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With a single dessert and just two glasses of wine our bill was kept in check - but the effort of doing so was not much fun
Babbo
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This is a film with beautiful performances and a visual style that urges you towards reflection
Bright Star
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Seize The Day
I loved this film from start to finish. Take the girlfriend, tell your mum - I'd see it again tomorrow and will buy the dvd.
I saw this last night and can't remember the last time I was so moved in the theatre.
I have been to many of London's so-called best Japanese restaurants and none have been as good as the food that I've had at Aqua Kyoto
London,
David Sexton's rating
Reader rating
Description: A grand brasserie broadly similar in scale (170 seats) to the Wolseley; on our early-days visit, the food and service of this Bayswater newcomer were rather superior to that you would expect in Piccadilly -- the location, however, is obviously convenient only for Bayswater shoppers and residents.
Food: 
Service:
Ambience:
Phone: 020 7221 1415
Website: http://www.lecafeanglais.co.uk
Open: Open daily noon-3pm and 6.30-11pm (last orders)
Good for: Good food, Ambience.
Teething troubles: Service doesn't always match the quality of Leigh's food
Rowley Leigh is the darling of the critics. They all know him, they all adore his food and bask in the atmosphere of his restaurants.
In these pages, Fay Maschler highly praised his new venture, Le Café Anglais, a beautiful big room above Whiteley's shopping mall.
All who love Rowley Leigh's cooking are long-term loyal. But less committed customers have been less convinced. Several friends have reported that the service at Le Café Anglais has sometimes been haphazard as well as slow.
Hoping to book for 1pm recently, we were asked to come at 12.45pm, no doubt to stagger the service, though the restaurant was far from full then.
At 1.10pm we ordered. Ten minutes later, a little hors d'oeuvre plate of the yummy salsify fritters arrived. Our first courses didn't turn up until 1.40pm.
Lobster bisque from the set lunch was fantastically good, quite light, not over-reduced, more-ish rather than overpowering. Pike boudin with beurre blanc, an obscene-looking sausage that is the fish finger from heaven, had its recipient actually groaning with pleasure.
Our main courses arrived at 2.10pm. For languorous hacks that's almost a hectic pace. But if you had to make conversation with a sticky business contact, or get back to work on time, it could be uncomfortably slow.
The wait was well worth it, though. The bistro classic, skirt steak with shallots, also had an enjoyably dilute red wine sauce, a sign of Leigh's determination to cook not blockbusters but the kind of food you'd love to eat every day, if only you could. Rabbit with escarole and bacon salad from the rotisserie was wonderfully tender and sweet, too.
Then, at 2.45pm, the service went awol again. I've been here for lunch before and had to leave before puddings had ever been reached.
When it finally came, pear and parmesan from the appealing set lunch menu (£16.50 for two courses, £19 for three) was no more than nice slices of perfectly ripe pear with cheese and oatcakes - a simple and right end to a meal.
And as it happened, the advertised parmesan turned out to be cheddar - really good cheddar, though.
And then it took time to secure a bill. We had entered that dreamy land where no waiter meets the eye. When the bill came the total, including a £20 bottle of Beaujolais, was £91.41. Fair, rather than cheap.
But if you stick to the set menu and drink modestly, it could be much less - and a bargain for anyone with the time to enjoy it.
Details are correct at the time of publication - please check with venue before booking.
Are there two Cafe Anglais in town? The first being the band-wagon that many are so desperate to be seen jumping upon, that they ignore the tawdry truth about the place and the second being the restaurant I ate in t’other evening, in that shopping centre on Queensway.
The cocktails were pleasant, but show me another restaurant in this price bracket, in which the maitre d’ escorts you from the bar to your table and tells you to “remember to bring your drinks with you”.
The cocktails were pleasant, but this restaurant is supposed to be about “roasts” and it has the spits to prove it: Why then did the specials of the day, “Roast Duck” and "Suckling Pig" turn out to be a 1980’s board-room caterer’s dish of portion-controlled, pan-fried duck breast with a chunk of raw orange atop and a semi-raw, meatless chunk of bone and connective tissue, with the sort of anaemic and rubbery skin, that was better suited to lining shock-absorbers with, than eating?
The cocktails were pleasant, but just how is it possible to get away with serving entirely un-garnished dishes, in restaurants of this ilk, in the 21st century? Had I stumbled into a 1970’s Italian restaurant of the type that had you agog at how the breadsticks, olives, frozen spinach and undelivered coffee had doubled the bill?
If you have to go to the Cafe Anglais, stop just long enough for a cocktail, then hop in a cab to Racine, where they cook and serve the sort of food that Cafe Anglais is meant to be about, properly.
- Epicurious, London
