Category: Restaurant

Manicomio in Chelsea is always good. For an outdoor lunch there I started with the cured Piedmontese beef, which was good, then went on to their Portland lobster ravioli with tomatoes, marjoram, chilli & garlic. It was the beat I’ve ever had and easily held its own alongside a...

The Ivy Market Grill is on the corner of Henrietta Street in Covent Garden.  They do a huge menu featuring international dishes.  I had their brioche crumbed chicken Milanese with fried hen’s egg and black truffle mayonnaise.  It was nicely done, moist inside and with the egg yolk suitably...

I invariably used to order the rose veal from Carluccio’s in Cambridge. Alas, it disappeared from the menu. Today I ordered their Chicken Milanese, done as an escalope with breadcrumbs. The breadcrumb coating needed a little olive oil to moisten it, but the chicken inside was moist and tasty...

At Fishworks in Swallow Street I sometimes eat the monkfish, but more often it’s their fish and chips. Their menu describes it as “Lyme Bay cider battered prime cod fillet with double cooked chips, Cornish sea salt, minted mushy peas and fresh gherkins and baby capers,” but it’s good...

Les Deux Salons is a rather nice brasserie just off Trafalgar Square. It does a range of mostly French-style dishes. Their onglet steaks are pretty good, chunky instead of thin, and served with rather good chips. The ice-cream was a puzzle, though. The initials IDS were on the accompanying...

I went back to Aster, the new Nordic-style restaurant at Victoria.  This time I sat in the ‘cafe’ part and ordered Baltic fish pie.  It was very unusually presented, with peaks of potato mash charred at the tip.  The fish pie underneath was good, with lots of fish chunks...

It was my first time at De Luca Cucina, an Italian restaurant in Cambridge’s Regent Street. I tried a new dish, chorizo arancini stuffed with fontina cheese served with a cucumber yoghurt.  It was deliciously good.  I followed it with oven baked fillet of salmon with a pistachio &...

It was Spanish Jews who settled in England in the 17th century who introduced fish fried in batter, and in 1860 Joseph Malin opened the first fish and chip shop in London, selling “fish fried in the Jewish manner.” Chips, or deep fried pieces of potato, appeared at about...

Gordon Ramsay’s Heddon Street Kitchen does a roast beef plate that rather resembles a pub’s Sunday roast.  Two slices of beef done medium rare as requested, Yorkshire pudding, roast potatoes, cabbage, carrots and parsnips, and a red wine and shallot gravy.  Next time I’ll ask for the gravy on...

Daquise is a Polish restaurant near South Kensington tube station in London.  It is very good and reasonably priced, and their menu has several excellent Polish dishes.  This time I began with the pierogi, dumplings with various fillings – meat, cheese/potato/onion, and cabbage.  Really appetising.  I went on to...