Giles Coren travels to California for a triplet of restaurants, starting at the Auberge du Soleil where he dozes off after a little too much heat, the "perfect Cobb salad and flinty Napa Valley sauvignons".
Then on to The French Laundry - the Best Restaurant in the World (Restaurant magazine) - to a room full of "wealthy middle-class paunchsters at nicely dressed tables". He gets stuck into the tasting menu, but "blown away we never were".
He has more luck at Ad Hoc - like The French Laundry a Thomas Keller restaurant - where for a seventh of the price he enjoys "family style" food on fried chicken night and sees Keller himself enjoying the fare.
Back in London, Damian Whitworth extols the virtues of the Aberdeen Angus Steakhouse,which serves a steak which is "the best I've had since a trip to Texas". he attributes the group's success to a combination of post-matinee diners and skipping "the exotic and the pricey to go back to the 1970s".
Tracey MacLeod goes to Sir Terence Conran's latest, Boundary and Albion in London, the latter a cafe plus restaurant, which "seems to have been designed to tick as many "trends to watch" boxes as possible", but serves "great" food in the manner of a traditional British cafe.
Boundary, in the same Shoreditch building, serves classic French dishes, described as "slightly sub-par", which doesn't dent MacLeod's enthusiasm for "an amazing ambitious project".
Matthew Norman dines at Bocca di Lupo in Soho, where a "charming and amusing maitre d' " welcomes him into the restaurant, where a "supremely enticing menu" keeps him entertained and he stuffs himself to the point of being unable to eat a pudding.
The Observer’s Jay Rayner describes Bocca di Lupo as a very welcome new arrival – it wasn’t perfect, but the dishes that didn’t work were “merely small moments in a larger evening of pleasure”.
Nicholas Lander goes to Lancashire, to The Highwayman and The Inn at Whitewell. The Highwayman combines the chefs from the Northcote Manor hotel with the site, beer and wines from Thwaites. Lander hails a mouthwatering menu of British favourites.
At The Inn at Whitewell, Lancashire's food finest are against represented, but the emphasis is on quantity and carbohydrates rather than flavour and finesse.
The Sunday Telegraph’s Zoe Williams scores the second branch of Tsunami, on Charlotte Street – also known as Foodie Row – as a 7.5 out of 10. Clearly a fan by dint of living near the original, Williams says many of the dishes are “superb” and the price, at £28.60, is good value. Other affordable Japanese restaurants mentioned in dispatches include Glasgow’s Ichiban, Ludlow’s Koo and Mount Fuji, in Stanton Fitzwarren, Wiltshire.
In his usual spot in The Sunday Times, AA Gill visits Russian steak chain Goodman, which recently made its UK debut in London. He says that it looks like a Russian take on an American chain – “the sort of place the KGB might have built to train spies” – with a bar and booths, lots of wood and leather, and black and white urban photos. Gill says that if you crave “good steak at a realistic price, then this is your place”.
The Times Magazine, page 78
The Times Weekend section, page 4
The Independent Magazine, page 37
The Guardian Weekend, page 71
The Observer Magazine, page 55
FT Life & Arts, page 6
The Sunday Telegraph, Stella Magazine, page 46
The Sunday Times, Style Magazine, page 44