Food & Drink Reviews
Pearl Liang, London W2
Published: 08 April 2007
101 star bars: The Flowerpot, Derby (#5)
Published: 07 April 2007
Derby was the heartland of the Industrial Revolution and the brewing industry, and its best pub is wonderfully short on frills. No gastro-pubbery, no Muzak, no pretensions. Instead, it's cosy, scruffy, chatty, friendly, open from noon to midnight and full of beer. The front bars serve half a dozen special-edition local ales, together with an ever-changing selection (check the 20 on the blackboard) brought up from the teeming cellars; they range from the super-pale Bishop's Gold to the gutsy Marston's Pedigree, the "wheat beer" Show White and lots of fancy names from the Hartington and Whim breweries. At the back bar, you'll find a glass-fronted "stillage area" where a dozen casks are on display, showing the plastic tubes that connect to beer taps.
Trenta, London W2
Published: 01 April 2007
101 star bars: Grand Central Oyster Bar & Restaurant, New York
Published: 31 March 2007
I was introduced to this subterranean cellar by The Independent's man in Manhattan, David Usborne; it's a place where journalists take contacts for a lunchtime slug, and furtive lovers meet for molten Bloody Marys and an urgent chat over the checkered tablecloth. Though it's more restaurant than bar, you can't afford to miss this gorgeous spectacle, with its vaulted arches, its white-tiled ceiling and church-crypt ambience, its just-slightly-tacky lighting.
The Kitchin, Edinburgh
Published: 25 March 2007
101 star bars: Baltic, London SE1 (3)
Published: 24 March 2007
The name over the door is so pale, it's hardly there. The entrance is so un-showy (behind the big church door, you walk blindly into a red velvet curtain) that you'd never find it unless you were looking. Really, the Baltic takes laid-backness to extremes. The brainchild of Jan Woroniecki, who launched Wodka in Kensington and Chez Kristof in Hammersmith, this is the place for vodka cocktails and Eastern European cuisine, and it has a loyal and loving clientele.
101 star bars: Pavilhao Chines, Lisbon (2)
Published: 17 March 2007
Located on the north side of the Bairro Alto, Lisbon's Soho-like grid of streets packed with bars, shops, eating-houses and tragic women wailing fado songs, the Pavilhao Chines is a wonder to behold.
Dinings, London W1
Published: 11 March 2007
101 Star Bars: Gordon's, London WC2 (1)
Published: 10 March 2007
A century before All Bar One opened its doors, Gordon's was in business as London's first wine bar. The enterprising Arthur Gordon, a "free vintner", started it in 1890, and it has sold wine and nothing else ever since. It breathes history. Pepys used to live here when the house was right on the Thames's bank. Kipling wrote The Light That Failed here when he rented a room on the first floor. Step inside and the building seems frozen in time. The walls are festooned with newspapers dating back to the Second World War, tables and chairs wobble alarmingly, and the atmosphere is relaxed and humorous.
Spire, Wavertree, Liverpool
Published: 04 March 2007
The Hat and Feathers Dining Rooms, London EC1
Published: 03 March 2007
So here we are in Clerkenwell, just north of the City, home of what's acknowledged as the first-ever gastropub, The Eagle, and several other distinguished examples of the species. And here we are, settling down to eat in a pub, a long-derelict and now expensively renovated Victorian boozer called The Hat and Feathers.
Mocotó, London SW1
Published: 25 February 2007
Getting a Brazilian in London used to mean undergoing a ruthless and intimate form of hair removal. Then it referred to transfers of fleet-footed Latin American footballers. Now it means going out to dinner.
Odette's, London NW1
Published: 24 February 2007
Apparently Odette's in Primrose Hill was the restaurant where Liam Gallagher popped the question to Patsy Kensit, which surely earns it a place in the timeless annals of romance but which hasn't recently done it any favours businesswise. In fact it's had almost as many relationships since that hallowed night as Patsy and Liam between them. One assumes that its most recent owner, Vince Power, is hoping to last a little longer than some of his predecessors - and he's taken an excellent first step to consolidate the marriage by bringing in Bryn Williams as chef - a successful contestant in the BBC's regal cook-off Great British Menu. Anyone with a hankering to try the fish course he ended up serving for the Queen's 80th birthday (turbot served with cockles and oxtail) will find it on the menu here.
XO, London NW3
Published: 18 February 2007
Barrafina, London W1
Published: 11 February 2007
Barrafina, London W1
Published: 10 February 2007
There are a lot of tests for the freshness of your seafood - from the crystal gleam of a fish's eyeball to the reassuring clamp of a nudged bivalve. But when you see a razor clam waving at you from its bed of crushed ice, I think even a novice is going to be able to tell that it's not very long out of the sea. I'm not sure it was wise of the razor clam to be advertising its own quality in this way, since the next stop was Barrafina's busy grill plate, but it obviously just couldn't help itself. And with several of its colleagues already despatched - dressed with garlic and parsley and cooked to a deeply pleasing chewiness - it was both reassuring and mildly disconcerting to see a live specimen groping blindly for its native sands.
