Nicholas Lander on three new London restaurants to avoid  16 Jul
2001 by JR  High Holborn, an expensive restaurant which earned a
Michelin star despite only opening last August, has just closed.
Its owners blame higher than budgeted costs and a later than
anticipated opening date but the real reasons, as I know from
two disappointing meals there, were more basic - the food was
too convoluted and the prices too high. Quite simply, the owners
had not bothered to research what their potential customers in
this busy, competitive part of central London would want and pay
for.  This at the moment seems to be an increasingly common
phenomenon amongst chefs and restaurateurs in London. Sadly, I
have never been, in such a short space of time, to such a
succession of restaurants that seem to have been opened for all
the wrong reasons.  Ego, fashion and novelty seem glaringly
obvious, but the fundamental requirement - to give customers a
good time at a fair price and to make them want to come back -
is woefully absent i