There are endless “best restaurant in London” lists, but in our (Sam Bowman’s & Ben Southwood’s) view nearly all of them are rubbish. They’re too expensive and tend to focus on things other than food like service, ambience and image. These things are all important, but with Straight Up London, we have tried to create… Keep Reading

What’s worse than a place with no redeeming qualities? A place with plenty of redeeming qualities that still doesn’t hit the mark. Tea Room, the cocktail bar below Bun House at the corner of Greek Street in Soho, ticks some of the right boxes – it’s difficult to beat the aesthetic of mid-century China, a… Keep Reading

The problem with going out for restaurants is that once you’ve paid for drinks, service, and a few courses you’ve usually spent £50. That’s a fair amount of money for almost anyone. But one thing London has done increasingly well in the five or so years I’ve been living in and around the centre is… Keep Reading

Why is it so hard for restaurants to expand? So often do I have a meal at the second or third branch of a chain and find it lacklustre or not up to the standards I built up in my mind. And yesterday’s meal at Zelman Meats in St. Paul’s, the fourth branch of the… Keep Reading

I went to Daddy Bao hoping to not like it, for the sake of making this blog a little more diverse. After a string of two medal reviews I’ve begun to wonder if I’m getting good at avoiding dud restaurants, which is great for me but might be a bit boring to read. It’s the… Keep Reading

Note: Pique-Nique has stopped serving its chicken tasting menu. It may well still be a good restaurant, but it now serves typical French dishes at a mid-to-high-range price point, and we haven’t tasted anything on the current menu. I’ll start with the most important point: Pique-Nique does the finest chicken I’ve eaten in London, and… Keep Reading

The really big names in London restaurants, the ones everybody knows, are all steak places – Gaucho, Goodman, Hawksmoor. Apart from a few new challengers like Flat Iron, which I maintain is a triumph of economics and supply chain management above all else, it’s not always clear where you’d go for a good steak apart… Keep Reading

I’ve written before about how Brixton sits a little uncomfortably when it comes to food and drink. It’s really not great considering how many options there are – it does the basics fine but it has none of the variety or spark of Dalston or the homeliness of Tooting. It’s miles ahead of Clapham, but… Keep Reading

If you ever find yourself in New Malden in South West London, a little town in between Wimbledon and Kingston, there are two things you should do. One, go to one of the gigantic Korean supermarkets and stock up on Asian food supplies – they have frozen chopped Filipino pig intestines, fresh kaffir lime leaves,… Keep Reading