Dylan Jones On His Favourite Restaurants In London

Where restaurants are concerned, I am loyal – extremely so. I like to have two or three regulars where I go pretty much all the time; places I feel comfortable, places where I know I can get a table, and places run by people I actually like. In the past I’ve been lucky enough to count Le Caprice, The Ivy, Scott’s and The Wolseley as my homes-from-home, and these days my go-tos are just as salubrious.

What I’m not such a great fan of is any new restaurant that everyone is suddenly talking about. Because invariably they prove to be a disappointment. My idea of a great new restaurant launch is as follows: some fancy new place opens in Spitalfields called, let’s say, BananaBread. It’s reviewed enthusiastically by all the big papers and the important critics, and for a few months becomes impossible to get into. Everywhere you go, people seem to be talking about it. Have you been? Didn’t you love it? Didn’t you love the maître d’? As for me? Well, I don’t go. Soon, people forget about it, stop talking about it, and about nine months later it closes down for good as the trendies have moved on to somewhere else equally annoying. Which means it had absolutely zero effect on my life, and I can carry on going to the restaurants I was going to before BananaBread opened.

And the restaurants I love right now are as follows: 1) The Park. While I’m a big fan of Jeremy King’s new hit, Simpsons in the Strand (two great restaurants, two great bars and a gargantuan event space), it’s his Bayswater place I love the most. It’s local (to me, anyway, as I live in W2); it’s both formal and informal, meaning you never have to worry about what you’re wearing, and serves food and drink all day long. It also looks beautiful and reminds me of somewhere which probably appeared in The Serial, Cyra McFadden’s satire about Marin County in the 1970s. I christened The Park an ocean liner diner, and I stick by that.

Soho Mews House

If I’m not wanting to eat locally, then I walk into town and go to 2) Soho Mews House, in Mayfair, which is Soho House’s grown-up members’ club, which caters for those who have belonged to the brand for twenty years or more. I like it because, like the old Boston sitcom Cheers, everyone knows your name; the food is good; there are no annoying teenagers with laptops and headphones. Oh, and it’s right, smack bang in the middle of town.

To contradict myself, my third choice is going to be a restaurant which only opened a few months ago, but which has already become a Chelsea staple, 3) Martino’s, run by the wonderful Martin Kuczmarski, who also runs the equally fab Mayfair restaurant, The Dover. Martino’s is on the site of the old Boss shop in Sloane Square, which was on the site of the old WH Smith, which was once the largest newsagents in Europe. In the 1970s, this is where I spent a lot of my time, as I lived on Albert Bridge Road and seemed to spend most of my life walking up and down the King’s Road looking at clothes I couldn’t yet afford. Martino’s is not just a great Italian restaurant – it is extremely swanky – but it also has good acoustics. It’s large, but Martin hasn’t been too greedy and put dozens and dozens of tables on the floor, which for people like me – with terrible tinnitus – means I can actually hear what people are saying when they’re sitting opposite me.

Dinner at Martino’s

Everyone needs a good local restaurant, and while I consider The Park to be my local, there is a relatively recent place in Connaught Village which I also like, principally because I like the people who work there. 4) Connaught Kitchen is relatively large, and has a bustling atmosphere, and yet it feels chic, and relatively upmarket without at all being sniffy. I go for the Greek salad and the wine list and I go a lot.

Dylan Jones’ new book, Table Hopping

I’ve just finished editing my new book, which is a history of the modern London restaurant, from the mighty Langan’s right up to the present day. The first thing people say to me when I tell them this is, ‘I bet you had a lot of nice meals!’ Well, I actually had none. Didn’t want any. I interviewed over 100 people, many of whom were chefs and restaurateurs, so I made a decision not to indulge myself too much. Which also meant I got to spend a lot more time in the four restaurants in London I actually like.

Table Hopping: The Secret History of London Restaurants: From Langan’s Brasserie to the Wolseley is published by Little, Brown on October 1. littlebrown.co.uk