Nigel Godwin, chef at the Equilibrium restaurant at stately Fawsley Hall near Daventry, Northants, occasionally dives for scallops off Skye, says The Daily Telegraph’s Jasper Gerrard.
And the one served up to Gerrard’s companion, presiding over a perfect strip of seabass, was the largest the critic had ever seen. Meanwhile Gerrard was tucking into breast of partridge with bacon, butternut squash and romanesco broccoli in juniper jus.
Godwin, says Gerrard, provides cooking of a very high order; his only reservation being that is a bit fussy. The cooking, he adds, is good enough without the frilly edges.
The Times’s Giles Coren and his girlfriend ate pretty well at Tierra Brindisa in London’s Soho. There were a couple of duds among the dishes, and he didn’t like the fact that the prawns came from shellfish farms in Asia.
After doing a bit of research, he discovered that is where most of the prawns we eat originate. But Coren blames the export industry in Bangladesh for forced human displacement, indigenous crop destruction and environmental Armageddon.
Coren says he feels a campaign coming on.
Vanilla Black in London EC4 is described by Tracey MacLeod, of The Independent, as “without doubt the best vegetarian restaurant” she has ever been to in Britain.
The chef, Andrew Dargue, really knows what he is doing and the cooking is refined and adventurous, presented with an artist’s eye for shape and colour. Two of the three main courses were knockout.
The Daily Telegraph 25/10/08 (Review) page 20
The Independent 25/10/08 (Magazine) page 57
The Times 25/10/08 (Magazine) pages 81 & 82
