United Chip, Clerkenwell

Being a fish and chip fan in London is hard, and you become wearily used to disappointment. Soggy old fish kept warm for too long in hot cabinets, batter too thick, batter too thin, chips too skinny, chips too fat, and the worst crime of all, the one truly unforgivable fish and chip violation, crushed minted garden peas instead of mushy peas. You're more likely than not to suffer one of the above list in your search for a decent fix in London, and the chances of you finding anything as good as even the most second-tier chippie up in Southport, or Blackpool, or Whitby, are pretty much nil.

So I was visiting United Chip more out of hope than expectation. I was also desperately trying to keep an open mind after a press release boasting an interior of "millennial pinks and soft greys... that linger in the memory" and of putting a "unique spin on a tired concept". Listen, mate, fish and chips is not a "tired concept". It's just that nobody south of Watford knows what the bloody hell they're doing with it. What we're waiting for isn't to match our dinner with craft beer in a "contemporary and vibrant" space but for someone - anyone - within Zone 6 to just do it properly for once.

How annoying, then, that United Chip turned out to be really rather good. Not the Swan Southport good, not Senior's Blackpool good, but good, and in London, quite frankly I'll take good. Yes, there are annoyances; the communal seating, the soundtrack of Morrissey's most recent "obnoxious dickhead" period, the fact that all the food is served in takeaway pizza boxes whether you're eating in or not. But they appear to know what makes good fish and chips, and how to achieve it, which puts them head and shoulders above most anywhere else in town.

It's also pretty good value. A "small" cod and chips is £7.50, and it really isn't that small at all. The fish was cooked perfectly, in a crisp, delicate batter and boasted lovely bright white, flaky flesh. Chips had a good crunch and were nice and soft inside, and despite being piled up inside a cardboard box managed to keep their texture 'till the last one was hoovered up. Doused in salt and malt vinegar, this was more than acceptable F&C work.

So, a "unique spin on a tired concept"? Not really. This was very solidly traditional fish and chips, done well, albeit served in a self-consciously "branded" room alongside craft beers and a selection of silly sauces. It won't be anyone's nirvana, least of all those lucky enough to pay regular visits up north, but it's guaranteed to be better than your local London pub's version, and possibly even cheaper, too. Oh, and the mushy peas? I'm afraid I didn't try them, but am assured they're proper, and don't involve garden peas or mint or crushed anything. And that alone gives me reason to return.

7/10

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The Coach, Clerkenwell

Imagine how difficult it must be to launch, and run, a really, really good gastropub. In fact, you don't even need to imagine - just look at how few there are anywhere. If it was really that easy to fashion yourself a Rat Inn, or Parkers Arms, or Sportsman, do you not think there'd be one on every high street in any small town in the country? Each full of happy families eating local, seasonal food matched with interesting wines and a selection of local beers. We'd be spoiled for choice.

Well, we're not, and we're not because the sheer amount of things that need to go right, from finding a good site, fitting it out, finding suppliers, finding chefs, KPs, front of house and then finally designing a menu attractive enough to tempt in the punters, means that it's only a very few, very special places that can afford to be mentioned amongst the truly great. I've listed a few above, but for a more comprehensive roster of pubs that are very unlikely to let you down try the Morning Advertiser Top 50 Gastropubs, a far more reliable indicator of a good feed than any number of Michelin stars, and also one with a happy lack of London bias.

I mention the above because the scale of Henry Harris and business partner James McCulloch's achievement in setting up the Coach in Clerkenwell cannot be overstated. Already, in its first few weeks, it's raced to the top of my personal list of best restaurants in London, a beautifully refurbished space serving a supremely attractive menu of classy French-English dishes, for a perfectly reasonable amount of money. By anyone's standards, this is a fantastic gastropub.

But Harris and McCulloch aren't stopping there. Believe it or not, these over-achievers are launching not just the Coach but two other top-flight gastropubs at the same time - the Three Cranes Tavern in the city, and the Truscott Arms (soon to be renamed) in Maida Vale, each serving the kind of refined, thoughful cuisine Harris is known for and promising to raise the average standard of food in the capital by a good few notches all by themselves.

I'm yet to visit the Three Cranes or the Truscott Arms, but thanks to it being about 10 minutes walk from the office I have been to the Coach three times for lunch, and can recommend everything I've eaten. This is onion and ale soup topped with cheese on toast, sort of a vegetarian version of French Onion soup but you hardly miss the beef stock at all. Glossy and rich with caramelised onion flavour, with a hint of alcohol from the ale, it would be a perfect warming winter treat even without the chunks of cheesy sourdough to chase around.

This was the greatest rabbit dish I can remember eating in many years, and though admittedly that's partly due to the standard of rabbit dishes in London being generally pretty poor, it was still a wonderful thing to behold. Utterly perfectly timed on the charcoal so that every last corner of the flesh was as moist and tender as possible, it was sat on a silky-smooth mustard-butter (I think) sauce and greens to soak up all of the juices. Oh, and two delicate slivers of crisp, flame-touched bacon that almost dissolved in the mouth they were so translucently thin.

The Coach cheeseburger is a solid new top-5 entry in the London burger charts, and has an interesting development story. After coming up with the usual arrangement of meat, cheese, tomato and lettuce bound with various condiments, Harris offered it to his son, whose immediate response was to say "get rid of everything apart from the meat and cheese". What they've ended up with then, is a thing of stripped-back, stark beauty, relying on the insanely good beef from butcher HG Walter with a decadent loose texture and a slice of bubbly raclette cheese. A further concession to fancypantsness is a bun glazed with bone marrow butter, but this doesn't distract from the beef, just adds an extra mysterious meaty note. It's a seriously brilliant burger.

Mussels in a thick bacon, leek and cider cream sauce came with a generous portion of the same excellent chips (bistro style - not too thick, not too thin) that arrived with the cheeseburger, and made another comfort-blanket of a winter dish.

And rhubarb meringue was the one dessert I've managed to find room for so far, but was, like everything else, intelligently conceived and executed, with just the right amount of sweetness and cream alongside the stewed fruit.

Those lucky enough to have enjoyed Harris' food when he was in Knightsbridge will have no doubt been waiting for this latest venture - or rather, ventures - with huge anticipation. And long story short, if you loved him there you'll love him here, too - that same innate mastery of technique and ingredient knowhow is still very much in evidence even as the price points have significantly shrunk.

But more than that, the fact that Harris has managed to team up with a partner who seems more than capable of showcasing his talents across three venues simultaneously (Harris describes himself more as an Admiral of the Fleet than chef-director, but was in the kitchen on at least one of the days I visited) is a huge cause for optimism about a London dining scene that seems under fire on all sides lately from economic pressures, staff shortages and closures (did anybody say Brexit?). If this is where things are going, then we should all breathe a hugh sigh of relief, and thank Henry Harris and team for their risk and their considerable efforts. Not forgetting, of course, once you've done all that, to jolly well go and eat there too.

9/10

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Club Zetter and the Zetter Hotel, Clerkenwell

This week came the news that Bruno Loubet, the Bordeaux-born chef who worked with Pierre Koffmann at La Tante Claire before running a series of fine dining restaurants in London throughout the 90s, has closed the Grain Store in Kings Cross, his last restaurant in London (if you don't count the one at Gatwick Airport. Which you shouldn't).

I've often wondered what the lucky people who ate at places like Bistro Bruno (1993), L'Odeon (1995) or even made the trip to Raymond Blanc's Manoir aux Quat'Saisons in the 1980s (where he was head chef at the time) made of the Grain Store. Loubet was once a very traditional fine-dining French chef, all demi-glace and fillet of beef with foie gras; the Grain Store was an odd departure, largely vegetarian and vegan, pushing things like grilled tenderstem broccoli and carrot and orange smoothies. Ironically, the bits I enjoyed most from the menu at Grain Store were the occasional dishes that involved meat; pigeon seared in the Josper grill, for example, or pork and lamb belly tamales. Fairly or unfairly I assumed that this was really where his heart (and skills) lay as a chef.

Much as I admired Grain Store, then, and much as I recognise its importance in the grand scheme of things, you don't win friends with salad. And it's a pleasure to report that the replacement for Loubet's other restaurant, Bistro Bruno Loubet, on the ground floor of the Zetter hotel in Clerkenwell, is an honest-to-goodness belt-and-braces Modern European bistro, full of things like chicken liver parfait, pork belly and dry-aged steak. And if you think shoes like Loubet's are going to be hard to fill, well let me introduce you to chef Ben Boeynaems.

I know I'm prone to hyperbole occasionally(!) on this blog, but I honestly can't remember the last time outside of the very finest of fine dining restaurants I've been offered dishes so utterly, seductively beautiful as Ben Boeynaems' at the Zetter. After a tray of good bread and salted butter came this gazpacho, lovingly drizzled with concentric rings of olive oil and cut across with a single long crouton dotted with neat cubes of olive and tomato. In the center, a miniature bouquet of cherry tomatoes and a sprig of micro basil. All of which astonishing artistry would mean nothing, of course, if it didn't perform on the tastebuds but fortunately it more than qualified on that front too - silky and herby and full of summer flavour.

Asparagus with "crispy hens egg" was in its own way just as attractive. Bright green spears of asparagus, draped with wispy sheets of ham, lay next to a perfectly soft-boiled egg, coated in a thin layer of breadcrumbs. Yes, ham egg and asparagus isn't a revolutionary combination, but it's a great one, and when created with as much care and technical skill as this, is unbeatable. Doesn't it just look incredible?

Chicken liver parfait had been made under a delicate dome of spun sugar and was - again - beautiful. The parfait was dense and meaty, lifted with a touch (I think) of alcohol and luxuriantly textured. Toasted brioche was similarly accomplished, soft inside and gently sweet.

An in-between course of miniature surf'n'turf - steak tartare and anchovy - was as exquisitely presented as everything else and a fine show of technical ability. I think if you can't enjoy steak, gently loosened with mayonnaise and capers, topped with a crunchy nugget of deep-fried anchovy, well then there's no hope for you.

Mains continued to draw gasps. If you've ever seen a better looking fillet of cod than this, with its golden crust, gleaming white flesh and bed of sea plants and mussels, then you're either very lucky or a liar. The fish fell apart into clean, defined flakes and the seafood-butter sauce bound the salty seaweed and sea aster together. It was pretty much a perfect cod dish, utterly faultless.

Pea and broad bean risotto, vibrantly green and lit with bright chunks of sheeps' curd, contained excellent al-dente rice and generous shavings of strong summer truffle. It tasted great too, of course. But I mean, just look at it.

Dark chocolate mousse came teased into another geometrically-exact dome, surrounded by a swoop of granola-dotted chocolate like one of the rings of Saturn.

And finally lemon posset, made from Amalfi lemons no less, topped with summer berry compote and crossed with two warm doughnut sticks. Just like everything that had come before, it was beautiful inside and out.

There's a part of me wishes there at been at least something to complain about during our evening at the Zetter, because such gushing praise about a relatively unknown chef, new to his job and with a bill picked up by the PR company, could quite rightly raise eyebrows. But I hope you can tell from the photos at least that such praise isn't misplaced, or even exaggerated. And while you'll have to take my word that it all tasted as good as it looked, at the prices they're charging the public (starters are £5-£9, mains £14-24) they shouldn't be too far out of anyone's budget if you wanted to try it yourself. £17 for that incredible bit of cod; £6.50 for that dome of chicken liver parfait. It's all amazing value.

Anyway, if I haven't convinced you by now I never will. Thank you, Zetter hotel, for the meal (obviously) as well as the night in your lovely rooftop garden rooms, and congratulations for somehow managing to find a chef to not only adequately fill the vacuum left by one of London's most famous chefs but in a few short weeks almost eclipse him. It's a real achievement. This grand old Clerkenwell hotel has reinvented itself - again - with one of the most exciting new bistros in town, and the future looks bright.

9/10

I was invited to eat at Club Zetter and to spend a night in their Deluxe Rooftop Suite. The bill with drinks would have been about £45/head, and the Rooftop Suite is available from £405/night. Offers available on their website.

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Breddos, Clerkenwell

It was, up until a couple of weeks ago, the one cuisine that this country hadn't yet quite got to grips with. Mexican food in the UK was, for almost as long as I've been alive, only known by way of rotten Tex-Mex brands like Las Iguanas or Chiquito, and those Old El Paso kits from the supermarket that made everything taste exactly the same no matter what ingredients you throw at them. To anyone lucky enough to have tried the real deal in Mexico or Southern California, trying to explain why Mexican food was one of the truly great global cuisines was nigh-on impossible - a bit like trying to extol the virtues of Italian food to someone whose only exposure to it hitherto had been a tin of Heinz ravioli. Not that there's anything wrong with Heinz ravioli of course, but just try telling an Italian that.

But here we are and whatever else 2016 will be remembered for (and don't get me started on that) there is at least one shining beacon of redemption, that Breddos have opened up shop on Goswell Road and finally - finally - decent Mexican cuisine has landed in London.

Everything to enjoy about Breddos is summed up in one dish - their "Baja fish taco", about which I can lavish no higher praise than say it's every bit as good as the ones they serve up at Machatlán Mariscos Chávez in Tijuana - moist, fresh fish, a delicate thin batter, a chilli-mayonnaise dressing and all resting on a simply stunning tortilla, soft and earthy, that speaks of many man-hours of research, training and experimentation. So for most of you, homesick (Baja) Californians in particular, that should be all you need to know - the Breddos fish taco is about as good as fish tacos can get.

But why stop there? Because there's more. Another must-order from the taco section is the masa-fried chicken, which would be a wonderful bit of chicken-craft even without being complimented by that zingy chilli-mayo and the loving embrace of one of Those tortillas.

And the beef short rib, luxuriant and rich, sharpened with something called "lemon onions" and a neat pile of fresh coriander. I have a sneaking suspicion you could pile up much more inferior ingredients than these on Those tortillas and for it to still taste wonderful but that's not to take anything away from the obvious effort and skill that's gone into the toppings.

I should say not all the tacos are wonderful. I didn't much like the sweetbreads, which hadn't been prepped properly and was a bit like chewing on fried testicle (and I should know). But how fantastic they were even attempting a sweetbreads taco - I'm sure, given time, it will be just as good as the rest.

And anyway, that's just the tacos. More delights can be found elsewhere on the menu, for instance this pork chop with grilled spring onions and lime chutney. The meat itself was perfectly seasoned and full of porky juices, but even better than that was working through the meat-soaked onions beneath; I found dangling them into my mouth from above, calçot-style, worked best for this but you may very well have your own, less extravagant, method.

In much the same way as I'll forgive a mis-step on the sweetbread taco, I'll forgive them the sea urchin tostada, which I'm imagining only truly hardcore uni fans will appreciate. I have been known to enjoy sea urchin in the past, but only under very, shall we say, controlled conditions. The bravery of essentially serving it on a cracker, in all its bright orange, fishy funk, is certainly to be commended, I just couldn't bring myself to enjoy it. The octopus one, though, is much nicer. So have that.

Far more accessible, and easily enjoyable, is the Queso Fundido, basically melted cheese with crisps for dipping and so therefore why the hell wouldn't you. The cheese is studded with chorizo, for extra meaty punch, and the "crisps" are actually "nixtamalised potatoes", the same process (don't ask me) that fluffs up the corn tortillas. Nixtamalised potatoes are a fantastic thing, light and potatoey but strong enough to withstand a hefty scoop of melted cheese, which of course is extremely important.

Finally, Breddos do a very decent ceviche, perhaps not as knockout as the ones I've tried over in Baja itself but still well worth the money. It's beautifully presented too, in one of those thick earthenware bowls and dressed with various colourful bits of this and that.

So yes, I enjoyed Breddos and if you've got any sense of fun and adventure, so will you. And in fact, judging by the crowds on all of my visits so far, so is London already - it seems it's not only taco-starved foodies that have been waiting for a decent Mexican joint to open; this is a cuisine whose time has finally come. So for fantastic food, a great time (try the Mezcal) and a bill that won't break the bank, Breddos is to be welcomed with sticky, lime-soaked, open arms. What it represents for the future of Mexican food in London, though, is what's truly exciting.

8/10

I was invited to one press dinner at Breddos, but went back twice on my own wallet because I liked it so much.

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Luca, Clerkenwell

In an ideal world, you’d visit any restaurant completely blind, with no preconceptions about the ability of those involved, no knowledge of the background of the chefs or the experience of the front of house, and not the slightest clue who’s bankrolling the place, and who stands to win or lose from its success. Then, you’d go in, have your dinner, pay your money, and make an entirely objective appraisal of the experience, all the better to relate to others they should make the trip themselves. Or not, as the case may be.

Unfortunately, this is not an ideal world. Even if I wasn’t a desperately tragic restaurant geek (which I very much am), scouring the print reviews and pages of Hotdinners every five minutes to see if that Belgian seawater-dough taco place I had my eye on had opened yet, it would be impossible to avoid every nugget of information about a new opening, whether it’s a new project from an existing high-profile chef, or the first bricks-and-mortar restaurant from a street food star. Expectations and preconceptions, whether you like it or not, will affect our impressions of a place well before we step through the front door. That’s just the way things are.

So I will probably completely fail to be level-leaded and objective about Luca, a new modern Italian restaurant on St John St, because I know full well – as you probably do too – that it’s being operated by the team behind the trail-blazingly creative Clove Club in Shoreditch, Michelin-starred 26th Best Restaurant In The World, and comes with a weight of expectation so heavy it could drown them in their own sparkling water before we’d got as far as the starters.

Before we get to the starters, though, nibbles. These are “parmesan fries”, a description that undersells them hugely, as instead of the expected bowl of chips and cheese we have these gorgeous things, tubes of fluffy parmesan mousse, delicately crusted on the outside and dusted with paprika, like savoury churros. These are a must-order item at Luca, genuinely exciting and innovative in exactly the kind of way – for better or worse – I was expecting from the Clove Club team.

From here on, though, events conspired to be a little – though only a little – more ordinary. “Sea Robin crudo”, a very pleasant arrangement of fish carpaccio sweetened with clementines and drizzled with olive oil, the kind of thing you’ve eaten before if you’ve ever been to a smart modern Italian restaurant in London (both Café Monico on Shaftesbury Avenue and Bernardi’s in Marylebone do something similar, if perhaps not quite as refined). Sea Robin, by the way, is another name for gurnard, a pseudonym I like to think they’re using so I can call the dish “RobinSea Crudo” in my mind. Yes, I’m sure that’s why they did it.

“Preserved peppers, air dried bonito and spinach” was a plate of cold red peppers and floppy spinach whose charms I’m afraid were completely lost on me. There wasn’t enough salty bonito (or the bonito wasn’t salty enough) to lift the bland peppers, and though the spinach had a nice enough flavour it still ended up all tasting like leftover ratatouille. And I don’t really even much like hot ratatouille.

I’d heard a lot (probably too much) about the “grouse ravioli”, and its famed “potato and whisky” sauce, so the fact I’d allowed myself to get excited about it probably contributes in no small part to the fact I found it faintly disappointing. The grouse itself came in the form of a mousse stuffing in the ravioli – fine, but pretty underpowered and the kind of thing that makes you wish for a thicker, darker, slow-cooked ragu-style, one with a bit more punch. The potato sauce tasted mainly of butter, and I didn’t detect any whisky at all, and though none of these things are exactly disqualifying for a pasta dish, they didn’t make for a particularly memorable experience, either.

The other pasta dish, spaghettini with shrimp and mace butter was, admittedly, lovely. Bouncy fresh pasta with an intense, briny, seafoody sauce, it was a perfect example of its kind, disarmingly familiar but beautifully rich and elegant. We’ve been a bit spoiled for pasta in London in recent times, especially with Padella in Borough Market doing what they do so extraordinarily well, so it speaks volumes this spaghettini was still a topic of conversation days later.

My own main of beef rump stuffed with pancetta was straightforwardly enjoyable, nothing groundbreaking and perhaps a teeny bit on the stingy side in terms of portion size but still attractive and seasoned nicely. It’s difficult to say anything too negative about beef and pancetta presented with green veg and one of those nice sticky reduced sauces, especially when it’s cooked as well as this, and so I won’t. I mean, I enjoyed it. Really.

A monkfish dish continued the theme – decent ingredients, cooked well – and was similarly hard to criticise even at the same time there was little to set the pulse racing either. Nothing was overcooked, or undercooked, or underseasoned, or cold (when it shouldn’t be) or warm (when it shouldn’t be). It was all, objectively, very decent food.

And look, maybe that’s all fine. Not every meal needs to reinvent the wheel or gun for a place in the Top 50 Best Restaurants list and the vast majority of people who eat at Luca will appreciate it very well for what it is – a solid, mid-range modern Italian restaurant in Clerkenwell, where you can book a table for 4 and be served by very pleasant and well-groomed staff and where tables have pretty cutlery and house bread comes with nice grassy olive oil.

The issue is, at the risk of repeating myself, a restaurant by the Clove Club comes with expectations. There’s absolutely nothing to stop these supremely talented guys from opening a solid mid-range Italian restaurant, there’s no good reason they shouldn’t, and that’s exactly what they’ve done. It’s not astonishing value in the Padella vein and neither is it a ripoff like the River Café. It’s just a good restaurant. It’s nobody’s fault but my own that I can’t be happy with that.

So perhaps the best advice I can give you is to take the above, and the score below, in the context of a person who's enjoyed some meals at Clove Club – and at the various incarnations before that, at the 10 Bells and so on – that have been very close to life-changing, and probably wouldn’t have been happy with anything less than that from Luca, either. And if you disagree with my scoring a place down for familiarity or safety or lack of ambition, I’ll only say that I scored the original Clove Club way, way up for risk-taking, innovation and ambition by the bucketful, as well. These things are important. Well, they are to me, at least. The rest of you can make your own minds up.

7/10

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