Smashed #13

The UK's restaurant scene digested

M. Bibendum is the gastronomic Reverend Jim Jones. Last Monday’s awards ceremony was his White Night and everyone drank the Flavour Aid, again. ‘Don’t fail to follow my advice. You’ll be sorry. Have trust. You have to step across. Hurry, hurry my children,’ boomed M. Bibendum’s sonorous, hypnotising amplified voice across the Midland Grand hotel’s Alexandra Suite. And one by one the stupefied, zombie-like chefs were called onto the stage to don the sacred white jacket and pledge their lives and allegiance to the one true path: the Michelin Guide.

And M. Bibendum said, ‘Only those that have already given shall be chosen' and it came to pass. For every single new star in the Great Britain and Ireland Guide 2024 was awarded to an acolyte. Yes, my brethren, Ayo Adeyemi of Akoko has a Michelin studded CV the length of your fucking arm, and even self taught Adejoké (Joké) Bakare staged at Ikoyi. ‘You know the rules and so do I. A full commitment's what I'm thinking of,’ sang M. Bibendum to his newly recognised west African followers, suddenly transforming into Rick Astley, which instantly lightened the mood and allowed the writer to shrug off the death cult schtick which was getting a bit unwieldy if he was being completely honest.

I have to admit to being slow on the uptake sometimes, but watching the events unfold on YouTube I had something of a minor revelation. Prior to the event, I had naively tweeted, ‘I know all the @MichelinGuideUK talk is of course about Manchester but I'm really hoping Brighton can break its half century duck tonight. Keeping everything crossed’. I genuinely believed that, because I had eaten what I felt were several one-Michelin-star-quality meals in Brighton over the past year or so, that the time had finally come, after 48 years, for the city to get the nod from the guide. But as each new one-star was announced, it finally dawned on me that the guide will always, always keep things within the family, a bit like Charles Manson (oh Christ, we’re back onto dangerous cult leaders. Why does that keep happening? Quick, someone change the subject.)

Right, that’s better. As I was saying, Brighton hasn’t had a Michelin starred restaurant for 48 years because it hasn’t had a Michelin starred chef for 48 years. You can cook to what you might suppose to be Michelin-starred standards, but unless you have slogged your guts out in high profile Michelin-starred kitchens, and preferably a lot of them for a long time, you are not going to get even a sniff of M. Bibendum’s star studded rubber.

There are several chefs with Michelin-star experience in Brighton, but no one that has previously held a star or helmed a starred restaurant. I now believe that, unless a big name starred-chef opens in Brighton, the Michelin star drought could last another 48 years. The Freemasons however seem to think differently and are apparently planning to spend £1million turning their lodge in the rather grungy surroundings of Queens Street into a restaurant that ‘would be run by a two and three Michelin star trained chef’. Good luck with that one chaps.

There is a new Bib Gourmand in Brighton, the brilliant Palmito, reviewed at my suggestion by Giles Coren last year and then subsequently by Grace Dent, but the guide can dish out Bib Gourmands without spoiling the Michelin magic. They are about ‘friendly establishments that serve good food at moderate prices’, the sort of places where most people want to go and which serve food most people want to eat. But, Michelin stars are about ‘quality of the ingredients used, mastery of flavour and cooking techniques, the personality of the chef in the cuisine, harmony of flavours, and consistency between visits’, the serious fucking stuff that only Michelin inspectors hold the key to and mere mortal chefs must strive and slave to understand.

By retaining Michelin stars within the Michelin realm, it underscores the idea of the guide’s full-spectrum dominance of the fine dining space. That aim is aided and abetted by the BBC who have repeated ‘Michelin’ like a mantra on Great British Menu and Masterchef: The Professionals for the last decade and a half.

And if staging their awards ceremony in Manchester (which, until 2019, was left starless for 42 years by the guide) and failing to award any new stars to the city isn’t a show of arrogant strength worthy of Putin, I don’t know what is. They did award a Bib Gourmand to Higher Ground though, so, yay, I guess. But the message was clear: to become Michelin, you must be Michelin; let the circle be unbroken.

The Reviews

I have slightly fallen behind with my review of the reviews, so this week I’m playing catch up and will cover two weeks worth in one go which provides the opportunity to look a bit closer at some of the reviewers writing styles and see if we can spot any tropes or themes in their oeuvres. If a restaurant critic can have an oeuvre that is. I sort of doubt it. Anyway, I’ve got nothing better to do so, hey ho, let’s go (you can google that one for yourself if you like, two YouTube links in one newsletter is enough, don’t you think?)

Giles Coren, The Times

Greenberry Hill et al 

Another of Coren’s periodical clear outs with three reviews in one including a greasy spoon and yet another Cotswold pub. As usual with these pieces, Coren’s acerbic wit is AWOL so I’ll keep this short and sweet. London front-of-house legend Morfudd Richards’s (late of Harveys, The Ivy, Le Caprice and Lola’s) Greenberry Hill café in Haverstock Hill makes up the tryptic at the behest of Jeremy King, her former employer, because the place is not busy enough at night. Coren’s remit then, one has to suppose, is to drum up some business for her. Is that the best use of a national restaurant review column? I genuinely don’t think anyone in mainstream media really cares about that sort of thing anymore.

If you go to a review under those circumstances only one of two things can happen. Its not good enough for a positive review so you quietly drop the whole thing, or if you write about it, you rave. It does sound good to be honest. I assume Richards and King will be pleased at the very least. And talking of King, this excellent interview with the great man by David Ellis in the Standard is well worth a read.

Best line: I can’t be bothered
Worst line: Same
Did the review make me want to book a table: Nope

The Dover, London (Cooking 8)

I did say I would try and find some oeuvre tropes (which is the title of my forthcoming trip hop album) and Coren has kindly handed me on on a silver salver. After reviewing a restaurant for a mate, he’s now reviewing an old mate’s restaurant. It’s not just any old mate though; Martin Kuczmarski is the former chief operating officer for Soho House (the private members club that was recently judged to simultaneously have no value and be overcrowded). His new restaurant The Dover is the hottest table in town according to the Evening Standard (David Ellis again).

In order to avoid sycophancy, Coren has chosen well-known miserabilist Joe Warwick as his dining companion. Joe is famous in my house for being the first person ever to commission me to write about restaurants. I interviewed Claude Bosi for an issue of Restaurant magazine when Joe was editing the magazine, with no little panache and style it should be said. Too much panache and style for a trade magazine it turned out but it was fun while it lasted.

Joe is currently head of customer experience (or some similar corporate-sounding title) but the last time I saw him was when he was running front of house for chef Victor Garvey at Sola in Soho. I returned last week for the new £59 lunch. Garvey is a spectacular cook and the menu is one of the great (only?) fine dining bargains in London. It’s beautiful looking, highly technical food that tastes amazing. What more could you possibly ask for.

According to Coren, Joe is ‘is from Northern Ireland with a palate on him like a fireman’s glove’. Why being from Northern Ireland has any relevance to Joe’s palate I don’t know, but Coren has a history with this sort of thing. The Dover’s menu is ‘based around Italian-American crowd-pleasers’ and is ‘not badly priced’. Exciting stuff. I can see why it’s so hot now. There’s nothing really to say about the food except that Coren ordered ‘spaghetti meatballs (USDA beef, tomato sauce — £25)’ which he says he’s rarely seen in a restaurant ‘except in front of those two horny dogs in Lady and the Tramp’. He fails to disclose if he and Joe recreated the scene.

Best line: It’s just not really Coren’s week
Worst line: See above
Did the review make me want to book a table: Oddly enough, yes.

Jay Rayner, The Observer

Levante, London

In a patience-testing meander, Rayner takes up half his column explaining why he’s reviewing a Turkish grill house in Lewisham. It doesn’t matter. It sounds like a decent place. Let’s see if his next column offers anything of real interest.

Best line: Nothing to see here, move along.
Worst line: See above.
Did the review make me want to book a table: I can’t really imagine the review inspiring anyone to book a table. I don’t think you need to anyway. It’s basically a kebab shop.

Zucco, Leeds

Rayner gives the thumbs up to a Polpo-alike small plates restaurant in Leeds run by alumni of the original restaurant that worked alongside the late Russell Norman, who he also pays tribute to.

I think I picked a bad week for oeuvres.

Best line: ‘Above us was a bronze-coloured, pressed-tin ceiling exactly like the one with which (Norman) opened the original Polpo in Soho. In front of us was the paper menu as place mat, waiting to get grease stained and sauce splattered. There were dangling filament lightbulbs, white subway tiles and a counter laid for dining. The cocktail list began with the offer of a negroni or Aperol spritz. Most of all there was a list of well-priced dishes, roaming from the thigh to the heel of Italy’s boot, all designed for sharing. What’s more, the table was too small for the many dishes we were encouraged to order. So authentically, at times infuriatingly, Polpo.’
Worst line: N/A
Did the review make me want to book a table: To be brutally honest, no, it didn’t but I enjoyed reading it.  

Charlotte Ivers, The Sunday Times

Ubiquitous Chip, Glasgow

Despite being sold off to Greene King, Ivers says this landmark Glasgow restaurant ‘has still got it’. Still having ‘it’ only translates to three stars however. Not surprising when you learn that what the Ubiquitous Chip actually has is ‘gloopy’ hollandaise with ‘a slight film on the top’, cold squash puree, ‘miserably flaccid’ rocket, ‘overwhelmingly’ floury croquettes and chips that are ‘entirely average. Neither thin enough to be crispy nor fat enough to be fluffy: the same plain bridesmaids of every mediocre pub dinner’. If that’s ‘it’, they can keep it.

Best line: ‘For a long time, if you asked for a restaurant recommendation in Glasgow, the answer would be that trains run regularly to Edinburgh from Queen Street station’
Worst line: ‘Runny, smoky taramasalata’ (Ivers liked it by the way). Unless you are talking about an egg yolk, the word ‘runny’ is never a positive thing in connection with food, and especially when it comes to taramasalata. The only context you should hear the two words together is in the following sentence: ‘The taramasalata’s gone a bit runny, shall I bin it?’
Did the review make me want to book a table: Get tae fuck.

The Silver Birch, London

’Almost nobody knows it’s here,’ claims Ivers in her review of The Silver Birch in Chiswick. The Michelin Guide says, ‘Silver Birch stands out – thanks to its appealing dishes that celebrate the wonderful ingredients we produce in the British Isles’. The Good Food Guide says that former head chef of The Barn at Moor Hall Nathan Cornwall brings a ‘burst of originality’ to Silver Birch. Square Meal says that ‘This neighbourhood restaurant on Chiswick High Road is serving some of the most exciting, competent and delicious food in West London’. In his 9/10 review, renowned food blogger Chris Pople said The Silver Birch ‘is quite brilliant’. After a memorable lunch there in June last year, I posted on Instagram, ‘The cooking is detailed but not cluttered, lots of interest on the plate but still allowing main ingredients like Isle of Mull scallop, Shetland cod and ex-dairy cow beef to really shine’. It’s just such a shame almost nobody has heard of the place.

It’s a bit early in the game to be talking Ivers’s oeuvre (try saying that three times fast).

Best line: ‘a firm semi-circle of celeriac topped with little chunks of Spenwood cheese, hazelnuts and pickled onion. It sits in a pool of “celeriac tea” — beefy, with overtones of bergamot. It’s unnerving, like slurping ramen broth, Bisto and Earl Grey at once, but works beautifully’
Worst line: N/A
Did the review make me want to book a table: I do need to go back.

Jimi Famurewa, Evening Standard

Paradise Cove, London (3 stars)

I think by now we are all very familiar with Famurewa’s oeuvre (which sounds like it should be a thought experiment about quantum physics); post grad student who has swallowed a thesaurus and a handful of speed. Will he deliver this time around on Tarell ‘Chef Tee’ Mcintosh’s Battersea Caribbean joint?

It’s an oddly muted performance from Famurewa but then we get, ‘vegan ital curry was, frankly, extraordinary: chickpeas, sweet potato, peppers and more, coaxed to compliant softness, and cloaked in a scotch bonnet-laced wonder of a rough-hewn, elegantly complex stew’. That’ll do for me.

Best line: ‘If, like me, you grew up in a house where the scent of rice hung in the air and the telly was only ever off if there was a power cut, then you will feel very at home’
Worst line: ‘A pale orange clump of coleslaw, dandruffed in coconut’. ‘Dandruffed’ is my new least favourite adjective.
Did the review make me want to book a table: Doesn’t sound much like paradise to me.

Grasso, London (3 stars)

Two three star reviews on the trot from Famurewa. This is unheard of stuff. What’s he doing with all that unspent mad enthusiasm? Watch out for next week is all I can say. Grasso is a Soho American-Italian ‘red sauce joint’ - a trend ‘hotter than an arrabbiata made for an enemy’ - located in a former Wagamama. I didn’t know there were any of those. The end is nigh.

Eating in Grosso is ‘not all that enjoyable’ and has ‘all the transporting glamour of a tarted-up Frankie & Benny’s’. It doesn’t seem to have inspired the usually loquacious Famurewa who has turned in a fairly uninspired review, but you can’t really blame him given the subject matter.

Best line: ‘It is a Big Mamma-style pastiche without the same detailed originality or ribald effervescence’
Worst line: Nothing, just nothing.
Did the review make me want to book a table: I’m off to Nuovo Vesuvio for some braciole.

Grace Dent, The Guardian

Eggslut, London

Isn’t Eggslut just the worst name for a restaurant? It’s an ugly looking word too. It’s a ‘US deluxe egg sandwich chain’ which obviously doesn’t exist because it’s too ridiculous an idea. But for the purposes of this newsletter, lets just imagine Dent isn’t making this up and just go with it, although she’s pushing it a bit when she claims the restaurant’s playlist includes Joy Division’s ‘She’s Lost Control’.

Eggslut basically sells eggs’n’shit in brioche buns. It’s a concept restaurant. It is proliferating across the earth. Forget about global warming (although, if you are watching Arctic Ascent on the National Geographic channel at the moment, and you should be, it’s incredible, it’s very difficult to forget about global warming), deluxe eggs sandwich chains are really what will finish us all off.

Best line: ‘I have waited for a company stooge to plead for forgiveness and for the place to rebrand as Eggqueen, but no – and, to be honest, it is this type of unapologetic doubling down in restaurant land that I live for. Without such chutzpah, I’d never get to enjoy Clap, which opened recently in Knightsbridge offering “sensory Japanese dining”, rather than a large dose of antibiotics to bring down the swelling’.

Worst line: N/A
Did the review make me want to book a table:  I’m waiting for Yoghurt Strumpet to open.

Sete, Margate

Oh, thank God, it’s a proper restaurant. It’s in Margate, but we won’t let that put us off. It serves natural wine, but we won’t let that put us off. Sete markets itself as a “Parisian-inspired wine bar”, but we won’t let that put us off. Because there is also a 40 seat restaurant with ex-St John and Marksman chef Billy Stock behind the stoves and his food sounds fantastic: ‘pungent, sweet confit garlic and goat’s curd stuffed into vol-au-vents, braised squid on olive toast with puddles of vibrant aïoli and slices of thick, creamy, lardon-bejewelled tartiflette’.

If you don’t usually click on the links I provide in this newsletter and read the full reviews, I’d urge you to do so in this case. Just don’t do it when you’re hungry.

And what of Dent’s oeuvre?, I hear you cry. I’m sort of running out of juice on the oeuvre front if I’m being honest. Two good, funny reviews though.

Best line: ‘The tender schnitzel, robed in crunchy breadcrumbs, is served with a whopping quenelle of Café de Paris butter, though Stock’s version is like a steroid-riddled curry sauce mated with a buttercream ganache’
Worst line: N/A
Did the review make me want to book a table: Once I’ve fully processed the trauma of my last visit to Margate in 2021, I’m there.

William Sitwell, The Telegraph

1 York Place, Bristol (4 stars)

Sitwell claims that littlefrench, chef Freddie Bird’s first Bristol restaurant ‘can do no wrong’. I won’t go into details, but when I visited a couple of years ago, inspired by it’s appearance on Fred Siriex’s excellent Remarkable Places to Eat TV show, a few things did go wrong with the meal. That immediately made me think, how much should I trust Sitwell’s four star rave of Bird’s latest opening and his claim that ‘Bristol has yet another culinary paradise’?

The none-more-posh Sitwell says that fennel is ‘the equivalent of a sensible nanny giving one a bollocking’ which tells you more than everything you need to know about his background and his taste in food. It accompanied some ‘fluffy tarama’ which trumps Ivers’s runny version by quite some margin. BTW, if deluxe egg chains don’t finish us off, we are going to drown in a sea of taramasalata which just seems to be everywhere at the moment. I’ve had lots of good versions but Mark Sargeant’s at his Restaurant MS in Folkestone (pictured below) was a cracker.

Sitwell ‘ploughed on’ through various dishes (always good to ‘plough’ through a meal isn’t it?) before sharing ‘the blackest, richest ox cheek you can imagine’. The blackest ox cheek I can imagine would be one that had been burnt to buggery, but he can’t mean that. It was served with Castelfranco ‘that pretty and tart chicory’, a vegetable which does not evoke memories of sensible nannies for Sitwell. One bollocking from a stern matriarchal figure per column is enough isn’t it? Otherwise you’re straying onto specialist literature territory and I’m sure your average Telegraph readers have their sources for that sort of thing already. Or a sensible nanny on call.

Best line: N/A
Worst line: Either ‘By dinner I’m usually aching for the vibe of soporific alcohol stupor, but the brightness, pale walls and light wooden-topped tables gave me more the feel of what you might call chirpy cornflakes’ or ‘It was a dish that swirled in the mouth like a whirlpool of discovery’, I can’t decide.
Did the review make me want to book a table: I’m going to ask a sensible nanny for her advice first.

Kima, London (4 stars)

Kima is an upmarket Greek restaurant in Paddington with a display of fresh fish and more fucking tarama. Sitwell has got about a bit in Greece and so he has the authority to declare that Kima offers ‘some of the finest Greek food I have ever tasted’. He gives it four stars. The absolute very best the Greeks can do isn’t quite good enough for Sitwell. Not the ‘pale circular mound’ of tarama ‘that was like turning left in a plane’; not the ‘light and clean and delicious’ raw sea bream; not the ‘insanely addictive’ fava beans bonito; not the ‘charred and soft and perfect’ grilled leg of octopus. None of it worthy of five stars, despite Kima being ‘too important to fail’ (it’s very expensive). I’ve literally no idea who would eat there. Upmarket Greeks maybe.

Best line: N/A
Worst line: ‘Sold as a fish souvlaki, his fish came smothered in tomatoes and other stuff, on a flatbread, and was bizarrely minuscule’. Other stuff? Pay attention Sitwell or I’ll have to ask nanny to give you a stern talking to.
Did the review make me want to book a table: I just need to arrange a marriage with Greek shipping magnate Maria Angelicoussis and then we’ll make it our regular Wednesday night haunt.

Tom Parker Bowles, Mail on Sunday

Pollini

How differently do two members of the aristocracy - Sitwell and TPB - write? I may have made these observations before, but the main differences are that Sitwell has a relaxed air about him and TPB is the Energiser Bunny of restaurant criticism. Sitwell always completes his sentences and TPB just doesn’t for some reason. I can’t work it out. Some example for you: ‘Meaning the space was awkwardly hewn in two.’; ‘And left mercifully untouched too – an exceptional yellowtail crudo, with sashimi-quality fish sliced so thin that you can see the plate below, drenched in a golden, grassy olive oil.’; ‘Amalfi anchovies, possessing the intense depth of the very best, served with cold butter.’; ‘Along with slivers of fried pasta.’ It’s maddening isn’t it?

Pollini, like Kima, sounds like another restaurant in potential trouble, ‘Pollini has some of the best Italian cooking in London. It just needs to fill that room.’

Best line: N/A
Worst line: N/A
Did the review make me want to book a table: It did. Not.

1 York Place, Bristol

It’s Freddie Bird’s new gaff again. I think I’ve said enough about it.

‘Crisp, soft, rich, sharp.’ That’s TPB on some crispy fried lamb sweetbreads with anchovy sage and salsa verde. Sometimes you’re just better off reading the menu, aren’t you?

Best line: N/A
Worst line: N/A
Did the review make me want to book a table: Sensible nanny says go for the sweetbreads.

Tim Hayward, The Financial Times 

Jamie Oliver Catherine Street, London

Hayward succumbs to the ‘Big Suck’ of Jamie Oliver’s fame and visits his new co-venture with Andrew Lloyd Webber in Covent Garden’s Theatreland. ‘Mushrooms on toast was clever’, a fish stew, the description of which made Hayward ‘squeak with joy’ (hurrah!) but was served in a ‘wide flat dish with low vertical sides’ that his spoon kept slipping into when he tried to rest it on the side (boo!). In the end, the whole thing left him feeling ‘sadly flat’ (aw!).

Best line: ‘My arse has graced many banquettes in the course of my work, but few as luxuriously upholstered as the lord Lloyd Webber’s’
Worst line: ‘The menu feels locked and loaded’. I just really don’t like Hayward in macho mode very much. Sorry.
Did the review make me want to book a table: I can resist the big suck. Can you?

Chishuru, London

In which Hayward almost immediately ‘others’ west African food. I think he means well. Chishuru is ‘different by default. . . .which might be enough, if you’re a bold food adventurer who wants to notch up a new cuisine’. One wonders if Hayward encountered Dr Livingstone on his long and arduous expedition from Cambridge into Fitzrovia’s heart of darkness; he certainly found ‘“exotic” new ingredients’.

Like nearly all critics trying to navigate writing about west African cuisine, Hayward appears to have done his homework and goes into the specifics of the cooking a little more than he might usually do. There’s respect for you.

Best line: ‘As PRs are fond of telling me: “Chef’s technique will challenge your perceptions and change the way you think about chicken forever.” But it’s still chicken, right? Even the recent frenzy of fermenting everything only opens one other dimension. (Please, Christ, don’t let anyone try to ferment a chicken.)’
Worst line: N/A
Did the review make me want to book a table: Yes.