What the experts recommend
Palatino 71 Central St, Clerkenwell London EC1 (020-3481 5300) In his younger days, Stevie Parle worked at The River Café, says Keith Miller in The Daily Telegraph – and something of that restaurant’s “sure judgement and absolute clarity, its strange alchemical blend of austerity and luxury” is in evidence at Palatino, but for about half the price. This is the fifth outpost in Parle’s burgeoning London empire, and like his Rotorino in Dalston, it serves “fairly echt” Italian food, cooked simply but well. At Palatino, the menu draws specifically on Roman cookery. We devoured crisp battered sage leaves with an off-dry wine vinegar; a crudo of salt cod with cubes of blood orange. I then went for “a rarity on these shores”, rigatoni con pajata ( pajata being the intestines of a milk-fed calf), followed by a very fine saltimbocca alla romana – veal, ham and sage “stitched” together with a stripped twig of rosemary. The room is quite “uncuddly” and the decor on the “butch side, a sort of 1990s warehouse chic”. But overall this is an “excellent restaurant”: a “grown-up pleasure, but a pleasure nonetheless”. £100 for two.
Bundobust 61 Piccadilly, Manchester (0161-359 6757) Vibrant vegetarian Indian street food and a great range of craft beers – all reasonably priced – served in an airy, friendly space with long communal tables as well as booths. That’s Bundobust, says Jay Rayner in The Observer. It’s Hindi for “arrangement” apparently – and it’s an unalloyed triumph. “Why has no one ever done this before?” This large, echoey basement restaurant off Manchester’s Piccadilly has a small sibling in Leeds, but “if there isn’t a Bundobust like this in every university town across the north of England within three years I’ll be very surprised”. Excellent snacks – salty-sour deep-fried rice puffs, spiced nuts and battered okra – whetted our appetites, followed by bhel puri, an addictive mixture of puffed rice and samosa pastry, “spun through with the sticky kick of a tomato and tamarind chutney”. Golden tarka dal was punchy, with fistfuls of roasted cumin, and vada pav (a "butty") was served with a coriander and green chilli chutney so good it made me “blink and sigh”. Paneer and smoky mushroom kebabs were great, too. In fact everything was. Spread the word. Meal for two including beer “£45 if you try hard”.
Menu Gordon Jones 2 Wellsway, Bath (01225-480871)
Gordon Jones is a chef “at the very peak of his considerable powers”, says Tom Parker Bowles in The Mail on Sunday. In fact, he is so good that a visit to his outstanding restaurant in Bath even managed to blow away my scepticism about no-choice “surprise” tasting menus. Roquefort and broccoli soup had intense depth, and arrived with a cheese and onion madeleine “as light as a virgin’s sigh”. Suckling pork belly, with flavours of peanut, chilli and pineapple, was “lasciviously soft and squishy”. Lemon sole was “impeccably fresh and beautifully cooked” and slices of hogget on pickled cabbage with crunchy Japanese artichokes were another hit. Jones’s menu is about “big flavours, kept under the strictest of control”. Prices are “ridiculously low for cooking this sensational” and the service is “warmly impeccable”. Lunchtime fivecourse surprise menu, £50.