The Man Behind the Curtain, Leeds

I think it's possible to acknowledge the importance of fiercely experimental, bleeding-edge restaurant culture whilst at the same time retaining a healthy scepticism about the reality of it. When I think about the most groundbreaking meals I've had over the time I've been writing this blog (ten years now, incredibly) and the most enjoyable, well, the crossover area in the Venn diagram is fairly small. For every l'Enclume, which took modern British cuisine into new directions while still remaining enjoyable, there's an El Bulli, shock-effect food that never asked itself "just because we can, do we really think we should?".

From a distance, The Man Behind The Curtain seems like the kind of self-consciously "edgy" concept that should trigger alarm bells. Not just the ugly-cool website, the street-art décor, the location on the top floor of a clothes shop in the centre of Leeds like some kind of Primark speakeasy, but all of these things combined does suggest an operation focussing rather more on image and provocative PR than the food on the table. What a relief, then, and a delight, that nothing could be further than the truth - behind the ultra-hip exterior is a kitchen that knows exactly what it's doing, serving food that is that rarest of things - genuinely unlike anything else anywhere in the country.

The innovation started with the very first snack. This kumamoto oyster was dressed with strawberry kimchi, something completely new to me, and I suspect new to planet earth, although I reserve the right to be wrong on that. It was great, the strawberry pickle working really well with the briny oyster and the chilli kicking in as the sweetness dissipated.

There was, of course, the odd bit of wacky tableware. This silver tree had little spoons of raw langoustine in some kind of lime oil nestled amongst its branches, and I enjoyed it very much, although I should say that a friend on the same table got a spoon that had lost its silver plating and couldn't taste much other than an unpleasant fizz of metal. It's all very well using this arty tableware, but you need to know how to keep it...

This bright red mini-burger contained veal sweetbread in XO sauce, with mint, basil and kimchi mayo. The bun was one of those bao-style fluffy rice flour types, perfectly formed and lighter than air, and the Asian flavours within were balanced and distinct. As to why it was bright red, well, I'm not sure, but MBTC's use of unusual colours and textures to subvert expectations of ingredients is something that returned throughout the lunch. I've known chefs who work with a palette of techniques and flavour profiles but never known anyone with an actual palette of colours - Michael O'Hare seems to work a lot with bright reds and greys, colours which don't often exist in nature and therefore somewhat counter-intuitive to feature so prominently in a tasting menu. As I say though, despite all that, it was never less than enjoyable.

This was wagyu beef - pretty high-grade judging by the remarkably light colour (mmm, fatty) - with gordal olives, and topped with transluscent sheets of potato starch. The olive flavour was the perfect foil to the beef, and though it seems obvious now, the more I think about it the more I'm sure I've never had quite this combination before, demonstrating that even the less outré courses were subtly inventive.

More bright reds and greys and 80s pop-art stylings in this next course of spider crab, wonton skin and iberico lardo 'lasagne'. Hiding under a 'Sriracha cracker' (which, perhaps fortunately, didn't taste too much of the garlic-chilli sauce) was an indugently rich mixture of fresh seafood and iberico pork fat, and it either contained some dairy or the 'lasagne' was just a clever nod to the fact that it really tasted like it did. It was - like everything that had come before it - lovely.

I imagine there aren't many chefs who have ever thought to themselves, "I wonder what will happen if I spray-paint some prawns gold?" never mind having the confidence to serve them to paying guests but - incredibly - it didn't feel forced or unsettling at all, in fact they just ended up being the most straightforward element of the dish. Far more notable was the heady malt vinegar 'powder' which seasoned this fillet of cod in squid ink, the matchstick fries turning it all into a mini trip to the chip shop. As I'm sure was deliberate. Many fine dining chefs feel the need to riff on a famous regional dish, and I've had a number of versions of "fish and chips" served in various forms. Sometimes - like the "trip to the chip shop" hot dog invented by the Fat Duck and served at Bubbledogs, it's disgusting. But here there was no heavy-handed use of batter, just a confident bit of fish cooking, lifted with vinegar.

On this strange bit of tableware, resembling somthing from a Salvador Dali painting, were positioned some bitesize chunks of beef shortrib and a selection of three dipping sauces - mustard, coriander and black truffle. I think of all the dishes this was the one that did least for me - the beef was decent but not spectacular, the sauces (especially the truffle) good but they didn't make much sense of the beef, or indeed vice versa. Still, it was hardly a failure, and we all ate it without complaint.

Last of the savoury courses was some chunks of Iberico pork, packing the kind of depth of flavour common to only the very greatest pigs in the world, with something called "charcoal shavings" (which actually didn't taste bitter or burned at all, strangely - more like cereal) and a little pickled boquerone anchovy. My only complaint here, which perhaps carries back through the previous courses as well, is that there wasn't quite enough of it...

...because with no bread to fill up on, and portion sizes barely above a mouthful per dish, I'm afraid to say by the time we were taking receipt of this, the only dessert course, we were all still pretty hungry. This spectacular thing, of course, was fantastic in of itself - white chocolate spray-painted silver (well, why not), hiding a shocking purple lavender ice cream, a kind of cinnamon mousse and something called "potato custard" (just normal custard as far as I could tell, although a very nice custard), all as unusual and imaginative and arty as everything that had come before. There just wasn't quite enough of it all.

So that's why I have to deny the Man Behind The Curtain my very top mark. Perhaps having guests leave wanting more is entirely deliberate - I wouldn't put it past being some aspect of their food-as-art-project approach, some kind of comment on the shortcomings of globalisation and the western liberal model - but I would have liked some bread. Or at least a second dessert course.

That said, the fact remains there is nowhere doing anything remotely like this anywhere in the country, and it was undoubtedly a theatrical and exciting way to spend a few hours of a Saturday. I hesitate to say there's nothing like it in the world, because more well-travelled friends have noted that certain of O'Hare's techniques owe a certain debt to the fine dining scene in the Basque areas of spain - restaurants such as Arzak or Azurmendi who have a similar visual approach. But, well, it's certainly new to me. And I've been around a little while.

At just over £110 a head, as well, for plenty of booze and a couple of clever petits fours (a "cupcake" with edible paper and a liquid-citrus centre, and a salted caramel chocolate with caraway seeds), it is undoubtedly still great value. This perhaps accounts for the fact it took us a full ten months to secure a table (this lunch was booked in May 2016) but full marks to them for not raising their prices, which they surely could have done by now. And I can grumble all I like about portion sizes, but the fact is, the moment it was over I wanted to go and do it all over again. Which is probably all you really need to know. It is, after all said and done, a groundbreaking and uniquely visual restaurant serving futuristic fine dining on the top floor of a clothes shop in Leeds. And you may as well do all you can to get there, because there's certainly never going to be another like it any time soon.

9/10

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Yosma, Marylebone

So many great innovations create their own market. I remember hearing about the concept of the Apple iPad before it launched, and immediately dismissing it - why would I need an oversized iPhone? How would that thing fit in my pocket? Wouldn't I feel a bit stupid carrying it around? And then it arrives and you try it and suddenly it all makes sense. "If I asked people what they wanted", another tech pioneer Henry Ford never said, "they'll just say 'a faster horse'".

So I didn't think I needed Yosma. I liked Turkish cuisine in London exactly how it was, thank you very much, from the ocakbasi grills of Stoke Newington and charcoal pits of Green Lanes to the mangals of South London, I like my pomegranete and grilled onion salad and my hummus and flatbread and strange pink tarama and, of course, lamb chops and kofte kebabs fresh from the coals, and why would you want anything more? If it ain't broke, and all that.

Well, it turns out I was wrong. Completely and utterly wrong. But it took a little while to realise how wrong I was, as my first visit to Yosma revealed nothing too far from convention. This chunky, accurately-seasoned house hummus, for example - excellent hummus, certainly, the match of any else I'd tried in London. But it was just hummus, and I know where I am with hummus. It came with some white bread, dusted with herbs and oil and I knocked it all back quite happily. I like hummus.

And then these lamb chops, in a wonderful light lemon-herb marinade, cooked to perfect pink inside and with the barest touch of smoke and char from the Josper, they were - again - the platonic ideal of a lamb chop dish, utterly faultless and a delight to eat. But I know where I am with lamb chops. I like lamb chops.

Clearly, Yosma were doing many things right but in the way these things sometimes go, my faultless-yet-familiar lunch soon faded into memory and the place dropped off my radar for a few months. And perhaps that would have been it if not for the steady stream of positive chatter about from friends and critics, ranging from "extremely positive" to "utterly-blown-away" and ensuring a return visit was all but inevitable. Never underestimate the power of FOMO - Fear Of Missing Out.

One wet evening in March, then, I sat down with a friend in the window of Yosma and ordered a selection of dishes that made a complete mockery of my conviction that Turkish food in London had reached some kind of endgame. For example, the above dish of pastırma, cured beef. Treating this densely-flavoured bit of charcuterie like an Italian would carpaccio is a touch of genius, and in fact makes more sense with cured rather than raw beef as the excellent olive oil, capers and scattered nduja-like chilli paste stood up to and highlighted the pastırma rather than masking it. Really, very clever stuff.

Hamsi, fried anchovies, were either some kind of freakish boneless variety or had been cooked using techniques new to modern science, as we were able to eat the whole animals, nose-to-tail, without a single annoying pin-bone tickling our throats. Which was enough of a novelty even apart from their wonderful earthy flavour, and the intriguing tarator (walnut and garlic sauce) to dip them in.

Yosma apparently make their own sucuk sausages, and to fantastic effect. The texture of loose mince, the strong beefy flavours and punchy chilli oil is like nothing I've tried before, probably best described as a cross between pork pie filling and chorizo (only with beef, obviously), and something that is surely unique to Yosma. At least, I don't know anyone else making their own sucuk. And as if that wasn't enough, they came with what I'll have to describe as perfect roast potatoes, thick of crust and smooth of interior, turning the dish into a kind of mini Turkish Sunday roast.

Mantı, Turkish dumplings, could perhaps have done with a little more filling but still went down very easily, with their good al-dente casings and yoghurt & chilli dressing. You can see the effort that goes into these by wandering over to the open kitchens, where there are often hundreds of them, all painstakingly made by hand, lined up in neat rows on trays ready for the water. It doesn't necessarily follow that anyone going to the trouble making their own dumplings is better than anywhere that doesn't, except it does generally seem to be the case, doesn't it?

Chicken wings were perhaps the only instance where Yosma's otherwise masterful command of seasoning and spicing let them down. They were beautifully cooked wings, and clearly high quality chicken with good, strong, big bones, but I'm afraid the breadcrumb coating was quite salty, which distracted from what would otherwise been a top bit of poultry work.

Yosma brush their flatbread with lamb fat - well, why wouldn't you - and so I hardly need to tell you it tastes absolutely incredible. It's just a light touch of the fat, enough for it to taste vaguely meaty but not be overwhelming, and a scattering of sesame seeds and interesting herbs further add depth. You can tell a lot about a place by its house bread, about their attention to detail and attitude to hospitality generally. Yosma passes this particular test - and so many others - with flying colours.

I am rarely enjoying myself so much after this much food that I even consider dessert, so it's a testament to how well everything had gone that I was determined to try as much of the menu as possible. Yosma is one of those rare places that approach everything with such style and intelligence that it makes you think it's impossible to order badly; that everything on the (reasonably large) menu is probably worth trying. That's certainly true of this Kűnefe dessert, sort of like a large baklava (sugar and pistachio and shredded wheat and, er, mozzarella cheese) which is as unusual (in London at least) as it is enjoyable, the syrupy bits of crunchy pastry mixing remarkably well with the ropes of stringy cheese.

I should also say a special word on the service, which was as good as anywhere I've been in recent times. Our waiter was engaging, attentive and great company, knowing everything about every inch of the menu and an expert in Turkish cuisine generally. My bill carries the name "Catalin" so if that was him, very well done indeed - an utter masterclass in front of house work. Awards, or at least greater recognition, surely beckon.

So, yes, it turns out I was wrong. Completely and utterly wrong. Fabulously wrong. I did need Yosma, and so do you, and so does London. This is Turkish cuisine reinvented for a new generation, never self-consciously experimental or deliberately obscure, but innovative in the best possible way - fresh and exciting but still accessible. Where dishes are familiar, such as the lamb chops or hummus, they're simply the very best they can be with no extra fuss. And when they try their hand at crafting traditional Turkish dishes using the finest local ingredients, the results - such as those extraordinary sucuk - are blinding. Yosma is the modern Turkish restaurant I didn't know I needed and didn't ask for. And yet here it is anyway, and now all of a sudden I can't live without it.

9/10

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Adam Reid at the French, Manchester

Some days it's all I can do to stop this blog becoming a single-issue publication for rants about Michelin. I know I shouldn't let them wind me up as much as they do, but really, is there any more insidious influence on our nation's dining habits than these people, trolling miserably around the country marking up anywhere conforming to their decrepit idea of what a meal should be (French, apparently, only French from about 30 years ago). My opinion of them was bad enough, too, before they launched their Twitter account, which seems to be written by a frustrated middle-manager in their mid-50s who seems to hate every aspect of his/her job and spends nearly all of their time complaining about service and sneering at provincial plating techniques. And I'm not just saying that because they had a go at me once.

Anyway, Michelin have an awful lot to answer for, not least the way chefs bend over backwards to get a star often at the expense of their other guests' enjoyment, and their own sanity. Famously, as documented in the TV series Restaurant Wars, both Aiden Byrne and Simon Rogan both set up shop in Manchester at the same time with the intention of winning the city's first star, something which, if Michelin hadn't been a miserable bunch of gout-ridden gastronomic dinosaurs (which they are), they would both have achieved almost instantly; Manchester House is a wonderful way to blow a fortune on lunch, and The French was, under Rogan, a triumph of colourful, seasonal cooking. If they didn't deserve a star, then nobody did. It was - and is - madness.

Fast-forward to 2017, though, and with Rogan's name taken off the operation at the Midland Hotel it's left in the capable hands of Adam Reid to serve beautiful food, in this beautiful room, to the beautiful people of the North West (and me). Nibbles on the "terrace" (just a curtained-off section of the lobby, really, but a clever idea to make you feel that the restaurant is separate somehow from the otherwise rather ordinary Midland décor) consisted of a powerful cod's roe and pine nut oil mousse - fresh and salty and full of ocean flavour - with (a Rogan technique I'm sure) delicate, pitch black squid ink crackers.

Reseated inside the lovely Art Deco dining room, the first proper snack was "prawn cracker", raw prawn and some vaguely Asian flavours encased in a little rice cracker. Now, I'm not the biggest fan of raw prawn so probably would never have given this full marks, but my friend enjoyed it very much so clearly they're doing something right.

The little bowl of pebbles used to present the prawn cracker was cleverly re-used for the next snack, a raw scallop on an attractive modernist spoon, with pickled spruce tip and caviar. Again, I'm more of a fan of cooked scallop than raw, so I'll refer you again to my friend who declared this mouthful of seafood the single best thing she'd eaten so far all year. Which is I'm sure a compliment they'll take.

The next course was much more my kind of thing, a delicately tempura'd broccoli shoot, in a densely truffle-y cheese mousse. The batter really was supremely light - just enough to provide a quiet crunch - but still carried a surprising amount of nutty flavour. The kind of thing that reminds you why you eat out.

The next dish, a steamed bun in the "bao" style stuffed with pork and pickled onion, didn't quite work for me. I think it was because the pickled onion flavour was overwhelming and quite distracting, tasting like Monster Munch crisps, and the chunks of pork were a bit lost. Still, some interesting techniques on display and it's good to see experiments like this occasionally even if they don't always come good.

If it's even possible to make a bad smoked eel dish, I haven't found one yet. Artichoke pieces - cooked to a firm bite - and a few pretty leaves of endive surrounded bouncy chunks of sweet-glazed eel, each a bitesize package of meaty, smoky flavour and irresistibly moreish. It was just as good as the smoked eel pasta at Padella, and as anyone who's ever tried that will tell you, that's praise indeed.

Hot smoked bacon with squid is an idea I unequivocally support; unfortunately the bacon itself was incredibly salty and rather dry, which made the dish hard to enjoy overall. The broth at the bottom of the bowl was good, though, as was the ribboned squid slowly poaching in it. Perhaps they just need to work on their bacon-making technique a little bit.

Bread came next, bread-as-a-course seemingly being a trend that's not going anywhere any time soon. And why not, because the art of a good loaf is worth celebrating just as much as any other bit of cheffery. These were apparently made by a local bakery to a recipe from the French, both sourdoughs I think though one had stout in it. The traffic light of butters were impossible to overfeed on, particularly one which had some kind of meat or offal element which was like spreadable foie gras.

This also arrived with the breads, a dense shot of meaty soup, a bit like a gourmet version of Heinz Oxtail. It was great.

I'll forgive the pretentious renaming of red mullet as "rouget" as the dish in question was so good - a beautiful fillet of fish, bright white flesh and orange skin shining like a Christmas decoration, with a charred piece of baby gem lettuce and an intriguing prawn/tomato mayo. A simple dish in essence, perhaps, but so easy to enjoy.

I'm afraid the duck element of this next dish was a little on the dry side, which is a shame because the concept and execution of the secondary elements - the delicate slivers of beetroot, the sharp pickled cherry sauce - was spot-on. Perhaps a seared fillet of duck breast would have worked better than whatever bit of the animal this was (rolled leg? Bit hard to tell) but I'm sure they had their reasons. Just as I have mine for not liking it very much.

Desserts, though, were cracking. Literally, in the case of the "clementine", which involved smashing a delicate sugar casing spiked with clementine zest to reveal a smooth white chocolate mousse within. It was an unbeatable combination of stunning to look at and to eat, the super-concentrated clementine flavour being particularly notable.

And this "custard tart", surely more than a nod to the version from Gregg's only (understandably) refined and reworked, with a delicate thin pastry, a smooth custard filling and a nice thick layer of shaved nutmeg. The rhubarb and ginger compote on the side didn't do much for me - rather bitter and lifeless - but the malt ice cream was great, and the effect of the custard and nutmeg took me right back to childhood, as I'm sure was the intention. Clearly someone in the pastry section at the French is having a ball.

There was the option to go for Adam's Great British Menu dessert "Golden Empire", but by this point we were stuffed and more than a little drunk thanks to a series of genuinely interesting and geographically diverse wines, from all over the world and various nooks and crannies in Eastern Europe. Apologies for not listing them, but you know what I'm like with wine.

As you will have hopefully realised by now from the above, despite the odd misstep and wobbly technique this is a mature and confident kitchen, aided by friendly and efficient front of staff, blessed with one of the more beautiful dining spaces in town. Reid himself spends service stood behind a kind of plating and dessert bar at one end of the room; guests ordering the Golden Empire special decamp here to watch it all being made up close. It's a lovely bit of theatre, and is a great way of showing guests his command over proceedings given the lack of an open kitchen.

So, the team at the French under its new head chef have already settled very nicely into the space and are turning out fine dining very much worth the fine dining prices they're asking for it. I'd like to say it's easily worthy of a star, but I don't want to give the impression I place any currency in stars at all, or imply that they - or anyone for that matter - should be aiming for them. It's a good restaurant, is all you need to know, and that's that. Who the hell knows what Michelin will make of it. Who the hell even cares.

7/10

The French's PR organised our booking, hence us getting nine courses for the price of six, and a slightly cheaper matching wine option.

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