Articles by Daphne Colthard
We restaurant reviewers like nothing more than home cooking. Sounds blasé but true. Last Friday Ollie decided to cook the meal. He is not an imaginative cook but prepares simple dishes well, so he went to the wet fish section of Waitrose and bought 2 crabs and some salmon. The salmon he cooked in [...]
Aqua Shard
There is a saying amongst restaurant reviewers “never trust a place with a great view.” There is another “never accept an invitation from an owner”. I went against both yesterday when I visited Aqua Shard as guest of one of the two owners, Richard Ward. But first the view. [...]
Greens
Greens at Duke Street, St. James, was a great favourite of mine in the eighties. Owned by Simon Parker Bowles, it epitomised the elegant English fish restaurant but was always more fun than Wiltons or Bentleys. It certainly was not cheap but I took the view that I would pay a subscription if it [...]
Tozi
I detect something exciting and innovative in the restaurant scene. For the last 20 years it has been driven by celebrity chefs. Now new vistas are opening. I already praised, as have many, Mr Wong for its combination of street food and haute cuisine, in offering Hong Kong Chinese in a new [...]
The Regency, Brighton
As I was meeting Nancy Bright Thompson for lunch, I was mindful of her comment that travel writers are not that interested in writing about the cheap end of the market. It’s much the same with us restaurant critics, who are rather too easily seduced by sophisticated PR and the celebrity cult. [...]
Happy New Year from Daphne Colthard
Traditionally I make the New Year’s Eve dinner and Ollie supplies the wines. Whilst the boys got wasted we had 4 couples over. The Gevrey Chambertin did generate a certain stirring in Daffers but Ollie was snoring away whilst I reprised a wild New Years Eve with another Oliver, Oliver [...]
A la Colthard/the Guinea Grill
For many years we have been having the Danida lunch – Davina, Nicola and Daffers at the Guinea Grill . Nic, an interior designer who has gone into refurbishing houses in the Fulham area, is maddeningly well preserved. Years running her own ad agency and the consequent liquid lunching that [...]
A la Colthard/ The Gay Hussar
I was so sad to see the Gay Hussar is about to go. It was a landmark restaurant patronised by the Left specialising in Hungarian food. The Standard food critic in the weekend supplement described the food as ” atrocious “which I thought a bit harsh. She based her withering critique on a [...]
A la Colthard – Halepi
I do have a problem with Greek gastronomy and that is differentiating between the levels of cuisine. Off hand I cannot think of an expensive Greek restaurant where the cooking is a superior to the taverna. I sometimes wonder too if the Greek food we eat here is Cypriot and out there a Greek cuisine [...]
A La Colthard – Mr A Wong
A friend of mine, a Portuguese patissier of international renown , whose custardos are to die for accompanied and recommended me to this restaurant as a Chinese that redefined and pushed back the frontiers. It’s in Wilton Road next to Gran Paradiso as beloved by Tory politicians as Gay Hussar [...]