Restaurant review: GALVIN AT WINDOWS (Mayfair)

Back in February, I had the pleasure of being able to try the five-course tasting menu at Galvin at Windows, at the Park Lane Hilton. With the exception of Yuauatcha and Sticks’n’Sushi, I rarely dine at expensive places, so when I got the opportunity to, it always feels like a special occasion!

Restaurant review: STICKS’N’SUSHI (Covent Garden)

Despite meeting Per Mertesacker at Sushisamba, I’ve never actually dined there, and thus the mantle of fanciest sushi restaurant I’ve been to is Sticks’n’Sushi at Henrietta Street, London.

We had the ‘Gala’, which, at £75, wasn’t cheap. The option included Beef Tataki, Edamame, Hotate Kataifi, Nigiri, Chicken with chili & teriyaki, lamb chop with miso herb butter and duck breast with panko & wasabi Caesar, so there was plenty to fill two people’s boots!

RESTAURANT REVIEW: Le Garrick (Covent Garden)

I’ll keep this one short: Le Garrick is the best French restaurant I’ve encountered in London. The food was absolutely superb! I had duck breast and mashed potatoes (pictured below), and the whole meal was delicious. I'm not sure how they got the duck to taste so well-cooked considering the order took less than 20 minutes, but I'm definitely not complaining. The sauce complemented the meal very well too, and I respect the restaurant for adding some greens to the meal, as opposed to other places which just give you a plate of carbs, all but forcing you to spend more money on a side of salad. On top of that, you’ve got good, attentive waiters and a beast of a wine collection. Win win!

If I had to point out any gripes with Le Garrick, it would be that the tables perhaps weren’t as large as they could be, given that you need to fit food, wine bottles, as well as water glasses on the table. But that is but a small concern in what was otherwise a damn near faultless tasting experience.

Grade: A

Restaurant review: 10 GREEK STREET (Soho)

Just on the fringes of Soho, a thriving hub of nightlife on all evenings on the week but in particular Fridays, is 10 Greek Street. It’s one of these curious restaurants that seems to be making a renaissance in London which neither has a fixed menu (instead, the food itinerary changes on a day-to-day basis depending on the whim of the chefs), nor takes bookings. 

Whilst I’m fine with the former – it’s good to keep things fresh and allow cooks their free rein, I’m much less fond of the latter. I can understand why not taking reservations works from a point of view of revenue for the restaurant, as it avoids annoying punters who flake out, I like to plan my evenings in advance and am genuinely a bit thrown when you have to go away for an unforeseeable amount of time until a table becomes free, especially as, in order to stay within proximity of the restaurant, you choices of drinking holes are basically restricted to a bunch of over-priced Soho places which charge for the pleasure of being in the location rather than the quality of the drinks they’re serving.

As for the food, the menu that day (chalked up on the wall in handwriting that could stand to be more legible) featured a dainty seafood thing which I ordered. It was well-presented and appetising to eat, but for £9, there really wasn’t anywhere near enough of it and I consumed the whole dish within three bites (admittedly, I was hungry from the enforced trip to a nearby bar that this restaurant’s no booking policy forced me to endure… see how it works? Don’t allow us to take bookings, suffer the brunt of this critic’s foul mood). 

The meagre quantity of the starter filled me with trepidation for the main course…

…And perhaps this had been a calculated move on the part of the chefs, in a wacky ‘expectation management’ move, because the main met my expectation of what a good restaurant should offer and then some. We ordered the duck dish to share, and I think you’ll agree from the photo, that the quantity was very generous.

As for the taste, wowzers. The sauce was a brilliant type of gravy that I haven’t tasted before, and the potatos were delicious (and there was a perfect amount of them, not too much, not too little). Even the greens tasted good, and you could tell they had been cooked, as opposed to just stuck on the side as a way of token healthiness. 

Overall, it was a treat and one of the best mains I’ve had in a restaurant in 2015. Which I was not expecting at all given the lah-dee-dah nature of the place when I first walked in.

So, the restaurant began in a deficit with me for its unhelpful ‘no booking’ rule, but by the time I had finished their delicious duck meal, I realised it was worth the wait. The starters are extremely overpriced but the main was damn near culinary perfection, so I’ll be kind with my score.

Grade: B+