Chisou

Review: Chisou, Mayfair

Sushi makes for a good pre-theatre meal: it’s light, service is usually fast, and of course I love it. Hmm… I suppose I could add that we also don’t usually drink much with sushi, so should be altogether less dozy for the performance, although this time we indulged in a flask of Chisou‘s house sake! …

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Madeleines

Review: The Vine Tree, Crickhowell

Actually The Vine Tree is across the river in the village of Llangattock, but I’m guessing more people will at least have heard of Crickhowell. The lovely little town in the Usk Valley, upriver from Abergavenny and beneath the Brecon Beacons? No? It’s a lovely area, you should take a break there. The Vine Tree …

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Lobster

Review: Skof, Manchester

Skof is the third restaurant recently where we’ve been given a playlist to take away along with the menu. I didn’t realise a chef’s musical tastes were also more refined than the average punter? The funny thing is, they’re never edgy or full of interesting acts I’ve never heard of, just a string of classics …

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Tartare

Review: Juliet, Stroud

I really love the bit of the Cotswolds around Stroud and Nailsworth. Stunningly beautiful valleys full of all manner of tiny villages and abandoned industry, swallowed by wilderness. Far fewer tourists than the chocolate box villages further north and yet far more interesting! If I were to live in the Cotswolds, I’d pick this part. …

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Counter 71

Review: Counter 71, Shoreditch

Wow there are a lot of fine dining options out east these days. Shoreditch and Hackney are now huge hotspots for splash-out meals, perhaps shaped by cheaper rents while still being pretty accessible on the tube and train network? The latest we tried was Counter 71, where as the name suggests, all the covers are …

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Review: Chisou, MayfairReview: The Vine Tree, CrickhowellReview: Skof, ManchesterReview: Juliet, StroudReview: Counter 71, Shoreditch

Review: TOWN, Covent Garden

Categories:

London, Restaurant Reviews

1 July 2025

Town

Town

I’d say TOWN is a pretty good candidate for meal of the year already. Combination of superb food, lovely setting and really excellent service. The interior is wonderful, lots of clean curves giving something of a 60’s modernist retro vibe but with all the furnishing and other decor carrying a burgundy and baked earth colour scheme that felt sharply contemporary and very comfortable. The wine list is moderate in length with most of it around the £60-£120 mark, but there’s lots of good stuff on there and we spent quite a bit of time chatting with their sommelier; as friendly and approachable as everyone else front of house.

We ordered nibbles to start: fried sage leaves, sourdough, radishes and gildas. I love a fried sage leaf, but these were amped up to gorgeous with the addition of honey and chilli. The radishes were plump and perfect, and very moreish with a savoury miso sauce to dip in. I liked the British take on a gilda, using soused herring instead of anchovy and adding a cube of cucumber and a herby shiso leaf. Tasty bite.

Radish miso

Radish miso

For starter I picked the cured beef and was very happy, at first. The beef ate beautifully and had a real depth of flavour, served up with nicely dressed leaves and some dabs of savoury cheese goo. But next door Maureen had the day-boat crudo with tomato water, and this was a heavenly starter. So fragrant, the herb oil and tomato water together with little nips of grapefruit on top of the perfect slivers of fish. Divine. Very light, obviously, but that’s why you have snacks!

I was drawn to duck and amarone papardelle for main, if only because I don’t think I’ve ever had that rare and elaborate Italian red wine used in a sauce before! The pasta and the duck were both perfect, and the sauce also included flavours of cinnamon, chilli and juniper. Every flavour was clearly there, distinct, and working in harmony along with the crumble of smoked almond on top. Yum. Maureen’s pork loin had to do well to compete… and very much did, beautifully caramelised but pinkly juicy inside, packed with flavour from the crust to the fat. Served with some really zippy mustard and an outrageously good burnt apple sauce, as black as treacle and also excellent with potatoes. Because we ordered a side of their beef-fat roasted pink fir apple potatoes (special) and a plate of shoestring courgette fritti (also special).

Pork

Pork

They’ve got the portions just right (for me) so we had room for dessert. Which was good news because they served up an immensely lush chocolate tart with a scoop of black barley ice cream whose nutty flavour just went perfectly. Maureen’s mango and coconut ice cream on tapioca was a lighter but very flavoursome alternative.

We had a superlative dinner at Town, and it came to about £55 each including dessert. And before drinks. Which we drank a reasonably large amount of. I hope they’ve got their business plan just right, because I’d really love to be coming back to Town for many years to come.

Ice cream

Ice cream

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Review: The Wensleydale Heifer, Wensleydale

Categories:

Pubs, Rest of UK, Restaurant Reviews

16 June 2025

Wensleydale Heifer

Wensleydale Heifer

I like the decor at the Wensleydale Heifer. It’s cheerfully bright and unashamedly personal: they like the things they like, and that’s how they’ve decorated. No attempt to design for an expected demographic or conjure up a particular aesthetic. Except I guess that “cheerfully individual” is an aesthetic in itself?

Anyway, the cheerful individuality and friendly helpfulness extended to the staff, who were all lovely. And the food was excellent. Oddly enough, considering the name of the place and it’s location as far from the sea as you can get in Yorkshire, they specialise in seafood. They also specialise in generous helpings.

I started with a fish pakora. The pakora was thin and crisp around a beautifully translucent piece of fish, very impressive to get the fish cooked just right while deep frying. Very nice spicing in the batter too, gently fragrant and warming. Worked well with a creamy raita and some sticky-sweet onions, a crumble of toasted cashew and coconut on top. Maureen’s fried squid was also excellent: delicate rings in a light batter, on a really delicious salad of wakame seaweed noodles, peanuts, warm chilli and bright lime.

Crispy squid

Crispy squid

Her main of fish-and-chips was a monster piece in a really great batter, very decent chips as well. One of the best bits was the curry sauce served with: unmistakable “chip shop curry” but somehow refined and made elegant, warmly flavoured and exceedingly moreish. Over the table my dad had a half-lobster thermidor that was pronounced superb and also seemed about twice the size it ought to be; the lobster was diced and I honestly think they may be so generous that they put more than half a lobster back into the half-lobster shell!? I broke ranks and had the rib-eye steak. It was a nice piece of meat, just what I was after, but if I’m honest I’ve had fuller-flavoured steaks. Still, cooked perfectly, and the absolutely ravishing truffled Madeira gravy they served with it added all the rich luxury that I could want. Celeriac puree, grilled mushrooms and crisp onion rings were all fine additions.

Coconut icecream and mango sorbet were all we could manage after, but both were top-notch. You’ll be at around £45 for two courses and £55 for three at the Heifer, so it’s at the top-end of dining in the Dales (I should note that we got a lovely amuse bouche and petit fours). I’d say that was good value for the generosity of excellent cooking, arguably the best meal of our eight nights in the north.

Fish and chips

Crispy squid

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Review: The Aysgarth Falls Hotel, Aysgarth

Categories:

Rest of UK, Restaurant Reviews

16 June 2025

Aysgarth Falls

Aysgarth Falls

This was a Sunday roast, albeit in the evening, the Aysgarth Hotel being one of those places that just does nothing but the roast right through Sunday. On the other hand, being one of the few places actually serving dinners on a Sunday evening in the middle of the Dales, it’s handy to know!

The hotel is in a nice spot, looking out over the Dales countryside above the famous waterfalls (for non-UK readers: don’t expect Niagara, the most famous waterfalls in the UK might not even be named on a map in Iceland, New Zealand, South Africa or Venezuela!). The dining room is comfortable, if a bit vanilla. The front of house team were young, friendly, energetic and just a bit unpolished. This was fine as we were in a cheerful mood and nothing much went awry. One of the guys did a card trick for us at the end of the meal. Our hostess at our B&B later said “oh yes, he’s always doing that” so you might also be lucky if you pop in!

Sunday roast

Sunday roast

Anyway, the roast. It was a fairly good bit of beef, cooked to still have some pink in the middle, although I’d prefer it a tad pinker. Roast parsnips and roast carrots were both excellent, earthy and full of flavour, very much worth having on the plate. Roast potatoes were great too; I got the sense of all good produce being used here. The gravy was at the “fine” end of the spectrum rather than superb. Oh, and rather crucially, I can’t review their Yorkshire pudding because they had run out of them. To be fair: we were just about the last table seated at 7:30 this evening. But on the other hand: no Yorkshire pudding on a Sunday roast, in Yorkshire!!!

Testament to the quality of the roast that we didn’t mind the absence too much. And it left us room for a sticky toffee pudding, another excellent specimen with a nicely bitter-sweet toffee sauce and a pudding that was moist and rich enough to stand up on its own. The roast was £20 and a three course meal would be £35ish, and to my mind that’s about right in terms of value. I can’t say (on the evidence of a Sunday roast) that the Aysgarth Falls is the best cooking in Wensleydale, but I’d certainly be happy to recommend it.

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Review: The Sandpiper, Leyburn

Categories:

Pubs, Rest of UK, Restaurant Reviews

16 June 2025

Pressed lamb

Pressed lamb

The Sandpiper is a classic country pub in the diminutive but charming little market town of Leyburn. The dining room is very no-nonsense, just serried ranks of wooden tables at which two, four or six people sit quietly devouring dinner. Because the food is jolly good.

I picked the grilled goat cheese salad to start, and I must admit I thought I was just being good (eating out five nights in a row starting to get to me!) but it was actually rather splendid. A generous slice of really goaty cheese, properly grilled until the surface had a crisp brown crust, on a salad of beetroot, orange and bitter leaves that added all the right sweetness and tang to the cheese. Across the table the tempura cod cheeks were also good, in a properly delicate and airy tempura batter.

Goat cheese

Goat cheese

For main I had a wonderfully cubist plate of pressed slow-cooked lamb with potato dauphinoise. The lamb was lush, completely falling apart with bags of flavour, and the same could be said of the dauphinoise. I did take exception to the veg, not because simple boiled veg isn’t just right sometimes with a rich meat-n-potatoes, but because they’d taken the trouble to include fennel and turnip and courgette – all of which have a wonderful flavour when treated right, but just taste of wet pulp once boiled. Maureen’s mushroom tart was buried under a mound of salad leaved, but it was worth excavating: nice nut-brown pastry filled with heaps of fungi, porcini and others, in a nicely fragrant garlic sauce.

You might pay around £35 each for two courses, and everything we had was excellent. Some of the meals on this trip have been even better, but I’d certainly recommend The Sandpiper as a good option if you’re staying in the area.

Tempura cod cheek

Tempura cod cheek

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Review: The Rat Inn, Anick

Categories:

Pubs, Rest of UK, Restaurant Reviews

16 June 2025

Rat burger

Rat burger

They’ve got a lovely view from the garden of the Rat Inn, over the Tyne Valley towards pretty Corbridge. Inside the pub is lovely too, one of those (seemingly) effortlessly ideal pub interiors, dark timbers, fireplace, brass whatsits and a chalked-up menu.

The big thing at The Rat is their sharing steaks, Chateaubriand and rib of beef. They chalk up the weights and prices on a board for you to chose. Here I got caught out by an irritating details. On the board on the wall was a list of steaks, all crossed-out except the 450g Chateaubriand. Perfect. Maureen and I decided to share that. Then when they came to take our order and we said we wanted to share a steak, they came out with another chalk board from behind the bar with just a few ribs on, none under 800g. Oh. But… we pointed hopefully at the board on the wall. “No, those ones are all gone.”

Trout

Trout

I deflated like a party balloon found two weeks later behind the sofa and ordered some… trout, I think? I can’t really remember. My whole being still focused on the cold water that had been dashed on my excitement. Which is fine, these things happen, but they could certainly have changed my entire enjoyment of the evening by remembering to cross-out that last Chateaubriand earlier. Sigh. After that I was ready to find fault instead of ready to feel warm, so you can read on and decide for yourself…

I started with a plate of manchego and cured meat, with a good onion marmalade and a nicely oil-and-salt dressed leaf salad. All good. For main I did indeed have trout. I liked: the very crispy skin, the samphire and fennel salad, the charred asparagus. I didn’t like: the fish cooked right through, no translucence or softness left in the meat. Maureen had the Rat burger and although the beef was great, very full-flavoured, it was cooked right through without any hint of pink left inside. Which is to some tastes, for sure, but not ours.

Everything at The Rat Inn was high quality and cooking was solid, but at around £30 for two courses it feels pricy for what we had. But you’ll need to bear in mind that I didn’t come at this meal impartially when making your own mind up!

The Rat Inn

The Rat Inn

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