Arroz negro coming up!

Review: Sabor, Mayfair

After a couple of false starts, we finally got around to eating at Sabor and I’m very glad we did! Showing up at 12 on a weekday turns out to be just fine now, whereas I think there was more queuing a couple of years back when Sabor was the exciting new kid on the …

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Morteau sausage

Review: The Garden Cafe, Waterloo

When it opened a few years back, the Garden Museum Cafe was voted “Best museum restaurant in the world” – a high accolade. Of course, in part that’s because museums haven’t often been known for their food offerings. The theory certainly always seemed to be: if you’ve got a captive audience, why not milk them …

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Stracchiatella

Review: The Barbary Next Door, Covent Garden

Stopping in at The Barbary Next Door for an early dinner pre-theatre, we found a stripped-back little corridor with about eight seats at the kitchen counter and four facing the wall. They’ve not messed around with any kind of design aesthetic, the vibe is just a hole-in-the-wall bar/kitchen that you might find somewhere in the …

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Cuttlefish

Review: Rockfish, Brixham

There are more than a dozen Rockfish restaurants along the Devon and Dorset coast, a successful little chain by anyone’s standard, and the one at Brixham in Devon was the first and is the place where most of their fish are landed. The dining room does have a bit of a chain vibe, anonymous rows …

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Loaded crab nachos

Review: The Club House, West Bexington

Palaver! We decided to stop at Hive Beach Cafe – one of our favourite spots on the coast – for a seafood lunch on the way home from Devon. Then, kablooie, one of the tyres on the car went pop. We ended up in a lay-by off the A35 waiting for the AA man. Who …

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Review: Sabor, MayfairReview: The Garden Cafe, WaterlooReview: The Barbary Next Door, Covent GardenReview: Rockfish, BrixhamReview: The Club House, West Bexington

Review: Counter 71, Shoreditch

Categories:

Fine dining, London, Restaurant Reviews

1 July 2025

Counter 71

Counter 71

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 counter-seated around the open kitchen. Everyone is seated and served at the same time. Worth noting a really lovely bar downstairs, called Lowcountry, where we began with a pair of excellent cocktails.

Back upstairs, we got stuck in. They’ve taken a 100% British take on produce, right down to the detail like herbs and spices, nothing (except wine!) passed our lips that wasn’t grown in the country. Impressive dedication to a theme, but did the food stand up?

We enjoyed a nice set of snacks to start, the highlight being a tiny donut stuffed with beef tartare and topped with a little hit of chilli and vivid green wild garlic butter. The smoked eel between black barley wafers was visually lovely but hit one of those odd uncanny valley notes when the wafers turned out to be softly chewy instead of crisp.

Cuttlefish

Cuttlefish

First starter was a single tempura shiitake, topped with a lovely seaweed emulsion. It wasn’t the best hit of tempura I’ve had recently, being a little on the oily side and the mushroom inside too juicy. Things got a lot better with a wonderful cobnut “tofu”, silky soft and tasting so amiably of fresh cobnuts, topped with powerfully flavoured maitake mushroom. After that perhaps my favourite dish: ribbons of lightly cooked cuttlefish in a bowl of beautifully dark tuna and seaweed stock, pepped up with brightly warm spiced I couldn’t quite identify.

The main fish course was a little cake made of lobster claw meat, delicately charred on top, in a beautiful saffron broth and served with a fresh and fragrant tomato gel. This was altogether an adorable, if small, bite. The lamb for the main was a lovely piece of meat, packed with flavour and well charred on the outside, juicy pink within. Some pressed slow-cooked belly alongside added a contrasting flavour. Just the one spear of asparagus to accompany.

Hogweed tart

Hogweed tart

Dessert was a teeny-tiny hogweed tartlet with four pieces of a strawberry carefully balanced on top, a scoop of cherry ice cream on top of those. It was a dear little thing and the hay-ish hogweed flavour came through the very lovely strawberries well. Pre-dessert was a very bright and perfect sea buckthorn granita and good blackberry ice cream.

There was some excellent food here, and we had a lovely evening, but looking back the tale of the night seems to be modesty: the kind of portion sizes I’d expect on a tasting menu with twice the number of courses. This was born out by how I felt on the way home: not hungry per se, but not full. I like to leave a three-digit meal feeling at least full. If not positively stuffed. Och, I know that’s not the point, but at £145 the menu is priced pretty high and while the food was really good, I’d only pick a couple out as memorable. I’d have to say that Counter 71 wouldn’t be my first pick as the East London tasting menu you should be looking out for.

Smoked eel snack

Smoked eel snack

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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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