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The Tartan Fox, Newquay

To get to the newer of Adam Handling’s two gastropubs (the other’s in Windsor), you turn off the A3058 to Newquay into a caravan park. Like us, you’ll be about to do a U-turn when the glorious old coaching inn trots into view from behind some trees ...

Lucky Lychee? Lucky us, more like ...

Creative Malaysian cooking and a wine list that transcends its gastropub setting in old Winchester. It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a gastronaut in possession of a modest fortune, must be in want of crispy ten-spice pork rolls with compressed pineapple. I duly doffed my hat to Jane Austen ...

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Tosi Gorgonzola Bar, London

If you happen to have missed the Sagra Nazionale del Gorgonzola that takes place each September in the eponymous town near Milan, then you can head to the somewhat less likely venue of a converted garage in Mayfair for a taste of northern Italian aperitivo lifestyle ...

JancisRobinson.com

Adventures in wine and cheese – spicy, sweet or with a spoon

Gorgonzola, the great Lombard blue – as Italian as Sophia Loren, the Leaning Tower of Pisa and Romulus/Remus rolled into one. Also, a favourite of Winston Churchill …

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The Urchin, Hove, East Sussex

Round the corner from the glam places that both Nick and I seem to favour when down in Hove for seaside bucket-and-spade fun – Wild Flor, etch, Fourth and Church and new kid on the block Michelin-starred Maré – is a great eating and drinking spot cut from a different polyester windbreak entirely ...

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Barnaby's at the Vineyard, Padstow

There was never a lot of lawn to be had with your prawn in the urban sprawl of St Paul’s Rd, London N1. But the news that the Highbury outpost of POTL (Prawn on the Lawn) was closing this summer was hugely unwelcome, greensward or no. For over a decade, it had been a little oasis of briny small-plate, large-fish, natural-wine heaven in the land-locked drudgery of this area of (not-quite) Islington. One of the main draws was its fully fledged seafaring sister down in Padstow, Cornwall, the small...

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Five Little Pigs, Wallingford, Oxfordshire

Wallingford in Oxfordshire was once home to Dame Agatha Christie; so says the tell-tale blue plaque outside Winterbrook House on the edge of town. The world’s best-selling author (it’s her or a certain W Shakespeare, the jury’s out) had an eye for property ...

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Emilia, Ashburton, Devon

En famille is a phrase that strikes fear into the hearts of all sensible diners. You enter a restaurant expecting an intimate table for two or an exciting front-row stool at the pass only to find that you are seated next to some bloke in a vest intent on eating his minestrone without coming up for breath …

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Adventures in wine and cheese – cheddar, simply the best?

... and there I count them. The cheddars. 25, or thereabouts. Some sporting little more than a strength rating as if somehow flavour is irrelevant. Or perhaps a...

JancisRobinson.com

Raising the Barr in Copenhagen

Some years ago, bobbing about in a plunge pool in the mountains near Uzès, I got chatting to two delightful Danes. One, it transpired, was in the Danish navy and the other a chef at Noma in Copenhagen, then riding the crest of its number-one-resto-in-the-world wave ...

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Tropea, Birmingham, UK

For those unsure (Mancunians, Liverpudlians mostly), Birmingham is the UK’s second city. And if you were brought up on MTV’s The Osbornes, yes, it’s that accent. Good independent restaurants abound and there’s the occasional place that punches well above local-hero weight, too. That’s where Tropea, just off Harbourne’s pleasant high street, comes in.

JancisRobinson.com

Dylans at The Kings Arms

The front bar is still reassuringly pubby, even if its ceiling is hung heavy with fresh hops from a local farm, the taps dripping with craft beer and artisan cider. This close to London any remains of the pub in ‘gastro pub’ are to be cherished ...

JancisRobinson.com

Adventures in wine and cheese – goat tales

It's spring. And that means goat.

This month's Wine & Cheese Adventure celebrates goat's cheese and the wines that pair beautifully with it: everything from the light and fluffy to the firm and farmyardy

JancisRobinson.com

The Rocket Stores, Boscastle

The restaurant sits snuggly on the quayside, just along from the MWM, the Museum of Witchcraft and Magic. Boscastle is that kind of place. Appropriately, the village is only a 3.5-mile (5.6-km), Salt Path hike along the coast from Tintagel and exists in the same sort of mythical half-light of crystal gazing and Enya ballads ...

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XO Kitchen, Norwich

Having garnered itself quite a reputation for clever pan-Asian reinterpretations, outgrowing its pub-kitchen roots into the bargain, XO Kitchen now sits proudly and independently among bits of the local art school, boho boozers and flint-knapped churches that crowd Norwich’s medieval centre.

JancisRobinson.com

A walk on the Wild side in Berkhamsted

Farm to fish to fork to frying pan … there is a lot of f-ing about in restaurants claiming an intimate relationship with the earth. Quite what this direct line to Mother Nature involves is sometimes less than clear ...

The Happy Foodie

7 must-try Ottolenghi rice recipes

Middle Eastern and Mediterranean kitchens are home to some of the world’s greatest rice dishes ...

JancisRobinson.com

The Bull, Charlbury, Oxfordshire

The Bull sits in the centre of things. A ‘pub with rooms’, it belongs to the small, exclusive Public House group of largely...

... welcoming shoulder-month fires played quietly in inglenooks, expensively washed plaster glowed in candle-lit corners and beautiful old floorboards provided charmingly on-the-wonk dining to a soundtrack of 1950s jazz and blues.

Falstaff International

Franciacorta: Italy’s young pretender to the sparkling crown

Rejecting the tank production methods of neighbouring Prosecco, Italy’s Franciacorta has its sights firmly set on another model: Champagne.

JancisRobinson.com

Adventures in wine and cheese – the lands of ice and snø

We’d arrived in a country whose Nordic angles had been softened by a blanket of pristine snow. Blue-white, crisp-crust, rasping-dry, squeaky-teeth, polystyrene snow. Though the scenic route around the fjord’s edge had made us hours late ...

JancisRobinson.com

More pie and wine

It’s pie season! Some mouth-watering ideas for pies and what to drink with them in time for Thanksgiving and all the festive occasions to follow.

JancisRobinson.com

Etch – carving out a niche in Hove

Passing the open kitchen on the way to my table, I noted gleaming stainless steel and corps-de-ballet choreography: military precision, artistic flourishes and the odd relaxed smile, too ...

JancisRobinson.com

Adventures in wine and cheese – the festive board

Dickens and the festive season are now so synonymous that I often find myself rifling through his dusty old pages to check what he, or rather they, had to say about cheese ...

Falstaff International

Cooking with the seasons: Seville oranges

A burst of citrus sunshine, Seville’s bitter oranges are surprisingly versatile and celebrated around the globe...