Smashed #35: AI will never replace restaurant critics, but I could (maybe).
The UK restaurant scene digested
Restaurant critics writing for the national press in the UK get well paid (plus not inconsiderable expenses) and so they should. They fill pages every week and pull in readers. But with newspapers cutting costs everywhere, they are surely a dying breed. One national title I know of already publishes reviews based on freebie PR meals (I don’t cover the reviews in Smashed, although I have done so in the past) but that doesn’t seem like a viable option for the rest. It’s difficult to imagine the likes of Jay Rayner or Grace Dent agreeing to compromise their principles and hard-won reputations by taking free meals in order to hold on to their jobs.
What may eventually emerge in their place, if stories I’ve heard recently are true, is a sort of crossbreed influencer/journalist; someone who happily takes money directly from PRs and brands but also receives paid commissions to write editorial stories (not advertorial) in newspapers. I don’t know if there are currently any examples of where someone who has been commissioned to write a newspaper editorial piece has also received money from the brand/product/venue in question in return for coverage, but I’m also not aware of any controls in place to prevent that from happening. How can an editor monitor the revenue streams of all their freelance contributors? All I know is that, in twenty years, no one has ever questioned me.
When newspapers eventually decide they can no longer afford the services of professional restaurant critic but still want restaurant coverage, why not call on someone who is already making decent money, doesn’t require expenses and will work at a reasonable rate (or for free) for an outlet that will help them attract more clients? Who cares about independent opinion when content is king?
Or maybe AI is the more ethical solution? I mean, at least no one’s getting double bubble. It’s meant to be the answer to everything, including, ‘What will be humanity’s extinction event’. To find out, I asked ChatGPT to write reviews of this week’s crop of restaurants in the style of the critic who wrote the published review. The results were, er, interesting.
It soon became obvious that ChatGPT is the computer equivalent of a lazy teenager forced to do their homework on a Sunday night; if it doesn’t know something it will just make stuff up. It doesn’t seem to be able to locate enough specific information about a given restaurant to be able to write an accurate and convincing review. It also struggles to mimic specific writing styles, although it did a reasonable Coren impersonation. So rather than subject you to the full reviews that are mostly nonsense, I have published some illustrative extracts.
The truth is that, because ChapGPT relies on already published material, it’s probably never going to be able to write about newly opened restaurants. It seems to do better with well-established places (its review of The Ritz in the style of Tom Parker Bowles wasn’t bad) but a real human has to write something about the place first so that it can mine the information.
That made me wonder if I could do a better job. In a world where restaurant critics may soon no longer be economically viable, could someone (me) gather enough information from online sources published prior to the review (restaurant website, press releases, socials and news items - but not other reviews, that would be cheating) to write something just as useful as a piece by a national restaurant critic?
Exactly how much extra value does a UK restaurant critic deliver for their fees and expenses? Putting aside the carefully honed prose, the odd clever turn of phrase, the numerous alliterative, adjective-heavy descriptions, what do they do for their money? Of course, they give their opinion and judgement and sometimes a score, but do you really need those to be able to make your mind up about whether you fancy going to a place or not? Let’s find out.
Before reading this week’s crop of reviews, I noted the names of the restaurants and wrote my own piece about each of them. I didn’t pretend to have eaten at the restaurants but I didn’t explicitly say I hadn’t. My pieces won’t read quite the same as a full review, and some are shorter than others depending on what information I could find, but they will hopefully illustrate a point.
I’ve compared my write-up to the national critic’s review to see how much more information the critic gleaned from eating at the restaurant and judge whether the critic’s comments on food, service and ambience are interesting and detailed enough to be the deciding factor for a reader to book a restaurant, or is a piece solely based on desk research just as good? I also made a judgement on whether not the critic’s review was more entertaining to read than my write-up, and drawn some overall conclusions at the end.
I hope you find the exercise entertaining and I would love to hear your opinions. Will you miss the critics when they inevitably go (it might be a while yet so don’t worry too much)? Do you care about the usefulness of a review or do you just read for enjoyment? Do you religiously read one particular critic, and if so why? Do you think they are a waste of space? Let me know.
The Reviews
Miga, London
Andy Lynes, Smashed
Set on a corner site between the train tracks and the A107 near to Cambridge Heath station, this family-run modern Korean restaurant is newly opened but has a long history behind it. A post on the restaurant’s Instagram proudly states that ‘Our Nan sold ox bone broth in Seoul’ and a mural painted on the restaurant’s white-washed exterior explains that she was one of the top three chefs in Seoul in the 70s and that the family originally opened Miga in New Malden 22 years ago.
Inside the intimate, simply decorated room, you’ll find Dad manning the bamboo-fronted open kitchen and his daughter and two sons running front of house. Early menu favourites have already emerged including Yughwe (beef tartare with Korean pear, parsley and egg yolk) and Maeun saeu (king prawns with gochujang sauce) and Suyug (sliced brisket with perilla seed aioli). Offal lovers will appreciate Ujog Muchim (beef collagen with baby leaf greens and gochugaru viniagrette) while Galbijjim (soy-braised shortribs, Korean pear, shiitake mushrooms) is a must order’. The early signs are that the Hackney incarnation of Miga is set to be one of the go-to destinations for authentic Korean food in London.
ChatGPT ( in the style of Jimi Famurewa)
Miga London: A Korean Love Letter with a Fiery Heart
'London’s dining scene is a patchwork quilt of global influences, stitched together with threads of ambition, heritage, and just a touch of chaos. And in the heart of this ever-evolving culinary tapestry, Miga London has appeared like a bold splash of color, bringing with it the unapologetic heat and soulful depth of Korean cuisine.’
ChatGPT did a terrible job, mistaking Miga for a Korean table BBQ restaurant, but it got a hint of the Famurewa style which you can just about detect in the above excerpt.
Jimi Famurewa, Evening Standard (5 stars)
What did Famurewa nail that I missed and ChatGPT missed?
Miga is ‘the Korean word for beef’. There’s ‘Aesop in the loos’ and ‘rustic wood panelling’ in the dining room where they play ‘bouncy Korean pop in the background’. Son Jae runs front of house with ‘straight-backed poise and a fair bit of sass’.
A fried tofu starter featured ‘unusually creamy blocks of bean curd, deep-fried in a lacily crisp, bubbled batter’ with a doenjang sauce, ‘a textured, house-made version of the lively Korean miso equivalent that played a lingering, twanged note of nutty, moreish funk’.
The signature dish is ‘seolleongtang, or ox bone broth: an ambrosial, milky brew’ is available either as a suppable capstone to the meal or the base for an enthralling noodle soup, clogged with slices of rare-cooked brisket’.
Best line: ‘the team at Miga have pooled generational resources to give their father’s remarkable, soulful cooking the platform it deserves. They are making their own history. And I think they’re going to need a bigger mural’
Worst line: N/A
Was the review pivotal in my decision to book a table or not: No. I gathered more than enough information about Miga before reading Famurewa’s review to convince me that I’d love the place. The additional bits and bobs helped fill in the gaps, especially about background music and front-of-house style, but they weren’t essential information that convinced me one way or the other.
Was the critic’s review an entertaining read regardless of its practical worth? As the critic of a London newspaper, Famurewa’s reviews are more geared towards highlighting new openings of interest to its metropolitan readership rather than providing them with a leisurely read. The column lives and dies by its practical value. That said, and this will come as no surprise to regular Smashed readers, I find Famurewa’s style overheated and hard to swallow, so again it’s a no from me.
The Park, London
Andy Lynes, Smashed
You can’t keep a good man down they say, and Jeremy King is living proof. After being ousted from his own Corbyn and King restaurant group in 2022, King made a triumphant comeback in 2024. First, there was the legendary Le Caprice reborn as Arlington in March, and now comes The Park (King is a busy man; Simpsons-In-The-Strand follows later in the year). Billed as ‘A New World Grand Cafe’, The Park is The Wolseley goes American with influences from King’s favourite News York and Californian chefs and restaurateurs such as Johnathan Waxman (who has consulted on the project), Danny Meyer, Alice Waters and Jeremiah Tower.
Set within the newly built Park Modern building on the corner of Bayswater and Queensway opposite Kensington Gardens, the restaurant features a beautiful wood-panelled interior that Frank Lloyd Wright would be proud of and picture windows that flood the space with light. Open for breakfast lunch and dinner and with a bar you’d want to linger at, The Park is a restaurant for all occasions.
Even if the menu at The Park makes a diversion from the sort of European cafe fare most associated with the restaurateur, you don’t go to a Jeremy King restaurant looking for innovative, complicated food. Expect simple things done well such as a ‘Gotham’ shrimp cocktail, chopped cobb salad, hot dogs, a cheeseburger, a classic lobster roll and a grilled veal chop. The wine list reflects the aforementioned US influence with what must be one of the most extensive selections of bottles from California, Oregon, Washington and New York State in London. Italy makes up the bulk of the rest of the list. That Italian/American theme is also present on the cocktail menu that includes a list of negronis as well as pisco punch and habanero margarita.
If you were to wash down your £47.50 char-grilled rib-eye tagliata with a bottle of Montebello Cabernet Sauvignon, Ridge, Napa Valley, 2012 for £590 plus 15% service charge, you will come away from The Park with a hefty bill. But, as usual, King has his eye out for his less wealthy customers too. Order chicken Milanese with rocket and parmesan, some fries and a glass of Grillo and you’re home and dry for under £40. And that’s why Jeremy is the King of the London restaurant scene.
ChatGPT (In the style of William Sitwell)
The Park: A Delightful Dance Between Elegance and Whimsy
‘Then there’s the Roast Saddle of Lamb, a dish that practically sings with the flavours of the British countryside. The lamb is cooked to a perfect pink, tender and juicy, with a rosemary jus that could bring a tear to the eye of even the most hardened carnivore. Accompanied by a side of dauphinoise potatoes—rich, creamy, and impossibly indulgent—it’s a dish that feels like a warm embrace on a cool autumn evening.’
There is no roast saddle of lamb on the menu at The Park. Bad ChatGPT. There is a hint of Sitwell about the writing though.
William Sitwell, The Telegraph
What did Sitwell’s review nail that I missed and ChatGPT missed?
There’s a ‘grand swirling staircase’. That wood panelling? It’s ‘golden African limba’. There’s also ‘large, funky art that bedecks the whole place.’
Sitwell ‘liked’ the monkey bread which he found to be ‘big and fluffy and similar to – though not quite as buttery as – brioche’ but ‘a little cold wheel of butter’ wasn’t great. ‘Gotham shrimp cocktail’ was ‘five shrimps, clinging on to the side of an ice bowl for dear life, with nothing but a slice of lemon and a red dip. The latter was a gutless, wet salsa of tomatoey nothingness’.
Cobb salad was ‘a scraggily chopped salad of no effect’. The veal chop was ‘thin and sliced’ but ‘well cooked, juicy and tender’. Ham hock pie was ‘decent’ and ‘dainty’ with ‘a flaky crust and rich contents’. Chips were ‘good’ while broccoli had ‘some bite’ but none of the promised chilli or garlic. You would need ‘a battering ram to get through the biscuit to the very fine filling’ of an ice cream cookie sandwich.
Best line: N/A
Worst line: N/A
Was Sitwell’s review pivotal in my decision to book a table or not: There was certainly enough criticism of the food that would help a reader to decide of they wanted to go or not. Personally, if and when I make it to The Park, I’ll be going in the knowledge that I’m not going to be blown away by the food but I want to sit in that amazing-looking room and have a memorable experience, chilli and garlic with my broccoli or no chilli and garlic.
Was the critic’s review an entertaining read regardless of its practical worth? The review was useful rather than entertaining.
Wild, London
Andy Lynes, Smashed
Opened in September 2023 in Notting Hill among Westbourne Grove’s bouji boutiques by George Bukhov and Ilya Demichev, the team behind Chelsea’s Wild Tavern (and Goodmans and Burger and Lobster), Wild puts top-quality Italian (and British) produce at the heart of its menus.
An enormous Josper grill and oven form the centrepiece of an open kitchen that provides a theatrical focal point for the chic and sultry dining room and is the source of many of the main courses. Expect simply grilled giant river prawns with parsley, caper and tomato sauce, veal chop with rosemary veal jus, and lamb cutlets with mint and anchovy sauce, all served on a collection of mismatched antique crockery.
In keeping with the neighbourhood, there’s plenty of bouji and spendy pasta dishes like taglierini with black truffle (£44) and linguine with jumbo shrimp (£38) to keep the well-heeled locals happy. If you’re the sort of person that likes to be seen drinking a bottle of Sin Qua Non with their Prime Grass Fed UK Beef Fillet, Wild is a restaurant made especially for you.
ChatGPT (in the style of Tom Parker Bowles)
Wild: A Foray into Flavour in the Heart of Notting Hill
‘There’s a particular kind of restaurant that Notting Hill does exceptionally well—the sort of place that’s effortlessly chic, with a menu that dances between the comforting and the contemporary. Wild, tucked away on Westbourne Grove, is just that sort of spot. It’s a restaurant that feels like it belongs here, among the leafy streets and pastel-hued houses, where bohemian charm meets a touch of urban sophistication.’
ChatGPT got virtually nothing right about Wild but caught a whisper of TPB’s style.
Tom Parker Bowles, Mail on Sunday (3 stars)
What did TPB’s review nail that I missed and ChatGPT missed?
TPB found that ‘half dozen Jersey rock oysters’ were 'pert, briny and not excessively milky, despite the time of year.’ Sea bass ceviche was ‘splendidly fresh, with a nudge of chilli and the sweetly acidic bite of pineapple’ while tuna tartare was ‘clean, artfully seasoned….with a whisper of wasabi and a sprinkling of sesame.’
A ‘Galician octopus salad’ was ‘soft, warm and suitably spiced with smoked paprika’ and ‘beef carpaccio. . . . hewn from a superior beast’ was ‘cut so thin you can almost see the plate below’. Seared tuna was ‘coated in a herb crust that overwhelms, rather than flatters’ while ‘grilled porcini mushrooms are soft to the point of slimy’.
Staff were ‘slick, smiling’ and the bill at £260 (‘Ye Gods!’) ‘was the wildest thing about Wild’.
Best line: ‘the menu reads decently enough: a metrosexual gallimaufry of delicate tartares, pretty pastas and serious steaks’
Worst line: N/A
Was TPB’s review pivotal in my decision to book a table or not: This is a bit unfair on Tom as I was on guard the second I saw that the restaurant was in Notting Hill. One look at the menu told me the place was just not my thing. If I was actively looking for a fashionable pasta/grill restaurant in Notting Hill and price was not an issue, then I wouldn’t have been actively put off by the review but I don’t think it would have particularly persuaded me either.
Was the critic’s review an entertaining read regardless of its practical worth? TPB has such a low word count that he has to keep things short and to the point. That said, he did spend over a quarter of his allotted 386 words explaining how hot the day was and why he and his son dived into Wild as it looked cool ‘in temperature’. Is that entertaining? Is that a good use of word count? I’ll let you decide.
Lita, London
Occupying a former Carluccios on a Marylebone side street, you may get a sense of deja vu about the recently opened Lita. If I said the words ‘open kitchen’ ‘live fire cooking’ ‘finest ingredients’ it might make you think of any number of London restaurants. But then if I added ‘George Bukhov and Ilya Demichev’ you might imagine Lita was another branch of Wild by any other name.
However, things are a little different in Marlylebone, with a rustic interior of bare plaster walls, exposed wooden beams, bare floorboards, bare wood tables and some fairly ugly wooden chairs (no doubt they cost a packet). Lita, it’s fair to say, has got wood. I imagine they burn the stuff in the open kitchen to fuel all that live (as opposed to dead I guess) fire cooking.
Manning the stoves is Irishman Luke Ahearne, former head chef of Corrigan’s Mayfair and alumni of The Clove Club; a serious pedigree. Lita has culinary ambitions and as a consequence is not cheap. Fancy some of that ubiquitous cod’s roe that literally every fucker on the planet is serving up? Maybe some sourdough to go with? That’ll be £17 plus 15% service charge if you please.
It is nevertheless an extremely tempting menu. I mean, you don’t have to order the 1.6kg turbot to share at £160, you could just make do with some Cornish monkfish with fennel, heirloom tomatoes and bouillabaisse at £47 or even the Norfolk quail with burnt nectarine and duck hearts at £28. Go on, have those ratte spuds, they’re only a tenner £9. You could enjoy it with your £54 bottle of Picpoul, the least expensive on the mostly three-figure list.
But what’s the point of moaning about London restaurant prices? Welcome to the new world, you’re going to have to either learn to love it or live off Nando’s. Isn’t modern life great?
ChatGPT (in the style of Tim Hayward)
Lita: A Carnival of Latin American Flavors in the Heart of London
‘Walking into Lita, you’re immediately struck by the vibrancy of the place. It’s as if someone took the essence of a Latin American street festival—complete with bold murals, rustic wooden tables, and an open kitchen that hums with activity—and squeezed it into a cozy, urban dining room. The space practically pulses with energy, the kind that makes you feel like you’ve just been let in on a very well-kept secret.’
In this instance, ChatGPT’s review was complete and utter codswallop. It thought Lita was a Latin American restaurant and obviously didn’t have a clue who Tim Hayward is. At this point, I’m rechristening it ChatShitGPT.
Tim Hayward, The Financial Times
What did Tim Hayward’s review nail that I missed and ChatGPT missed?
There is a lot of space in the dining room, so much so that ‘a broad, noble boulevard leads from the door to the open kitchen. The kind of space you could fire a cannon down in the event of a popular uprising’.
You can pay £30 and get Australian truffle shaved over anything on the menu.
Hayward’s dreams are made of ‘a serried phalanx of steamed St Austell Bay mussels on a toast plinth, with a creamy underlayer of sauce gribiche’. Aren’t you glad you’re not him?
Hayward was made ‘profoundly happy’ by ‘raw Fuentes bluefin tuna under a layer of finely minced corno peppers’ the sweetness of which was balanced with capers and perked up with coriander. He says he’s never eaten a corno pepper before but fails to explain what they are. The internet told me that they are Italian, full name ‘Corno di Toro’, or ‘Bull’s Horn’, grow to 8-12 inches long with thick sweet flesh.
In Hayward’s opinion, ‘The cooking here is confident and extremely competent. Above all, there’s a sense of someone with an excellent palate keeping a firm guiding hand on what’s coming over the pass’, so that’s nice to know.
A pan of rice cooked in squid ink had a ‘nutty, almost crunchy consistency’ and was topped with ‘near-sashimi Scottish langoustines and a dollop of emollient aioli’.
All the staff were very good looking which made the ‘fat, old and bald’ Hayward feel ‘awkward, ugly and irrelevant’ and he couldn’t bear thinking about the idea that the staff had been hired on looks alone.
Best line: ‘The Concept turned out to be “Broadly Italian/British ingredients/small plates/sharing courses”, which was perhaps not the paradigm shift I was hoping for’
Worst line: ‘imported truffle served like HP Sauce — is jarring. It’s like having a sign in the bathroom saying, “We don’t supply toilet paper. Please help yourself from our basket of absorbent kittens.”’
Was Hayward’s review pivotal in my decision to book a table or not: I have to be honest and say no. I had the opportunity to go a few months ago and turned it down on the basis that it would be ruinously expensive. Ironically I ended up at Mountain instead and probably paid the same or more. Although Hayward did make the food sound as good if not better than the menu descriptions it wasn’t enough to make me change my mind.
Was the critic’s review an entertaining read regardless of its practical worth? Yes, the first piece this week to do its job.
Kioku by Endo
Andy Lynes, Smashed
Third-generation sushi master chef Endo Kazutoshi has been wowing London foodies at his White City restaurant Endo at The Rotunda since launching in 2019. He won a Michelin star within six months, something that probably didn’t go unnoticed by the management team at Raffles at The OWO Hotel, who have been hoovering up big-name chefs including Mauro Colagreco and established international restaurant brands like Café Lapérouse (Paris) and Langosteria (Milan) to fill up their mahoosive hotel.
While Kazutoshi is re-tooling The Rotunda to reflect the Japanese concept of Onkochishin (‘a way of looking into the future through the perspective of the past’ - no further details available, we’ll just have to wait and see exactly how that will look in practice when it re-opens in September), he has opened Kioku Restaurant on the rooftop at The OWO.
Kioku is a little bit Japanese, a little bit Mediterranean, reflecting the chef’s time spent sunning himself on the beach or more likely working incredibly hard as chefs tend to do. There’s a 55-seat main dining room decked out in natural oak, cork, leather and linen that is meant to evoke the chef’s memories of his travels, although what those memories might be is anyone’s guess. There’s also an outside terrace, but true Endo fans will want to dine at the 8-seat chef’s table overlooking the kitchen.
The menu ranges from a relatively conventional king crab chawanmushi with ginger, kaffir and yuzu to more wacky items such as chashu pork ramen ravioli or goma dare (Japanese sesame sauce) spaghetti, gazpacho, kombu oil and Mazara red prawn. If the fusion cuisine all gets a bit much, customers can take refuge in the ground floor Kioku Bar where they can get completely slaughtered on appreciate the largest sake collection in Europe.
ChatGPT (in the style of Giles Coren)
Kioku by Endo: Sushi That'll Make You Weep, and Not Just Because of the Price
’There’s a new spot in town, a place where the sushi is so good it’ll make you question every sad little slab of fish you’ve ever forked into your mouth. It’s called Kioku by Endo, and it’s the latest from Endo Kazutoshi, who’s more or less the sushi whisperer of London. You know the type—bloke with a razor-sharp knife and an even sharper eye for detail, slicing and dicing like he’s choreographing a ballet. And at the end of it all? You’re presented with a piece of sushi that’s less a bite of food and more a piece of edible art.
Let’s start with the setting. Kioku is slick. It’s not trying to dazzle you with shiny things or neon lights. The décor is all clean lines and calm neutrals, like stepping into a temple of minimalism. But it’s the sort of minimalism that whispers in your ear, “Prepare to drop a small fortune.”’
This is not a bad effort from the Chat, it’s like Coren on a particularly uninspired day. If you didn’t know and had to guess who it was meant to be, I think you’d say Giles.
Giles Coren, The Times (8/10)
This is bloody weird. I told you that I hadn’t read the critic’s reviews before writing my versions of them and I promise you that is completely true, I did not cheat. So it’s only now, as I’m writing this bit of the newsletter that I have read Coren’s piece. Would you believe he starts with a ‘review’ of Tollington’s in Finsbury Park WITHOUT ACTUALLY VISITING THE RESTAURANT?! He wanted to go but couldn’t get a booking so based his write up on this Hot Dinners article and finishes by saying ‘I’ve already said everything that I would have put in the review.’ Christ. Coren’s already proved my point for me and I didn’t know. Have I wasted two days of my life (this has taken a lot longer than I though it would)?!! Oh well, we’ve got this far (why didn’t I start with Coren? Bloody hell), let’s soldier on.
What did Giles Coren’s review nail that I missed and ChatGPT missed?
Everyone was on their phone all the time. The views across London are great. The best thing Coren ate was a ‘a small crouton disc piled with chopped raw fatty tuna’ topped with N25 cavair.
He ate a number of dishes that he gave no further information about other than their titles, but did say that a beetroot and blackcurrant salad was ‘crazy-paved with sugars and acids’ and had ‘a sansho pepper bomb that kept on fizzing through the next couple of courses.’ He also described a ‘sliver’ of duck breast with fermented chilli and barley as ‘dense, ferrous’. So that’s two words. Finally ‘a crème brûlée topped with a blob of cream cheese ice cream and a spoonful of caviar’ was ‘quite a firework to go out on.’
Best line: ‘Endo is a genius, no question. But this is not the sort of place that does it for me. I just don’t warm to the ghoulish transience of a megahotel and the tax exile citizens of nowhere such a place attracts. I wish he’d take over a north London chip shop.’
Worst line: N/A
Was Coren’s review pivotal in my decision to book a table or not: I’m not spending £540 on sushi so it was never on the cards, but the additional information in Coren’s review was negligible so it made no impact one way or the other.
Was the critic’s review an entertaining read regardless of its practical worth? I rarely find Coren’s writing to be anything other than highly entertaining and this was no exception.
Conclusion
Despite Giles Coren’s own-foot-shooting exercise with his remote review of Tollington’s, it’s pretty clear that, for as long as there is budget available, the critics’ jobs are safe. ChatGPT is quite a long way off from being able to do the job, and unless there is some great AI leap forward, I don’t see how it could ever be a realistic alternative. My write-ups are all well and good but they are missing one essential ingredient. What readers are looking for from a critic is not necessarily the most forensic analysis, the most complete coverage, but a thumbs up or down from someone who, over a period of time they have come to ‘know’ and whose opinion they trust. The only way to achieve that is for critics to sit in dining rooms and eat. Long may they do so.