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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Rigatone con fungi

Review: Da Mario, Kensington

They’ve been serving Italian food at Da Mario in leafy Kensington for decades and decades. It is exactly what you would expect from an antique London Italian restaurant, from the mish-mash of old furniture to the photos of famous visitors on the walls alongside pictures of glorious bits of the mother country. At Da Mario …

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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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Review: Rockfish, BrixhamReview: The Club House, West BexingtonReview: Da Mario, KensingtonReview: Chisou, MayfairReview: The Vine Tree, Crickhowell

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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Review: The Beaumont, Hexham

Categories:

Rest of UK, Restaurant Reviews

16 June 2025

The Beaumont

The Beaumont

Hexham is a very handsome little market town with a lot of history and a splendid old abbey as a centrepiece. Just a stone’s throw from the abbey is The Beaumont, the town’s grandest hotel (at least, as grand as a small market town could need). It’s an old Victorian building, very effectively modernised and a lovely stay. The staff couldn’t be more helpful, including at dinner. Hotel aside, The Beaumont also seems to be *the* place to eat in Hexham too and I’d be tempted to agree. Except, of course, that it’s the only place we ate in Hexham so I can’t fairly compare!

I started with a smoky beef tartare served with a vivid yellow egg yolk, charred fungi and crispy bits of… onion? Not sure. Nice crispy bits. More to the point, a generous portion of beautiful beef clearly very well prepared and given a spin with the smoky flavour. Maureen’s mussels were all plump specimens and served with a gently nduja-infused tomato sauce that worked extremely well with the shellfish.

Tartare

Tartare

For main I went with the wild mushroom risotto. This was a really good specimen, from the plump grains with just the right bite and the gentle flavour of truffle running right through, to the nicely char-grilled porcini added to the plate along with softly caramelised onions and a tangy cheese. Across the table was a superbly cooked pork chop. Having had a few over the years, I’d say that a pork chop is one of the hardest things to cook well, so I’m always pleased to find one with a good amount of crispy caramelisation on the surface, fat seared enough to be delicious and still a faint rosy pinkness in the juicy interior. Very full-flavoured too (I can speak with experience, as we ate here again the following night and I had the chop!).

No room for pudding on the first night, so next evening I forced myself to try their sticky toffee pudding. Excellent specimen, for the record. When I say that two courses might be £30 and three courses under £40, it’s clear that The Beaumont is also ridiculously good value. If I’m up in Hexham again I really ought to try a couple of other places… but it will be very hard not to just return to The Beaumont!

At the Beaumont

At the Beaumont

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Review: The Blacksmith’s Arms, Lastingham

Categories:

Pubs, Rest of UK, Restaurant Reviews

16 June 2025

Lamb pie

Lamb pie

There’s a lovely walk you can do from Hutton-le-Hole via Spaunton to Lastingham and then back along the edge of the moor, it’s only four miles or a couple of hours and all three villages are lovely. We came back to Lastingham in the evening for dinner at The Blacksmith’s Arms, an atmospheric little inn tucked in a fold of the landscape with the village church and a scatter of grey stone cottages.

The menu is a lovely looking no-frills mixture of pub classics and more modern twists, and the prices good value. My starter was goat cheese and beetroot arancini. In hindsight I’m not sure why I picked it, as although I like goat cheese and beetroot they seem an odd filling for an arancini. Sure enough, they just sat there as unexpected flavour nuggets in an otherwise pretty dry rice ball fried in a very hefty breadcrumb coating. One large arancini would definitely have been better than the three small ones.

Stroganoff

Stroganoff

My main was a piece of minted lamb pie. It was fine. I’ve had much more full-flavoured, melting and lush lamb in other pies, much more zip of mint in the gravy and much more crisp and nutty pastry. So this was just okay. Maureen’s beef stroganoff was also just kinda okay. It was the beef stroganoff of a modest home cook; the beef neither full-flavoured in itself nor seared, just cooked right through and sturdy in the creamy sauce and looking very grey on a bed of rice. Across the table mum had sea bass with a wild garlic risotto… but such a miniscule (if any?) amount of wild garlic in there it was undetectable. Decent chunk of fish though.

So although priced fairly, around £30 for two courses, I can’t honestly say that I’d seek out the Blacksmith’s Arms in Lastingham. But if you happen to want a lunch stop on a nice walk, or you’re staying in the area, it’s not going to do you any harm either.

Country stroll

Country stroll

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