What: Holborn Dining Room
Who: Calum Franklin
Where: 252 High Holborn (nearest tube Holborn, duh)
Why: Pies
Cost: £££

I'm guessing you know by now (even I know and I'm more out of touch than you imagine). Holborn Dining Room (under Chef Calum Franklin) does pies, really good pies; no no, REALLY good pies.  Planning my trip to Holborn Dining Rooms, that's pretty much all I knew.

What else then do you need to know? First off, HDR is part of the Rosewood Hotel but as soon as you peel off the street to enter the hotel complex, the Dining Room is immediately on your left (with Scarfes Bar on your right) so you never really feel like you're in a hotel (which is clearly a plus). Second, the Dining Room also hosts The Gin Bar which claims 'London's largest collection of gins with over 500 Gins and 30 tonics,' (everybody needs a USP these days and clearly pies are not enough). Third, the style of the restaurant is that of a Grand Brasserie, (think Balthazar in Covent Garden), and servicing both the hotel and the public, it's large, something like 200 covers. Once again, you can feel the scale of the investment made.

​The menu is extensive and generally a crowd pleaser. If you don't want a pie, you still have plenty of choice as the 'Roast & Grill' section offers up a range from beef burger (£24) to ribeye (£30) to Dover Sole (£44). I'm still re-adjusting to London restaurant prices, but it's hard not to note that add a portion of chips (£5) to the Dover sole and you're at £49, which will become £56 after service is added. Fish and Chips however can also be had for £19 as can a shrimp burger.

But the pie will be, for many, the reason to visit and really, full credit to Calum Franklin for this achievement. His pies are a testament to his reach for excellence and accordingly, HDR is doing for pies what Bubbledogs did for hotdogs. With Wiki informing me that pies have been around for about 2,500 years, for Calum to single-handedly jump start pies to be trending across both social media and real menus elsewhere is an achievement that has as much substance as one of his own pie fillings.

At the basic level, the formula is simple: get the pastry right, get the filling right, combine them in the right proportions, but how many get it wrong? And how many can reproduce that winning formula across hundreds of pies every day? As impressed as I was by the pie (which was very impressed), I was as impressed by a kitchen that could repeatedly and consistently deliver on that achievement. And while I can imagine, for example, my dad being aghast at being asked to pay £20 for a pork pie (they sell 'em for under a pound in Morrisons you know), Calum's hot pork pie with gravy (can I call it gravy?) has as much in common with a supermarket pork pie as a Rolls Royce does with a Dacia Sandero.

I had been so much looking forward to visiting HDR and I am pleased to say that it fully lived up to its pie-tastic reputation. The dining room was vibrant with an international clientele (and atmospherically lit such that good photographs of the food are somewhat challenging - I did my best is all I can say). While many institutions have claimed 'world famous pies,' HDR might be the first restaurant where that's actually true (and Calum London's most famed pie maker since Mr Todd first supplied pie fillings to Mrs Lovett). Staff were friendly, the sommelier gave splendid recommendations and you will likely leave your meal here extremely full up. Traditioanlly, Holborn had little reputation for its dining scene but with HDR, it now, finally, has a destination restaurant. Definitely worth a visit. 

P.S. those who have known Holborn over the years will remember that just a few hundred yards down the road from HDR was the Melton Mowbray pub (which was refurbed in the summer of 2015 and subsequently reopened as the Inn of Court). This appears entirely coincidental and I am generally unaware of any specific or special link between Holborn and pork pies.   

Last week was a good week, I got to eat cheeseburgers on back to back days. Yay. It struck me that putting further burgers on the blog would be all round better if I did two at a time so they can be more easily compared. I might even do it as a knockout competition, like the FA Cup, but with less running around.

To select my participants, I have been using the Evening Standard's Best Burgers article that is dated 23 August 2018. I'll no doubt expand on the list in due course but it was a good place to start. This week then, it was Mother Flipper vs Bleecker.

Mother Flipper, you've just got to love that name for a start. If you want a Mother Flipper burger however, you'll have to either get lucky or have a plan because they're part of the KERB market thing which sees them move around such that on their website, looking at it right now, I see only three Mother Flipper opportunities in September: West India Quay (14th, 21st) and the Gherkin (27th). Being such an occasional market trader then, it ticks the 'burger with love' box. And while their signature Dirty Barbie looks interesting on paper (Barbie as in BBQ), and even more interesting in real life as the double patty makes it simply tower, to be fair and do a like for like, it has to be the standard cheeseburger.

The burgers here are 28 day aged chuck steak served in a glazed brioche bun and come with ketchup, mustard, onion, lettuce and gherkin. It's a good burger: it looks the part, it feels the part and it tastes the part. The burger condiments, like at Patty & Bun, are layered on the base of the bun so that the cheese on top of the burger with the bun placed directly on top of that can cook under a cloche melting and fusing the these three critical layers. It works a treat. At £7, I'm happy and this burger is a pretty tasty treat.   

Bleecker has an origin story in a lawyer quitting his day job and buying a food truck. Once again then, it's a 'burger with love' story. That was 2012, though sadly, back in the day when it was just a food truck, our paths never crossed it seems. Roll the clock forward to 2018 and Bleecker has three permanent sites with the latest in the shiny new Bloomberg complex in the City, and that's where I headed.

The standard cheeseburger here is £6.50, while other options include a double cheeseburger, a bacon burger and a blue cheese burger. Once again however, the battleground of burger-wars requires a level playing field in so far as possible. I like the fact that you can get a beer with your burger here and that is something I took full advantage of.

On the Bleecker website, they talk about the beef being king in their offering and using rare breed dry aged beef in their burgers. I assume that that's an ongoing commitment and not just for their specials (like their award winning Bleecker Black). I'm unaware of details regarding the beef/patty being described in the shop, but there again, I'm not sure I looked that hard so I'm willing to say it's me, not them here.

But while the burger was nice enough, it didn't blow me away and it feels like some of the love story has been lost in the business practicalities of running multiple (presumably homogenised) outlets. The bun is a (very) soft white bap that squashes down as you approach the burger without ever springing back, so that it's quite a flat affair before very long. The patty itself is topped with cheese, a lettuce leaf and a mustard based sauce, so nothing too fancy. And while the cheese is nicely melted in, it all feels a little too close to what you might reasonably achieve at home.

For me, in this particular burger war, Mother Flipper wins. From the brioche bun, to the burger-cheese-bun top deck package, to the overall burger-in-hand feel, Mother Flipper gets everything right. Bleecker, in my opinion, is a nice burger but never quite reaches the height of special. 

What: Brat
Who: Tomos Parry (previously Kitty Fisher's)
Where: 4 Redchurch St, Shoreditch, London E1. (nearest transport: Shoreditch High St overground)
Why: Considered by many the hottest restaurant in the UK currently
Cost: ££££

It's almost impossible for a food blogger to now do an adequate review of Brat. The professionals have weighed in and declared Brat the best new thing, well, ever. Accordingly then, should the food blogger say it's not very good, the immediate riposte is, 'well, what do they know, look what Coren said. Bloody amateurs.' Whereas if we say that Brat is brilliantly fantastic, we simply join the chorus line of praise, inconsequential against Coren's flamboyant front and centre Billy Flynn. For the record, we loved Brat, it is truly excellent.

'I read Shakespeare once but didn't like it much, it was full of quotes,' as some wag once said. And while the professional critics are no fans of food bloggers, I am happy to give credit where credit is deserved, acknowledging that both Coren and Rayner are excellent writers. Accordingly, you expect a good turn of phrase. But there's another thing to remember on any particular turn: when they eat at a restaurant, they are in fact working, and when they then write the review, they are similarly working. In other words, as they search for the perfect phrase, even if that takes an hour or two (or ten), they're doing it on the clock, in the quiet study of their working day. The food blogger meanwhile scrambles to fit in some writing between coming home from work, cooking a meal and doing the ironing, thereby consigning perfect phrases to l'esprit de l'escalier.

I say all this because of Brat's egg-bottarga dish. Rayner describes it as follows:

It’s a thick slice of still-warm toast topped with a crushed mess of an egg, also just still warm, the yolk languidly fixed between solid and soft, overlaid with shavings of cured and dried grey mullet roe. The cosy nursery softness of the egg is punctuated by the salty, grown-up hit of the bottarga.

As a description, salty roe on scrambled eggs on toast hardly cuts it after that, does it? You're on a hiding to nothing to try. Coren clearly decided he'd up the ante with exaggerated praise and significantly less prose by declaring that this same dish was in fact:

the greatest single new dish to be invented in this country in decades

As I say, what room does that leave the food blogger to operate? Coren's already 'all in'.

So let's start elsewhere - the service. Looking after us that day was Caitlin, who it seems flew over from Perth, Australia specifically to take up the position at Brat. Bravo. She was totally brilliant and delivered service every bit equal to Parry's cooking. It's easy to forget but it's the FOH who prime your mood well ahead of a plate of food ever arriving at your table and that can set the tone for your enjoyment for the whole meal. Let's face it, Coren is hardly known for his sunny disposition, so maybe his review was nudged in the right direction by the wonderful FOH staff at Brat.

The menu itself is divided between large nibbles (£3.50 - £7), then something like starters (£7.50 - £12.50) and finally bigger dishes to share or not share (£18.50+). The sharing concept is broadly in operation throughout. Whole turbot (£65/75) for example is another dish everyone raves about but it's fairly substantial (while also costing a few quid) so if you're a table for two, you might want to see more of the smaller plates for the variety (unless you have huge appetites) and a wider variety of smaller plates was our choice, allowing us to take in a fairly decent selection (shown below).

And yes, everything is pretty much perfect, we had no criticisms anywhere. The cooking by fire thing is brilliantly done and adds that extra layer of depth to all the dishes. The bread for example on both the cod's roe dish and on the bottarga are both flame toasted and it brings that marginal gain that puts distance between it and the short cut electric toaster equivalent. Doing many things a little bit better accumulates to make a big difference.

And most noticeable of course is the meat cooked in this fashion. We had grouse to share which provided the perfect main after multiple starters and it was, honestly, the best grouse I've ever had and the grouse to which all future grouse must now be compared. Of course, real fire cooking adds a degree of unpredictability on getting each and every dish just right, especially perilous when cooking on a commercial scale, but that is what you're buying here, Parry's unquestionable skill in this area.

Devoid of pretension, Brat offers the most desirable of menus, brilliantly executed. I guess we've joined the chorus line of praise.   

What: Roganic
Who: Simon Rogan
Where: 5-7 Blandford St, London W1U (nearest tube Baker St/Bond St)
Why: Sister restaurant to 2 Michelin star L'enclume, unique take on modern British cooking 
Cost: ££££

It's back you know? On the off chance that you don't know, and let's face it, there's a lot going on in the world right now to distract us, Roganic, Simon Rogan's London satellite of his award winning restaurant L'Enclume in Cumbria has reopened two doors down from its original site on Blandford Street, Marylebone. And, it's better than ever.

We first ate Simon's food at L'Enclume in May 2011 and were smitten. Back then, when so many top end restaurants relied upon luxury ingredients like foie gras and lobster to do the heavy lifting, Simon had a way of finding the remarkable in the everyday and the everyday lived in fields and grew in hedgerows on his doorstep, right there in Cumbria. Much came from his own farm. The sense of 'belonging' at L'Enclume was then, and remains now, remarkable. In turn L'Enclume won The Good Food Guide best restaurant in the UK for 5 years running, scoring a perfect 10.

The original Roganic also opened in 2011 (where do the years go?) and was, at the time, billed as a 'two year pop-up'. And that's what happened, two years on, it popped back down again; it was greatly missed. In the intervening period, several trips to Cartmel were made, and thoroughly enjoyed of course, but if you live in London, Cartmel is not a place you can really pop to for lunch (though it can just about be done). Marylebone however is a different matter.

​If you already like Simon Rogan's food and ethos, you will simply love Roganic. If you've not tried his food yet, you really are missing something special and you should immediately get yourself to L'Enclume or Roganic to rectify the situation. Head Chef Olly Marlowe does a fabulous job delivering on Simon's vision and Roganic in turn feels properly connected to L'Enclume as a sister restaurant, and that is something the Roganic team can be very proud of. 

While some restaurants deliver meals, others deliver a little magic. My sense too that day was that other diners were similarly thrilled, with an adjacent table on their very first visit to the new Roganic, having been fans of the old, expressing the same surprise and delight that I was feeling. London's restaurant scene is rich and diverse, but Roganic occupies a special, unique, place within it, a perfect offering of modern British cooking.  

Gloucestershire is generally well served with good restaurants and historically, the county has held more Michelin stars than the whole of Wales. And in a move that has been somewhat below the radar, a couple of years back, The Greenway Hotel in Cheltenham took on Marcus McGuinness as Head Chef, which must be regarded as a significant coup for both the hotel and the region. If the name rings a bell, Marcus featured on Great British Menu some years back, but more significantly, was Claude Bosi's Head Chef at Hibiscus in London. He has also worked with David Everitt-Matthias at Cheltenham's 2 Michelin Star Le Champignon Sauvage.

The Greenway Hotel & Spa, to give it its full name, is very much in the Cotswold country manor house genre and delivers up Cotswold stone outside, while inside, it's all oak panelling, stone fireplaces and soft carpets - you get the idea. But with Marcus in the kitchen, the food offering, while appropriately classical for the setting is also going to have contemporary twists and is always going to be stunning. For my lunch there, Marcus treated me to a tasting menu that is not yet available to the public, but across menus, most of the individual dishes were, and all of the food was fantastic.

There's some massive flavours here, like Confit Isle of Wight Tomato with Salted Pilchards, which delivered an astonishing intensity. Secretly I want to bottle it and use it as a condiment for it makes every relish you've ever tried pale in comparison, and nothing would ever be bland again. Over the blogging years, I can't remember anything quite like this before. There was some classic pairings also such as Roast Isle of Skye Scallop, Black Pudding and Cauliflower that are expertly delivered. The main course duck meanwhile came in two parts: the glazed breast with cherries and smoked eel again packs a punch, but it is the "Duck Rolly Polly" that has duck leg rolled in brioche that steals the show, with sweet and savoury notes that almost confuse you as to what part of the menu you're enjoying. This is a new dish that Marcus was about to launch on the main menu, finally being happy that he's got it right, and he has, it's beautifully unique and a real winner.

Looking after front of house was Ben who did a great job, but his colleagues perhaps needed a reminder that they are in the hospitality business. But I also enjoyed the fact that The Greenway's wine list has a decent selection of half bottles at good prices allowing you to drink well without anchoring you to a full bottle and the absence of variety that can bring.

Marcus is a massive talent and he earned his stripes heading up the pass at two star restaurants, and all that technical skill, innovation and attention to detail continues here and really marks the food as special. I have eaten at The Greenway several times now and absolutely love doing so, it's always good. The restaurant is open to non residents but, and this is only a personal opinion, it does not feel like the owners of the hotel are seeking to push the restaurant on a wider stage. It would be more than easy to visit Cheltenham, research top restaurants in the area and never even discover that the restaurant at The Greenway has one of the country's leading chefs at the helm. And that's a shame. But if you do visit Cheltenham and you do want to eat something remarkable, keep The Greenway in mind. Hidden gem is a somewhat overused term, but Marcus at the Greenway is surely that and deserves substantially great recognisiton.  

Grant Hawthorne is currently the Chef in Residence at Great Guns Social, which is located on Southwark Bridge Road in Borough, SE1. Inside a former pub, the drinks offering is cocktails (which we enjoyed several of), wine and craft beer (mostly) while the food offering changes via kitchen residencies. Grant will be serving his menu through to the end of August and he invited us to his temporary home to try his menu.

If the name Grant Hawhorne is not familiar to you, you might better know him through his increasingly popular peri-peri sauce, African Volcano and his weekend Maltby Street market presence. At Great Guns Social, per the website's description, Grant's menu is, 'an exploration of Southern-style cooking the world over; from Southern America to South Africa and Southern Europe.' What you might reasonably guess then, with the focus on Southern food across a range of styles, there's going to be a big comfort factor on offer. 

In that respect it is excellent. While the mains offer much that is tempting, two things really jumped out to us. There's a burger with 18 hour slow roast pulled pork. Yes, hello. And it's Southern food so the other choice of Southern Fried chicken with spiced mayo leaps off the page. Good choices for sure, though embracing the wider style of Southern, there's also (among other things) 'Mozambique style grilled baby chicken and a burger with 'treacle cured African Volcano streaky bacon,' which is sure to have a fan club. It's super enjoyable food, it's what you want, and what you expect from Southern, and with the two mains costing £11 (chicken) and £14 (burger/pork), nor does it break the bank.

Pan fried chicken livers and rissois (Mozambique style crab croquette) offered interest and variety as starters (BBQ chicken wings are there too if you can't get enough chicken), while we also got to sample a rather special smoked wild sea trout. If you don't know or haven't guessed by now, Grant was born in and grew up in South Africa, so a dessert of chocolate Cape Malva pudding is pitch perfect and a whole lot lighter than its appearance gives on, and the other ordered dessert was coffee flavoured custard flan.  

But what impressed throughout the starters/mains was Grant's balanced use of spices and heat to add soul to the food rather than push through a more aggressive heat for the sake of heat approach to catch some headlines. The outcome was a thoroughly enjoyable lunch, food that makes you happy, and that surely is the purpose of a menu such as this. It hits the brief and you leave with a smile. Grant is in residence until the end of August so catch him while you can.
 

I know what you're thinking: why the hell are they putting Patty & Bun on the blog (again)? Not only was Patty & Bun an established feature of the burger scene when we stopped blogging four years ago, but P&B had featured twice on the blog by then also. So what gives?

While this blog has never been shy to feature a Michelin starred restaurant or two, we also love a good burger and we recognise that each has a time and a place. So the answer is this: in the four years we have been away, we still haven't found a burger we enjoy more, we simply adore Patty & Bun.

Now, we need to expand on our explanation a little more. First off, in our absentee years, P&B went from one site to, it seems from their website, 13. In word association games, when I hear the word 'expansion', my immediate comeback is 'reduction in quality,' yet somehow P&B seem to have avoided this trap. In the past year, I have eaten at the original (James St), but also regularly enjoyed Liverpool St (where this post came to life) and their Soho branch also. Not only is there no discernible difference that we've noticed between branches, but nor has there been any drop in standards over time. The consistency is fabulous.

Now, granted, we have not been chasing burgers these past four years, but in a crowded market place, we still feel that nobody does it better. To us, it is the gold standard of burgers, or might we say, the Ari-Gold standard of burgers! For us, a burger, like an M-star meal, is a treat not a staple and we have no wish to waste a treat on a bad burger and in that respect, P&B never lets us down. And that must be true because I underlined the word never, and I never underline words in blog posts.

We recognise that there are many burger-blogs out there, and that is great. We do not seek to be that however, so we will never offer you an ultimate guide to burgers, but, we do expect burgers to be an ongoing feature of this blog in its phoenix like rejuvenation, and it is here that we nail our colours to the mast: for us, P&B remains the burger to beat. That is the challenge, and in our future burger blog posts, P&B will feature as our benchmark reference point. I think I am going to enjoy this. 

Feel free to send us suggestions of where you think does a better burger and over time, we will seek to try them (all) out.      

We are now on Instagram, please do follow us:
 www.instagram.com/criticalcouple/

Sitting in my seat at the Liverpool Street branch of P&B, as I look out the window, across the road is the golden arches. While I recognise that McDonald's have a very different proposition, their global daily traffic is estimated at 62 million people, I still want to scream 'why' at the people going there instead of here. On the plus side, if 62 million people tried to visit P&B in a day, the queues would be horrendous, so a little part of me is also secretly happy.

WHAT: Margot
WHO: Paulo de Tarso & Nicolas Jaouen
WHERE: 45 Great Queen Street, London WC2B (nearest tube: Covent Garden/Holborn)
WHY: Front of house industry legends (Paulo & Nicolas) deliver their 'dream' restaurant
COST: ££££

It has been a hot summer. And that, perhaps, is the most uncontroversial thing I've ever written on the blog. But there's hot, and there's HOT, and Friday just gone threatened to be the UK's hottest day ever (christened in anticipation 'Furnace Friday' by the media). Friday though failed in that endeavor, leaving Thursday as the year's 'winner', Thursday, the day of our booking at Margot. I note all this because famously, the waiters at Margot wear dinner jackets and bow ties. I'm curious.

Margot has been open almost two years now, serving top end Italian food, but it's our first time there and the visit is not without some expectation. Paulo, who we know a little from his time at Bar Boulud, and Nicolas, who we do not know, are both industry legends, and while most restaurants are currently chef led, it's a rare find indeed to come across a restaurant that has an FOH origin story. Expectations are also high because this is one of the favourite eating spots for a highly acclaimed chef friend of mine and I greatly respect his opinion.

The suggestion is then, that Margot offers the complete package. Of course, the complete package doesn't come cheap, but as I again acclimatise to restaurant prices, it doesn't look at odds with what else is out there at the top end and compared to say River Cafe and Locanda Locatelli, it appears significantly, or at least somewhat, less expensive. But Margot has an ace up its sleeve also in its set menu, which Margot's website lists as available for lunch as well as pre and post theatre, and costs just £25 for two courses and £29 for three, and that has to be seen as a bargain.

But what strikes me as significantly different at Margot is that while every other restaurant opening seems to want to lose the table cloths, dress the waiters in jeans and have the staff be your new best friend for the two hours you spend with them, Margot, rather, wants to offer something that transcends either the food or the service, what we might label, experiential dining. The waiter in a tuxedo becomes a clever device, it invites you to leave your mundane real self outside the door and connects you with a fantasy that builds outwards. Forget that you arrived by tube, perhaps instead you were whisked here by speedboat, straight from the Count's villa.

But inviting such a fantasy creates a bubble that can be all too easily popped, yet wonderfully, Margot keeps everything exactly how it should be. Service is elegant but non intrusive. Despite the heat of the day outside, the  air-conditioning did a fine job, but I know that I am sitting there enjoying a glass of ice water (jacket left at home) while the waiters are working hard delivering service, yet if they were stifling under their tuxedos (which they likely were), they gave no hint to that effect and pulled off a class act on a day when I would wish a tux on no-one. But thank you team Margot all the same.     

The food offering was also delightful across everything we tried. The menu is full of classics and favourites, so making your choice is likely to be the only experienced angst of the night. A good start tonight is a shared plate of salumi that had a well sourced selection of ham, salami and beef among other things. And then things get tricky: for the starter option, you really do have a massive offering with temptations such as burrata, veal (vitello tonnato), tartares and carpaccios competing with six, all delicious sounding, pasta dishes. And just when you think you've decided, they offer you a special: pasta in butter with summer truffle. And that really is going to be the test, the dish with nowhere to hide. We both ordered it and would have been happy to simply eat that all night until we had to be rolled out. An Italian restaurant is always going to be judged on its pasta and at Margot, it's divine.

We enjoyed mains of ossobuco with saffron risotto, as well as grilled sirloin of beef with fig balsamic vinegar, Pecorino and rocket. A side of tomatoes was recommended by our waiter and proved a valuable suggestion providing some fresh acidity to both dishes. And the risotto, a danger dish for so many restaurants executed flawlessly here. Puddings? Oh go on then. I definitely felt the winner with my milk chocolate sphere with Frangelico mousse and caramelised hazelnuts. The sphere, dissolving into a gooey mess is the picture that heads this post and is a chocolate lover's delight. Caramel mousse was less dramatic but equally enjoyed.

This visit to Margot was long overdue and despite high expectations, it delivered at a level more than I hoped for, leaving me happy not just with the food and service, but with an experience beyond that. As such, I think it's a wonderful place. For many people, I recognise that the full shebang might be special occasion only, but with the set menu allowing you to have an early or late dinner of three courses for £29, that's cheaper than a three course meal (with lobster main) at Burger & Lobster! Don't get me wrong, I love Burger & Lobster too, but at Margot, you'll enjoy divine Italian food brought to you by a waiter wearing a tux. What's not to like?      

An old City story tells of an ABN Amro employee who resigned to take a job elsewhere and, two years later, returned to his former employer, ABN. On his first day back, he was allocated his old desk and had the same colleague sitting alongside him. As he took his seat, his colleague turned toward him and casually enquired, 'good lunch?'

Four years ago, we retired the blog, but last week in an idle moment, we decided to write a new chapter. Much has changed over the past four years, for us, for the restaurant scene and for food blogging generally. Indeed, we possibly live in a post food-blog world. We don't mind. But with all that change, and our blogging skills somewhat rusty, it is unclear even to us what this new chapter will look like. Aside of saying only that this needs to be fun, let's find out... 

WHAT: HIDE (ABOVE)
WHO: Chef Ollie Dabbous, Hedonism Wine
WHERE: 85 Piccadilly, London (nearest tube: Green Park)
WHY: The new project of a great British talent, Ollie Dabbous, paired with the deep pockets of billionaire Hedonism owner Yevgeny Chichvarkin: that's got to be interesting.
COST: ££££ (I think this scale is out of 5, well, it is today)

When Ollie's first restaurant Dabbous opened, it was the hottest ticket of the year, the year in question being 2012. In fact, few could recall an opening like it before and famously, the restaurant was fully booked out for a year in advance. Fay Maschler gave Dabbous the maximum 5 stars, which she awarded perhaps once, but seldom more than twice in a year and as we observed in our own blog post, 'there's no doubting the arrival of a new star in the London restaurant firmament.'  

Dabbous (the restaurant) was edgy, all steel and brushed concrete, well suited to a young chef but, as these bloggers well understand, we all get older and what feels appropriate changes in time. In HIDE, Dabbous (the person) has been backed by the Russian billionaires behind Hedonism wine and the result is a sumptuous multi level space overlooking Green Park, where no expenses has been spared. And with floor to ceiling windows, the upstairs interior decor leads with light wood and beige to create an airy, expansive space that delivers the comfort that a Mayfair restaurant demands.

With the three floors of the establishment labelled BELOW, GROUND and ABOVE, you get a bar (BELOW), then (per the website), 'comfort and nourishment' (GROUND) while the top floor (ABOVE) showcases Dabbous' high end offering. Being my first time at HIDE, ABOVE seemed the place to start.

With the choice of a set lunch menu at £42, or the tasting menu at £95, again, being my first visit, I really wanted to see what the full bells & whistles show looked like. For those who like a walk down memory lane, the tasting menu at Dabbous in 2012 was a steal at £54. Within the tasting menu there are further decisions to be made including (today) an optional course of 'Cornish fish in two services' (£16) as well as choices in the regular fish course, bream versus turbot, which hardly seemed like a decision (turbot), and on the meat, duck versus barbecued Herdwick lamb - lamb won. A cheese course is also optional (£12). Dessert also offers a choice but with one option simply described as 'coconut', it barely enlightens you, but I'm not sure that it really matters.

There's of course the usual snacks to start including charcuterie wrapped around (ceramic) bones and feathers which you can either take as whimsical or gimmicky, while the main menu kicks off in earnest with Avocado, gooseberries & basil in a chilled osmanthus infusion. It's a very good start, and what is memorable about the whole meal, but delivered immediately in the chilled infusion, is how, in this hottest of summers, the food was incredibly well judged to deliver a meal that works so well after stepping out of the blistering London heat - it immediately refreshes, picks you up and adds to the summer joy. Summer sun relief continues with the Cured wild salmon, creme cru and Exmoor caviar, and credit to HIDE for their generosity with the latter, it's a plate with a lot of goodwill. For the ingredient connoisseurs among you, Exmoor Caviar is the only caviar farm in the UK. 

Listed on the menu as 'Nest egg' is what seems to have become Dabbous' signature dish, coddled eggs, which is welcome any time of year. But it's the prime dishes of turbot and barbecue Herdwick lamb where everything comes together and you get something close to perfection on a plate. Parking to one side the hype, the concept and the gajillions spent on the place, it all comes down to this: the best ingredients cooked with a master chef's touch that delivers flavours at least equal to the promise. It's food to love and we do.

That's probably enough writing for a blog freshly out of mothballs, but two more things I want to mention. First, the front of house. Clearly in a restaurant of this calibre, you pick your FOH with care, and I relished seeing familiar faces including Matthew Mawtus, General Manager at HIDE (previously Pollen Street Social) and Vincenzo Mancinelli, Restaurant Manager of ABOVE (previously Alyn Williams at The Westbury).    

Second, the link with Hedonism wine is now well known, where restaurant guests can order wines from Hedonism's 6,500 bottle deep wine list and have them delivered to the restaurant for drinking (with an admirably modest corkage fee). We weren't intending to try this particular service, but the effect of paying retail prices to drink amazing wines in a restaurant of this class did see us put them to the test. Everything worked like a dream, and the wine arrived before we had finished our bridging cocktail. It's a very strong USP (as if Ollie's food was not USP enough already).

Oh yes, wrap up summary, like I said, bit rusty; here goes. If, as some readers do, you scan the first and last paragraph and skip everything in between, to bring you up to speed, we loved HIDE. Ollie Dabbous is without doubt an enormous talent and HIDE now gives him the biggest canvas on which to make his mark. And he really does. While the price point of his tasting menu has likely been set with a keen eye on the competition and the desire not to break above a hundred - triple digits always look scary on a menu - it's clear where your money is going and the quality of the offering more than justifies the price: expensive things can still offer value. With a billionaire backer, each of us will have our own narrative on HIDE and what it says about London and London restaurants, but this is no case of style over the substance, the food delivers brilliantly against the highest of expectations.

A word on pictures. I took these pictures on my phone rather than my quality camera of old. I am undecided which to use going forward, most likely it will be a mix of both. New chapter, new rules, and the principal rule is that I enjoy myself. If the camera will get in the way of that, it stays at home. If it's not inconvenient, for me or the restaurant, I'll shoot some quality pics with my Nikon. Feel free to tweet us your view on this. Thanks. 

When planning my holiday in Scotland, I simply knew that I could not go north of the border without spending time at Ondine, arguably the finest seafood restaurant in the UK. If I lived in Edinburgh, I think I would be at Ondine constantly, since I don't, I try to get there when I can, though I have been somewhat tardy of late. Accordingly, I was super excited to return.

At the helm of Ondine is a brilliant chef and a brilliant man, Roy Brett, and it is his integrity and his values that run through Ondine: the best product, ethically sourced treated with respect. I cannot say it better than Roy himself who notes on the Ondine website:

Our emphasis is on the fishermen who provide us with the freshest and most sustainable produce, which we celebrate with knowledgeable yet satisfying cooking.

And that they do. I am rather annoyed at myself in terms of this blog post because on the first night of my stay in Edinburgh (and first of three visits to Ondine) I didn't take my camera and accordingly I have far fewer pictures of the amazing food than I would like, and even when I returned and did take my camera, at dessert, greedy me demolished it before realising that I had forgotten to take any pictures. It's like that Ondine, the food is so compelling that you just dive straight in, because this is food that makes you happy.

The langoustine at Ondine really are the very best langoustine you could hope to get in the UK, absolutely massive, and when on the first night a plate of six of them arrived at our table, it caused every other table around us to stop and stare for the dish is indeed a showstopper. Not ordered on this occasion, but the same is true of the Roasted Shellfish Platter which is simply seafood paradise. Another dish taken on the first night which I wish I had a picture of is the grilled scallops with spicy sausage and garlic butter. The scallops are hand dived off the Isle of Mull by Guy Grieves of The Ethical Shellfish Company and again, you simply wont get better. And Roy's philosophy is that when you have ingredients this good, keep the cooking simple and let the quality shine.  

And being like throughout, I could go down the menu and say the same things about so much: the oysters, the salmon and even the beef which is on the menu for those who are not so much seafood fans.

But above and beyond the food, what I like so much about Ondine is twofold: the atmosphere and the hospitality. Ondine is a restaurant to enjoy food, not a restaurant of hushed tones and stiff ambiance. It buzzes with the sound of enjoyment, it's as simple as that. This means it's a place that you want to go to and spend time in, just hang out. And on the hospitality, it is the friendliest of places, staffed by a fabulous team. What was so nice was seeing so many familiar faces on the staff, despite me not having been up there for a while, people like Julia, James, Craig, Anna and Danny. That continuity ensures the highest level of consistent service, but more than that, it builds the customer relationship that means I always feel at Ondine like I am returning to see old friends, and that in my book is the pinnacle of hospitality.

Ondine then offers the diner a full house of achievement: the best product, ethically sourced, cooked brilliantly, great atmosphere and ultimate hospitality. It's little wonder that I should love it so much, leaving me to end where I started: no trip to Scotland is complete without stopping by Ondine. See you there.