The Daily Telegraph, 15 April
Still on her Scilly Isles tour, Jan Moir vows never to return to the hotel and restaurant, Hell Bay, in Bryher, Cornwall
Worst of all is the catch of the day, a lemon sole that is absolutely appalling - it is served grilled, but has not been gutted, or even cleaned properly. My poor S is almost in tears, and no wonder, for this is beyond disgusting and completely unacceptable. Hell Bay should be ashamed of itself - how can it put someone in a kitchen who doesn't understand that a fish has to be gutted, or even bother to check? Unbelievable.
After watching slime and roe spilling out of the fish's belly, swamping the miniature sweetcorn already on the plate - a horrible sight on every level - it's no surprise that we don't have much of an appetite left. (Lunch hot dishes about £10)
The Independent, 15 April
Thomas Sutcliffe heads off to east London to Bermondsey's Village East and earmarks a return visit
We start with a salad of pear, golden beetroot, mache leaves and Fourme d'Ambert and six tempura'd oysters served with a wasabi tartare. The tempura is faultless - rustling and foamy, dry to the touch and cradling oysters so relaxed by the heat that they need this exoskeleton of batter to hold their shape. For my taste the tartare is just a little hesitant with the wasabi but this is still a great dish. Pot roast lamb... arrives so rare that I swear I hear it bleat as it's put down. We finish with a startlingly solid chocolate pot - good but overwhelmingly dense - and a Champagne jelly with blood oranges, which has been made with a leaf or two too much gelatine... but tellingly none of [the technical flaws] has quite overwhelmed the good feeling that the place gave us when we came in. (Rating: three out of five. Meal for two £95 with wine)
The Guardian, 15 April
Matthew Norman is beguiled by Worcestershire's Grafton Manor hotel but resists the temptation to hatch gunpowder plots
It was on this site that the Gunpowder plotters met for a little chat two days before the (non) event... [and] it is an unusual and deeply charming place... a hotel owned and managed by people less interested in fleecing punters than in showing them a good time. My starter of ravioli of oxtail with sautéd leeks was pretty good, the pasta having the perfect texture and the meat being properly opinionated. The savour of my friend's Sali Goa chicken cafreal, a spicy, succulent curry with the authentic afterkick of freshly ground chilli, "lingers in the memory", as my friend put it, "like a Raoul Dravid on drive". As a responsible newspaper, we cannot condone the blowing up of the Houses of Parliament, but for anyone contemplating [this] I cannot recommend Grafton Manor warmly enough. (Rating: eight out of 10. Three-course set dinner £27.85)
The Observer, 16 April
Jay Rayner joyfully finds a rival to New York's finest steakhouses in Popeseye, London SW15
Last year London became home to not one, but two outposts of apparently legendary steakhouses - Le Relais de Venise L'Entrecôte of Paris and L'Entrecôte Café de Paris de Geneva, both of which first opened their doors many decades ago. I went to the former and thought of it not much at all: mangy salad, flaccid chips and a meagre serving of steak at a high price. The problem for me wasn't the idea, it was the execution. By contrast, Popeseye gets it right. I will go further. It is for me the Holy Grail, a place which serves steaks to match those I have tried on the other side of the Atlantic... But what really seals the deal is everything else around the steaks. (Meal for two with wine £80)
Time Out, 19 April
Guy Dimond sings the praises of a new wine bar and restaurant in London's Clerkenwell - the Ambassador
There are bar snacks and simple lunch dishes, from the best sausage sandwich in London (as it should be when it costs £7.50) to a ham hock ballotine, the dense pink meat arranged like cotton reels around a plate interspersed with pert salad leaves. Chef Toby Jilsmark's dinner menu is more ambitious. Wafer-thin pasta encased two ravioli of rich rabbit meat, topped by some chopped black olives and accompanied by some strips of fennel braised with fennel seeds and pastis. The puddings continued the pattern of simple dishes, done very well. (Meal for two with wine and service about £75)