Andy Lynes

My dinner at Fresco's was one of the highlights of my visit to the Okanagan last year. The restaurant is very stylish and comfortable with well spaced tables and the food is fantastic. I particularly remember asparagus soup with a shiny puck of goats cheese pannacotta and a fish dish that layered flavours with a subtle use of spice in an extraordinary way. I failed to take a copy of the menu away with me and I'm afraid the details of the meal have now been lost to time, but I'm looking forward to returning if we can get a reservation this year.

Moby - thank you so much for the report and pictures;an exemplary post. All I can say is that it makes me want to return to the restaurant as soon as humanly possible (which should be the end of July, pending completion of building works.)

You went for the gala night - standard tickets are £15.00.

I'm sure we've had reports on this event in the past but I can't seem to find them. I'm going on the first night so will report back then.

I don't think Maureen has had to do an awful lot of leg work on this one to get critics through the doors. Anything with NPM and Phil Howard's name on it was always going to cause a critical stampede. I would also imagine that Jay Rayner will be alone in reviewing either The Ledbury or Maze. I think we can safely assume that there will be similar blamket coverage of the place, led by Fay Maschler who has already gven it the thumbs up.

Norman awards the Ledbury 9 out of 10 and the review has an excellent picture of the dining room. Norman repeats Coren's assertion that "There was never any really first-rank stuff around here (Assaggi, perhaps, but even that’s low-key and folksy despite the cold-sweat menu prices) because, I guess, the locals were too sophisticated or too cool or too media or too stoned to want it." by saying "The ledbury is the first truely grand restaurant...Notting Hill has known." Both are wrong and have obviously forgotten all about Leith's and its Michelin star. The room was at least as grand, if not more so, as The Ledbury's, Alex Floyd was an extremely talented chef, the wine list was compiled by Nick Tarayan and it was bloody expensive. I hear good things about its replacement The Nottinghill Brasserie (you can see a 360 tour of the dining room which will give you some idea of how leith's used to look although its had a refurb) although whether it is as ambitious a restaurant as Leith's was I don't know.

Thaks Stephen, I'll see if I can get hold of a copy now.

Thanks for posting the restaurant's response. Sounds like they took your complaint seriously and looked into it properly.

Well, I don't know about that, but they do have a TV series coming up next week:see this thread for details. But if you are brother to Charles, I assume you know more than we do.

My understanding is that waiting lists, especially at weekends, are getting longer and longer so the restaurant is turning away business. David has put up with a less than stellar kitchen for the last 19 years and the dining room was in need of re-decoration. The next door premises became available and they have decided to expand. I think they are taking on one more chef and one more front of house to cope with the larger dining room. I wouldn't be surprised if all these physical changes were accompanied by some tweaks to the food, considering the additional preperation area and the extra pair of hands. But I don't think David is the type of chef to go chasing his tail after another star, although I'm sure he would be totally delighted if he did get one. The investment makes sound business sense. He doesn't want to squeeze money out of his punters (hence the very reasonable menu prices and the frankly ridiculously cheap wine list) so the only way to increase his turnover is to get more people in the place. It will be interesting to see if he does put his prices up. I bet his bank manager thinks he should, and I really don't think anyone is going to begrudge him a few extra quid. How many two Michelin star restaurants do you know that charge eleven quid for house white.

Apparently things have come full circle at Lola's and Juliet Preston is back in charge of the kitchens.

Critics are arranged in order of arrogance from Micheal Winner (uber-arrogant) down to Terry Durack (not an arrogant bone in his body.) All the rest come in between but I'll leave it up to you to decide which order they go in.

Not the good ones.

I'm sure Coren said in one of his reviews a while back that he wasn' going to get into the game of reviewing restaurants the minute they opened, and there he is at The Ledbury.

Does anyone actually buy the Telegraph on Sunday? I really wanted to read Matthew Norman's review which I would guess was this week and I completely forgot to pick up a copy. For some bizarre reason Norman's reviews are never on line.

Make sure you have the mash.

I've just read in William Sitwell's Food Spy column in the Evening Standard magazine that Shumi has closed: "To sum up: posh men in suits will never gather in a whitewashed space to eat overpriced pasta with chopsticks." I've asked the restaurant's (former?) PR company if they have an offical statement which I'll post if and when I get it.

Chef! Starring former black and white minstrel Lenny Henry. Out on DVD in August.

There's a few more to come so don't make your mind up just yet...

"Tom, these pickled onions are getting near their sell by date and these sardines are a bit whiffy" "Hold on a minute, I'm just cleaning these sweetbreads." (Thinks: Hmm, that gives me an idea....)

Not so much a plate of food as a situationist prank. What is going on inside that man's brain do you think?

While I struggle to imagine what might have prompted such an odd remark, here's a thread that offers an opposing view, backed up with examples and a cogent arguement.

I was probably in Brighton, but not at the restaurant.

Frustrating website - no menus! The rates sound very good though. Have you been?

As an aside, I first heard about el Bulli in 1999 when I spoke to Stephen Terry after a meal at Frith Street restaurant where he was head chef and Atherton was his sous. He told me that he and his chefs used to fly over from London for lunch and come back the same day.