Firestarter, Liverpool Street

It's often very difficult to stand out from the crowd in Restaurant London, especially when - as in Firestarter's case at least - you appear to be serving the same kind of live-fire, internationally-ambiguous, ingredient-led menu that began to pop up all over the place after Acme Fire Cult showed there was a market for it. If this sounds cynical, it's not meant to be - everyone needs to make a living, and deciding to serve the kind of food you know people want is just basic common sense.

What separates the wild-farmed wheat from the chaff, though, is whether or not your live-fire, internationally-ambiguous, ingredient-led food is attempting not just to ape the success of somewhere else but to genuinely impress in their own right. Sure, superficially the menu at Firestarter seems very familiar, certainly to this particular jaded food blogger who has seen this kind of thing at pubs and markets and food courts all around the city. But as soon as the crab doughnuts arrived, soft, sweet buns containing a generous amount of white and brown crab meat spiked with chilli, I was reminded that putting crab doughnuts on your menu is one thing; quite another is making them as confidently as this. And they were great.

Lamb haunch could hardly have been cooked better - crusted from the grill, seasoned perfectly and with just enough of a chew that spoke of a top-quality product, the flavour was incredible - dense and gamey and framed so well by the live fire treatment. Mint chimichurri was generously applied and very nice but the star here was the meat itself, an otherwise cheapish cut of lamb presented at its absolute best.

Sea bream, boned (mainly - we found a couple but it wasn't a problem) and butterflied, had a dreamy buttery, crispy skin and a meaty, bright white flesh. I think I would have preferred the accompanying dressings to have been in a little pile on the side rather than scattered on top, as without them the beautiful chargrilled flesh of the bream would have really looked at its best. Also, somewhere - presumably as part of the sambal cabe ijo (an Indonesian chutney, apparently) were some incredibly bitter chunks of sour lemon, which seemed a bit out of place. Still, as I say, this was all about the fish, and the fish was everything.

Smash burgers are everywhere these days, and although not quite up there with the best of them (step forward, Whole Beast) this was still hugely enjoyable. May the burger gods strike me down for saying so, but I found the use of gloopy melted cheddar an actual improvement on the usual processed slice, perhaps because it was so hot off the grill it hadn't had time to cool down and go chalky.

Finally from the savouries, a side of "barbecued baby gem tahini Caesar". If you think that sounds like a lot going on at once, well, you're not wrong - but it actually worked rather well, the tahini going well (as it often does) with the crisp, smoky grilled veg. This side was just as much about the range of crunchy, crackly textures as it was about the umami-rich salad, and we polished it off quite happily.

So far so good, but Firestarter had one final trick up its sleeve in the form of "Wagyu Bone Marrow Lemon Thyme Mousse". Now I don't know if you're the kind of person that can see Wagyu Bone Marrow Lemon Thyme Mousse on a menu and not order it, but I am certainly not one of those people, and jumped at the chance to order perhaps the one thing on the Firestarter menu you wouldn't see anywhere else.

It did not disappoint. If you'd have told me before last week that a lemon-thyme mousse flavoured with bone marrow would be one of my favourite desserts of 2025 then... well, actually I probably would have believed you because I love crazy fusion-offal experiments like this, but it still came as a delightful surprise just how well it worked. At first, you get a very nicely done lemon-thyme mousse, slightly salty and with a pleasant dense texture. Then as it warms up in your mouth the beef appears, not overwhelming or disgusting but a kind of gentle, farmy, earthy memory of a flavour that turns the whole experience up a couple of notches. Very clever stuff, including an almost tobacco-ey smokey pickled pear side, although I wouldn't describe two small half-bones of mousse as being "for 2 sharing" - I think I could have had 4 of these little buggers to myself.

As I said, I was worried when first looking at the Firestarter menu that it wouldn't end up doing enough to stand out with the kind of food that's almost become a shorthand for 2022-2025 London. But the devil is in the detail, and Firestarter really know how to do this stuff. The 'standards' (such as they are) like the grilled steaks and the smashburgers are way better than they need to be and well worth the (actually pretty decent) price of admission. But anywhere marrying together bone marrow and lemon mousse needs all the encouragement they can get - this imaginative, surprisingly, wildly successful dessert is one that I will remember for a long time to come. And if I go back - and I probably will, as it's a part of town I find myself in quite a bit - I hope to find something even more noteworthy.

8/10

I was invited to Firestarter and didn't see a bill, but the above menu would have cost about £50pp including a bottle of wine. Which I reckon is a bit of a steal.

Nessa, Soho

Looking over the confidently international menu at Nessa the other evening, it occurred to me that it's been a while since I've had a moan about anywhere being 'inauthentic'. For all the years that we British were insecure about our place in the culinary world, and those years were many, we worked ourselves to the bone to be more French than the French, more Italian than the Italians, more fiercely Spanish than anything you could reasonably be expected to find in Spain. How dare anyone come to our shores and think we didn't take our food seriously? Look at what we can do!

Nowadays, though you certainly still find restaurants that stick religiously to their regional remits (just look at the success of Bouchon Racine), it seems like more places are willing to just do what comes naturally, peppering their menus from influences from all across the globe. Look at the menu at Papi, for example, or (the sadly departed, though hopefully soon-to-return) Bright. Not British, not Asian, not French or Italian, just a list of dishes you immediately want to eat, using the best ingredients available. All of a sudden, it seems obvious that this is the future.

Nessa, then, is not to be tied down to any particular cuisine. It dances through Italian, French, American and British, constructing a menu of attractive and accessible comfort foods that rarely - if ever - conform to anything so dull as tradition but still impress nonetheless. These are cheese and onion croquettes, piping hot from the fryer, on a bed of 'grape mustard mayo' which provided the perfect accompaniment.

Panzanella made great use of those juicy, sweet (and often eye-wateringly expensive) winter tomatoes, with (as is traditional) croutons to provide crunch but also (as isn't) slices of jalapeño chilli and pomegranate seeds because, well, why not.

Spelt risotto was constructed and seasoned perfectly, with that lovely loose bubbly texture of spelt bound with a shocking green wild garlic. They'd apparently used the excellent Montgomery's cheddar in the mix too, so it had a lovely rich farmy flavour in the background. We all loved this, and I'm not normally a risotto fan.

Leeks were charred in the wood-fired oven then presented on a bed of "almond ricotta", something that deserves to take off. Salsa verde added some acidity, and some pieces of caramelised pecans some extra nutty/sweet/crunchy notes. Again, this went down very well.

The black pudding brioche has become a bit of an Instagram hit, and very nice it was too - think gala pie, only with black pudding instead of egg and brioche instead of sausage and pastry. Actually, don't think of it like that, that doesn't help at all, it's nothing like a gala pie. Anyway the pudding itself was nice and crumbly and rich, and the "brown butter noisette" was a kind of thin, stock-y gravy.

House bread was soda with whipped butter, just what was required.

If I'm going to be brutal, the Caesar was a bit thick on rich, cheesy sauce and a bit light on everything else - maybe it needed more of a salty kick from anchovies to fight the sauce, or more mustard somewhere. I'm not sure. Still, not bad.

Chicken "Cordon Bleu", a respectful nod to an institution that's trained up many a British chef over the years and is still going strong, was exactly as the recipe intended, with moist breast meat folded around bacon, all coated in breadcrumbs and sat in a nice salty jus. Monksbeard was added probably to stop the whole thing being a bit culinary school, but was very welcome.

Steak tartare was impeccably done - there was just the right amount of dressing and herbs folded into the meat, but the dry aged beef shone above the other ingredients, with a fantastic funky taste and addictively loose texture. Look at the colour of that truffled confit egg too.

Finally amongst the savouries, a giant monkfish tail on the bone, perfectly cooked and topped with chopped pickles and chives. Everyone on the table took turns lifting great chunks of bright white meat from the bones until every trace of flesh had disappeared. Plenty of it, too, for £35.

Desserts were unpretentiously presented, but very well done. We particularly enjoyed the bay leaf custard that came with the gooseberry jam roly poly, but also, how nice to see gooseberry on a menu?

And finally baked Alaska, with bright pink poached rhubarb surrounding a blowtorched mound of meringue coating a portion of (gorgeous) gingerbread ice cream. Whenever I order baked Alaska I am duty bound to point out how easy chefs have it in professional kitchens being able to use a blowtorch the exterior without worrying about melting the ice cream. My grandma had to do this dish with nothing more than a very hot oven and perfect timing. She always managed it though.

Yes, we did have a lot of food - and certainly enough wine - but the bill only came to just over £64 each, which is pretty good really. Service was attentive and pleasant, and it's a very nice room to be in, with its views of the busy open kitchen and comfy plush furnishings. I did get lost on the way back from the toilet at one point, but it's a bit of a maze down there, and they're desperately missing a 'Back to the restaurant' sign or two. Something to work on, anyway.

Overall, though, Nessa is serving nice food for not much money, and you can't ask much more than that. I'm only docking a couple of points because in my nerdy blogger way I'd quite like to have seen a bit more unusual offaly bits or rarer seafood available - the list of dishes is, necessarily I would assume, familiar bordering on safe. But when it's all done as well as this, who cares? Sometimes you just want to be rewarded, not challenged. And when you do, Nessa will be waiting for you.

8/10

Ynyshir, Powys

I am aware that not many of my recent posts have featured restaurants in London. This is probably nothing more than coincidence - I happen to have been on a few short breaks up north and the west country and while there was lucky enough to enjoy some very, very good meals indeed.

However it is worth speculating that perhaps there has been a subtle shift in the foodie power dynamic in this country. Sure, London still gets the glitzy international chefs, the exciting new "concepts", the queues for sharing plates. But in borrowing so eagerly (and, it must be said, so successfully) from the great restaurant cultures of the world it loses a certain geographic authenticity. Other than a couple of pie & mash and salt beef bars grimly hanging on from the 19th century, there's no such thing as a "London" restaurant - for better or worse. Even our best gastropubs seem unsure whether to aim for Michelin stars or spit-and-sawdust rural grit.

And recently it seems it's not just gastropubs that seem "happier" (if that's the right word... it almost certainly isn't) out in the regions than in the capital. The astonishing Where The Light Gets In proved without a glimmer of a doubt that there are few better places to host a multi-course seasonal menu than in a post-industrial northern town. And it would be impossible to run Coombeshead Farm in Fulham or Shoreditch even if you carved the building from its landscape in one go and airlifted it in one piece; these places exist because of where they are, not despite it.

I mention all this because of the strange nagging feeling I had at Ynyshir Hall that this admittedly impressive operation out in the Welsh countryside doesn't have quite the same feeling of "belonging" of other equally ambitious sites I've been lucky enough to visit in the last few years. Partly this is entirely deliberate - head chef Gareth Ward is determinedly not creating Michelin-baiting dishes of stuffy French familiarity, and draws influences from the far east as well as his time at Sat Bains' restaurant in Nottinghamshire, with decidedly eccentric and otherwordly results. This is all perfectly fine and acceptable, and entirely up to them.

But part of me wishes there had been just a bit more Wales on the menu - some salt marsh lamb perhaps (the hotel is right next to a salt marsh), some clever cheffy take on laverbread or rarebit, even something more recognisably British instead of - or even alongside - the procession of undoubtedly clever but unnervingly "international" bits and pieces that formed the tasting menu. That said, you can't argue that it's all interesting stuff. This was "Not French Onion Soup", a bowl of dashi gel, tofu and who knows what else, which was covered in a smooth onion broth.

Duck was next, a sort of sausage-slice of leg meat topped with spring onions, ginger and soy. It wasn't a particularly brilliant idea - the powerful Asian dressing overpowered any subtlety in the duck flesh, if indeed there was any - but went down well enough. My pescatarian friend was subbed in a bit of salmon belly for this dish, which was enjoyable in a fatty way but totally impossible to eat with the supplied surgeon's tools. She ended up gingerly balancing flakes of salmon on the prongs then rushing them up to her mouth before they fell off.

Bread was good, though giving me the choice of miso-spiked butter and a quenelle of wagyu fat meant quite a difficult decision had to be made re: butter/bread ratio per bite. I coped though; I'm good like that.

"Sweet and sour" mackerel was conceivably the kind of dish that would have some people spinning for joy and others rushing for the exit. I'm afraid I was more in the latter camp - a very good bit of Cornish mackerel was drowned in what I've no doubt was an acceptably "fine dining" take on a Chinese classic but I'm afraid to this jaded palate tasted for all the world like the stuff from Man Ho on the high st.

Crab was nicer, more balanced and allowing the excellent buttery crustacean to shine.

Ynyshir were right to call the next dish "Black bean" rather than whatever bit of protein (duck) the black bean was painted on, as the animal itself was totally overwhelmed by an incredibly salty dressing. I didn't hate it, and there's pleasure to be had from most things doused in a nice black bean sauce, but I didn't get a great deal out of it other than high blood pressure.

Fortunately, "Garlic prawn" was much nicer - tender and moist and resting in a subtle bisque. If I'm going to be brutal, I've had better bisques elsewhere - this one was rather heavy on the cream and light on flavour - but the prawn more than made up for it, dressed in just enough wild black garlic to lift it. Very nice.

A decent duck liver (that's foie gras to you) parfait was studded with a bit of apple sauce, and topped with a cracker coated with flakes of what I think they said was eel. The eel didn't really do much, and the foie was verging on bland, but the textures were nice.

The next dish, "Caesar", was - inevitably - a deconstructed Caesar salad consisting of lettuce broth studded with croutons, smoked (I think) chicken, parmesan and theatrically-shaved dried egg yolk. It was pleasant enough, although with these deconstructed dishes, you're often treading a fine line between "enhancing and highlighting the original" and "wishing you were, in fact, eating the original instead".

Similarly, "Chicken curry" was a perfectly decent spoonful of slow-cooked chicken rogan josh (or something), with a bit of puffed rice for crunch and a side serving of a pot of beer with grated lime. This isn't the first time I've been served an ironic curry house course at a tasting menu, and it's certainly not the worst, but skipping from one cuisine to another like this made my head spin.

Oh dear, I know I've been moaning a lot. In truth, we were really enjoying ourselves at the time, thanks to some genuinely lovely (some natural) wines and engaging and enthusiastic service from every member of staff. But it seemed the dishes that I enjoyed worked despite the madcap "kitchen sink" ethic and not because of it. It all needed a bit more grounding - in geography, in technique, in just sitting still for five bloody minutes so I could understand what I was eating and appreciate it properly. It wasn't rushed at all, but the zipping from one wildly different cuisine from one minute to the next meant that not much of it registered above the noise. Which was a shame, considering the amount of work that had clearly gone into it all.

One final savoury course remained - a bit of wagyu rib dressed in dried mushrooms. It was, like much of what had come before, overseasoned and unsettling, wobbly with fat and tasting more of the powerful umami sauce it was doused in than anything that had once been an animal.

I was inwardly praying that the desserts would go for a more conventional approach, but it wasn't to be; "S.T.P", a knowing "take" on a Sticky Toffee Pudding, involved a large, rather mealy mejdool date topped with ice cream and doused in caramel sauce and was cloying and sweet. It goes without saying that I would have much, much preferred a normal sticky toffee pudding.

Cox Apple was much better, poached apples resting on a buttermilk cream and topped with frozen sorrel snow, it had a good balance of textures and the straightforward balance between fruit, dairy and foraged herbs was a blessed relief.

And the final course wasn't too difficult either - a deconstructed (there's that word again) tiramisu, with blobs of coffee and custard pressed under a transparent sheet of sugar, topped with crumbled biscuits. Unlike the S.T.P., this course was probably greater than the sum of its parts and largely survived the deconstruction process. Attractive thing, too.

There was one final flourish - a frozen meringue cooked in liquid nitrogen in the style of the Nitro Green Tea at the Fat Duck, which was fun. It seems a bit cruel comparing this last mouthful to one of the best restaurants in the world, but I remember in Bray the flavours being released by the rapidly warming tea mixture were extraordinary. Here, it was just a bit of frozen meringue.

So, what to make of it all. It's worth pointing out at this stage, after moaning about my fancy dinner in a five star hotel, that plenty of other people - close friends and professionals alike - rate Ynyshir up with some of the best food they've eaten anywhere. And I will concede that a lot of my gripes are simply matters of taste - by course five or six I was desperate for a lamb chop or something involving potato, and whether that makes me a complete pleb or a reverse snob I'll leave for you to decide.

The fact is, I was more unnerved by Ynyshir than I was delighted, and at these prices, I think I deserved a lot more of the latter. But you know what, we had fun, and the room was lovely, and we had a nice walk around the extensive and beautiful grounds in the morning, and it was all still far from a wasted weekend. And if you've been reading my grumpy descriptions and looking at the photos and thinking "you know what, that looks pretty good", there's every chance you could go and have the time of your life. And I suppose there's only one way to find that out.

6/10

We had a small press discount on the room but paid for everything else full price. Pictures by Hannah.