Romantic restaurant

Andrew Edmunds is such a wonderful restaurant I am really surprised that in my 11 years in London I have not visited it before. I was alerted to it by one of my food critic friends, as I asked him about the restaurants with the best wine lists in London. He said Andrew Edmunds had a good and reasonably priced wine list. I had very close friends visiting me from Latvia – Guna and Arturs – and Arturs is a huge wine fan and he was especially trying to visit restaurants that offered a wide range of wines and had an impressive wine list, hence our choice of Andrew Edmunds.

D.O.M is a very special restaurant and one of those very few restaurant to which I can’t give a rating… D.O.M is a modern Brazilian restaurant in Sao Paulo that currently is ranked the 7th best restaurant by the St Pellegrino restaurant awards, the highest ranked restaurant in Latin America. It does not have any Michelin stars yet though, as the Michelin guide is only going to Brazil this year, so I am sure it will get them soon. D.O.M stands for Deo Optimus Maximus, which means ‘God is greatest and best’ and the restaurant was opened by now celebrity chef Alex Atala, who is passionate about Brazil and tries to source ingredients from all over the country, including Amazon. Before opening D.O.M he worked in France and Italy as a chef.

The first Polpetto opened in 2010 in Soho and then closed in 2012 as the venue was too small (seated 24), even though people loved the food. After spending some time looking for a new place, Polpetto has finally opened on another street, also in Soho, and now seats 60 people and also has an aperativo bar. Polpetto as the name suggests is the sister restaurant to Polpo (Venetian tapas restaurant with many branches in London) and Russell Norman is behind all these venues.

I did not go to the previous Polpetto, even though I did want to, but the new one is quite dark in the inside (which means photos taken with my iphone were super dark and not great at all), creating that romantic feeling, similar to what Ducksoup (another restaurant in Soho) is like. The main chef is Florence Knight and the dishes on the menu were quite unusual, using popular ingredients but combining them in interesting ways that worked very well.

This is a classic amazing Chinese restaurant. Hakkasan is one of the very few Chinese restaurants that has a Michelin star (got it in 2003) and was also even included in the top 100 best restaurants in the world a few years ago. The restaurant was created in 2001 by Syra Khan and Alan Yau who are also behind Wagamama, Yauatcha and Sake no Hana restaurants in London. The first Hakkasan in London was opened just by Tottenham Court Road station in Hanway Place, but in 2010 they opened another restaurant in Mayfair, which is bigger than the Tottenham Court one. Also Hakkasan started expanding abroad in 2009 with a restaurant in Miami and nowadays Hakkasan can also now be found in New York, San Francisco, Las Vegas, Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Doha, Las Vegas and Mumbai. The main chef of Hakkasan is Tong Chee Hwee and he even won the award of the best London chef in 2005.

The Ivy is one of those restaurants that used to have so much character and grandeur and with time this has faded. The Ivy serves European/ British food and since 1990 is owned by the Caprice Holdings Ltd, same group that owns Le Caprice, J Sheeky’s, Scott’s and other iconic London restaurants (but the Ivy is the oldest restaurant out of all these). All these restaurants are or have been the destinations for celebrities, and some of them still are and some less so. The Ivy dates back to 1917, when the owner Abel Glandellini and Maître d'Hôtel Mario Gallati opened it, but then it was a modest café. Ever since The Ivy has seen many redevelopments which slowly has created the dining room you can see now. The name of the restaurant comes from a phrase the actress Alice Delysia said "Don't worry, we will always come to see you, we will cling together like the ivy,", quoting a popular song of the day. The Ivy has a dress code and you can’t wear shorts or vests.