Our second visit to Beso, Covent Garden, now re-invented as Italian restaurant

Earlier this year, in January, to be precise, Ms B & I had been invited to check out the then still relatively new Beso in Covent Garden (review here) and we rated it 5 out of 5. The food back then had been labelled Moorish, basically a mix of Moroccan, Spanish, and other Mediterranean cuisines. There were distinctly Moorish design elements including an ornamental nine-seater table with traditional tiles. Recently I was on the way to a meeting in Covent Garden and passed by the restaurant. To my great surprise they had re-invented themselves as Italian Mediterranean restaurant and changed their interior decoration accordingly. When checking their menu I could see that these were not the only changes: the prices had gone up significantly too (their pre-theatre three-course ‘deal’ sets you back £24.95 and included no combination of even only vague interest to me).   After some deliberation I decided […]

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Galvin at Windows – Our Restaurant Review

[UPDATE 25 April 2024: This restaurant has permanently closed] We’re just back from our visit to Chef Patron Chris Galvin‘s Michelin-starred Galvin at Windows, which boasts incredible 360 degree views of London from the 28th floor of the London Hilton on Park Lane. I should say “usually boasts”, because we picked the worst time to visit, considering that it was a dark, rainy, cloudy day, but the friends we met up with (two other couples) and us, we were still immediately bought in on the atmosphere. The interior décor combines modern elegance and state-of-the-art comfort with the glamour of the 1930s. Everyone I know hates 1960s architecture, and rightly so, but this true gem, which was completed in 1963, is one of the nicest buildings I’ve seen. It looks surprisingly modern from the outside, but the main selling point is its Y-shaped layout, which means you are always next to […]

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Benares Restaurant – Best Indian in Town

My wife Ms B and I have just returned from a tapas sharing platter lunch at Benares, Atul Kochhar‘s Michelin-starred Indian restaurant on Berkeley Square. The 5-dish street food sharing platter cost a mere £30 for the two of us and we topped it up with two cocktails for another £10 in total. A mind-boggingly marvellously brilliant deal. You pay more at most pubs in this town to get two portions of rubbery, battered cod with sliced, oily, deep-fried potatoes and some luke-warm IPA.    Right from the moment we arrived at the ground-floor reception, the service staff were very friendly, polite, helpful, relaxed, unpretentious and knowledgeable, a true delight. The atmosphere is also very pleasant, with dimmed light, sound-absorbing décor, warm colours, a nicely decorated bar and a lounge area with a little pool where lovely gerberas were peacefully floating around. It was in the lounge area where we […]

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