Mamapen at the Sun and 13 Cantons, Soho

There are a few pubs in London notable for their hosting of fledgling food businesses, giving talented but cash-strapped teams a chance to test their market and their cooking skills without the risk and stress of opening a completely brand new restaurant. Over the years, you will have possibly read about a few of them on this blog - The Prince Arthur in Dalston, the Spurstowe Arms in London Fields and the Newman Arms all played the part of startup host at some point in time, and some still do.

But perhaps nowhere is as influential on the London food network as the Sun and 13 Cantons in Soho. Not all their partnerships have been successful (to say the least) but then that's not always the point - when you open your doors to anyone with an idea untested in the marketplace, not everything will find an audience. But if you can say your humble city centre pub was responsible for the success of the brilliant Darjeeling Express, well, that's a record to be proud of.

I am not going to make any predictions about what lies in the Sun and 13's latest resident Mamapen's future, because I am notoriously bad at predictions (I thought Café Kitty would be a surefire success; it closed last week after barely a year open). But I can tell you that the appealing, reasonably priced food served by their enthusiastic and energetic team is doing almost everything right, and they deserve to go far.

Dinner kicked off with a plate of pickles, tasting as vibrant and multicoloured as they looked. My particular favourite was the almost fluorescent yellow daikon, which had a fantastic punchy pongy-ness.

Next, mushroom skewers, nice firm shiitake in a gently sweet glaze, licked with smoke from the coals. At least, I assume they're cooking over live fire because it certainly tastes like it. They came with a little clear chilli-spiked dip, as did the...

...pork neck skewers, equally deftly cooked with a nice dark crust from the grill. If this is Cambodian cuisine, I'm a fan.

Prawn crackers were notable not just for a remarkably addictive "sour soup seasoning" but because they came with a fantastic "burnt chilli and pineapple" dip which actually went with most of the menu not just the crackers.

Sorry if it seems like I'm rushing through these descriptions a bit but although most of the dishes felt like a lot of work had gone into them (thanks to nice balancing of fat and salt and sharp and sweet), not knowing the first thing about Cambodian cuisine I'm a bit of a loss to explain in more detail why. Our favourite of the snacks was pan-fried tofu knots, soft and meaty-tasting (despite being vegan), soaked in rich green chilli and with fried shallots for extra crunch. Cambodia seems like a very nice place to be vegan.

"Panko pork toast" was more elevated comfort food - accessible and even vaguely familiar to London tastes but still interesting, topped with a fried egg and homemade XO sauce. Oh it was good pork too, greaseless and with plenty of flavour.

We were finally defeated by this generous portion of chicken but fortunately Mamapen happily provide takeaway boxes. And so I'm happy to report that even the next day this was a fine piece of poultry, moist right to the bone thanks I think to a clever marinade and with another sweet, sharp and citrussy glaze. Charred broccoli were also beautifully crunchy and soft in all the right places, with an extra note of exotic toasted sesame.

It's probably right to assume that Mamapen, despite their announced title of "London's Only Cambodian Restaurant", aren't trying to be the last word in the cuisine. It doesn't feel like some deeply authentic slice of Phnom Penh transplanted into the UK - it is after all pub food served in an English pub, albeit food of a style and flavour the capital largely hasn't seen before.

But is in that very process of balancing authenticity and commercial success that so often produces extraordinary results. Stick rigidly to authenticity and you won't be more than a sideshow for a handful of ex-pats. Give the people what you think they want and you're no better than any other chain restaurant in the country. But if you can be accessible and interesting, using Cambodian cuisine as inspiration while still serving a menu full of dishes people want to eat in a country 6,000 miles away (and believe me, you'll want to eat all of it), then you end up with something quite special. I said I don't make predictions, and so I won't. But let's just say if "Chef's Table: Mamapen" appeared on my TV listings in a couple of years' time, I wouldn't be in the least bit surprised.

9/10

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I was invited to Mamapen and didn't see a bill, but a realistic amount per head including a drink or two is probably about £40.

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

The Devonshire, Soho

There's no avoiding the fact, and there's no point dancing around it. There's no need for lengthy, thoughtful or measured arguments; no sense in analysing the details. There needs to be no slow and steady building of a case, culminating in a grand and weighty conclusion. The truth is so stark and self-evident that I may as well just state it up front and let you get on with your day: The Devonshire in Soho is probably the best pub in London, and possibly even the country.

That there's a new gastropub worth visiting in London, a city which - with one or two notable exceptions - has hitherto hardly been blessed with many classics in the genre - is remarkable in itself. Most places find proximity to local suppliers and lower Not London rents to be crucial factors in their success, which is why despite the capital being home to 9 million people it is rather unrepresented on the reliable Top 50 list, with only one spot in the top 10. The Devonshire would unquestionably be one of the best gastropubs in the country if it had popped up in Devon or Lancashire or rural Kent. That it exists steps away from Piccadilly Circus, in a corner of Soho so soaked with potential customers it could (like every other pub in Soho) have offered frozen Brakes Brothers pub favourites from a laminated menu jauntily decorated with the British flag and still made a killing, is a miracle. Well, it's the first miracle.

The reason it's not just good but brilliant, comes from an almost superheroic attention to detail. Let's start at the "pub" section downstairs, which is cozy and comfortable in the finest pub tradition, with snugs behind the bar and what they're calling a "family room" at the back where Irish musicians gather on Tuesdays. There's a wide - and interesting - selection of beers including craft stars Verdant and Deya, but there's also the small matter of - their words - the Best Pint Of Guinness In London, a claim which, based on my own observations, very much seems backed up by the evidence. And yes, it's already crazily popular, but - at least in my experience - bar staff are so practiced and efficient that you won't have to wait more than a couple of minutes to get served. Miracle number two.

Miracle number three is at work in the restaurant upstairs. Ashley Palmer-Watts - yes that one - works an open grill at one end of the room. Beside him, members of his kitchen brigade gingerly feed lumps of oak wood into a terrifying flame-belching furnace, in a manner that suggests if they didn't, the whole range would roar its disapproval, tear itself away from the wall and roam the streets of Soho looking for sustenance. According to Palmer-Watts, cooking on embers is difficult - "which is probably why almost nobody does it", but is worth it because of the extra flavour the oak embers impart on the food.

And my lord, what food. Perhaps you might expect a man who once held three Michelin stars to know his way around a kitchen, but I can tell you from experience that there's no guarantee the skills required in a world famous fine dining restaurant translate comfortably to a pub grill. But Palmer-Watts looks not just comfortable here but positively beaming, happily chatting with customers, bouncing from grill to grill with enthusiasm and grace. And as I'm about to explain, every bit of that enthusiasm and personality sings from every dish on the menu at the Devonshire.

We start, though, with bread. And if you thought that the Devonshire might go down a tried-and-trusted route like sourdough, then you haven't been paying attention. What we have here is glazed brioche, baked throughout the day so that every batch is warm out of the oven. My favourite San Diego steakhouse Cowboy Star is famous for their brioch-y buns, and I've spoken at length in the past about how good they are. These are better. They are salty on the outside, golden brown and glowing, and inside so stretchy and moreish you want to eat another one (spread with the room-temperature butter) as soon as you've finished your first. This is a world class bread course.

So the rest of the food? Obviously, it's all brilliant too. Scallops were giant sweet things, seared to a lovely crust, dressed in an interesting bacon-vinegar dressing which sounds a bit basic while I type it out but was actually probably the best scallop dish I've had ever. You'll be hearing me say "best ever" a lot in this post. I'm sorry if it gets boring.

I'm going to talk about the rest of the food before I come back to the langoustines - I'll explain why later. This is a stunningly good, dry-aged chunk of fillet steak, with a fantastic salty crust on the outside but inside tender and medium-rare and wonderful. It was presented with a peppercorn sauce which at first seemed quite thin, but then you realise it's supposed to be used as a kind of vinaigrette, sparingly and carefully, like a kind of French chimichurri. Used in small amounts it complimented the beef perfectly. And I never want normal peppercorn sauce again.

Duck fat chips were crunchy and addictive, definitely worth an order. I mean, of course they are.

And this giant Iberico chop, timed to just pink in the middle, which melted in the mouth like porky heaven. These pigs are apparently from Ledbury chef Brett Graham's own farm, because I suppose if you have a chance to source your pork from one of the most celebrated chefs in the country, you just do. Nothing - and I do mean nothing - on the menu at the Devonshire is anything less than exceptional, a supreme achievement in sourcing, managing and cooking that shows every stage of the process and every person involved knows exactly what they're doing.

But the langoustine. Oh, the langoustine. I'm sure if I tell you that these are the best langoustine I've ever had in my life you have an inclination to think I'm overstating. I know I'm prone to exaggeration, I realise that, it's an issue. But I have eaten langoustine all over the UK and the world, and you have to believe me, these are the best langoustine I've ever had in my life. They start with the very best product - Loch Fyne beasties, sweet and fresh. That would be enough already. But then they glaze them with an emulsion that's made of "langoustine butter, prawn stock, cream mayonnaise, lemon juice and white soy" (again thank you Hotdinners) which somehow ends up tasting many, many times greater than the sum of its parts. Salty, buttery, spritzed with citrus, brushed with wood smoke, these were langoustine designed to ruin all other langoustine. Breathtakingly good.

We ended with a chocolate mousse with boozy cherries, and a Grand Marnier soufflé, theatrically flambéed tableside. With a scoop of homemade vanilla ice cream dropped on top, it was both a dramatic and fitting end to a wonderful meal, but also a nod to the fine dining traditions where the head chef made his name. And you haven't lived until you've greedily scooped up the very last morsels of pudding soaked in orange brandy.

It's barely a couple of weeks since the Devonshire opened its doors, and yet it already feels settled and timeless, a grand old lady of London pubs. Partly that is of course because it occupies a handsome and lovingly restored Victorian building, although how much of the interior is original and how much a very tasteful recreation and reinvention perhaps only the owners will know. Those owners, by the way, are Oisin Rogers (formerly of the Guinea Grill) and Charlie Carroll (of the amazing Flatiron chain) and they have a bit of experience in running fantastic pubs and serving fantastic food respectively, so there was a large part of me expecting to be impressed. But just how stunning every aspect of the Devonshire is completely blindsided me. I've been boring everyone I met since with stories of that bread, and those langoustine, and, well, everything else about the place. I'm booked to go back in a couple of weeks, and if it hadn't been completely booked solid I would have gone earlier.

I'll stop now; if you aren't convinced by this point the Devonshire is worth your time, then you never will be. Every moment spent thinking and talking about the place is time better spent going there and enjoying it, and I suggest you do exactly that as soon as you can. If you want to know just how good a pub and kitchen can be, look no further than the corner of Denman and Sherwood streets, and this towering achievement in hospitality. I'll see you there.

10/10

I was invited to the Devonshire for the above meal, but I have been back a couple of times on my own dollar and am booked for another visit in a couple of weeks' time. Apologies for the terrible photos, my main camera has died and the above - aside from the exterior, which I grabbed from the Devonshire website - were taken with my iPhone.

Chungdam, Soho

I generally try and avoid focusing too much on service on invited meals. If the front of house know you're in to review they usually try and be that extra bit more attentive, and occasionally too much so, and either way it's rarely an accurate reflection of the average punter's experience.

However, rules are made to be broken, and I feel duty bound to mention the service at Chungdam because it's amongst the most pleasant, knowledgable and mesmerisingly efficient I've come across in a long while. The experience of eating there is like having your own personal chef and confidant, who patiently explains how everything works, offers advice on what goes best with what, and occasionally personally handles the cooking of certain items with a grace and skill that's so utterly transfixing it's like watching close up magic done with beef instead of playing cards.

Now, great service is rarely, if ever, enough of a reason to visit a restaurant by itself, but fortunately Chungdam is serving rather nice food and drink as well, to boot. Our welcome drink was a soju cocktail served in a very pretty frozen coupe glass, wide and shallow, that felt very special even if it did require both hands to safely pick it up. Or maybe that's just clumsy old me.

As you might hope and expect, house pickles were the first foodstuffs to arrive. Sesame beansprouts, house kimchi and pickled radish all had things to recommend them, but we particularly liked the radish which had that irresistable funk of daikon matched with a gentle sweetness.

Japchae arrived alongside the pickles, a dish of glass noodles with beef and wood-ear mushrooms, amongst various other stir-fried veg. Perfectly decent, although looking back at the end of the meal, almost painfully overstuffed with various different cuts of beef and noodles, I think this is one dish we probably could have done without. Would make a nice lunch by itself though.

The real excitement began with the arrival of the first beef dish, raw tartare with slices of pear. The sesame oil made a good dressing but what lifted this dish was the addition of at least an entire bulb (I may be exaggerating... but not by much) of raw garlic, which made the thing burn in the mouth like you wouldn't believe. I'm a huge fan of too-much-garlic at the best of times, but this was unreal. I can only apologise to anyone who shared my carriage on the southbound Northern Line later in the evening.

Alongside that arrived seafood pancake - very good, particularly the citrussy dipping sauce it came with - but eyeing up the five more courses to come on the menu and given how generous the portions had been so far we just tried a square or two each. Bear in mind though, this was a press menu, so you should be able to construct yourself something a bit more reasonable on your own visit.

I was very excited at the prospect of the grade 1++ Korean beef listed on the menu, and it was certainly very nicely marbled and had a good flavour, but in conversation with our waiter it turns out it's not actually Korean, or officially graded 1++ (think Japanese Wagyu grading but for Korean cows) but the closest approximation they could find from UK butchers. Which is absolutely fine and wouldn't have been a problem if they weren't listing 1++ steak on the menu, which I'm fairly sure is against some trading standards laws. So they might want to look at that and put it in inverted commas or something in the future. Anyway we greedily demolished strips of this ultra tender steak with chilli, sesame oil, salt and a number of other interesting dips and sauces, some of which I have no chance of remembering how to describe or spell.

Brisket and short ribs both came sliced ultra-thin, thus needing no more than a few seconds on the tabletop grill before they could be eagerly gobbled down. The brisket came with some nigiry-style pieces of lovely vinegary rice which made a great foil for the beef, but in almost all cases with the beef I preferred it either with the soy dressing or the sesame salt, both of which brought out the flavours in interesting and addictive ways.

A final savoury course of cold noodle soup with kimchi, which even through the fog of beef-addled defeat I could tell was a very intelligent and nicely constructed thing. I half thought about asking for some to take home with me but didn't trust myself not to spill it on the tube, so in the end ate as much as I could - which unfortunately wasn't much - and left the rest. I hope they'll forgive me.

Matcha roll cake was more easy to devour - different stomach for dessert and all that - and was excellent, made by their sister Japanese cafe Shibuya. I've heard good things about Shibuya actually, particularly their ice cream, so I'm determined to make a separate visit there one day.

Meanwhile, I shall continue to digest my meal at Chungdam and recommend wholeheartedly it to whoever asks. True, they've dropped a point or two for mislabelling the beef and for not having proper charcoal tabletop grills like they do at the more authentic New Malden joints, but the former can be easily fixed, and the latter is very likely to be a limitation of their Soho license, who knows. Either way, all that is made up for in spades by carefully presented food of vigour and imagination, and service that you'd cross oceans to enjoy. I imagine it's very, very difficult to have a bad time at Chungdam.

8/10

I was invited to Chungdam and didn't see a bill. I think if you had a normal amount of food and a drink or two you might expect to pay something like £60/head.