Restaurants
Myths and legends
The Ivy is a Playmobil-style faux-medieval restaurant in a triangular building opposite The Mousetrap; of the two, The Ivy is…
Grills just want to have fun
The Beaumont Hotel is a bright white cake in the silent part of Mayfair, where the only sound is Patek…
High anxiety
Fenchurch is a restaurant that is scared of terrorists. It cowers at the top of 20 Fenchurch Street, a skyscraper…
Your problems solved
Q. I have a friend who can be shy and inhibited. Recently, he was invited to stay on a Caribbean…
Goulash and whiplash
Ed is a plank. He was always a plank — and now he is in Ibiza being a plank. Plankety–plankety-plank:…
Square meal
The Portrait Restaurant lives at the top of the National Portrait Gallery, London. It is fiercely modern, but likeable. You…
Dear Mary
Q. I have moved from London to the centre of a historic market town, now becoming famous as a foodie…
Sharing Caring
The Ivy Chelsea Garden is a restaurant inside an Edwardian house disguised as a Tudor house on the King’s Road;…
A cemetery with cocktails
La Coupole, Montparnasse, is the grandest and most famous of the old pre-war Parisian brasseries; that is, if you have…
Your problems solved
Q. I’m a single bloke now and for various reasons don’t foresee any change to that status. I have moved…
Kitty corner with the PM
David Cameron is too cowardly, or too cynical, to debate with Ed ‘Two or Possibly Three Kitchens’ Miliband — which…
Going large on Park Lane
The Dorchester Hotel, Park Lane, is a cake floating in space. All grand hotels create a parallel universe in which…
Beyond the Wall’s
I think Rowley’s is the perfect restaurant; but I am really a gay man. Rowley’s is at 113 Jermyn Street…
Poor little rich meals
Rivea (stupid name) is in the bowels of Bulgari in Knightsbridge, a hotel which looks like a vast Virgin Upper…
In Dracula’s local
Quaglino’s is an ancient subterranean brasserie in St James’s, a district clinging to the 18th century with cadaverous fingers. It…
Diary
Moscow Here we go again. The rouble slides, then tumbles, and slides again. For those of us who remember the…
Dear Mary
Q. We enjoyed the Christmas University Challenge series featuring mature graduates, some of whom were more in the public eye than…
Sugar rush
The Cereal Killer Café is a temple to cereal on Brick Lane, east London. It serves only cereal — and also…
Smock and awe
Somerset House, a handsome Georgian palace on the Thames, was once the office of the Inland Revenue, and the courtyard was…
Dear Mary: Your problems solved
Q. There has been a marked increase in the number of people who have pristine flooring and are so keen…
Cornish and pasty
Mousehole is a charming name; it is almost a charming place. It is a fishing village on Mount’s Bay, Cornwall,…
The real French embassy
Semper eadem. There is some basement in a Mayfair street that is forever France. It is not far from the…
Station to station
Atlantico is a vast buffet inside the Lopesan Costa Meloneras Resort Spa and Casino in Gran Canaria. The Lopesan Costa…
Diary
Do fish have loins? Last Tuesday, in a pretentious restaurant, I ordered a ‘loin of sea trout’. It looked just…
Dining with death
Beast is next to Debenhams on Oxford Street and it is not conventionally beast-like; rather it is monetised and bespoke…
