Jimi Famurewa is one of London’s most recognisable restaurant critics, having dutifully toured the city in search of the new, the exciting, the brilliant and the bold. Though his finds have not always impressed. Here, we round up some of his best lines from past reviews.
On reviewing in general: “You very much get the restaurant era that you are given. I was not there in the early-Seventies pomp of Le Gavroche. I cannot tell you what it was like to guzzle sole mousseline at Harvey’s under the sexy intensity of Marco’s gaze. But if you want to know about that period of the 2010s when a strange mania for single-item menus gripped the dining firmament, if you want to know about the dawn of Burger & Lobster and the passable, Nando’s for-the-coalition-age experience of The Chicken Shop, then, friends, I am absolutely your man.” Read more
On Kebhouze: “Late-night kebab shops glow bright in the hearts of most right-thinking Londoners. They are beacons amid the wreckage of a night out — emotional A&Es. Even when they are not very good, they deal in a certain honesty, soul and simplicity. Or at least they normally do. At Kebhouze, they have taken one look at all this romance, tradition and culturally prideful common sense and basically hurled a stick of dynamite at it.” Read more
On being fed by Salt Bae: “He gave me a nod, began the hip-thrust, slicing schtick, reached over to the bowl held by his weary-looking official salt bearer, craned his arm and rained pale flakes down onto our relatively modest £120 Wagyu striploin (and, I couldn’t help but notice, onto my leg). Then he speared a lobe of meat, dangled it into Mark’s mouth and was suddenly off to another table, figuratively shimmying out of the window after what had felt like an intensely suggestive, culinary one-night stand.” Read more
On Studio Voltaire, in Clapham: “Hamdy and his team have done the unthinkable: brought cool, swagger and weapons-grade restaurant sexiness to an area that even locals are prone to decry as a culinary tundra.” Read more
On Al Kahf: “Where much of the city’s restaurant landscape is defined by pomp and guest appeasement — by alluring decor and resting pedestals for weary handbags — attempting to eat here can, at times, feel like negotiating an obstacle course of hazards and discouragements… once you have navigated all these potential deterrents, what you are left with is the prize of something truly remarkable. Which is to say, a hidden grotto of home-style East African cooking that spikes endorphins, costs next to nothing and is only intensified by the lightly confounding, clandestine nature of its surrounding context.” Read more
On Tollington’s, a chippy-meets-pintxo bar: “At a time when lots of restaurants are dealing in stylistic karaoke, Tollington’s is a wholly original, radically inexpensive and thrillingly crafted remix. A Chas and Dave knees-up with added castanets, if you will.” Read more
On Facing Heaven: “My ‘MSG margarita’ hadn’t been properly strained and the “mala rim” of numbing spices, smeared messily up its side, looked less like a playful garnish so much as the sign of a place where the dishwasher was on the blink.” Read more
On Bacchanalia: “Bacchanalia is, as its on-the-nose name suggests, opulent silliness incarnate; a project that sails close to the blazing sun of its own ridiculousness and yet somehow lives to tell the tale. It may, fittingly enough, leave you feeling a little grubby. But, by the beard of Zeus, it is anything but boring.” Read more
