Welcome to Oliver Thring's weekly round-up of national critics’ restaurant reviews.
E. Mono, Kentish Town Road
‘The best kebab I’d had in years,’ says Giles Coren at E. Mono. ‘The chicken was unbelievable ... better even than the lamb’. ‘Overall I was blown away.’
‘Less hideous than anticipated’ is Matthew Norman’s verdict on the biggest restaurant in the country, Za Za Bazaar on Bristol’s Harbourside. This remarkable place serves all kinds of cuisines: Norman had ‘passable’ Tex-Mex chicken and ‘dried out’ sushi, but pho was ‘fresh and nourishing’.
He also found time to visit Oslo Court, the St John’s Wood time-warp serving classics of cuisine bourgeois. Veal holstein was good and steak diane was ‘beautifully cooked’: this is ‘a magnificent restaurant.’
John Lanchester: Manchester WAGs’ favourite Australasia is ‘jolly for a basement’. Soft shell crab tempura was a ‘success’ and black cod ‘good’, but the ‘star of the meal’ was mango soufflé. It's ‘clever’ place ‘copying the kind of food people like to eat’.
An excellent review from Marina O’Loughlin of the Hansom Cab, a gastropub on the Earl’s Court Road part-owned by Piers Morgan. ‘I actually don’t mind the place’: clichéd beetroot and goat’s cheese was better than a ‘dismal’ sweet cherry risotto, although a piece of halibut was ‘dry and overcooked’.
Don’t miss Fay Machler’s restaurants of the year: Dinner, Chabrot Bistrot d’Amis, Spuntino, Pollen Street Social, Medlar, Galoupet, Hedone, Elliot’s Café, The Lawn Bistro, Meatliquor, Young Turks at The Ten Bells and The Delaunay (which most people spell ‘Delauney’, though Fay doesn’t).
Guy Dimond visits the first London branch of Turkish café chain Kahve Dunyasi, on Piccadilly. ‘It’s cheap, and there are great cakes and coffees’ although ‘the sandwiches are not great’.
‘Mishkin’s is as much a Jewish deli as The Wolesley is,’ says the pseudonymous, Jewish food blogger ‘Anthony Silverbrow’. Cod cheek popcorn is ‘vaguely fishy fried batter’ and the bagel a ‘really bad example of its kind’. ‘This feels the most formualaic’ of Russell Norman’s restaurants.