Le Coq, Islington

I'd like to know why it took until 2013 for London restaurants to work out how to cook chicken properly. This is, after all, a skill possessed by the most reluctant of weekend chefs - even me, and I can overcook a pot noodle. But how many times have you sat down for half a bird in your local pub only to be presented with a dried-up old carcass with a texture like damp loft insulation, the flesh peeling off the bones in sweaty, claggy clumps? How many hotel restaurants have proudly unveiled a 'supreme' from beneath a silver dome and for it to taste like it's been crumbling under a hot lamp for the best part of a fortnight? I've eaten drumsticks that have been left on the barbeque coals for hours longer than they should have been and they've still been juicy and tender (albeit beneath a half-inch of carbon). Something about the processes required in a professional kitchen and the demands of service conspire to make chicken in a restaurant, almost invariably, a colossal disappointment.

So it's worth repeating a couple of the places that are Doing Roast Chicken Right. There is Clockjack Oven in Soho, a proto-chain yes and unashamedly so, but where each piece of spit-roasted poultry is bouncy and juicy and seasoned to perfection. The chips are some of the best in town, too, and although some aspects of the experience could be improved (the drinks list still reads like a wet Monday) you can't fail to enjoy their main product. And who could forget Chicken Shop, currently pride of Kentish Town but shortly to open in Tooting, where for very little money you can eat some lovely crispy-skinned bird with a side of crinkle-cut chips. It's places like these that make you wonder what the hell everyone else is finding so difficult.

And now there is Le Coq, in Islington, a sign that perhaps, oh God please, London finally has a grip on this thing. They may bristle with the comparisons with the rather more downmarket examples above - Le Coq is a classy, independent venture with a proper drinks offering and a weekly-changing menu of interesting starters and sides - but they still form part of that exclusive group of restaurants that somehow have managed to serve roast chicken without completely coq-ing it up (sorry).

Starters, despite the obvious (and understandable, as you will see) focus on the main event, were still worth bothering with. A salad of artichokes, capers and parmesan ticked all the flavour profile boxes and we particularly enjoyed the way the artichokes had been grilled to get little crispy bits on the petals. And a 'brown crab rarebit' tasted as odd as it sounded, but after the initial shock of the powerfully seafoody brown-meat had died down it was actually weirdly moreish, the cheese and crab mixture being salty and rich alongside that punch of the sea.

But we - and everyone else in the room for that matter - were here for the chicken, and the chicken we did have. Presented in two parts, the bright white flesh of the breast encased in a golden-brown skin, and the darker meat of the leg stretched out next to it, it was, every last morsel of it, quite beautifully done. The flavour of it, not least, was seriously impressive - perhaps thanks to this particular breed of chicken, perhaps the way they were reared, perhaps the skill of the kitchen at Le Coq. Whatever the reason, I can't think of a better roast chicken to be found in London, and certainly not for a very reasonable £17 for two courses. It came with a colcannon made with yet more artichokes (Jerusalem this time), a side which beats any green salad into a coq'ed hat (please somebody stop me), some excellent tarragon mayonnaise, and a teeny pot of chicken roasting juices which my friend had to stop me drinking like it was soup.

I should also make a special mention of the "rotisserie potatoes", which I like to think were gently cooked in the roasting fat from the chicken, and if they weren't certainly tasted like they were, all soft and glistening and browned with concentrated chicken flavour. Could Le Coq, not content with serving arguable the best roast chicken in London, also be home to the best roasties?

My only regret was not ordering a side of bread to soak up the rest of the juices, so if you make the trip to Islington yourself be sure you don't make the same mistake. Running your fingers feverishly round your plate trying desperately to get a final fix of that sticky chicken stock is not the most edifying way to end a meal, and I can only apologise to those around me for my behaviour last night.

Having completely failed to avoid making any cheap gags at the expense of the name of this restaurant thus far, I don't see why I should stop now, so it just remains for me to say that you really can't help falling in love with Le Coq. The main event is, as I say, impossible to fault, and if everything else had been a disaster it still would have been worth the hour-long Overground trip from Battersea. But add in the expertly-judged sides, the interesting (and resolutely British) starters and the finest roast potatoes in town you have yourself a real gem of a place. In fact they're so good even now, barely weeks after opening, the only question is where they go next. My advice is, don't get Coq'y.

9/10

I was invited to review Le Coq

500, Archway

People quite often - and often quite rightly - have a habit of factoring in the ease of getting to a restaurant into their overall appraisal of a place. It makes sense, doesn't it, that you'd be more pleasantly disposed towards somewhere you could reach by foot in five minutes than somewhere objectively better but requiring a horrendous multi-stage tube/bus/tram/rickshaw journey. I think Mien Tay Battersea, for example, is much better than Mien Tay Shoreditch even though both are owned by the same people, have exactly the same menus and serve very similar crowds of youngish middle-class Londoners; I suspect the only actual difference is that one I can wobble home from in under a minute, and one I can't, but I swear the honey-glazed quail is always that much crispier and tastier on Lavender Hill. And that prejudice suits me very well.

I can only assume, therefore, that the well-heeled lot patronising 500 in Archway - every table taken on a cold Monday night in late October - and the hundreds of people leaving positive reviews on sites like London Eating and Urbanspoon must all live within a stone's throw of the place, because I'm afraid this SW11er couldn't find much to enjoy at all.

House bread, often the first bit of food you get to try in any given restaurant and a pretty good barometer of what's to follow, was stale and dull, a few bits of dry tomato bread and a greasy, crumbly foccacia. They had, I think, made it on-site but if you're going to go to that effort, why not wait until a bit later in the day so that it actually shows? Or it could have been leftovers from yesterday. Either way, not good.

We ordered a burrata starter to share, just so we had something to counter the carb-fest to follow, and they do at least get points for dividing it up into two separate plates to save us fighting over the same piece. But this lump of unexciting cheese, with very little creamy burrata filling, was covered with a mound of slimy roast veg smothered in oil, all of which was teeth-achingly chilly. It arrived mere seconds after it had been ordered, obviously straight from the fridge, a brazen display of infuriating laziness.

Against expectations by this stage, the mains were pretty good. My £18 plate of buttered tagliatelle came with so much shaved white truffle it is surely one of the great truffle bargain dishes of London - it is barely cheaper than this wholesale. The truffle wasn't the freshest but had enough of that funky, funghi flavour (sorry) to make it worthwhile and the pasta was bouncy and silky and lubricated with just enough butter without being sickly.

Ravioli came in a generous portion and were at least cooked to the same standard as the tagliatelle, but I'm not entirely convinced the swirls of sweet balsamic improved matters much, or the rather dry pork filling, or for that matter the soggy deep-fried sage dumped on top. But, you know, they were edible, and my friend who had ordered it, and was Italian, said they were better than the ones she'd had at Trullo. Which is an endorsement of sorts.

So our evening at 500 wasn't a complete waste of time. But were it not for the lure of the bargain-basement white truffle and decent pasta, we couldn't have found much home to write home about. Everyone deserves a good neighbourhood restaurant, and yes I know my experience of the place is tainted by the struggle to get back across town to home. My advice though, even if you happen to live in the flat directly above 500 on Holloway Road, is to get on the tube - there's better out there, and some things are worth travelling for.

5/10

The French, Manchester

Anyone who has been following this blog for long enough will know that I consider Simon Rogan to be one of the most talented chefs working in Britain today, and that my meal at l'Enclume is unlikely to be superceded any time soon as the best meal I've ever eaten. I realise labelling anything the "best" is fraught with problems, especially with anything so subjective as restaurants, but much as I try to avoid quixotic praise, the more I think about that afternoon in Cartmel, in that bright conservatory overlooking the garden, the more I realise how special it was. Sixteen courses of love and joy, and edible pebbles. What more could you want?

It is probably due in part, then, to this hopeless fanboyism that I and a friend were invited up to Manchester last weekend to sample his latest ventures (more on his more informal spot, Mr Cooper's House and Garden, from Lizzie in due course) at the Midland hotel. The chances of my not having a great time at a Simon Rogan restaurant are so slim that the PR powers that be clearly decided that it was worth putting us up in this swankiest of city centre hotels and letting us loose on a ten-course tasting menu, for which we are of course very grateful. So after a morning swim in the basement pool and a brief wander around Manchester in the rain (I believe this is Manchester's default weather setting), we settled in for the midday sitting.

Much like the way things kicked off at l'Enclume, the dazzling selection of amuses that preceed the menu proper at the French are each mini works of art. Crispy kale, chicken skin and horseradish bore a certain resemblance to a similar creation at l'Enclume but substituting the cracker for a sheet of crispy kale was a stroke of genius, and having it all dissolve in your mouth into a riot of animal fat and cream was quite the sensation. Cute little crab and sorrel canapés, too, played with contrasting textures thanks to a crunchy, puffy base laced with seaweed (I think). And 'Rye, mustard and linseeds', spiked with pickled red cabbage, was fresh and invigorating, the seeds toasted just to release a bit of smoke and oil. The only not-entirely-successful item was a black pudding and sage croquette thing which should have been right up my alley but turned out to be rather bland and pappy. Or maybe it was just suffering in contrast to everything else.

Plenty to discuss, then, and we hadn't even reached course one. That arrived next in a little stoneware pot, and consisted of two impossibly sweet new potatoes covered in a rich cheddar sauce. Toasted bread added crunch, and chives colour. It was all very comforting and autumnal, a cheese and potato pie gone posh.

"Grilled radish, leek and watercress" doesn't sound like the most amazingly interesting dish, does it? Except there is nobody who can do vegetables like Simon Rogan, and thanks to a range of techniques and some incredibly fresh ingredients, it was an absolute dazzler. A young leek, gently charred and tasting of wood smoke, was draped around a couple of pieces of rich, salty ham in an ever-so-slightly gelatinous sauce studded with mustard seeds. A fresh radish on top added a bitter crunch to compliment the salt and soft notes elsewhere, and another type of cooked radish was so sweet and smoky and had a flavour so arresting it could have won Best In Show on its own.

And so, just as had happened at l'Enclume, that course kicked off a run of five that could each barely be faulted. Take each of these ingredients in isolation and tell me you don't want to smother yourself in them - mushroom broth, salt-baked swede, smoked yolk, truffles. Now imagine all forming part of one extraordinary dish, rich and soothing, like wrapping yourself in a blanket in front of a log fire in an old thatched cottage.

Then the ox in coal oil dish, much discussed by others as a highlight of their meal at the French but supremely impressive even despite all the hype. On the one level, it's a steak tartare, prettied up with neat little balls of kohlrabi and toasted pumpkin seeds. But the coal oil adds a bewildering extra dimension, the flavour of a charcoal-charred steak without the char.

Caramelised cabbage - ah, you had me at "caramelised cabbage" - scallops, herbs and smoked roe had the trademark Rogan way with smoke and vegetables, with some lovely sweet little Scottish scallops boasting a golden brown crust. I wish I'd known that the roe was quite so punchy before I downed a whole puck of it in one, though - it was so powerfully salty my squeal of surprise turned heads from more than one neighbouring table.

Next was one of Rogan's famous salad explosions, consisting of at least fifty or so separate elements and presumably having taken some poor bugger the best part of the day to put together. I won't even begin to remember everything that went into it, but it was great fun to work our way through, and was interesting seeing how it had evolved from a similar dish I tried at the Electrolux Cube when he was cooking there last year. Just as pretty, though.

Plaice with carrots was a dainty arrangement of bright-white, superbly-timed fish and carrots done caramelised/roasted and as a little purée. Whether it was because it was towards the end of the savoury dishes by this point or just my delicate stomach, I'm afraid neither of us really much enjoyed the deep-fried nugget of bone marrow that topped the fish; it was rich to the point of defeating. Nevertheless, it's always nice when a top chef turns his hand to a fish like plaice - you rarely see it looking and tasting this good.

Middlewhite pork belly was just about the nicest bit of pork I've enjoyed in a very long time, the flesh hammy and bouncy and edged with a thin layer of golden crackling. The accompanying veg - blewits, turnip and mugwort - had the added benefit of sounding like something from Hogwarts' Advanced Potions class as well as tasting earthy and mysterious. A pork jus poured on top made some popcorn crackle like breakfast cereal.

Apples, woodruff (wiki here, I had no idea either), sweet cheese and hazelnut was a pleasant if unspectacular introduction to the sweet courses. Even here, though, despite rather muted flavours, there was some interesting technical skill on display in the form of some nitro-frozen, apple-flavoured meringue things which completely disappeared in the mouth like cold candy floss.

Then a marvellous course consisting of toasted oats, raspberries and hyssop where the fruit had been teased into a thin sheet of translucent raspberry-flavoured candy, and the medicinal, minty hyssop came in the form of a crumbled sorbet. As you may have noticed by this point, there's always plenty going on in terms of technique, but never at the expense of enjoyment.

It was all, of course, as it was always likely to be, a joy. Opening Manchester's first fine-dining restaurant in its most grand and classical old dining halls is a pretty serious achievement in itself, but to do so while sacrificing so little of the charm, inventiveness and fanatical devotion to detail that made l'Enclume so special has not just created the first high-end restaurant in Manchester worth visiting, but another regional destination restaurant, a jewel in the crown of the north that deserves to draw in visitors from all over the country.

I hesitate to mention the dreaded M-word but enough people have made comments to the effect of "if it's so good, why didn't it get a Michelin star", and enough Mancunian pride has been hurt by the omission in this year's guide that it probably deserves addressing. Firstly, and most importantly, Michelin are an ignorant bunch of foam-frotting dinosaurs who wouldn't recognise a good meal if it was tied to a brick and flung in their faces. The briefest of glances at the awards as they currently stand nationwide reveal no obvious pattern other than that if you are connected in some way to a famous name treading water in the Michelin comfort zone (Ducasse, Gagnaire, Robuchon) or are at least serving the kind of dishes they recognise from other restaurants they've awarded (the Greenhouse, Gordon Ramsay, Le Champignon Sauvage) then you are likely to do well. Other than that, you may as well be pulling names out of a hat. The dreadful Ametsa gets a star and not the Clove Club? The gimmick-fountain that is Bo London is awarded, and not the refined, innovative Kitchen Table? It's a crapshoot, in all senses of the word.

So the fact that l'Enclume is "deserving" of two stars and the French not even one says nothing - absolutely nothing - about the quality of the food at either restaurant but everything about how risk-averse, unpredictable and utterly irrelevant the Michelin guide is. Simon Rogan's crafted, intelligently seasonal, creative dishes in the heart of this grand old hotel may not have been deemed as good as somewhere in Mayfair charging £80 for an edible used condom but nobody - not him, and certainly not you - need to worry about that. One day the Michelin guide will be a forgotten relic of a time when the wrong people valued the wrong things about eating out and we will laugh about how chefs would drive themselves loopy to win their favour. Until then, just know this - there are few better restaurants than the French.

9/10

I was invited to the Midland to review the French

You Me House, New Malden

Compared to other SE Asian cuisines, Korean is strangely overlooked in this town, for some reason. Chinese is effortlessly well represented at the top (Hutong, Min Jiang) and the bottom (Silk Road, Chilli Cool) ends of the budget, you'll never want for a good Vietnamese meal if you're anywhere near Battersea or Hackney, and every high street in town has a Thai restaurant despite the fact none of them are much good. But while there are a couple of Korean restaurants lurking around Zone 1 (Kimchee, Asadal, Koba), they had, for presumably very understandable reasons of rent and overheads, been tame and rather overpriced, and with indifferent service borne of the kind of location that gets a healthy tourist footfall.

So it was during yet another interesting but ultimately disappointing meal at popup Jubo in Shoreditch last month that I and a friend finally vowed to pull our fingers out and make the trip to where we'd constantly been told is the home of authentic Korean cooking in London - New Malden. Actually, as we both live near Clapham Junction, the journey to New Malden station itself was fairly trivial; the problem is that unlike, say, Kingsland Road or Chinatown, the restaurants are spread out over a large, anonymous stretch of South London suburb that makes planning your destination in advance a neccessity. We'd settled on You Me House (either a bad translation or they really do want to sound like a Cbeebies TV show) after a tipoff from a New Malden regular, promising authentic food on a budget.

It started extremely well. The (You Me) house snacks consisted of some crunchy mung beans in a sticky dressing and bean sprouts in sesame oil, and both those and a boldly-spiced, gently fizzy house kimchi were devoured even before any decisions were made about which other food to order. House beer was something called 'Hite' that tasted of precisely nothing, which is probably the point.

Of the main dishes, there were two highlights. Chilli-salted chicken had that knobbly, bubbly coating that all the best Korean chicken does, and the flesh inside was nicely moist. I would have a liked a bit more chilli perhaps, and slightly more acidity in the coating, but it was still a good example of this kind of thing.

Steamed dumplings were huge, soft, doughy affairs, generously stuffed with a pork/herb mixture and full of flavour. The dough, in fact, was so good it was perfectly edible on its own, which is just as well, as after cack-handedly shredding the things apart with a spoon and chopsticks to create chunks small enough to swallow, you tended to end up with either pork, or dough, and only very rarely both.

Other dishes were, if not unsuccessful exactly, then at least slightly more everyday. Bibimbap was perfectly good but the fierce heat of the stone pot overcooked it almost before we'd had a chance to take a bite each. Thin strips of beef rib, too, stood little chance of being tender after 30 seconds on a white-hot iron griddle, but still managed to retain a faint memory of a gentle garlic marinade. Only a beef and noodle dish was a real disappointment, the house-made noodles suffering under the weight of a gloopy black sauce of no discernible flavour.

We had massively over-ordered, and had to take much of the leftovers home in plastic boxes (which they were happy to provide), and so our bill came to a not-insubstantial £56.70 for two. But at a very conservative guess I'd say even half this amount of food would have been enough, and with that in mind I'm pretty sure you could have a very nice meal (dumplings, chicken, kimchee, perhaps some rice) for no more than £15 a head. And for that reason, it's hard to criticise You Me House too much. Service was charming (it's family-run), the place was clean and bright, and with a menu this size it's not hard to imagine I could have ordered much better. So here's to next time.

7/10

Mayfields, Hackney

It's not just that a lot of new restaurants have opened in London recently, although those numbers in isolation are still staggering. What's truly impressive is that so many aren't just good, but groundbreaking, serving dishes of supreme skill, sure, but of remarkable ingenuity and with unusual ingredients treated in exciting new ways. Someone recently emailed me asking for my five favourite openings of the past 12 months and narrowing it down to just that many was one of the most difficult exercises I've had to undertake in a long time. Seriously, out of Gymkhana, The Dairy, Toast (East Dulwich), The Clove Club, Peckham Bazaar, Bone Daddies, Hutong, Casse Croute, Smokehouse, One Leicester Street, Newman Street Tavern, Bubbledogs, Duck and Waffle, Sushisamba, and now bloody Mayfields, which five would you choose? It's pretty much impossible.

Yes, Mayfields. It deserves a spot in that hall of champions above for many reasons, but let's start at the beginning. It's a bright, bijou dining space attached to a small kitchen, and if I'm going to be brutal I'd say that some tables are better than others - I certainly wouldn't want to be sat at that one right next to the door once the winter really kicks in, and some of the others are packed pretty close together. But the staff are relentlessly friendly and at least in this small, open space you never have to try hard to attract their attention, so there are benefits.

House bread, fresh sourdough, with a grassy olive oil was very good. It was probably from Bakehouse E5, though I'm happy to be corrected on this.

Seabass ceviche (fantastic fresh fish, gently marinaded) came in a cold watercress soup which had the most extraordinary colour, like dark green ink. The last time I've seen something this colour was a chervil "tea" at El Bulli, but that was disgusting - here it softly enhanced the flavours of the fish without being overwhelming or bitter. Do you hear that, Mayfields? You're better than El Bulli.

Mackerel sashimi and sesame was similarly inventive - and very successful. The toasted seeds and oily fish were actually a really good match, and for £3.50 you got plenty of it.

Duck and pumpkin was nicely seasonal, and prettily presented with some dried citrus and various root vegetables. The duck itself, presumably sous-vided to a perfect pink colour, was seasoned well and had a great texture - you could have almost cut through it with a spoon.

And then the absolute star course, in which every element, flaky white cod, smokey grilled cauli and leeks, some fantastic crispy cabbage of some sort and a marvellous rich olive sauce, combined to produce one of those dishes you will remember for a long, long time. There is some serious talent in the kitchen at Mayfields, and they're not afraid to show it off. This dish, with all its different techniques and ingredients, cost just £10.20. The total bill, with five alcoholic drinks, came to £31/head - they even only added 10% service charge, as if I couldn't have loved them more.

Not so long ago, an opening as profoundly impressive as this would have been the talk of the town. These days, I'm worried their efforts may be lost in the storm of talent that seems to be sweeping every corner of the capital. But given its size and location, perhaps ducking the very brightest glare of the spotlight might do them - and you - a favour. It may just mean you can get a table at a reasonable hour, and that they may avoid the kiss of death of the dreaded Michelin inspectors. Yes, this is yet another astonishing new restaurant for Londoners to get their teeth into. Long may this dazzling trend continue.

9/10