Our round-up of what the nation’s restaurant critics were writing about in the week up to 14th December 2025
Financial Times
Jay Rayner had his faith in top-end tasting-menu establishments and their frequently self-important, grandstanding chefs restored – well, “(almost)” – by dinner at this “sweet, modest and clever restaurant”, where chef Daniel McGeorge made a nine-course tasting menu look “simple”.
One dish in particular summed up the approach: a garishly printed fried chicken box containing a large Buffalo wing for each diner, crisply battered and in a hot and sour sauce, but boned, stuffed with chicken mousseline and dolloped with sour cream and caviar – “it was obviously a technical marvel, but also a nod to our appetites, and the chicken shop next door”.
“Vetch is not for trophy hunters or Michelin star collectors,” Jay declared. “This restaurant really is about feeding people, and in a charming environment.” Sadly, he and his dining companion were the only customers that night. “It really shouldn’t be this way. Vetch should be full.”
*****
London Standard
“I’ve found my new favourite restaurant”, David Ellis panted, admitting that he felt “guilty cheating on The Ritz”.
Restaurateur Martin Kuczmarski’s follow-up to “London’s coolest restaurant”, Dover Street, this converted Hugo Boss store opposite Sloane Square station achieves an ideal combination of all the key elements of a hospitality venue – food, drinks, service, location, décor, atmosphere and more.
David found the American-Italian cooking perfect in its simplicity, gladdeningly familiar and wonderfully executed: “meatballs with ragu so rich it was more like the stew of a beef bourguignon; tortellini in an almost gelatinous chicken broth, the kind once marketed as a health tonic”; excellent veal Milanese and gamberi crudo; and chicken diavola with “potatoes most pub Sunday roasts could only dream of”.
*****
The Times & Sunday Times
Giles Coren was knocked out by a “stonking” Greek restaurant near Borough Market that has attracted little press attention, but which stood out for him in a busy period of pre-Christmas dining. “I’m cancelling all my summer plans,” he announced. “The Med’s too hot anyway. I’m spending August 2026 right here.”
Two dishes from chef Yiannis Mexis were particularly impressive: humbly billed as “market crudités”, “the most dazzling array of vegetables I have seen plated for a starter in years” included radishes, squashes, chicory, turnip and daikon, all “so beautiful, so rare, so crunchy, so full of flavour”. Equally stunning was a whole sea bream served raw on ice, “the sweet flesh cubed, rolled with some sort of ceviche-style citrus arrangement, olives and caper leaves, and served in the body of the hollowed-out fish. It looked amazing and tasted incredible.”
Giles mentioned en passant several other restaurants he has sampled recently: Chez Lui in Notting Hill (where two dishes had spent too long in the oven); the new Poon’s in Somerset House (where he found the cooking a little too “domestic”, although he tipped it as a winner); and The Crown in Highgate, which confirmed the north London ‘burb as well worth eating in these days.
***
Charlotte Ivers visited chef Stevie Parle’s follow-up to Town in Covent Garden, finding it similar but “darker, more futuristic”, but also “a little too slick, a little knowing” for comfort. The insulting wine list did not help matters, making guests the butt of the joke as ignorant cheapskates by designating one bottle as the “second cheapest”.
That said, Charlotte rated Motorino as a “solid restaurant” whose food has “moments of excellence”, such as a bluefin tuna carpaccio with spicy-sweet Italian peppers and a dash of Asian citrus; gigli al gin — “a clever riff on vodka rigatoni, a dish that was the future once”; and a super-light tiramisu with the “joyous little innovation” of Irish whiskey.
On the downside, strozzapreti noodles were “a little floppy”, and their sauce of cavolo nero, walnuts and Spenwood cheese was “cloying, slightly bitter. Three nutty, earthy ingredients in one sauce is too many…”
*****
The Observer
Chitra Ramaswamy hailed this new arrival from chef James Murray (formerly of Le Manoir and an ex-head chef at Timberyard) as “a late entry to my best new restaurants of 2025 and, as they said on TOTP in my day, straight in at number one.”
A “hyped restaurant, risen, as such mythical beasts are, from the ashes of an extinct old boozer”, Dogstar impressed from Chitra’s very first nibble, a fat slice of “the best focaccia of 2025”.
The bread was accompanied by bagna cauda of the “ferociously punchy kind that, like a toe-curling memory, comes back on you for days. Proof that no matter how ubiquitous food trends get, when you meet them at their very best they’re unforgettable.”
*****
Daily Mail
Tom Parker Bowles was impressed by the room and the “sheer ambition” of this retro New York-style “red sauce” restaurant in the basement of the old US Embassy – but ultimately condemned it as “overhyped, overpriced and over here.”
He had no real issue with the exorbitant prices – “to complain about huge bills in Carbone is to miss the point. Huge bills are the point” – or with the food, which veered between the “excellent” (tortellini in broth), via the merely “decent” (rigatoni vodka), to the “plain dull” (veal parmesan).
“But Carbone really isn’t about the food. It’s about being the sort of person who wants to be seen dining at Carbone.”
*****
Daily Telegraph
William Sitwell thoroughly disapproved of the luxurious new seafood restaurant opened by Aussie chef Ross Shonhan on the site where the late QEII was born – although he could not help but admire much of the cooking.
Prawn carpaccio was a “brilliantly light and beautiful way to engage with a shrimp”; baby quid was “light, rich and tasty to eat, in part fried to a delicious brown crisp”; rice and prawns were “wickedly flavourful”, while the signature mash with lobster bisque and the desserts also earned a thumbs-up.
But William could not excuse what he regarded as the tasteless Dubai-style interior: “I’d venture that if the late Queen got wind of the garish furniture, fittings, lighting, mirrors, vases and lamps of her namesake restaurant, she wouldn’t just turn in her grave, she’d spirit a new wrecking ball on the place.”