Grace Dent

1 month ago | theguardian.com | Grace Dent

Off to Notting Hill to the secret, exclusive dining room, pub and hidden speakeasy that is the Fat Badger. When it opened earlier this year, the place was invite-only, but has since relaxed its door policy to allow anyone who fancies the first-floor bar for ale, martinis and toasties or the set menu by a former River Cafe chef on the top floor.

1 month ago | theguardian.com | Grace Dent

The demise of London’s Chinatown has long been predicted, what with recent rent and rate rises, and diners’ changing tastes. Yet on a spring lunchtime last week, business on Wardour Street was booming, with alfresco noodle-slurping, long queues and endless selfie sessions all in full swing.

1 month ago | theguardian.com | Grace Dent

As a name, One Club Row sounds a bit like the title of a 1990s lads’ mag, but it’s actually a purposely shabby-chic room above a pub in Shoreditch that serves martinis, oysters and schnitzels in a heady, tipsy, twinkly atmosphere that itself may well remind you of the 1990s. Or at least it will if you were “on the scene” back then. These days, the 90s are synonymous with louche, raffish semi-pandemonium, mainly because today feels so saintly in comparison.

2 months ago | theguardian.com | Grace Dent

One of the main challenges of writing a weekly restaurant column is finding new ways (and at least 11 times a year) to describe the experience of eating Mediterranean small plates in a room painted in Little Greene’s Silent White. Other food – and, indeed, paint colours – are available, but in recent years, whenever you cast an eye over some hot, hip new place, you need to brace yourself for polenta, coco beans, galettes and neutral furnishing.

2 months ago | theguardian.com | Grace Dent

Tatar Bunar, a new Ukrainian restaurant in Shoreditch, east London, is styled as quaintly and charmingly rustic: wooden-fronted, with sage curtains, glass-panelled doors and stacks of higgledy-piggledy plates artfully arranged on shelves. Then there’s the food: sprats, potato latkes, , borscht and an abundance of wild mushrooms, and all of it influenced by chef Alex Cooper’s home town of Tatarbunary in southern Ukraine.