Our round-up of what the nation’s restaurant critics were writing about in the week up to 19th July 2026
The Guardian
Grace Dent found the “happy hubbub” of satisfied diners in Brum’s Jewellery Quarter at a “small, Sicilian and scrappy” restaurant from Angelina Adamo, a chef whose motto is “Bite off more than you can chew”.
“Vieni’s menu is hearty, not trendy,” writes Grace. It’s 32-hour ox cheek crispy lasagne in slices as a starter – “lots of depth, lots of softness. The ultimate cuddle on a plate”; Pyefleet oysters with British strawberry and champagne vinegar; seabass crudo with peaches, basil and green chilli; and ruffled ribbons of mafaldine with vodka tomato sauce.
Adamo is also adept at arancini – not the “piddly quail’s egg-sized arancini so popular in Britain”, but a “magnificent object” stuffed with peas, broad beans and pecorino and perched in a puddle of tomato sauce.
*****
The Times & Sunday Times
Giles Coren was frankly insulted by a so-called ‘gastrotheque’ promising ‘unfussy French dishes’ in a “lovely, nooky corner sport Neal’s Yard”, from New York celeb chef Jody Williams, whose “lazy grift might have worked in 1989” but in 2026 represents “a big Yankee fart in London’s face”.
The main problem, Giles fumed, was that there wasn’t any proper, adult food for lunch. “The menu consisted almost exclusively of grated carrot, beetroots, three types of croque monsieur, two types of waffle and steamed organic eggs” (whatever they were).
He clung to the hope that the chef’s special might be a real dish – poulet aux morilles in vin jaune or lapin a la moutarde. But no, “The plat du chef (£15) really was just a bowl of dressed salad vegetables. The chicken salad (£17) was the same vegetables with some chicken on top. Neither was filthy, or really worth bothering to eat.”
***
Chitra Ramaswamy returned to a “hidden gem” of a local seafood restaurant and wine bar in Bruntsfield which has the “enigmatic status” of being loved by chefs and regulars without being “as revered outside the capital as it deserves to be”.
Chef-patron Stuart Smith has recently tweaked the only dish on the menu since day one, salted cod mousse, using pollock instead to protect declining stocks of cod – and it is still “a knockout, comprehensively smooth with a silky mouthfeel”.
But the dish that most impressed Chitra was a “Mexican-Scottish high-summer collision” created by head chef Yash Rajpal following a trip to Mexico: slivers of cured haddock in a vivid green citrus bath bursting with lime, salt and blended chilli. “All the vivacity and fruity heat of that Latin American country is on this one chic northern European plate.”
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Camilla Long was enticed to eat at the new showroom of US-based homeware behemoth Restoration Hardware in a 1720 Italianate palace behind the Royal Academy, on what turned out to be the false assumption that “it’ll be like meatballs at Ikea but for rich people”.
The menu in the vast Dining Room’s had about it “more than a whiff of room service”, Camilla said. As for the food, the deep-fried artichoke starter was “like eating potpourri”, while the caviar baked potato was “sort of withered”, the caviar mushy because it had been sitting on it too long.
Wagyu – “the national dish of Dubai” – was fine, although it arrived pre-sliced (“naturally, as the rich are toddlers”); ditto the lamb chops, although they were a bit overcooked and greasy. But a pear martini was “perfectly disgusting, with top notes of pesticide and a slice of dried pear floating like a body on top”.
*****
Financial Times
Jay Rayner was another critic to remind readers this week that “in certain London postcodes the stupidities just keep on coming”, after visiting the recently opened outpost of a venture that began life in Ibiza. A waiter set the scene by promising food that was “Greek and Mediterranean with a Japanese twist, a declaration which could cause an international incident”.
This approach led to dishes such as spicy crab tagliolini with mint harissa and pineapple chutney, which “reads like ingredient bingo” in Jay’s view, or tarama topped with kaffir lime sauce, “which makes it taste like an aromatherapy candle by Jo Malone, and not in a good way”.
“Every dish we have is a tweezered, over-thought calamity: too sweet, too salty, too aromatic, too in thrall to the tongue-deadening demands of umami, and no amount of edible blooms or grinding beats will disguise the fact.”
*****
London Standard
Josh Barrie dined among the one per cent at a new Japanese spot from Markus Thesleff’s Los Mochis group – the sort of place, he said, where people order champagne without thinking about the price: “friends taking a break from Dubai, one or two low-level footballers, and an Indian gentleman who I’m quite sure owns an airline”.
Josh dodged the signature dish of ‘flaming avocados’, but found that, “bar a rock shrimp tempura which is sadly soft, the food is much better than cynics like me might expect”.
Kobe beef, “Japanese Black cattle in this case — massaged, fed beer, played Bach and tickled into tenderness”, is “everything you’d want a £310 steak to be: faintly enchanting.” Even better was the rice, full-bodied and rich, packed with butter, garlic, onion, chives and toasted black sesame seeds: “If you eat anything here, ever, eat the rice.”
*****
Daily Mail
Tom Parker Bowles spent a languid summer’s afternoon on the terrace of the restaurant at St Clement, the new hotel from Nick Jones, founder of Soho House, where former River Café head chef Danny Bohan has created a menu “to suit every whim and desire”.
“You can splurge on oysters and fillet steak, pick at a sea bass carpaccio or get stuck into onion soup and Toulouse sausage casserole” – all at “eminently reasonable” prices, including a set lunch for £28.
The cooking is “reassuringly excellent”, and “everything hollers with sun-soaked Mediterranean delight”, Tom purred. “I rarely order chicken at restaurants, but the spatchcocked version here is magnificent: all crisp skin and joyously succulent flesh, topped with tissue-paper-thin slices of speck and served with green beans in a slick of shallot vinaigrette.”
*****
Daily Telegraph
Lardon at Elkstone Studios, Gloucestershire
William Sitwell had a taste of the future at an old estate farmyard now converted into a “co-working commune” (hairdresser, padel court, sound sanctuary, electric car charging etc) with a restaurant that claimed inspiration from Tuscany, the Basque country and Provence – “an idea that is both so very specific and so head-scratchingly vague that it still hurts my brain to fathom it”.
The food was “mostly really great” – melting jamon iberico, pintxos of prawns and crabmeat on toast, “glorious” chicken and parmesan pizzetta, and “fabulous” pork belly with morcilla and Normandy sand carrots.
But the experience was marred by the “rapid-fire dish arrivals” – the result of the small plates philosophy of serving dishes as soon as they’re cooked. Within 20 minutes of ordering every plate was on the table, as if the message from the open kitchen was “See, the food’s great, so just get it down you and f— off.”