What the experts recommend

Ox Club 19a The Headrow, Leeds (07470-359961) This place has the potential to be “seriously bloody annoying”, says Jay Rayner in The Observer. Ox Club is all about grilling and smoking: in front of the bar lie brown paper sacks of charcoal and a “self-conscious” pile of kindling that “threatens us with rustic beardy parody”. Happily, though, the “boisterous and assertive” cooking of chef Ben Davy easily compensates for such niggles. A fried duck egg is pelted with girolles that have been sautéed crisp, alongside leaves of lightly bitter cavolo nero. Three fillets of smoked eel are “softened by a smooth pea puree lifted from overt, buxom sweetness by the addition of a little miso”. And a dish of cubes of melon with savoury fermented chilli is “genius” – “one of those ideas you want to steal and pass off as your own”. Mains of guinea fowl and trout with leeks are also great. And although desserts are a bit “ho-hum”, I’m not going to let that “get in the way of a bit of fandom”. More, please. Meal for two, including drinks and service: £80. The Pot Kiln Chapel Lane, Frilsham Berkshire (01635-201366) If I told you there was a place where chefs were “foraging local ingredients, preparing them skilfully and then serving them in the way that most honoured their natural flavour and terroir, but that also nodded to local culinary tradition” – you’d nod sagely and guess Fäviken or Noma, says Tim Hayward in the FT. “But this isn’t Scandinavia”: Michael Robinson has been “doing that – all of that – five miles off the Chieveley junction of the M4” for years. Let me “cut to la chasse”: there’s a pigeon-breast salad here that’s “going to change your mind about game” (which so often disappoints). Robinson’s pigeon, cooked pink, is “sweet, fragrant, crisp on the outside and velvet smooth within”; it’s so tender it’s “halfway to being a parfait”. Grilled pavé of fallow deer is just as good; “simple and very, very lovely”. There are other great things here too: fish dishes, excellent desserts, well-kept cheeses. But the game is so “superb”, The Pot Kiln may “ruin you” for other restaurants. Starters £8-£11; mains £12-£25.

Flavour Bastard 63-64 Frith Street, London W1 (020-7734 4545)

First things first: what’s with the stupid name? A “callow gambit” to stoke up controversy and publicity? Probably, says Keith Miller in The Daily Telegraph. On the other hand, there appears to be “method in the Bastardeers’ madness”: what’s on offer at this over-designed, loud, rather chaotic new Soho restaurant is indeed a kind of “mestizo cuisine”, with eclectic, ramped-up flavours from all corners of the globe. “They’re putting the thermonuclear into fusion, if you will.” Far from all of it works: bacon jam, cinnamon and clove overwhelm a nice-enough hunk of belly pork, for example. But there are also flashes of inspiration: “quinoa and cucumber pudding with the vetiver herb, berries and pistachio” was a sumptuous treat. Overall, we gave this place a “scoredraw, if not quite a win. But we did feel that this haute vulgarité thing feels like a marker of societal decay and a harbinger of apocalypse, however you dress it up.” Small plates (some could do with being “a little less small”) are £7-£8.50 each.