Raising the steaks: Maze Grill, Grosvenor Square, London

Saturday, 26 July 2008

City lunchers have had to re-think their priorities lately. Gone is a three-course blow-out at the Mercer, with the throw-caution-to-the-wind bottle of Chateauneuf. A new realism is abroad. It's saying, You, my lad, will be lunching at Strada or Wagamama or Yo! Sushi for the immediate future. So why is everyone going to the Maze Grill?

We are most amused: Princess Victoria

Sunday, 20 July 2008

Princess Victoria, 217 Uxbridge Road, London W12, tel: 020 8749 5886

Tooley scrumptious: Magdalen, Tooley Street, London

Saturday, 19 July 2008

The enthusiasm of my vary-sized fellow judges for Magdalen, nominated in the Best British category, was the spur I needed to make an overdue visit to this not-particularly-new, but apparently very good, restaurant in Bermondsey

Prince of Denmark Street: The Giaconda Dining Room

Sunday, 13 July 2008

Why Australian chef Paul Merrony is making a big noise on the street known as London's Tin Pan Alley

Second helpings: More wizards of Oz

Sunday, 13 July 2008

Soul Food: L'Anima

Saturday, 12 July 2008

L'Anima is the Italian word for "the soul" or "the spirit", and it's unusual to find ethereal connotations attached to modern Italian cuisine. Restaurateurs like to emphasise the earthiness, the spicy peasantness, the down-home, hairy-armpitted, beans-and-pasta-soup-iness of vero Italian cooking. You may think it laughable that the River Café calls its fabulous dishes cucina rustica, when no actual rustic Italian could afford a tenth of their Hammersmith prices – but the image was seriously meant.

Brasseries not included: Brasserie St Jacques

Sunday, 6 July 2008

St Jacques brings an authentic French buzz to the heart of London. But you don't want to read about that, do you?

Food Of The Week: Cultural fine dining is quite an art

Sunday, 6 July 2008

There's no need to go hungry when sating your cultural appetite. Check out these top-notch restaurants in galleries, theatres, concert halls and museums around the world.

Lost in Soho: Quo Vadis

Saturday, 5 July 2008

If ever a restaurant embodied the Zeitgeist of the Nineties (and isn't Zeitgeist the Ninetiest of words?) it was Quo Vadis. How deliciously ironic that an old Soho haunt, once the home of Karl Marx, should be taken over by the PR maestro and corporate flack Matthew Freud. And what larks when Freud and his partners, the artist Damien Hirst and Marco Pierre White, eventually had a spectacular falling-out, leaving White sulking in sole charge with only his self-painted Hirst knock-offs for company. Truly, each generation gets the bohemians and boulevardiers it deserves.

This Is Summer: Eating out

Monday, 30 June 2008

Nobody wants to be inside on a lovely day – so make a note of these delightful eateries around Britain that have outside spaces, from garden benches to elegant terraces