What the experts recommend
The Red Lion 17 High Street, Soham, Cambridgeshire (01353-771633)
The Red Lion in Soham is “a fighter”, says Grace Dent in The Guardian. Dating from the early 1600s, it has survived one civil war and two World Wars, and I devoutly hope it can survive and prosper in the face of the chilly economic winds blowing through these parts. After a few fallow years (when the part-listed building slid into “local eyesore status and was little more than a rotting pile of timber attached to the neighbourhood phone box”), The Red Lion has been “gorgeously” restored and reopened. If you’re an “ardent food bore”, it might not be your thing, but I fell in love with this “big, friendly, stonefloored, tastefully hewn ye olde boozer”. The daily changing menu is “a gentle cuddle” rather than a “journey”; the most “outlandish thing” on it was a white bean hummus with toasted pistachio. We had a lovely time, sipping homemade sloe gin and drinking Petite Gasconne Blanc by the glass – and enjoying a perfectly fine celeriac soup and sourdough, and a satisfying fish pie with fennel. We’ll be back. About £30 a head for three courses.
The Little Fish Market 10 Upper Market Street, Hove, East Sussex (01273-722213)
I’ve always been mystified by the dearth of “properly standout cooking” in Brighton, says Kathryn Flett in The Daily Telegraph. Turns out I should have shimmied along to Hove and tried this fabulous fish place opened by Duncan Ray (ex-fat Duck) in 2013. It looks modest from the outside, and there’s not much about the “warmly woody” interior to make one anticipate the joys to come either. Yet everything we ate “was both perfectly and delicately realised, with unexpectedly happy juxtapositions (wine-wise, too) beautifully presented”. It takes supreme chefly skill to feature fish in course after course without ever being boring or obvious – but Ray pulls it off with aplomb. Standouts included the “quite exceptional, subtle-but-punchy” bream, a “funky” combination of halibut, chicken skin and caviar, and dessert of chocolate, banana, salted caramel and vanilla that was “so much more brilliant than it needed to be”. We spent £230 with wine pairing; you could easily spend less.
Ham 238 West End Lane, London NW6 (020-7813 0168)
The head chef at this great new restaurant in West Hampstead is Matt Osborne, formerly of The Ledbury and Terroirs, among other places, says Fay Maschler in the London Evening Standard. Even if I didn’t know he was Australian, I’d have guessed from his menus: there’s a “strand of inventiveness coupled with health-consciousness that isn’t unusual these days, but here possesses a breezy buoyancy that I associate with the land of Oz”. Discs of thinly sliced radishes (the “garnish of the moment”) make a “pretty quilt neatly draped” over chopped aged raw beef mixed with wasabi mayonnaise, ginger and shallots. Equally impressive is Norfolk quail, roasted, pulled apart and tumbled with artichokes, nicely chewy pearl barley and kombu (a Japanese dried sea vegetable). Herdwick lamb shoulder is “judiciously cooked” and goes beautifully with anchovy puree, calçots (“strapping Catalan spring onions”) and a “light snowstorm of grated salted ricotta”. And when we went back for Sunday brunch, we were just as impressed. Starters from £6, mains from £14.