What the experts recommend
Beetroot Sauvage 33-41 Ratcliffe Terrace, Edinburgh (0131-629 4484)
Beetroot Sauvage is “my sort of place”, says Grace Dent in The Guardian. More “shack than chic”, this boho café-restaurant serves thoughtful vegan food, including dhals, power porridges, homemade cakes and tagines. It evokes the “slightly anarchic” spirit of independent eateries of old: “chalk blackboards, recipes dreamt up that morning, and simple, nourishing food served by people who may or may not have once played timpani in Chumbawamba”. Truthfully, the food is decent rather than spectacular. A subtly spiced bowl of green lentil mulch with tomato and chickpeas, served with white rice and flatbread drizzled with vegan garlic butter, was “glorious” in terms of texture and presentation, but it needed bolder seasoning. More successful was the sweet, sticky vegan French toast with chopped banana and coconut bacon. Still, I’ll definitely be back. John Lydon once said “never trust a hippy. He said nothing about not eating their scones.” About £15 a head, plus drinks and service.
Fatto a Mano 25 Gloucester Road, Brighton (01273-693221)
If you want to eat out with children in Brighton, you’ll struggle to improve on Fatto a Mano, says Giles Coren in The Times. There are three branches; we went to the one in the Lanes and found it “bustling with vigour and fun, and a sense, as soon as you arrive, that you could not possibly be better off anywhere else”. The staff were “jolly”, great with the kids and the pizza was phenomenal. I don’t usually bother with pizza myself, but this was the “billowing, fluffy” Neapolitan type, with a lovely, savoury tomato sauce that put “sugary Anglo versions” to shame. One taste of the children’s (free!) pizza – “salty, nutty, melting into a fudge-like sweetness on the tongue – had me yodelling for a grown-up ‘nduja one” with spicy pork sausage and excellent mozzarella. The melanzane parmigiana was terrific, too – as were Campania fries and everything else. And my daughter tried her first tiramisu. It has changed her life, or so she said. About £50 for the four of us.
Harry’s Bar 30-34 James Street, Marylebone, London W1 (020-3971 9444)
It would be easy to dismiss Harry’s Bar as “cynical or inauthentic”, says Tim Hayward in the FT. It has no relation to the famous Venetian original: it’s merely a “brilliantly executed pastiche” brought to us by the uber-restaurateur Richard Caring – a fabulously kitted-out space incorporating all the most “blisteringly obvious signifiers of posh restaurant, general Italianness and Venice in particular”. All this might be irksome – were it not for the fact that the food is simply “stupendous”. The brilliant chef, Diego Cardoso, is dishing up “some of the best executions of a particularly delightful Italian idiom that I’ve tasted in or out of Italy”. ‘Nduja-smeared flatbread made an excitingly fiery starter. Linguine vongole was “absolutely on the button” – the clam juices beautifully infusing the whole dish. And lobster risotto was so good it was almost “ridiculous”. Tended with such care that it had the texture of a velvet soup, it “was so rich that the lumps of lobster flesh running through it actually lightened things”. Why carp about a place that is “doing God’s work”? Starters from £3.75; mains from £14.95.