What the experts recommend
Chick’n’sours 1a Earlham Street, London WC2 (www.chicknsours.co.uk)
“Forget subtlety,” says Marina O’loughlin in The Guardian. The food at Chick’n’sours “biffs and pows”, making you “gasp and grin”. There’s “outrageously crisp” chicken, and fantastically spicy “Mexi-nese” nachos that come with ragu made from chicken, fermented chilli paste and smoked bacon, lashings of pickled jalapeños, kimchi and a glorious anchovy-tinged cheese sauce. There’s a vast “guest fry” of drumstick and thigh from what “seem to be the world’s biggest birds”, crisp-fried and sticky with a hot and fragrant glaze. Even the sides and starters are “firecrackers”: Szechuan aubergine; ginger miso slaw; pickled watermelon; “electrifying” hot-and-sour pineapple. In short, Chick’n’sours (the sours bit refers to its range of excellent cocktails) is “sluttily great”. It is like returning to the “first time you had KFC, a weird, mesmerising return to the palate of childhood, only better. Much, much better.” Around £20 for three courses.
The Hare 3 High Street, Milton-under-Wychwood, Oxfordshire (01993-835763)
Glance at The Hare’s menu online and you might think it all looks “a little pedestrian” with its chicken, leek and ham hock pie; Caesar salad; 8oz ribeye steak; and so on. “But you’d be wrong,” says Giles Coren in The Times. A starter of pan-fried chicken livers in cream and wholegrain mustard on toast is “exceptionally rich and rewarding” – the chicken breast marinated in coconut, lemongrass and lime with mango slaw and harissa mayonnaise is “delicately wrought and very fine”. Best of all is the fish board, from which we had excellent gravlax of Scottish salmon with roasted beetroot and horseradish crème fraîche, brilliantly crisp and clean monkfish cheeks, and a quite stunningly good fillet of black bream – “huge, crisped on the skin side, perfectly sweet and moist”, with a “big tangle” of dense, gamey, crab linguine. “It could easily have fed two people, and at £16.50 puts London portions of such stuff to shame.” Puds are great, the staff are too, and there’s not a hint of “Notting-hill-onthe-wold” pretension about the place. If I were you, I should “make like a hare and get along there quick, quick, quick”. Around £35 a head for three courses without drinks or service.
Bentley’s 11-15 Swallow Street, London W1 (020-7734 4756)
With London in the midst of a “thrusting New Restaurant Boom” it can often be hard to get a table at a decent place, says Tim Hayward in the FT. For some happy reason, though, even the capital’s most sumptuous oyster and fish bars remain “temples of spontaneity” where the “wandering hungry” can usually find a seat. J. Sheekey in St Martin’s Court is a “constant pleasure” – yet, “to my mind, Bentley’s is superior”. Located in Swallow Street, a “salubrious” Nash-designed alley behind Regent Street, Bentley’s has been satisfying diners since 1916, and these days has a most attractive enclosed and heated outside space. I usually go for their perfectly executed fish and chips, but on a recent visit, ceviche of scallops was “an assured display of freshness and talent”, and lobster pasta was great, too. “I’m not sure I could stand the velvet drapes, stuffed pike and other Wodehousian shtick every night.” But for a fishy treat, “this is the place”. Around £50 per head for three courses without drinks or service.