The Daily Telegraph
William Sitwell was full of praise for the new spinoff from Restaurant 22 (also on Chesterton Road), where he found the food “seriously sublime – the cooking without fault, delivering well-balanced dishes and the finest cheffing nicely short of too many knobs on top.”
Focaccia both soft and crunchy, a vivid pea soup “with little bites of wild garlic to make the dish a strong contender for favourite slurp of 2025”, a terrine of chicken that was “a masterclass of soft, fresh pressing”, a piece of monkfish, a lamb rump and tomato salad were all “beautifully executed”.
The one fail was a duff treacle tart, in William’s view “too smooth, its crust too thin, its texture all wrong. The filling needs those bitey crumbs that fully divorce it from a smooth custard. It should be rustic, earthy and sweet, and tempered with cream. Not trying, as this one does ill-advisedly, to melt in the mouth.”
William Sitwell - 2025-07-13The Times
Jay Rayner gave a big thumbs-up to this “diffusion” restaurant from chef Sam Carter and his wife Alex Olivier, apparently named after a regular at their “more grown-up” venture Twenty-Two, which is two doors away and offers complex tasting menus.
Margaret’s is a lower-key affair, occupying a small and cleverly designed space that “presents as that friend who is so well dressed you don’t quite notice the quality of the tailoring, only that they look supremely comfortable in their own skin”.
The cooking is likewise confident and accomplished. Snacks and starters arrived in waves, including chilled gazpacho that was “a sun-kissed summer’s day in a cup”, perfect spears of asparagus and warm croquettes of shredded lamb belly. Mains of monkfish tail and loin of pork, each roasted accurately on the bone, also hit the spot, as did desserts. “Really, every town should have a Margaret’s.”
Jay Rayner - 2026-07-12
