What the experts recommend
Haywards Restaurant 111 Bell Common, Epping, Essex (01992-577350)
This six-year-old, Michelin Plate-holding, husband-and-wife operation in a pretty converted stables on the edge of Epping Forest deploys “significant levels of chefly firepower” to striking effect, says Keith Miller in The Daily Telegraph. The food, served in a “suavely neutral” space, offers bold and original flavours: a “fantastic” main course of roast cauliflower didn’t follow the “beaten path of Ottolenghoid orientalism”, but arrived with a Sicilianstyle sauce of pine nuts, raisins and capers (more usually served with fish) and some “lovely” little cylindrical ricotta dumplings. There are interesting takes on familiar treats: a “Proper Sunday Roast” of côte de boeuf and braised ox cheek for two, with all the trimmings, for example. And there is beautiful presentation too: leaves, flowers, micro-squeezings and, in the case of my quail starter, a “crisped-up squiggle of rösti that belonged on a hat in a Cecil Beaton photograph”, artfully arranged to jazz up the main ingredients.
Lunch for two £140.
The Swan 4 Shipton Road, Ascott-underWychwood, Oxfordshire (01993-832332)
The Swan at Ascott-under-Wychwood is a “great big, newly upgraded, spanking bloody excellent Cotswolds pub”, says Giles Coren in The Times. And as a lover of the Cotswolds, and fantastic pubs, “I mean that as about the biggest compliment I can muster”. The interior has been “beautifully painted, in all its reassuring vastness, in aristocratic greys and greens, so that it holds deep, sheltering cool on a raging hot summer’s day like a serious old country house”. And outside there’s a lovely courtyard, two walls of which are half-roofed, offering welcome shade. As for the menu, it’s a “hotchpotch of reimagined pub classics, mostly brilliant” – and all of it local, hearty and modern. The best of the starters was a bowl of barbecued prawns with peas, in a “rich, spicy, yabbering sauce” of garlic butter and ’nduja – a meaty shellfish dish with “delirious porky juices in the bottom and real Mediterranean heft”. And we enjoyed “sharing” baked potatoes with an “unctuous stew of super-surrendered” beef cheeks in a Bourguignonne gravy. Plus lots of “shimmering fresh veg” and “multicoloured knickerbocker glories for the kids”. What more do you want?
Around £45 a head.
Siren The Goring, 15 Beeston Place, London SW1 (020-7769 4485)
There’s no escaping the seafood theme at Siren, the new restaurant from “piscine king” Nathan Outlaw at the Goring hotel, says Tom Parker Bowles in The Mail on Sunday. Glass lobsters crawl up glass chandeliers; menus are clad in shagreen. There are “spiky glass sea urchin things” on the marble-topped tables, and napkin holders in the shape of golden seaweed. It’s “just the right side of too much”. And the food is as impressive as you’d expect with Outlaw and his head chef Andrew Sawyer behind the stoves. Cuttlefish black pudding is “gentle, soft and subtle”, with a “sharp and tart” apple catsup to add bite. Beautifully cooked turbot is “so damned fresh I swear I saw it wink”, and is served with a crab sauce that’s so “deep and richly flavoured that it has a caramel burr”. The Cornish crab risotto looked magnificent, but I wasn’t allowed a bite. “Too good to share”, reckoned my companion.
About £50 a head.