The Daily Telegraph, 27 October
Mark Palmer visits The Rocks, Dunbar, East Lothian

You can do Edinburgh to Dunbar in 30 minutes - and plenty do. The town (population 8,000) is on the East Lothian coast, south of North Berwick, and deep in golfing country. There are two courses here alone, one of which is championship standard. There are many more a little further north, including Muirfield at Gullane. We used to come here as children, not to play golf but to swim in the lido, because my mother thought it would get us out of the house and strengthen our constitutions.
The Rocks – The Daily Telegraph review in full >>

The Guardian, 27 October
Matthew Norman visits Haozhan, London W1

For those among us with the appetite for a little suffering but not the taste for the more extreme modes of sating it, there are other sources of sadomasochistic release than being zipped into a Frank Bough Memorial PVC Bodysuit and given a damned good hiding. The most common SM alternative is, of course, gambling. Fyodor Dostoevsky was the first to observe what is now a truism - that what drives real gamblers isn't the expectation of winning, but the craving for the cathartic self-disgust that comes from losing. And then, for those of us who are enticed by neither the dungeon-dwelling dominatrix nor the seductively spinning roulette wheel, there is dining out in London's Chinatown.

The Independent, 27 October
John Walsh visits Caldesi in Campagna, Bray, Berkshire

The inhabitants of Bray, a pretty village in the Berkshire countryside, must wonder what they've done to deserve such pampering. While neighbouring villages content themselves with a Copper Kettle tearoom and a chicken-and-mushroom pie in the Pig and Whistle, Bray folk can choose between eating at the Roux brothers' Waterside Inn, Heston Blumenthal's Fat Duck and a 15th-century hunting lodge turned gastropub called the Hind's Head, where Prince Philip held his stag night in 1947. Into this gustatory Valhalla now strides the flamboyant figure of Giancarlo Caldesi.
Caldesi in Campagna - The Guardian review in full >>

The Observer, 28 October
Jay Rayner visits The Dining Room at the Railway Hotel, Faversham, Kent
I did not profess undying love to my companion over lunch in this week's restaurant, nor promise to leave my wife in a surge of passion. Dan's a nice enough chap, with an impressive shrubbery of beard, but he's really not my type. Still, I can see how one might do so here, in the right circumstances and in the right company. The name of the place is pure Brief Encounter, and so is the location. The Railway Hotel stands across the road from Faversham station, a handsome lump of redbrick Victoriana with a simple dining room of sturdy wooden tables and white walls hung with unobtrusive prints.
The Dining Room at the Railway Hotel – The Observer review in full >>

areyoureadytoorder.co.uk
Jan Moir visits Hibiscus, London W1
First there were peanut butter and jam sandwiches for pudding at Gordon Ramsay’s Maze. Then came burgers made with squid at Arbutus in Soho. Television chef Brian Turner once dabbled with black pudding spring rolls at one of his restaurants in Birmingham, but I wouldn’t recommend those to you, not even if you were starving. Now the latest humdrum family food to be given the a la carte treatment is good old sausage rolls, which make a surprise appearance on the menu at London’s newest gourmet destination, Hibiscus restaurant in Mayfair.
Hibiscus – areyoureadytoorder.co.uk review in full >>