sort of very sweet red berry sorbet, more coconut milk. Mad. I adored it.”
The drinks, too, are “fabulous, bright and extravagant. Get the bandung gumbira with rose syrup and condensed milk — deep pink, rose petals scattered on top. A drink for the gentleman comfortable in his masculinity”.
*****
Daily Mail
Tom Parker Bowles hailed an “absolute Iberian gem” – “laid-back, unpretentious and sensibly priced” – from bothers Ali and Mo Razavi (of nearby Halisco and Anakuma) and Ian Swainson, a former head chef at The Pass.
Croquettas, “impeccably fried and gently oozing”, are followed by “sublime” prawns in garlic butter and “gloriously fresh” torched mackerel on a neat pile of smoked cod’s roe,
“It’s not just fish that impresses. Rib of beef is slow-cooked until transformed into a wobbling lozenge of pure bovine bliss”, coated with a sticky red wine reduction and served with lightly acidic tomatoes. “It’s one hell of a dish, demanding the plate be licked clean.”
*****
Daily Telegraph
Kaji, Manchester
Pip, Manchester
William Sitwell reviewed two restaurants from a trip to Manchester, revealing two sides of the city’s “generally fabulous dining scene”. Kaji – directed by chef Steve Smith, formerly of the Ribble Valley’s Freemasons – is a Japanese live-fire venue “manned by a collection of burly lads. It’s all tummies, bald heads, tattoos and heat.”
Sadly, the joint is a travesty of “the noble name of Japanese cuisine”: William was so incensed by the “sickly sweet kimchi ketchup” and “sticky tomato ponzu” that he repeated the adjective “vulgar” in consecutive sentences. Worse still, he said, “Kaji is a Japanese gaff without sake. Which is like opening a British pub in Tokyo and forgetting to put an ale on tap.”
Pip, by contrast, is a “great-value tonic… a charmingly colourful and comfortable space” in the lobby of the new Treehouse hotel, from chef Mary-Ellen McTague, “a sort of Alice Waters of modern-day Manchester”. The highlight was a “fabulously good” Lancashire hotpot – “an elegant version of this classic dish”.
*****
Financial Times
After much frustration, Jay Rayner succeeded in booking a table at a Paris bistro founded in 1997 that reportedly stopped answering the phone three years ago. The menu was a parade of familiar dishes: terrine de campagne, sole meuniere, île flottante – so “what we are dealing with is the hierarchy of small differences”.
“Is it worth it? Damn it, yes, it’s worth it. Go there,” Jay urged. “Order the steak au poivre and a bowl of their stupidly good chips, then go home again, at peace with the world. The creamy, spice-flecked sauce with the fillet is made with Malaysian Sarawak pepper which has heat but also an earthiness that leaves your mouth warm and vibrating.”
And so the meal continues, each dish a perfect version that “sits at the apex of that hierarchy of small differences”.