What the experts recommend

Pasta Loco 37a Cotham Hill, Bristol (0117-973 3000) Everything at this “astonishing” value Italian restaurant – from the warm service and well-priced wine list to the classic soul music soundtrack – is “done properly”, and with generosity of spirit, says Tom Parker Bowles in The Mail on Sunday. As well as making “one of the best negronis I’ve ever drunk”, they also serve phenomenal food. Salt cod fritters so light they might “float away” were served on a bed of charred aubergines, scattered with thyme, sweet oven-dried tomatoes and punchy saffron mayonnaise. With its “blessed balance, and a simple, no-nonsense art”, it was typical of the dishes here. The wild boar ragu, rich and extravagantly creamy, was “tangled” with delicate fettuccine. A risotto of orzo stained black with squid ink, with cockles, charred tentacles and sharp slivers of fennel had a “full fathom five” profundity. And curried goat tortellini provided a “mouthful of such cross-cultural genius that I was rendered temporarily speechless”. Lunch for two, £30 plus drinks.

Rambla 64 Dean Street, Soho, London W1 (020-7734 8428) I can’t claim to be fully “independent” when it comes to this new Catalan restaurant, says Fay Maschler in the London Evening Standard. I’ve loved chef Victor Garvey’s cooking since he opened Bravas Tapas in St Katharine Docks in 2013. And, over the years since – as he opened the nearby Amaru and the muchpraised Encant and Sibarita – I’ve come to count him as a friend. So I am not dispassionate about Garvey. But then it is “not often that authenticity is handled with such a keen collector’s eye for gastronomic advances”. Dishes of hake with an anchovy and cava cream, and sea bass with a Jerusalem artichoke soubise (onion sauce) and port-poached salsify are both “stunners”. Spinach croquetas are perfect spheres with a crisp shell. An escalivada of grilled tomatoes, onions, aubergines and red peppers is a “delight”. Puds are equally delectable: warm apricot and almond coulant with frozen yoghurt and torrija, a Catalan version of pain perdu topped with pistachios and raspberry sorbet. Great food; amazing value. Meal for two, incl. drinks and service, about £80.

Fishers in the City 58 Thistle Street, Edinburgh (0131-225 5109) Much of the cooking at this central Edinburgh seafood restaurant – a younger sibling to the long-established Fishers in Leith – “makes you sigh” with pleasure and “rest your elbows on the table” with satisfaction, says Jay Rayner in The Observer. Soft, pearly fillets of lemon sole, for example, curled in on themselves as they might be for a classic Véronique, are served with a chive potato cake – a kind of rosti with a thrillingly “brazen” fat-fried crust. Or take the “grinning mussels and a brilliant green velouté flavoured with breezy notes of tarragon”: this is “serious and confident cooking”. As for the hot shellfish platter, it is a “monumental” thing (as it should be for £50). For all that, though, there are just too many niggles for comfort: salt and pepper squid is “simply too salty”, as are the chips. Roasted plums aren’t quite roasted enough. And while the service at our table was warm and engaged, I’d been kept waiting for absolutely yonks at the front desk. Nice place: iron out these cavils and it could be “truly terrific”. Meal for two, incl. drinks and service, £100.