From a modest café that opened over a hundred years ago, to a Michelin-starred celebrity hang-out, the history of the Ivy has been both varied and colourful. The brand remains an enduring one in the culinary world despite having opened Ivy spin-offs across the country, in towns such as Guildford. Its most recent venture has been to create an Asian sub-brand. Trading partly on its name, the ethos at Ivy Asia is full-on decadence with decent enough food to match. My dining comrade and I visited the Mayfair outpost on a recent weekday lunchtime. Located on the site of the former Princess Garden C ..read more

This is a special post to mark a truly memorable meal. Gourmand Gunno normally restricts himself only to reviewing restaurants on his home UK turf. Top dining tips for elsewhere can generally be found in the global section of the website. A visit to Horma Ondo is an experience. Take in the views, enjoy the food and wine. This is the sort of place where one could comfortably spend a whole day. It’s located in the hills outside Bilbao and easy to miss if one does not know the way. Fortunately my host was a local to the area and successfully navigated the winding road up to the venue. Once there ..read more

Reviewers that see any restaurant describe itself as “eclectic” have good reason – often through bitter prior experience – to be sceptical. When your venue has an absurdly pretentious name and is located on an expensive street in Mayfair, then the trepidation should mount further. MiMi, named with yet more absurdity in homage to a fictional empress who travels across China, is however worth a visit. There is substance behind the show.  When your reviewer read more about MiMi (the restaurant rather than the empress) he felt reassured. The backers behind this venture have also pioneered oth ..read more

Kapara is big and bold, full of joy and exuberance. It serves as a wonderful reminder of the many good things about Israeli culture and constitutes a welcome addition to the London restaurant scene. Have no doubt, Kapara is explicitly Israeli. So much so that its signage is written in both English and Hebrew. Read the restaurant’s website and you learn that the venue is the product of “a bunch of crazy Israelis” given “free reign” over two floors in Soho. “Anything goes”, readers are told. This live and let-live attitude is a healthy one and evident in spades at Kapara. Located in a new develo ..read more

This is a special post to mark a truly memorable meal. Gourmand Gunno normally restricts himself only to reviewing restaurants on his home UK turf. Top dining tips for elsewhere can generally be found in the global section of the website. Legend, simply, would be the word to describe Dominque Crenn, the eponym behind this venue and its neighbouring Atelier Crenn. For those unfamiliar, she was the first female chef in the US to gain three Michelin Stars and currently commands a total of four. For those without the reservation skills or budget for her main restaurant, Bar Crenn – the one Star ho ..read more

It is hard not to fall in love with the St Pancras Renaissance Hotel, a landmark of Gothic Revival and High Victorian architecture. First opened in 1873 as the Midland Grand, the hotel received a new lease of life in 2011. The main dining room – now in its second iteration since the hotel’s reopening – is worth a visit, both for the décor and the food, even if atmosphere is a bit harder to come by.  The room, just to the left of the main hotel, is a marvel to behold. The whole venue is Grade-1 listed but within the dining space, no expense has been spared. Think marble columns extending t ..read more

Like Londoners say of buses, you wait for one and then two come along. By virtue of fortuitous coincidence, your reviewer visited a pair of Thai restaurants on consecutive Tuesday evenings. It was an obvious opportunity to compare and contrast. Think of the experience as a two Thai taste-off. Both had strengths and weaknesses, but there had to be a winner: Supawan beat Kolae. The two restaurants could not be more different. Kolae (visited first and suggested by Gourmand Gunno’s dining comrade for the evening) has become a London dining phenomenon. Located in trendy Borough Market and backed by ..read more

Countless column inches have been spent pondering the question of what gives a restaurant atmosphere. This reviewer’s two cents on the debate is simple: when you walk into a venue, you know almost instinctively whether or not the vibes are good. York’s Ambiente, a Andalucian-inspired tapas venue, hit all the right notes. The group behind Ambiente has five outlets spread across Yorkshire, of which three are located in the county’s eponymous city. The Goodramgate venue, which we visited, apparently has a more traditional and less industrial feel than the others in its portfolio. Despite being lo ..read more

Brits have a well-known love for both curry and Chinese cuisine. What happens, then, when you mix the two? India and China share a border and so some crossover must be inevitable. There has also been a long history of migration, with the Hakka of Canton having moved to Kolkata, bringing along with them many of their cooking techniques. It is this vein that Fatt Pundit happily taps into. Others should follow. Since opening just before the pandemic, the venue has established a cult following. A second branch in Covent Garden has succeeded the Soho original. Booking at both is highly advised. You ..read more

The restaurant trade is Darwinian. Only the fittest should survive. How Dim-t has endured for since the mid-2000s and expanded into a mini chain of half a dozen outlets is an absolute mystery to this reviewer. He and his dining comrade visited the Hampstead original and were mostly disappointed from start to finish.   Dim-t (why an additional letter is appended to the name is utterly unclear) has evolved from its original steamed dumpling dim-sum proposition to offering what is billed as “a taste of Asia.” The term is patronising. There is no such thing as a taste of Europe, so why assume ..read more