Five things Fay Maschler ate this week

Our restaurant critic takes Tom Park Bowles' advice at a Thai in Soho and is left confused by the new Strand Dining Rooms

Gilded: cornbread cooked to order at The Lockhart

Fay Maschler16 July 2014

1. Her Majesty the Queen’s step-grandson recommended it so I felt commanded to try som tum poo (Thai green papaya salad with brined black crabs) at Janetira in Brewer Street. Tom Parker Bowles knows of which he speaks.

2. Even exemplary chicken oysters with mustard sauce and fine shrimp and grits were outshone by glistening gilded cornbread (pictured) cooked to order at The Lockhart.

3. Cry of “Got reservation?” (in sparsely occupied restaurant) followed by “£30 minimum charge!” was not a great welcome at Kikuchi in Hanway Street, and sashimi at £38 a disappointing miserly serving for one.

4. Dilled-to-death potted shrimps in gloopy butter at the 180-seater Strand Dining Rooms, one of those openings to make you wonder who this is for?

5. Vitello tonnato as suave as Silvano Giraldin, former general manager of Le Gavroche, who has been instrumental in the reinterpretation of Toto in Knightsbridge.