The Guardian, 12 November
Matthew Norman is delighted by Bristol's "indecently good" Hotel du Vin
The warmth of the name badge-less reception staff was a shock, and the quiet elegance of the bedroom (Egyptian cotton sheets and windows that open) an unnerving aftershock. Although buzzing with the sound of people having fun (an extremely rare, and quite possibly unlawful, sonic manifestation in an English hotel restaurant, where whispering is preferred), the acoustic was excellent. So too was a menu well tailored for a damp, chilly night, from which we both wanted just about everything. My friend, an erstwhile bistro owner herself and not easily impressed, was hugely taken with her escabche of mackerel (£6.75), which was warm and lemon-zingy, and came not just with some good potato salad but also some star anise.
The Independent, 12 November
Thomas Sutcliffe heads to Le Manoir aux Quat'Saisons in Oxfordshire for a date with his dream dinner
If you book in for the night, as we did, you get an early hint about the establishment's attention to detail when you check out the fruit bowl in your room. The pear - as ˆ point as a pear can be - has a blob of red sealing wax on the end of the stalk, to forestall the notorious rapidity with which pears rush from being meltingly ripe to sloppily past it. We start the meal proper in Le Manoir's garden conservatory with a gleaming triangle of beetroot terrine, set in a jelly of imperial purple, and surrounded by a fine lace of horseradish cream. Its balance of sweetness and bite is wonderful but it is trumped by the second dish up on the menu gourmand. This is partly because I am hapless in the face of foie gras - a substance that often induces a complete structural collapse of my ethical scaffolding. This dish, marrying God's butter to diced quince and several little apostrophes of balsamic vinegar, reminds me why. (£95 for eight courses, including coffee and petits fours, without wine)
The Independent on Sunday, 13 November
Terry Durack celebrates now that fine dining has found Leicester, in the form of Entropy
You're all mad not to be eating here. Look at the starters: I pinch a pea and ham soup (£3.50) from an early evening menu, and it's blindingly good. Bright green soup swirls around a delicate lasagne turret of ham cooked in hay - good old ham and pea soup gone to finishing school. A terrine of pig's head and foie gras (£7.50) shows exacting technique, with its strata of varying degrees of pinkness and rich middle layers of foie gras scattered with finely chopped truffle. One piggy layer melts effortlessly into the next, and the overall effect is punched up by a gutsy sauce gribiche. (Around £100 for two including wine and service)
The Sunday Times, 13 November
AA Gill says Roast in London's Borough Market still has some way to go before it can join the best of British
I started with a duck salad that consisted of a fan of labial magret, a hunch of little gem and three boiled, bland mini carrots. It was a depressing bit of catering construction. Next I had grilled ox heart. I haven't eaten ox heart since they forced abattoirs to slash their ventricles and, with one stab, murdered a transcendent British dish: roast stuffed heart. Grilled in slices, it has the texture of liver and the thin, sharp flavour of fillet, which was augmented with nice dabs of bone marrow. It was fine but not really an improvement on calf's liver, unless you are doing a Duke of Edinburgh award in offal.
Time Out, 16 November
Volt lights up the Victoria landscape and Guy Dimond's night out
Too often bar staff look you up and down, deciding if you are worthy, but even the bouncer here was sweet as pie. Service was unfailing, smiling, and friendly, and after our meal the manager was so effusively proud of his new restaurant he offered us a tour and free glasses of Champagne. The cocktails were good too, not cheap, but straightforward drinks made with premium spirits that you might actually want to savour, as opposed to concoctions to keep the bar staff amused. The "Modern Mediterranean" menu is far from being as phoney as the plastic chandeliers - any Italian would be at home with these dishes. Vitello tonnato is a dish from Piedmont of thinly sliced veal with a sauce made from tuna, capers and anchovies. The sauce had exactly the right taste.