Studio Gauthier, Fitzrovia

Hard as it may be to believe from my supremely easy-going and liberal attitude these days (no laughing at the back), there was a time when I was, well, if not completely anti-vegan then certainly vegan-skeptic. To someone who once considered vegetarianism radically restrictive, veganism seemed like vegetarianism with the few remaining good bits (butter, cheese, cream, eggs) taken out, a path taken only by people who didn't really like food in the first place and were looking for a more socially acceptable word to substitute for "dietary neurosis".

And certainly, there are cuisines that (for want of a better word) "veganise" better than others. Most of the SE Asian and Indian subcontinent handle veganism supremely well - certain subgenres of Indian food are largely vegan anyway, and I have it on good authority from a vegan friend who went on holiday to Thailand recently that he ate extremely well almost everywhere. Just don't try being a vegan in France - one member of my family recently asked for a vegan alternative to a set menu starter and was served pâté de foie gras, a substitution very much from the Nana Royal attitude to hospitality.

Sushi, with its focus on fresh fish, doesn't seem like an obvious cuisine to lend itself to going vegan, but then chains like Pret and Wasabi have done so for a number of years already with their avocado and cucumber rolls. What if it was done properly, with a chef's attitude to detail and with real presentational flair? Studio Gauthier attempts to do just that, making excellent sushi that just happens to have no animal in it. Can it really work?

Well, in a word, yes. The first thing to arrive to our table was this cute presentation of plant-based "caviar", the deception strengthened by being served in a little custom-printed caviar tin. The "caviar" itself was remarkably realistic - certainly the equal to the lumpfish roe you can get from Tesco, probably even nicer - and underneath was a layer of creamy, salty plant-based crème fraiche of some kind (probably made from nuts but don't hold me to that). It was all rather lovely, despite the vegan blinis perhaps not working quite as well as their butter and milk-based counterparts and also being somewhat burned. Passing the huge open kitchen a little later, I noticed one of the staff despondently picking through a pile of burned blinis for the occasional one that could be salvaged and used, so clearly something had gone wrong in the preparation that day. I'm sure they're normally a lot better than this.

When it comes to accurately describing the actual sushi, I'm going to have a bit of an issue, as some of the very clever techniques they used to recreate the standard sushi sets are quite beyond my powers of deduction. But alongside avocado nigiri here are "salmon" and "tuna" nigiri made, I'm told from tapioca starch with more fake tuna urumaki, all of it more than convincing. What also helped was that the sushi rice was warm - a detail that plenty of "actual" (and far more expensive) sushi places get wrong.

Another plate of nigiri featured chargrilled aubergine, piquillo peppers with passion fruit chutney and, in the centre there, "Green Dynamite" - crisp rice fritters topped with tofu "crab", and sliced jalapeño dotted with sriracha. Thoughtfully put together and each mouthful bursting with flavour, I think it was about this point that I completely forgot I was eating plant-based food and was just eagerly looking forward to the next thing to arrive.

More "tuna" and avocado and truffled miso nigiri came sharing a plate with a bitesize inari - a spongey, sweet tofu thing stuffed with soft, warm rice. Inari are actually vegan anyway, so perhaps the success of this shouldn't be too much of a surprise, but it was still a very good example of its kind, and right up there with the caviar as one of my favourite things overall.

With a couple of cocktails, the bill came to £43pp, more than reasonable for London these days, certainly for food which although doesn't contain any expensive protein did still clearly have a lot of work and thought gone into it. I'm just docking a couple of points firstly for the burned blinis, and also for slightly inexperienced service charged at slightly-over-normal 15% - we had to ask a couple of times for various things. Also, the room isn't air-conditioned which you could just about get away with when it's 28C (the day we visited) but once it goes over 30C, which it often does in London these days, you're not going to want to be there very long. Still, these are niggles.

Even a committed protein eater like me had a blast at Studio Gauthier - it's intelligent, enjoyable food done well in attractive yet informal surroundings, and for not very much money at all. For vegans though, this could very easily be everything they ever wanted in a restaurant, where instead of having to choose between the only plant option (usually mushroom risotto, or something involving butternut squash) or going hungry, they can have anything they want from this enticing menu, and be just as smug and satisfied as their protein-eating friends anywhere else in town. And that alone has to be worth a trip, surely?

8/10

Chef's Table, Chester

I don't know when it was exactly that London lost its monopoly of great places to eat in the UK. As with so many things, change is gradual - perhaps when l'Enclume won the Good Food Guide's Best Restaurant award back in 2012 it signalled a certain shift away from the capital, but then the odd fine dining establishment has always existed nestled in well-heeled countryside - the Manoir aux Quatre Saison in Oxfordshire, for example, or Gidleigh Park in Devon. L'Enclume was different, of course, because it made more of the bounty of its location and its partly foraged, rustic-yet-refined menu was genuinely groundbreaking, but even so, back then London was usually still where you first went to open a serious restaurant.

So what changed? Well, rents didn't help - to turn a profit owner/operators have had to really think hard about their margins and the creep out of zones 1 and 2 into newly be-restauranted areas like Lewisham and Leyton is well documented, but then when have London rents ever not been an issue? The grabby mitts of the Shaftesbury Estate have been around much longer ago than 2012. And Brexit has surely made a lot of the people who might be cooking and serving your dinner feel like they might be better off in a non-racist country that isn't about to detonate 40 years worth of trading networks for no good reason, but show me any member of the hospitality industry that's ever found hiring staff easy and I'll show you a liar. Brexit was, is, and always will be, a disaster, but restaurants have shuttered for want of decent personnel well before 2016.

The simple reality is, London restaurants got more boring - becoming increasingly gimmicky and superficial, relying on (that awful word) Instagrammable signature dishes and unusual interiors - at the same time as independent gastropubs and high street bistros came to realise that the availability of top producers and a nearby field full of wood sorrel is something very few places near a tube stop could use to their advantage. This is, of course, a brutal generalisation - there are still great restaurants in London, but a vast majority of the most exciting meals I've had in the last few years have been in locations up and down the country, far outside the M25, serving food with the kind of immediacy and honesty that you rarely see in the big smoke.

And so to Chester, where a little high street bistro called Chef's Table is serving fantastic food, with a smile, at prices that would make a London restaurateur weep. First of the 'snacks' were these frog's legs, cutely trimmed into mini drumsticks, breadcrumbed and fried, and resting in a thick pea soup. They were lovely, every bit of them, the peas having an incredible flavour (they own a kitchen garden not far out of town, apparently) and the protein full of tasty fat without being greasy.

And further evidence that Chef's Table aren't afraid to offer unusual ingredients, a lamb's tongue "yakitori", bronzed with ponzu and accompanied by a colourful coleslaw of pickled cabbages, carrots, and sesame oil. Asian seasonings and sauces abount on the Chef's Table menu, but are never clumsy or jarring - this is a kitchen in supreme command of its influences.

A generously proportioned cube of tonkatsu, full of melty fatty pork and dressed in more of that zingy ponzu - just enough to offset the pork but not enough to set your teeth on edge - was one of those things that you wish you could eat forever, free-flowing arteries be damned. Those on the top, by the way, aren't strings of saffron but finely-chopped smoked chilli, which was a clever little touch.

Kitchen Garden Salad was quite breathtakingly pretty, a medley of miniature vegetables and shoots all woven in and out of each other, with croutons for texture and bound with a large poached duck egg. It was all good but I was particularly taken with a bit of what I think was turnip pickled in beetroot juice for colour, a little nod to Middle Eastern comfort food.

Chef's Table put just as much emphasis on vegan dishes as non-vegan, with a whole separate plant-based menu to choose from. This is, in fact, how all restaurants should approach veganism - as you're probably more than aware, simply removing dairy from a vegetarian dish is a surefire way to end up with something inedibly bland. This mushroom and avocado crostini didn't suffer at all from lack of animal product - mushrooms cooked in oil provided an earthy, meaty base note while whipped avocado played the role of mayonnaise admirably. And although I didn't order it (obviously), I would happily have eaten it, which tells you all you need to know.

Given that everything that had come before it was so artful and precise, the vegan main - a huge falafel burger and chips - came as a bit of a shock. I suppose we only had ourselves to blame in ordering a burger and underestimating the generosity of Northern restaurant kitchens, but nice though it was there's only so much falafel and bread you can wade through before waving the little white flag. That said, the romesco sauce was cracking, and the triple cooked chips utterly brilliant - golden brown and crunchy on the outside, and creamy within.

My own main was chicken, and though beautifully presented with a nice golden brown skin, it was rather underseasoned and strangely unsatisfying, which was a shame. But I loved the stuffed courgette flower, and the girolle mushrooms, and the sharp saffron-spiked hollandaise sauce, so all was not lost at all.

A second vegan main of pea and lovage risotto got us back on track though. Full of late summer colour and enhanced with something called "tomato essence", much like the crostini the lack of dairy was a complete non-issue, and unlike the falafel burger the portion size was spot-on. And isn't it a pretty thing?

Desserts were highlights of a meal not short on highlights. A raspberry a white chocolate delice, sat in a fruit syrup, had a beautifully balanced flavour, and a sorbet made with anise hyssop was soft and smooth.

And finally honey and lavender steamed pudding is absolutely the best thing to happen to honey and lavender, so rich and comforting it drew gasps from all at the table. It was topped with "apple crumble ice cream", which is probably the best thing to happen to apple crumble as well. Just brilliant.

The bill, with plenty of booze but without service which they didn't even ask for, came to £40 a head, which I hardly need to point out is pretty astonishing value considering the amount of thought and care that had gone into the dishes. True, I had my issues with a couple of bits and pieces but it's worth stressing that, cosseted by attentive and knowledgeable staff in that cosy little room, we left Chef's Table with our spirits in the clouds. Very, very few restaurants are quite this joyful an experience, and quite so easy to enjoy.

So, another point for the North West, and yet another fantastic restaurant Not In London. I can unhesistatingly recommend a meal here in much the same way I can unhesitatingly recommend the Parkers Arms or indeed Sticky Walnut just around the corner - in short, if you don't enjoy Chef's Table then eating out just isn't for you. They are absolutely nailing on the head everything that makes a good restaurant, and most of what makes a great one, and is a reason to visit Chester all by itself. Lucky, lucky Chester.

9/10