What the experts recommend

The Beckford Bottle Shop 5-8 Saville Row, Bath (01225-809302)

This off-licence and restaurant in Bath is run by the people behind two of my favourite pubs – The Talbot Inn in Mells, Somerset and the Beckford Arms in the Wiltshire village of Tisbury, says Giles Coren in The Times. And with their new outpost, they’re onto another winner. The space itself is a “beautifully modernised” delight – combining high-ceilinged grandeur with a welcoming cosiness. There’s a cracking range of wines available in the “brutally sexy” off-licence (and any of them can be brought to your table for a small corkage). And from Tuesday to Saturday, there’s a “tantalising menu of grown-up sharing dishes” – oysters, crispy Bath chaps (cured pork cheeks), rabbit and black pudding pie, octopus and chorizo stew, mackerel tartare and skate cured in seaweed. We enjoyed a “dazzling” board of British-made, Italian-style charcuterie, and a fabulous brunch that included pumpkin rosti with eggs, hot smoked trout, black pudding and chorizo hash, and ox cheek shakshuka. Lucky Bath. Our meal for four cost £80. Levan 12-16 Blenheim Grove, London SE15 (020-7732 2256) I am a firm believer in the notion “that a restaurant is almost as much about mood as it is food”, says Grace Dent in The Guardian. Clearly, the team behind this “gorgeous” new neighbourhood joint in Peckham are of the same mind. I’d hail chef Nicholas Balfe and his partners as “engineers of the new wave of highly relaxed, yet incredibly drilled hospitality”. Levan is warmly welcoming, with an open kitchen, upbeat staff “whom you can’t help but befriend” and – important this – seriously cool loos (“softly lit, inkily painted”, and with a speaker pumping out buoyant electronica and post-disco). As for the food, expect filling dishes of “wholly enticing” deliciousness. We sample wondrous snacks, such as tempura mushrooms with sesame vinaigrette, and “daintily plated house-cured” sardines; meaty delights (Angus beef tartare with anchovy); and a caramelised celeriac ravioli, with dashi butter and “blissful” roast Jerusalem artichokes, that is the “greatest vegetarian dish ever”. About £35 a head, plus drinks.

The Creameries 406 Wilbraham Road, Chorlton, Manchester (0161-312 8328)

The Creameries might not amount to the “platonic ideal of the perfect neighbourhood restaurant”, but it’s “pretty damned close”, says Marina O’loughlin in The Sunday Times. Chef Mary-ellen Mctague, with baker Sophie Yeoman and designer Soo Wilkinson, has “wrought a small oasis of loveliness”: there are tubs of herbs, characterful old flour sacks and an original Edwardian tiled frontage (“Drink Milk for Health”, it instructs us, sweetly). The food, meanwhile, is hearty, rather than “prettified”. My “butter pie” – luxurious layers of buttery potatoes and onions in the lightest, flakiest pastry – is a “plain old dollop”, made no more attractive by the split green peas with vinegar that come with it. But it’s glorious – a “triple-carb” triumph that has me gaping in “astonished, horny admiration”, and the peas are addictive. Pheasant stew comes with sweet, almost spicy carrots, and is topped with the “radiant loveliness of proper, trad-brit dumplings”. This is “comforting, happymaking” food. We spent £51.50 on a big meal for two (excluding drinks).