Time Out Eating & Drinking 2008

Page 63 COVENT GARDEN Rules

"London's Oldest Restaurant" offers a theme-park experience, and an increasingly dispiriting one. The tone was set when we were left to kick our heels in a holding lobby too small for all the would-be diners, and the evening ended with the off-hand waiter briskly clearing away our not-quite-empty wine glasses. In between there were some good dishes - such as hard-to-get-wrong Isle of Lewis smoked salmon with capers and soda bread, and a pretty, delicate raspberry blancmange with 'candy floss' (spun sugar) and macaroons - but they were outnumbered by lacklustre ones. Fish and chips was cutely presented, wrapped in a paper bucket made of pages from the FT, but the chips were soggy, the batter greasy and the haddock pretty tasteless. First impressions of steak and kidney pie with green beans were positive too, but both steak and kidneys were tough, the gravy too thin, and the pastry no better than you'd get on a shop-bought pie; what's more the beans were stringy. Some solace can be found in the decent wine list and OTT decor (all mounted heads, framed prints and stained glass) but overall this is tourist food at tourist prices.

It's guidebook season, so chefs and restaurateurs everywhere are clamouring to get their mitts on their reviews. We were intrigued to see that within a matter of days of publication of Time Out's latest London restaurant guide, a venerable London restaurant had posted its latest review on its website. It's the only review up there, and its a stinker.

From The Restaurant Magazine

Page 31.