28-50 Covent Garden – a Restaurant Reinvented. At one point London had three restaurants trading as 28-50, all part of a group owned by the Texture group of restaurants and run by Agnar Sverrisson from Iceland. And, at one point fairly recently, the venue that is now a new 28-50 wine bar and kitchen was […]
VyTA Italian Restaurant Covent Garden – Review
La Dolce Vita at VyTA Covent Garden. VyTA describes itself as ‘an elegant Italian lifestyle experience’; in practice, it’s an all-day restaurant handily located in the heart of Covent Garden market ‘open from dusk till dawn serving breakfast and brunch through to dinner and beyond’. New pre-theatre or late-night options in Covent Garden are always […]
Lady of the Grapes Wine Bar – Review
Meeting the Lady of the Grapes in Covent Garden. Tucked away on Maiden Lane, almost opposite Rules, is a charming new(ish) wine bar with a focus on female winemakers. Lady of the Grapes is the brainchild of Parisienne, Carole Bryon, who set the place up to help redress an inherent male balance in the wine […]
Cafe Pacifico Covent Garden Review
Back to the 80’s at Cafe Pacifico: Back in the 1980s, London was an exciting place to be if you were young and interested in music, politics or fashion, though the cultural energy wasn’t reflected in the choice and range of restaurants. The city certainly hadn’t become the centre of gastronomic excellence that it is […]
Photo London with an exclusive lunch at The Delaunay
Photo London and the Delaunay: I love Christopher Corbin and Jeremy King’s restaurants. There is an old-world professionalism about them that that makes me deeply happy. They take classic European models mediated through a contemporary London lens and have created a series of great rooms with an individual sense of style and an energy, furnishing […]
The Delaunay Pre-Theatre Dinner
Pre-Theatre Dining at the Delaunay: The Delaunay is an excellent choice for a pre-theatre dinner partly due to its location on the corner of Aldwych and Drury Lane. Both streets are in the centre of London’s West End theatre district and most venues are but a short walk from the restaurant. As luck would have […]
Pre-Theatre Dining at Le Restaurant de PAUL
Perfect Pre-Opera Dining at Paul, Covent Garden Many years ago I was strolling through the elegant streets of Lille and come across a PAUL bakery. It was clearly a local business and there was nothing like it in the UK at the time; that mix of the rustic and the sophisticated that the French do […]
Celebrating National Fish and Chips Day at Rock and Sole Plaice
Rock & Sole Plaice Review: Like many others families in the UK, I was brought up on a traditional Friday night diet of fish and chips, brought home from the local chippy by my dad after he finished work for the week. The rustle of paper and smell of vinegar seemed to herald the start […]
Lao Cafe – Review
A little Laotian in London – Lao Cafe: Laos wraps itself like a scarf around Thailand. A landlocked country, a narrow strip bordering on Thailand, Vietnam, Burma, Cambodia and China, I had no idea what to expect from Lao Café, a relatively new restaurant and the only place in London to serve Laotian food. The country […]
Cocktail Mixing and Supper at Henry’s
Henry’s Cocktail Mixing Event: The two Henry’s Wine Bars (one in Green Park, the other Covent Garden) are fixed in my heart – regular haunts for me and a group of friends, we’d often meet up in one or other of the bars with grand plans to paint the town red. And, generally after a […]