The Hart, Marylebone

In an ideal world this would be a post about the 'proper' upstairs restaurant at the Hart, a serious (though not by all accounts stuffy) dining room serving seasonal British food in the heart of Marylebone village. Unfortunately, due to a combination of my own lack of organisation and the wild popularity of the Hart (despite it only being open a couple of months), the 'proper' dining room was full, and so on this particular Saturday lunchtime we settled for a series of the Hart bar 'snacks' served to our cozy, Christmassy corner table downstairs.

I say 'snacks' in inverted commas because the Hart team (also behind the brilliant Pelican in Notting Hill) do not do anything so straightforward as bar snacks as you might know them elsewhere. At first glance they may look like familiar stuff - pork scratchings, cheese straws, pork pie - but they're all made in-house in the same kitchen that's churning out the full A La Carte upstairs, and are level above what you might expect for the pretty reasonable prices they're charging.

These are the cheese straws for example - warm (probably not baked to order but at least nicely reheated) and crispy and gooey and topped with shaved gruyere (I think) - three giant pieces for £6.

Radishes were crisp and full of life and although I perhaps would have preferred the usual salt dip than the mayo-mustard (actually, ideally both), they were still extremely easy to enjoy. I wonder if one day we'll ever see the giant tennis ball-sized radishes in this country that I fell in love with in Seville a couple of years back? I'm keeping my eyes open.

The pork pie did seem like quite good value on paper (well, chalkboard) until you realise you're only served half of one. But it was a very good pie, with just enough salty, savoury jelly to season without being too much, and came with a dollop each of powerful English mustard and chutney.

The Hart make their own pork scratchings too (of course) and these were distressingly addictive - just the right amount of crunch without being tooth-shattering, enough soft fat without being sickly, and again seasoned perfectly. These disappeared almost as far as anything else on the table.

Sardines on toast came in the form of a kind of smooth whipped paté, evenly spread on excellent toasted sourdough. A fairly straightforward thing I suppose, but fish on toast in its many forms is one of my favourite things in the entire world (see also L'Escala anchovies on tomato-garlic bread) so I devoured this enthusiastically.

Next, chicken liver, a wonderfully cheffy silky-smooth version which spread like butter and tasted many times more rich and indulgent than its price point (£11) suggested. Toast was super thin and crunchy and melba-like and it also came with some very nice pickled pear (I think it was) chutney. No reusing of house chutneys in different dishes at the Hart, thank you very much.

And then finally the main event - something the Americans might call a loose meat sandwich but which the Hart call a 'mince roll'. A giant mound of gooey, salty, beefy rubble spilled out of and soaked through a toasted brioche bun, making the eating of it a rather messy but ultimately hugely rewarding process. When Quality Chop started doing their mince on toast back in the day I had optimistically assumed it would be the start of a new mince revolution, but I think it still feels to most people like too low-rent an addition to a modern British menu. Well, I love it, and I love the Hart mince rolls.

This wasn't an invite, but I was very kindly treated to this lunch and didn't see a bill. But with a couple of pints each (the beer list is good - we went for Deya Steady Rolling Man) and a mince roll each (I was hardly about to share, now, was I) I imagine the total would have come to around £140, so about £47 each - perfectly reasonable for a good couple of hours entertainment on a Saturday lunchtime. And the upstairs menu seems equally good value - starters £17 and under, no mains over £28 (not even the steak) - it's no wonder the place is popular.

The cliché always used to be that there were no good gastropubs in London and that you always had to travel out into the countryside for this kind of food without paying a fortune. Of course, it was never quite that black and white - the Drapers Arms has been a little slice of the countryside in Islington for many years, ditto the Red Lion and Sun, and more recently the Baring (Islington), the Audley and the Barley Mow (both Mayfair) have added themselves to the kind of places you can drop in for a pint of something interesting and a carefully crafted menu of modern British snacks without having to remortgage your house. And so welcome to Marylebone, then, the Hart - may London's gastropub tradition long keep evolving and maturing.

8/10

Lita, Marylebone

The food at Lita is very nice. I'm saying that up front because I worry that the list of things I didn't like about the place threatens to overwhelm the main message which should be that, despite everything, the food is very nice. And maybe if you went to Lita yourself, and you got a better table and didn't mind the prices and could put up with the general feeling that your presence was an inconvenience then you might have had a better time than we did. Maybe. I mean, I tried to enjoy myself, I really did.

The problems began almost immediately. Now, I appreciate that not every table in every restaurant can be the best - not everywhere is Bob Bob Ricard. But for somewhere charging as much as it does (and more on that later) Lita has some genuinely terrible places to sit, not least the two four-headers jammed into the middle of the room, one of which we were deposited at, where in a normal eating position the back of my chair was literally touching a stranger's on the table behind.

Next, the size of the tables themselves, which were pretty short of space just with four sets of wine glasses and side plates. Once the food started arriving - and it's all sharing plates, and "food comes out when it's ready" which I'm sure is very convenient for them - the dishes often threatened to tip over onto the floor. Staff made the most of it and we generally felt looked after but if ever a place needed to be a bit more realistic about the space they have, it's here.

Anyway, the food. Bread was decent, with a good amount of whipped butter just the right texture. Good bread in restaurants has become so common now I'm in danger of taking it for granted, so it's probably always worth pointing out when somewhere gets it right.

Whether by luck or design, a number of the dishes at Lita come divided by four, which was very handy for trying as many things as possible if there's four of you. These are Sicilian prawns, sweet and plump, served with olives and pickled onions, a combination that looked a bit odd on paper but in practice worked remarkably well.

Bluefin tuna came sliced thinly and dressed with red peppers and capers, and was another great example of Lita using pickled or 'condiment' ingredients alongside a premium main product. You really couldn't fault the attitude or the approach of the kitchen, but after these two small dishes plus bread we'd already spent the best part of £80.

I don't want this to turn into yet another rant about central London pricing - we've all been there before, many times - but even in 2025 the pricing at Lita stands out from the crowd, and not in a good way. And while you might expect to pay a premium for bluefin tuna or red prawns, smoked sardines cost about £7 a tin, even for pretty good ones, so how Lita arrived at the price of £19 for 3 fillets is a bit of a mystery. I mean, they were lovely - firm and meaty and full of flavour - but come on, guys. They're sardines not caviar.

And so the theme continued. Langoustine were cooked brilliantly - and the garlic butter sauce they left behind was soaked up beautifully by the house bread - but even the River Cafe would think twice about charging £52 for three tiny beasties with barely a teaspoonful of meat in each. Perhaps we were just unlucky on our visit and they'd been shafted by their supplier with small langos but if so, charge less for them, is my advice.

The thing is though, because the food was so good (and OK because this was a work lunch, we weren't paying), we were enjoying ourselves. Strozzapreti with duck ragu mightily impressed the Italian on our table, and there's no greater compliment than that (he's had some choice words to say about other high-profile Italian restaurants in the capital). Rich and glossy and packed full of slow-cooked goodness, this really was a fine plate of pasta.

I am always going to order cull yaw if I see it on the menu, even if, at £85, it significantly bumped up the bill. I've banged on about this stuff quite a bit in the past so I won't repeat myself - read up on the backstory here - but it's quite the most wonderful stuff, the flavour like a cross between lamb and Galician beef with big, bold chunks of funky fat. With it, a selection of grilled vegetables that soaked up one of those glossy reduced sauces that the top places do so well. One day I should teach myself to make one of those sauces, I'd save myself a fortune.

Next to the cull yaw I'm afraid the pork chop was a bit of a nonentity, but maybe there were just too many bits and pieces that came with it - a rare moment of overcomplication from the Lita kitchen. More of an issue, though, was the fact that it was listed on the menu at £29 for 300g and appeared on the bill as 'pork large' at a whacking £84. Annoyingly we didn't notice that until we'd left, so to this day I have no idea what's going on there. It was certainly not very 'large' - I think we had two finger-sized slices each and it had gone - it certainly looked like 300g on the plate.

Of the desserts I can only report on my rhum baba, which was literally perfect in every way - better, in fact, than the version served at Alain Ducasse at the Dorchester and he's supposed to be famous for them. Others looked the part but we didn't share, so you'll have to draw your own conclusions. I certainly didn't hear any complaints from the table.

Not about the desserts, anyway. Or indeed the vast majority of the food, which with just one notable exception was considered, crafted and beautifully presented. But a few days after our lunch and once I'd had time to think about it all, it's hard to shake the impression that the attitude of Lita is that they were doing you a favour, allowing you to sit in that terrible table and charging you £84 for a small pork chop - not to mention a wine list that starts at £70 - rather than appreciating our custom very much. I note this morning that Michelin have decided to honour them with a star, so none of my whinging will matter to them one bit, but I'm afraid at £170 per person (they added on 15% service charge - well of course they did) I just expect a bit more luxury. Maybe I'm just getting old.

Anyway, no harm done, in the end, apart from to our company expense account. There's some real talent in the kitchen at Lita and they've certainly found an audience - perhaps they wouldn't have to use those awful central tables if the rest weren't already taken, so good for them. But in a town where another popular ingredient-forward bistro a couple of miles away in Soho can do a lunch menu for £29 that includes langoustine, ember-grilled flank steak and duck-fat chips, and a sticky-toffee pudding, plus endless free portions of the best bread in town, well you'll excuse me if I'm not rushing back to Lita. If you want me, I'll be in the Devonshire.

6/10

Bossa, Marylebone

I don't know whether it's by design or sheer accident that Bossa, a brand new Brazilian restaurant from chef Alberto Landgraf, has landed right next door to the Brazilian embassy. But it felt very appropriate walking under a giant Brazilian flag up to the front steps of Bossa - who knows, perhaps Vere St is on its way to becoming a new Little Brazil.

Inside, it's smart and comfortable in the modern London style, with a good mix of booths and views of the open kitchen. I can probably be accused of taking interior design for granted - it's not really my area of expertise - but there are clearly a lot of very good restaurant designers working in the city at the moment.

Now, hands up - I've never really tried high-end Brazilian food before. The country itself regularly features on the top fine dining lists and there are 16 Michelin stars in Rio alone, but so far London hasn't been host to too many in the category, the 2-Michelin starred Da Terra being the one notable exception to the rule. There used to be a Japanese-Brazilian fusion place called Sushinho on the Kings Road but I was never too tempted to try it and then it closed. Maybe it was brilliant (there's a long tradition of that style of food, called Nikkei, in South America) but something tells me it wasn't.

Anyway, events began with a very nicely made Caipirinha and Mojito, and some good focaccia and olive oil. The bar is very well appointed at Bossa and staffed by clearly very capable mixerinhos (as I imagine they're called back in Brazil) so I thoroughly recommend making use of their services.

Roasted bone marrow was nice in of itself, with a good flavour and plenty of the good stuff, but I had a bit of an issue with the strange texture of the tapioca pancake things it came with - not a million miles away from like eating cork coasters. But I am nothing if not keen to try new things, and this was certainly different. The cashew dip was good too.

Beef tartare was very nicely seasoned, pickled and spiced and contained a very generous shaving of truffle. We liked the little bits of crunch too - toasted oats perhaps although I couldn't swear to that. It's not a very purist attitude but I always think beef tartare benefits from an element of crunch.

Pork belly was a huge lump of nicely cooked meat with a thick, bubbly rind (as you might expect for £38, but more on the value side of things later) with a satisfying sauce they called 'feijoada broth'. Feijoada is a black bean stew so presumably this was black beans cooked in pork stock, or something like that. Either way, was very nice.

The second main was, we were told, their house speciality. Seafood Moqueca is a stew apparently originating in Bahia and was very decent, with plenty of big chunks of meat and a nice tomato/coconut flavour to the sauce. Whether you think it's worth paying £49 for a fairly small bowl of seafood stew and rice, well, you'll have to decide on that yourself.

OK so, we may as well pause to address the elephant in the room - Bossa is not a cheap place. And I appreciate all of the things that make running a restaurant in London 2023 so ruinously expensive, from energy costs to staff to the price of ingredients, which have all shot up and continue to reach skyward in the last year or so. But even so, at its best Bossa is cooking hearty, unelaborate but enjoyable food - rich stews and big slabs of pork and the like - and to be charging almost exactly for 3 courses what Alex Dilling asks at the Cafe Royal for his food of exquisite beauty and two Michelin star service experience, well it all feels a bit unearned. Alberto Landgraf may have two stars back home, but there's a certain arrogance in assuming you can get away with £90/head for 3 courses in a brand new place.

Anyway, their restaurant, their pricing structure. Of the two desserts, a lineup of sorbets - the first two made from exotic fruits I have no chance of remembering, but the last being strawberry and rhubarb - were the easiest to enjoy, summery and well made.

But I'm afraid I didn't enjoy the other dessert at all - tonka bean flan was a bit like chawanmushi, and that bit of it was fine, but for some reason it was paired with a "jam" made from something called cupuaçu. Apparently it's the national fruit of Brazil, and I hope I don't cause an international incident by saying this, but it was so ludicrously sour it was beyond inedible. Perhaps they'd forgot to put the sugar in that day, or maybe I'm just particularly sensitive to cupuaçu, but I really struggled with this.

Anyway, the cupuaçu dessert was a rare low point of an otherwise decent - if aggressively priced - meal. As this was an invite we didn't see a bill, but with the cocktails and a glass of wine each I work out it would have been about £145 per person with service added. Quite punchy, in other words. Bossa is a good restaurant, but for that price it really needs to be great. And although none of the dishes apart from the açai thing were actively bad, nothing was really two-Michelin-star level either. Perhaps that's not what they're aiming for, but I'm also afraid that if you put 'two-Michelin-star chef' in your press release, that's what people are going to expect. Certainly at those prices.

I hope they take the above in the constructive spirit it's intended. It's hard being less than positive about anywhere in the current climate, but then they aren't a charity, they're a high-end restaurant in the centre of London and all I can do is compare it to other places at that price point in the local area and it just doesn't quite stand up. Still, there's every room to improve, and refine their offering somewhat, and always hope for the future. For now though, I'd wait.

6/10

I was invited to Bossa and didn't see a bill

The Italian Greyhound, Marylebone

In a handsome old building in Marylebone, life in post-covid Britain appears to be creeping back to normal. Staff scoot about in smart uniforms, the tinkle of fine glassware fills the air, and a relieved and deeply grateful public (which would include me) are settling back into a routine that God Knows I hope won't hit a brick wall again.

I had a hugely enjoyable evening at the Italian Greyhound in Marylebone - it's early days for the new kitchen, nobody running a hospitality venue is having a particularly relaxing time of it at the moment, and the quality of the ingredients and technique on display was well worth shouting about. And if everything arrived with at least two or three - sometimes more - bits and pieces too many, which tended to distract from what would otherwise been an even more impressive display of Italian classics, well, who cares. I'm still out and about and eating.

Having said all that, I actually thought the cocktails on offer had been modified from the classics for the better - putting oregano in a Negroni is a very clever move, the flavour of the herb combining incredibly well with the other bitters and aromatics. Similarly a 'Smoked Negroni' worked incredibly well, not too bonfire-y and nicely presented. Pretty big measures on both, too.

I can see the way their mind was working, providing a medley of summer herbs and veg alongside a burrata, but I think you probably needed either asparagus or broad beans, not both, and perhaps the asparagus would have been nicer just presented as whole stalks rather than chopped up into bits and doused in oil and red pepper. But you know what, these were still good ingredients cooked well, and it all got polished off.

Smoked yellowfin tuna was a revelation - I believe they smoke it themselves, and the salty, earthy flavour of the fish itself combined with a luxurious texture was like a cross between the finest carpaccio and top-end smoked salmon. The caperberries were lovely too actually although I think it would have fared just as well without the cress or celery. Definitely on the must-order list though, no question.

Octopus, tender and nicely seasoned, came with daintily-peeled cherry tomatoes and celery leaves, and I do appreciate the effort to use every bit of the vegetables across a variety of dishes. This star of this dish though wasn't the celery, or the octopus, but some cubes of potato which were just about the sweetest and softest little bombs of flavour I can remember any potato ever being. I was so impressed, I asked what they were and was told a special name which I have since completely forgotten. Sorry. I bet if you asked them they'd tell you, though.

Onto the pasta dishes, and I imagine you know the drill by now. The pasta was fantastic, just the right side of al-dente and a joy to eat. Similarly the slow-cooked lamb (shoulder I think) was full of flavour and not a hint of chewiness, it just dissolved in the mouth. And there they could have stopped and had an absolute winner, except instead they decided to cover it all with breadcrumbs and herbs which, you know, weren't horrible just a bit distracting and pointless.

Even more "busy" was ricotta ravioli which as well as containing more beautifully done pasta, all silky and buttery and with a fantastic bite, had a ratatouille tipped on top of it, courgettes and tomatoes and pine nuts. Without the ratatouille this would have been one of the great London ravioli dishes - in fact, look it was one of the great London ravioli dishes, if you ignored the ratatouille.

Last of the savouries was a superbly cooked fillet of sea bream, skin nice and crisp and flesh inside just-so, a work of art by itself that didn't at all need the "aquapezzo" (lit. crazy water) broth underneath. I am not such an extremist that I would recommend they serve the fish literally on a plate with nothing else, but the aquapezzo was rather bland and the textures rather confused the experience of eating the fish.

Ironically - and wonderfully - when it comes to desserts the Italian Greyhound have decided simplest is best. Cherry and almond tart was a fine old thing, boasting a nice crunch and with a soft sugary filling of plenty of cherries. And a raspberry & prosecco sorbet just let its ingredients absolutely sing - no weird dressing, no confusion of flavours, just two blobs of pure summer loveliness. Where was this judiciousness in the savoury courses?

It sounds like I've been moaning a lot, and I have I suppose, but sometimes it's just easier to cover everything (in the correct spirit in which it is intended) than to attempt to sugar-coat the sorbet. As you can see from the score below, I had a nice time at the Italian Greyhound, and I do recommended it, I just wish they'd have a bit more confidence in their incredibly good pasta and raw ingredients and give them a bit more space to shine in their own right. On the other hand, you could go and decide all the dishes are perfect and you like it just how it is. All opinions are available.

7/10

I was invited to the Italian Greyhound and didn't see a bill. Imagine with wine/cocktails you should expect to pay about £50/head, which is about right for somewhere this smart in Marylebone. EDIT: It's occurred to me that the first paragraph way way too harsh considering everything that followed, so I've tweaked it a bit.

Liu Xiaomian at the Jackalope, Marylebone

I may as well come clean - restaurant He and today's review subject weren't picked completely out of the blue. True, they were handy from the office and reasonably priced, but they were also, crucially, well-reviewed by Marina O'Loughlin in the Times, someone who has a fairly unblemished track record of recommending excellent places going all the way back to when she was the Metro's in-house critic. These days, thanks to a paywall and my own lifelong boycott of any Murdoch product (I'm from Liverpool) I only get to read the first couple of paragraphs, but it's usually enough to get the gist of the place. So thank you Marina for another lovely noodley lunch, and may one day your later paragraphs be revealed in full.

Much like He, Liu Xiomian offer a short, attractive menu of regional Chinese specialist dishes, in this case Chongqing, a sprawling province to the south east of Sichuan with whose cuisine it shares much in common - think hot, numbing soups studded with Sichuan peppercorns, and a fondness for hot pot. Your choices at their residence at the Jackalope in Marylebone (a lovely place to pub even if you're not eating) are wheat noodles, or glass noodles with either minced pork or "vegan" (not sure and don't really care), and a separate option of 10 x "numbing pork wonton". I ordered the pork noodles and wonton (spice level "hot"), because why the hell not, and was soon, via a Shake Shack style remote buzzer ordering system, rewarded with two very colourful bowls of Chonqingese loveliness.

I started with the wontons, as they felt like more of a starter. With an almost ethereally-light, silky texture they spoke of a kitchen right on the top of its dumpling game, and were so easy to eat they practically jumped down the gullet. The flavours were balanced and rewarding - a complex broth of chilli oil and spices, enough heat to clear the sinuses but enough pork for it to still be the main ingredient. Yes, they were very good, and I polished them all off in about 30 seconds.

Similarly the wheat noodles, clearly well made and with a good bounce, came topped with a generous amount of minced pork and more of that rich, hot red oily broth. Extra texture in the form of some toasted peanuts floating about amongst it all, a really nice little touch. Perhaps I didn't quite need two full bowls to myself for lunch, but I'm equally sure that just one wouldn't have been enough, so overall I think I played it quite well.

So yes, at £20 (plus £3 for a Sprite) for a noodle lunch this isn't perhaps quite as good value as He, or indeed other noodle joints in Chinatown, and as such loses a point. But even if this isn't an every day lunch spend, it's still exciting, fresh, handmade Chinese regional food, the kind of which you're unlikely to find in many (if any) other places in town, at least until they open their second branch at the Holborn Whippet, even more dangerously close to the office. Pray for me.

There we go, then, another friendly, exciting specialist Asian operation, authentic and honestly realised. God knows there's enough to be terrified of in Brexit Britain, but for as long as London remains open and welcoming to talented food people from all corners of the globe, we may as well make the most of it. I certainly bloody will.

8/10