Reviews

The restaurant has a laid-back charm which takes it out of chain territory

Fishy Fishy, 25 East Street, Brighton

Dermot O'Leary has always shown great professional timing. His rise from youth TV to the shiny floors of Saturday night has been as smooth as the suits he wears on The X Factor. But as a first-time restaurateur, his timing is lousy. What bad luck to open a fish restaurant just as The End of the Line hits UK screens, the film which has taken tuna and cod off the menu for all right-thinking people.

Inside Reviews

Raise your glasses: The Glasshouse

Sunday, 5 July 2009

After eight years and 385 reviews for the IoS, Terry Durack signs off with a restaurant built to last

Il Baretto, 43 Blandford Street, London W1

Saturday, 4 July 2009

The modern trattoria derives from the famous Terrazza in Soho's Romilly Street, started in 1959 by Mario Cassandro and Franco Lagattolla. It was a desperately groovy but authentically Italian joint frequented by shrieky socialites, photographers, visiting film stars and the first wave of media tarts. It set the gold standard for trattoria life: a local, pop-in-for-supper restaurant, cheap and jolly, full of fiascos of chianti, elongated pepper grinders, joshing waiters and an aproned Neapolitan Mamma pinching your cheek and encouraging you to eat, eat or you will never find l'amore.

Cooked cream with cherries poached in rose syrup

Sunday, 28 June 2009

This cooked cream is essentially panna cotta; cool and fresh, it slips down the back of the throat in the most comforting fashion. Cherries are at their best right now and work well lightly poached and served with ice-cream or in the dessert below. Cherries are also one of the very few fruits that work well with dark, bitter chocolate... Think black-forest gateau.

Raspberry ripple ice-cream with rose syrup

Sunday, 28 June 2009

I love ice-creams that contain a fruit ripple, it is old-fashioned and nostalgic to me. To ensure an ice-cream that really ripples, make sure that both the custard and raspberry pur�e are well chilled.

Expect the unexpected: Keelung

Sunday, 28 June 2009

Keelung, 6 Lisle Street, London WC2, tel: 020 7734 8128

Rose syrup Prosecco

Sunday, 28 June 2009

This is a lovely summer aperitif – it looks elegant, tastes delicate and is a lovely way to begin a meal.

Palm, 1 Pont Street, London SW1

Saturday, 27 June 2009

Like Crisco or Regis Philbin, Palm is one of those great American institutions to which the rest of the world is oblivious. The granddaddy of New York steakhouses, it has grown from a family-run restaurant, founded in Manhattan in 1926, into a 27-strong chain. In the States, Palm calls itself the original "place to see and be seen". Over here, it's the place you haven't really heard of.

Gallery Mess, Saatchi Gallery, Duke of York's HQ, King's Road, London SW3

Saturday, 20 June 2009

The only officers' mess I've ever seen is on screen: the one in Cairo in Lawrence of Arabia, into which Peter O'Toole walks wearing his battle-scarred Arab robes and supporting a knackered Arab boy with whom he's just, triumphantly, walked through the desert. I remember the British officers holding pink gins, radiating disapproval and telling off the adventurer ("Now look here, Lawrence ...") for going native, poncing about in a djellaba and ("Throw them out, somebody ...") bringing his frightful Ganymede chum into the mess with him. I don't remember seeing any food. And it would have smacked of pretension if T E Lawrence had, in such circumstances, asked for a lunch menu and ordered the venison carpaccio.