Category: Fine dining

White linen, silver service, but not in Mr Michelin's book

Review: Midsummer House, Cambridge

Sweet scallop

Daniel Clifford’s Michelin 2-star dining room in Cambridge has been on our hit-list for aaaaaages. It’s one of the stealthiest restaurants in the country. You walk across Midsummer Common and then stand there in faint bewilderment. There’s a pub. There’s a small detached Victorian house alongside. And there’s nothing else this side of the river. …

Continue reading

Review: Hedone, Chiswick

Magic crab at Hedone

Other restaurants have no trouble putting up a sample menu on their website, even if it almost certainly won’t be what you eat on the night. It just gives you an idea of the kind of thing you might find. The clue is in the word “sample”. That’s too forthcoming for Hedone. They don’t even …

Continue reading

Review: &samhoud places, Amsterdam

Gilded egg - metaphor?

Some people just want to watch the world burn. Why else would you start the name of your restaurant with a piece of punctuation? There’s a word for that, and it begins with “pre-” and ends in “-tentious”. I was actually amazed that websites like Google Maps and Trip Advisor were quite happy with the …

Continue reading

Review: The Plough, Kingham

Roast venison!

Our latest destination for a Sunday lunch. Since autumn had properly begun, and the day was moist and grey with dazzlingly red and gold leaves on the ground, it felt like the right kind of Sunday to find a really proper wellies-by-the-door fire-in-the-grate kind of country pub. So the Kingham Plough was a great choice, …

Continue reading

Review: Two Cats Kitchen, Birmingham

Wagyu beef and coal oil

What is “New Baltic Cuisine”? Well, one answer is: it’s the tag line that’s meant to intrigue you into eating at Two Cats Kitchen. Another answer might be: it’s a themed menu that sticks pretty rigidly to the idea of only using things grown or found in northern Europe, with a couple of nods towards …

Continue reading