Finally: A Brutally Honest Restaurant Review

Posted by Mike Richard on December 26, 2007
Filed under: Food + Booze, Sidelines, United Kingdom

Like what you see? Subscribe to the full RSS feed.

Here’s something you may have missed. It’s as rare as the white rhino: a truly honest travel or restaurant review.

Last month, the Guardian U.K.’s Jay Rayner reviewed (or, more accurately, eviscerated) Divo - purportedly London’s first luxury Ukranian restaurant. Here are a few of the best bits:

On the name, Divo:

Apparently Divo is Ukrainian for ‘amazing’, a name I cannot argue with. It is amazing that anybody thought a restaurant like this would be a good idea, amazing that they invested a reputed £2 million in the conversion, amazing that the result is so staggeringly, comically, bowel-twistingly poor.

On the whole:

There are many words I could use to describe the food served here, but this is a family newspaper and none of them should be available before the watershed. I can’t deny my disappointment because the remaining candidates - awful, calamitous, the horror, the horror - don’t quite do it justice without the visceral attack of the expletive.

Restaurant Divo, London

On the decor:

The decor is a mixture of overblown kitsch - swirly carpets and drapes that Middle Eastern dignitaries might favour for photo opportunities - and a down home babushka, cottage look. It’s as if two completely different teams from Changing Rooms have been let loose, armed only with half a million quid each of someone else’s money, crystal meth and a taste bypass.

Yikes. Having never patronized Divo, a small part of me pities the restaurant. Did the owner betray the critic’s mother in some way?

It’s so rare to see such a visceral and (I imagine) honest review of a restaurant or any place for that matter. More surprising is that this comes from the Guardian.

If you liked this post, subscribe to our full feed RSS. You can also subscribe by email and have new posts delivered directly to your inbox daily.

Vagabondish editor Mike Richard lives in Rhode Island - a small patch of land in the northeastern U.S. He is a professional web designer and travel junkie with an unhealthy addiction to backpacking, camping, hiking and seeing the world. He enjoys knit hats and speaking in the third person.



Like This Post? You Might Also Like:

Our Sponsors

Comments