It was mid-December 2020 when Jimi Famurewa had the call that he would be the Standard’s new chief restaurant critic. With London as it was then — an accordion of a city, opening and closing, everyone in and out — it may have looked an inauspicious time to take the column.
But Famurewa was already by then an old hand, having written the ES Magazine reviews since 2018. And so what followed for this paper was a weekly sequence of thoughtful, considered writing, sometimes joyful and exuberant, at other moments the written equivalent of a despairing and exhausted sigh.
Below is a choice cut of his highs and lows from four years of eating, each simmered down to their essence; the full reviews are online at standard.co.uk. To stay up to speed with what Jimi is doing, follow him @jimfamished.
The greats
Miga: They talk a big game here and boy can they back it up
“Miga is both old school and new school; a collision of detonative, masterfully balanced home-style flavours — ringing, richly complex, utterly unlike almost every other Korean in the capital — and a minimalist, contemporary setting. The team at Miga have pooled generational resources to give their father’s remarkable, soulful cooking the platform it deserves. They are making their own history.”
Miga, Mare Street, E8 4RP, @miga.restaurant
Roe: Fallow boys flex with mammoth second act
“Roe is unfathomably huge, shot through with a slick, ruthless flintiness and, for all its chef-pleasing ingredients, unabashed in its pursuit of mass-appeal. It probably shouldn’t work. But it really, really does, and the reason for that is its digitally savvy founding team — chefs Will Murray and Jack Croft, plus operational consigliere James Robson — that recognise even a blockbuster restaurant lives and dies on its microscopic details and meticulously wrought moments of deliciousness. One of the defining, gravity-defying openings of the year.”
5 Park Drive, Wood Wharf, E14 9GG, roerestaurant.co.uk
Lita: Pricey as hell but boy it is breathtaking
“The sauces at Lita could warrant a separate, subscription-only column of NSFW content. Chopped dexter beef, startled by a renegade hit of Amalfi lemon and clumped beside shoestring fries that were like God’s own Chipsticks, was somehow even more thrilling. Lita is a marvel; a fearsomely skilled wolf in grandmother’s garb.”
7-9 Paddington Street, W1U 5QH, litamarylebone.com
Story Cellar: Tom Sellers stacks a Jenga tower of flavours
“Ostensibly a Paris-inspired rotisserie chicken spin-off of Tom Sellers’s two Michelin-starred Restaurant Story, this Covent Garden spot is, perhaps, better understood as a fanatically detail-oriented team stacking a careful Jenga tower of elements onto a deceptively basic concept. Is it still just a chicken place if you also do fresh pasta, wood-fired scallops in a strident XO sauce, and end it all with a bread and butter pudding that may genuinely be one of London’s best desserts? Story Cellar does all this and more while shimmering with fine-honed craft and purpose. It is a rarer bird than it seems.”
17 Neal’s Yard, WC2H 9DP, storycellar.co.uk
Kolae: I’d made plans to come back before the bill was even paid
The promise of “authentic Thai food” has long been an especially elastic and problematic one; an ever-moving target shaped by time, context and whatever level of regional fidelity the cautious masses deem tolerable. Debates about cultural accuracy here will continue to rage; some other rip-snorting synthesis of sub-regional Thai is undoubtedly around the corner. But, for now, Kolae is a sophisticated, scintillating shot in the arm for a beloved genre — and about as authentically brilliant as it gets.
6 Park Street, SE1 9AB, kolae.com
Mountain: Sound the alarm — this Balearic beauty is a grill on fire
“If Parry, a proud son of Anglesey with cherubic features and a rock frontman’s flopping fringe, has a legacy, then it has been to turn glamorous urbanites onto the sort of primeval, rustic pleasures that would delight a vermut-burping Basque fisherman. That the kitchen team’s approach is so shortcut-averse and lacking in ego, that its process-heavy creations look like food rather than unearthly blobs and smears, is what makes it all so rousing, so unforgettable and so deserving of the fuss and attention engulfing it.”
16-18 Beak Street, W1F 9RD, mountainbeakstreet.com
Bouchon Racine: Room of gutsy flavours and twinkling magic
“It is, in every appreciable way, the real deal, consciously channelling the texture, attitude and chest-beating offal lust of Lyon’s darkened bouchons. At a time of brazen restaurant cynicism and fearful glances towards the future, Bouchon Racine is a sanely priced passion project that urges us to live, gloriously, in the moment.”
66 Cowcross Street, EC1M 6BP, bouchonracine.com
Al Kahf: Nirvana of truly unforgettable Somali food hidden in the unlikeliest of places
Where much of the city’s restaurant landscape is defined by pomp and guest appeasement — by alluring decor and resting pedestals for weary handbags — attempting to eat here can, at times, feel like negotiating an obstacle course of hazards and discouragements. But then, once you have navigated all these potential deterrents, what you are left with is the prize of something truly remarkable. Which is to say, a hidden grotto of home-style East African cooking that spikes endorphins, costs next to nothing and is only intensified by the lightly confounding, clandestine nature of its surrounding context.
112-116 Vine Court, E1 1JE, @alkahfrestaurant
Evernight: Megamix of Japanese cool might be one of London’s most remarkable places
“Izayaka food is kind of a deliberate Jive Bunny megamix of varied Japanese dining styles, but there is a processional logic to the elements (pickles, raw fish, fried things, a vast rice dish) you need to tick off. The portions here are modest and, notably, the prices are not. But if you follow the broad track that we did — edging from the skewer section to the flawlessly executed glory of a shared Aylesbury duck donabe rice bowl before a climactic wibbling, hypnotically rich miso crème caramel — it will all amount to a profound emotional crescendo, and the magical feeling of being sated rather than stuffed.”
3 Ravine Way, SW11 7BH, evernightlondon.co.uk
The hates
Kebhouze: If this were a TV show, it would be Squid Game
“Late-night kebab shops glow bright in the hearts of most right-thinking Londoners. They are beacons amid the wreckage of a night out — emotional A&Es. Even when they are not very good, they deal in a certain honesty, soul and simplicity. Or at least they normally do. At Kebhouze, they have taken one look at all this romance, tradition and culturally prideful common sense and basically hurled a stick of dynamite at it.”
159 Oxford Street, W1D 2LJ, uk.kebhouze.com
Salt Bae’s Nusr-Et: This vibeless business lounge is categorically a bad restaurant
“He gave me a nod, began the hip-thrust, slicing schtick, reached over to the bowl held by his weary-looking official salt bearer, craned his arm and rained pale flakes down onto our relatively modest £120 Wagyu striploin (and, I couldn’t help but notice, onto my leg). Then he speared a lobe of meat, dangled it into Mark’s mouth and was suddenly off to another table, figuratively shimmying out of the window after what had felt like a intensely suggestive, culinary one-night stand.”
The Park Tower, 101 Knightsbridge, SW1X 7EZ, nusr-et.com.tr
Swiss Butter: Out-of-step steakhouse is as weird as it is boring
“On leaving, I noticed that the opening hours written on the door had not been finalised and so read as :00am to :00am. It was a fitting sign-off for a venture that is out of step with the times, low on meticulousness and lost in the sauce of its own minimalism.”
114-118 Southampton Row, WC1B 5AA, swissbutter.com
Akira Back: So forgettable that a fortnight in and the chef’s already skipped town
“I will say that a gochujang bibimbap donburi was highly comforting in the way that you’d hope a warm mound of rice, slathered in spicy ketchup, would be. But the kicker here is the prices. To charge £22 for the donburi, £50 for an entry-level bottle of wine and, somehow, £18 for that aubergine is to make the general lack of thrust, spark and flavour complexity pretty much unforgivable.”
The Mayfair Mandarin Oriental, 22 Hanover Square, W1S 1JP, mandarinoriental.com
Grasso: Mid-market mediocrity with all the glamour of Frankie & Benny’s
“Grasso may have opened with minimal fanfare but there is basically nothing quiet about it. Magicked into the vast, new-built shell of a Dean Street Wagamama, it is an imitation red sauce joint that hits with all the subtlety of a big pizza pie. It is a Big Mamma-style pastiche without the same detailed originality or ribald effervescence. And that is fine. I just can’t help but hope that the quality of the cooking will be sharpened. Or that the next herald of independent mid-market dining’s future won’t feel quite so much like a well-meaning yet wholly unremarkable vestige of the recent past.”
81 Dean Street, W1D 3SW, grassosoho.com
The Black Sheep: Farm-to-fork spot in SW19 frustrates with a series of avoidable double faults
“Though it never tipped into full-scale disaster, The Black Sheep did seem afflicted by a kind of well-meaning mediocrity; the cumulative mass of double faults that can, in its own strange way, haunt and frustrate you more than a total calamity. Lots of it was sort-of fine. That almost made it worse.”
After this review was published, the restaurant was renamed The Black Lamb
67 High Street, SW19 5EE theblacklamb-restaurant.com
Terra at Eataly: Grand aspirations built on shaky ground fall flat at vast Italian grill
“None of the food was disastrous. And yet, there was something about the meal’s accumulative impact — the drip, drip of missed beats, oomphless flavours and the attentive but distracted service — that didn’t leave an especially enjoyable afterglow. I do not doubt that there are probably simpler ways to appreciate Eataly’s charms, but Terra, to me, seems built on shaky ground; an endeavour awkwardly pitched between the low-cost efficiency of a food court restaurant and something with grander aspirations. We exited through the biggest gift shop imaginable. And saw no sane reason to ever come back.”
