Cafe Kitty, Soho

For someone who spends an unhealthy amount of time thinking about and reading about restaurants, I consider it a personal failing that I didn't connect Cafe Kitty (Soho) with Kitty Fisher's (Mayfair) until it came up in conversation about halfway through dinner. In my defence, the two venues do not share an immediately obvious aesthetic - the Mayfair joint is low-key, bohemian, candlelit and spread over two floors of a Georgian townhouse with many dark and intriguing nooks and crannies. Cafe Kitty looks and feels like what it is - a smart, modern bistro that doubles up as a pre- and post- theatre drinking spot for the Underbelly Boulevard crowd, and with a tiny handful of notable exceptions (RIP The Other Naughty Piglet), theatre bars are not usually destination eating venues.

But even as the setting is distinctly un-Mayfair, the menu at Cafe Kitty shares one very important feature with its sister restaurant - you want to order and eat everything on it. And so, more or less, we did, starting with some extremely well put-together cocktails - above is a 'Picante', involving tequila, lime, agave and chilli. "Don't eat the chilli", I was told, a faintly patronising bit of advice I thought until they explained that a recent customer with more tequila in him than sense had decided to dispatch the whole garnish in one gulp. And from what I can gather (perhaps mercifully, they didn't go into too much detail), it didn't end well.

Most of the savoury courses at Cafe Kitty come under the heading 'To be shared...' although some are easier shared than others. They'd helpfully supplied a knife with the Welsh rarebit but I still think this would have worked better as a starter for one. How do you divide a 'Very Welsh' rarebit between 6 people? Caerphilly.

Devilled eggs is one of those strange things that for some reason the whole of North America thinks us Brits eat before every meal but in fact you rarely see on a menu over here. Which is a shame because done well, like these, they're very nice indeed - a silky smooth mayonnaise spiked with just enough chilli and paprika to provide a bit of a kick.

Cafe Kitty have a bit of a habit of covering dishes in giant clouds of shaved parmesan, and though I have nothing against the practice, it does mean the resulting photos are a little on the ambiguous side. So you'll have to take my word for it that this is a Caesar salad (very good, with lots of lovely crunchy bits and oily anchovies providing a good hit of umami)...

...and under here somewhere is a steak tartare, equally fun to eat thanks to good quality beef and the fantastic, not-seen-nearly-enough-in-my-opinion shoestring fries.

It seems churlish to complain that the Caramelised Roscoff Onion Tarte Tatin would have been nicer with some good buttery puff pastry but vegans don't often get much to call their own on a London restaurant menu even in 2024 and on its own terms I suppose it succeeded.

Buffalo chicken bites with blue cheese dressing felt a bit like an interloper from a different and (let's face it) slightly less ambitious menu but was nonetheless a bit of a crowd pleaser, with a good sharp buffalo sauce and salty, creamy cheese element. The nuggets could have probably done with being a bit crisper - the sauce had started to send them a bit soggy by the time they got to us - but this was a minor quibble.

Much more impressive was this club sandwich. Many, many horrible crimes have been committed in the name of a club sandwich on room service menus all over the globe, but the Cafe Kitty version served as a timely reminder that actually, the combination of grilled chicken, mayonnaise and crisp, wonderfully salty streaky bacon, done properly, is hard to beat. And it would have been fantastic even without the addition of more dangerously addictive shoestring fries on top.

But Cafe Kitty's skill with potato isn't limited to shoestring fries. This is a little bowl of "crispy potatoes" - essentially their version of the Quality Chop House confit spuds that have been doing the rounds in London restaurants over recent years, and just like the OG they were deliriously lovely. Crisp on the outside, smooth and soft within and flecked with salt and thyme they deserve to be an absolute must-order. We must-ordered a second portion.

The savoury courses reached their conclusion with a large coal-roasted bass, perfectly cooked to achieve a nice crisp salty skin and with firm, fresh flesh inside. Everyone on the table loved this - including those who wouldn't ordinarily order a whole roast fish as their main - and despite the very reasonable price tag of £35, all 6 of us had a good amount each.

The value of Cafe Kitty, in fact, is something that deserves a special mention. With enough to drink - cocktails all round as well as a few by-the-glass wines - two desserts to share (the boozy Knickerbocker Glory was the star, although there was nothing wrong with strawberries and cream either) and a side salad, the total including service came to £60pp, the kind of sum you could easily arrive at in a regional chain pub these days never mind somewhere in the centre of Soho offering food as accomplished as this. The narrative on eating out in London has for so long been about soaring costs and lowered standards that when somewhere like this comes along, serving better than decent food at reasonable prices, it really deserves some attention.

But I don't think Cafe Kitty will be short of such attention. Already a buzzy spot barely 6 months after it opened, it's only going to get more popular as word spreads about the attractive, airy space serving supremely comforting comfort foods above the sleazy Soho streets. Gather your friends, order as much of the menu as you can, and put your evening in their hands. You will enjoy it, I promise. They're good at this.

8/10

OMA, Borough Market

Dave Carter, a big friendly giant of a man with a completely impenetrable Barbadian accent, began his London restaurant journey at Smokestak, the hugely influential East London BBQ joint. Smokestak, together with a tiny handful of other brave pioneers around the same time (Lockhart, Shotgun, Pitt Cue, etc.), introduced the British public to the idea that BBQ didn't have to involve soggy overcooked ribs soaked in commodity sauce, or feeble bone-splintered chicken wings, or leathery bland mystery-meat "brisket", but in fact with a bit of care in sourcing and intelligence in applying smoking and live fire, could show itself to be a noble and mature cooking tradition.

Carter, I'm sure, could have made a very nice living for himself opening up a string of Smokestaks across the capital and beyond but it was somewhat of a surprise to see his name next attached to Manteca, one of my best meals of 2022 and, with its authentic, modern Italian aesthetic about as different from Smokestak - but just as brilliant - as you could possibly imagine.

So it really shouldn't be any surprise that OMA, his latest passion project, attempting to do for modern Greek food what Smokestak did for BBQ and Manteca did for Italian, is anything less than extraordinary, but it's fair to say that Greek cuisine is one of the most regularly abused and under-appreciated in the capital, and for anywhere calling itself Greek and being anything better than OK has the potential to be a complete game-changer. And let me tell you, OMA is a complete game-changer.

We started with two types of bread, both baked in-house, a wildfarmed laffa (flatbread), light and warm and with just enough of a char from the grill, and açma verde, a bagel-shaped soft bread that has wild garlic butter folded into its fluffy insides. Both were brilliant, the laffa in particular so good that as soon as we'd taken one bite we ordered another.

And bread is a critical component of the OMA experience because there are so many lovely thing to dip it into, such as this bright-white, silky-smooth tarama studded with pickled cucumber and crunchy little nuggets of 'carob rusk' which added a - for want of a better word - soily (in a good way) counterpoint to the fish. There are plenty of thrusting modern restaurants that can knock up a decent tarama these days - this was up with the best of them.

Babaghanoush, smoky and rich, came under a layer of zingy tahini spread and topped with greaseless, brittle Jerusalem artichoke crisps and was another riot of flavour and texture. Again, you will have had babaghanoush before, you will have had tahini before, you possibly would have even tried jerusalem artichoke crisps before, but rarely have they all worked together as well as this.

Oyster, a Carlingford Lough variety, came dressed in a chilli and tomato sauce that worked like a kind of posh Tabasco, highlighting the oyster without masking the flavour. I could have eaten a lot of these but in the interests of trying as much of the menu as possible I just had one. So I'll just have to go back and have some more in the future.

In a similar vein, the tomato and citrus dressing on the chalkstream trout crudo was intelligently balanced to make the most of the main ingredient, although I should warn that those slices of raw jalapeño aren't messing about - unless you want them as a pleasant background note in the dressing I recommend you don't mindlessly decide to chomp down on one whole unless you want to spend the next ten minutes gasping for water. I'll know better next time.

Hand-dived scallop with chilli oil butter was a giant, plump thing with - glory of glories - its roe attached, so you really did get quite a lot of seafood for your £11. Beautifully cooked to a dark crust and topped with a beguiling dried chilli dressing it was, again, about the nicest thing you can imagine happening to a scallop.

Even ostensibly throwaway sides such as this fennel salad had plenty to recommend it, containing a wide variety of lovely summery things like oranges and grapefruit, shot through with fresh mint. All the dishes at OMA are poised, posed and pretty, full of life and colour.

We only tried one of the 'skewer' category but it was an absolute belter - neat little pieces of squid, beautifully charred from the grill and coated with za'atar herb oil, a clear indication that the other skewers - including asparagus, lamb, octopus and an eye-catching ex-dairy txuleton, would have been equally worth an order. So yes, I suppose I'll just have to go back and make sure.

My favourite of the desserts was a superb olive oil ice cream, with a heady grassy flavour and so smooth and light it was like eating cold whipped cream. But a chocolate cremoso was also very good indeed, topped with salted caramelised nuts.

Service had that irresistible energy and sparkle of a brand new operation that knows it's onto a good thing, and despite being a full house (this is something they - and you - will have to get used to - it's already one of the hottest tickets in town, booked up for weeks) never left us wanting for anything. And it's a very attractive place to enjoy it all in too, with decently-spaced tables and a terrace overlooking the market below. If it sounds like they're doing everything right, well, I suspect they pretty much are.

The bill came to just under £50 a head - incredible value although I suspect we could have easily polished off at least one more skewer, or even the wild prawns cooked in seafood butter which I am still kicking myself we didn't order, so I think a more realistic spend is around £70-£80. Still good for London, and still nigh-on amazing for the quality of food on offer.

Just as we were wrapping up our evening at OMA, chatting idly about Google reviews and the happy challenges of being a restaurant in heavy demand, our very pleasant South African server asked us a favour. It seems in recent days the restaurant's entry on Google had been landed with a number of negative reviews seemingly from angry Greeks (although really, who knows) accusing the place of betraying Greek food and not being "authentic". Apparently they had the same at Manteca from angry "Italians" too.

So we were politely asked, if we had a moment, if we could readdress the balance by posting about our evening on Google. Well, I don't do Google reviews - life's too short - but I can hopefully do them one better on this blog, by reporting honestly and truthfully that whatever you call the food at OMA - although I don't see what's wrong with Modern Greek - that there is hardly any better way to spend money on dinner in the capital. And I hope they're happy with that.

10/10

64 Goodge Street, Fitzrovia

The first thing we were given to eat at 64 Goodge Street was a little plate of truffle-cream gougères topped with shaved Comté. These turned out to be important for two reasons - firstly, they weren't on the menu and as unannounced bonus extra dishes go you could hardly do more to tap right into my personal pleasure points. Secondly, they were absolutely, extraordinarily wonderful.

And these things are important because the way you react to this (spoiler alert) hopelessly fawning review rather depends on whether you think my critical faculties have been impaired by a group of extremely talented restaurateurs knowing their audience inside-out, or whether you think that despite the near-impossibility of my not enjoying a new venture from the Quality Chop House guys, 64 Goodge Street really is, objectively, as blindingly good as I say. And I very much hope to convince you of the latter.

So yes, those gougères. Warm and silky smooth inside, with a supremely light crust, they packed a heady truffle punch and almost dissolved in the mouth they were so delicately put together. I am able to enjoy even slightly cackhandedly constructed gougères - I mean, what's not to like about truffle, cheese and pastry - but when they're made with care they're great, and when they're this good something very special indeed is going on.

Crudités - baby carrots, radishes, chicory - came with a luxurious Roquefort dip topped with caramelised walnuts. In all fairness, there's only so mind-blowing a plate of raw salad can be, but the Roquefort dip was lovely, and it all looked very pretty and summery.

From here on, almost everything that came out of the kitchen at 64 Goodge Street was not just good but close-your-eyes-and-can't-believe-it's-so good. Chicken liver parfait, as good as chicken liver parfait has ever been in this country or any other, came squiggled (neatly) onto the top of dainty brioche fingers, with some slices of cherry (no doubt treated to some extremely clever cheffy technique) providing sharpness and colour.

Kintyre smoked salmon - which I assume is from Kintyre smokehouse up in Campbeltown but happy to be corrected if I'm wrong - was excellent both on its own and draped over warm blinis and topped with crème fraîche and roe. 64 Goodge Street can do fireworks and fancy techniques, but are also otherwise confident enough in their own skin to occasionally sit back and let the ingredients do the talking.

The fact we didn't order these smoked cod's roe tartines and they appeared as a little blogger bonus extra makes me eternally grateful that I was able to have my terrible ordering blunder so easily rectified, but was left seriously questioning my skills in reading a menu. Of course a smoked cod's roe dish from the team behind Quality Chop House would be good - how on earth did I not spot that? - and these were world class little nibbles, a layer of tarama on a delicate stick of pastry, topped with pickled radish and onion.

Snail, bacon and garlic is never going to be anything less than a winning combination, and treated to the 64 Goodge Street's skill with a deep-fat fryer they became little crisp "bonbons" that exploded with meaty, buttery goodness.

Then, lamb sweetbreads, gorgeous tender bitesize things in a light crisp breadcrumb coating spritzed with some kind of vinegar, then topped with blobs of mint & tarragon purée. Another marriage of brilliant ingredients and dazzling technique in an accessible, deliriously enjoyable little package.

Oh, and so far these were just the "snacks". The menu proper - at least my own - began with this pretty little fillet of sea bass with wild fennel and pastis. The fish itself was - needless to say - beautifully cooked with a delicate crisp skin, and the sauce, creamy and light and heady with aniseed, was a perfect match. But dotted around the place were these little elements of - well I'm not sure, they were sharp and pickled and citrussy, perhaps gooseberry or some other seasonal fruit, and really lifted the dish to something else.

On the other starters, duck sausage and crab with asparagus, I can't report firsthand as they disappeared before I could beg for a taste, but the general consensus from my fellow diners appears to be that they were sophisticated, generous of flavour and extremely enjoyable. And given everything else we were served, I'm quite happy to take them at their word.

My main was a porc - sorry, pork - chop, portioned into even, chunky slices each containing a morsel of tender meat and melty fat. It was all covered in a charcutière sauce, a glossy, meaty affair studded with cute little buttery girolles, spinach and herbs. Perfectly seasoned, masterfully cooked and with one of those fancy French sauces that probably take a lifetime to perfect, it was everything you (or, more importantly, I) would ever need from a pork dish.

I got to try a bit of the turbot, which although perfectly decent perhaps lacked a little bit of the power and dazzle of the pork. This could easily be a personal taste thing though, or even a victim of contrasts - perhaps I should have tried the fish before the pork.

And I didn't get to try the hogget at all, but I heard nothing but satisfied noises coming from those who did. Looks nice too, doesn't it?

All the desserts were at least worth ordering, but I got the impression the Paris-Brest (traditional, in a classic way - none of your weird fruit flavours added to this, thank-you-very-much) and the strawberry tart (fantastic balance of pastry and fruit in a stunning red gelée) were very slightly more accomplished than my own apricot tarte tatin which needed a lot more sugar to counteract the rather sour fruit element. But that said, I still enjoyed it, and the almond ice cream was superb.

Overall though, we had a blast at 64 Goodge Street, and left all agreeing it was one of the best meals any of us had had all year. Which is just as well, because the bill, with 2 bottles of wine between 5, came to £137pp - certainly at the higher end of what you might expect to pay for modern French food in London, even food as sophisticated and intelligently constructed as this.

But it still felt like value, and I'd pay it again on any given future special occasion, because all said and done, when French food is done this well, there's very little that can beat it. Certainly you can pay a lot more for a lot less - especially (whisper it) in France. 64 Goodge Street, like Quality Chop House before it, is a place so good that it makes you that bit more happy (and, let's face it, smug) to live in London. And there's no higher compliment than that.

9/10