The last thing you’d anticipate in this distant corner of Scotland is a smart, buzzy outpost of Islington… 5 Bank Street, Stornoway, Isle of Lewis (01851 700 026). Meal for two, with wine and service, £70-£100 It is my last night on dry land, and outside the restaurant the streets of Stornoway are being washed by a hard summer rain. In the harbour the boats heave and sigh on their moorings, and at the table I sigh and frown over ...
With Pierre Koffmann at the stove and Simon Hopkinson at the table, it was always going to be a lunch to remember The Berkeley, Wilton Place, London SW1 (020 7235 1010). Three-course lunch £22.50; à la carte for two with good-value wine £150 I am sat in a happy sandwich. On one side, sharing my corner table at Koffmann’s, is good egg and great cook Simon Hopkinson. On the other an elderly English roué, oozing impeccable manners and silky charm ...
If you are a fan of Sichuan-style “nose-to-tail” eating, Chilli Cool may just set your tastebuds on fire 15 Leigh Street, London WC1 (020 7383 3135). Meal for two, including tea and service £45 “I am sweating, my hearing’s going and the top of my head is pulsing!” My companion has a note of panic in his voice. Our main courses have arrived before the starters and – crucially – before our bowls of cooling rice. He starts sneezing and ...
If you want a slice of old Bombay you will not find it at Dishoom. But that doesn’t stop it pulling the crowds… Dishoom, 12 Upper St Martin’s Lane, London WC2 (020 7420 9320). Meal for two, including wine and service £70 Dishoom, a new, self-styled Bombay Café in London’s West End, feels like the answer to a question nobody is asking. That question is: where do you go to eat if you fancy Indian food but are tired of ...
Sushi of Shiori is the ideal Japanese restaurant this side of Tokyo, except for one little thing – the rice 144 Drummond Street, London NW1 (020 7388 9962). Meal for two, with wine and service, £60-£150 There are lots of restaurants like Sushi of Shiori. It’s just that none of them are in London. Or Britain. To be sure of finding another place like this you will have to head to Tokyo, where they cluster like so many pigeons around ...
Does the food at motorway service stations drive you to despair? The Guild of Food Writers has produced a downloadable list of tasty places to eat just off the motorway With the possible exception of Tebay services – a family-owned affair on the M6 in the Lake District, which won Egon Ronay’s British Academy of Gastronomes’ Grand Prix award last year and has a farm shop – motorway service stations have not progressed very far up the culinary scale since ...
From gourmet restaurants to old-fashioned chippies, via ice-cream parlours and charming tearooms, we have winkled out some great places to eat by the sea RESTAURANTSJoJo’s, Whitstable, Kent It’s a boon that JoJo’s is even open – the owners were considering going travelling. But business in their new restaurant on Whitstable’s Marine Parade is booming. They moved to this larger site this year but remain on first-name terms with most of their customers, which adds to the living-room-meets-supper-club feel.
Hard on the heels of a good Italian in north London comes a restaurant worth crossing the river for 184 Bermondsey Street, London SE1 (020 7378 6809). Meal for two, including wine and service, £75 You wait ages for a good, reasonably priced, achingly hip, modern Italian restaurant, and then two come along at once. There are, naturally enough, various things to separate last week’s Trullo at London’s Highbury Corner and this week’s Zucca, on that tight knot of streets ...
Great food, expertly cooked and served by friendly waiting staff… There’s no secret to Trullo’s success 300 St Paul’s Road, London N1 (020 7226 2733). Meal for two, including wine and service, £75 Towards the end of our rather lovely dinner at Trullo, the sort of dinner that can restore your faith in the often grisly business of getting food cooked for you by other people in return for money, my companion asked what I did not like about the ...
Discover the ideal places to eat and drink in local haunts at locals’ prices with our Rome insiders’ guide It’s easy to eat mediocre, overpriced food in Rome, a city where tourists – and the restaurants geared towards them – are thick on the ground. Which is a shame because with its wealth of family-run establishments, and access to fresh ingredients grown just outside the city, Rome boasts a number of top-value places to drink and dine. The trick is ...