Fine dining has evolved a lot. And so it’s lovely sometimes to rock up at a country house hotel in the middle of nowhere, be settled by the fire and brought champagne, then taken through to a high-ceilinged dining room, seated at a white linen clad table, and served superb food and good wine by …
I seldom order steak. Not because I don’t like steak. I do like steak. But I also like an interesting plate of food, an unusual vegetable, an exciting accompaniment, an inventive sauce. And yet no matter how wonderful and inventive the rest of a restaurant’s menu looks, the steak is always served with a f*cking …
I love a place that has its own ambience. Something deliberate, done well enough that you can really soak up the atmosphere. I am bored to bloody tears of “oh look, reclaimed floorboards walling. Oh look, scaffold tube and copper pipe as furnishing and lighting.” You get the feeling there must be catalogues for this …
I love the arrival of Indian streetfood in the UK. It’s such a breath of fresh air after the decades of meat-in-sauce curry house cooking that was all you could find anywhere unless you went for the handful of fine dining Indians that started to appear in the late 90’s. That said, I found Mowgli …
I’ve already reviewed the classic Bell’s Diner, an absolute pin-perfect neighbourhood bistro. And now I’m jotting down a few words about their other outpost in another Bristol neighbourhood: Bellita. A bit more bijou, more of a bar with a menu, but every bit as adept with the Mediterranean small-plates. We had a masterfully cooked bit …