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

The Burger at CUT at 45 Park Lane, Mayfair

The last time I visited a Park Lane restaurant and ate a burger costing over £25 it did not end well. The evening a friend and I spent in the Playboy Club, where we tried their miserable food and tried our best to keep it down, is still a topic of conversation all these years later, a shared moment of dining horror that has hardly lessened from the passage of time. The experience was so grim that I avoided "posh" burgers for a good while after, until I eventually realised it wasn't wagyu beef and truffle mayo I didn't like, it was cynical pricing and restaurants housed in hideous soul-crushing temples of misogyny. And fortunately, hideous soul-crushing temples of misogyny are fairly easily avoided. So with the trauma of the "Hef burger" now little more than a distinctly unpleasant memory, I booked for the signature offering at CUT at 45 Park Lane, hoping it would redeem the reputation of posh burgers everywhere.

The best place to start looking for a premium burger is, and has always been, the steakhouse. It makes sense that anywhere specialising in the sourcing and searing of beef would be able to easily turn their hand to mincing said beef and serving it in a seeded bun, and it further makes sense that the very best steakhouses - Goodman and Hawksmoor in London, Peter Luger's and the Strip House in New York City - with access to the best beef money could buy, would serve the very best burgers. And so it seemed likely that CUT at 45 Park Lane, with its moneyed clientele and focus on stunning imported USDA, would have as good a shot at the title as anyone.

Often a steakhouse burger is little more than a patty of ground beef in a bun - no salad, no cheese, often not even a slick of mayo or sauce. Peter Luger's go down this route, the confidence in their product bordering on arrogance, but when you have access to the best cow this particular food blogger has ever tasted, well, that confidence seems perfectly well-placed. It's fair to say that CUT are not a "no frills" operation, not by a long way. Even before the main course arrives diners are treated to some superb bubbly cheese straws, fantastic fluffy warm cheese gougère (perhaps on loan from the Alain Ducasse operation next door) and beautiful fresh pretzel bread which were so good I ate two of the tasty little buggers before I'd even finished my martini.

But you won't be here to read about pretzels or martinis. What about the burger? Well, overall this was an extremely enjoyable - if not flawless - meat sandwich. The beef itself, in using a Wagyu blend, had it seemed to me sacrificed a little of the flavour of the British and Irish grass-fed breeds for that lovely loose crumbly flesh, rich with marbled fat. Using Black Angus in the mix as well is presumably an effort to reintroduce a bit of funky taste, but I think it could have taken more of this, and less of the Wagyu. Still, what do I know. The tomato was (surprisingly) good even if the lettuce was a bit nothing-y, and the garlic mayo was a fantastic light texture even if there was ever so slightly too much of it.

I liked the poppyseed bun a lot, and it held together remarkably well considering everything that was going on inside. Personally I'm not a usually a fan of marmalades or chutneys in burgers (with the notable exception of bacon jam on very rare occasions) and I could have done without the "shallot-jalapeno marmalade" here, but Ogleshield cheese is, if you're absolutely determined not to use American processed, a very good option as Hawksmoor (and, since them, many others) will tell you, and still retains a good soft consistency even as it cools. Unlike, for example, cheddar. Never use cheddar in burgers. Never.

Service, as you might expect in this poshest of posh steakhouses, was immaculate, and is perhaps partly responsible for the fact I enjoyed the overall experience of eating at CUT more than I objectively appreciated the charms of the burger itself. I'd like to go back, in fact, to try some of the very attractive looking steaks presented as part of the CUT experience (whether or not you're too much of a cheapskate to "just" have a burger and a martini and get the bus home) and see if I don't bankrupt myself.

Because no, CUT is not cheap. It's not even "a bit punchy". It is gold-star, fully-paid-up, certificate-of-authenticity expensive, where a burger and fries a drink ended up costing £50. Is it really worth that kind of money? Well, no. But is anything? Perhaps there's never any justification for spending such numbers on food, but I'm not about to let silly things like logic and rationality get in the way of a good eat, and neither should you. After all, it could be worse - at least it's not the Playboy Club.

7/10

The World's End Market, Chelsea

The World's End is a building with a long and distinguished history. Well, a long history. It's been on the map since Chelsea was a small farming village a couple of miles from the old City of London, and became such a landmark that it lent its name to that whole end of King's Road. Oh, and eventually a bus stop. You know you've arrived when you've a bus stop named after you.

But the Chelsea of yesteryear was nothing like the playground of oligarchs and Middle Eastern royalty it has become today. The original Five Fields, between Chelsea and Kensington, now the somewhat ironic name of a very fancy restaurant, was a notorious area of crime and deprivation, and even in 1897 when the current building was erected, this was not a smart part of town. In fact, it was pretty rough, and remained fairly working class right up until the 1960s when thrusting young creative types like Mary Quant did for the area in much the same way as the Young British Artists of the 90s did for Shoreditch and Hoxton. So presumably the oligarchs and Saudi princes are something that Shoreditch and Hoxton have to look forward to in the next 50 years. Lucky them.

Anyway, back to Chelsea, and the World's End Market. I admit I only visited the most recent previous incarnation once and found it an unremarkable (and oddly dark) space, making very little of the Victorian gin palace architecture it has been blessed with. Whether you consider the recent revamp as "better" probably depends on what fond memories you have of the old place - I didn't grow up in Chelsea in the 90s and I prefer nice restaurants to Sloany drinking dens, so I quite like the new look. Each to their own.

As for the food, well, someone is at least trying hard. An impressive-looking selection of seafood is laid out on ice next to an open kitchen boasting a Josper grill. A good start. Less impressive were the rather underwhelming cuts of meat displayed in the cabinets in the corridor on the way to the toilets - they looked tiny and swamped by the huge space they were in, although maybe the plan is eventually for these to hold something more substantial. If the effect they were going for is the glorious drying cabinets at Goodman City or Beast, well, they need to contain more than a couple of New York strip steaks.

The next worry is the menu - it's huge, a mistake a lot of new restaurants make in trying to cover every potential corner of their new market to see what sticks, but is just never less than bewildering for us poor customers. Twelve (!) different starters, god knows how many different types of fish and seafood, steaks, sides and sauces, but amusingly just one veggie option - I quite liked that. Oh, and there's a whole 'nother menu just for burgers, lest they miss out on that particular zeitgeist.

Seafood soup was pretty decent, one of those things you suspect isn't particularly technically difficult to make but just involves a lot of time and effort, for which I am most grateful. A beguiling, earthy mix of fish and seafood flavours, possibly involving lobster, and I happily polished it off.

Lemon-cured tuna with ginger, jalapeno chilli & coriander dressing was an interesting and colourful starter. Nicely presented, not too much chilli, and all through it that slightly ceviche-y note of subtly marinated fresh fish.

A 2nd starter ordered as a main was a rather more straightforward tuna tartare, albeit shot through with aubergine and cumin mayonnaise. Many of the starters involved (mainly) raw fish so this is clearly where this kitchen's talents lie...

...because I'm not entirely sure they lie in the preparation of beef, at least not yet. My steak needed a much hotter oven in order to get a nice dark crust on instead of the soft, pallid grey we ended up with. They may have splashed out on a Josper grill but that's only half the battle; next you need to know how to use it, and this was cooked so slowly it may well have just been done on the hob. In fact, maybe it was. This was doubly disappointing as you could tell the beef itself was pretty good, from Surrey apparently with a good grass-fed taste and plenty of fat. But if the beef was disappointing the "peppercorn sauce" it came with was genuinely horrid, thin and pale and with about as much flavour as a jug of dishwater. I can't imagine the set of events that led to this rank liquid being served to customers, but let's give them the benefit of the doubt and assume it won't happen again.

Of the desserts, chocolate fondant was the best but then it's pretty hard to mess up chocolate fondant. The ones you can get in the little boxes from Waitrose are nice if you don't overcook them. Vanilla ice cream was churned well to thick and smooth though, which was good.

Hazelnut and caramel cheesecake sounded like a good idea at first, except I don't think they should have embedded the nuts in the cake itself as they'd gone offputtingly soggy by the time it came to opening the little Kilner jar and eating them. A much better idea would have been to roast the nuts to order and put them in at the last minute, then they would have stood a chance of being nice and crunchy and toasty. But hark at me, giving cooking advice to a professional kitchen. Maybe they were supposed to be the consistency of pickled garlic. Who knows.

There we are anyway and there the World's End Kitchen is, despite the early weeks' flaws still probably better than you can do in much of this part of town. In fact it's still only really Medlar (just a short walk away) that's a reason in itself to visit Chelsea for a meal, and I can't see that changing any time soon. So if you have to be wandering down King's Road with £45 or so (I assume) burning a hole in your pocket and want some nice fresh fish, or a cocktail or two, then you may as well give it a go. After all, it's a long walk to Shoreditch.

6/10

I was invited to review the World's End Market

The George Grill, Rye

The are some incredibly talented people working at the George, a handsome old hotel and bar on the High St in Rye. Whoever designed the menu, for example, knows exactly what they're doing - it's a minor work of art, with a "Crustacea" section with oysters three ways, lobster, and 1/2 pint of prawns for very little money indeed. There are half a dozen starters, half a dozen mains, occasionally namechecking local suppliers and seasonal ingredients, and a "From our Josper charcoal oven" section with keenly-priced steaks from butcher Donald Russell, with chips and bearnaise included. So far, so good.

And whoever's heading up the kitchen brigade, too, should be very pleased with themselves. Without exception, the food we ate, given the prices they charged, could hardly be faulted - good ingredients, treated well, honestly presented. No superfluous trills or frills, no sprigs of parsley finding their way into places they don't belong, just good, no-nonsense, grub.

The problem, for the customer at least, is that progressing from the 'menu' stage to the 'eating' stage involves dealing with a front of house that, while often well-meaning, are clearly still struggling with the whole arse/elbow dichotomy, and which on more than one occasion threatened to derail the whole affair.

But let's start where it matters. Our plan, and I hope you'll agree it wasn't a particularly complex one, was to share 1/4 dozen oysters each as a starter, one portion 'natural' and one 'Rockefeller' (grilled), then I wanted a starter-sized portion of scallops as a main, my friend a half pint of prawns, and a portion of chips to share. Not a vast lunch, admittedly, but we were mindful of a huge dinner we had looming in the Gallivant that evening, and the seafood section of the menu did seem the most appealing.

The first thing we did, though, was order two glasses of prosecco. These were very nice, and only unusual insofar as they were one of the precious few items that appeared on time, and as expected. From here on, things got a bit more... tricky.

Oyster Rockefellers, here, and you may notice there are four of them. Maths was never my favourite subject in school but I still find myself regularly labouring under the misapprehension that a quarter of twelve is three, not four. Still, at least this was an error in our favour, and they were bloody lovely, just the right amount of herby salsa under a gentle baked parmesan crust.

We waited as long as was comfortable for my equivalent "au natural" portion to arrive, but there was still no sign even as we'd given up and shared the Rockefeller between us. As the plate was cleared, I mentioned the mystery of the missing bivalves to our waitress who, to her credit, looked genuinely surprised and offered to find out what had happened. Meantime, our next courses arrived, suspiciously sans chips.

But who needs chips, anyway, with food this good? The 1/2 pint of prawns were presented with a bowl of excellent lemon mayonnaise - aioli seems to be more usual these days but this made a very good case for the traditional British version - and a slab of light, focaccia-like white bread.

Rye Bay Scallops were super, too; I loved the fact they'd left the roe on, I loved the sweet, mildly alcoholic liquor, I loved the nuggets of salty ham, I loved the pile of bright-green wild garlic. I loved all of it. There are surely few better ways of spending £10 than this piping hot bowl of fresh, colourful springtime joy.

At some point, the raw oysters arrived, bumped up in number to a full dozen to apologise for the delay, which was a nice gesture but as my friend doesn't eat them turned my starter-as-was into a bit more of a bushtucker trial than I'd anticipated. Still, with a clever rotation of garnishes (mignionette on one, lemon on the next, tabasco, black pepper, combinations of all of the above) it wasn't too much of a hardship to finish them off. I'm good like that.

The bill arrived with the non-existent chips on. Well, of course it did, but by this point we were past caring, and I mean that in the nicest possible way. Nobody was rude or lazy, just a bit baffled, and very often attitude makes up in spades for the lack of, well, general competence. They were soon removed, albeit with no apology for them having been forgotten about then charged for in the first place, and I'm not sure if the 7.5% service charge is normal or just accurate self-appraisal, but it seemed fair all things considered. Ultimately, we left very happy, and you can't put a price on that. Well, you can - £25 a head - but you know what I mean.

7/10

Romesco, San Diego

Back in what has firmly become my second city and home-from-home, San Diego, and a belated write-up of what is fast becoming my favourite restaurant there - Romesco, in Bonita. You may remember me waxing lyrical about the extraordinary Mision 19 in Tijuana last year, a world-class celebration of the finest Mexican food (and believe me, the competition in that category is quite fierce) from chef Javier Plascencia. Romesco actually predates the Tijuana joint by a few years, but is still the only Plascencia place in USA - all the rest are in his home town - so for Californians wanting to try innovative and exemplary Mexican food without negotiating a border crossing, it's a great place to start.

Which is odd, because on paper (literally, I mean the menu), Romesco is doing a lot of things very wrong. It calls its food Mexican-Spanish (or even "Mexiterranean", would you believe it), but has a vast, rambling list of dishes encompassing Greek salads, lasagne, risotto, tapas, tacos and steaks enough to strike the fear of God into anyone who's ever suffered at the hand of so many other unfortunate "fusion" restaurants. I'm usually the first to ridicule anywhere that claims it can cook, say, Malaysian, Thai and Chinese food to a competent level in the same kitchen but those cuisines at least all share the same subcontinent; how on earth would Mexican-Spanish be any more successful?

The answer, to everyone's great relief, not least my own, is a whole lot. Romesco dismisses worries about the oddness of its concept and geographical fuzziness with food that, sampled over two visits and at least two dozen dishes, is rarely less than stellar. Perhaps this success is down to the wise decision to largely keep the Spanish and Mexican elements (and American, and Greek, and Italian, and so on) distinct but separate, rather than attempting too many linguini tacos or chicken mole paellas. So despite being somewhat experimental, a tamarind margherita, for example, is unmistakeably Mexican - and very nice.

House bread (a French baguette, just in case they hadn't quite covered every single country in the world just yet) went remarkably well with pickled garlic (Lebanese? Syrian?), bouncy and crunchy and bright.

OK so maybe some dishes are literally Mexican-Spanish fusion after all. "Grandma's Tacos de Fideo" (I hope she doesn't want them back) were made with that noodly stuff the Catalans use, and also included Spanish chorizo, a rarity in this part of the world more used to the chilli paste (think Mexican n'duja). And very nice they were too.

Even better were the beef cheek tacos - no fancy fusion business here, just a great big glistening load of heavenly-rich beef, and a steamer full of those fresh masa flour casings that make Californians go all wobbly and sing the Star Spangled Banner.

Croquettas were, if we're going to be brutal, perhaps not quite as impressive as examples I've tried in London - using Cheddar cheese can't have helped - but a fluffy aioli perked them up a bit, and they were still enjoyed.

And then. And. Then.

And then the bone marrow sope.

Try and imagine - you won't be able to, but try - three golden brown, piping hot cylinders of roast bone containing a marrow so unbelievably smooth and rich and intense it was like eating the result of an experiment designed to distil the very best beef on the planet into a single mouthful. Each perched on a neat little circle of crisp cornmeal, and topped with a sprig of greaselessly deep-fried curly parsley, delicate enough to collapse into essence after little more than a hard stare.

We're not done yet. Next imagine a little bowl of chile de arbol sauce, with the haunting flavour of wood fires and citrus, presented alongside. Next to that, another bowl of what Romesco coyingly refer to as "beef glaze" but which goes nowhere near describing the wonder, the utter life-changing glory of this, God's own demiglace, a silky, heady reduction of red wine and beef stock so extraordinary simply knowing it exists makes me feel infinitely better about the state of humanity.

Then imagine combining all of the above and enjoying it as a single, divine entity. A symphony of animal and vegetable, taste and texture. Impossibly good.

Sorry I think I lost myself for a second there, but if there's one dish that was worth travelling 5,000 miles for it's that bone marrow sope, and I'm going to make it my mission to eat it on every future trip to San Diego.

Prawns - sorry, shrimp - in garlic butter were authentically Spanish, and perfectly cooked so as to retain a good firm texture. And even the desserts didn't disappoint, fluffy fresh churros served with a good homemade ice cream and creamy dulce de leche dip.

What else? Oh, the service - this, too, was something special, our waiter on our most recent visit (I'll namecheck - he was called Alfonso) a relaxed, seasoned career professional of a kind that exist hardly anywhere else in the world. And the icing on the churros was the bill - with the wine list being half price on Wednesdays we got a whole bottle of Californian Pinot Noir for about a tenner.

Looking back at the Romesco menu even now, after two trips, I still can't quite understand how it all works. This bonkers collection of influences and inspirations should have been, and heaven knows usually is, a disaster. Javier Plascencia is a supreme chef, of course, but being a skill in the kitchen is one thing; making a success out of a fideua taco is quite another.

But, in the end, who cares how it works. You need to know only this - it does work, and it's good value, and the staff are lovely and it's all just... just really, really good. Sorry, I've run out of words. I was thinking about the bone marrow sope again.

9/10



My flights to San Diego were very kindly provided by British Airways. Prices start around £717 return.