What the experts recommend

The Kinneuchar Inn 9-11 Main Street, Kilconquhar, Fife (01333-340377)

“Sometimes you come across a place so enchanting, it might as well have a sparkling halo surrounding it,” says Marina O’Loughlin in The Sunday Times. This “tiny inn” in Fife is such a place. It was recently taken over by James Ferguson and Alethea Palmer, formerly of the Rochelle Canteen in east London. They have given it a no-frills redesign that has preserved the inn’s “thick-walled” character, and a similarly “pared back” ethos informs the cooking, which had us “beaming with pleasure” throughout. Squid in the “crispest casing” came with a skordalia (creamy mash) “absolutely guffawing with garlic”. My “massive slab” of wild turbot was “golden-skinned from butter”. Hebridean hogget was served with turnips in anchovy dressing – “a truly inspired match”. There’s an almost alchemical sense here of cooking and place coming together. What this duo have achieved is “little short of spellbinding”. Dinner for two, including wine, £120.

The Leaping Hare Wyken Vineyards, Stanton, Suffolk (01359-250287)

There is nothing “innovative” or surprising about the cooking at this venerable Suffolk establishment, which has been in the Good Food Guide for 25 consecutive years, says Jay Rayner in The Observer. But as your meal wears on, “you will clock just how well you are being cared for”. Situated on an old vineyard, The Leaping Hare is housed in an old barn – a “vaulting space” with walls “traced by gnarled beams”. At lunchtime, we seemed to be surrounded by people “now untroubled by the call of daily work”. The kitchen takes British produce and gives it a “seeing to with lots of classic French bourgeois technique”. Highlights include spiced roasted monkfish with a curry sauce that “lubricates the fish perfectly”, and seared and roasted partridge breast that still has a “crimson blush within”. Service is “unobtrusive”; the decor is uniformly “tasteful”. All in all, a place you’ll leave feeling that “all is very much right with the world”. Three-course lunch, £22.