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Featured reviews The Dining Room La Barbe Gurkha Kitchen Cafe Rouge The Westerley Lal Akash Ask Pizza Pizza Express Cafe Nerro Village Brasserie Fanny's Farm Shop
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Reigate Reviews
This page is intended for reviews of local restaurants, services, attractions and shops. It is pure subjective opinion and if you are tempted by the laws of libel, please post on the bulletin board before giving in! Click the links on the left to access the different reviews. This doesn't cover Reigate pubs because the redhillandreigate.co.uk site would make any attempt pale into insignificance. For their masterly look at every single Reigate pub, click HERE:
Tony Tobin @ The Dining Room
This is not just Reigate's finest restaurant but arguably one of the finest in the whole of Surrey. It is discretely situated above another altogether different eating place called Si in the High Street in Reigate.
Once you reach the restaurant proper, through a green door and up a flight of stairs, the first impressions are very good. Tasteful decor, a sumptuous array of glasses, good art and - very best of all - on most days the smiles of Mr Tobin himself.
When we visited the food and the service were quite exceptional. Perfectly-sized portions, elegant presentation, subtle but intense flavours and best of all, served hot! There was a time early on when Tony Tobin himself - famous for his 10 years of BBC Ready Steady Cook appearances and local good works - left the kitchen and moved front of house. When we visited he was back behind the pans and the food reflected this. Absolutely superb.
The most recent addition to the restaurant is an upstairs bar, that - while being quite expensive - lives up to its billing as a truly exclusive intimate drinks snug. Leather sofas, eaves seating, champagne and the perfect place to have an aperitif before your meal or an eau de vie afterwards.
Food and atmosphere don't get much better than this but two warnings: don't expect to park outside, try the pay and display just a little further round the corner which you access by heading towards Dorking then turning back on yourself to the right just past the Blue Anchor pub... and expect to pay around £100 for a three course dinner for two with nice wine. Not cheap but you will definitely not regret it! A credit to Mr Tobin and the town!
Reservations: 01737 226 650
Click HERE to visit the restaurant's website.
TOP La Barbe
La Barbe is a little further away from the main drag, up the hill towards Woodhatch on the left. The restaurant prides itself on being "the only truly French restaurant in Reigate" and lives up to its billing with very good French cuisine and good-sized portions too. There is a discernible pride in the quality of the menu and ingredients (put together by the suitably French-sounding Laurent, Sébastien and Alain). The Head Chef, Laurent, creates a new menu every eight weeks so I could tell you how good the Carpaccio de Jambon Cru à l'Etorki et Fenouil, Arinade de Sardines aux Agrumes et Baies Roses, Carré d'Agneau à la Boulangère et Fleur de Thyme or Entrecôte de Boeuf Poêlée are... but they may have moved on by the time you read this!
Three courses at La Barbe will cost you £29.95 in the evening or £21.95 for lunch with a fiver off both at weekends. Thankfully it is completely non-smoking too. A really good night out if you haven't saved up quite enough for The Dining Room.
Reservations: 01737 241 966
Click HERE to visit the restaurant's website.
TOP Gurkha Kitchen
You only need to check out the awards on the walls down near the kitchen at the Gurkha Kitchen - Best Curry Chef, cleanliness awards - to know that this is a bit special. It's not really a curry house: Nepalese cuisine doesn't have kormas and vindaloos but drier dishes with more lentils, fish and interesting vegetables. Some of their offerings are just superb: Rara chicken, Tareko Farshi, Mayalu Lamb and most of the Chuli dishes are my favourites. Chuli dishes are cooked over Charcoal in a beehive-shaped clay oven apparently. The key word for the Gurkha kitchen is subtelty - very subtled flavours and interesting ingredients. The portions are not post-pub size, but intended to give you the best chance of soaking up the flavour (rather than the beer).
The staff are all exceptionally polite, and there's lots of pictures of Nepalese mountain ranges while you're picking up your take-outs. They don't deliver but you can collect and they knock 10% off for good measure. Superb.
Reservations: 01737 226 200
Click HERE to visit the restaurant's website.
TOP Cafe Rouge
Convenient if a little inconsistent, Cafe Rouge is great for a Latte, Croissant or occasional breakfast but the quality of dining is dependent on how lucky you are with the rapidly changing staff. I visited three or four times during 2007 and sometimes it was fine but other times it was awful. When busy, the quality of food, service and just about everything else plummets. There used to a be a fantastic chef and french waitress who held it together a few years back but both seem to have now left.
Let's be fair, it is slap bang on the junction in the town centre (although since writing this Cafe Nerro and Starbucks have both arrived, leading to more competition for the mid-town latte income!) making it prone to being beaten up by millions of buggies per day... but it can be handy when out shopping. Overall, when it gets the basics right, it's fine but be prepared for a wait and variable fodder when they don't!
Reservations: 01737 226 200
TOP The Westerley
Inauspiciously sited just around the bend of the one way system at the end of the high street, before you get to Mr Exhaust and the Kebab House, The Westerley replaced Sweet Potato that used to be there in 2006. It comes with fine pedigree with Jonathan Coomb, the chef who helped to make Stephan Langton in Friday Street a real success, behind the venture. The Westerley went through a real purple patch in 2007 receiving an award in The Times paper as one of the best bistro style restaurants in the land and then a Michelin Star. It has been done very tastefully, making great use of the available space, so - like the Tardis - the inside is very different from what you might expect if you pass by in your car and give a cursory glance. With high expectations, I'm sorry to say our first meal there was not that great soon after it opened by I have been twice recently and can report that it now serves up very good food indeed. The menu is ambitious with some really unusual dishes on it. Maybe in these Heston Blumenthal days you have to put something really odd on the menu to succeed but the idea of Pig's Head terrine doesn't do it for me! Thankfully, everything we ordered was delicious and the service just right.
Certainly it is going from strength-to-strength and after The Times award, it was hard to get a table for love or money, so book well ahead! Personally, I still prefer the Dining Room but there is always room for a little competition...
Reservations: 01737 222 733
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Lal Akash
The classic unfussy, good service, good at dealing with post-pub groups, local Indian restaurant. The Lal Akash is great for all the dishes you know and love: kormas, rogans, bhoonas, tikka-masalas, naans, poppadoms and Cobra beer. However, it also features a much larger and more ambitious menu alongside these. The food is genuinely good: having eaten there many times, with many different groups of people, no-one has ever had anything but praise. The decor is just slightly 80s but there is no flock wallpaper or formica and a nice little waiting area. There are little hidden surprises - free bottles of wine appear sometimes, the waiters will often have jokes and small wagers with you. Overall, everyone at Lal Akash keeps things ticking along in extremely friendly fashion. For the truly lazy, they are one of the few local eateries that deliver for free so long as your order is over £15. They take cash and cheques at the door and are always cheery and appreciative of the business.
Lal Akash Menu PagesReservations: 01737 223 773
TOP Ask
Ask is ideally situated on the left of the high street in a beautiful tudor building. It is double-fronted making window-dining slightly goldfish bowl-like but the proprietors have taken advantage of the room style with tables often in their own little discrete areas. Perhaps that's why you can see so many business lunches going on if you wander down the high street of a lunchtime. Apparently, this branch of the franchise is one of the busiest in the country and maybe that's why.
Ask is good at Pizzas and does other dishes too if you're feeling adventurous. Actually, not if you're feeling adventurous because they are the usual other-dishes-than-pizza that pizza places tend to do: lasagne, chicken dish, salads etc - but all of them pretty good, especially the salads. Ask comes into its own during the summer when you can walk out of the back, climb into the garden and eat up there. Feels lovely when the sun is setting and you don't get neglected with the service either.
Reservations: 01737 241 122
TOP Pizza Express
Still the best Pizza chain in the UK and Reigate doesn't let it down. The decor is amazing with original tiled walls and high ceiling with an amazing skylight. The oven is in the corner of the upstairs room and features a mightily impressive oven hood that looks like a piece of sculpture in its own right. There is also a downstairs room, though I confess to never having eaten there (or indeed seen it open but that comes of always going there with the kids!)
Very child friendly - and this is borne out by the number of family groups and celebrations you witness there. Also, unlike Cafe Rouge, Pizza Express's watchword is consistency. An Americano or Veneziana here will taste pretty much the same as in the famous Jazz Venue in Soho - usually very good.
Reservations: 01737 241 969
TOP Mimis
Alas, Mimi's has now been knocked down so that another property development company can create Reigate starter flats in its place. We miss its uncorporateness and the picture link is included for those who fancy a little nostalgia at the passing of such an authentic little place!
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The Village Brasserie is Reigate's second Indian Restaurant and a very good one too - particularly as, like Lal Akash, they do home delivery. The food tastes fresh and relatively light - the sauces aren't too cloying and your night's sleep doesn't get interrupted by your meal as always seems to happen when you buy a preprepared bag of rubbish from a supermarket! All of the standard indian fare is there: good Kormas, feisty Jalfrezis and delicious naans. Best of all, at Christmas, every home delivery seems to come accompanied by an Xmas-wrapped bottle of wine. OK it's not Chateau Petrus but the spirit is there. Probably most popular for its takeaways, it would be unfair to mention that the restaurant itself is also jolly good for eat-in: clean, good service, very reasonable and nice staff. We're a lucky town to have two good Indian Restaurants and the Village is a worthy co-recipient of your purchasing power if you can't be bothered to face the awfulness of Morrisons followed by a night over the stove!
Reservations: 01737 217445
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Fanny's Farm Shop
Fanny's Farm Shop is an institution in these parts - and rightly so. Fanny and her family have been serving up their inimitable style of rustic authenticity and charm for over 25 years now and each time you visit it is infectious. Not only is Fanny one of Surrey's great characters but the whole higgledy-piggledy look and feel makes you realise this is not some 'knocked together for the tourists' places but a way of life. Remember Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and Caractacus Potts's inventor's windmill? Well it's like that but with mugs of tea, chutney, preserves, veg and a viatnamese pot-bellied pig. Like most of the food, the whole place is as unprocessed as you could possibly get. We managed to find a wonderful old school seat in the 'Tunnel of Bits and Bobs' and go their for our coal and birthday presents. When Fanny is out her daughters are equally smiling and helpful. Just outside Reigate near 'Gatton Bottom' believe it or not. From the M25 just follow the brown signs that point the way. She deserves them - a national treasure!
Fanny's Farm Shop, Markedge Lane, Nr Merstham & Reigate.
Telephone: 01737 554444
Click HERE to visit Fanny's website.