Andy Lynes

The Capital would be great as long as your trip is after 1 September which is when they re-open after their refurbishment.

Zerlinetta, welcome to egullet. I'll be interested to hear how the meal goes, which at that price has got to be the bargain of the moment in London.

Thyme is open to the public, the club has another members only restaurant.

The Gavroche lunch has long been touted as London's fine dining bargain - £40.00 including half a bottle of wine and water I believe.

As an aside, the restaurant re-opens 1 September following a refurbishment. I will be paying the place a visit for the first time next month and will report back.

Moby - I'd love to join you but work prevents me doing so. Look forward to your report.

Thats what I call music vol 58. (its been a long day.)

... and manages to say so in 14 words. That's what I call a restaurant review.

Looks like Racine could be the place to eat grouse this season, £20.00 a pop: Grouse with Fay (although apparently Benares are doing it for £15.00, but whether that's for the whole bird or not I don't know).

Excellent news (for them and me). Thanks for letting me know.

Restaurants, Cuisine and Travel - so you're bang on topic. The more UK related travel stuff the better in fact.

I just remembered I made this recommendation. Please ignore it--the place has since shut up shop, which is a shame. Is Marque Central still open? I've just writen a review of them for a magazine so I hope they are! (Just tried ringing them and no answer, I'll try again nearer dinner time if no one responds before then).

Che, if you start a new thread linking back to this one, it will raise awareness that the media round up exists and also avoid having posts about lots of different things on the one thread.

Circeplum, see Mrs Hugget's earlier post above.

That is such a gloriously inappropriate response as to be almost poetic. (Now, if you can spin 600 words of relentless vitriol out of it, you too could be a restaurant critic for a national newspaper.)

OK, no one is allowed to say "Petrus" at this point or there'll be trouble...(whoops, sorry Gordon).

Yes, it was lunch. We were the first to test drive the new roof-top terrace which is highly recommend on a sunny day.

When I went there was one table of two!

With all the other stuff I should have written - still in my head. I will try and get it down soon.

He's not too far from the original Zaika location on Fulham Road and is apparently welcoming back a lot of customers from that period.

Just an aside that I forgot to mention in earlier posts- Vineet told me that Marco Pierre White, who is a long standing supporter of his and who talked up his restaurant in Hammersmith to anyone that would listen (including AA Gill), was due to dine at Rasoi last Saturday.

Bruce told me that he cooks them using exactly the same method (i.e. blanch potatos in water until almost cooked, then dry. Blanch in fat, drain, then deep fry for service) as at the Riverside.

I thought it was tomorrow. I don't know how that happened.

The first half of the post in undeniable fact, the second half is pure guess work. My intention was to underline a serious point with humour.

The Giles Coren review is an example of poor restaurant criticism and is an abuse of power: English critic is chastised by French waiter, critic takes up 696 words of a 1,222 word review getting own back on waiter in print when he should have been telling his readers what they might expect if they dined at Pearl. Critic dresses up the dressing down by attempting to appear to be more of an expert on cheeses than the waiter by typing "Crottin de Chavignol" into google and cut and pasting results into review (after putting them into his own words of course, I'm not about to accuse anyone of plagerism).