What the experts recommend
Cook House Ouse Street, Newcastleupon-tyne (cookhouse.org) Every neighbourhood needs a Cook House, says Tom Parker Bowles in The Mail on Sunday. “Food that makes the senses sing. Without making the wallet sting.” This truly “special” Ouseburn restaurant, sitting in a couple of old shipping containers arranged in an L-shape, has pretty blue tables, a woodfired stove, a blackboard menu and bottles of homemade pickles. Oh, and a tiny kitchen, cooking up properly “splendid” grub at breakfast and lunchtime. A thick, comforting, brick-red roast red pepper soup is simple but “exquisite”. A great tin plate of roast chicken salad – with an assortment of interesting greenery, chunks of toasted sourdough, and a “sharp, serious dressing” – is a “magnificent” take on an often run-of-the-mill dish. Best of all is a roast pork belly sandwich – a “beautiful bastard son of English doorstep and Vietnamese banh mi”, with “blissfully soft” pig and a dressing pungent with fish sauce. We finish with excellent apple and almond cake, and the bill arrives: £31 for two. What a “kick-ass Newcastle feast”.
Kym’s 19 Bloomberg Arcade, Square Mile, London EC4 (020-7220 7088) It’s yonks since an opening was as “hotly anticipated” by restaurant lovers as Kym’s, the new venture from chef Andrew Wong, said Marina O’loughlin in The Sunday Times. His original Pimlico restaurant (A. Wong) has moved “elegantly from being the subject of niche, nerdy fandom (guilty) into mainstream acclaim without missing a beat”. Could he pull off this “potentially difficult second album” – in a much bigger, more upmarket setting in the City – and keep up his obsessively high standards? Yes! Alas, there’s none of his “exquisite” dim sum on offer. But a range of Chinese classics are given “intriguing flourishes”, and star billing goes to the stunning Cantonese-style roast meats. There’s crunchy-skinned pork belly (“a 48-hour job”) and ibérico pork char siu – soft, fragrant and velvety. Most of all I love the soy sauce chicken: “insanely moist”, with salty skin and notes of ginger, anise and sweetness suffusing the meat. “It’s intoxicating.” Kym’s has got future roll-out written all over it – and any city lucky enough to get one should “rejoice”. Large meal for two: £84, plus drinks.
2 Fish Market, Doncaster (07912-687581)
Even its “fondest cheerleaders” will concede that Doncaster is not overrun with great eating options, says Jay Rayner in The Observer. So there’s a special kind of thrill in coming across the Clam & Cork, an unassuming seafood café in “Donnie’s” fish market doing “lovely things” with the catch that arrives here daily, mostly from Grimsby, some 40 miles due east. We are “won over straightaway” by five fat crab claws in the lightest of lacy, chilli-spiced tempura batters, with garlic and lime mayo. “It’s a lot of fresh crab for £9.50.” About a pound more gets you an astoundingly good-value “platter of fat scallops, fiercely seared on one side, with cubes of crisped pork belly”, slivers of crackling, apple sauce and green leaves. A south Indian fish curry is crammed with meaty white fish, “treated with tenderness and care”, in a gorgeously sweet, deep caramel-coloured sauce. And “even the timbale of rice in the middle of the plate is a beauty”. All dishes £6.50-£11.95. Open till 4pm (or 8pm when the races are on).