Category Archive: Restaurant Reviews

Restaurant reviews

Review: Marmalade Bistro, Birmingham

This is the new restaurant attached to the REP theatre, right in the middle of Birmingham. We stopped for a quick meal of small plates after a performance at the Symphony Hall next door. Sorry, no photos – way too dark for my phonecam. I like the decor and ambiance, slightly mad hatter with the …

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Review: Nut Tree Inn, Murcott

I like my DSLR camera. I’m a keen (if decidedly amateur) photographer when travelling the world, but I could never bring myself to pull it out in a restaurant. It surely just screams “food blogger!” and I never want staff to guess I’m a blogger. I’d love to say that this is a highly principled …

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Review: East India Cafe, Cheltenham

Anyone who reads this blog knows that my favourite Indian restaurant is The Chilli Pickle in Brighton. And this is because it is not just a curry house. It’s not a good local curry house, it’s not a curry house with fine dining pretensions, it’s not an actual fine dining curry house. It’s a modern …

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Review: Old Passage Inn, Gloucestershire

Dear front of house. When a diner asks you for a recommendation, maybe between two or three dishes, they aren’t really asking you to name the best dish on the menu. They’re just undecided, they just want you to help them make their mind up. Batting the question back at them with a headmistress-y “I …

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Review: The Sportsman, Kent

The eerily drab Kent coast on a moist, cold November day with the last few leaves dropping from the trees. It’s gloriously Dickensian. The Thames estuary is a huge grey blanket the same colour as the sky and you can’t see across to the other side. The Sportsman doesn’t look like much from the outside; …

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