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Me, Dua Lipa and two tales of one restaurant...
The London Standard
|February 26, 2026
Dua Lipa liked it here.
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Is that enough? It might just be: on a drab Monday lunchtime, the place was heaving with a university-age crowd dutifully and diligently documenting their meals. Could they possibly be so conscientious in every other aspect of their lives? I'd be exhausted. Imagine submitting essays on time.
Impact, though, that's what Dua Lipa has. Multi-million-selling singers tend to. There's been a lot of chatter about clout over the past fortnight, much of it semi-literate rehashes of either Jeremy King's take on influencers published in this paper (shoot the ring-lit lot of them) or journalist and creator Amira Arasteh's reply on our website (not all influencers). I'm paraphrasing. But it led to another round of: "Is restaurant criticism dead?" If it is, so long and thanks for all the fish. And the martinis.
Lots of people mulling, then. Should fame parlay into trustworthiness, or is it down to expertise or experience? Not that they're necessarily mutually exclusive Robert Downey Jr probably has a couple of pars in him riffing on the top 10 rehabs. I'd read that. But part of it is that the same infallibility undercuts anyone's recommendation: no one is everywhere at once. There are often flukes, always off nights.
This story is from the February 26, 2026 edition of The London Standard.
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