I'm sure the Manoir (as I will call it for this post) can impress whatever the weather, but when the early summer sun is shining, and punters are welcomed into the gardens for their aperitifs and/or digestifs, the place is surely at its best. When you've got gardens like these, sprawling over several manicured acres, including orchards, vegetable allotments, lawns and ponds, all in the shadow of a honeyed Cotswold stone country mansion, you need to make the most of them, and after the first glass of English sparkling wine I was thinking that whatever else happened during the day (and despite the weirdly cheap-looking garden furniture) that well, this is just lovely isn't it? Of course, we weren't just at the Manoir to drink champagne in the sun (although I get the feeling the staff would have no issue with you doing just that) but to see what on earth you get for the eye-watering £230 per person lunch menu - a figure that puts it right out in the top 1% of dining experiences in the country. Paying this amount of money puts a place firmly in the 'extremely special occasion' category, and brings with it a certain set of expectations that, for better or worse, only a near-flawless (or actually flawless) experience can meet. But it was during that first drink on the lawn, once we'd had a few minutes to settle down and take it all in, that we began to notice something. Good service is pretty much the norm these days in the UK - we took a while to catch up with the rest of the world but can now easily hold our own. But the staff at the Manoir appear to be operating on another level entirely. They dance around the place, nimble as ballerinas, confident, happy, assured, attentive yes but not overly-so, chatty and pleasant but never too much - it really is a world-class lesson in front of house. So in all honesty, the food only needed to be good enough and we still would have had the time of our lives at the Manoir, as it's impossible to not enjoy being a part of a service routine so utterly dazzling. But it's a pleasure to report that the generous number of dishes that made up the lunch tasting menu were almost as faultless - starting with these bitesize canapes of beef tartare with shimeji mushroom, salmon tartare with trout roe, and (my favourite) a dainty beetroot and goats' cheese meringue sandwich which absolutely exploded with flavour in the mouth. House bread was a sort of tomato-laced brioche thing which reminded me very much of the onion brioche they used to serve at the Ledbury back in the day. Maybe they still serve it at the Ledbury, I don't know I haven't been in a while. Anyway that was, just like this is, excellent, just moreish enough that you worry about filling up on it before the menu proper starts. This confit egg with pea and smoked bacon was perfectly nice but perhaps the only dish that didn't feel quite in the same 2-Michelin-star league as everything else. I liked the little cheese straw thing wrapped with ham, but there was something a little bland and textureless about the egg and pea mixture itself. Still, another person on our table said this was his favourite dish, so there's every chance this is just a matter of taste. Next up (for some of us at least) was a lovely big slab of seared foie gras. For a £35 supplement - because presumably a menu costing £230 per person is barely even covering their costs - it came (as you might hope) beautifully cooked, absolutely dissolving in the mouth, and alongside a dainty little apple tart. With a tamarind sauce dropped on top, it really was a fantastically enjoyable plate of food. The non-supplemental alternative was a scallop ceviche with cucumber and Thai spices, which I didn't get to try but am reliably informed was also excellent. Looks the part as well, doesn't it? Everyone absolutely loved this next course, a huge single morel mushroom stuffed with chicken and sweetbreads, sat in a white asparagus and Jura wine foam. Sometimes when French food goes full, no-holds-barred, Frenchier-than-French haute cuisine, there's absolutely no stopping it. This was a course to remember, certainly. Nobody felt confident enough to go for the £50 supplement A4 Wagyu, but there was a certain amount of soul searching when we saw it presented to other tables, above a mini charcoal grill sending waves of incredible beefy flavours wafting around the room. But fortunately, lamb with sweetbread, asparagus and wild garlic was stunning - a piece of loin so tender you could have cut it with a spoon, and new season asparagus and wild garlic from the gardens adding the perfect vegetable pairing. We also loved the little potato tuiles made into the shape of flowers, and the brilliantly sharp dots of mint sauce which added another talking point. Cheeses next - I forget which is considered more 'French', having cheese before dessert or after, but Le Manoir have gone for the former - and a relatively short but focussed selection of cheeses in blindingly good condition. There was an aged Comte (of course) and an English blue, but the stars of the show were two soft washed-rind cheeses, one French and one English, which I completely forgot to write down. Hopefully someone can identify them from the pictures. They were great, anyway. As a palate cleanser with elements of savoury (lime and bitters) and dessert (cream and chocolate), the pre-dessert bridged the gap to the sweet courses perfectly. With a base of bitter chocolate and cocoa nib topped with a dome of lime foam, it looked gorgeous and tasted even better - just ridiculously easy to eat. The strawberry dessert was absolutely perfect in every way. A hundred different pastry techniques all on show at once, all masterfully done, all showcasing a main ingredient at its absolute best and treated beautifully. I particularly liked the way they'd incorporated strawberry into the brandy-snap crunchy topping, and also placed a bit of strawberry puree into a sample of the actual strawberry so you can see where it all started. Also, though again I didn't get to try it, there was something called a "Cafe creme", a cup made of actual chocolate filled with various coffee-flavoured mousses, parfaits and (I think) ice cream. And as per the scallop dish, I didn't hear any complaints, even about the £35 supplement. And perhaps a supplement for foie gras I can understand, or Wagyu beef, but coffee and chocolate? Petits fours, including a wonderful mini magnum on a stick, were served back out in the garden under the late afternoon sun. And it's just as well that the final bits of food we were served here were just as impressive as the first as it was here, sozzled and sated, that we were handed the bill. £1902 for 4 people. But there's two points I need to make about what is clearly a lot of money for a single meal. Firstly, Le Manoir do not hold back on the old wine refills. I think we must have had about double what they advertised (125ml per glass) - at least it certainly felt like it once we'd barrelled out of the place into an Uber - and none of these extras were added to the bill or even mentioned as an issue. They just always made sure our glasses were full. Secondly, and I realise I'm repeating myself, but bloody hell that service. As we had visited on a "very high pollen" day, one of our party sneezed (discreetly I may add) at the table and within seconds a box of tissues had appeared by her side. Our waiter wasn't just charming but fun with it - I realise that has the potential to be completely insufferable but I honestly think he just completely clicked what kind of day we wanted and went with it. The smiles never left our faces for the whole afternoon (at least apart from the times we were filling them with food and booze) and it transformed what would have been an extremely pleasant experience into an exceptional one. Pied a Terre or, I don't know, even £350 better than somewhere like etch in Hove despite having lovely formal gardens to enjoy. A lot of places do very good food now, and the Manoir is no longer the exclusive island of gastronomy it once was over 40 years ago. 8/10

There's no sign of a cost of living crisis on the King's Road, but then the people of Chelsea aren't known for their frugality. The Cadogan Arms is a grand old Victorian boozer - which means it has nice high ceilings, stained glass and a big carved wooden bar - but then this is also Chelsea so they can do a good cocktail and have oysters and fancy salads on the menu. The place had been on my list for years thanks to the "new" owners (this was in 2021, when the country was in full plague mode) being JKS of Gymkhana, Hoppers and Trishna fame, but also because it's not that far from my house in Battersea, and living in Battersea, believe me, a short journey home is a rare treat indeed. It was a good thing we'd booked - the place was completely slammed on a Friday night, not at all a given in many city centre pubs I've noticed lately. Welcome cocktails (well, we welcomed ourselves with them) were very good - an El Diablo with both mezcal and tequila, and a Sticky Toffee Pudding Old Fashioned which combined buttered bourbon and PX to produce a remarkably authentic STP flavour profile. There's a definite North-American-Mexican lean to the drinks list - I also notice they sold Agua di Madre as a non-alcoholic option, and interesting range of drinks made with fermented kefir. I mean, this is Chelsea, after all. Now, I hesitate - usually - to review a place after having just one dish (each) but this is, after all, a gastropub and we definitely weren't the only people just popping in for one dish before heading home to watch the new White Lotus. My burger was perfectly fine - a good shape and size, easily eaten with my hands so many marks for that, but unfortunately the beef was overcooked to grey and rather dry. They didn't ask me how I'd like it cooked, so maybe this is just how they want to serve it. Much better was a £34 sirloin, a giant chunky thing cooked accurately albeit a little timidly - we'd like to have seen more of a dark crust - but it tasted great and it really was something almost approaching a bargain for your money. Both sets of chips - chunky and fries - were decent, and the bill which I completely forgot to take a photo of but we did pay honestly, was £47.88 each, about right really. I mean, we didn't leave hungry. It's almost always the case that when a restaurant doesn't have to be good to make money - when your customer base is the captive audience of an airport terminal, for example, or a posh suburb of London where residents are independently wealthy and not very discerning - it isn't. I have had some genuinely diabolical meals in Kensington and Chelsea - and Belgravia, and Hampstead - over the years, to the extent that it almost puts you off trying anywhere in this places again. But I'm glad I challenged my prejudices at the Cadogan, and found a place that both knows its audience and tries to do things well. And such an easy journey home, too. 7/10

Three down, one to go. My determination to visit all of the restaurants in this particular restaurant mini-chain - because, so far at least, they've all been that damn good - has now taken me to a northern suburb of Leeds and to the Dastaan there. My worry is that all of the things that made Black Salt and Koyal so remarkable also very much apply to their Leeds location, and so this post may end up being a bit, well, familiar. But a good restaurant deserves to be talked about, and indeed the fact that this team is able to run 4 (I assume... or at least 3) world-class spots at once is even more reason to shout it from the rooftops. Dastaan Leeds is big and brightly lit, and on this particular cold Tuesday evening pretty quiet, although the room did begin to start filling up towards the end of the evening. It's a pleasant enough space - functional, slightly corporate - but your experience is lifted immediately thanks to the attention of the staff, who are so charming and welcoming and enthusiastic about everything that you feel like the only people in the room (even if you actually are). Dinner began - naturally - with papadums and chutneys. Interestingly, there was one more kind of chutney than Koyal, and one fewer type of papadum, so we didn't get the Walkers Max-shaped crisps but did get a tomato and chilli chutney alongside the coriander and mango types. They were still all superb though, particularly the coriander which had a deep, rich, vegetal flavour. Pani puri were just as powerfully flavoured as the puri at Koyal but the pastry casings were just a bit smaller, and therefore far more comfortable to eat. Like all the best versions of this dish, they explode in the mouth in a riot of spices and a blast of tamarind, one of the all-time great vegan dishes. But just look at that lamb chop. Just look at it. Have you ever seen a more beautiful thing? The way the extremities are darkened and crunchy from the grill, the way it has that incredible tomato-soup colour from yoghurt and spices, the way you just know the center is soft and just-pink, expertly conceived and beautifully timed. Then, let me tell you, it tasted even better than it looked. This was a monumental achievement in chop-craft, an absolutely stunning bit of cooking that even had the edge on the excellent version at Koyal a couple of weeks previously. This may, in fact, be the best lamb chop I've ever eaten in my life. The problem is, you get the very strong impression that you could just order anything at Dastaan and it would turn out to be great - narrowing our choices down to a sensible amount for two people was more of a case of deciding what we could definitely not live without. These are veggie samosas, grease-free and generously portioned, with another fantastic coriander-based chutney. And this is a bowl of marvellously fragrant jackfruit biryani, studded with peas and topped with crisp caramelised onions. The vegan version doesn't come with the famous Gymkhana-style pastry lid to smash apart (my dining companion on this trip was a vegan) but has the same room-conquering aroma as it's brought to the table. Finally, another contender for dish of the day, pork cheek vindaloo. The complex, vinegar-spiked sauce could have credibly made a paperback book edible but the meltingly tender chunks of pork served to lift it into the stratosphere - this was a genuinely breathtaking dish, quite an incredible thing. But, sadly, there's only so much of the menu at Dastaan it's possible to eat in one go, and so we reluctantly finished up and paid, vowing to return next I was in town. The bill, with a couple of beers and 10% service came to just over £42pp, which considering the expertise on offer here (remember, these are ex-Gymkhana people serving 2-Michelin-star quality food) is one of the great dining bargains of the country. 9/10

If there's one thing I've learned after nearly twenty years of writing about food in this country, it's that fine dining can happen pretty much anywhere. If Ormskirk, an otherwise unremarkable town in Lancashire previously best known as the childhood home of Marianne Faithful (and very little else) can in 2025 hold five Michelin stars then all bets are off - there's no excuse for anywhere not being a food destination. So let me introduce you to West Sussex, and specifically to the South Downs just outside of Horsham, where on the same short stretch of road sit no less than two Michelin starred restaurants. And although I'm sure Ben Wilkinson at The Pass has plenty to recommend it (another time, maybe), today I'm going to talk about Interlude at Leonardslee House, a local, seasonal, South African-leaning fine dining spot quite unlike anywhere else I've ever had the pleasure of visiting. They don't make much of the South African angle on the website - perhaps because if you're trying to sell yourself as hyper-local and seasonal then I suppose you risk confusing people a bit. But in practice it all works incredibly well - a South African-led kitchen, working out of South African-owned vineyard and estate, is cooking ingredients grown, foraged and caught within shouting distance of the restaurant using African-inspired techniques and recipes. Lunch began in the spectacularly comfortable (think St James' private members club) bar, with a beetroot and goat's cheese meringue which burst on the tongue into a riot of flavour, and a prettily decorated cheese stick with home mate "Marmite", powerfully rich with umami and with a lovely delicate bite. After those, a dainty little Jerusalem artichoke and Hamachi tuna taco, which involved curry leaf emulsion to great effect, dressed with some micro herbs and what looked like mini vine leaves. Leonardslee have a couple of vineyards on the estate with which they make 3 varieties of (actually very reasonably priced) sparkling wine, and part of the 'experience' at Interlude is to be talked through them before lunch at an entertaining little tasting. And I'm happy to report that working through 3 glasses of fizz and a cocktail before lunch even starts is a great way to get into the right mood. We were then led from the bar into an anteroom on the way to the dining room, where stood a cute little presentation of some of the estate's bounty - their own venison biltong on one side, various herbs, seeds and oils on the other, and between them a glass teapot of rich, silky venison consommé. The pride in showing off the variety of elements available to work with was evident - even the chocolate was "local", made in Horsham using fair-trade cocoa. Now reseated in a gorgeous, high-ceilinged dining room with a commanding view of the gardens, the lunch proper began, with this oak-smoked oyster. The smoking had turned the bivalve from its usual texture to a firmer, meatier style, which various dots of sharp citrussy jelly offset nicely. As is so often the case in fine dining places, bread was a course unto itself - a mosbolletjie loaf, all soft and brioch-y and made using fermented grape juice (the estate's own, of course) as a leavening agent. It arrived with koji-cultured (another little ingredient I'm seeing a lot around lately) butter and some home made preserve, which is apparently a nod to how this bread is eaten back in Africa, with butter and jam. Next came what I assume was either a last-minute or usually-dinner-only dish as I don't seem to have it on my menu - a cute little quenelle of some kind of lobster tartare, topped (well why not indeed) with a dollop of Exmoor caviar. It tasted exactly as good as you might hope lobster and caviar would taste - extremely good, and the theatre of the caviar presentation, arriving under its own little crystal dome, added another bit of joy. It's interesting to note at this point that while Interlude is not a cheap date, unlike some multi-course places the prices do reflect the ingredients - there's some high-end stuff on offer here. "Rabbit eats carrot" is, we were told, a dish that has been on the menu in some form at Interlude more or less since day one, but has gone through several metamorphoses. Here you see it as a little boat-shaped snack of estate rabbit topped with some of the herbs and vegetables (carrot, of course, included) it feeds on. Also part of the same dish, little tartlets of I think rabbit tartare, and miniature millefeuille-type mouthfuls of what I think were rabbit jelly sandwiched between layers of carrot emulsion. Sorry for the vagueness, it all rushed past in a happy blur and after those introductory glasses of wine my brain was very much in 2nd gear. Fish course was aged turbot, the fillet of which glinted with a mother of pearl sheen, indicating (I have been told) both an extremely high-quality fish and a delicate touch in cooking it. The sauce was one of those beautiful French types, at once both light but buttery and rich, and accompanying were various types of foraged (at Shoreham-by-Sea, the closest bit of coastline to Horsham) sea greens like monks beard, sea kale and sea purslane. Oh yes, and an absolute truckload of winter truffles, because if you can, you absolutely should. The "main" meat course was their own venison. Leonardslee are lucky enough to have four different types of deer on the estate, and this is sika, served both as a lovely pink bit of seared loin and a bitesize nugget of slow-cooked game served skewered over coals. The loin came with more winter mushrooms of various kinds, and a crisp, salty slice of grilled kale, and it was all just completely perfect. The transition to the dessert courses began with sorrel granita soaked in Leonardslee sloe gin, yet more showcasing of their seemingly endless ability to make any food or beverage out of what they find growing around the place. I'm still kicking myself for not taking a bottle of it home with me, but I suppose there's always next time. Blackberry - preserved (literally, as in made into a preserve) from earlier in the year was topped with crumbled ice cream blast-frozen theatrically tableside. And then shortly after the classic pairing of chocolate and mint, albeit foraged water mint (they grow next to the estate's lakes) and chocolate from J Cocoa, a bean-to-bar producer from Hassocks. The mint flavour in particular was incredibly arresting - your mouth felt like it had been lovingly cleaned from the inside out. There was yet more - a superbly-kept cheeseboard that focussed on serving a small (although not tiny) selection well rather than have a trolley groaning with a bewildering number of options (not that I don't often enjoy that approach too). And once we had finished with that it was time for a final flourish of petits fours back in the bar, expertly crafted little choux buns, citrussy bitesize jellies, and chocolate truffles all variously infused with acorn, eucalyptus and their own homemade walnut butter. OK, so, let's get the locally foraged elephant in the room out of the way before we go any further. Interlude is not cheap. Our lunch had we been paying full whack, with wines and cheeseboard and welcome cocktail (etc. etc.) would have conservatively come to about £250pp, perhaps more if you made more use of the bar, which puts it all pretty firmly in the "special occasion" budget bracket. But Interlude is a special occasion, in a hundred different ways at once, and this is exactly the kind of experience that you'd hope to get when paying that amount for your lunch. In its own way, it's great value. While waiting for the uber home, sozzled and sated, my friend said "I think I've just seen a kangaroo". I looked blearily up at her, then without even bothering to follow up such a ridiculous statement, replied "No, you haven't" and went back to checking my phone. It was only when I got home and visited the restaurant website that I discovered that Leonardslee does indeed have its own population of not kangaroos but wallabies, which have lived on the estate since the late 19th century. So if after reading all of the above you still needed a reason to visit, there are also marsupials. 10/10 I was invited to Interlude and didn't see a bill. Lunch menu is £120, dinner £195 and rooms start at £525 for a two night stay.