By: Steve Dinneen

Life&Style Editor I'm the editor of City A.M. The Magazine, and editor of the daily newspaper's Life&Style section. We cover food, wine, going out, culture, technology and travel. I'm also the head judge of our Toast the City awards that celebrates hospitality in the Square Mile. Find me on X @steve_dinneen

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Lotus restaurant review: The food is fine, but it’s not fine dining

September 2, 2015

Lotus 17 Charing Cross, WC2H 0EP Tel: 0207 839 8797 FOOD ★★★☆☆ VALUE ★★★☆☆ ATMOSPHERE ★☆☆☆☆ Cost for two with wine: £120 The last five years have seen every restaurant in the country renounce their tablecloths. They’ve ripped the plaster off the walls to expose the jagged, crumbling brickwork beneath, because brickwork is real and plaster is a [...]
Film review: Straight Outta Compton

August 27, 2015

Cert 15 | ★★★★☆ Ice Cube spitting F**k Tha Police in front of a jumping Detroit crowd, and the subsequent stage invasion by armed cops, is one of the most exhilarating moments in film this year. That it never actually happened – the band were calmly arrested at their hotel later that night – is largely [...]
Hamlet review: Benedict Cumberbatch shines in this flawed production at the Barbican

August 27, 2015

The Barbican | ★★★☆☆ “We are all Hamlet” booms the programme of The Barbican’s – nay, the world’s – fastest-selling play of all time. It means that Hamlet’s such a broad part, he can be played as a lunatic, a depressive, a Machiavellian and even, heaven forbid, a woman. But while we can all be [...]
Hotel Chantelle needs to earn its place on the culinary map

August 26, 2015

Hotel Chantelle 23 Orchard St, W1H Tel: 020 7299 2522 FOOD ★★☆☆☆ VALUE ★★☆☆☆ ATMOSPHERE ★★☆☆☆ Hotel Chantelle is terribly exclusive. It has a bouncer, who is in charge of fastening and unfastening a red velvet rope, like you remember from nightclubs in the 1990s. It has a lady in a pencil skirt who stands next to [...]
Restaurant review: Fall down the culinary rabbit hole at Céleste at the Lanesborough hotel

August 18, 2015

Céleste at the Lanesborough 9 Hyde Park Corner, SW1X 7TA Tel: 020 7259 5599 These are halcyon days for the London restaurant scene, a time when seemingly everybody is a foodie and every borough in London has at least half a dozen restaurants worth visiting. You can start to take it all for granted, [...]
Almeida’s Bakkhai is a stirring but wayward production

August 7, 2015

Almeida | ★★☆☆☆ The Almeida’s stirring new production of Euripides’ Bakkhai begins with a promise. “I will thrill you,” says Ben Wishaw as Dionysus, clearly enjoying the rapt attention commanded by his shamanic appearance. His look: Jesus in drag, or a beardy Ophelia. Movement-wise he’s like Madonna, sporadically voguing throughout his opening monologue. He’s got [...]
Fifty scents: Richard E Grant on being led by his nose, speaking to peacocks and watching his neighbours ‘at it’

June 4, 2015

When Richard E Grant suggested we meet at Fulham’s exclusive Hurlingham members’ club, it seemed to make perfect sense. He lives just up the road in Richmond and it’s exactly the kind of place I can imagine him hanging out, especially after having watched him star in Downton Abbey. I had visions of wood-panelled walls, winchester sofas, views over the croquet [...]
Film review: A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night

May 22, 2015

Cert 15 | ★★★★☆ Striking visuals and a wicked sense of style are just enough to carry this enigmatic, at times frustrating Iranian-American vampire story. Director Ana Lily Amirpour’s black and white neo-noir debut is a dream-like stream of ideas and images rather than a coherent whole. It’s loosely evocative of many things [...]
Film review: It Follows is terrific, horrific fun

February 27, 2015

Cert 18 | ★★★★☆ The last decade hasn’t been kind to the slasher movie. Its heyday came in the late 1970s and early 80s, with John Carpenter’s iconic Halloween, which paved the way for the likes of Friday 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street. Then Wes Craven reinvigorated the genre with 1996’s Scream – a [...]
Restaurant review: M by Martin Williams on Threadneedle Walk

January 27, 2015

It’s a brave man who first ate an oyster, they say, but it’s a braver man who opens a restaurant in the Square Mile. The normal laws of gastronomic physics don’t apply here. The food scene moves slowly, governed by ritual, force of habit and sheer bloody-mindedness. The trends and fads of Shoreditch and Mayfair [...]

Dimon casts doubt over JP Morgan’s London tower with tax warning to Burnham

Exclusive: Rugby World Champions Cup set to be mothballed

Why Guildhall Art Gallery and Roman Amphitheatre deserves a Toast Award

By: Steve Dinneen

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