The White Swan at Fence, Lancashire

It's hard to imagine now, but on the run-up to my latest trip to Manchester it was the Bull & Bear I was certain was going to be the weekend's rip-roaring success of a flagship meal, whereas the White Swan at Fence I was more uncertain about. Michelin stars tend to do strange things to rural gastropubs - prices creep up, service becomes more formal, menus more elaborate and fussy. I'd heard good things, of course - I'm not about to waste good money on a complete gamble - but I'd been trying to keep my expectations in check, and if nothing else the previous day's Sky-Sports-Sponsored weirdness certainly helped with that.

I needn't have worried. From the moment we stepped inside this handsome Victorian building, given the warmest of welcomes and shown to our cosy table next to the fireplace, it was clear everything was going to go very well indeed. It's often a tricky balance to get right, holding on to your soul as a community pub while acknowledging the kind of expectations (and prices) that the Michelin accolades bring, but the team at the Swan have created an atmosphere of easy grace and geniality that feels absolutely right for the occasion, and the kind of food they're serving.

Food, by the way, that's amongst the very best I've ever eaten in the country. The menu - at lunchtime anyway - is charmingly short, just two choices each for starter, main and dessert, plus the option of a tasting menu featuring presumably slightly smaller portions of all of the above. It's a mini work of art in itself, with suppliers namechecked, premium ingredients highlighted, and yet accessible - there's nothing too clever-clever or pretentious. The whole operation, in fact, from the décor to the menu to the Christmas decorations, speaks of a group of people with absolutely exquisite taste.

Bread came out first. Warm crusty buns, with an interesting scone-y texture, with a neat quenelle of room-temperature butter (good) and a portion of chicken liver parfait with shaved foie gras (so, so good). For a kitchen to come up with a parfait this notable and give it away as an unadvertised extra to every table shows both a generosity of spirit and a determination to impress in every given moment.

Then, a pretty stoneware beaker containing a tomato consommé covered with basil foam and topped with a few bits of crunchy pancetta. I had forgotten to advise that one of our party was pescatarian, but a replacement consommé was whipped up in less than a minute (the same, minus the pancetta presumably) which just show you how smooth the front of house are and how efficient the kitchen. It had a good deep tomato flavour, the basil as good a match for it as you would hope, and it all added up to a very pleasant, warming little introduction.

I'd like to tell you about the warm smoked salmon starter - with wasbi buttermilk, apple, yuzu and herring roe - and I'm sure it's lovely, but nobody on our table wanted to sacrifice their celeriac 'risotto' with Perigord truffles, so I'll have to tell you about that instead. Once it arrived, nobody regretted their decision. Tiny rice-grain sized chunks of celeriac actually make a better base for a risotto than most risotto rice I've tried, the parmesan came both as a kind of super-tasty hollandaise and shaved on top, and of course a few huge slices of winter truffle added extra seasonal cheer. Refined without being boring, attractive without being prissy, this was an absolutely great dish.

Fortunately, thanks to the pescatarian, I can tell you about both mains, although having tried the Isle of Gigha halibut with spiced onion fondue, saffron, red prawn and tarragon, I can assure you the fish option was hardly a runner-up. Beautifully cooked, meaty halibut, skin gently bronzed, was topped with a single plump red prawn, sweet and satisfying, and all sat in a frothy sauce that was so superbly balanced between dairy and umami seafood that it drew gasps from all of us, one at a time, as we tried it.

Suckling pig came as a tender medallion of pink loin, and a neat section of belly, a delicate layer of skin crisped up like the finest pastry. With it, silky-smooth blobs of cauliflower purée, roast shallot (or pearl onion, not sure) filled with some kind of light mayonnaise, little sprigs of I think broccoli, look it doesn't matter, all you need to know is that it was elegantly presented, technically stunning, and tasted so good you never wanted it to end.

By this point, despite the fact our appetites were beginning to fail us (a portion of super-crunchy triple-cooked chips had plugged any gaps left by the starters and mains) we asked if we could cheekily share one cheese course between 3. They obliged, of course, and proceeded to wheel over what is surely the most impressive cheeseboard in the North West of England. All bases were covered, from washed-rind to blue, and though local makers were featured there were a couple from the continent too. In the end we settled on a Langres, a creamy English blue which I've forgotten the name of (sorry), and the best cheese in Britain bar none, Martin Gott's St James. They were, in case you even needed to ask, perfectly kept and the perfect temperature.

Desserts continued the theme of just being blindingly good in every way. A pre-dessert of caramel custard was like eating a melted Mars bar - this is of course a good thing - and Sticky Toffee Pudding came arranged as a kind of festive tart, topped with winter nuts and berries and a very nice ice cream.

Mango soufflé, an impressive enough bit of work by itself having risen beautifully, came with more top ice cream work, this time coconut flavoured, and a generous jug of heavenly white chocolate sauce. Like everything that had come before, it was sophisticated, elegant and a masterclass in technique but also, most importantly, a riot of flavour.

You'll have probably guessed where I'm going with all this. The White Swan at Fence has, in the dying days of 2019, leapt straight into my own personal top 10 restaurants and may even have nudged the top 5. Everything that's life-affirming and joyous about eating out has been studied, worked at and executed flawlessly, a perfect dance of harmony between a charming (there's that word again, but they really are) front of house and a world-class kitchen, everyone seemingly having the time of their lives. It's deeply infectious, and utterly wonderful.

And so for a restaurant that does everything right, and nothing wrong, it inevitably follows I have to give it my highest mark. For only the second time this year, I've been lucky enough to be served a flawless meal by a small, passionate team that love what they do and communicate that love in spades. You'd have to have a heart of stone to not utterly fall for everything about the place, and I just can't say enough good things about it. But maybe I'd better stop for now, and give you a second to get on the phone and book a table yourself. It'll be the best decision you'll ever make.

10/10

Burnt Truffle, Heswall

No matter how many great restaurants open up in the many far-flung corners of the country, no matter how many times the national newspapers make a concerted effort to review sites in Manchester, Leeds and York, no matter how many places in Cornwall or the Lakes or the Scottish Highlands win Michelin stars or find themselves in the upper reaches of so many "best restaurant" lists, there's still a huge temptation to regard London as the last word in dining and epicentre of restaurant culture and anywhere decent in the provinces as a blip, a one-off, impressive maybe but unusual, nothing more.

And I'm as guilty as anyone - still patronisingly surprised, after all these years, when anywhere north of Watford is any good at all, despite the fact I make a habit of casting my net wide in search for blogging material. Should we really be that incredulous that L'Enclume is as good as it is, given it has access to such extraordinary local Lake District produce? Or that the Black Swan serves world-class cuisine, most of it plucked out of the surrounding lush North Yorkshire countryside? Northerners eat too! Who knew.

But I think what helps us Londoners feel so irritatingly superior is the perceived lack of a healthy "middle ground" dining scene outside of the M25. Yes, places like L'Enclume and the Black Swan are completely wonderful but a good restaurant culture consists of more than the occasional £150/head temple of gastronomy and a high street full of Zizzi and Pizza Express and Ask. What's so good about London isn't just Fera at Claridge's and the Ledbury but the ground occupied by Quality Chop House, the Draper's Arms, Smoking Goat, Hoppers and Bao - those places where you can enjoy exciting food for about £40-45 a head with a bottle of wine. Where would we be without them?

Burnt Truffle in Heswall is chef/owner Gary Usher's answer to the question of good, mid-range, local restaurants in the North West. And I'm trying hard to contain my more superlative instincts because the fact that there is finally somewhere worth eating in Heswall (Heswall!), shouldn't mean I judge them any differently than I would anywhere of a similar budget in London. So I'm going to very soberly and objectively explain why everyone living anywhere near this lovely little place should be feeling very pleased with themselves indeed.

Burnt Truffle make their own sourdough bread. This in itself is noteworthy. Drizzled with olive oil and paired with whipped walnut butter, though, it becomes a very special thing, impossible to not overfeed on while it exists on the table.

My own was - fortunately - my favourite of the starters, but then I would say that. Robustly seasoned raw tuna, dressed with cooling white radish and a couple of pretty slices of fried lotus root, and with a slick of lovely powerful avocado/sesame purée (mayonnaise perhaps), this was fun, confident cooking despite being the kind of thing that could go hideously wrong in less than fully competent hands.

Cured duck ham (I assume they'd cured it themselves; it had a nice bite) with roasted beets, ginger and orange was similarly attractive, with a zing of good fresh summer ingredients.

Only the gazpacho wasn't quite up to the task, unfortunately, tasting of little more than blitzed red peppers. The basil "sorbet" had melted into a small puddle and though the black olives were a nice touch, there weren't enough of them to season the large amount of dull pepper mixture. Still, it wasn't inedible and was eaten.

All three main courses were great, though. Jacob's Ladder (beef rib), slow-cooked to gooey, tender perfection, dressed in the most fantastic reduced beef stock (I presume) jus, with some nicely textured chunky chips and a blob of addictive onion purée. The kind of beef rib dish that you wish you were given every time you ordered a beef rib dish but only very occasionally are.

Tender just-pink slices of Barbary duck breast, with some gently Asian-influenced veg and another one of those beautiful sticky reduced sauces. And those cute little balls are made of potato, unannounced on the menu and a lovely little extra flourish.

You'll be able to see how well they'd crisped up the crust on this piece of blackened cod, and with the bright white flesh still flaking wonderfully underneath, an exact bit of cooking. But it sat on top of a clear fish consommée of some kind that would have been worth the price of admission by itself, clear and clean and spiked with samphire and summer greens.

Hot chocolate pudding with popcorn ice cream was as good as it sounded on paper. Unusual ice creams and sorbets being a bit of a theme at Burnt Truffle, and each dessert came with a different flavour - a small detail perhaps in the grand scheme of things but you definitely got the impression they were going to significant extra effort, as opposed to if they'd just put a blob of vanilla on everything like some places would have done.

Lemon millefuille was lovely, rich custard spiked with real vanilla and presented with a blob of intense summer berry couli. I couldn't work out how exactly the "meringues sorbet" featured - it could have been that thing on top but it was surprisingly warm for a sorbet. Either way, it was still a very enjoyable dessert.

You can tell a lot about a place from their cheeseboard. This quartet of (left to right) Tomme Brulée (lightly blowtorched to give the frills a bit of a crisp, a nice touch), Flower Marie, Montbriac goat's and a pungent, softly oozing slice of Soumaintain is a masterful selection and didn't leave you wanting for anything, not even a blue. Yes, it's sometimes fun to pick your own choice from a cheese trolley but then when you're in safe hands (only when you're in safe hands) it's nice to have a selection brought to you. This was a very good cheeseboard.

With a bottle of good Douro and a glass of prosecco, the bill came to £126.50 - that's £42 for three courses each made with love and care and skill, and served with astonishing attention and flair considering service wasn't even added onto the bill. So we happily paid the usual percentage and went merrily on our way.

It shouldn't really matter that Burnt Truffle is in Heswall; it's a restaurant that could hold its head up anywhere, and clearly there's no reason why residents of the Wirral shouldn't eat every bit as well as anywhere else. But right now, in 2016, places like this in the quiet suburban corners of the UK the are still a rarity and until there's a Burnt Truffle in every high street (and Usher has plans in motion to this very end - his third restaurant Hispi opens soon in Didsbury, let's hope it's the third of many) I think I'm still allowed to get excited about them. One day, maybe Burnt Truffle will be just another great place to eat in the North West. Until then, it's a unique, and wonderful, anomaly.

9/10

Until there's a Liverpool version of the app, see where's good in London

Noble Rot, Bloomsbury

To be fair to the team behind Noble Rot, they tried to keep if not schtum then at least sotto voce the involvement of chef Stephen Harris. This was not billed anywhere official as The Sportsman in London. Harris was merely a consultant on the menu, and manning the stoves on a daily basis would be Paul Weaver, admittedly ex-Sportsman but also having experience of the nose-to-tail aesthetic of St John Bread & Wine, and very much his own person. Noble Rot would be "Franglish", they said - British ingredients presented in a French bistro style. Definitely not the Sportsman v2. No no no.

But then the mere mention of "slipsole" on a preview menu was enough to prompt fevered speculation. Of all the dishes served in that windswept spot on the north Kent coast, it's the "Slipsole with seaweed butter" that's come to represent everything that's pure and good about Harris' cooking. Delicate but meaty fillet of sole drenched in a sauce made from seaweed gathered from the beach, seasoned with sea salt made from water carried out of the ocean by hand. Dare we expect this level of ultra-seasonal, haute-British cooking in Bloomsbury? Would we be disappointed if it wasn't?

In the end, what Noble Rot have done is very clever. Those knowing nothing about the pedigree of the kitchen will enjoy a sophisticated yet accessible menu of seasonal British ingredients, well worth the money they're charging and alongside a wine list that's every bit as intelligently considered as the food. But what about those people expecting the Sportsman in London? Well, they won't be disappointed either, because Noble Rot is such a good restaurant that any lingering doubts will fade as soon as the food starts arriving. Oh, and they even serve slipsole.

First things first, though, and the house bread at Noble Rot is up there with the very best in town. This is because they get some of it from the Antidote/Hedone people, who are almost as famous for their obsessive attention to making the very best bread as they are about, well, pretty much everything else they do. There's no finer way of starting a meal than with a bread course like this, soft soda next to sticky sourdough and moist, cakey foccacia. All gorgeous. I do think it's a bit strange when places serve focaccia with butter but that's a minor niggle.

Native oysters from (where else) Whitstable, and lovely they were too, minerally and fresh and lean. Not massively cheap at £3.50 a pop but then natives never are, and it's always a good sign to see them on a restaurant menu. Means a place knows what it's doing.

A plate of Iberico ham next, just because it's on the menu and if you don't always order Iberico ham whenever you see it you're a stronger person than me. It was in perfect condition, and every sliver of that warm, nutty, rich meat with its ribbons of fat dissolved on the tongue like butter.

And so, the slipsole. In a nod to the location instead of seaweed they'd used "smoked" butter, an equally clever and visually arresting way of making the most of this astonishing fish. Just like when I had it in Whitstable the flesh was bright white and lifted off the bone in satisfying clean chunks, and the dressing added an intriguing spicy note. Perhaps it goes without saying that the seaweed version in the Sportsman is slightly better but that is there and this is here and you'd have a heart of stone to whinge about this superb dish for £8 in central London.

"Burrata, pumpkin & hazelnuts" almost, but not quite, made me enjoy pumpkin. The burrata was gooey and bright tasting, and the nuts had a lovely toasted flavour and fragile texture, but pumpkin is still a bit of a characterless vegetable as far as I'm concerned. Still, this wasn't my dish and the person who ordered it loved it, so what do I know. Or care.

This was halibut braised in "oxidised 1998 Batard-Montrachet Grand Cru". If I was a proper food writer I'd make at least some effort to find out what the hell this means, but I'm not, so all I can tell you is it was a lovely meaty chunk of moist halibut in a wine/butter sauce with some new potatoes. Certainly on the more straightforward side of food presentation and not a great deal going on texture-wise but the fish was lovely and it went down very well with the parties who ordered it.

Whole roast quail with bacon, chestnuts and cavolo nero was far more my kind of thing. The bird was cooked pink inside, with a fantastic dark skin holding bags of salty flavour. The rinkles of the cavolo nero worked like a sponge so that every bite gave up a satisfying amount of gamey gravy. Chestnuts were horrid little nuggets of soily blandness like they usually are, but were easily avoided. A comforting, seasonal dish.

Desserts were a game of two halves. On the one hand, a not-very-good-really egg tart which though edible didn't have the depth of flavour or structural integrity (I mean to say it was a bit runny and the crust was too thick) of masterful versions elsewhere in the capital such as the one at the Marksman. I know this makes me sound a bit spoiled but the egg tart game has upped so much in recent times that substandard ones really do stand out. The clementine sorbet didn't do anything for it either.

But on the other hand, a really good cheeseboard, with (from wobbly memory, we'd had a bit of wine by this point) a stinky Livarot, a good creamy Comté and a blue, all room temperature and in perfect condition.

So it seems the strengths at Noble Rot, and they have some very notable strengths, are in sourcing impeccable ingredients, from oysters to cheese, and serving them at the absolute best they can be. And the savoury courses generally were worth the journey, not least that slipsole which is still able to shine despite not having the benefit of its seaside context.

Oh, and I almost forgot, the wine. Noble Rot have consistently described themselves in the press as a wine bar first, and to this end the wine list - not excessively long but full of interesting options - will I'm sure keep oenophiles happy as Larry. For those of you (myself included) who don't take a professional-level interest in that side of things, there's the fun of ordering a bottle of £20 white and knowing that if it's on the list, it's likely to be pretty good. I spotted a few other tables who were as happy working their way through the wine list as we were working our way through the food menu, and I'm sure Noble Rot are happy playing to either role.

So I'll leave it up to you whether you treat Noble Rot as an exciting new wine bar that happens to serve excellent food, or a modern British-French bistro that serves some of our island's greatest ingredients with the minimum of faff and fuss. Either way, you should find a lot to like in this charming mid-range (you're probably looking at £40-£50 a head) spot on Lamb's Conduit St, and I can see myself returning quite a bit, not least because it's 8 minutes walk from the office. It's a hugely enjoyable addition to the area, and to London.

7/10

Noble Rot didn't quite make it into the app this year, but to see what else is in the area try the brand new Where to Eat in London 2016. Also, apologies for the photos. It's dark in there.