Andy Hayler - Blog

From Ladroke Grove to Mayfair

Sino is a Ukrainian restaurant run by a former soldier in the Ukrainian army who has fought in the war defending his country against Russian invasion. He takes dishes from his country and modernises them with a high degree of skill. This restaurant is welcoming, fairly priced and genuinely interesting. It is well worth your time, and the cooking at the meal I ate was of Michelin star standard. It is very popular already, so book ahead.

I had another lovely meal at The Cocochine, who have the good fortune to have first pick of the produce from a farm and a fishing port owned by one of their investors. This means that the produce quality, such as huge scallops and langoustines, and excellent lamb and venison, is of a very high level. The chef, who previously headed the kitchen of a starred restaurant (Petrus), now supplements the French style cooking with touches from his Sri Lankan homeland, making the cuisine distinctive.

From Mayfair to Southwark

Oudh 1722 is the high-profile London sister of two Michelin star Opheem in Birmingham. I think that I went too early, because at this early service there were quite a few teething issues, mostly around the temperature that dishes were delivered at. This was distracting, though to be honest if there are this many problems then why not charge half price for a few weeks while you iron out the issues? I like Opheem a lot and I am sure this will settle down in due course. I’ll try it again in a few months.

Lilibets is a popular British restaurant in Mayfair, offering an appealing menu of nicely cooked, crowd-pleasing dishes. The service was great and even the wine list wasn’t excessively priced by the standards of the area, so there is a lot to like about it. The restaurant was heaving on a weekday evening.

I actually had a short business trip to the US but had a chance to have just one lunch before my return flight. This was at Anjapar Chettinad Elite in Irving Texas, an area near Dallas that is rather like Southall in London in that has a large Indian community. The food here was pleasant and extremely reasonably priced.

From Putney to Kings Cross

The Yellow Bittern is a quirky Irish restaurant near Kings Cross. It served only a fixed menu, only takes cash, and the wine list is only partly written up, on a blackboard. The food is simple and no attempt is made at cheffy presentation, but the food was wholesome and enjoyable enough.

Raaz is an Indian restaurant in Putney. It has only been open four months and was already on its third head chef, so unsurprisingly this meal was not particularly inspiring. The cooking was erratic, with some entirely pleasant dishes but also some real errors, like some wildly overcooked prawns.

From Marylebone to Hatch End

Social Dhaba is a pleasant local Indian restaurant in Hatch End. It seems popular with the locals, and served some decent dishes at the meal that we tried. There was a very good black dhal and a nicely made garlic naan, as examples of some of the better dishes. Gajar halwa was also an enjoyable rendition of this classic dessert. Social Dhaba isn’t really a destination restaurant, but is a decent choice if you happened to be in that area.

Orrery has had a major refurbishment and has been relaunched with a high-profile chef. With just half the number of seats it has culinary ambitions, and a price tag to match. The meal that I tried had one exceptional dish and some other capable ones, but also rather too many issues and minor errors for the sky-high price tag. There were also some questionable choices of supplier that (for the coffee and caviar, for example) didn’t feel in line with the aspirations of the restaurant. This was early days and hopefully the kinks will be ironed out.

From Kensal Rise to Piccadilly

The Ritz is my favourite London fine dining restaurant, and it produced another superb sequence of dishes at my latest visit. Beef Wellington (pictured) was dazzling, and a rhubarb dessert was particularly good, but really the whole meal was just terrific. Add in the charming service and the lovely surroundings and you have a winning formula.

Parlour is a pub in Kensal Rise that I have not been to for quite some time. It has a lot of things in its favour, such as a classically trained chef/owner, and a penchant for reviving retro British dishes. It even smokes its own salmon on a smoker on the roof. However at this visit the head chef was absent and things had slipped. A chicken Kyiv was cooked too long and was rather dried out, and some vegetables were overcooked. This is a shame, as this used to be a regular haunt of mine. Hopefully it was just an off night.

From Wandsworth to Queensway

The old Whiteleys shopping centre in Queensway has been transformed into flats and a luxury hotel, the Six Senses. In this is a restaurant called Whiteleys Kitchen, which offers notionally a British menu. This was not very evident from the menu, but the problem was that the food was just not terribly good, and yet the prices were breathtakingly high (a small Dover sole dish was £100, for example). This was a smart place with good service, but the value for money factor here seemed way off.

By contrast, Chez Bruce is one of the more reliable restaurants in London. It has a very appealing menu, charming service and a pleasant location overlooking Wandsworth Common. At this latest meal we had a particularly good pigeon Wellington dish, which was a delight. As ever, the restaurant was very busy, and it is easy to see why.

From Hammersmith to Knightsbridge

Em Sherif is a Lebanese restaurant in Harrods, tucked away between various menswear designer sections on the second floor of the department store. It is an odd place for a restaurant, and the food felt like an afterthought. We tried quite a range of dishes, which ranged from acceptable to downright bad, and yet this is far from a cheap place. Part of a small chain of restaurants set up in the Middle East, I fail to see the appeal of Em Sherif.

The River Café is an institution in London, serving Italian food in a casual setting near the Thames in Hammersmith. It has always had a reputation for produce quality that is high but with prices to match. On previous visits I have never been convinced by the value for money factor, but at this latest meal the prices continued to spiral upwards but the food quality was down. An ordinary mini pizza and a disappointing risotto were very ordinary indeed, though a good lemon tart at least meant that the meal finished on a pleasing note. However, the prices are now steepling, especially for food at this level. The regulars seem entirely unperturbed, the dining room being busy, but this was a disappointing meal.

On another subject, I wrote a blog about the use of AI in restaurants.

From The Strand to Chiswick

Simpsons On The Strand has been a much anticipated opening, or rather a reopening, of the historic café and restaurant. Jeremey King has applied his usual eye for detail to the site, helped by a large dollop of investment. The large site now looks utterly gorgeous, including two lovely bars. The food was pleasant rather than inspiring, and objectively it was quite expensive for what it was. However, it is hard not to like the place.

The Kitchen in Chiswick is a place I was curious to try, partly because it was the site of the late lamented Hedone, a much beloved restaurant to me. Sadly The Kitchen was very ordinary, a smartly decorated pan Asian place where money and thought has been spent on the décor but not so much on the kitchen. The food is mostly Japanese, cooked by Brazilian kitchen staff who seem to have only a passing acquaintance with how Japanese food should look or taste. Ah well.

From Chelsea to Pimlico

Corenucopia is the casual sister of Core, and serves appealing dishes that are put together with skill. The Dover sole with lobster mousse, billed as “fish and chips”, was very good, and the service was charming. The expensive wine list is the main caveat, but the place is packed out, so the residents of Chelsea clearly are not fussed about that.

Cornus delivered another lovely meal this week, with a red mullet dish a particular highlight. The ingredient quality and technical skill here is high, and the room is attractive. The location, tucked away in Pimlico, means that it gets less attention than it deserves, but this is a top-class restaurant.

From Surbiton to Mayfair

Koyal continues to produce arguably the best Indian food in London right now. Its out-of-the-way location in Surbiton means that it does not get the attention it deserves, but the quality of the cooking there is second to none. Dishes at the latest meal, such as the wild boar vindaloo and superb tandoori prawns, confirmed just how very impressive it is, and all at a fraction of the price of fancier places in Mayfair.

The Cocochine in Mayfair is a French restaurant but with distinct Sri Lankan influences, reflecting the background of its head chef. I had another lovely meal there, with dishes such as charcoal grilled lobster kedgeree and scallop with pandan leaf amongst the highlights. A beef dish with a particularly good red wine-based sauce was also lovely.

Just a reminder that if you are interested in AI, I have recently published a book on this subject, available on Amazon. There is even a section about the use of AI in the wine industry.

From Hanover Square to Piccadilly

Mazarine in Hanover Square is a smart French restaurant whose kitchen has a chef with a serious pedigree. We had a very good meal here, with a lovely eel croquette canape being a particular highlight, as well as a beautifully cooked Dover sole dish. The expensive wine list is the main caveat.

The Ritz has been my favourite fine dining restaurant in London for quite some time. This latest meal showed the kitchen to be cruising along in top form. From familiar dishes such as the well-established canapes through to a superb veal dish and new desserts, this was high-class cooking.

From Euston to Hammersmith

Master Wei in Hammersmith (there is also a Holborn branch) served a wide range of noodle dishes and some other options too. Kung pao prawns were very good here, while the noodles themselves are authentic and well-made. This is casual, inexpensive place where the food is on the money.

Diwana Bhel Poori is a Euston institution, serving vegetarian Indian snacks and dosas for decades. The bhel poori and chaat here are very good indeed, and at an almost absurdly low price. The atmosphere is casual, with bare wooden tables and booths, and the service is efficient. This is surely one of the best value restaurants in London.

From Clapham to Westbourne Grove

Ploussard is a very enjoyable French restaurant in Clapham, serving well-made dishes from an appealing menu. A duck pithivier was a particular highlight, but so was a red mullet dish, and the standard of the dishes was fairly consistent throughout the tasting menu that we opted for. The wine list is also good, and the service was friendly.

Materia Prima in Westbourne Grove serves mainly Japanese dishes, with many ingredients imported directly from Japan. The technical skill in the kitchen is high, and there were some elaborate dishes that worked well despite their complexity. Across the tasting menu there were several really lovely dishes, and essentially no duds, with the ingredient quality shining through. The price is high, not helped by a heavily marked-up wine list, but servicew as excellent.

From Wandsworth to Soho

Frites Atelier is a casual restaurant in Soho specialising in chips with assorted accompaniments. This is the first UK branch of a little chain based in Belgium and the Netherlands, backed by Sergio Hermann, who earned three Michelin stars for Oud Sluis. This is a simple place but the chips were indeed excellent, and a Flemish beef stew was a nice way to set them off.

Chez Bruce has been operating for well over two decades, overlooking Wandsworth Common in the premises that were once the legendary Harveys. The menu at Chez Bruce is particularly appealing, and the star dish was a stuffed pig trotter dish that was adapted from a Pierre Koffmann dish that was also served at Harveys.

In unrelated news, I have a book out, but not about food. This is all about artificial intelligence, and if you are interested in this subject, then I hope this book will help you understand AI and its implications a little better. There is even a section on the use of AI in the wine industry.

From Twickenham to Mayfair

Hakkasan Mayfair is the solitary Hakkasan in London now, and although it is now twenty-five years since the original Hakkasan opened, the formula still works. The décor is still smart, the lighting is clever, the menu is appealing, and the staff are charming. This may not be the latest in London food fashion, but that is not the point.

Delhi Social is a terrific Indian restaurant in Twickenham, with a head chef who used to run the kitchen at Black Salt, part of the Dastaan family of restaurants. The food at Delhi Social is high-class, with fine tandoori lamb chops and a particularly good methi chicken amongst the dishes we tried at this latest meal. This is all priced fairly, at a fraction of the price of fancier (and less good) places in central London.

In other news, I was interviewed for Vittles magazine.

From Petersham to Mayfair

The Cocochine’s cooking continues to develop, with some new dishes at this visit, including a langoustine canape and a new dessert, as well as an interesting lobster kedgeree dish (pictured). As ever, the quality of ingredients here is dazzlingly high, with the restaurant being blessed by an investor who owns a large farm and also a private island with a fishing port in Scotland. The restaurant gets first pick of the produce from both these sources. The chef, who was formerly head chef of Michelin-starred Petrus, is well versed in classical technique but now adds Sri Lankan touches to many of the dishes to reflect his heritage. For me, this is very interesting and brings a distinctive element to the cooking.

The Dysart, whose kitchen is run by Roux Scholar Ken Culhane, is one of my most regular fine dining haunts. It has a particularly relaxed dining room, with widely spaced tables, no music blaring and very welcoming service. The cooking is sophisticated, using top-quality ingredients and old-school classical technique. Sauces and stocks are made from scratch. Some dishes, like the charred bream, are fixtures on the menu, but others vary, such as a lovely Arnaud Tauzin chicken dish at this visit.

Both Dysart and Cocochine are places that I actually prefer to the current crop of 3-star Michelin restaurants in London. In other news, I did an interview that was posted in online food magazine Luxeat.

From Soho to Marble Arch

Florencio is a pizzeria near Marble Arch. Sister of Zoilo, it serves thin-crust New York-style pizzas from a limited menu, in a cosy dining room and with very capable service. It works very well, and I would happily go back there. The room is quite small, with an overflow dining room downstairs.

Zedel is a vast basement brasserie just off Piccadilly Circus, on a site with some history. Its huge scale means that it needs to fill seats, and it does so by producing a very appealing, lengthy menu of bistro and brasserie classics. It executes these dishes quite well, the star dish for me being a very capable lemon meringue tart. The room is quite grand, and even on a weekday lunch in January, it was very busy, so they clearly have hit upon a successful formula.

From Petersham to Knightsbridge

Nanyang Blossom is a smart Chinese/Malaysian restaurant in Knightsbridge. The food was good on this visit, with enjoyable seafood dishes such as chilli prawns and a capable beef rendang. The price is a little high, but you are, after all, eating in Knightsbridge, and the service was excellent, and the place is nicely decorated at least.

The Dysart near Richmond is one of my favourite restaurants in the capital. The cooking is of very high quality, the kitchen being led by Roux Scholar Ken Culhane. The ingredients are impeccable, and the technique is intricate and old-school, with sauces and stocks all made from scratch. As a bonus, the dining room has widely spaced tables, and the service is charming. It is a joy to eat there. This restaurant outperforms most restaurants in the capital, including most two and three-star Michelin places.

A Trip to Bangalore

We had some winter sunshine for a week in Bangalore. This is my 24^th visit to India, and although Bangalore is not the most obvious tourist destination in India, it has some advantages. You can fly direct from the UK, it is quite leafy (it is the “garden city” of India) and, above all, its position high on the Deccan Plateau means that it is cooler than most of India. Whereas in January, Goa and Kerala average around 32C or more as a high, in Bangalore, it is 27/28C high, with the temperature in the evening around 23C. This means that you can dine outside at night and not be frazzled too much during the day.

We stayed at the Leela Palace hotel and tried three of the four restaurants there. Citrus is their all-day casual restaurant, Zen serves (mostly) Chinese food, while Jamavar is the flagship Indian restaurant. There is also a European/American-style place called Le Cirque. Outside the hotel, we tried Indian Durbar and Ssaffron (not a typo).

From Ealing to Chiswick

After all the rich food at Christmas, something simpler seemed in order, and I went back to an excellent pizzeria L’Oro di Napoli, in Ealing. This does excellent Neapolitan-style pizzas, and is up there with the best in London. It has been consistently good over multiple visits that I have made here.

I also tried a local Japanese restaurant in Chiswick called Kuyamoto, run by Filipino brothers. The front of house staff were friendly, but the cooking was very ordinary indeed, with a tendency to slather dishes in mayonnaise. A dried-out salmon teriyaki was all too typical of the cooking, sadly.

Hope that you all had a lovely break, and wishing you a very happy 2026.

From Mayfair to, well, Mayfair

Michael Caines at The Stafford is a new restaurant in St James. This was very enjoyable, with especially charming staff and food that was of a generally high standard. The beef and pigeon dishes were particularly good, and the dining room was elegant and blissfully free of music and hard surfaces, so conversation was easy.

I had another excellent meal at The Cocochine in Mayfair. As well as the dinner, I had a separate set lunch the same week, to take advantage of the £39 three-course lunch, a genuine bargain given that it features dishes like lobster ravioli. The dinner was to the usual high standard, with dazzling langoustines and lobster and superb sika deer among the many highlights.

Hope that you all had a great Christmas.

From Mayfair to Surbiton

Bonheur is the much-anticipated restaurant opening on the site of the late, lamented Le Gavroche. Matt Abe has a fine culinary track record, and the food was good, while the service was of an unusually high standard. The drawback is the stiff pricing, particularly of the wine list, which is one of the most marked-up lists I have ever encountered. This is a pity, as the rest of the experience was good.

Koyal continues to deliver the best Indian food in and around London. Dishes such as the wild boar vindaloo are spectacular, and even humble dishes like mustard potatoes and vegetable bhajias are elevated to an impressively high level. With sufficient notice, and not on weekends, you can pre-order (for a supplement) the ultra-high-quality Arnaud Tauzin chicken, which can be made into dishes like chicken tikka and methi chicken. This bird has a very special flavour, but even without this extra elevation, the dishes here are very special indeed.

From Queensway to Mayfair

Lambombe is the sister of Trivet and is in a smart Park Lane Hotel. The food was pleasant enough, though the best thing I ate was actually a pate en croute, which was bought in rather than prepared in the kitchen. There was also a pleasant breaded veal chop with cabbage, though £48 for this dish gives you an idea of the target audience.

The Taste of Lahore in Bayswater is one of a small group of Pakistani restaurants in London. The tandoori lamb chops were nice, but to be honest, the rest of the food that we tried was very ordinary at best, with some quite disappointing dishes mixed in with the average. Even though the price was fairly moderate, I could not really recommend this restaurant.

From Fulham to Mayfair

The Harwood Arms is the only Michelin-starred pub in London. It specialises in game, and features a signature venison Scotch egg that is a king amongst Scotch eggs. The fallow deer here was also excellent, and was a honey tart for dessert. This is a highly consistent restaurant, with a very good wine list as a bonus.

The Cocochine is tucked away off Berkeley Square and has several unusual features for a fine dining restaurant. Firstly, it has access to some remarkable quality produce via the farm and Scottish fishing port owned by one of its investors: the scallops that appear here are the largest I have ever seen, for example. Its cooking has developed significantly since opening, now still based on classical French technique but reflecting the Sri Lankan heritage of its head chef, Larry Jayasekara.

From Hammersmith to Surbiton

Shilpa is a Keralan restaurant in Hammersmith, run entirely by staff from Kerala. At my meal, I had the best dish by some margin was the masala dosa, though the paratha was also very nice. Not all dishes were quite to that standard, though the overall standard was entirely reasonable, and prices were modest.

Koyal in Surbiton is blessed with a gifted head chef, and the food that it is producing is as good as anything in London. A recent menu addition, a variation on pork vindaloo that used tastier wild boar, was fabulous. I also love the chicken dishes here, especially those made using a high-quality bird from Arnaud Tauzin in France (this dish must be pre ordered and is not available at busy weekends).