What the experts recommend
L’Artisan 30 Clarence Street, Cheltenham (01242-571257)
L’Artisan is run by Yves and Elisabeth Ogrodzki, a French couple who ran a country inn in Leicestershire before relocating to Cheltenham, says Jay Rayner in The Observer. The restaurant does not feel daringly contemporary: the era it channels is “about the mid-1980s”. Diners sit on “high-backed velour chairs” and order from leather-bound menus, while the “sounds of La Vie en Rose waft across the small, brightly lit room”. Many of the dishes are so old-school they “probably sat Common Entrance”: escargots swim in garlic butter; confit rabbit leg comes “smothered in a ripe, grain mustard sauce”. But here is the thing: the Ogrodzkis “know what they are doing”. Yves’ cooking is pretty well faultless, and Elisabeth provides wonderfully attentive front-of-house service, which even extends to offering a small glass of calvados between starter and main to “clean the palate”. Yes, this place feels “like a love letter from the past. But boy is that letter beautifully written.” Starters £6.95-£11.95; mains £14.95-£26.95; desserts £7.95.
Trattoria Brutto 35-37 Greenhill Rents, Clerkenwell, London EC1 (brutto.co.uk)
Russell Norman “seized the culinary zeitgeist” a decade ago with his Venetian-inspired Polpo chain, says Jimi Famurewa in the London Evening Standard. Easily rolled out, it became a “17-site empire”, before eventually falling back to just two locations. This latest venture is rather different: a “glorious, determined, one-ofa-kind”. Brutto, a “raffish ode to the Tuscan trattoria”, is a visual feast: its redand-white checked tablecloths and napkin lampshades conjure a mood of “swooning, old-school romance”. And the food is delicious too – from the chicken liver pâté crostini with which our meal opened to its finale, a “bitter-edged tiramisu”. Best of all, though, were the coccoli (listed in English as “cuddles”): pieces of warm, deep-fried dough that you tear open and stuff with prosciutto and creamy stracchino cheese. A “backstreet Florentine staple”, they’re a “miracle of sinful, addictive simplicity” – and a candidate for dish of the year. Meal for two plus drinks around £150.
The Pack Horse 3-5 Market Street, Hayfield, High Peak, Derbyshire (01663749126)
When Luke Payne and Emma Daniels took over this Peak District pub five years ago, they started off by serving the standard crowd-pleasers, says Marina O’Loughlin in The Sunday Times: fish and chips, prawn cocktails, burgers. But as time wore on, they became gradually more ambitious, and now The Pack Horse is that rare thing: a proper pub where the food is as lovely as the awe-inspiring landscape that surrounds it. Payne’s cooking might seem straightforward on the face of it, but there’s “something elevated and unexpected” about every dish – whether scrumpet with duck, or purple sprouting broccoli “turned into a thing of heady luxury” by a hollandaise sauce enriched with café de Paris butter. At the same time, this is still a village pub: you can order chips and onion rings – both “divine” – or sit at the bar and have a pint and snack. This is “a real place, familyrun”, that is about “good food, good people”. Meal for two, with drinks, around £130.