As its name suggests, The Wright Brothers Soho Oyster House is a seafood restaurant with a predominant emphasis on oysters. Located on Kingly Street in the Carnaby area, it is well located for the shopping pleasures of the independent boutiques and designer brand shops of this famous area. Carnaby also plays home to a string of other tasty restaurants such as Dehesa and Cinnamon Soho, and the boutique cake shop Choccywoccydoodah.

Wrights Brothers Soho Oyster House is arranged over three floors with a lovely inviting atmosphere. There is an open plan ‘raw bar’ on the ground floor that looks over Kingly Court, banquette seating upstairs and a communal dining area on the lower ground floor.

There is a decent range of oysters at The Wright Brothers, all of which are sourced from the Duchy Oyster Farm on the Helford River in Cornwall and other farms in the British Isles and France. Colchester oysters (3 for £6.50) were fat and intensely irony. In contrast, the Lindisfarne oysters from Northumberland (3 for £6) were milky and creamy. Wrights Brothers also offer a choice of oysters with toppings, one of which was caviar and crème fraiche (3 for £12). Using the Carlingford oysters from County Louth, Ireland, the combination of the topping with the creaminess of the Carlingfords proved a good match. All the oysters were delicious.

Oysters & prawns

Oysters & caviar

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La Portes Indes is an Indian restaurant with a difference. Opened in 1996, the food contains a Gallic twist and is inspired by the dishes of Pondicherry, an area in India that was formerly a French colony. Being a Franco-Indian restaurant it is possible to find dishes such as cassoulet de fruits de mer on the menu.

The restaurant occupies an incredibly grand space. Set over two floors, La Portes Indes has a look of the exotic to it, with a 40ft Mogul waterfall, a marble staircase and antique Indian artifacts.

The menu is plentiful with options. We started with a tandoori seared foie gras (£13.00) which was rich and unctuous. It was pleasantly sweetened by a fig and ginger chutney that matched the foie gras well.

Foie gras

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Cassis

Note: Since this blog post, Chefs Massimiliano Blasone and Marco Calenzo have both left Cassis Bistro.

You may recall that I went to Apsleys last year, an Italian one star Michelin restaurant in the Lanesborough Hotel on Hyde Park Corner. Executive and sous chefs Massimiliano Blasone and Marco Calenzo have since left Apsleys and now head up the kitchen at Cassis Bistro in South Kensington, therefore adding a star quality to the existing bistro menu. The restaurant is lovely, exuding a feeling of comfort and warmth with the use of earthy tones. There are also some high-end pieces of art on show, including original pieces by Matisse.

Cassis is part of the Marlon Abela Restaurant Corporation (MARC) which also owns a number of Michelin restaurants in both the UK and the US, including The Greenhouse and Umu, and the starred Italian A Voce in New York City. With Massimiliano and Marco on board, the idea is to launch an A Voce restaurant here in London sometime next year with the hope of it obtaining a star. Cassis is therefore the springboard for that project.

I recently dined at Cassis at the invitation of the restaurant. My meal was a specially created tasting menu that included some of the dishes from the à la carte menu. Davide Buongiorno, previously the Head Sommelier at Apsleys, has also made the move to Cassis and he expertly paired wines for us to go with our meal.

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Many people will know Murano by Angela Hartnett from when it use to be part of the Gordon Ramsay family. But in 2010 Hartnett and Ramsay decided to part ways. Other than the change in ownership, little else seems to have changed. The restaurant is still Italian and it still holds a one Michelin star. Angela Hartnett might be the front woman for Murano, but it is really Diego Cardoso who is it’s head chef. I tried the set lunch menu at Murano about three and a half years ago and thought it to be great value. The portion sizes of each of the courses were pretty generous, and before we even began our meal we were plied with a plentiful platter of hams. All this for an incredible price of £25 for three courses.

Consequently I have always wanted to visit Murano for lunch again, and that I did recently. Conceptually, little has changed about the restaurant, not even the interior, but the set lunch menu portions have shrunk somewhat. The coppa di parma and salami platter we got at the beginning of the meal was much smaller than that dished up during my previous visit and we had to share this between four. Nevertheless the platter was very tasty.

Ham and salami platter

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Umu is a one Michelin-starred Japanese restaurant located in Mayfair. The executive chef behind Umu is Yoshinori Ishii, a chef with 20 years of high end cooking experience. Chef Ishii previously spent nine years at Japan’s three Michelin-starred Kyoto Kitcho. This was followed by postings as the head chef at the Japanese Embassies in both Geneva and New York and as the omakase chef at New York’s Morimoto Restaurant.

Umu offers an à la carte selection of cold and hot starters, traditional and modern sushi as well as main courses. But Umu is perhaps best known for offering a kaiseki menu, a multi-course Japanese dinner which draws on traditional Japanese cooking skills and techniques to harmoniously balance the taste, texture, colour and presentation of the best seasonal ingredients that are used in the preparation of this meal. As well as the standard kaiseki menu, Umu also has a sushi kaiseki menu option, both priced at £100.

We eased into our meal with an amuse bouche of turnip with an unusual pairing of espoisse cheese, wasabi and a balsamic vinegar reduction which proved to be very tasty. It was an unusual concept but it worked surprisingly well.

Turnip with espoisse cheese

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Peruvian food was a barely known cuisine in London until a few months ago. All that seemed to change when half-British, half-Peruvian Martin Morales opened Ceviche back in March, a Peruvian restaurant and pisco bar on Frith Street in the heart of Soho. The restaurant is named after the famous Peruvian dish (ceviche) of raw seafood marinated in lime. Since its arrival, Ceviche has created the kind of hype that seems to suggest Peruvian food is the latest craze in old London town. In the months ahead, Morales plans to open two more Peruvian restaurants, and with that, Peruvian food seems here to stay. About time I say. Craze or no craze, as far as international cities go, London is behind the times. New Yorkers have long embraced Peruvian (fusion) food and their association with it goes way back, even before I was living in NYC more than 10 years ago.

The food at Ceviche isn’t just about ceviche. The menu is split into lots of different sections with nibbles, grills, salads and classic favourites (but sadly no guinea pig). From the nibbles, we tried the deep-fried tequeños fritters (£3.75) filled with a delicious mix of chicken and chilli. I adored the accompanying ají amarillo chilli dipping sauce which was moderately spicy and moderately sweet. However the fritter effect would have worked better had the wrapping been a little less soggy. A little bit crispier and the tequeños would have been spot-on.

Tequeños

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Obikà is a concept mozzarella bar and restaurant that champions a variety of mozzarella di bufala hand picked from Italian producers accredited with a Protected Designation of Origin status. Obikà offers three different varieties of mozzarella, all of which are imported from Italy three times a week – classica, affumicata (naturally smoked) and burrata (deliciously creamy). Beyond the mozzarella, the menu at Obikà also includes cured meats, antipasti, pastas, pizzas and main courses.

Obikà has a number of restaurants in various locations around the world with two restaurants in the UK. One is located in Canary Wharf, and the second is the recently opened branch in South Kensington which I visited on its preview launch evening last week.

I wasn’t entirely enamoured by the design of the Obikà website, but don’t let this fool you as it did me for I soon realised that it did not entirely recreate the elegant and contemporary appeal of the restaurant. The décor was created by Italian architects Labics and fashioned on a style inspired by the sushi bars in Japan. The result is something funky and sleek with floor-to-ceiling windows that created a good sense of light and space.

The preview evening allowed us to try a range of dishes from the à la carte menu in the guise of a tasting menu, albeit with smaller portions. The prices indicated below are those listed on the à la carte menu. First up was a taste teaser of a shot of chilled organic tomato soup (£9.50). With a hint of aromatic basil running through it, this soup was decidedly delicious and fresh.

Tomato soup

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Lobster

The concept at Burger and Lobster is really simple. Serve a limited range of dishes which ensures freshness and speedy delivery. Overheads can be kept lower due to less wastage and purchasing economies of scale. These savings can then be passed onto the customer in the way of very affordable meals. This in turn draws in the crowds who know that they are getting a good deal. Add on a no reservations policy so the crowds will have to order drinks at the bar while they wait for a table. Genius! I just wish I had thought of it.

Brilliant business model aside, Burger and Lobster really does offer up a good thing. The owners are the people from the popular steakhouse Goodman, and as you can tell by the name it only serves burgers and lobsters, all of which are priced at £20. There is no menu and the lobster comes as either a lobster roll or a whole lobster, steamed or grilled, and with a choice of two sauces. And if you are particularly hungry, an extra £10 affords you a 2 kilo lobster rather than the standard 1.5 kilo option. All meals come with salads and fries.

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