The Parakeet, Kentish Town

I'm going to start this post about the Parakeet, with - unfortunately (for them, and possibly for you) - a bit of a rant. Why is it that no matter how much money has been lavished on a place, no matter how starry the chefs, how extensive the wine list, how exclusive the whisky collection (the Parakeet has some very interesting bourbons), the beer offering is almost always absolute garbage? I've lost count of the amount of gastropubs I've turned up to for a pre-dinner pint that seem to think it's OK to serve an exciting, seasonal modern British menu with a straight face alongside Camden Hells, Moretti, Guinness and bugger-all else. There's nothing poisonous about any of these bog-standard beers, and not everywhere can be the Wenlock Arms, but honestly guys, it's not difficult - serve the mass-market crap if you must but why not have one or two taps available for something from Deya, or Verdant, or Signature, or Pressure Drop, or god knows how many other great independent craft breweries on your doorstep? Would it really kill you?

So yes my evening at the Parakeet got off to a bit of a humdrum start, with a pint of something entirely forgettable, but I'll give them this - at least, unlike so many 'gastropubs', it's still a proper pub, with a handsome and tastefully restored high-Victorian bar area supported by banquette seating at least equal in size to the dining section. And they're both beautiful spaces, with stained glass details and dark wood panelling, the dining area theatrically unveiled with the raising of curtains at the beginning of service.

They can do a good Negroni too, and know how to put together a supremely attractive Spring menu, with a lot of my favourite words - crab, asparagus, wild garlic, oysters - offered at prices that, these days at least, seem almost modest. The point is, the Parakeet are doing lots of things right and so when they do slip up it only serves to remind you how much better it would be if they'd paid slightly closer attention to the details.

This, for example - described on the menu as "Poached oysters & sea buckthorn granita". Now I'm going to be generous and forgive the plurality as a typo, rather than anything more sinister, because it's £5 for a single beastie is pretty much the norm these days. But am I right in thinking "poached" means served warm? This was ice-cold and tasted raw - again, perfectly fine if that's what you want but not as described. And doesn't "granita" mean a kind of shaved-ice frozen affair? This was a very nice dressing, with what can be a sharply astringent sea buckthorn element tempered by apple juice, but I wouldn't call it a granita.

Duck hoi sin tartlets were very pretty little things which tasted as good as they looked - bags of salty, syrupy hoi sin flavour and with nice soft chunks of pink duck.

Crab lasagne bites contained a good amount of crab meat and a very seductive cheese-toastie style arrangement of textures. They were also something I'd genuinely never seen before on a menu, which for this jaded blogger after nearly two decades in the game is impressive by itself.

Hopefully it's not too much of a criticism to say that this plate of artichoke, broad beans (properly peeled, thank you) and sunflower seeds possibly would have been better described and sold as a side, rather than a starter. It had nice shaved artichokes, plenty of big juicy broad beans and the seeds added an attractive crunch, but in the end there wasn't quite enough going on to justify itself as a standalone dish. Nevertheless, we did quite happily polish it off.

The only real dud of the evening, food-wise at least, was the turbot. Under-seasoned, with an unattractive flabby skin and a strangely blobby-textured, soily flesh, it really wasn't a very pleasant thing to eat and was a poor advertisement for what can otherwise be one of the best fish to eat on the planet. The pickled white asparagus and grape dressing it came with, however, was lovely, which although hardly making up for the turbot did mean there was at least something to enjoy on the plate.

Bizarrely though, considering the poor state of the turbot, this battered, deep-fried red mullet was an absolute joy. Inside a nice crunchy greaseless batter was a fillet of superb mullet, every inch of it properly seasoned and bursting with flavour. I'll forgive them missing to remove a few bones from one side - they were easily dealt with, and the masala and curry leaf sauce it came with was rich with tomato and spices. I know through bitter experience that red mullet does not always taste this good, so this was a surprise as well as a delight.

Desserts were enjoyable, but didn't seem to have had the same amount of care lavished on them as the savoury courses. Chocolate mousse was tasty enough and a bed of crunchy puffed oats (I think they were) gave it a bit of texture, but it's not really the best chocolate mousse I've eaten this month (step forward, yet again, the Devonshire) never mind longer ago.

Citrus Bakewell tart was slightly more interesting and I liked the fragile ribbons of caramelised fruit they'd draped on top, but the cake element was slightly dry and crumbly.

Overall, though, the Parakeet are doing more things right than wrong, and if that seems like damning with faint praise it still puts them ahead of a lot of spots in town. I hesitate to mention service on invites like these but everyone seemed very enthusiastic, and kept exactly the right balance between friendliness and professionalism - they also passed the folded napkin test with flying colours. And although the food menu wasn't exactly at the budget end of the scale, they do offer a house white for £29 which is approaching a genuine steal these days. So yes, if I was going to spend this amount of money and take a journey across town for this kind of food there's a few places (not least the Devonshire, but also the Baring, the Drapers Arms and the Pelican) that would be ahead of the list. But if I was a local, I think I'd be pretty happy to have the option to visit. And perhaps that's all that matters.

7/10

I was invited to the Parakeet and didn't see a bill, but totting up what we ate and drank from the menus comes to about £70pp which isn't bad really.

The Duke, Henley

It's coming up on a year since I was last in this part of the world, when I had a very lovely lunch in the sun at Dominic Chapman, then a brand new restaurant in the Relais hotel on the banks of the Thames. Strolling around town before lunch last week I was pleased to see he was still at the Relais - he's a talented chef and deserves to do well - but I do remember being one of about 6 people in a vast dining room last May. It's strange how some of the wealthiest areas of the country need to be persuaded to spend money on food, even as they drive around town clogging up the tiny streets in their Range Rovers and Aston Martins.

So I was a little concerned that for the whole of a Saturday lunch service we were the only people eating at the new Duke Henley. But I suppose the point of these invites is to change that and get the word out, and perhaps it's not too much to hope the people of Henley can be persuaded out of the giant Wetherspoons round the corner and into this charming, dynamic little startup.

Aged beef fat focaccia was the first thing to arrive, which I hope you can tell even from my slightly blurry photo (I really think it's about time I got myself a better camera - any suggestions welcome) was nice and bubbly on top, smokey from the grill and came with whipped wild garlic butter (first week of the season apparently) and rosemary salt. I'm always a bit torn about having butter with focaccia - I have a feeling it's not very traditional Italian - but then rules are meant to be broken, aren't they? Apologies to any Italians out there.

Venison tartare came hidden under a layer of powerfully wasabi-spiked cream - horseradish cream, basically, only with wasabi. We were instructed to scoop it out using the accompanying prawn cracker style puffed snacks and while this sort of occasionally worked there weren't really enough crackers for the generous portion of tartare, and they had a habit of disintegrating when you attempted to scoop. So we basically ended up having the crackers on the side and then eating the tartare with a spoon. Tasted good though.

These were "Toastie"s, big chunks of chargrilled toast covered in gooey grilled bechamel and umami-rich black garlic, topped with shaved parmesan and what I think were crisp fried shallots. The trick in "poshing-up" cheese on toast is to not have too many confusing flavours, but black garlic and cheese are a perfect little partnership, and the bread was light and easy to eat despite being a generous portion.

King prawns with yuzu, jalapeno and cucumber made a delightful counterpoint to the richness elsewhere, adding more of those Asian ingredients to complement plump, meaty prawns. The yuzu and cucumber made a kind of Japanese gazpacho, and there were all sorts of micro herbs and interesting vegetables (sprigs of fennel maybe, and parsley) added to the mix. One of the highlights of the lunch.

We certainly only have ourselves to blame for ordering so many dishes with the same ingredients, but it was testament to the skill of the kitchen that these tube-shaped chips, that came with yet more cheese and black garlic, were ethereally light and ridiculously easy to eat. Topped with Rachel, a semi-hard goats cheese, it was another one of those dishes that would have gone great with a pint at the bar, or picked at in their little walled beer garden.

We had enjoyed everything up to this point so much that we went for both sweet desserts to finish. This is miso salted caramel tart, with pineapple chutney and crème fraiche, which was dense and gooey and almost slightly too salty but shared between too people not too overwhelming.

And this is Yorkshire forced (I assume) rhubarb, chunky and jammy, served with ice cream and shards of berry-studded meringue, which had a lovely summery flavour profile and some fantastic complimentary textures. Both desserts disappeared in record time.

As I say, this was an invite so we didn't see a bill, but doing a quick bit of maths and assuming the bottle of Chablis they sent us cost about £50, the total per person would have been about £60 (£67 if you add on service), which I think is incredibly reasonable for the amount of skill on display and the thoughtful, seasonal ingredients used. And because this is Henley, after lunch you have the option of a walk along the river, a pint in the Angel, and a photo opportunity outside George Harrison's old house Friar Park, all of which we did. And the sun shone the whole time. It was quite a lovely day.

8/10

I was invited to the Duke and didn't see a bill.

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.

The Counter, Tunbridge Wells

As much as I try to travel as far and wide as possible for a meal, there are certain parts of the world that are somewhat better-represented on these pages than others. Obviously as I live in London, and it's the best food city on the planet, that's the main focus of this blog. But thanks to family living there I'm also generally on top of all things Liverpool (look out for the relaunched Pilgrim, coming soon) and you may have also noticed a slight skew towards Kent, whose culinary gems are spread all the way from the Sussex border to the foodie towns of Deal, Broadstairs and Margate.

And it's thanks to a group of friends living in Tunbridge Wells that I've got to know that specific part of Kent pretty well in particular. A post-lockdown trip to the Kentish Hare proved that there were some really serious gastropubs tucked into the countryside around the town, and I will be forever grateful to them for introducing me to the incredible Tallow, one of my very best meals of recent years.

The Counter, then, a new restaurant/labour of love from chef Robin Read, has some serious local competition from operations that have more than proved themselves, but itself already feels so confident and secure in its Regency location that it could have been there for years. Tables are nicely spaced and sensitively lit by the soft autumnal sun, and staff buzz happily about all the various nooks and crannies (it appears to be two or three premises knocked-through to make a charmingly haphazard whole) with a practiced ease. There's a small bar, and short cocktail offering, but my summer berry martini thing was very decent, and from what I can gather their take on the Negroni was very good too.

The menu proper began with this cute little smoked eel and cep tart which perhaps could have been slightly improved by being warmed through but still had loads of lovely mushroomy filling topped with generous chunks of fish. The mushrooms in fact were described as "Tunbridge Wells Cep" which indicates they were if not foraged then at least grown locally, which was a nice touch.

The bread, served as a course in its own right which is more or less the norm amongst forward-thinking modern British restaurants these days, was an extraordinary thing itself, a sticky, malty-rich sourdough with an ash-touched crust as delicate as French pastry. The 'Chiddingstone Dairy' (just out of town, towards Hever Castle) butter was as rich and powerful as you might expect from Jersey cows, and was nicely room temperature and spreadable. But as if all that wasn't enough we were presented with a cute little cup of vegetable broth, a waste-free way of enjoying the bits of the seasonal veg that couldn't be sensibly used elsewhere - very tasty, and full marks for sustainability too.

Chalk stream trout tasted every bit as good as it looked, and as you can see it looked stunning, with the sashimi-shaped slices of fish prettily arranged amongst carved kohlrabi flowers and dots of dill oil, all of it resting in a cool, clear dashi broth. I've been reading some pretty scary stories about the state of our country's chalk streams in recent years so it's somewhat of a relief to still be seeing products like this on a menu, and a delight to have it treated so well.

Rump cap was an incredible union of impeccable sourcing and intelligent cooking, being what is clearly top-quality beef cooked in such a way as to leave the flesh soft and tender but with an exquisite thin layer of crisp, salty skin and fat on one side. A triumphant trio of sides - swede and black pepper puree, girolles and beer-braised shallot - complimented the beef, and it was all bound together with a nice rich, sticky jus. You really couldn't want for a better beef course.

Of course we had to go for the optional cheese course, in this case Rachel goat's turned into a kind of mini rarebit topped with watercress, beetroot relish (see, there are still exciting ways of doing beetroot and goat's cheese) and more shaved cheese. It was great - the hot, gooey rarebit mixture the ideal format for this cheese, and the toasted bread held its shape very well.

I should probably step back at this point in case I end up boring you with my usual over-effusiveness. Restaurants like this, in case you're new to this blog, are my own particular nirvana - I will happily travel the length of the country in search of strictly seasonal Modern British food served with intelligence and flair, and I've been lucky enough in recent months to come across (either by invite or by sheer luck) a few of them. I can't personally imagine being served a menu like this and not falling head over heels in love with it, but then I don't know why people voted for Brexit or Trump either, or why Clapham Junction station hasn't been bulldozed and rebuilt at any point since the 1970s. Some things will always be a mystery to me. All I can say is that if you have even the slightest interest in being served wonderful food by people who love what they're doing and are incredibly good at it, you should also love the Counter.

Anyway we haven't quite finished yet. Sliced figs (treated cleverly somehow - they weren't quite raw but not quite cooked - maybe sweetened and/or poached?) were topped with a silky mascarpone mousse and a linseed-studded sugar crisp, all of it full of texture and invention.

And then right at the end, a parade of petits fours - fudge, truffle, canelé and macaron - that demonstrated a very capable pastry section and a supremely generous attitude towards unannounced extras, a really nice effort indeed at the end of what had been quite a display of culinary skill for £60.

Of course, our final bill was way north of £60pp thanks to us having a bit more fun than was necessary with the wine list and a final round of single malts, but if you were a bit more sensible and limited yourself just to the matching wines (and OK perhaps a glass of Sussex fizz to start) then you would probably be looking at something more in the region of £120pp - pretty much bang on what you might expect to pay for this kind of thing. Certainly you can pay a lot more for a lot less. Of course you could also decided to go for the full £125pp 10-12 course extravaganza which I'm sure is even more wonderful. Maybe next time.

The Counter, then, is definitely a restaurant worth travelling for, but then if you're lucky enough to live somewhere near the SouthEastern rail route, the fact that its 10 minutes' walk from the station means that there's a good chunk of Londoners and South Easterners generally for whom the journey will be pretty trivial as well. And as with anywhere committing itself to strictly seasonal dishes, the menu will shift and shuffle and evolve throughout the year, meaning that repeat visits will always reward and delight. So don't feel jealous of the residents of Tunbridge Wells having somewhere so wonderful on their doorstep - be happy that for millions of people it's only a short train ride away. And most of all, be profoundly grateful that it exists at all.

9/10

The Lamb Inn, Little Milton

Most visitors to the Lamb Inn will approach from the car park and be greeted with the sight pictured above - an achingly cute thatched countryside pub in whitewashed stone looking like it hadn't changed much in the past few hundred years. And this is, of course, a great way to start. But being a few minutes early for our lunch, we decided to do a little tour of the area and ended up walking past the front of the building where a giant exhaust vent from the Lamb kitchens is heaving out sweet-smelling clouds of charcoal and animal fat into the pretty medieval street. I stood in front of it for a good few seconds, trying to work out what might be on the menu that day, intoxicated by the mix of aromas until my hair smelled of bonfire and I realised if I spent any longer there I may end up not being allowed inside. It's hard to describe, but the Lamb Inn kitchen vent smelled serious, the product of a high-end kitchen doing all the right things.

This was, I'm pleased to say, borne out by the food served inside. I always find chicken liver parfait to be a pretty solid test of a kitchen's skills, and they passed with flying colours, smooth and salty and full of earthy offal flavours without being bitter or grainy. This would have been more than worth the paltry £9.50 they were asking for it by itself, but it came alongside an incredibly lovely bacon jam, with little tiny bits of crunchy pig studded into sticky sweet onion, and a slice or two of top-quality grilled sourdough. I don't remember it being purple though, so blame my weird old camera for that particular effect.

Smoked eel is a good example of the kind of ingredient that only confident and accomplished gastropubs usually serve, as it can be a bit of an ask of your more timid pub-goer (I know a few people that won't go near it, however strange that sounds to the rest of us). The garden greens and baby beetroots brought some nice textures and earthy/bitter flavours, but the star was obviously the eel, so soft and salty and full of flavour that it could be mistaken for chunks of halloumi cheese. This is a good thing, by the way.

But the star of the starters, and in fact one of the best dishes overall, was this single giant crab and scallop ravioli. Not only did it contain a generous portion of bouncy fresh seafood filling, all encased in delicate handmade pasta, and dressed in an irresistible frothy Thai green sauce, it was also on the menu for an incredible £11.50, almost certainly about half, and in some cases less than half, of what you'd pay in most restaurants even attempting to offer a giant crab and scallop ravioli. And apologies - I took the above photo before the sauce was dropped in, so you're going to have to imagine what that looked like.

Enoki tempura suffered just slightly from an excess of grease, as the brush-like fronds of the mushroom can really soak up the stuff, although that's also possibly because it was such a generous portion. It was still all polished off quite happily.

We only had one of the "big" mains, this huge pork chop, expertly grilled and sliced into portions each of which had a morsel of firm but moist meat attached to a melt-in-the-mouth bit of fat and a delicate thin crunch of crackling. The sauce was rich and herby and gently apple-y and the celeriac remoulade studded with (I think) wholegrain mustard for a bit of heat. Doesn't it look beautiful? Well, let me tell you, it tasted even better.

Oh, and the Lamb do very good chips, too.

We nearly didn't order desserts as we were so stuffed from the savoury courses, but these conspired to be some of the best items on the menu. Crème brûlée had a deeply vanilla-y filling and an extra-thick crunchy top which had been spiked with spices of some kind I couldn't quite put my finger on - an improvement on the usual at least, and I'm already a huge fan of crème brûlée. There's an argument to be made that the blackberry ice cream was perhaps an extra flavour too far, but it was absolutely superb home made ice cream, so who cares.

Finally, a kind of reimagined sticky toffee pudding that appeared to be constructed largely of caramel and stewed fruit - at least, if there was a spongecake base there it was incredibly low-key. It was brilliant though - so ridiculously easy to eat with its soft vanilla ice cream topping I practically inhaled it despite the huge amount of food I'd had already. Alongside the seafood ravioli (I think technically I should call a single ravoli "raviolo" but nobody in this country ever does this so I won't either) it was an instant classic, and a Lamb Inn absolute must-order.

It's an incredibly difficult balancing act a lot of these country pubs have to perform - go too haute cuisine and unapproachable and you end up alienating your local audience who will be the core of your customers. Go too cookie-cutter and pub-standards and you're competing with every chain boozer in the area, most of whom have the resources to serve the same stuff a lot cheaper. But get it right - find a balance between accessibility and quality and value for money and with a seasonal menu that without being too overwhelming has something that almost everyone could enjoy, and the rest takes care of itself.

Raymond Blanc's Manoir aux Quatre Saisons is just up the road in Great Milton. We had a little wander round earlier the same day. It seemed very nice, and I'm sure their £230pp lunch has much to recommend it. But if you want local, seasonal, intelligently constructed food for somewhat less than the price of a return to New York (see above) then I would say there's only one choice in the area. The Lamb Inn are doing pretty much everything right, from the service (charming and knowledgeable although obviously given this was an invite feel free to take that observation with a pinch of salt) to the design of the menu to the execution of the dishes themselves. Add in a low-beamed dining room in a 16th century building in the middle of the Oxfordshire countryside and you have all the ingredients of a perfect day out. Thoroughly, wholeheartedly recommended.

9/10

I was invited to the Lamb Inn and didn't pay the bill (although as you can see they did kindly show us one for our records!). We weren't drinking that day so expect to pay £50pp-£60pp for a "normal" lunch. Still an absolute bargain.