Tag Archives: good value

January 20

The Quality Chop House. It’s on my list.

You can’t really write about The Quality Chop House without talking about its history. I was just going to mention that it had been a restaurant since 1869 and leave it at that. Thing is though, as a property lawyer by profession and an historian by education I can’t quite leave it there. So, combining […]

January 01

Les 110 de Taillevent. Bank on it.

An accomplished brasserie with sophisticated food, mainly classics, executed to a high standard for the price point.

November 05

The Ivy, spreading its tendrils to Marylebone.

I’ve got a table for the new Ivy Café in Marylebone tomorrow, says Mr A, I know it’s short notice, but I thought you might like to try it. Short notice? Never a problem. As he said it, the vague memory of an Ivy opening in Marylebone drifted into my conscious mind. It had slipped […]

October 16

Bao. Stuffed in Soho.

It is a Monday lunchtime and a tedious morning has my brain looking for a food-based displacement activity. There is nothing calling to me within a mile of my office and I am not in the mood for polite conversation.

August 25

André Garrett at Cliveden House.

Shall we go to Cliveden, I say to C, who is sitting on the chair in the kitchen, playing with his phone.  I am sitting at the kitchen table, preparing a schedule of mortgage requirements for a new client. Unsurprisingly, the tedium is leading me to thoughts of escape. There are only so many times […]

August 14

Rabbit and The Shed.

We have also the wines from success, said our waiter, in a thick accent of indeterminate origin, his ponytail pulled back so tightly that he had given himself a Croydon facelift. We decided to give the wines of success a miss when we worked out that they were wines from Sussex, not that I’ve got anything against […]

July 31

Chez Bruce. Safety first.

There is, I am told an unspoken rivalry between locals as to which is best, Trinity, Clapham or Chez Bruce, Wandsworth. My companion J, is very definitely Team Trinity and I sense that he is not entirely comfortable on enemy ground.

June 13

Portland and yes it is (mostly) Great.

#Firstworldproblems no 1:  being irritated by the OpenTable booking message telling me I can only have the table for a two hour slot. #Firstworldproblems no.2 : being called by the restaurant two days before the booking, to remind me about the two-hour slot, in case I hadn’t seen it on the screen during booking, not […]

June 03

La Trompette. Top chow in Chiswick

Why are we sitting in this traffic says C, not understanding why we can’t eat somewhere local. It’ll only be about half an hour in the car, I say. Trust me. And anyway, I say, I just need to get out of central London and I want to go somewhere grown up. As we are sitting […]

April 21

Trinity. Cream of Clapham.

It’s the unfairness of it that rankles. And it’s not like I haven’t dragged myself across the river to Clapham twice already in the last six months, both times to visit the epicentre of current culinary derring-do that is The Dairy. It doesn’t seem entirely fair that the good burghers of Clapham have not one, but three restaurants I’d be happy to eat at any […]