etch by Steven Edwards, Hove

Hove is a very acceptable place to spend a day. I was last in the area when visiting the Urchin, a seafood-specialist gastropub and microbrewery (I bet there aren't too many of them around) which made the (pretty easy actually) journey down from Battersea more than worth my while. Since then, I've discovered that we paid way too much for our train tickets (apparently we should have gone Thameslink, not Southern) and also that etch by Steven Edwards has opened, thus giving me another great excuse to travel. This time on a much cheaper train.

The fact that Hove is so well connected to the capital city has a couple of main effects. Firstly, it means etch's catchment area is a few million or so people who can make it there and back for lunch (or dinner I suppose if you don't mind getting back too late) in a very sensible amount of time. And secondly, it means that the astonishing £55 they charge at etch for 7 exquisitely constructed courses (or another £28 for 9) is even more mind-blowing for day-trippers from the big smoke as it is for lucky locals.

We shall start at the beginning. Amuses - in fact extras of any kind - are more than you've any right to expect on a £55 menu but these dainty little things, one a Lord of the Hundreds biscuit topped with cream cheese and chive, the other a mushroom and truffle affair shot through with pickle, were an excellent introduction to the way etch goes about things. Beautiful inside and out, generous of flavour and a delight to eat, from this point we knew we were in safe hands.

Cute little glazed buns formed the bread course alongside seaweed butter. Perhaps the idea was for these to accompany the next couple or so courses, but I'm afraid because they were so addictive they disappeared way before anything else arrived. Still, no regrets.

"Soup of the day" was a bit of a misnomer as this consisted of two courses that arrived as a pair. One a gorgeously rich and fluffy winter vegetable soup - chervil and cauliflower with some irresistible chunks of roasted cauliflower hiding underneath and topped with toasted pine nuts - and a couple of beef tartare tartlets on the side (tartartlets?) to provide a nice companion to the soup. I'm not 100% sure if the tartare was just a blogger's bonus or if they really did come with the soup as standard, but I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt and assume they do - I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong. Oh, and it was all paired with a Retsina, which was a touch of genius.

Halibut could have perhaps been taken off the heat a minute or two earlier but I'm only really saying this out of a dearth of anything else to complain about. It was still clearly a very good fish, with a bright white flesh and nicely bronzed skin, and the parsnip underneath made a remarkably good pairing as well as being nicely seasonal. The crunchy, seaweed-y, noodle-y bits on tops were fun to eat, too.

Of all the dishes, perhaps the crisp hen's egg made the least to write home about. It was perfectly nice, with some good texture provided by croutons and cubes of pickled veg, but the egg itself was...well, an egg yolk in breadcrumbs, decent enough but compared to everything else a bit familiar. Although having said that, I'm very aware I do have slightly more likelihood of getting 'familiar' with tasting menu classics than some people, and there's every chance this could be someone else's favourite course. Such is life's rich tapestry.

Scallop next, a good sweet specimen that had been given a nice firm crust, then sliced and shot through with pumpkin. It's in restaurants like these where you don't have to worry about waiting until the more abundant seasons begin before committing to a meal out - their skill is such that the dishes will be equally exciting and imaginative at every time of the year.

My own personal heaven was embodied in the next course, though, and I'm sorry to be so predictable but there's nothing I can do about that. Beef arrived brilliantly charred from the grill but beautifully tender inside, both as a neat medallion of fillet and - joy of joys - a slice of ox heart with a texture equally dazzling as the fillet but with an extra note of funky offal. Next to it, a little finger of celeriac and a cluster of enoji mushrooms which soaked up a glossy, beefy sauce that made the whole trip worthwhile on its own. I would have paid £55 just for this dish, then gone home happy, it was that good.

More was to come though - firstly a gently flametorched (can you gently flametorch anything? I can't think of any other way of describing it sorry) piece of Tunworth, with a red grape sorbet and bit of pickled endive. After having moaned for years about places trying to gussy-up the traditional cheese course by piling things on top or heating things up (I still have a bit of a problem with baked Camembert) I've realised that with a bit of sensitivity, applying (gentle) heat to a cheese is just a way of presenting its charms in a slightly different way. Think of when a sushi master briefly torches a nigiri before presentation.

And finally dessert, beetroot mousse topped with apple sorbet and with a little red hat of beetroot crisp on top. Colourful and cleverly presented, like a kind of miniature Miro sculpture, it was a lovely coda to the meal, which had ended with the same technical ability and attention to detail as it had begun.

In the interests of impartiality, and given certain recent experiences, I should probably play a little thought experiment and consider if I'd not had the scallop and cheese dishes, would I still have considered £55 to be value. And the honest answer is yes - there's a huge amount of work gone into the food here, with some courses consisting of multiple elements, and the scallop and cheese were just extra expressions of the same kind of theme. There was still more than enough to eat and enjoy without the supplements.

But look, enough hand-wringing. You will know by know if this is the kind of food you like to eat, and whether you think £55 (or more realistically £120-£150 ish if you have matching wine and supplemental courses) is the right amount to pay for it. All I can tell you is that this is the kind of food I like to eat, and Steven Edwards and the team at etch are exactly the people I want to bring it to me. And I would have no hesitation in going back to Hove later in the year, paying in full and seeing what other delights the seasons bring. This is a place worth revisiting.

9/10

I was invited to etch and didn't see a bill. As above, expect to pay between £55-£155 +service depending on what time of day you go, how many courses you choose and what you drink.

Vetch, Liverpool

The best way of experiencing 90% of the fun and frolics of a top-end restaurant whilst shelling out less than 50% of the usual cost is to go for a weekday lunch or early bird menu. Some of the most exciting dining spots in the country have some remarkably reasonably priced off-peak offers, designed to fill tables at times where otherwise they'd be empty, and as we all know there's nothing worse - from a diner's or restaurant's perspective - than an empty restaurant.

These special menus come with an understanding, however - that there will necessarily be cheaper ingredients used (cod instead of halibut, chicken instead of pigeon) and crucially that if there are fewer courses, the overall amount of food should remain largely the same, made up by bulking out with sides of carbs or slightly more generous cuts of the main ingredients. And there will be no squabbling about this, because everything coming out of a good kitchen will be worth the effort, made from the same wonderful stocks and sauces and using the same presentational flair, and if you get mackerel instead of turbot, or sticky toffee pudding instead of soufflé, then who really cares?

But Vetch seem to have gone in a different direction with their early bird menu, and though most - in fact all - of what we were served was impressive in many ways, instead of bulking out with extra carbs or bigger cuts, they have seemingly just lifted three dishes out of the £85/£105 10-course tasting menus, size and all. I should repeat that everything we were served was at least excellent, and occasionally stunning, there just wasn't nearly enough of it. A dainty loaf of Japanese Shokupan (milk bread) was first, warm from the oven, with a little bit of miso butter which soaked into the crumb beautifully.

Cauliflower chawanmushi was a lovely bowl of wintery comfort food, a silky-smooth savoury cauliflower custard topped with parmesan and chive velouté, kind of a deconstructed (if you like) and elevated cauliflower cheese.

Artichoke, goat's curd and truffle was another intriguing bowl of powerful flavours and textures, topped with a giant leaf of charred kale (I think it was) which was great fun to crunch through.

But favourite of the starters was this stunning chunk of monkfish, glazed on top and bright white underneath, next to a cute parcel of braised leek topped with charred stalks (more leek I think) and a little mound of some kind of fish roe. Everything about this dish was pretty much faultless, from the way the flavours worked together perfectly, the addictive textures, and the beautiful main ingredient. Everything, that is, apart from the fact we could have done with a bit more of it. But I'll try not to moan about that too much.

Mains, such as they were, followed. A finger-sized slice of (albeit perfectly cooked) duck fillet came with a pickled beetroot and kale, all soaked in a fantastic beetroot/duck jus. This would have been as faultless as the monkfish it if it had only included a bit of potato - fondant, maybe, or some creamy mash - to fill it out a bit.

Cod, chicken and mushroom was an exquisitely tasteful - and bijou - the fish fillet with a gorgeous glazed skin bound to seasonal wild mushrooms with a chicken cream sauce which you just wished there was more than a teaspoon of.

Desserts were equally beautiful, equally accomplished, and equally tiny. "Pumpkin, caramel, finger lime" showed a range of interesting techniques and textures, but the highlight was the pumpkin, sort of a dense, silky-smooth mousse. And "pear, chamomile, yoghurt" was an intelligent balance of crunchy fruit and decadent dairy, which also just left you wanting more.

So much like the service issues at the Hightown Inn which made the overall experience so frustrating to score, I'm in a bit of a quandary with regards to Vetch. I know for a fact they can cook, and the full tasting menu would most likely have been brilliant, and perhaps there are some people who would have considered the portion sizes if not generous exactly then still just about reasonable. These people probably do exist. But I can't remember the last time I left a restaurant hungry, and I have a very strong feeling that if it wasn't enough for me, it probably wasn't enough for most, and it most certainly wasn't enough for the giant bloke on the next table, 6'5" and nearly as wide, who made our drinks shake like a scene from Jurassic Park when he got up to go to the loo and who must have wondered if this procession of bitesize dishes was some kind of elaborate practical joke.

But all that said, Vetch undeniably has some real talent in the kitchen and I really do want to go back for the Full Monty, so perhaps that's what these off-peak menus are about. Or at least partly about. And it's in a beautiful Georgian townhouse, front of house were as charming as you could hope for, and although the matching wines arrived in slightly stingy portions (as fitting the general theme) they were offered with enthusiasm and real knowledge. And we really enjoyed our evening there, as I'm pretty sure you would too. But maybe have something waiting for you in the fridge when you get home after, just in case.

8/10

Vatavaran, Knightsbridge

It was Trishna in Marlebone, all the way back in something like 2009, that opened many Londoners' eyes - not least my own - to the possibilities of modern Indian fine dining. Now, I'm sure Vivek Singh (Cinnamon Club, 2001), Sriram Aylur (Quilon, 1999) and Cyrus Todiwala (Café Spice Namasté, 1995) will each have something to say about that, and clearly these places are just as much of a part of the journey of this cuisine (or rather, cuisines - India is a big country) as anything that has come since, but there was something about Trishna, the way it wore its fine dining credentials so lightly in favour of being so accessible and bright and fun - the effect was irresistible. I had more than one birthday party there, safe in the knowledge that there would be something on the menu for everyone, and everyone would have a fantastic time.

Head chef at Trisnha at the time was Rohit Ghai, a man who immediately jumped to the top of my good list for having a particular fondness for game. Tandoori pheasant, pigeon, grouse and guinea fowl all appeared over the years, both at the Gymkhana group, the wonderful Jamavar and at his later solo ventures Kutir and Manthan, and in all that time across all those venues I never had anything less than an excellent time. Especially in game season.

Vatavaran, barely a month old, already feels solid and settled in its swanky Knightsbridge location, and has clearly found an appreciative audience. As far as I can tell, every table in this sprawling three-floor restaurant was taken on a cold Monday night in December, quite an achievement for any other new venue but perhaps not quite as much of a surprise given the pedigree of the kitchen. Alongside a worryingly drinkable tequila-based cocktail "Sehar", involving tamarind, passion fruit and ginger, came the selection of baked and fried papads that have become such an important part (to me, at least) of the London Indian fine dining experience, alongside some intelligent house chutneys. We were particularly impressed with the gooseberry one which married the best of British winter produce with South Asian sensibilities.

Ghati masala prawns kicked off the meal proper and turned out to be lightly battered and deep fried (though still nicely plump and fresh inside) then topped with a mix of spices originally from Maharashtra in western India. They were, as you might expect, lovely, although in the interests of a bit of honest feedback we had in fact ordered - on advice from the chef, no less - the grilled wild prawns with chickpeas and curry leaf, from the 'Grills' section. Which I'm sure would have been very nice too. Still as I say, they're only a month old so a few service niggles are to be expected.

Guinea fowl Balchao (a Goan dish, this one - with Portuguese roots) came as a giant chop, slathered in beguiling spices and expertly touched by the chargrill. Again, there's that enthusiasm for the best British produce matched with perfectly-judged and intelligent, complex spicing, creating something entirely new and entirely brilliant.

There was one dish we didn't completely love, but even now I can't decide whether it was objectively not as good as the others or whether it wasn't quite what we expected. I think part of the problem is that when you advertise something in the 'Rotisserie' section of a menu, that tends to suggest a crisp skin, bronzed by dripping hot fat, encasing soft yielding flesh - textures a rotisserie setup does so well. This strange, shapeless seabass had a soft, flabby skin and a rather mushy flesh inside, and although you have to admire the skill and patience to bone an entire fish, I have to wonder whether just grilling the thing over coals might have produced a better result. Still, maybe I'm missing something.

The final courses, as is traditional in such places, arrived together alongside fluffy naans straight from the tandoor and a couple of tasteful sides. The main event, butter chicken, was a knockout - darker and richer than some examples, with giant chunks of expertly grilled poultry that still gave a crunch from a char under the superb sauce. Black daal was equally impressive, thick and buttery and moreish, and what I'm pretty sure was a courgette masala providing a nice light counterpoint to the other dishes but still packing a flavour punch.

So despite there being one or two things I wouldn't order next time (or rather, one thing I wouldn't order next time and one other thing I wouldn't let them order for me next time) I still left Vatavaran more than happy. It might not quite be up there with the flagships of the group like Kutir or Manthan, but then this is a slightly different operation aimed at a slightly different crowd - the difference, without putting too fine a point on it, between the post-Harrod's crowd and the post-Peter Jones'. I was shown round a very glam cocktail bar soon to open on the 3rd floor which will go down an absolute treat I'm sure - this is a place, as I say, that really knows its audience.

It's worth repeating just how much London owes the astonishing variety and quality of its high-end Indian food to all the names I've mentioned previously but from my perspective in particular, Rohit Ghai and the rest of the JKS group who transformed this naive food blogger's attitude on just how good Indian food could be with countless brilliant meals over the years. So consider this post as a protracted 'thank you' for the last 15 or so years, and here's to another brilliant 15 more. Oh, and bring on game season 2025.

7/10

I was invited to Vatavaran and didn't see a bill, but expect to pay £100/head with booze, pretty much bang on for this quality in this part of town.

The Hightown Inn, Liverpool

Despite spending the first 20 years of my life about 100m up the road from the Hightown Inn (then the Hightown Hotel), I never really considered this grand old Victorian building to be much of a "local". I was far more likely to get the train to the Railway in Formby where most of my friends lived, or the Grapes in Freshfield if we were feeling particularly Footballer's Wives. The Hightown contingent did - occasionally - persuade others to join us in L38, but the building's constant change of ownership, focus and purpose (was it a pub with food, a food pub, or just a plain old boozer? A hotel? A wedding venue or events space?) combined with the fact nobody ever seemed to know the best way of using the vast structure - a series of huge high-ceilinged rooms that depending on the time of day would be ear-shatteringly noisy or intimidatingly quiet - created a strange atmosphere that was never really anyone's favourite place to hang out.

There's still a vague sense of prevailing awkwardness in the dining areas of the Hightown - the giant spaces certainly give them a flexibility when it comes to catering for groups (we noted with some trepidation on arrival that each room contained a few tables for 20, although actually they weren't stag or hen do's and it was all very convivial and - crucially - a sensible volume) but do in the end still feel like a dance floor that's been temporarily emptied out for a banquet. There's no real sense of permanence, and you get the very strong impression that if the whole gastropub thing doesn't work out they could clear out the tables, put up a DJ booth and be back to putting on karaoke evenings and pub quizzes faster than you could say "Merseyrail Northern Line".

Further unease was spread once we'd taken our seats, from a waitress who unapologetically began with "We've got no steak tartare".

"Oh that's a shame. We-"

"Or focaccia, or Caesar salad, or mushroom parfait-"

"Can we-"

"Or ribeye, although there's alternative steaks on the specials."

Having had to go back to the drawing board food-wise, attempts to fill the gap with alcohol were thwarted too.

"Can I have a Bloody Mary?"

"No tomato juice, sorry."

"A prosecco?"

"Sorry."

Eventually we managed to piece together a drinks order from the few items they did have, and once they'd all arrived we tried again.

"Can I have the beef & ale pie please."

A pause, then she wordlessly scurried off to the kitchen. A minute later, she was back.

"We don't have that either."

Just as our lunch was on the verge of turning into a complete Monty Python sketch, between the six of us we did somehow come up with a food order, but by this stage I'm afraid our expectations had dropped all the way down through pessimistic to downright despondent. Even an attempt to fill in the yawning gaps on the a la carte with an item or two from the bar menu - a couple of Scotch n'duja quail egg would have been nice, or a grilled beetroot salad - was met with icy indifference.

"Different menu sorry, we can't serve those here."

We looked forlornly over to a table about 6 feet away in the raised bar area, where a family of four were happily tucking into an order of Scotch eggs alongside a portion of fish and chips and a burger. Somehow we'd ended up in the only gastropub in the country where the bar menu was bigger than the dining room's.

And in any sane universe, that should have been that. Another half-assed attempt to relaunch a pub with a vaguely ambitious menu that after a couple of months has fallen back into serving fish and chips, burgers and steaks because honestly, why try harder?

But then the food arrived. And it was all quite lovely.

Parmesan truffle potato chips were so fragile and delicately fried they dissolved in the mouth, and though there's nothing natural about the truffle oil they'd used (nobody's expecting real truffle on a dish worth £4.50) there was still a pleasing amount of it, the aroma filling the room and I'm sure prompting a few more orders from other tables. Assuming they hadn't run out by that point.

Oysters were a bit on the small side but nice and fresh and lean and opened well, with no shell fragments. They came with a decent mignonette but also Sriracha which it turns out goes with oysters perfectly.

Skagen toast is a Swedish thing - head chef Daniel Heffy spent some time in 3* Frantzén in Sweden - best described as a prawn cocktail on toasted brioche. It boasted lovely plump fresh prawns bound with a delicate light mayonnaise, and despite the hugely generous portion size was supremely easy to eat and disappeared very quickly.

Also fantastic were red tail scampi, huge sweet things in a batter that at first looked like it might be too much but thanks to the flavour punch of the prawns turned out to be balanced just right. The jalapeño aioli might have needed a bit more of a chilli kick but then that could just be me - this was still another very nicely done bit of seafood.

Tomato tarte fine looks great and tasted better, a delicate (there's that word again) pastry base layered with powerfully tomato-y (possibly stewed down or partially dried somehow) tomatoes and fluffy goats cheese. I've probably said all I need to say about the annoyance of having so many menu items unavailable, but things like the tomato tart and parmesan chips demonstrate that there is real skill in this kitchen and a future in something more than doing the classics well.

They do the classics well, though, of course. I tried a bit of this burger which had a good crumbly and crusty beef patty with a sensible arrangement of pickles and cheese above. Crucially as well you could eat it without dismantling it, never a given with pub burgers.

Pork schnitzel with fried capers and anchovy butter was doing almost everything right, although with the memory of a Berlin schnitzel in my mind from a couple of years ago the relatively small size of this one came as a bit of a surprise. But I doubt there's many people in Merseyside really want to eat a piece of deep-fried pork the size of a table, so this is probably just a case of knowing your audience.

Steak was definitely worth an order - lovely and charred properly with little bits of fat all crunchy and dark - and though the quality of the beef wasn't quite world class, all was forgiven thanks to how well it was all cooked and seasoned. Fries were impeccable though - crisp and full of flavour right to the last one.

There were more mains as you can see from the bill, but I won't exhaustively go through everything a table of 6 ate for a long lunch. But it's a testament to the quality of the food that despite the shaky (to say the least) start, we all left the Hightown Inn happy as Larry and more than eager to go again when, fingers crossed, they may have a few more interesting things on the menu.

With desserts (tarte tatin, above, a particular highlight - fantastic gooey treacly pastry with crunchy bits) and lots of holiday booze the bill came to £63 a head, and it's probably worth pointing out that even on a "good" day (assuming these do happen) the most they charge for service is 10%. Maybe if you offer the usual 12.5% they'll consider carrying a dish from the bar menu over to the dining room without fear of the world ending. It might be worth a shot. Oh and by the way, we also tried ordering the chocolate fondant. They didn't have any.

So scoring the Hightown has left me with a bit of a conundrum. The food alone, even the hugely reduced selection we ended up with, is probably 8 out of 10, but I can't ignore the fact that you could turn up and find half the dishes and drinks you had your eye on unavailable, and coupled with some bafflingly inflexible service decisions this has the potential to rather spoil your day. So I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt and settle with a 7. Room for improvement from a fairly promising start, and here's hoping that in the next few months they become the dining destination they're so very clearly capable of being.

7/10

Tuétano Taqueria, San Diego

On the shortest day of the year, in the middle of the gloomiest and wettest of England's gloom and wet, I thought it might be fun to review a taco shop in southern California, because it's days like this you need to remind yourself that there are places in the world where the sun always shines.

Tuétano is Spanish for 'bone marrow', and so if you call yourself 'Tuétano Taqueria' this brings with itself a certain set of expectations. I remember being very disappointed as a child when it turned out central Liverpool chippie The Lobster Pot didn't serve lobster (yes, I was that kind of kid) but, fortunately for all concerned, expectations are more than met in this cheerful little spot in Chula Vista, where the birria tacos come with an "optional" chunk of roast bone marrow.

I put "optional" in inverted commas because quite honestly, anyone making the journey here and NOT ordering the bone marrow needs their head examined as it's the loveliest bit of offal you can order in this part of the world. And I'm including the brain and tongue tacos at El Gordo in that assessment.

Anyway I'm getting slightly ahead of myself. The menu at Tuétano is short and no-nonsense, essentially the same ingredient - birria - served in two types of taco casing and also available as a sandwich (torte). Short menus are almost always a good sign, indicating a kitchen focussed and confident in their abilities where it matters, and not trying to be all things to all people.

The first thing we ordered was the standard quesabirria taco - so their own birria mixture topped with lovely gooey cheese, either some kind of pizza mozzarella or a very close Mexican equivalent, in a standard taco casing. For $4 it was a fine example of its kind, the slow-cooked beef and cheese creating that magical combination of flavours and textures that are such an integral part of the Southern California experience, and yet so weirdly difficult to find elsewhere.

Better, as you might hope and expect, was the same filling inside with the bog standard tortilla swapped out for their own hand-pressed on-site version, fluffy little things as light as buttermilk pancakes but holding firm to the last bite - well worth the extra $1 and more than enough reason to visit by itself.

But as I mentioned, Tuetano have a little extra trick up their greasy sleeves, and it's a quite wonderful chunk of roasted bone marrow which for an extra $7 comes slapped on top of your taco speared through with a little wooden stick, like a beefy lollipop (sorry, popsickle). Push the perfectly cooked marrow through the bone onto the top of your taco and you are rewarded with a storm of beefy, offaly wonderfulness, a spritz of fresh lime and chopped coriander (sorry, cilantro) just enough to stop the whole thing tipping over into fatty excess.

They also do a lovely "consommé", not a clear broth in the French style but a heady beef soup made from their own stock, finished with chunks of fresh onion and soft, buttery frijola beans. Typing this back in Blighty with 70mph winds and horizontal rain battering the windowpane makes me think such a powerfully flavoured winter-y soup is wasted on a part of the world where the temperature rarely dips below 'shorts weather', but then life is nothing if not contradictory.

Even the drinks offering has had some love and attention directed towards it. The counter has 3 barrels of Agua Fresca, one of which on the day I visited was a homemade mint and lemonade, the plastic cup it came in dipped in chamoy - a sticky, sweet and sour paste (usually) made from tamarind, tajin and sugar. They also sell Mexican coke and a rather nice non-alcoholic sangria soda, again not a fast array of options but all making sense.

If you've added up the prices I've mentioned above in your head you may have reached the conclusion that Tuetano is a bit of a bargain, and indeed it's not far off, but this being America in 2024 every seemingly reasonable order is at the final stage slapped with sales tax and (increasingly common) a minimum 20% tip, so costs can easily head north of expectations. However, $33pp for probably the best birria taco meal in town is still more than acceptable. You can certainly pay more for less.

It's more than possible I only obsess so much about quesabirria tacos (and believe me, I do obsess about them) because it's the one thing hasn't quite been tackled successfully by any UK Mexican joint. Madre in Liverpool had a decent bash at one point but last time I tried was a shadow of its former self, and most spots in London, even the ones that are so-called taco specialists, don't even bother with birria. But then maybe, like that bottle of holiday wine that tastes so flat and dead when you've gone to the effort of bringing it all the way home, quesabirria aren't meant to travel, and I'll just have to wait for my next trip to California for my next hit. Absence makes the heart grow fonder.

9/10