Merci Marie restaurant review

The Friday we visited, the room was cosy and candlelit, decorated with white drapes from the ceiling and wall projections of ariel worldscapes: deserts, mountain ranges, industrial urbanesques. Fittingly, the music was world/ambient with some cute Mississippi jazz thrown in.

New Cocktail Menu from Gaucho

As the winter seasons begin to set in, Gaucho introduces a new cocktail and bar menu for those cold, moody evenings. The new’Beef in the Bar’ menu is the perfect accompanient to the new cocktails. Choose from the Aberdeen Angus Air Cured Bresola, Beef & Chilli Salami and, Chimmichurri Cured Salt Beefall packed with intense beefy flavours. 

La Tagliata

Some restaurants take the philosophy of becoming synonymous with a dish, a style, a cuisine, a theme or an ethos to an extreme – serving only a single dish. It’s a brave decision; anyone who nails their their colours to a particular mask had better know what they’re doing. Thankfully, La Tagliata – a small Italian restaurant that calls the rabbit warrens between Liverpool Street and Spitalfields Market home – does, at least where their main course is concerned.

Nozomi

Nozomi is a Japanese restaurant, serving up (in their words)’contemporary Japanese cuisine’ and’eclectic cocktails’. While I don’t know nearly enough about Japanese food to give credence to the first statement – they served sushi, sashimi and tempura, what more do you want? – I can safely say the cocktails were eclectic.

Every spirit under the sun is on offer here, mixed with every fruit money can buy. Although we tried a few, including the watermelon bumbum and a fruit cocktail that floated in a small bowl of ice, my favourite was possibly the simplest – the Japanese Old Fashioned. That said, as well as whisky and sake, they had flavoured this with hints of caramel and a stick of ginger, so not that simple after all. A nice strong drink, that takes a good while to sip, the caramel gave a sweeter than usual taste, while the ginger left a medicinal aura. Mmm…medicinal.