Restaurant Reviews - c
Cadogan Arms
Step into this new drinking and dining venue in the heart of Chelsea and you’re immediately welcomed by an old-English-gentleman themed interior, decked out with stuffed animal heads and Robert Dighton drawings of Georgian aristocrats. Plus save 50% this month!
Caleya
Some critics have had a pop at Caleya’s decoration and style, but I rather like it. Bright and modern and with chairs that boast extra wide seats, presumably for extra wide bums, it’s friendly and cheerful but is also a tale of bi-polar cooking. Starters and desserts of true genius, mains of less than perfection.
Canteen Baker Street
The suffix Canteen never boded well for meal prospects: School Canteen, Staff Canteen, Office Canteen, you knew it meant grisly grey dishes of indeterminate meat served by a woman in a tabard, probably with a cigarette dangling from her lips. In this Canteen,they could do with a bit of a tighten up in the kitchen, particularly by whoever is on the chip station, but they have the right work ethic.
Cantina Laredo
I suppose the West End is full of these unauthentic tourist havens that people flock to for a quick-fix meal, as long as authenticity isn’t high on the agenda and so Cantina Laredo may fit the bill. But for people who know about food and expect quality and standards that match the steep prices that they are paying, I would give Cantina Laredo a miss.
Caponata
As we reported after attending Caponata’s launch in early December its owners have created a cool contemporary venue. Two restaurants in one it offers a wide choice to its customers, with some very interesting dishes on the menus it is unsurprising that it is gaining popularity.
Carnevale
Falafel with aubergine and pepper Harissa casserole to follow could perhaps have been spicier but was tasty and huge and rounded off with the addition of a lemon-tahini sauce. The two home-made sausages sat atop their heap of Colcannon mash with cabbage raised a few smiles among the more puerile among us however despite looking as though conceived for a Dennis Potter school- flashback were inoffensive if not striking. Certainly they could have done with a little more of the redwine gravy with which they came.
Chapter One,Farnborough Common
Its unassuming location, in the suburban, culdesac-tastic commuter-ville that is Orpington doesn’t really prepare you for what lies inside – a West End style restaurant with chic decor, well turned out, professional staff and an impressively theatrical wine cellar.
Chapters All Day DIning
Not Chapter2 anymore but Chapters. All day dining, even at breakfast. Can Blackheath cope with a new style for its old favourite? We take a book, we mean look.
Chez Bruce
The last time I dined in Chez Bruce I had an absolute horrid time, we had been stuck upstairs in Siberia on my birthday with a waiter who informed us it was his last day and didnít really care. Fast forward five years, another birthday and a decision that it was time to go back. After all you don't keep your stars for that long with crap service and the cheese board was still tempting after all those years.
China Tang
Five months after the actual event, I was being treated to a birthday dinner at The Dorchester’s Cantonese, ‘China Tang’ which takes its name from Sir David Tang, clothes designer, gold-miner and cigar aficionado – Cuba’s Honorary Consul no less.
Chinese Cricket Club,London
The Chinese Cricket Club is apparently named after the new Chinese National Cricket team who this year played its first international match. Ni hau? I am no sports afficionado but is this a good omen for a fledgling venture? What will stand it in good stead is that it’s located within the Crowne Plaza in London which already houses Giorgio Locatelli’s Refettorio restaurant.
Chino Latino, Park Plaza Riverbank Hotel, London
Chino Latino is an excellent restaurant, we enjoyed our meal there and the ambience enormously. Situated on the south bank of the Thames, diagonally opposite the Houses of Parliament, it is a little away from central London’s restaurant land, but it is well worth making the effort to seek out.
Chutney Mary
Tantalising our taste buds since 1990, Chutney Mary is a stalwart of the Kensington and Chelsea culinary scene. Sister restaurant to Veeraswamy, Britain’s oldest Indian restaurant (Est.1926), this is most definitely not your local curry house.
Cinnamon Kitchen
Brick Lane is just a few hundred yards away from Cinnamon Kitchen but it’s a million miles away in spirit. On Brick Lane hustlers from the endless restaurants whisper at you seductively, attempting to lure you into their establishment with promises of good times and blandishments about your wonderfulness.
Coach & Horses
Two foraging carnivores have modestly gentrified Clerkenwell’s ‘Coach & Horses’ into gastropub territory. However rather than tick box diners expectant of Michelin frippery alongside a beer garden / sprog storage pen, it now draws genuinely hungry foodies craving good value, hearty quality.
Corrigan's Mayfair
Richard Corrigan’s life has been defined by pathos. From tending roots, shoots and sorting cows from sows, to tussling chicken-crazed foxes, he rose from the bog where electricity was anathema, to cook for the Queen. In rehabilitating dowdy ‘Bentley’s’, the barrel-tummied Nimrod also roused interest in food ‘from our islands’. An almost evangelical ingredientism continues to eat into his latest venture.
Crabby Aikens’ Winnebago
Despite reservations, Douglas Blyde found himself making the short journey past the ‘Sloany Pony’ for day one of two of Cloudy Bay’s pop-up Crab Shack on Parson’s Green.
