What the experts recommend
The Heathcock 58-60 Bridge Street, Cardiff (02921-152290)
Cardiff has not always been blessed with “great eating options”, says Jay Rayner in The Observer. Happily, though, several interesting-looking restaurants have opened up there in the past few years – and this “reassuringly solid lump of a pub”, in Llandaff to the city’s north, is one of them. With its white-washed walls and embrace of offal, there’s a “touch of Farringdon’s St John” about the Heathcock. And much like that restaurant, it “takes a pleasingly straightforward approach to the business of feeding people well”.The small plates lunch menu is full of good things: silvery fillet of pickled mackerel, resting on a “sweet-sour blood-orange dressing”; butter-yellow ribbons of pappardelle with a rabbit ragu; “dainty pieces of grilled ox heart” on a “multi-layered” confit potato. And for pudding, there’s a “perfectly engorged rhubarb soufflé tasting brightly of its star ingredient”. This is “thoughtful and thoroughly satisfying cooking”. I’m very pleased I visited the Heathcock – and I would gladly revisit it. Lunch dishes £7£13; desserts £7-£8.90; wines from £19.
Lahpet 21 Slingsby Place, London WC2 (020-4580 1276)
Unlike much of the cooking of southeast Asia, the cuisine of Myanmar (formerly Burma) remains relatively unknown in Britain, says Grace Dent in The Guardian.
And that’s a shame, because it’s glorious: I love “the crunchiness, the delicate sourness”, and the “rapturous brown-ness and mauve-ness” of it. Lahpet, which specialises in “Burmese comfort food”, opened its first branch in east London in 2018, and now has this second one in Covent Garden. It’s a “cool, casual” place with an uplifting atmosphere – on my visit it was full of families and “gossiping friends” – and some seriously enticing cooking. I couldn’t resist the lahpet thohk (tea-leaf salad with fried beans and dried shrimp) – despite being warned that, because of its high level of caffeine, it might keep me up all night. It was unlike any salad I’d previously encountered, and I scooped up every last “enticing bite”. A trio of “frankly incredible” grilled skewers followed – chicken thigh, prawn and oyster mushroom and broccoli – and I also cleared a bowl of Rakhine mohinga, a sort-of chowder of noodles and grilled squid. What an “utterly welcome” addition to the area. About £35 a head, plus drinks and service.
Crabshack 2 Marine Parade, Worthing, West Sussex (crabshackworthing.co.uk)
“Sorrento, it ain’t”, but with its “genteel, faded charm”, the West Sussex seaside town of Worthing has an appeal of its own, says Tom Parker Bowles in the Daily Mail. And for food lovers, this delightful no-frills fish restaurant provides another reason to visit. The interior of Crabshack is “all bare bricks” and “distressed wooden flotsam”; knives and forks sit in an old sardine tin. The kitchen sources from local fishermen, and allows the “quality of their catch” to speak for itself. Whole dressed crab arrives on a red plastic tray, “gloriously fresh and forensically picked”. There’s prawn cocktail with the softest of buttered brown bread, and crabcakes that contain more crab than potato – “which is exactly how they should be”. Despite it being a “bleak February lunchtime”, the room is “packed with locals and daytrippers alike”. Clearly, they know “a good thing when they see it”. About £30 a head.