The Bottle of Sauce is a great big, new, modern pub tucked a short stroll away from Cheltenham High Street. It’s the new partner to a couple of successful pubs in Oxford, The Rickety Press and the The Rusty Bicycle. They’ve hit on a really excellent formula, pared back furnishing, bright colours, bare wood, good …
We found Jolly Nice three years ago. Someone had bought a defunct petrol station on the A419 and turned it into a bit of a farm shop. Only it was a surprising little farm shop because they made a really good flat white, astonishingly gorgeous salted caramel milkshakes with their own ice cream, and sold …
I feel the need to ‘splain this up front. We were lucky enough to visit Japan just over a year ago, and as well as some convoluted kaiseki feasts and high-end tempura temples, we also ate tons and tons of delicious casual Japanese cooking – tonkatsu restaurants, okonomiyaki places, and smoky bars serving yakitori and …
All the tables at BOX E are closer to the kitchen than the chef’s table at most other restaurants. I say “all the tables” but they’ve only got 14 covers in total. The clue is in the restaurant’s name: BOX E lives in two knocked-through shipping containers, perched on top of some other shipping containers …
Full disclosure: my meal at The Clarence Social was paid for by dem. Though that’s only because there was a cock-up with our booking two weeks previously, and they very generously offered us a free meal by way of apology! Any business has the odd cock-up, you ought to be judged by how you deal …