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The White Swan Inn, Market Place, Pickering, North Yorkshire

Fri, 25 May 2012 23:00:01 GMT

Pickering in North Yorkshire is a country town with exactly the right sort of attractions: 12th-century castle; bustling steam railway; church with medieval wall paintings admired by Pevsner and, not least, a quietly handsome inn on the high street.

FM Mangal, 54 Camberwell Church Street, London SE5

Sat, 19 May 2012 23:00:01 GMT

I suppose it was inevitable. We've had the posh burger, the couture hot dog, mac and cheese deluxe – and now kebabs are getting the attention of foodies. Two enterprising young men, Oliver Thring and James Ramsden, writers and bloggers with sharp eyes and a fork into every emerging trend, have started Kebab Kitchen – a roving grill serving lamb and chicken of good provenance with ritzy accompaniments.

Lecture Room and Library at Sketch9, Conduit Street, London W1

Fri, 18 May 2012 23:00:01 GMT

Oh blimey, it's that time of year again; my annual dinner with the highest bidder in The Independent's charity auction. I always find these blind dates a bit stressful. One of our generous readers has paid money to come out on a review with me. The restaurant had better be bloody good. And I had better behave myself.

The Blacksmith & The Toffeemaker, 292-294 St John Street, London EC1

Sat, 12 May 2012 23:00:01 GMT

Anyone who has ever worked a shift anywhere knows the interminable agony of the Final Hour. You've been in since 9am, but these, the final 60 minutes, have a habit of dragging out. Much of that hour is spent plotting the conviviality to follow: a glass of Sancerre, a fag in the sunshine, an online catch-up with The Apprentice, perhaps. What you want least of all is some corpulent goon calling up 20 minutes before home time and asking if he can delay your exit. Today, that goon is me.

Briciole, 20 Homer Street, London W1

Fri, 11 May 2012 23:00:01 GMT

When is a restaurant not a restaurant? When it's trying to be several other things at once. I may have bent your ears before about restaurants which are "also" breakfast cafés, tea-rooms, local-produce shops, off-licences, children's rumpus-rooms, and places where "you just drop in for a glass of wine and a few nibbles". I've heard every combination, and they seldom work: it's like training a shire horse to go out and be a thoroughbred the next day and take kids on beach rides the day after.

Tom Aikens 43 Elystan Street, London SW3

Sat, 05 May 2012 23:00:01 GMT

There's a saying in fashion: "Just because you can do the zip up doesn't mean you should." In other words, ability isn't the only consideration. After dinner at Tom Aikens I want to go into the kitchen and say, "Just because you can make crispy milk skin doesn't mean you should."

Cotidie, 50 Marylebone High Street, London

Sat, 28 Apr 2012 23:00:01 GMT

Despite its ubiquity on our high streets and in our shops, most of us know very little about real Italian cuisine. This is mostly the fault of pasta and pizza which, being relatively easy to cook well with only a few basic ingredients, have become a British staple. Across the country, people are munching through endless variants of these two dishes and thinking, deep down, that what they're really tasting amid the tomato and basil and mozzarella is a distillation of Italy.

The Gunton Arms, Cromer Road, Thorpe Market, Norfolk

Fri, 27 Apr 2012 23:00:01 GMT

It's been 10 years since Mark Hix began writing his weekly food column for this magazine, an anniversary we'll be celebrating in next week's bumper food and drink-themed issue. Over the past decade, the quietly influential Mr Hix has changed the way we eat, though he'd be much too modest to make that claim for himself. Meanwhile his restaurants, with their clever mix of traditional comfort and contemporary art, have supplied the template for many a copycat dining room.

Smoak Malmaison, Piccadilly, Manchester

Sat, 21 Apr 2012 23:00:01 GMT

There's no smoke without fire. And there's no Smoak without fire, either. It's just a shame that the fire here comes in the form of a three-storey illuminated billboard promoting this restaurant on the building opposite, which flickers distractingly all the time.

Adam Simmonds, Danesfield House Hotel and Spa, Henley Road, Marlow-on-Thames, Bucks

Fri, 20 Apr 2012 23:00:01 GMT

Late-night visitors to Marlow have often been shocked by the chilling apparition of the Grey Lady of Danesfield Park, a solemn-faced ghost holding a lantern, who glides around where the chapel once stood, before disappearing. We had a broadly similar experience on driving into the hotel grounds – seeing the chilling apparition of Danesfield House, a great white whale of a late-Victorian Gothic folly looming in front of you like Moby Dick. It's an extraordinary sight, with its tall chimneys, its clock tower and elaborately terraced gardens, and it carries an air of melancholy – the result, perhaps, of too many owners, speculators and changes of use. It was built in 1899 by the heir to the Sunlight soap fortune, who sold it the moment it was finished. It housed evacuees in the war and was requisitioned by the RAF. It was once home to the Hellfire Club of Medmenham, a bunch of crazed desperadoes from the nearby village. Since 1991 it's been a hotel. And in the past four years, it's picked up a reputation as home to one of the country's finest chefs, Adam Simmonds.

Petersham Nurseries Café, Church Lane, Off Petersham Road, Richmond, Surrey

Fri, 13 Apr 2012 23:00:01 GMT

It may be that the sun has gone to my head – I've spent a golden couple of hours in a dappled, greenery-filled glasshouse, drinking Prosecco and rose syrup – but surely Petersham Nurseries Café is the prettiest restaurant in Britain? It certainly looks gorgeous on a sunny spring day – a rus in urbe, or at least sub-urbe, idyll, which still has the power to take the breath away. The Café was born eight years ago, when owners Gael and Francesco Boglione saved a ramshackle nursery at the foot of Richmond Hill from developers. Initially it was just a single table in the main greenhouse, serving 10 guests. But word spread, and soon Petersham was a phenomenon, regularly mentioned alongside the country's finest dining experiences.

Meat People, 4-6 Essex Road, London N1

Sat, 07 Apr 2012 23:00:01 GMT

It is currently being said in the foodie blogosphere that meat is on the march in London. Restaurants with names such as Meat Liquor and Meateasy have recently opened or acquired a modicum of fame; and the turn-of-the-century hopes of veggies everywhere, that the rest of us would forgo dead animals in aid of the planet, our stomachs and the animals themselves is yet to be fulfilled.

Le Pont de la Tour, 36D Shad Thames, London SE1

Fri, 06 Apr 2012 23:00:01 GMT

Nothing on the landscape of London dining so greets the spring as the array of restaurants that lines the Thames at Tower Bridge. When the daffodils are out in Hyde Park, and legs of spring lamb hang in the windows of Allen's and Lidgate's, then (as Chaucer might have put it) folk long to go dining al fresco. For 20 years, the Pont de le Tour has offered City locals and rich tourists a gorgeous view of the river from the terrace. Terence Conran's flagship eaterie started life in 1992. Since then it's been bought by the D&D group (which owns 19 London restaurants, including the Pont's less posh neighbours, the Blueprint Café, the Cantina and Butler's Wharf Chop House) and celebrates its 20th birthday in October. Inspired by the whiff of Easter spring in the air last week, I went to pay my respects.

Ceviche, 17 Frith Street, London W1

Fri, 30 Mar 2012 23:00:01 GMT

Peruvian cuisine, it's probably fair to say, is something of an unknown quantity in Britain. In fact, before my visit to Ceviche, a new Peruvian restaurant in Soho, I would have struggled to name a single dish from that country – apart, perhaps, from Lima beans, which don't really count. Here, in the frenzied international zone that is the London dining scene, you'll find Mexican food a go-go, and a growing flirtation with Argentina. But Peru hasn't been invited to the party yet.

Gregg's Table, Bermondsey Square Hotel, Bermondsey Square, Tower Bridge Road, London SE1

Sat, 24 Mar 2012 00:00:01 GMT

It's funny how the personality of a TV celebrity can permeate a place he owns. Gregg Wallace comes across on MasterChef as a no-nonsense, don't-muck-about, straight-talking, plain-dealing kind of geezer, not a foodie, certainly not a cook, just a chap who loves his food and appreciates it in big quantities. His most characteristic utterance in praise of a dish is, "I could polish off a 'ole plate of that". When you visit his new restaurant, Gregg's grinning visage keeps turning up in your head, beaming encouragement, defying you to find fault and criticise his down-home style.

Fitzbillies, 51-52 Trumpington Street, Cambridge

Sat, 17 Mar 2012 00:00:01 GMT

I'm walking through Cambridge at twilight, and there's a touch of magic in the misty air. Lights twinkle distantly behind college windows. Students stream past on bicycles, heading back to their digs. Apart from the fact that most of them are talking on mobile phones, we might have slipped back into another century.

Morgan M, 50 Long Lane, London EC1

Sun, 11 Mar 2012 00:00:01 GMT

At a dinner shortly before Christmas, I was placed next to a fellow restaurant critic far more experienced than me. Shortly before dessert, I asked whether he felt there were any occupational hazards attached to this most privileged of occupations. The lady to his left instantly snapped at us: "The tendency to sound ungrateful." Indeed, what could be worse, than to eat at fine restaurants, be paid for it, and still come across as ungrateful? So it is with a heavy heart that I make this confession: there follows a report about Morgan M in which your correspondent answers very neatly to the lady's description.

10 Greek Street, London W1

Sat, 10 Mar 2012 00:00:01 GMT

Ah Soho, such a shifting mixum-gatherum of grace and grot, such a protean hybrid of shabby and genteel. RL Stevenson in Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (published in 1886) described a Soho street which contained "...a gin palace, a low French eating house, a shop for the retail of penny numbers and two penny salads, many ragged children huddled in the doorways, and women of many different nationalities passing out, key in hand" – and little has changed.

The White Oak, The Pound, Cookham, Berkshire

Sun, 04 Mar 2012 00:00:01 GMT

Cookham is one of those charmed towns: a place in the English countryside where the houses are beautiful, the shops are chi-chi and dogs gambol on the green. Oh, and a river runs through it. When I was growing up, it was somewhere we drove to for a spot of rubber-necking from a hired rowing boat.

Winteringham Fields, 1 Silver Street, Winteringham, Lincolnshire

Sat, 03 Mar 2012 00:00:01 GMT

Approaching from the east, the first thing you see in the Lincolnshire village of Winteringham, an isolated straggle of houses on the fringe of the Humber, is a sign that baldly declares 'FERRETS'. It is an unlikely milieu for an upmarket 'restaurant with rooms'. Yet there it is at the heart of the village: a slate-topped, two-storey structure, possibly a former Georgian inn, with pantiled extensions. The facilities include a helipad, but our spirits failed to soar on entering Winteringham Fields. Booked in for Friday lunch (three courses £39.95, four courses £45), my wife and I found ourselves deposited in a small, unpopulated lounge. Our refusal to take a drink before the meal was greeted with an expression of surprise ("Oh!") as if apéritifs were pretty much compulsory.

Dabbous, 39 Whitfield Street, London W1

Sun, 26 Feb 2012 00:00:01 GMT

And so we come at last to the Holy Grail for which your correspondent has been searching: an exquisite tasting menu in London for less than £50. It probably won't last; not long after I went to L'Autre Pied for the first time five years ago, it received a Michelin star, and jacked up its tasting menu by £17.50. That is why it is very important that you avail yourself of the earliest opportunity to attend Dabbous, the most thrilling addition to the London scene for yonks.

The Lounge, Odeon Whiteleys, Queensway, London W2

Sat, 25 Feb 2012 00:00:01 GMT

This isn't the first time, in the course of eating out for this column, that I've found myself spectating while a couple nearby has a full-blown, marriage-threatening row. But it's certainly the first time I've booked a ticket specifically to do so. This week's assignment sees me braving the new frontier of modern dining. I'm having supper in a luxury cinema, watching a Polanski movie from a huge leather seat while eating venison chilli and sipping a mojito. This is possibly the most middle-class thing I've ever done in my life.

Mele e Pere, 46 Brewer Street, London W1

Sun, 19 Feb 2012 00:00:01 GMT

So here we are, standing in a queue outside Pitt Cue Co, the red-hot new barbecue specialists in Soho, on the coldest night of the year. (I'm surely not the first to rechristen it Pitt Queue Co.) A woman walks past and pauses. "What the hell are you doing, waiting out here in the cold?" she gasps. "It's not like there isn't anywhere else to eat around here..." And that's how we end up in Mele e Pere.

The Pass, South Lodge Country, House Hotel, Brighton Road, West Sussex

Sat, 18 Feb 2012 00:00:01 GMT

On a brass-monkey night in January, the South Lodge Hotel looks good: grey-beige stone, triangular pediments, lots of ivy and lots of windows through which firelight and lamplight gleam appealingly. The lobby is wide enough to accommodate a Victorian coach-and-four passing through and sparsely furnished with plush sofas. Though the place dates from 1883, it has an ersatz feel to it, a sprayed-on faux-luxury. As a manager comes to greet you, your eye falls on a doorway through which you glimpse a horribly overlit green space – a gym? A swimming pool? – and you try to ignore it. On the way to the bar, you pass a cosy-looking restaurant, all wood panels and floral wallpaper and you think, ah yes, just the job. The bar is a mocked-up gentlemen's club with more panelling and chandeliers made of twisted shards of leather-coloured glass. You greet your friends, floor a dry martini and head for dinner...

The Nobody Inn, Doddiscombsleigh, Exeter, Devon

Sun, 12 Feb 2012 00:00:01 GMT

In case you were wondering, I can report with certainty that this is not just the first time I have eaten in Doddiscombsleigh, about five miles south-west of Exeter, between the Teign Valley and the Haldon Hills, but the first time I have eaten in a pun. It's the Nobody Inn, which takes its name from the unfortunate moment during a former landlord's wake when his coffin was brought back to an empty pub.