Days out in London

Prepare to meet some real fat cats. CatFest is back with a full day dedicated to those kings and queens of the internet. Get all misty-eyed over rescue kittens, listen to CatLit, hang out with cat celebrities and try some ‘feline fancy dress’ (not in a sex way). This year the festival is back at Beckenham Place Mansion with live music, vegan street food and cat-themed cocktails to neck back. You’ll be able to get up close and personal with adoptable rescue kittens and meet feline influencers, including Sunglass Cat who will be joining the festival from Los Angeles, Pixie Adventure Cat and Barry the Bengal. There’ll also be talks from prominent cat fans, including TV star Rory the Vet. Part of the proceeds will go towards Erham Rescue, a charity helping to sterilise, treat and feed and rescue street cats and kittens. 

This event has been postponed until further notice. Time Out editors, March 2020   Experience one of our signature silent discos at the SEA LIFE London Aquarium. Don a pair of glowing headphones and tune in to one of three channels as you immerse yourself in the world below the waves. With pop, rock and party classics to choose from, you're sure to find something you can cut shapes to at the ultimate nautical night out.    The chance to party with sea creatures doesn't come along all too often (unless your Jason Momoa in green spandex, that is), so don't miss out on these aquatic events. 

Literary Salon is a quarterly celebration of voices from the Black British diaspora. Spend the evening listening to London-based Nigerian-German writer Olumide Popoola, Nigerian British author Irenosen Okojie and Nigerian British journalist Diana Evans recite readings around the theme of Love and Desire. There’ll be two more events exploring other themes on Thursday May 28 and Thursday September 24.

Celebrate one of the greatest composers' 250th birthday. Join one or all of London’s top orchestras and acclaimed pianist Warren Mailley-Smith candlelight Beethoven piano concertos. There’ll be five performances, each one covering a different one of his five symphonies. Guaranteed you’ll be Bach for more. 

Okay, let’s just get this out of the way. ‘Hamilton’ is stupendously good. Yes, it’s kind of a drag that there’s so much hype around it. But there was a lot of hype around penicillin. And that worked out pretty well. If anything – and I’m truly sorry to say this – Lin-Manuel Miranda’s musical about Alexander Hamilton, the first secretary of the US Treasury, is actually better than the hype suggests. That’s because lost in some of the more waffly discourse around its diverse casting and sociological import is the fact that ‘Hamilton’ is, first and foremost, a ferociously enjoyable show. You probably already know that it’s a hip hop musical, something that’s been tried before with limited success. Here it works brilliantly, because Miranda – who wrote everything – understands what mainstream audiences like about hip hop, what mainstream audiences like about musical theatre, and how to craft a brilliant hybrid. Put simply, it’s big emotions and big melodies from the former, and thrilling, funny, technically virtuosic storytelling from the latter. ‘Alexander Hamilton’, the opening tune, exemplifies everything that’s great about the show. It’s got a relentlessly catchy build and momentum, a crackling, edge-of-seat sense of drama, and is absolutely chockablock with information, as the key players stride on to bring us up to speed with the eventful life that Hamilton – the ‘bastard, orphan, son of a whore and a Scotsman’ – led before he emigrated to America in 1772 as a teenager. (

‘Everybody’s Talking About Jamie’ is a burst of joy in the heart of the West End. This new British musical, transferring from the Sheffield Crucible, is the real deal. Watch out, tired revivals: there’s a new kid in town. Inspired by a 2011 BBC documentary about a teenager who wanted to be a drag queen, the show follows 16-year-old Jamie on his journey to be himself – out of a classroom in a working-class part of Sheffield, away from the bigotry of a deadbeat dad, and into high heels. Director Jonathan Butterell’s production is a high-impact blaze of colour, combining video projections with seamless scene changes and a live band above the stage. It captures the frenetic energy of being a teenager. Every element of this show works beautifully together. The music, by The Feeling frontman Dan Gillespie Sells, is a deft mix of irresistibly catchy, pop-honed foot-tappers – try not to hum ‘And You Don’t Even Know It’, I dare you – and truthful, heart-wrenching numbers. This is Sells’s first foray into writing for musicals, but he’s always excelled at telling stories in song. He is matched by the show’s writer and lyricist Tom MacRae. Apart from notable exceptions like Punchdrunk’s ‘Doctor Who’-themed kids’ show ‘The Crash of Elysium’, he’s largely written for TV, but this works well here. His dialogue is punchy, funny and often lands with a sting. While most of the characters exist to orbit Jamie, they still have their own stories and these are crisply told. As Pritti, Jamie’s best

'My mummy says I'm a miracle,' lisps a pampered mini-me at a purgatorial kiddies' birthday party at the outset of this delicious, treacly-dark family show. The obnoxious ma and pa of its titular, gifted, pint-sized heroine are not, of course, quite so doting. But 'Matilda' must be making its creators, playwright Dennis Kelly and comedian-songsmith Tim Minchin, a very pair of proud parents. Opening to rave reviews in Stratford-upon Avon before transferring to the West End in 2011 and snatching up Olivier Awards with all the alacrity of a sticky-fingered child in a sweetshop, Matthew Warchus's RSC production remains a treat. With hindsight, Kelly and Minchin's musical, born of the 1988 novel by that master of the splendidly grotesque Roald Dahl, is a little too long and, dramatically, a tad wayward. But like the curly-haired little girl in the famous nursery rhyme, when it is good, it is very, very good. And it's even better when it's horrid. The past few months have seen some cast changes, including, alas, the departure of Bertie Carvel's tremendous Miss Trunchbull, headmistress of the dread Crunchem Hall School, former Olympic hammer-thrower and a gorgon of monumental nastiness, complete with scarily Thatcher-esque tics of purse-lipped gentility and faux concern. David Leonard doesn't quite match the squirm-inducing, hair-raising detail of Carvel in the role, but his more butch, granite-faced version is fantastically horrible nonetheless. And if Paul Kaye as Matilda's loathso

The posters have been plastered around the London Underground for years – long enough for this show to become the most successful musical of all time – but nothing prepares you for the sheer impact of 'The Lion King's opening sequence. With the surge of 'Circle Of Life' reverberating through your chest, Julie Taymor's animal creations march on, species by species. Gazelles spring, birds swoop and an elephant and her child lumber through the stalls. It's a cacophonous cavalcade that genuinely stops you breathing. You'd think Noah's Ark had emptied onto the stage. For a global blockbuster, 'The Lion King's absolute theatricality is astonishing. Techniques from all over the world – African masks, Japanese Kabuki costumes, Malaysian shadow puppetry – are smashed together in an explosion of spectacle. It's perfect for a musical, allowing both distinct flavours and an eclectic carnival spirit. Admittedly, things deflate when it sacrifices this defiant originality for subservient approximation of the film. Timon and Pumba (Damian Baldet and Keith Bookman), though impressively like their screen counterparts, step into the savannah from a different dimension. The hyena-infested elephant's graveyard swaps menace for goofiness and the famous stampede scene, so delicately handled and moving in the film, is merely ticked off with a sigh of relief. The familiarity of the film is a root cause of the show's commercial success. But, ironically, 'The Lion King' can't afford such compromises. I

In the unlikely event you were worried a leap to the stage for JK Rowling’s Harry Potter series would result in it becoming aggressively highbrow, self-consciously arty or grindingly bereft of magical high jinks, just chill the hell out, muggle.  ‘Harry Potter and the Cursed Child’ is an absolute hoot, a joyous, big-hearted, ludicrously incident-packed and magic-heavy romp that has to stand as one of the most unrelentingly entertaining things to hit the West End. Writer Jack Thorne, director John Tiffany and a world-class team have played a blinder; if the two-part, five-hour-plus show is clearly a bit on the long side, it’s forgivable. ‘The Cursed Child’ emphatically exists for fans of Harry Potter, and much of its power derives from the visceral, often highly emotional impact of feeling that you’re in the same room as Rowling’s iconic characters.  There’s also a sense that this story of wizards and witches is being treated with the respect its now substantially grown-up fanbase craves. No disrespect to D-Rad and chums, but the leads here are in a different acting league to their film counterparts’: Jamie Parker and Alex Price are superb as battered, damaged, middle-aged versions of old enemies Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy. Sam Clemmett and Anthony Boyle are a fine, puppyish, sympathetic engine to the play as their awkward sons Albus and Scorpius, trying to escape their parents’ shadows. It is a bit of a sausage (wand?) fest in terms of the lead parts, although in the most

‘& Juliet’ is a heavily ironic Shakespeare rewrite based on the songs of super-producer Max Martin. And with the gift of that knowledge, I can fairly confidently state that you’ll probably like ‘& Juliet’ almost precisely as much as you expect to like ‘& Juliet’. Me, I grew up with Martin’s greatest hits: Britney Spears and Backstreet Boys dominated the radio when I was at school, and while I’ve never spent a single penny on his music, I’ve probably spent days of my life listening to it. These were Big Tunes to start with, and in ‘& Juliet’ they sound immense, reconfigured into lush new Tudor-nodding arrangements (a harpsichord features prominently). Most crucially, in a musical that Martin is heavily involved with, they’re deployed in ways that always find some emotional connection to the plot (by no means a given in a jukebox musical – *takes a long, hard stare at ‘Mamma Mia!’*).  The plot is fun provided you refuse to take any of what happens seriously. It’s basically ‘Romeo & Juliet’ rewritten into a sort of woke panto. The Bard of Avon (Oliver Tompsett, channelling a mid-tier ‘Love Island’ contestant) is very pleased with himself for having written the play. But his wife Anne Hathaway (Cassidy Janson, scene-stealingly bolshy) has other ideas. She browbeats Will into allowing Juliet to survive then persuades him to let her rewrite the play as an empowering feminist road trip for Juliet and her gal (and non-binary) pals. A lot of wilfully silly, somewhat subversive, occasi

‘The Ocean at the End of the Lane’ transfers to the West End in October 2020. This review is from its run at the National Theatre in December 2019. Tickets for the transfer go on sale March 13 2020. Considering how popular fantasy literature and its adaptations currently are, it feels like a bit of an omission that we see so little of it on stage. But Joel Horwood’s over-twelves version of Neil Gaiman’s 2013 novel ‘The Ocean at the End of the Lane’ is emphatically The Way To Do It: a heady, dreamlike whirl of story, scary and beautiful in equal parts, that looks phenomenal and makes expert use of the stylised language of theatre to cram in an entire otherworldly epic.It begins as an unnamed man runs away from his father’s wake, drawn to an old duckpond near his former family home. He is haunted by thoughts of a girl, Lettie (Marli Siu), who he met on his twelfth birthday, in the early-’80s. She is gone, but he comes across her elderly grandmother, Old Mrs Hempstock (Josie Walker), who he only dimly recalls. Her presence revives suppressed memories, of Lettie and her family being an ageless coven of immortal spellcasters; of his home being invaded by Ursula (Pippa Nixon), a malevolent entity from outside the walls of reality; of the fightback, and its consequences.Gaiman’s story is hot property: Simon Pegg, of all people, is apparently making a TV version. But it’ll have to go a long way to catch up with Katy Rudd’s thrilling NT production, which is pacy, stylish and also exp

‘Six’ returns to Arts Theatre in January 2019. This review is from August 2018. ‘Remember us from your GCSEs?’ It’s Henry VIII’s six wives – and they’ve back, bitch, to re-tell ‘her-story’ as a slick, sassy girl band. Think Euro-pop remixes of ‘Greensleeves’, Anne Boleyn spouting tweenage text-speak (‘everybody chill/it’s totes God’s will’), and K-Howard warbling #MeToo tales of gropey employers. ‘Hamilton' looms large here, and although ‘Six’ has its own moments of clever-clever hip-hop rhymes, it’s a tough comparison: this musical started life as a student show (Cambridge, obvs). But its creators, Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss, have succeeded in crafting almost brutally efficient pastiche pop songs – here a ballad, there a ballsy, blinging R&B number – performed with snappy dance routines by a talented, diverse cast (and all-female band). Since inception the show seems to have been given a good lick of gloss, too; it stands up in the West End. But beneath its super-shiny surface, ‘Six’ is totes vacuous. And so basic in its feminism that it’s hard to believe it’s written by, like, actual Millennials. The whole thing is staged as a deeply unsisterly competition, each wife getting a song in which to prove they’re the biggest victim, the one who suffered the most at Henry’s hands. This is treated weirdly as comedy though, OTT shrieks and snarks escalating until they’re actually in a catfight, pulling each other’s hair. Several of the wives are characterised as dim and ditzy; some a

The film world continues its love affair with werewolves, vampires and all things 'Twilight'. But theatre types have always known witches are where it's at. After its 2006 opening at Apollo Victoria, Oz prequel 'Wicked' continues to fill this massive theatre with an international crowd of voracious consumers (glass of champagne and a choccy for £16 anyone?). But this stylish and bombastic musical still delivers, sailing over its patchy score thanks to a gravity-defying performance from its current leading lady Rachel Tucker, as the intense green-skinned undergrad who goes on to become the Wicked Witch of the West. 'Wicked' is a spectacle that rises or falls around its central performance. In the midst of a gigantic production full of bangs, bells and whistles Tucker, with her small frame and searing vocal ability, simply flies off with the show. She's closely followed by Gina Beck, who plays good girl, Glinda. Glinda and Elphaba's relationship forms the heart of this story and, as the Good Witch, Beck is a consummate clown, playing up the silliness of her character at every turn. But she can raise a tear, too, and her final duet with Tucker, 'For Good', is genuinely heart-rending. The Tim Burton-inspired ensemble oscillate between the hypnotic and grotesque and a sweet but thin voiced Matt Willis charms as the rather superfluous Prince. As in classical ballet, this is all about the women and, even by previous lead Idina Menzel's standards, they are in soaring form here. This

'Joseph' returns to the Palladium in Summer 2020; this review is from its July 2019 premiere. Casting tba. There are some very cool new versions of the early works of Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice doing the rounds in London at the moment.  ‘Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat’ isn’t one of them. It remains sweet, silly, reasonably lovable ‘Joseph…’, in a lavish but lightweight revival from Laurence Connor, director of Lloyd Webber’s recent smash ‘School of Rock’. Of course you’re not going to get much grit out of ‘Joseph…’, which was written as a primary school play back in 1968. And Connor and his team have fun playing with the Book of Genesis-inspired musical’s origins. Despite the obviously enormous budget, there’s a wilful am-dram larkiness to the whole thing: the cast is peppered with child performers, several of them playing adults and wearing crappy false beards, while many of the props – camels made from bicycles, towering golden statues – manage to simultaneously look incredibly expensive and like they cost about 5p.  Sure, the actual Old Testament tale that ‘Joseph…’ is based on is kind of dark. But Rice’s lyrics put an irreverently jolly spin on the whole thing. (Short version: Joseph is given a fancy coat by his dad, sold into slavery by his jealous brothers then grafts his way to the top of Egyptian society through his powers of dream interpretation.) It also has gigantic tunes, energetic and varied songs, which are given a sumptuous orchestration her

It was a wet December night. The type of night that’s only good for two things: going to see a pastiche film noir musical, and going home to try and half-assedly write a pastiche film noir-style review of the musical while knocking back cheap Russian vodka.The show was called ‘City of Angels’: it had been a big hit for a guy called Cy Colman about 25 years ago. It was a jazzy joint, that bought together Colman’s love of ’40s movies and music to spin a tall tale about a writer called Stine and his private-eye creation, Stone, as both of them negotiate the mean streets of LA: Stine in the cutthroat movie business; Stone in some business with a missing girl that might end with his throat cut.Now, with respect to the late Mr Colman, he wasn’t an LA guy, he was a Broadway guy. The idea for his show is nice, there are a lot of laughs and the lyrics – by a kid called David Zippel – are hilarious. But ‘City of Angels’ is a bit too Broadway, if you catch my drift: all head, not much heart and more arch than the Sixth Street Viaduct.But that ain’t put off Josie Rourke, boss of the Donmar Warehouse. A hard-boiled dame with a reputation that says you really don’t want to cross her, there’s no denying she knows how to put on a show. If it’s hard to fall for ‘City of Angels’ itself – cold as a popsicle, distant as Neptune, not much to say but plenty pleased about how it’s said – it’s easy to fall for Rourke’s production, and fall hard. Mostly, that’s because this cast is something else: wh

‘The Prince of Egypt’ is the plucky, earnest underdog of ’90s animated movies: not even a celeb-heavy cast and a score of Stephen Schwartz bangers could save it from back-of-the-video-cabinet, cult flick oblivion. Until now? Well, sort of. This massive new stage show probably won’t add substantially to the film’s fanbase, but it’s a pacy, powerfully sung showcase for songs like ‘When You Believe’.Schwartz’s son Scott brings the ancient story of two Biblical brothers to the stage with dust-raising chaotic energy. Massive digital backdrops summon up the grandeur of its Ancient Egyptian setting with the monolithic graininess of ’90s PlayStation graphics. In front of them a huge, tumbling cast of physical theatre performers act as both the pyramid-building Hebrew slaves, and as the underdressed physical theatre incarnation of the story’s many ambitious plot points. There’s nothing this agile, ragged, bikini-clad crew can’t lend a kind of clumpy ’90s eroticism to. Sexy chariot race? Check. Sexy burning bush? Check. Sexy river of blood? Check.Philip LaZebnik’s book isn’t quite as limber. He pads the film’s taut story of Moses and Rameses’s rivalry with clumsy new scenes. The worst ones attempt to fill out these men’s relationships with their wives in disappointingly retro fashion, with Moses and Rameses bonding over their other halves being ‘difficult’. Here, Tzipporah becomes an Esmeralda-esque figure who specialises in hip-weaving dance movies and one-note defiance. She and Moses

Yes, it is a big mistake. Yes, it is a huge mistake. It wafted over from Broadway on a miasma of bad reviews, so I was braced for this musical version of the clearly quite dated 1990 Julia Roberts smash to be a touch problematic.  In fact, ‘Pretty Woman: The Musical’ is so witless that it defies any serious attempt to scrutinise its politics. Telling the story of Edward, a ruthless businessman whose life is changed on a visit to LA after he picks up Vivian, a free-spirited hooker, it is in fact no more about capitalism or sex work than it is about sports cars or cruise liners – all of these things are just plot points as Gary Marshall and JF Lawton’s book hauls itself wearily through its ‘Pygmalion’-like paces.  The film, of course, had Julia Roberts and Richard Gere to style it out. With the best will in the world, leading man Danny Mac is no Gere. But he doesn’t have much to work with. His Edward is a respectful, teetotal, pleasant guy whose only discernible personality traits are a fear of heights and being a remorselessly destructive vulture capitalist, something that is vaguely intimated as being down to daddy issues, but goes unexplored.  By the same token, Aimie Atkinson can hardly hold a candle to Roberts. But her Vivian is winningly goofy and the clear highlight of the production. Yet bulked out with songs, the whole set-up is baffling. Edward hires Vivian for six days on the grounds that he needs a dinner date, and a live-in hooker is less hassle than a girlfriend; 

I would seriously question whether any other show on the planet bar ‘Les Misérables’ could get away with junking its original production and carrying on as if nothing had changed. But ‘Les Mis’ could be transposed to space, or underwater, or to the height of the Hittite empire and it would basically be the same show as long as the singing was on point. In case you missed it: the world’s longest-running musical that’s still playing shut for six months recently while the Sondheim Theatre (née Queen’s Theatre) was renovated by proprietor and producer Cameron Mackintosh. It has returned, not in the original Trevor Nunn RSC production, but a new(ish) one from Laurence Connor and James Powell that has already been rolled out around the globe, with London the last bastion of the ‘classic’ ‘Les Mis’. The ditching of the original has caused disgruntlement in certain quarters: hardcore stans distraught that the exact show they grew up with no longer strictly exists; and the original creative team, notably director Nunn, who understandably feel a little betrayed by the whole affair. All I can say is: yup, I really dug the old revolving stage too, but its loss is bearable. The songs are the same, the score is the same (accepting that it was tweaked to make it a bit less ’80s a few years back), the costumes are the same, many of the current cast are veterans of the original production, and the text is still Nunn and John Caird’s adaptation of Claude-Michel Schönberg and Alain Boublil’s o

Sara Bareilles and Gavin Creel will star as Jenna and Dr Pomatter for eight weeks only, until March 21 2020. Lucie Jones and David Hunter are currently playing the roles, and will return to them from March 9. This review is from June 2019, of the original West End cast.  The specials board in the diner in ‘Waitress’ advertises a bacon and blueberry pie. Most of the pies in Diane Paulus’s Broadway-conquering show are allegorical: their lurid lists of ingredients are flights of fancy in the mind of Katharine McPhee’s titular heroine Jenna, a pie-making prodigy who dreams of escaping her abusive marriage. However, as far as I can tell, the show is serious about the bacon and blueberry one. Bacon. Blueberry. Individually these are reasonable things, but with apologies to American readers, I cannot conceive why anybody in their right mind would even put them on the same level of the fridge, let alone lock them inside a pastry crust. Similarly, ‘Waitress’ is made from the very finest ingredients, but often they don’t actually feel like ingredients that should have been put together. Adapted from Adrienne Shelly’s cult 2007 indie flick of the same name, ‘Waitress’ is a moving musical full of flawed, morally compromised characters of the sort you so rarely get in this type of glossy Broadway show. Everyone, on some level, lets us or themselves down: indeed, the big showstopper, ‘She Used to Be Mine’ – delivered with exquisitely controlled sorrow by McPhee – is Jenna’s bitter ode to h

It's been decades since this skillful adaptation of Susan Hill's 1983 Gothic horror story first started setting West End audience a-shiver. 'The Woman in Black' remains perennially popular – particularly, it seems, with generally hard-to-please teenagers – which is testament to its rough-theatre appeal and the extraordinary and enduring potency, not of guts, gore or special effects, but of simple suggestion. Ageing Arthur Kipps is haunted by sinister events that befell him 30 years earlier. In an effort to exorcise his demons, he hires an actor to help him tell his story for an invited audience. As they rehearse, though, their staging itself becomes prey to supernatural visitations from the titular hatchet-faced, whip-thin, funereally garbed woman. Stephen Mallatratt's dramatisation and a deft production by Robin Herford exploit the peculiarly spooky atmosphere of an empty theatre, making us, as an audience, feel almost like spectral voyeurs. And the chills are irresistibly effective: swirling fog, a creaking rocking chair, a locked door, a pale visage looming out of the gloom. Only occasionally does the staging show its age. The projected image of the gaunt, sinister house of Kipps' tormented memory looks hopelessly cheap and crude, and a graveyard conjured with dust sheets struggles to convince, even within the low-tech aesthetic parameters of the piece. Yet the shrieks and gasps that greet the performance demonstrate that, even in the twenty-first century, this doughty lit

This review is from August 2019. ‘Evita’ returns in June 2020, casting tba. Forget everything you know about ‘Evita’: this one properly rocks. Gone are the romanticised shots of sun-soaked South America, sliced out are the filler numbers clogging the score and deleted is the simpering, blonde starlet. Instead, Jamie Lloyd’s production wipes the gloss off Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice’s musical, creating a pumping, sped-up ‘Evita’ edged with dirt, rust and grime. It starts literally with a bang. Grey confetti falls like funeral ashes blasted from a cannon, marking Eva Peron’s death. From there, it’s a mass celebration of blue-and-white streamers, flares, cheerleaders and names on placards. The feel is more Maradona than Madonna, a tribute perhaps to a country England knows best through the World Cup. Or, a clever nod to the overlap between the unified chanting and colour coordination of a political rally and the behaviour inside a football stadium.  It’s a more critical portrayal of the Peróns than, for example, Alan Parker and Oliver Stone’s film provides. Yet one of the best aspects is how Samantha Pauly’s Evita owns her reputation and herself. Bounding around in a white slip dress and sneakers – the costume department definitely got the ’90s revival memo which also includes boyband braces and baggy suit pants – Pauly looks like an Insta influencer who gives no fucks about other people’s snark. Trent Saunders’s Che-in-a-Che-T-shirt has flashes of an earnest Political Scie

Interview: Laura Wade – ‘I like writing tribes’ Even if you’re up to speed with the twist in Laura Wade’s ‘The Watsons’ – and carry on reading for maybe five more seconds and you will be – there is something totally irresistible about the moment when an awkward-looking maid suddenly blurts out the words ‘these are not the droids you’re looking for’ and limply waves a hand at Grace Molony’s baffled Jane Austen heroine Emma Watson. Austen never finished ‘The Watsons’, the story of a penniless but witty young woman abruptly left to fend for herself in the bearpit of Surrey society. After three chapters, an enticing selection of suitors are on the horizon – an awkward lord, a decent clergyman, a caddish cad – but for whatever reason Austen simply gave up on the story and left it abandoned. Now, 200 years later, a playwright named Laura (Louise Ford) suddenly strides into ‘The Watsons’ disguised as a maid, determined to finish it. From relatively straitlaced beginnings, Wade’s play becomes an increasingly out there meta satire, in which a writer’s blocked Laura and a series of extremely pissed-off Austen characters become bogged down in a sort of Mexican standoff over each other’s futures. It’s about the nature of authorship and authorial responsibility; it follows Wade’s last play ‘Home I’m Darling’ in taking a very long, very pointed look at our habit of fetishising regressive past societies; it’s also, at least for one very pointed scene, about Brexit, and the tyranny of democ

Erstwhile young scamps Mischief Theatre have spun their pleasant ‘Noises Off’ knock-off ‘The Play That Goes Wrong’ into a veritable empire: not only is the original backstage farce still going strong on the West End and off-Broadway, not only do they have another sizeable long-runner in ‘The Comedy About a Bank Robbery’, and not only do they now have an actual BBC1 TV show in the form of ‘The Goes Wrong Show’, but they’ve also won a whole host of US celebrity fans, including JJ Abrams – who co-produced this latest show – and magicians Penn & Teller, who’ve helped them write it.And it’s… okay. There is something charmingly unchanging about the core Mischief players, who are presumably now all millionaires several times over but always attack each new venture with the pure elan of a fledgling university sketch troupe. They’re both winsome and limited, and ‘Magic Goes Wrong’ feels caught at a strange crossroads between Mischief’s bumbling Englishness and Penn & Teller’s edgier interjections.The plot is pretty much contained in the title: neurotic magician Sophisticato (Henry Shields) is throwing a charity magic gala in his late father’s memory, and he’s rustled up some truly terrible acts to perform, notably Henry Lewis’s hack mentalist The Mind Mangler, and Dave Hearn’s entertaining The Blade, an amusing send-up of faux-edgy ‘alt’ magicians.That this somehow stretches on for two-and-a-half-hours without really having a plot is not ideal, not least because the ambling pace burie

'Curious Incident' transfers to Troubadour Wembley Park in November 2020. This review is from 2017.  Three theatres, three casts, one major disaster and seven Olivier Awards on, the National Theatre’s adaptation of Mark Haddon’s novel about Christopher Boone, the teenage ‘mathematician with some behavioural difficulties’ remains a thing of unbridled wonder. The occasion for this re-review is the end of the enforced layoff inflicted upon ‘The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time’. The show figuratively blew the roof off when it transferred from the NT to the Apollo Theatre, but unfortunately the ageing ceiling responded by literally collapsing, necessitating a change of venue and months off. Hopefully, that episode will provide a footnote. The most important thing is that Simon Stephens’s adaptation remains high tech and high quality. The first Christopher, Luke Treadaway, will always cast a huge shadow, and incumbent Graham Butler can’t match his coiled spring energy and manic otherness. But if Butler offers a gentler, more ‘normal’ hero, his superficial lack of strangeness means that it’s all the more heartbreaking when his nameless condition – presumably Asperger’s – leaves him suddenly, unexpectedly broken, unable to cope with something as simple as a human touch.  Ultimately ‘Curious Incident’ is a tragedy about a family torn apart by the pressures of looking after their son. Nicolas Tennant and Emily Joyce are excellent as Christopher’s bumblingly selfless dad E

NOPI’s chef-owner is Yotam Ottolenghi, who struck culinary gold a few years back with his game-changing Ottolenghi cafés. This somewhat more grown-up, all-day restaurant shares a similar look and ethos, but is more formal. The white decor is warmed up with brass fittings; the basement contains large sharing tables and an open kitchen. The inventive cooking has a firm foundation in the Middle East and takes bold flavour forays into the Mediterranean and Asia. You can go the conventional route, with starters and mains, or take the opportunity for wider grazing by sticking to sharing plates (but these are quite small). Vegetarians have plenty of choice, with dishes such as a savoury cheesecake with gently pickled beetroot, crunchy hazelnuts and thyme honey, or a moreish side portion of truffled polenta chips. Star dish was spiced gurnard served Vietnamese-style: taken off the bone, mixed with chilli and spices, wrapped in a banana leaf and steamed. NOPI isn’t the greatest bargain in town (a main course of comparatively lacklustre chickpea dumplings with tahini and yoghurt cost a stiff £19). Two-hour table slots are strictly enforced, and service can seem rushed as a consequence. The wine list is as wide-ranging as you’d expect, with some excellent (if pricey) selections.  

Getting a table at a vegan pub isn’t easy, it turns out. I call, I send two desperate emails, I call again. When I finally get through I’m told there are 60 people on the waiting list. I think I hear the waitress snort when I ask for a Friday night booking. Set at what was previously the lovely but often-empty Jackdaw and Star in Homerton, The Spread Eagle is clearly onto something. Opening a 100 percent animal-free pub (even the candles are vegan) during Veganuary is pure genius, especially when it’s from Meriel Armitage, the woman behind cult vegan-Mexican street food star Club Mexicana. The pub has kept its gorgeous central bar, but has been painted a deep, dark blue; lights are strung from the ceiling, and tables are made from worn wood. The vibe was more relaxed than I was expecting and the food came quickly. That table was (almost) worth all the wait. Much has been said about Club Mexicana’s ‘to-fish’: flakey, fleshy, and uncannily like fish, it’s famous in taco form. Here, they’re serving it beer-battered, slathered in tartare sauce and slipped into a soft, brioche bun. I can’t believe something this delicious could be made from bean curd. Another highlight was a spicy jackfruit taco (so meat-like, I swear this jackfruit bled). And the booze? There are 16 taps pouring vegan-friendly beer (sorry, no Guinness just yet), but the stars of this show are the sours: tequila, whisky and amaretto. They use chickpea water instead of egg white to achieve that lovely frothy head.

I love a rebel. Temper gallops up to the ‘cooking on charcoal’ bandwagon, then sets it on fire. Imagine smoked meat and fish served over tacos and flatbreads, with pow-pow Asian and Latin spices. It’s one of those rare, holy-shit-I’ve-not-eaten-like-this-before places. This Soho joint, from Scottish chef Neil Rankin (Smokehouse, Bad Egg) sources top-notch whole carcasses, which are grilled or smoked in slabs – a cow’s entire ribcage, a legless goat (no jokes, please) – ahead of slicing or dicing. The most straightforward dishes are those served over a ‘flatbread’ (more of a basic roti, made with rendered animal fat and puffed up on the grill) in small, affordable portions. Try the impossibly juicy pork, or the full-flavoured smoked goat. To this bread-and-meat-combo, you add up to eight exotic sprinkles and salsas (all homemade). I loved the simplicity of their ‘green sauce’: just lime juice, coriander and garlic. But it’s with the tacos where things really get interesting. They grind the corn on site (of course they do), and because these rough, rustic little discs are hand-pressed, they’re thicker than usual, so you can really taste – and feel – the corn. But the fillings, oh, the fillings. I adored the soy-cured beef. This is a twist on a yukhoe (a Korean ‘steak tartare’), which they make by stripping off the outside of a half-smoked joint of beef to expose the uncooked bit underneath (sort of like using the inside of a medium rare steak), then hand-chopping and mixing wit

There’s a dedicated entrance for the restaurants in Heron Tower, from where a glass lift will whizz you in seconds up to Duck & Waffle on the 40th floor, or its glitzier sibling Sushisamba two floors below. The views are, as you might expect, stunning – if you’re pointed in the right direction and, preferably, sitting at a window table (many of which are for two diners only). Alternatively, linger in the entrance bar, where you can press your nose against the glass and gawp unhindered. Food is an on-trend mix of small plates, raw offerings (oysters, ceviche) and a few main courses (including roast chicken and the namesake duck confit and waffle). Our dishes ranged widely, from the spot-on (three dense pollock balls in creamy lobster sauce) to bonkers (who thought it a good idea to combine beetroot chunks with watery goat’s curd and sticky knobs of honeycomb crisp?). Prices are as sky-high as the setting; it cost £8 for a harissa-tinged herdwick mutton slider that was undoubtedly tasty, but came unadorned and vanished in a mouthful. Desserts of cold rice pudding, and chocolate brownie sundae, were better (and bigger). Service wavered between keen and offhand. Another downer: all that glass, plus marble and wood tables and a low ceiling (with yellow ‘waffle’ design) mean the acoustics are terrible. D&W is open 24/7, so breakfast or late-night snacks are further possibilities.

The downside to this trendy Battersea boozer? It’s impossible to describe to your mates without it sounding like some kind of wanky hipster hangout. They’ve got their own micro-brewery. They distill their own gin. They keep an escape game in the basement. There’s even a retro gaming room upstairs that lets you project ‘Street Fighter 2’ across an entire wall. ‘Jesus Christ!’ your pals will probably exclaim: ‘What’s it called? “The Artisanal Sourdough?”’ It is, however, a brilliantly down-to-earth place to spend a night. It’s a beautifully refurbed Victorian palace that’s full of wall-mounted taxidermy, scuffed wooden floors and pretty vintage tiling. Aside from their own-distilled gin, the 45 gins they offer – alongside a range of more exotic tonics than a Chinese medicine shop – means there’s plenty for spirit hounds to explore. And the games room? We defy you to find a more fun night out in Balham. It’s packed with ping-pong, table football, old arcade games and a totally nutso racing game. Booze and racing? Jeremy Clarkson would approve. Don’t let that put you off, though.

It’s not easy to open a spate of brand-new restaurants and maintain high standards, but chef-patron Jason Atherton has clearly moved on from being the sorcerer’s apprentice (under Gordon Ramsay) to being the sorcerer himself. His Little Social deluxe bistro only opened in March 2013, right opposite his fine dining Pollen Street Social in Mayfair. He followed this up, weeks later, with an even more ambitious restaurant in Soho, by delegating the chef role to his buddy and long-time head chef at Pollen Street Social, Paul Hood. The ground-floor dining room has a mirrored ceiling to create the sensation of space in a low room; upstairs is a smart cocktail bar, called the Blind Pig, which also has a separate entrance. Most of the action is in the dining room, though, with a kitchen brigade who are clearly at the top of their game. Smoked duck ‘ham’, egg and chips is a dish that’s typical of Pollen Street Social’s playfulness. ‘Ham’ is cured and smoked from duck breast on the premises, served with a breadcrumbed duck egg that’s molten in the middle, but with an aroma of truffle oil. Umami – savouriness, the taste that enhances other flavours – was also plentiful in a roast cod main course that uses powdered Japanese kombu seaweed in a glaze, served with a creamy sauce of roasted cockles and just-in-season St George’s mushrooms. Presentation is a strong point of Hood’s dishes, just as they are for his mentor Atherton. A starter of ‘CLT’ – crab meat, a fan of blonde castelfranco rad

The Shard you already know. Hutong, halfway up the Shard, needs more than just a ni hao of introduction. Like the original Hutong in Hong Kong, this is a glitzy, high-end Chinese restaurant with magnificent views and ersatz Old Beijing decor, the same Sichuan and northern Chinese menu, and a clientele comprised mainly of tourists and expats. What’s different about the Hong Kong and London kitchens is the level of spice, with the traditionally fiery cuisine having been toned down a bit for the gweilo (foreigner) palate. Delicate starters of chilled sliced scallops served with pomelo segments or octopus salad with hot and sour sauce are followed by mouthwatering mains such as prawn wontons with ma-la (‘numbing, spicy hot’ sauce), a ‘red lantern’ of softshell crabs or Mongolian-style barbecue rack of lamb. It's not cheap, but then this is the Shard, not Chinatown. Also in the Shard: Hong Kong restaurant group Aqua has taken over the 31st and 33rd floors of the Shard. On the 33rd floor is Hutong, a contemporary Chinese restaurant modelled on the Hong Kong restaurant of the same name. On the 31st floor is Aqua Shard, a British restaurant. A three-storey high atrium bar serves British cocktails with an emphasis on gin and tea. On the 32nd floor is Oblix, run by the people behind Zuma and Roka.

Riverside pubs are among London’s finest features, from the windswept old pirates’ haunts of the East End to the handsome havens that dot the more placid Thames upstream of Chelsea. So it’s always pleasing when someone puts a bit of effort into doing one up properly – and here’s a refurbished boozer (in 2014) that takes its place among the city’s best. 

To call it a ‘new’ pub would be misleading, by quite a few centuries. There’s history dating back to the 1300s, although the current building is mainly postwar (The Beatles ordered lager and limes here in ‘Help’).

But a lot of cash has clearly been splashed on the beautifully panelled dining room, complete with heritage paintjob, well-stuffed leather banquettes and well-stuffed birds. It’s curious how the shooting-lodge look feels less ironic the further west up the Thames you go, as if it’s flowed down from the Cotswolds.

 Out the front on the almost bucolic Strand-on-the Green is a turfed area with deckchairs and a few tables, but the City Barge’s best feature is its backside. A row of tables overlooks the iron Kew Rail Bridge and Oliver’s Island, the ducks and rowers, and the trees of Kew.

 Spring tides mean the Thames floods the path, so keep an eye on the lunar cycle if you don’t want to get Stranded-on-the-Green.

The fish and chips or burgers will please the casual Thames stroller stopping off for a bite of superior gastropub food, but the likes of ‘mille-feuille of white and green asparagus with morel beurre blanc’

Welcome to party island. You’ll have to battle past crowds of frazzled commuters at Waterloo station and climb up a series of brightly coloured staircases to get there. But it’s worth it to reach this buzzy rooftop oasis with swoonsome views of the city’s skyline. It takes its inspiration from the tiny island of Elba, just off the Tuscan coast, where Napoleon Bonaparte was forcibly sent in 1814. He took his horse and a few hundred of his closest pals. Political exile? Apparently he just partied in the Med for 300 days. Enough of that, though. Bar Elba’s historical theme is as loose as they come. With fairy lights, communal benches and a sizeable cocktail list, this rooftop bar is more about the (bona)party than the nineteenth-century military leader. The bar boasts a small wine, beer and cider menu, as well as a selection of bubbles for those with an emperor’s budget. Cocktails are sweet and summery: the frosé, a velvety-smooth, rosé and vermouth-spiked strawberry slushie, was easily the stand-out, while the Aperol Spritz was solid and came served in big sharing jugs for the thirsty. Balmy Italian paradise, Bar Elba is not. But, as the sun sets over Waterloo, with a view of the Shard glinting in the day’s last light, it is a sweet place to be. Of course, there’s no proof that the premise is in any way historically accurate, but ‘liberté, egalité, rosé’? That’s a motto I can get behind.

Sure, Hampstead has its fair share of loveable old hostelries, but The Duke of Hamilton – a 300-year-old pub – has an unusual recent history, too. Back in 2015, its landlord barred some 800 members of community group Hampstead Neighbourhood Forum after their successful campaign to make the pub an Asset of Community Value against his wishes. Those locals are now being welcomed back with open arms, with the pub under new ownership. It seems the new managers – local brothers Ed and Ben Robson, who also run The Clifton in St John’s Wood, and their friend Adam Gostyn – are looking to the pub’s distant history, rather than its recent strife. They play up the historic pub name, with a story about a duelling duke used in fresh decorative elements. But while a renovation also hams up the best of its old features – including an original bar – a dusky green-grey colour scheme gives the room a cold feel, especially when teamed with old wooden furniture, and not a cosy sofa in sight. The new look seems to have dining first in mind, drinking second. Luckily, the food is more than up to standard. We stopped by on a Sunday, when the pub was heaving with families and friends, and I made light work of a bountiful roast. Draught beer comes from the nearby Camden Town Brewery and, more further afield, The Kernel and Four Pure. A range of exotic gins came with tailored tonic pairings, while wines (not all with Hampstead price tags) mostly hail from Europe, a full-bodied albariño working wonders.

Most conversations about Westerns Laundry start like this. ‘You know, it’s the sister restaurant to Primeur’, or ‘it used to be the laundrette for Pentonville prison’. Its much-loved north London sibling hovers between destination restaurant and cosy neighbourhood hangout, the kind of place where the small plates change daily and come chalked up on a board. Westerns Laundry has a similar charm. The menu is, again, scrawled on a blackboard. Scrawled being the operative word: either someone needs to work on their handwriting or I need to get my eyes re-lasered. Still, once a waitress decoded it for me, it was clear that it’s not as overtly ‘meaty’ as at Primeur. Here, land and sea receive equal billing. The overall cooking style is much the same – modish, European-ish – it’s just a little lighter. To kick off: something fishy. Moreish, glossy taramasalata, trowelled on to sourdough toast, with a teetering hen’s egg on top. As soft-boiled as an egg can be before you’d say, ‘This has definitely been cooked, right?’, it had been slit open, its intense-hued yolk – the colour of marigolds – spilling out as if from a mortal wound. It was modest, yet magnificent. Less impressive was a lobster fideuà (a Valencian paella made with pasta rather than rice), its alluring bisque-like flavour not enough to compensate for being overbaked. No matter: everything else was superb. From an unctuous slice of glazed lamb belly with a faint echo of heat, to a humble, peasanty dish of butter beans coo

While evenings are still busy-to-frantic in this two-floored contemporary trattoria, lunchtime finds Trullo calm and the cooking relaxed and assured. A bargain £12 set menu gleans two courses (primi plus either antipasti or dessert) from a daily-changing menu. On our visit, the tempting selection of starters included bright British asparagus with parmesan, and cured trout with wilted spinach and poached egg. Slivers of grilled ox heart were perfectly cooked, with the accompanying roast shallots, beetroot and horseradish almost, but not quite, overwhelming the unexpectedly delicate flavours. Pappardelle with beef shin ragu has been a staple since Trullo’s early days and remains a silky, substantial delight. Seasonal tagliarini with nettles and nutmeg featured an uncooked egg yolk wobbling daintily atop a vast pile of green pasta; when mixed in, it made a wonderfully creamy dish. In opting for the set menu you miss out on the roasts and grills, but as a giant Black Hampshire pork chop and generous cod with cannellini beans and mussels whisked by our table, we weren’t sorry to have missed out on them – after all, where would we have put the succulent loquat and almond tart?  

The buzz is as important as the food at Jacob Kenedy and Victor Hugo’s enduringly popular Soho restaurant. Dine at the bar and you’re in for a fun night, or afternoon – especially if you’re by the window. It’s the perfect perch from which to watch favourite actresses swan into the clamorous and less atmospheric rear dining room. The menu is a slightly confusing mix of small and large plates to share and, amid the noise, it can be unclear what you think you’ve ordered and at what point it might arrive. Staff reassuringly affirm, ‘It’s sooo good,’ to virtually everything you suggest – and sometimes they’re right. We have fond memories of buttery brown shrimp on soft, silky white polenta (the Venetian preference), and a deep-fried mix of calamari, soft-shell crab and lemon. The radish, celeriac, pomegranate and pecorino salad with truffle dressing is a much-imitated Bocca di Lupo signature – far better, we found, than the spartan raw fennel salad. The brioche in our gelati dessert was also too dry to thrill, irrespective of the quality of the own-made ices. To drink, there’s an enticing selection of cocktails and an impressive all-Italian wine list, but it isn’t as fairly priced as the hype suggests.  

I remember the day Som Saa launched their crowd-funding campaign: Twitter nearly melted. This Thai food ‘residency’, previously housed at an east London coffee roastery (and a Peckham pop-up before that), was in the market for a large, permanent site. They’d hoped to raise £550,000, but had to close the books when they hit £700,000. Time taken to smash through their target? Less than three days. Why all the fuss? Because the cooking at Som Saa will blow you away: literally and metaphorically. This is not somewhere you come for a cheeky green curry and a plate of pad thai. It’s food from Thailand’s north-eastern provinces, where nothing gets dumbed down and your tastebuds will be held up at gunpoint. Perhaps the closest comparison is at The Heron, a dingy karaoke-on-the-telly kind of a Paddington pub basement. Som Saa’s chefs aren’t natives – Mark Dobbie is an Aussie; 2009 ‘MasterChef’ finalist Andy Oliver is a Brit – they met training under visionary Thai cook David Thompson, another Aussie, at Nahm – but both share a passion for food that intrigues and excites. Take the deep-fried seabass with Isaan (north-eastern) herbs. Don’t let the fact that it’s served whole put you off. The sides come loose easily, leaving a cartoon fish skeleton that you can discard or take home to sew into an annoying housemate’s curtains. What remains is delicate flesh, crunchy roasted-rice-battered skin; herbs (mint, coriander, Thai basil); mandolin-thin shallots and a puddle of sweet-sour-salt-fir

I’ll admit it. I was underwhelmed by the first Santo Remedio, the one in Shoreditch. Sure, it was vibrant, but it also came with underseasoned food and two-track service (you know, the kind that’s great if you’re friends, family or famous; not so much for the rest of us plebs). Just five months in, it closed. But let’s write that off as a bad, clammy-handed dream. Because the new incarnation, relocated to Borough’s Tooley Street (opposite the Unicorn Theatre), is everything I wanted the original to be – that is, brilliant. Low-lit and inviting, it has a humble, homely feel: patterned cushions on the seats, dark turquoise faux-shutters on the walls, easy-listening Latin grooves in the air. There are no airs and graces: they use the same glasses for their flickering tealights as they do for serving water. Staff make you feel like family. A glass was smashed and they somehow made us feel like it was their fault (it really wasn’t). I loved them. Better yet, the kitchen is on sparkling form. The guac with grasshoppers is on the menu again, so I gave it a second chance. I’m so glad I did. It was still a chunky, creamy, generous portion, but this time with pep and punch in the pot, including minced red onion, fresh coriander, chilli and lime. And salt! It was delicious. The insects perched on top are tiny, immaculately preserved specimens, looking suspiciously like something stolen from a Victorian museum’s pinned insect collection. They’re novelties, really, the Mexican equivalent

It’s an interesting quirk of restaurant reviewing that when describing Iranian food, you’re taught to call it ‘Persian’. Persia is for culture, Iran is for politics. And no one wants to eat their politics. But somehow it feels more appropriate to call the food of this new Covent Garden spot modern Iranian, because this is not your classic kneading-bread-in-the-window kind of a place, but a stylish space serving the metropolitan cooking of Tehran. Walking in, there was vibey hip hop playing in an industrial-chic setting: exposed pipework overhead, darkly gorgeous patterned tiles underfoot, and rose-hued seats for your bottom. It’s all super-sceney. As for the food, there’s plenty you’ll recognise from the rise-and-rise of modern Middle Eastern dining in the capital: pistachio, pomegranate, aubergine, yoghurt. But there are more overtly Persian leanings too: an enthusiasm for saffron and rose water, or that most beloved of Iranian fruits, quince. Also modern: the downsizing of stews and grills, so that every item was essentially a small plate. Yup, we’re in London. And mostly, these were terrific. Two star turns bookended the meal. First, a staggeringly good ‘bazaar’ bread the shape of a flattened baguette: oily, golden, and doused in salt and sesame. And later, an equally sensational twist on a tarte tatin, the pastry filled not with apple, but with meaty chunks of spiced quince, then teamed with fragrant Persian tea ice cream. In between, there were other must-haves, like

Did Sir Christopher Wren adroitly combine the traditional gothic style of church-building with the grace and ambition of Renaissance design, or was his cathedral too decorative for a seat of English ecclesiastical power and a dangerous transgression towards the old faith? There’s no better place to consider the points of debate circling around St Paul’s than this new rooftop terrace bar in Jean Nouvel’s One New Change shopping complex. The name of the bar is meaningless – a vague attempt at Manhattan glamour. The looks are unimportant, as the whole mall is in thrall to its neighbour. Madison seems to exist largely as a viewing platform. But what a view it is. A glass lift takes gawpers from the ground floor, sweeping up parallel with St Pauls’ east elevation. Once in the bar or its generous outdoor space, an unrivalled close-up is offered of the drum, peristyle, upper balustrade, upper drum, dome and lantern of the cathedral – all the godliest bits – with the ball and cross silhouetted perfectly against the sky. You can of course drink in more than the views: cocktails range from standards (mojitos and whatnot) to concoctions with names ripe for being cackled at by hen parties (Pornstar Martini, Hot Bitch Martini). There’s a good range of spirits, and Heineken is offered by the ‘schooner’ (a two-thirds of a pint measure). There are snacks, some of which may cause puzzlement if piled on small plates in Spain, but called tapas here nonetheless: the likes of Welsh rarebit fritte

It can sometimes be hard to know if a restaurant is trying to make food that you will savour and enjoy, or is simply creating dishes to feed the Instagram craze. Taking no chances, Shoreditch’s Clove Club is doing both. The Clove Club’s menu is a masterpiece of contemporary aspirations. With a no-choice list of nine courses, there’s no possibility of a fashion faux pas when ordering. This daily-changing menu is economically worded. It describes a succession of small plates: dishes which are seasonal, that champion British produce, yet are oddly esoteric. It is both accessible and obscurantist. The menu’s ‘Radishes, sesame and gochuchang’ only contained gochuchang – a Korean chilli paste – as a slight pink tinge to a mayonnaise dip. Leeks were poached and slit, then smoked mussels were inserted like peas in a split pod. A spinach purée seeped from the side. The result looked disquieting, but will end up on lots of Pinterest boards. A pattern emerged: dishes seemed destined to be photographed and talked about, possibly more than savoured. The best dishes tended to be the ones that weren’t trying quite so hard to impress. A dish of Ruby Red beef, ramson and potato comprised a generous piece of slow-cooked beef, very tender and moist; the ramson (wild garlic) was barely discernable, but it helped tick the ‘seasonal’ and ‘wild’ boxes. Nine courses are a lot to get through, but the desserts might include another highlight: blood orange segments dried like prunes, then studded into

Please note, since this review was published Hide Above has introduced à la carte options alongside its tasting menu. Time Out Food editors, NOVEMBER 2019.  Above is the more expensive first-floor restaurant of super-chef Ollie Dabbous’s Michelin-starred restaurant-and-bar complex Hide. It’s a tasting menu only here, folks. The look, meanwhile, is pale and airy: the tasteful yin to Hide Ground’s yang. Wrap around glass means views over Piccadilly’s traffic on to the trees of Green Park. The furniture is all smooth curves, the lighting ultra-designer (think oversized upside-down eggshells). The cooking is exceptional. Meticulous and technical while also playful (snacky charcuterie wrapped around giant feathers; a dessert of poached pineapple with a foamy kaffir lime sorbet served inside a pineapple). Petals, oils, things cut into impossibly small pieces. Oh, and a cheese trolley of your dreams, with gleaming cloches and a chutney mixed at the table. They add apple vinegar with a tiny pipette to a wrinkly poached pomme, then crush it all up with a pestle. Sigh. The service, likewise, is solicitous, skilled and serene. Unfortunately, the tasting menu is currently a brutal £115 per person. And that’s just for the food (the wine list is an oenophile’s dream, but no less pricey). The better value option is the terrific set lunch – also with lots of frills and freebies – which clocks in at £48 a head. This is a polite, refined place for foodie pilgrims with (very) deep pockets.

Down a cobbled street banked by estate agents, a petrol station and a wall of graffiti, the approach to Sager + Wilde’s second branch hardly screams fine dining. But that’s the charm of London. The crummy can sit with the flash, so you never know when you’re going to stumble upon a real gem. Paradise Row is one of those: a place where railway arches house a bevy of trendy bar-restaurants, one of which was taken over back in 2014 by Michael Sager (now the sole owner) and Charlotte Wilde. The duo, who spent much of their lives visiting vineyards around the world, put together an intimidatingly vast wine list that, thankfully, the staff know as well as the owners. My barrage of questions about the best white to pair with pork were met confidently – a fresh, pear-hinting Saladini Pilastri Falerio from Marche, Italy, if you’re wondering. Abundant beverages aside, this Sager + Wilde is very much about the food. Having enlisted the talents of Sebastian Myers (formerly of Chiltern Firehouse), the menu comprises British dishes with European flourishes. The grilled cut of Iberico pork was a particular highlight; teamed with black trompettes and hispi cabbage, each mouthful popped with salty-sour flavourings, levelled off beautifully by the sweetness of the red apple jus. Despite the industrial setting, the vibe is inviting. Neatly lined-up wooden tables are lit by candlelight and a few low-hanging bulbs. Service was impeccable – our waitress happily (and patiently) explained the sizing