New Restaurant Review Roundup 2021
Part Two
Welcome to the second part of our guide to London’s new restaurants of 2021, in which we go back and check in on some of the openings we’ve covered in the past six months to see if they turned out to be any good or not.
In Part One we reviewed floating cheese, spicy thighs and boozy honeybears. In today’s edition we tackle posh Nandos, funky wine and Batman-based immersive dining.
Bar Crispin, Soho
A new, natural wine bar (inevitably serving ‘small plates’) crops up pretty much every week at the moment, but Bar Crispin stood out because it’s the latest venture from the team behind Crispin, the all day restaurant in Spitalfields, and it’s situated right next to the brilliant Ain’t Nothin’ But… The Blues Bar on Kingly Street, which means you don’t have to travel very far to have an excellent evening out.
The Standard’s David Ellis visited last month and found the “cereal-box sized room” and terrace to be “rather lovely” and the natural wine to be “less farmyard and more fine-living”. He also approved of the two cocktails on the menu: Negronis and Vespers (although David wasn’t sure about the Vesper on the rocks, we kind of like that idea).
He didn’t really get to eat much, but when Condé Nast Traveller visited they did manage to get some food in and they liked it enough to put the place on their list of the best bars in London right now. Apparently you’re best off starting with the “sourdough from Hackney’s E5 Bakehouse smothered in brown butter” and combining that with the “thin slices of Trealy Farm Charcuterie copp” and then following that up with “creamy burrata and crunchy fennel doused in Château La Coste olive oil, anchovy and potato focaccia with a zingy green sauce” (they liked the wine and cocktails too).
Hackney Coterie, Hackney (duh)
From a tiny wine bar to a “cavernous restaurant, wine bar and wine shop that feels tailor made for post-pandemic dining with its plentiful outdoor seating, strong neighbourhood vibe and multifaceted offer”. Hackney Coterie is the second restaurant from Anthony Lyon, the man behind Lyon’s Seafood & Wine Bar in Crouch End and that description comes from Big Hospitality, which had good things to say about the “biodynamic, organic and minimal intervention” wine list, which steers clear “of excessive funk and is more than happy to list things that are more classic in style”. The “fish-focused menu” went down well too, thanks to being “balanced and nuanced” with a bonus “minimal-waste focus”.
Hot Dinners visited shortly after opening and took photos of their dinner which included “fish crackling with smoked tofu dip…Szechuan potatoes with black tea mayo… cured pork belly, Kisaichi pickled watermelon, smoked tofu”. They also say that “much of the menu is vegetarian” although maybe they mean pescatarian, because there seems to be a lot of fish on there. Overall they approved, summing it up as “great wines, interesting plates and a lovely spot to while away the day.”
Vanity Fair also mentioned the Hackney Coterie in their What To Do In London This Week column and, having tried all the same dishes (the salmon, the pork belly, the tofu dip), they declared it to be “not contrived and… delicious,” with the “makings of a newfound institution” (whatever that means).
Sidechick, Marylebone
We mentioned on Monday that London has got more than its fair share of chickeny places recently, and while Sidechick is definitely the one with the worst name, it also has the pedigree of being a spin off from Patty & Bun.
Once David Ellis gets past the name he accepts that the ‘concept’ of “half or whole chickens cooked three ways — either aromatically spiced with za’atar, rubbed down with chimichurri or laced with piri piri” might sound very Nando's (although there’s no chips on the menu), but he also notes that not all chickens are created equal, and that Sidechick’s chickens are “gluttonously juicy…soft as anything, skin browned with spice and blackened from the grill.”
London on The Inside tried Sidechick when it was in ‘delivery only’ mode during lockdown, and they went a little further with their praise, calling the chicken “juicy AF” and claiming “you’ll want to drink the sauce that’s left on the plate”. While Big Hospitality explains why this might be: the chickens are brined for 24 hours and then marinated for another 24 hours before being roasted.
Jollibee, Leicester Square
Back in May we noted that Filipino fast food legends, Jollibee had opened a flagship UK store in Leicester Square and then managed to sell “over 4,000 pieces of Chickenjoy” fried chicken in just one day. But does the Chickenjoy bring the joy?
Picky Glutton (whose Humble Chicken review we mentioned in the last issue) was not convinced, damning the fried chicken with the faint praise of “competently done”. The batter is of the “soft and supple variety, rather than crisp and crunchy” they say, and “the chicken underneath was, as expected, nothing to write home about”. As for the “much-touted spaghetti,” that took on an “unappetising congealed appearance” in the time it took the Picky Glutton to “carry it from Jollibee’s Leicester Square premises to a nearby green space reasonably free of pigeons.”
If you want a more detailed look at the Jollibee Leicester Square experience then your best bet might be this video from YouTube channel You Had Me At, who were one of many Filipino reviewers invited down on day one to try the chicken and spaghetti as well as meet the not-at-all-nightmarish guy in the large red bee costume.
Or, if you want an altogether more serious reflection on Jollibee’s UK rollout and market positioning, Forbes magazine wrote an entire article about it.
Sucre, Soho
Back in June we told you about the plan for Argentinian chef Fernando Trocca to take over the space that used to be the concert hall at the London College of Music in Soho and install a dining space “built around a dramatic open fire pit kitchen”. Well Sucre is now open and people seem to be as excited about the decor as they are about the food.
House & Garden (yes, they review restaurants now) spent a lot of words drooling over Sucre’s “lofty ceilings, Argentinian fabrics and an array of bespoke chandeliers and light fixtures made from carafes” but they’re also pretty effusive about the “wood fired shrimps… burnt aubergine with herb salad… charcoal fired monkfish tail… [and] charred hispi cabbage” (if you hadn’t worked it out yet, Trocca is big on setting things on fire).
In the Independent, Molly Codyre is transported, claiming Trocca has somehow “picked up a slice of Buenos Aires and dumped it in Soho”. And once she’s finished banging on about the “corniced ceilings, vibrantly upholstered chairs” and the “chandeliers built from decanters,” she gets stuck into the menu. Molly claims that the best thing she ate at Sucre was “room-temperature mashed potatoes topped with prawns, avocado, red onion, a jammy boiled egg and a mayonnaise-esque sauce,” a dish which she describes as “a true delight. Zingy, bright and a multitude of textures and flavours that made for joyful eating”. If you say so Molly.
Hot Dinners did their usual good job of photographing all the dishes (as well as those bloody chandeliers) and they also rave about the food, plus they enjoyed the cocktails in Abajo, the downstairs bar. Although they stress that “you'll need your glad rags on to live up to the glamour of this gorgeous new dining room”.
La Rampa, Oxford Circus
A few months ago we mourned the loss of Nas’s fried chicken and waffle venture, Sweet Chick, and looked forward to the space being taken over by Cuban-inspired bar La Rampa.
The Standard were down there within a few weeks of it opening, describing it as a “take on Fifties Havana; [with] live music that rumbas and mambos and cha-cha-chas, rust-coloured walls, rum in everything.” The cocktail menu is not doing anything particularly new (“mojitos, daiquiris, lime and pineapple in everything”) but that’s exactly how it should be for somewhere that is not taking itself too seriously and just wants to be “a forget-the-news place” and give everyone “a night off from it all”. And couldn’t we all do with a night like that right now?
The Nudge also praises the house band in their write up, and also mentions the food menu, which consists of “Cuban-inspired small plates” that include “a twist on the classic Cuban sandwich (with pork belly, ham, and raclette cheese); as well as some extraordinary foot-long pork chicharrones (they’re like Cuban scratchings); and some beef-loaded Picadillo Empanadas.”
The place must look pretty good inside though, because everything else we could find about La Rampa is more about the decor than it is the food and drink. Seriously, Living Etc even did a whole article on five style lessons you could take from the place.
Park Row, Soho
Last one before we run out of space: A DC Comics-themed restaurant based on Gotham City
If it had been built in the 90s, then Park Row would have been full of miserable staff in ill-fitting costumes, dishing out themed burgers and disgusting cocktails. But somehow, in 2021 a themed superhero restaurant is (as Engadget notes in its write up) “entirely made for grown-ups” and there’s even “a ban on people cosplaying inside the venue.”
Engagdget sums up the Park Row experience as “immersive superhero dining,” and if that sounds like a good thing to you, then maybe you won’t mind dropping £200 on a tasting menu consisting of “a barrage of 11 themed courses that guide patrons through the heroes and villains of DC,” which is eaten inside an “immersive high-tech experience” that involves a lot of projections and other gadgetry.
You don’t have to go for the full £200 experience though. As Hot Dinners notes in their ‘test drive’ of Park Row, there are four other rooms including Pennyworth’s and The Iceberg Lounge, which offers less-pricey and non-immersive options.
If you want the full comic book fan review of Park Row then this post from The Aspiring Kryptonian has all the easter eggy details as well as a ton of photos and even video of some of the foody theatrics.
And the rest…
The Grenfell Tower inquiry has been told that firefighters did have access to equipment capable of reaching the 15th floor of the building, but that they did not know how to properly deploy it.
The Guardian has been riding the tube to ask commuters about their opinion on mask wearing. Meanwhile, Sadiq Khan has admitted he’s powerless to stop “significant numbers” of people from travelling without masks and he’s looking to the government to pass a bylaw “to ensure face-coverings are used”.
The Royal Institute of British Architects has announced the shortlist for the Stirling Prize (“awarded to the UK’s best new building”), and the surprise addition is 15 Clerkenwell Close, an office building with a facade that contains fossils rather than brick, and which was very nearly demolished a few years ago.
The Hackney Gazette reports on a dispute between food delivery couriers and Dalston McDonald’s over parking, which had led to couriers in the area rejecting all orders from the golden arches on Kingsland High Street.
We’ve talked a lot about chicken this week, so to try and balance things out let us bring you the exciting news of SmugNuggs, the Quorn nugget pop-up that is coming to Camden later this week. Open for just three days, the SmugNuggs menu is free but there is “the option to make a donation to Quorn’s charity partner, FoodCycle.”
City A.M. has covered the story of Anya Jackson, a ‘paid intern’ for the dating app, Thursday who has “become a LinkedIn sensation” after tying a bunch of balloons to herself and wearing a cardboard sign around her neck outside Liverpool Street station… And that is definitely one of the most depressing sentences we’ve ever had to write.