Category: Fine dining

White linen, silver service, but not in Mr Michelin's book

Review: Copper and Ink, Blackheath

Choc tart AND BASIL SORBET OF GOD!

There’s a helluva lot of care and attention that goes into fine dining – even informal fine dining – that you only notice when it’s absent. When our dessert showed up at Copper and Ink, with two cubes of chiffon cake, there was plenty of jealous comparing going on; lucky me, my cubes were nearly …

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Review: Le Cochon Aveugle, York

Boudin noir macaron

York is an awesome city to visit, absolutely saturated in history, very beautiful, and more and more full of great places for a coffee or a full-on feast. There’s even a medieval beer hall. And now imma give you a tip on a lesser known place to visit in York that I found every bit …

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Review: Scully, St James

Tentacular spectacular

When you go all-out for flavour and innovation, you won’t hit perfection every single time. Some dishes will be a bit OTT or just plain weird. For me, that’s part of the joy. I’d rather have food I can talk about and maybe a couple of dishes I can absolutely rave about, than several courses …

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Review: The Old Stamp House, Ambleside

Splendid hogget

I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about dining experiences, and how must expectation feeds into your enjoyment of a meal. I’ll be honest: I went to Core with so much buzz and hype about Clare Smyth’s restaurant having passed before my eyes that I was perhaps doomed to go “meh?” when I was treated …

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Review: Core, London

Signature pre-dessert

Core is proper fine dining. The elegant room filled with soft lighting on white linen, the miracle thin glassware, the shimmying clusters of waiters bearing the next remove, it’s all there. This is not “casual fine dining” or “modern fine dining”. And that’s lovely. This is exactly the place to come if you want to …

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