Where did Jay Rayner eat?

When I’m in London (or in another place in the UK that is not Nottingham), I frequently end up asking myself if there is a restaurant close by that Jay Rayner has reviewed for The Observer or the Financial Times. As finding this information online is currently not straightforward, I decided to create a more accessible overview of the restaurants and their locations. The list covers reviews back to January 2022.

Filtering options

The map and the table can be filtered by date range, restaurant names, towns and by my totally subjective overall impression of the restaurant based on Jay’s review. Note that any filter settings will be applied to both the map and the table.

Select date range:

Select restaurant(s):

Select town(s):

Select overall impression(s):

Recommended

Mixed bag

Not recommended

Closed

The restaurant map

Recommended restaurants are green, so-so restaurants are orange, not recommended restaurants are red and permanently closed restaurants are grey. Hover the mouse pointer over a marker to see the restaurant name. Click on the marker to open a popup with more details.

The blue circles represent clusters with multiple restaurants. Hover the mouse pointer over the circle to see the names of the restaurants in the cluster. Click on the circle to zoom in on these restaurants.

Moving or zooming the map filters the table below, so it only lists the restaurants currently in view.

The five buttons in the top left corner of the map are, from top to bottom:

+ and −, which zoom in and out,
a circular arrow, which resets the map to its original view,
a magnifying glass, which lets you search for a place by name,
a dashed square with a plus sign, which lets you drag a box on the map to zoom into it,
a crosshairs, which is a “Locate Me” button. This location feature is handled entirely within your web browser. Your location is not sent to the server hosting this website.

The restaurant list

By default, the table is sorted by the date the review was published (newest first), but it can be sorted differently by clicking on column headers marked with a double-arrow icon. If a restaurant is permanently closed, the overall impression is listed as ‘Closed’.

London or not London?

The chart below shows the percentage of restaurants reviewed in London vs. outside London over time. The line is smoothed: each point covers roughly a six-month window centred on that date. The vertical line marks Jay’s move from The Observer to the Financial Times in March 2025. Note that, unlike the map and the table, the chart is not affected by the filters above.

“London” here means a London postcode, which is the postal boundary rather than the administrative one: a few restaurants that sit in a London borough but carry an outer postcode are counted as outside.

Area chart showing how the percentage of reviews of restaurants in London versus outside London has changed since January 2022, with a line marking the move from The Observer to the Financial Times in March 2025.

Over the past 12 months, 78% of the 46 restaurants reviewed were in London. Since January 2022, the figure is 55%.

If you spot a mistake or other issues, please get in touch.