Our round-up of what the nation’s restaurant critics were writing about in the week up to 7th December 2025
London Standard
David Ellis was the first critic to issue judgement on the heralded reboot of Le Gavroche by chef Matt Abé, backed by his old boss, Gordon Ramsay. It is, he said, “a restaurant of substance over style”, even if the luxuriously spacious and sound-proofed interior in cream and leather – “call it cruise ship chic” – is not to his taste and the whole experience is “priced for warlords and footballers” (David ate the cheapest menu, at £165 a head).
“But are you chasing exquisite food, money no object? Book now: go. It might not be the most beautiful place, or the best value, but Christ can Abé cook. He is not only the name above the door, but the man sweating it out at the stoves. For all my sniping, there’s no putting down what comes out of the kitchen.”
Of particular note were “what I can only call a Parmesan Oreo”; a broth of carrots, parsnips and beef tallow that “tastes like an entire roast dinner”; quail blanquette that was “precision manifest”; a huge scallop in a battered crust; and “steak the size and shape of a tea caddy… extraordinary, intensely beefy, its fat rendered so well it could have been cut off and served as a snack.”
*****
The Times
Crisp Pizza, The Marlborough, Mayfair
Giles Coren tapped his “old mate”, landlord Oisin Rogers of the Devonshire in Piccadilly, to nab a table without having to queue for six hours at Osh’s collaboration with acclaimed pizza-obsessive Cal McCluskey at this Mayfair project which sees “England’s most queued-for pizza joining forces with England’s busiest pub”.
First, though, Giles shared his general attitude to pizza – a dish he memorably dismissed as “Never truly exciting, never truly disappointing, but always available locally. Like marital sex.”
So was Crisp’s any better? Up to a point, said Giles: “It’s delicious. Absolutely delicious. And extremely crispy. But is it worth a long journey and a very long wait? Well, seeing as that is an experience I am never going to have, I guess I will never know.”
***
Chitra Ramswamy enjoyed a “vibey and no-frills” Asian street-food BYO in the Barras market – and as for the name, the pun is very much intended, though it also translates as “lucky taste” in Cantonese, an explanation that is less convincing when you know that this is a second venue from Lee and Johnny Chung, the duo behind Ho Lee Fook on the Gallowgate.
Most, but not quite all the dishes she tried met with Chitra’s approval – the big disappointment was the famed biang biang noodles, which were “as often happens after the hype, a tad disappointing. Good but not so good you can’t stop thinking about them.”
On the other hand, oyster mushrooms were “dry, salty and fiendishly moreish”; Thai sweet chilli chicken was “juicy and immaculately battered”; while a Japanese sando contained “roughly chopped king prawns compressed and crumbed into the fattest, most absurdly delicious cutlet of your dreams… And no, I can’t stop thinking about it.”
*****
Daily Mail
Billy’s Smokehouse, Shepherd’s Bush
Tom Parker Bowles joyfully inhaled the smoke at a new “no-frills ’cue joint” near the Shepherd’s Bush roundabout on the site of an Indian restaurant that closed down almost 20 years ago, now resurrected under chef Tiberius Tudor, “who was born in Romania, but forged in the hickory-scented inferno of the Texas barbecue scene”.
Open for just five days when Tom visited, the dining area was not fully ready. “But who needs interior design when you have the Leviathan Pits Arcadian live fire cage? The vast asador-style beauty dominates the back wall of the room… Jet black and mighty, it looks like the sort of thing that Thor might use to grill his lunch.”
The brisket here, smoked in the Central Texas style, is as good as at Smokestak in Shoreditch – “a great, monolithic slab of gently scented brilliance. Veins of fat, winsome and wobbling, run through the meat, while a pink smoke ring (a sign things are done properly) sits beneath a dark, beautiful, intensely savoury bark (or outer layer). The smoke is elegant, but never overpowering, each mouthful an expertly seasoned paean to the barbecue art.”
*****
Daily Telegraph
William Sitwell was brought to “happy tears” by a revelatory plate of seafood that may be his “dish of the decade”, at a tiny spot tucked away upstairs at Hatch (which was closed for the winter) on Weymouth’s fishing harbour.
“Scallops, raw and soft and sweet, nestling with juicy little local prawns (raw), with baby tomatoes dried just a touch to bring sweetness but not too much, accompanied by a squirt of roe… The chef did nothing more than respect his perfect ingredients, milk them with a deft touch, and in doing so delivered a lesson in inspiration, simplicity and great sense.”
It was no one-off, as all seven courses on the set menu met with William’s approval, including a “clever” dish of local Portland crab using both the white meat and a pâté of the brown with the texture of chicken liver. This was “a few steps above heaven” – but still not as good as the scallops that followed.