What the experts recommend
Tallow 15A Church Road, Southborough, Royal Tunbridge Wells, Kent (tallowrestaurant.co.uk)
Donna and Rob Taylor previously ran an “excellent” gastropub in rural Kent, the Compasses Inn in Crundale, says Grace Dent in The Guardian. Their new venture is located more accessibly, in the “leafy town” of Southborough, just outside Tunbridge Wells. And it’s also really good – “get-in-the-car-and-go good”, in fact. While Rob Taylor’s cooking seems at first to be “reassuringly straightforward”, it turns out to have “surprising” ambition. “Kermit-coloured” wild garlic bread is stuffed with “some sort of buttery, salty, algae-like concoction”. A warm “potato and cheese terrine” consists of “translucent layers of clearly deeply cherished spud”, mixed with pungent blue cheese and topped with a “hedge” of microherbs: it’s a dish that’s “much more than the sum of its parts”. All in all, this is “my sort of fine dining”: high-quality ingredients and “intricate plating”, but with nothing overly fussy or pretentious about it. “Spring lunches don’t get much better.” From about £50 a head à la carte; six-course tasting menu £79.
Acme Fire Cult Abbot Street, London E8 acmefirecult.com
Live-fire cookery is usually associated with slowly roasting “hunks of meat”, says Jay Rayner in The Observer. But at this recently opened restaurant in a “rough old yard” in London’s Dalston, the menu is “thrillingly, impressively vegetable led”. All the food is cooked outdoors, on a woodfired grill. While there are a few uneven edges (always a risk with this kind of cooking), most of what we eat is “really engaging”. There’s an opening snack of delightfully moreish devilled eggs, “drenched in a sweet-sour tamarind-like sauce”. Leeks “grilled until the point of surrender”, and served with a romesco sauce made from pistachios, are a “study in verdant shades of green”. Best of all is the “hearth vegetable plate” – a collection of roasted tomatoes, courgettes and fennel, with white beans and squash purées. This “singular” dish, costing £14, “makes the argument for the whole venture”. Don’t let the bombastic name put you off: Acme Fire Cult is worth a visit. Snacks and small plates £3-£9; large plates £14-£24.
Opheem 65 Summer Row, Birmingham (0121-201 3377)
A couple of things made me hesitate before heading to this Michelin-starred Indian restaurant in Birmingham, says William Sitwell in The Daily Telegraph. One was my “natural aversion” to tasting menus; the other was my suspicion of “posh” Indian restaurants. My fears, however, proved unfounded, because my ten-course meal here was a delight. In a dining room that was “lit, it seemed, by a thousand ping-pong balls”, I was presented with a parade of “well-tempered, beautifully measured dishes” that blended British ingredients with Indian techniques. Smoked eel came with a light korma sauce; a lamb rib was served with a bowl of south Indian soup; something called aloo tuk – essentially, pink fir potato with tamarind – was a “dish of endless, deep joy”. A further highlight was the wine, as recommended by the “brilliant sommelier”: “how original” to serve sake as a “foil for all that spice”. Food like this may be “the epitome of bastardised cultural appropriation” – but I loved it. Dinner for one, £115 plus drinks and service.