What the experts recommend
Erst 9 Murray Street, Ancoats, Manchester (0161-826 3008) Over the past few years, wine bars have undergone a rather “startling transformation”, says Marina O’Loughlin in The Sunday Times. Once, they were fusty, subterranean dives populated by chaps in “florid cravats”. These days, the best are accessible, fun and “supercool” – and serve food that is a significant advance on “slate tiles heaped with sheeny salami, greying pâtés and shrivelled cornichons”. An example of this new breed is Erst, from the team behind Manchester’s popular Trove bakery and cafés. The short menu – a “magpie collection” of dishes – has been devised by people who really like to eat. Crispy potatoes with yeast sauce are “fiendishly good”. A boudin noir is so “splendidly priapic” that my pupils dilate just recalling it. The decor, it’s true, is a bit lacking in warmth – and alarmingly, they seem to be “reinventing strip lighting” – but that’s more than made up for by the “intriguing dishes”, the excellent wine and the friendly, knowledgeable staff. Dinner for two, without service, £87.
Seabird The Rooftop, The Hoxton, Southwark, 40 Blackfriars Road, London SE1 (020-7903 3050) I’ve always loved rooftop restaurants with “unreasonable zeal”, says Tim Hayward in the FT. So I’m pleased to report that this new seafood place – on the top floor of the newly built Hoxton Hotel – is splendid. The view over London from here is amazing, and the food is “astonishingly good”. Our meal started with “spanking fresh” razor clams and another dish of clams steamed in their own broth, accompanied by a “shockingly fresh” coriander pesto. Sensing that the kitchen could be “trusted with good fish”, I ordered a whole grilled John Dory – a dish which “I’ve had comprehensively buggered by fine restaurants all over the world”. And my faith was rewarded: served with a piquant mojo verde, the fish was “perfectly grilled”. It was the kind of dish that makes one “take pause and genuinely question one’s life priorities”. So recently established that it “still smells new”, Seabird has “somehow managed to achieve proper, old-school rooftop-restaurant magic, straight out of the traps”. Starters £5-£18; mains £16-£43.50.
The Gumstool Inn Calcot & Spa, Tetbury, Gloucestershire (01666-890391) The Gumstool Inn is the more humble of the two restaurants housed within Calcot & Spa, a boutique hotel in the Cotswolds, says Tom Parker-Bowles in The Mail on Sunday. I visited with my father on a misty January evening when I was still nursing a “middling hangover” from the night before, and its “uncomplicated charm” quickly put us at ease. There was a crackling fire, and the service was smooth and unobtrusive: “exactly what’s needed for those with a somewhat tender constitution”. I started with an “inspired” Asian duck salad, the “shredded quacker” mixed with cashews and cool radish, all brought together with a sharp lime dressing. The mains were “damned fine” too: chateaubriand from local cows, “cooked the rarer side of pink and hewn into great bloody hunks”; liver with capers and “shards of crisp pancetta”. Nearly everything was spot-on, right down to the espresso with a “marked acidic kick”. This is a place that has the confidence to treat “good ingredients” with “knowing respect”. About £30 a head.