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The Sportsman restaurant, Seasalter, Whitstable, Kent
The Sportsman, in Seasalter, Kent. Photograph: Tricia de Courcy Ling
The Sportsman, in Seasalter, Kent. Photograph: Tricia de Courcy Ling

My 50 favourite UK restaurants: critic Marina O'Loughlin's choice

This article is more than 8 years old

The Guardian’s restaurant critic picks her 50 favourite restaurants in the UK, from a seaside pub in Kent that serves some of the best food on the planet to a Glasgow old-timer that’s a city institution

Asking me for my favourite restaurants is a bit like insisting I choose my favourite child: genuinely agonising. It’s a question I get asked on a weekly basis (the restaurant one, not the children) and, just as regularly, the answer will change. But for every different response, the reasons they’re my favourites remain the same. And it’s not because of cheffy showing off or experimentation, the perfection of the linen or the opulence of the decor. The key determinant is: would I go back? It surprises me how many times – even after a technically flawless meal – the answer to my own question is to shake my head: nope.

Restaurants are about far more than the cooking. (I’d never say I was a food critic; my job is restaurant reviewer.) In some of the restaurants on this list, the food isn’t the main draw by any stretch of the imagination. But would I go back tomorrow, and the tomorrow after that? Yes, please.

Even after 15 years of doing this gig (plus 10 years of actually working in restaurants), when I wake up in the morning knowing I’m off out to lunch, I feel uplifted and excited, and immensely privileged that I get to do this for a living. Once upon a time, I used to scour Michelin, especially when travelling, enduring many a hushed, clenched room and dishes where red peppers were tortured to look like Mondrians. This has caused a bit of an allergy to the stressy, tweezered school of cuisine, so I’m afraid you won’t find many multi-course tasting menus here. (There are a couple, but they’re the work of chefs who understand the term ‘hospitality’, and still see food as a joy, a pleasure, rather than an opportunity to waggle their appendages.)

I’m sorry if your favourite isn’t here, and I apologise in advance to Wales, Birmingham, Auchenshuggle. These are my favourite restaurants, not the UK’s best, or the country’s top, or any other such arbitrary listicle. Yes, my choices may be London-heavy, but do bear in mind that a) I do not live there, and b) it’s simply where the highest concentration of good restaurants in the UK is to be found. (If I’d been allowed out of the UK, you would be reading about the likes of Joe Beef in Montreal, Cibus in Puglia and the Swan Oyster Depot in San Francisco.) And because I visit incognito, I get the same experience you would: no rolling out the red carpet, no special treatment or extra little freebies.

My favourites may not suit your purposes if you want to crunch deals in an atmosphere designed for Masters of the Universe. Or to stand in line for hours with nothing to show for it but a meat sandwich that takes 30 seconds to eat. Or spray yourself orange and dance on tables (yes, STK, I’m looking at you). But the more restaurants I eat in, the more I’m devoted to those that send me out into the night thinking not ‘I wonder how the chef got the foraged sea asters to do that?’ but ‘That was top fun’.

My favourite places are those where staff look genuinely pleased to see you, where there’s a buzz of contented customers, where the menu gives you a little thrill because there are so many things on it that you’d like to eat. And where you always fancy just the one more glass from an alluring, ungreedy wine list. I’m afraid I no longer much care about Michelin and The World’s 50 Best, nor do I particularly worry about lack of upholstery in the seating (I’m furnished with plenty of my own padding). But in each of the restaurants I talk about here, I can say – with hand on heart – I’ve had a really, really good time.

Agree with Marina’s choices, or got your own favourites to add to her list? Join our restaurant critic for a live Q&A on Monday at 1pm; leave your comments now

Scotland

Timberyard

Timberyard in Edinburgh is ‘one of Scotland’s most rule-breaking and experimental restaurants’. Photograph: Murdo Macleod

10 Lady Lawson Street, Edinburgh EH3, 0131-221 1222, timberyard.co
How odd of stern, handsome Edinburgh to be home to one of Scotland’s most rule-breaking and experimental restaurants. Surely Glasgow’s the place for that sort of thing? But while the Second City continues to gorge itself on burgers, this beautiful, family-run former warehouse and – yes – timberyard continues to plough its own merry furrow to haunting and hugely satisfying effect.

The malted sourdough and whipped bone marrow butter that kick off proceedings are a ballsy statement of intent, and everything that arrives afterwards – “bite”, “small”, “main” and “sweet” – will raise eyebrows and smiles in equal measure. I’m particularly impressed with chef Ben Radford’s way with meat, taking fine Scottish produce and letting it sing, avoiding water baths and other culinary footerings. But he’s a wow with the lighter things in life, too: sodas flavoured with wild things, dishes scented with lovage or elderberry, or scattered with woodruff, sea buckthorn or fluffy, sharp Crowdie cheese.

Add to that Timberyard’s policy of aiming to achieve zero waste (they grow a lot of their own greens and herbs), a wonderful hidden interior courtyard where you can sit with tartan rugs over knees and an in-house butchery, and you get something very special indeed. And the cocktails – from a list on which charred tomato jostles with noble fir, burnt birch bark, even bone marrow – are simply not to be missed.

Rogano

‘A long-standing seafood joint that cracks out classics with aplomb.’ Photograph: Murdo Macleod

11 Exchange Place, Glasgow G1, 0141-248 4055, roganoglasgow.com
There was a period of my life when I basically lived in the Rogano, a walnut booth in its beautiful, art-deco interior pressed into service as office, living room and occasionally – after a martini or several – very nearly bedroom.

The lobster bristling on the perfectly preserved Vitrolite exterior lets you know that seafood is the name of the game here. It was originally an oyster bar, and you can still prop up the bar necking the bivalves – plain or Rockefeller or, with dangerous modernity, fried in polenta. But the greatest treat for me was being able to afford the restaurant proper, for classic fish soup with rouille and croutons, and – oh! – lobster thermidor. With chips, of course.

On a recent visit, the exterior had sadly sprouted a “terrace” that was enthusiastically colonised by smokers. But inside it’s as seductively of another time as ever. And the rosy langoustines as yielding and sweet.

I always thought Rogano was one of those vintage entertainment palace names, like Alhambra, Locarno, Gaumont, but apparently it’s the elision of the name of the original owner, Mr Roger, with “ANOther” silent partner. Love this. Maybe one of these days, if I go back often enough, I might even score the legendary Table 16.

Inver

‘The Isle of Bute lamb served at Inver will be probably some of the finest you’ve ever eaten.’ Photograph: Murdo Macleod

Strachlachan, Strachur, Argyll & Bute, 01369 860537
What a location – this place has the sort of view over loch and castle that tourist boards dream of. And in this whitewashed former croft in Argyll, the team of chef Pam Brunton and front-of-house Rob Latimer are delivering cooking that’s every bit as dramatic as the panorama.

You can sit in the little bar and eat crab fished from those Loch Fyne waters and served simply with homemade sourdough and hand-churned butter. Or call by (unlikely, given its remoteness) for fresh scones, cookies and coffee in the afternoon, nabbing one of the outdoor benches to breathe in the cool, clean air. But dinner in the pale, Nordic-looking dining room with its wood fire is a real event, worth travelling over hill and dale for. Perhaps there might be a slab of purest white Gigha halibut served with a tangle of acidulated potato, a clever and delicious play on fish and chips; or that old stalwart of scallops with black pudding reinvented as a black pudding bun with raw scallop nestling at its centre. Isle of Bute lamb will probably be some of the finest you’ve ever eaten – swoonworthy. Dishes might be scattered with wild herbs, meadowsweet and scurvy grass, pea tendrils, wild garlic, or delicate flowers, all collected by the team. A wee beauty.

La Parmigiana

447 Great Western Road, Glasgow G12, 0141-334 0686
Chef and owner Sandro Giovanizzi can’t be said to be one of the world’s great kitchen innovators – I’m pretty sure that the menu served when they opened in 1978 would look pretty much like the one on offer today – but that’s not what La Parmigiana is all about. It’s about comfort, familiarity, the knowledge that the fine elastic pasta for the trademark lobster ravioli will be homemade with free-range eggs and Italian 00 flour, the little parcels stuffed to bursting with shellfish, the creamy sauce rich with their shells. And that the beef will be finest Scottish, as will the salmon, but the technique will be purest Italian.

The snug, red walls have welcomed lots of stars over the years – I love the photos of the likes of Lionel Richie and Sex And The City’s Kim Cattrall on the website – but the restaurant quietly goes about the business of turning happy customers into regulars who’ll come back time and time again. Senior staff treat old and young with equal grace. The small restaurant has been the setting for more O’Loughlin family parties than any other, the most recent for a 90-year-old who’s sadly no longer with us. He had a wonderful time.

North

Sticky Walnut

Sticky Walnut: ‘Good simplicity is notoriously difficult to achieve.’ Photograph: Christopher Thomond for the Guardian

11 Charles Street, Hoole, Chester, 01244 400400
Chef/owner Gary Usher may have stood down from his perch as funniest chef on Twitter (a shame, because his uncensored rants, from lacerating soul-searching to lambasting the “conosurs” on TripAdvisor, was one of social media’s top diversions), but his delicious, plainly decorated two-storey bistro in Hoole garners new fans daily.

Usher is typically self-deprecating about the food that comes out of his kitchen, insisting that it’s simple stuff. But good simplicity is notoriously difficult to achieve – there’s no hiding place – and his team carry it off every time. Fluffy foccaccia with a seductive, oily crust; fine meat – lesser-loved cuts such as shin, maybe, or Jacob’s ladder, or pig’s cheeks, slow-braised into spoonable tenderness. The eponymous “sticky walnuts” served with roast baby beets, spicy pumpkin seeds and fresh goat’s curd are now poshly named “walnut praline”, but they’re still there. Game is a real strength, and I could develop a serious habit for their blue-cheese arancini.

Usher successfully crowdfunded a baby Sticky, called Burnt Truffle, in the Wirral, and rumour has it that he’s looking at opening Sticky Mk III in Manchester. If so, lucky Manchester.

House of Tides

House of Tides: ‘Pulls off that rare trick of making high-end cuisine truly accessible.’ Photograph: Rebecca Lupton for the Guardian

28-30 The Close, Newcastle NE1, 0191-230 3720
A lovely, historical riverfront building, an inspiring chef (Kenny Atkinson), creativity and excellent produce aplenty: House of Tides is a real north-eastern star. The original tasting-menu-only option has now been augmented with two- and three-course options, making it truly accessible. Brief dish descriptions – “peas, pine nuts, chives” – belie the delicious intricacy of the dishes.

Van Zeller

8 Montpellier Street, Harrogate, North Yorkshire, 01423 508762,
It was during a riotously greedy trip around God’s Own Country that I first came across Tom Van Zeller’s small Harrogate restaurant. Of all the places I visited, it’s this one I’m drawn back to – despite it being far, far away from my own back yard.

In a boutique-lined street in the city’s pretty Montpellier Quarter, it doesn’t look like much at first, especially compared with some of Yorkshire’s other culinary stars, who go in for cosy tradition and open fires in a big way. But the restrained, monochrome interior allows Van Zeller’s creativity to shine where it belongs: on the plates.

One of his menu stalwarts – rabbit, marmalade, carrot, soil – is a bucolic romp on a plain white dish: endless iterations of the root vegetable, pickled, raw, cooked; the most delicate, tender bunny; a “soil” made from dark, fragrant mushrooms. It’s a genuine classic, and one I’m happy to rave about any opportunity I get. Newer dishes are delicate and complex – chicken wings with scallops, cauliflower and truffle; or the richness of smoked eel given freshness and zing by cucumber, chervil, apple and goat’s curd – without losing sight of that essential deliciousness. And, yes, they’re beautiful.

I may not give much of a damn about Michelin stars, but with his thoughtful, intricate cooking, Tom Van Zeller clearly does. Why he isn’t tripping over the things is beyond me.

The Man Behind The Curtain

68-78 Vicar Lane, Leeds LS1, 0113 243 2376
He calls himself Hair Metal Chef on Twitter, a nod to gorgeously eccentric Michael O’Hare’s silver-aproned, rock’n’roll style. In a loft-like space above designer clothes shop Flannels, O’Hare crafts his idiosyncratic dishes: a punky approach to haute cuisine. Despite the artistry, he never loses sight of the need for food to taste fantastic.

Siam Smiles

Siam Smiles: ‘An Asian food store in Manchester that just happens to serve brilliant Thai food on the side.’ Photograph: Rebecca Lupton for the Guardian

48a George Street, Manchester M1, 0161-237 1555
A supermarket in Manchester’s Chinatown is the unlikely setting for some of the most authentic-tasting, vibrant Thai cooking I’ve had in the UK. The kitchen’s forte is noodles, lovely, wriggly noodles with plenty of bite in broths shimmering with gardens’ worth of herbs. They might brim with pokey Thai chillies, pink shallots, even pig’s blood. The owners regularly fly in produce from Thailand, fresh peppercorns almost juicy with citrussy fire, lime leaves, morning glory, stink beans, pea aubergines, and Chef May makes fine use of them.

In case the vivid flavours aren’t enough for you, tables are laden with condiments: white pepper, crushed peanuts, tamarind, chilli vinegar. But that’s for the hardcore – anyone needing more spicing clearly has a palate of purest asbestos.

Even sticky rice is wonderful (I’m not damning with faint praise: it’s tricky to get right), perfect for bunching into balls and dabbing into the sour-sweet-hot sauces or for soothing the burn from punchy, fermented pork sausages. If you’re lucky, there might be red duck curry on the menu, the paste heroically Technicolor in flavour. Siam Smiles is family-run, and the care and love they pour into each dish makes us customers feel like family, too.

Lunya

18–20 College Lane, Liverpool L1, 0151-706 9770
This sprawling deli-meets-tapas bar serves some of the best Spanish produce to a devoted local crowd. Ceilings sprout first-class hams and sausages, many of which can be eaten in the brick-walled restaurant. Owner Peter Kinsella calls it “Catalan fusion” (gambas pil pil might come with vanilla; bacalao spring rolls; a lush arroz negro; very unSpanishly, they have a vegan menu, too), while Catalan scouse, laced with chorizo piccante and morcilla, is surely as fusion as it gets.

Volta

Volta: ‘Everything you’d want from a neighbourhood joint.’ Photograph: Christopher Thomond for the Guardian

167 Burton Road, West Didsbury, Manchester M20, 0161-448 8887
Along West Didsbury’s strip, it’s hard to throw a move without hitting a cool little hostelry or bistro. Despite being unnaturally drawn to the notorious Crazy Wendy’s Thai, Volta is my favourite: everything you’d want from a neighborhood joint, plus a whole lot of rackety fun besides.

Some of that racketiness is possibly down to the fact that it’s owned by the DJ duo known as the Unabombers – Luke Cowdray and Justin Crawford – who serve food influenced by their world travels. So the menu could feature the likes of purple sprouting broccoli fried with shallot and chilli; monkfish ceviche in a coconut-enriched leche de tigre; lamb chops grilled with Lebanese spices; juniper-and-orange-smoked duck with giant couscous and pickled mushrooms. There’s always a board groaning with good charcuterie, with house pickles and fine bread from Trove in Levenshulme.

It’s a cute little place, a bit battered around the edges, but in a decorative way. There’s a great drinks list and rare-breed roasts on a Sunday. The streetside terrace is a year-long party. Staff are lovely, too, and understand the concept of hospitality.

The Reliance

76-78 North Street, Leeds LS2, 0113-295 6060
They make their own charcuterie at this raw-boned, striking boozer. Top stuff it is, too: velvety, scented with fennel, glistening with fat, and so good the city’s excellent charcuterie bar Friends of Ham stocks it. The rest of the menu isn’t to be sniffed at, either: the kitchen turns out food you want to eat, from the simple (Yorkshire pork sausages with mash and gravy) to the special (pigeon breast with charred spring onion and pomegranate molasses). Much more than a pub, the Reli is a fine eating house, one with heart and soul.

South

Bell’s Diner

Bell’s Diner: ‘Has settled into a formula of being simply excellent.’ Photograph: Sam Frost for the Guardian

1-3 York Road, Montpelier, Bristol BS6, 0117 924 0357
A Bristol stalwart throughout many incarnations, Bell’s has now settled on being, simply, excellent. The corner site, with its vintage furnishings and series of little rooms, oozes charm. If it’s on the regularly changing menu – I described it as “Modern Brit with touches of Moro” – the lamb Sainte Ménehould (fried, breaded breast with a vibrant herb sauce) should always be ordered. And an unusually fine wine list rewards enthusiastic exploration. An offshoot, Bellita, opened last week.

64 Degrees

53 Meeting House Lane, Brighton, 01273 770115
I like to pull a stool up to the counter at tiny (just 20-odd covers) 64 Degrees in the Brighton Lanes and work my way through everything on the menu between two of us. It’s easy to do: the menu is short and the dishes small, but both punch far above their weight. Terse menu descriptions – lobster, wasabi, lime; mackerel, gooseberry, elderflower, cucumber; grouse breast, greengage, bread sauce – belie the sophistication of technique and the sheer thwack of flavour teased into every dish. This is a kitchen working at the top of its powers: the menu changes with dizzying regularity, and there’s something to dazzle and thrill each time you go.

Chef Michael Bremner runs his minuscule empire with energy and enthusiasm, and a Nutty Professor’s cupboard full of sophisticated kit, used to alluring effect to dehydrate kimchi for serving with sticky, addictive chicken wings crowned with a blue cheese foam, or to create discs of ethereal, savoury jelly. The gummy bear dessert, if it’s on, is a showstopper. I’ve no idea why their second outlet in central London didn’t last, but I’m inclined to blame the burghers of Pimlico, rather than this electrifyingly entertaining little number.

JoJo’s

2 Herne Bay Road, Tankerton, Kent, 01227 274591
JoJo’s hasn’t missed a beat since moving from a tiny main street restaurant to this handsome seafront building with plenty of alfresco tables. Produce is Kentish – especially the pristine fish – but flavours are Mediterranean: smoky grilled sardines, sharp with lemon and black pepper, excellent salumi and embutidos, mutton and feta koftas, mixed meze. Sadly, it’s no longer BYO (they used to add extra corkage if wine came from Tesco).

Pump Street Bakery

1 Pump Street, Orford, Suffolk, 01394 459829
This stripped-back little outfit is justifiably renowned for its baking, but a lunch at the cafe – Orford-smoked salmon on home-baked Montreal bagel, maybe, or pulled pork and buttermilk coleslaw on a brioche bun – offers sheer pleasure (especially on a sunny outdoor table). I once went to a party here and woke up the next morning with my bag full of their sausage rolls. I’m happy to report they were every bit as glorious a day later.

LONDON

Brawn

49 Columbia Road, London E2, 020-7729 5692
A former small-industrial building – high ceilings, open kitchen, vast windows – Brawn is a looker with the sort of bones that mean it doesn’t need to try too hard. But both its understated beauty and the apparent simplicity of the menu belie the kitchen’s real commitment to deliciousness: punctilious sourcing, a passion for ingredients, real technique. Their pannacotta is the finest I’ve tasted, and what they do with vegetables, duck, lesser-loved cuts of meat… A newly re-found favourite for me – the sort of place I’d go to weekly, if I could.

Rules

Rules: ‘The perfect location for pretending you’re landed gentry.’ Photograph: Christopher Thomond for the Guardian

35 Maiden Lane, London WC2, 020-7836 5314
As we speak, I’ve just booked a table here, for grouse. Rules comes roaring into its own in game season, its opulent, red-velvet-and-gilt grandeur the perfect location for pretending you’re landed gentry. I couldn’t love this restaurant more as the nights grow chill and, at Christmas, it is simply the ideal place to avoid any thoughts of shopping over a gallon or two of claret and perhaps an overstuffed, offal-rich suet pudding. Maybe under a tinsel-bedecked portrait of Maggie Thatcher.

As London’s oldest restaurant, Rules gets its fair share of the grown-up, wealthier tourist trade (last time I went, I collided with original supermodel Janice Dickinson), but it’s still home to real Londoners, many of whom look as though they’ve taken a brief hiatus from starring in a Punch cartoon.

Two great Rules secrets: 1) the bar – the martinis are among the best in the capital, but I’m not telling you how to find it, because it is mine, I tell you; and 2) it’s open all day, right through from midday to midnight. Grouse at 4pm, then game chips, pâté and port, before rolling home to an early bed, preferably tucked in by Nanny. They’re not afraid to have a cocktail that’s dedicated to Kate Middleton; Rules is old enough to be above irony. “Game birds may contain lead shot,” they say. It’s a risk I’m willing to take.

José

104 Bermondsey Street, London SE1
Probably my favourite seat in the capital is at the window of tapas bar José with a glass of something saline and frosty – a manzanilla from Sanlucar de Barrameda, maybe – and a plate of purple, glistening, expertly cut Ibérico de bellota in front of me. (That it looks out on to another cracker, ultra-bistro Casse-Croûte, is just a by-the-way.)

This tiny space gets mobbed almost the minute it throws open its doors at noon, so scoring the prime spot feels a real privilege. Most people treat José as tapas bars should be treated: grab an Estrella Damm or glass of txacoli, a plate of croquetas (and, when they taste the wonder that are chef José Pizarro’s croquetas, immediately order another), and then move on. Me, though, I bed in. As soon as they think they’re getting rid of me, or another punter reckons they might be in line for my perch and gives me the hard stare, I’ll order something else: a wobbly-centred tortilla, crisp-fried hake with allioli, baby chicken with nutty romesco sauce. Anything, really – it’ll all be gorgeous. Pizarro’s background in the Spanish importers (and now restaurateurs) Brindisa means that the quality is always stellar. Four o’clock in the afternoon is a great time for nabbing a seat. And then just staying there.

40 Maltby Street

40 Maltby Street: ‘More than just good and frequently verges on stellar.’ Photograph: Sophia Evans for the Guardian

40 Maltby Street, London SE1, 020-7237 9247
Believe it or not, I love a starched linen tablecloth and Riedel glassware as much as the next restaurant addict. But much of the genuinely interesting cooking these days – especially from a younger, more impecunious bunch – comes from places like this corrugated iron-clad railway arch. It’s the warehouse of Gergovie Wines (whose natural wines dominate the list), so they’ve made a virtue of necessity. The kitchen may be the size of a cupboard, but this is über-foodie Maltby Street, so if the food weren’t up to snuff, it would rapidly croak its last. It’s more than just good, and frequently verges on stellar. There’s usually a fine, rough terrine – pork and peppercorn, maybe – and wonderful croquettes (celeriac, say, or smoked haddock). A tart: fine pastry laden with smoked eel, onion and horseradish. Crayfish cocktail on toast. And they’re not afraid to put on a pie: pork and prune, or venison. Dishes may be humble – cabbage rolls with pork broth, egg mayonnaise striped with slivers of fierce, salty anchovy – but they’re always made with an eye towards the consummate pleasure of eating, possibly thanks to chef Stephen Williams’ background in the high-end likes of The Ledbury. I realise that a depressing number of my recommendations say the words, as 40 Maltby Street does, “We do not take reservations”. I can only apologise.

The Manor

The Manor: ‘Enthralling, sometimes challenging, wildly creative, but always, always a blast.’ Photograph: Sophia Evans for the Guardian

148 Clapham Manor Street, London SW4, 020-7720 4662
How does chef Robin Gill do it? His mini-empire now stretches to three restaurants – this, with the original The Dairy down the road and just recently Paradise Garage in Bethnal Green – yet he’s hit the bullseye every time. His food is enthralling, sometimes challenging, wildly creative, but always, always a blast.

Head chef at this cool, artistically scuffed number is Dean Parker, who seems to be every bit as talented as his mentor, teasing vegetables into extraordinary service – charred-edged celeriac, smoked aubergine whipped with mint, honey-smoked asparagus (they love a good smoking, and fermenting, and pickling) with mead and creme fraiche. I’m a huge fan of the likes of their barbecued chicken skins with own-made kimchi. The tasting menu – eight courses for £42 – is so worth doing: it’s a true showcase of the kitchen’s skills.

Vegetables, herbs, even honey, can come from their own rooftop garden back at the mothership down the road, and flavours are notably brighter and sprightlier as a result. They make their own sausages and charcuterie. I’d cross oceans for their baked Vacherin with chestnuts and doused in that honey: evidence that the team is happy with luxurious simplicity as well as with culinary pyrotechnics. Those with a sweet tooth will faint with joy at the build-your-own-elaborate-sundae dessert bar.

Ciao Bella

Ciao Bella: ‘May not be the greatest Italian in the capital, but it has the biggest heart.’ Photograph: Sophia Evans for the Guardian

86-90 Lamb’s Conduit Street, London WC1, 020-7242 4119
Nothing about Ciao Bella suggests that it belongs on any list of restaurant critics’ “bests”, from the website that appears to have been designed in the 1990s to a menu where every hoary old Italian trattoria cliche is alive and bellowing O Sole Mio. But this 30-year-old trouper packs ’em in night after night. The terrace (aka tables on the pavement) is busy no matter what the weather. The overwhelming impression – from the vast risottos, bready pizzas and dishes you thought didn’t exist any more (vitello alla pizzaiola, pollo alla diavola) – is one of generosity.

There’s a resident pianist bashing out Italian “classics”, and over-refreshed punters are forever joining in. It’s a wonderful place to come with in-laws, or toddlers, or anyone who enjoys the ministrations of jovial, cheesy, super-attentive older waiters. The last time I came here, I had lasagne and chips. Because I could. I once also sat between David Bailey on one side and that Darius from The X Factor on the other. It’s that kind of place: enormous, unselfconscious, old-school fun. Boris Johnson is a fan – probably something to do with the startling hugeness of portions – but don’t hold that against it. This is not the greatest Italian restaurant in the capital, but it has the biggest heart. And, of course, enormous pepper mills.

Koya Bar

50 Frith Street, London W1
I wept hot tears when Koya closed at the start of this summer (I know, I should get a life) when its visionary chef Junya Yamasaki decided to head back to Japan. But Koya Bar next door is holding up remarkably well in his absence, and growing to be, if anything, almost every bit as good.

Udon noodles – fat, snowy-white, with the most haunting chew – are the most alluring things you can give to your teeth. Legend has it that they’re made the traditional way, by foot. (Yes, foot.) They can come in vast bowls of fragrant broth, or as cold, decorative nests to be unravelled and dunked in soy dips or hot soups. Topped with the frilliest, laciest tempura – vegetables, or prawns of improbable enormousness – they become a rare, opulent treat. Koya Bar’s breakfast bowl, heaving with marinated mushrooms, fried egg and bacon, is bloody gorgeous. But there’s so much more than just noodles, especially on the specials blackboard: pristine sashimi, whole deep-fried sole with its crunchy bones, curry and tempura prawn donburi. Little wonder this long, simply decorated room, for counter dining only, has a constant queue outside, something I avoid by going mid-afternoon. The freelance life has to have its perks, and Koya Bar is one of them.

Lyle’s

Lyle’s: ‘Unmistakeably brilliant cooking.’ Photograph: Xavier Girard Lachaine

Tea Building, 56 Shoreditch High Street, London E1, 020-3011 5911
I was a bit sniffy about Lyle’s at first – not because of the unmistakeably brilliant cooking, but because of the set, no-choice dinner menu and its canteen-like demeanour. It was all just a little uncompromising, I huffed. Then I went back for lunch, when you can choose. And went back again. And again. Now that chef James Lowe has relaxed a little, it’s some of the most exciting cooking in the capital.

Brunswick House

Brunswick House: ‘I have fantasies of being found in a corner, covered in cobwebs.’ Photograph: Sophia Evans for the Guardian

30 Wandsworth Road, London SW8, 020-7720 2926
The restaurant at Brunswick House is one of those places that simply shouldn’t work. But it does, it really does, despite its location, marooned in the middle of the ugly Vauxhaull giratory system, part of the Georgian mansion shared by architectural salvage specialists Lassco. And its decor: Steptoe’s yard crossed with the Marylebone pad of a camp set designer (which I love, obviously).

But scratch the surface and the pedigree starts to show: the restaurant is run by Jackson Boxer, grandson of food writer Arabella Boxer, brother to Frank of the famous Peckham car park rooftop cafe specialising in Campari; his father runs an Italian deli not far away. It’s fair to say this is one foodie family.

The food is contemporary without being outré: a lot of vegetables, treated sympathetically and creatively (a riot of different brassicas on pecan butter; fried pattypan squash with a fonduta of Coolea cheese and lovage oil); off-piste meat cuts (lamb’s tongue with endive, roast top flank with cabbage and nasturtium, spiced sweetbreads with roast corn and grilled onions).

I have fantasies of being found in a corner here, covered in cobwebs, a kind of mummified Miss Havisham, having expired after a particularly lavish dinner. Just slightly preserved by the ingestion of several of their very excellent cocktails.

Gymkhana

42 Albemarle Street, London W1, 020-3011 5900
By no means your neighbourhood curry house, Gymkhana is a swish, special-occasion restaurant – if you can score a table, that is. It shows that the food of the subcontinent deserves to be celebrated, not dismissed (as we often do in this country) as cheapo beer sponge. Here, it’s raised to a fine art: the freshest spices tempered and sizzled, good wine and fine meat (the duck dosa and muntjac biryani have become must-haves, with good reason), served in an atmosphere of moody, Raj-inspired luxury.

Opera Tavern

23 Catherine Street, London WC2, 020-7836 3680
Asked what I’d eat for my last meal on Earth, there’s every chance it might have to include the Ibérico pork burger from Opera Tavern, a far more complex dish than its terse description suggests. It is gorgeous, as is the bustling restaurant (I like the more informal ground floor best); from the clued-up staff, brilliant wine list and fine, expertly cut hams to the more intricate dishes, it fires on every cylinder.

Honey & Co

25a Warren Street, London W1, 020-7388 6175
Just thinking about Honey & Co makes me come over all warm and fuzzy: the husband-and-wife team who run it (Sarit Packer is Itamar Srulovich’s “honey”); the tiny, constantly packed restaurant with its shelves of jewel-coloured preserves and lust-inducing cakes and pastries; the cooking, vibrant with Middle Eastern spicing, based on “the food we grew up on… our moms’ and aunties’ food… the things we miss from our childhood”. The sticky Fitzrovia bun, fat with pistachios and sour cherries, is properly life-enhancing.

Sweetings

39 Queen Victoria Street, London EC4, 020-7248 3062, no website
Born in 1889, wood-panelled fish restaurant Sweetings is supremely masculine, its City location dictating a testosterone-blessed clientele. But there’s also the menu: from the already-buttered bread, to the Dover sole and oysters, to its roster of stodgy, syrupy, custardy, trad-Brit puddings, it’s designed for the chap who loved his nanny (an impression intensified by being ministered to by firm, uniformed matrons). I should hate the place, but it has a curious hold on me: there’s nothing much like it anywhere else.

St John Bread & Wine

94-96 Commercial Street, London E1, 020-7251 0848
Many would choose the seminal mothership, St John, but I like the more rackety Bread & Wine – it has less of a pole up its jacksie. As you’d expect, both bread and wine are worth travelling for (as is their celebrated breakfast bacon sandwich): wheels of the legendary St John sourdough stacked up by the open kitchen and a wine list to tickle the fussiest oenophile. Dishes are suitable for sharing, frequently starring creatively spiced vegetables or the perkiest fish. The only restaurant I know to feature elevenses. Seed cake and a glass of Madeira, anyone?

Ganapati

Ganapati: ‘The parathas are a must-order: “a carbphile’s life goal.”’ Photograph: Sarah Lee for the Guardian

38 Holly Grove, London SE15, 020-7277 2928
For a long time, people on Twitter just had to bellow “PARATHA!” to me to send me off into a lustful reverie about the flaky, buttery flatbreads at this unassuming little South Indian restaurant in Peckham. They are a carbphile’s life goal.

The small, vibrantly coloured restaurant with a vaguely urban-hippy vibe was an early beacon in Peckham’s burgeoning status as a destination for food-lovers; those of us who found it raved with a kind of rabid evangelical fervour. And it hasn’t stumbled since. Concentrating, they tell us, on the “home cooking and street food of Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh”, the kitchen delivers in spades. Refreshingly, the menu changes frequently, but there will usually be a generous vegetarian thali, a slow-cooked meat curry – Keralan-style goat, perhaps, pokey with mustard seed; fish might be seabass fillet or swordfish with ajwain (carom) and smoked tamarind. Homemade pickles are outstandingly vivid, and I’m properly addicted to the crab thoran: masses of crabmeat, chunks of coconut, all thrumming with the fragrance of curry leaves.

Oddly, it’s not owned by Indians, but by a Brit, Claire Fisher. Apparently, she opened the restaurant after falling in love with the food of southern India. After a meal here (which must, must, include that paratha), you will, too.

Moro

Moro: ‘It was a pioneer, introducing us to ingredients
that have gone on to become mainstream.’
Photograph: Karen Robinson for the Guardian

34-36 Exmouth Market, London EC1, 020-7833 8336
Venerable in terms of London’s chomp-’em-up restaurant scene, Moro is ageless and timeless. A pioneer, not only in helping launch foodie mecca Exmouth Market, but also in introducing us to many of the exotic ingredients that shimmer throughout its alluring, Moroccan-Iberian menu: labneh, za’atar, cacik. Morito, its baby tapas bar next door, is also a little star.

Kitchen Table

70 Charlotte Street, London W1, 020-7637 7770
Skip the queue for hot dogs and champagne at Bubbledogs, part the heavy curtains at the back and some of London’s most extraordinary cooking awaits. Leather bar stools, only 19 of them, surround a kitchen that’s as much part of the experience as the food. The menu changes frequently, but expect 12 to 14 courses of intricate, adventurous dishes made with flawless produce. I’m normally allergic to the “chef’s table” kind of lark (who knows whom you might end up sitting beside?), but with food this exquisite, an exception has to be made.

A Wong

A Wong: ‘The cooking startles and thrills.’ Photograph: Sophia Evans for the Guardian

70 Wilton Road, London SW1, 020-7828 8931
How to choose a favourite Chinese restaurant? The delicious eccentricities of the Pengs at Hunan? The sky-high swank and heavenly Beijing duck at Min Jiang? The earthy, sizzling, fatty lamb skewers at grungy little Silk Road? No, it has to be A Wong, on a not particularly lovely road between Pimlico and Victoria, because the eponymous Andrew, who took over his family’s traditional Chinese restaurant, has achieved wonders here, transforming the old warhorse into something chic and contemporary (and not a little clattery), with a menu that startles and thrills.

It romps around China, namechecking all corners of the country. The 10-course Taste Of China menu assembles dumplings from Shanghai, Shaanxi’s pulled lamb “burgers” and Yunnan seared beef with chilli and pomegranate into a meal that’s a delicious travel adventure. Dim sum are exquisite: evolved versions of classics – “Breakfast in Causeway Bay” (Wong’s version of zha leung cheung fun) features sticky rice roll, fried dough stick and “lava floss”; and just the thought of the pork bun, with its snowy frosting of sugar, can cause me to emit a small moan of longing.

The Forbidden City bar in the basement does equally extraordinary things to cocktails, using fragrant teas and delicate foams, and pairs them with little snacks huge with Asian flavours: Taiwanese popcorn chicken, jellyfish, sweet-and-sour ribs.

Barrafina Adelaide Street

10 Adelaide Street, London WC2
I worried that, with the opening of their latest outlet in Theatreland, the Hart brothers might be in danger of dimming their tapas bar treasure. I needn’t have: each Barrafina is a little belter. This one – larger, airier, beautiful in its acres of marble around a bustling central kitchen – is my favourite.

The menu is genius: everything from suckling pig to alluring vegetable dishes (far more than you’d get in actual Spain). Further excitement comes from the daily specials board: mammoth, scarlet carabineros, empanadillas stuffed with wild rabbit, razor clams, tiny delicate tellinas (clams), pig’s trotters. If the crab croquetas are available, they are an essential order: gooey, crisp, thrumming with the rich flavour of the shellfish. The fried squid bocadillo with onion is this branch’s signature: these, with a glass of Palo Cortado sherry or some crisp, gluggable godello, make an absolute feast. If you can stretch to Belondrade y Lurton, you should.

I love the new breed of tapas bars (Copita nearly made it on to this list, too, as did El Gato Negro), as dedicated to the quality of the ingredients as to the cooking. This, largely thanks to the small group’s brilliant chef Nieves Barragán Mohacho, is the jewel in the crown.

8 Hoxton Square

8 Hoxton Square: ‘Makes a strong case for being ‘the perfect neighbourhood restaurant.’ Photograph: Emma Marshall

8 Hoxton Square, London N1, 020-7729 4232,
At the risk of being pitchforked outta here, I’m going to tell you that Cameron Emirali, chef and co-owner of 8 Hoxton Square, catered for my wedding. But this is no back-scratching quid pro quo, rather an acknowledgment that now – as then, at the wonderful Wapping Food (RIP) – he’s a real talent.

This, to me, has everything it takes to be the perfect neighbourhood restaurant: big enough to be buzzy, yet also small enough that they properly get to know their regulars. The wine list is inspired and accessibly priced. There’s a little terrace out front for people-watchers. And the daily-changing menu is a joy: Emirali has the Antipodean’s magpie approach, so you might find the likes of risotto nero, rabbit, morcilla and chickpeas, or veal chop, sprouting broccoli and anchovy. There are creative, unhairshirted vegetarian choices. There’s usually a fine steak, too.

Breakfasts are blissful: banana bread with dates, buttermilk waffles with bacon and maple syrup, courgette fritters with peas, fried egg and buffalo ricotta. And I ate one of my favourite ever puddings here: a sticky, moist pistachio cake topped with roast peach, curiously and beautifully scented with tarragon.

I also love Emirali’s 10 Greek Street, but this one is just nudging ahead in my affections due to the fact that it takes bookings. In Hoxton! I know.

Street Feast


I’m using this as shorthand for the extraordinary mushrooming of the street-food phenomenon around the UK, something to be celebrated, not only because it gives young entrepreneurs the chance to launch their menus without massive investment, but also because the best of them inevitably gravitate towards bricks and mortar restaurants with, you know, roofs and heating and licences. See also the excellent Kerb, Altrincham Market and Belgrave Music Hall.

Lardo

197-201 Richmond Road, London E8, 020-8985 2683
Eliza Flanagan’s baby, a hymn to everything Italian filtered through a distinctly Hackney lens, continues to delight. Colonising the ground floor of the handsome, vast-windowed Arthaus building, it’s a looker in a rough-and-ready way, softened by colourful cushions and a bobby dazzler of a pizza oven – less utilitarian kitchen equipment and more glitterball.

It’s used to sterling effect on the pizzas and focaccia, but there’s way more to the menu: fine pastas – you might find pappardelle with wild boar and guanciale, or casarecce with burrata, squash, walnuts and sage –and clever, thoughtful, vegetable-only dishes. The oven belches out great meat, too: just-charred pork chop with endive and wood-roasted potatoes, say, or duck breast with spinach and wild berries.

The home-cured salumi are to be treasured, using free-range mangalitsa porkers for the likes of ripe, purple coppa, smoky speck or fennel pollen salami. And the arancini, stuffed with still al dente rice and, perhaps, fiery ’nduja, are among the nicest fried things you’ll ever shove down your neck. And those pizzas – airy and elastic of crust, with deliciously blistered bases – come with intriguing toppings: black anise pepperoni; zucchini and anchovy; pancetta, provolone and peppers. There’s a terrific brunch, too. Lardo is the kind of place I really wish I lived next door to.

Spuntino

Spuntino: ‘Brings a touch of New York-style grunge to Soho.’ Photograph: Katherine Rose for the Guardian

61 Rupert Street, London W1
Russell Norman’s mini empire of hugely influential restaurants is mostly composed of his sorta-Venetian Polpos. But of all of them, it is the grungey little Brooklyn-flavoured Spuntino in the still-seamy part of Soho that I like best: here it’s permanently dusk, the drinks are hardcore, the soundtrack eccentric, the sliders and pizzette addictive, and the macaroni cheese the gooiest and cheesiest in town.

Craft

Craft: ‘It’s clay-baked duck is ‘one of the country’s most intriguing dishes.’ Photograph: Karen Robinson for the Guardian

Peninsula Square, Greenwich Peninsula, London SE10, 020-8465 5910
One word: duck. Pre-order the clay-baked duck – I’m not afraid to say it’s one of the country’s most intriguing dishes. (It’s so labour-intensive, I’m sure chef and owner Stevie Parle won’t thank me.) But everything on the menu at this dazzling, Tom Dixon-designed complex nudging right up to The O2 (aka The Dome) will be truly rewarding. A gem in an unlikely setting.

My top 10
(in reverse order)

10 Roti King

Roti King: ‘Comfort food par excellence.’ Photograph: Sophia Evans for the Guardian

40 Doric Way, London NW1
I’m calling it: the roti canai with dhal at Roti King in Euston is the best four quid you’ll spend on food in the UK. You might get bigger food for the money, or dirrrtier or a, er, nice kebab, but this £4 buys you a bowl of richly fragrant, spiced pulses with magical depth of flavour and two Malaysian-style flatbreads. Sure, these are cheap ingredients, but the Roti King, aka “prata-man” (breadmaker) Kalpana Sugendran Sugendran, turns them into things of truly transcendent loveliness. Which is just as well, since his little restaurant is, kindly, no beauty.

Sugendran makes the roti in front of you, flipping and stretching the elastic dough in an almost balletic dance until it’s as transparent as chiffon. When your hot breads arrive, their crisp surfaces and squidgy folds make a bread that is one of the capital’s most gorgeous things to sink your teeth into; when a torn-off chunk is dunked through the dhal, we’re talking ambrosial.

The other dishes are worth checking out, too: a vast cauldron of coconutty laksa, brimming with noodles, mussels and squid; mutton curry, potent and sombre. But it’s the roti I come for, most recently a solitary visit, all the better to contemplate their glory uninterrupted. Comfort food par excellence.

9 Birch

Photograph of Birch restaurant
Birch: ‘Apparent simplicity disguises painstaking attention to detail.’

47 Raleigh Road, Southville, Bristol BS3
“We are one half restaurant, one half garden,” says the website for lovely little Birch, in foodie Mecca Bristol’s Southville. In addition to the restaurant, owners chef Sam Leach and FOH partner Beccy Massey have a patch of land – “around 10 full-size allotments” – where they grow the produce that ends up on the plate in front of you.

The menu changes, it seems, on the turn of a minute hand – it depends on what’s in season and what’s good: turbot, perhaps, with cider butter and summer vegetables, kid meat “scrumpets” with hot mustard. Gleeful use is made of just-picked herbs and leaves on one hand, and the likes of ox heart or hogget on the other. Ice-creams might be brown bread or wortleberry. This is one of these restaurants where apparent simplicity disguises painstaking attention to detail: gorgeous bread and desserts, a smart, affordable wine list (the owners’ background in the estimable likes of St John and the Quality Chop House shines through).

The first time I visited, I said, “I’d give my eye teeth to have this as my local.” My jealousy of its neighbours has not lessened. Leach and Massey built Birch almost from scratch – this is the classic labour of love.

8 Bob Bob Ricard

Bob Bob Ricard: ‘It doesn’t make a lot of sense, but I don’t need it to.’ Photograph: KatheKatherine Rose for the Guardian

1 Upper James Street, London W1, 020-3145 1000
We all needs a good dose of decadence every now and then. And when I’m in the mood, this eccentric glamourpuss is the only destination. It’s fair to say that when BBR opened, there was a giant chorus of WTF. Critic AA Gill gave it an unprecedented no stars, calling it “Gloriously Chronically Unfixably Misbegotten”. Me, I loved it: everything from the David Collins interior that looked like a luxury steampunk railway carriage lined in bookbinding paper to the Farley’s rusk on the menu.

Over the years, its bonkersness has been toned down – the staff no longer have to wear salmon-pink waistcoats or lurex-threaded tweed, sadly; the rusks are no more – but it’s still a restaurant like no other. The menu is vaguely Russian, with endless varieties of vodka, caviar, potato and mushroom vareniki, even chicken Kiev. But there are British classics, too: an outrageously handsome beef wellington, pies of burnished beauty, a pungent Stinking Bishop soufflé. It doesn’t make a lot of sense, but I don’t need it to. And apart from these marble-lined riches, anywhere that has a button at every table saying “press for champagne” (“crapulently pointless”: AA Gill) is OK by me.

7 The Clove Club

The Clove Club: ‘His food thrills even when he does fried chicken.’

Shoreditch Town Hall, 380 Old Street, London EC1, 020-7729 6496
As you enter what was Shoreditch Town Hall, there’s a cold room that looks – depending on which side of the foodie divide you stand – like either an axe-murderer’s playroom or sheerest heaven. It’s the building’s former box office, where chef Isaac McHale and his team age homemade rare-breed charcuterie (red wine-cured old spot ventreche, mangalitsa lardo), to be enjoyed in the austerely handsome bar with freshly baked sourdough. McHale paints pictures on the plates with ingredients such as albacore tuna, red pepper and sage; or suckling pig with south Indian spices. But his food thrills even when he does fried chicken: nuggets of the buttermilk-brined bird served with pine salt (exactly what it sounds like) on a nest of pine needles. My only criticism: I always want about three times as much of it. There’s a sophisticated vegetarian menu, too.

The last time I ate at the Clove, I had the finest, most fragile cheese tartlets with wild duck and ginger consommé swirled through a decanter of 100-year-old Boal Madeira. No exaggeration, it was celestial. The Clove made waves this year by being the first restaurant here to adopt the Tock system (you pay for a meal “ticket” in advance). Controversial, but in an age of tight margins and the rudeness of no-shows, I’d say fair enough.

6 Bocca di Lupo

Bocca di Lupo: ‘A gem of a joint.’ Photograph: Antonio Olmos

12 Archer Street, London W1, 020-7734 2223
When Jacob Kenedy opened Bocca di Lupo back in 2009, it was an instant smash. The beauty of a British chef paying homage to Italy is the lack of chauvinism: specialities from Liguria nudge famous dishes from Lombardy, Piedmont, Puglia… the whole gamut, across the 20 regions of Italy.

Pastas are stellar: the fluffiest, cloud-like gnocchi; handmade orecchiette sauced with spicy ’nduja sausage; spaghetti to which you can choose to add humble mussels or luxurious lobster. But the rest of the menu – roasts of suckling pig, game when in season, exciting salads – amply rewards exploration. They make their own excellent bread and ice-creams (a trip to their gelateria Gelupo over the road is a great way to end lunch), even salami and glorious, fat sausages. The all-Italian wine list is a corker. too.

“We are a family business, a humble trattoria… at heart,” the website says. That “at heart” is significant, because it’s far from humble, one of London’s most glamorous restaurants: the buzzing open kitchen and marble dining counter; dramatic chandeliers; moody oil paintings of food by Kenedy’s mother, artist Haidee Becker. Add the buzz from a local crowd of theatre producers, West End stars, flaneurs and foodies thrilled to score a reservation, and you have a gem of a joint.

5 The Goods Shed

The Goods Shed: ‘It’s the restaurant equivalent of a hug.’ Photograph: Sophia Evans for the Guardian

Station Road West, Canterbury, Kent, 01227 459 153
Of every restaurant the length of the country, this is the one you’ll find me in most often: a halfway stop-off between the capital and My Seaside, the restaurant itself handily positioned a 20-second stomp from the station (well, it is a goods shed, after all).

In the long, narrow restaurant perched above the farmer’s market, with its brick and soaring windows, chef Rafael Lopez brings his Spanish sensibilities to play on the glorious bounty of Kent. Looking out over the banks of vegetables and fruit, local cheese, bread baked in-house, it’s easy to see why the county’s called the Garden of England. Lopez gets his ingredients from the market, so, depending on the season, his short menu might feature crown prince squash, roast beets, wilted, vivid chard. There are nearly always roast potatoes, fondant in texture with treacly edges. His treatment of fish is glorious: Spain’s beloved hake, perhaps, with a bouillabaisse-rich sauce and mussels; or scallops with chorizo and tiny, fleshy beans, all served on decorative vintage plates. The drinks list stars all sorts of recherché and well-priced lovelies, plus local beer and wine. I’ve never once left hungry or disappointed. (And these days I go for a pre-lunch sharpener cocktail to the Shed’s new little outfit, Wild Goose – usually something potent with a caramelised chilli on top.) This isn’t ground-breaking, or cool, or edgy – it’s just the restaurant equivalent of a hug.

4 The Quality Chop House

The Quality Chop House: ‘How can you not love it?’ Photograph: Patricia Niven

88-94 Farringdon Road, London EC1, 020-7278 1452
I find myself here time and time again – I’m evangelical about the place. I drag people in, forcing them to eat Galloway beef mince on dripping toast, wonderful game served with preternaturally light, luxurious liver parfait, thrilling to the inevitable actual moans of pleasure.

Chef Shaun Searley innovates without ever losing sight of deliciousness (or an innate sense of Britishness). So you might be lucky enough to encounter his croquettes made from kid meat, oozing with Tymsboro cheese. (See? Goat on goat: so clever, so good.) There are homemade terrines and roasts, Neal’s Yard cheese, excellent charcuterie. The cult dish is Searley’s confit potatoes, a fried item of evil deliciousness. The wine list is among London’s best; unsurprising, because co-owner Will Lander is the son of wine maven Jancis Robinson.

My tip: book in the bar. The restaurant, with its magnificent, original “working men’s restaurant” wooden booths and tiled floor, should be on the must-see list of anyone interested in restaurants and their history (it’s been around since 1869), but those booths are resistant to the modern person’s posterior; the bar has more accommodating bentwood seating and exactly the same menu. Their butcher’s and deli next door sells sausage rolls by the inch. How can you not love that?

3 Som Saa

Som Saa: ‘Jan Naem is a strong contender for my Death Row meal.’ Photograph: Sophia Evans for the Guardian

Follow @somsaa_london on Twitter for updates
Chef Andy Oliver’s tribute to Thailand was hot stuff, a ramshackle set-up in the archway owned by the Climpson’s coffee roastery, home to some of the finest Thai food you’ll get outside Thailand (and inside, too). The menu is exhilarating: sea bass deep-fried before being blanketed by a perfume factory’s-worth of aromatics; jan naem (fermented pork sausage vibrant with Thai herbs and grilled into stickiness) is a strong contender for my Death Row meal. It’s a bit of a cheat to include Som Saa in this list, because it’s not currently open; but they’re about to launch a crowdfunded permanent site, and I love it, so it has to be here.

2 The Ethicurean

The Ethicurean: ‘Every visit feels like a celebration.’ Photograph: Jason Ingram

Long Lane, Wrington, Bristol BS40, 01934 863713
Even if it served up curling ham sarnies, the Ethicurean would be worth a visit: it’s set in the enchanting Barley Wood Walled Garden, a perfectly restored Victorian kitchen garden, bursting with fertile life. But far from your usual garden cafe fare, gardener Mark Cox sends his produce to the restaurant in the delightfully scuffed former glasshouse to be made by the team (chef siblings Matthew and Iain Pennington, Paula Zarate and Jack Adair Bevan) into some of the most delicious, innovative, vegetable-focused cuisine in the land.

The restaurant, they say, is “founded on a sense of place”, and that place is just beautiful. There’s a sense of history, too: they celebrate solstices and wassails and ancient British ingredients. But there’s utter modernity alongside: items on the daily-changing menu might include 12-hour pork belly, glazed carrots and anise, kimchi and kohlrabi, or whole, salt-baked celeriac. Their squidgy toffee apple cake served with cinnamon cream is one of the finest desserts I’ve ever rammed into my face.

They make an alluring range of tinctures and cordials, among them their own vermouth, made from English wine and herbs from the garden. As the name suggests, there’s a commitment to organic tenets, fair trade, the Rainforest Alliance. It could all be a bit hairshirted and worthy, but it so isn’t: every visit feels like a celebration.

1 The Sportsman

The Sportsman: ‘The homemade bread is my favourite anywhere on the planet.’ Photograph: Tricia de Courcy Ling

Faversham Road, Seasalter, Whitstable, Kent, 01227 273370
I’ve been going to the Sportsman for years, before any of the current brigade of gushing fanboys had ever heard of it, before the Michelin recognition – astonishing for what has always been, as they describe themselves, a “grotty rundown pub by the sea”. (It’s not really like that: spartan, yes, but comfortable and welcoming.) I followed the oysters to Whitstable: it turned out to be the gateway drug to what is now a genuine addiction to Stephen Harris’s remarkable cooking. But I’ve never written about it.

Until now – and I’ve got only a measly 200-odd words to tell you about the beauty of everything Harris puts before you, from the glistening local oysters topped with tiny touches of homemade charcuterie that pick up their blissful salinity, to the ice-pops dunked in “cake milk” and the fragile, delicate tartlets that end the meal. About the homemade bread, my favourite anywhere on the planet: especially the magnificent treacly sodabread, with home-churned butter, salted from the sea just outside the door. The white fish in rich vin jaune, the crisp lamb breast with vibrant, vinegary mint. And the unmissable slip sole, delicately meaty in its bath of seaweed butter.

Harris is self-taught, a fervent believer in locality – fortunately Kent is blessed with produce – and the ultimate enthusiast. On the rare occasions he’s not in his kitchen, he’ll be in the world’s great restaurants, absorbing and learning. Gun to head, if you forced me to say which was my favourite of all these restaurants, it’s undoubtedly this one.

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