London, London restaurants, Michelin restaurants

Ametsa with Arzak Instruction – Best of Basque

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We have been lovers of Basque cuisine ever since we visited San Sebastian, the culinary capital of Planet Earth, five years ago. That weekend in the northwest of Spain was a real eye-opener to us and made us realise what a great ingredient good food is to our lives. Michelin-starred Ametsa with Arzak Instruction opened in our adopted home town London in 2013, four generations since the family tavern opened in San Sebastian in 1897. ‘Arzak’ (three-starred since the 1970s) is generally considered to be one of the world’s ten best restaurants. Since we started our travel and food blog three years ago and since we started researching Michelin-starred restaurants, we were surprised to read so many bad and mediocre reviews about Ametsa. We don’t spend big on restaurants, so it was only when we found a £59 deal on Buy-a-Gift for a three-course meal for two and a glass […]

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London, London restaurants, Michelin restaurants

Finally Made it to London’s Most Famous Chinese – A. Wong

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We had heard good things about Michelin-starred A. Wong for years, but somehow never managed to visit, even though it’s just half an hour’s walk from where we live. Earlier this month, we finally made it, and what a feast it was! The restaurant was founded in 2013 by Andrew Wong, then a young graduate with an anthropology degree from LSE, when he took over a non-descript Chinese local next to Victoria station from his father. For several months before that point in time, he had travelled mainland China and explored the many different cuisines and cooking styles. In late 2018 he’ll open another, much bigger and more casual restaurant at the Bloomberg Arcade in the City. It will not be serving dim sum, because Wong feels, as he said in an interview earlier this year, that serving three dumplings for £2.80 would devalue the art of the dumpling (each […]

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London, London restaurants, Michelin restaurants

The Ninth – our Restaurant Review

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We have just come back from Michelin-starred The Ninth in Fitzrovia, and were heavily impressed. Chef Jun Tanaka, whose, you guessed it, 9th restaurant this is, offers “simple but refined French Mediterranean-style dishes”, all made for sharing. Probably because of the rumoured recent pasta obsession of the chef (which is a very good thing, considering his immense skills making pasta!), the dishes today were mostly Italian influenced. For a very competitive £27 per person you can choose three tapas dishes each to share. Between the two of us, Ms B and I ordered 6 tapas, following the waiter’s recommendation to order the duck leg twice, because it was by far the most substantial dish and you want to get a good fill (she put it more elegantly). Besides that, we ordered (3) sea bass carpaccio, salsa verde & pickled kohlrabi; (4) pappardelle, venison ragu, hazelnut and sprouts, (5) pumpkin fregola risotto, […]

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London, London restaurants, Michelin restaurants

Benares Restaurant – Best Indian in Town

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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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