The very civilised Newman Street Tavern

Sometimes it’s good to go to a place without much in the way of expectations. The Newman Street Tavern sounded on the face of it like just another restaurant climbing on the fashionable Fitzrovia bandwagon . . .

A chef who wasn’t on my radar, the usual guff about sourcing the best ingredients and a name that suggests what Americans might think of as a British pub.

In fact it’s charming and cosy, much more in the mould of two other recent retro openings, Quality Chophouse and Green Man, French Horn.

Chef Peter Weeden comes from the former Conran empire (Paternoster Chop House and The Boundary), a heritage you can immediately spot from the crustacea bar common to Conran restaurants in their heyday. Fish comes in daily from Cornwall. Meat is aged in a maturing room downstairs and butchered on the spot. Bread (good old fashioned white and wholemeal loaves) is freshly baked in house.

Our meal kicked off with briny oysters (Colchester rock served with shallot vinegar and a cucumber and manzanilla dressing) and, for the oyster-intolerant, some lovely sweet, simply dressed crab.

There was a small bowl of very intensely flavoured red mullet soup (using 'all the bits of the fish', as Weeden nicely put it) made in a British fashion with saffron but without tomato and some well-judged finely shredded orange which offset the slight bitterness of the livers.

Soused red mullet followed in a sharply-flavoured vinegary broth. You might be thinking 'too much red mullet' but I really liked the fact that the same ingredient was used two different ways because it was good and in season.

There was a perfectly judged rosy pink rib of beef served with a fiery beetroot and horseradish sauce and some amazingly good triple fried potatoes finished with a lavish amount of garlic oil from which you can see that NST would be a good place to go for Sunday lunch.

And very English puddings of the kind you'd expect to find at a dinner party thrown by a foodie friend: the inevitable sticky toffee pudding - the chocolate fondant de nos jours - and a delicious crabapple 'autumn' jelly served with rich chunks of quince and a small lake of double cream.

The wine list, which has been drawn up by co-owner Nigel Sutcliffe who used to work at the Fat Duck, is also a draw: 250 interesting wines divided up into enticing categories like Sea and Ocean and Mountain Reds. Several are available by the glass. and a good number are natural which certainly rocked my boat. The headily perfumed 2009 Vacqueyras "Les Restanques de Cabassole" Roucas-Tomba we had with the beef (albeit an eye-watering £66*) was utterly delicious. As indeed it should have been for that price though there are many cheaper options.

Bar food such as Spicy Moon's Farm beer sticks (aka scratchings) sounds fun and would make the Newman Street Tavern a good option for what Fergus Henderson of St John calls 'a little bun moment' round about 4 in the afternoon. That and its menu of Bloody Marys . . .

On the downside, it’s quite crowded and noisy, even in the upstairs restaurant and I suspect service could get a little slow at busy times.

Good for: visitors to the UK wanting a typically English experience, wine lovers

Not so good for: quiet romantic evenings, vegetarians

Newman Street Tavern is - surprise, surprise - in Newman Street (no 48) just north of Oxford Street and west of Tottenham Court Road. Tel: 020 3667 1445.

*I ate at the Newman Street Tavern as a guest of the restaurant. And we were served a set menu so didn't get a full chance to put the dining room through its paces. I would/will go back though.

Toupeirinho, Matosinhos - a perfect seafood restaurant

Despite the fact that I ate amazing food during my recent weekend in Porto it was the tiny fish restaurant of Toupeirinho in the nearby resort of Matosinhos that stole my heart.

It’s up a side street - you could easily miss it - and the tables are cramped but the warmth of the welcome and the quality of the simply cooked seafood from the family-run kitchen makes it a must if you’re anywhere in the area.

As soon as we’d sat down - rather earlier than the locals who drift in about 9 - we found food waiting on the table - a couple of small crabs, piled high with crabmeat, a dish of fat sardine roes in chilli-spiked oil, a pool of vivid green grassy oil from the Douro and some tiny, sweet oily black olives, Perfect accompaniments for a welcoming glass of chilled white Ramos Pintos port.

That was swiftly followed by inevitable plate of presunto - Portugal’s answer to Iberico ham, glistening with fat and served with freshly baked warm cornbread rolls. Then a plate of tiny sweet shrimps and scary-looking goose barnacles (percebas) looking like the sort of snack that Hagrid might tuck into. Tender as a langoustine though.

Feeling we’d passed some kind of test we were rewarded with two kinds of lobster - a crayfish-sized spiny or 'slipper' lobster (lavagante au naturel) served simply boiled and a more elaborate lobster salad with a punchy parsley and onion dressing - both delicious with our bottle of richly textured 2009 Borges Douro Reserva branco which appears to sell for under 10 euros locally in Portugal.

They’d asked if we’d like seabass baked in salt as our main course so that’s what we were expecting next but instead got presented with the best clams I’ve ever eaten - again, ridiculously plump and cooked in white wine, olive oil and fresh coriander which seems to be widely used in seafood dishes.

The seabass finally arrived, dramatically presented on a flaming bed of salt then cracked open and served with dry roast potatoes and drizzled with the inevitable oil though it wasn’t in any way oily. And a great side of fried onions, carrots, courgettes and greens to offset our otherwise protein-fuelled meal.

By this stage we were utterly stuffed so passed on dessert which didn’t prevent them bringing a couple of custard tarts with our infusions (worth ordering in Portugal instead of the extremely strong coffee at night.)

Lest you get too carried away I should say that the prices at Toupeirinho are not cheap (Matosinhos, along with neighbouring Foz, are very well-heeled neighbourhoods). The salad alone cost 65 euros a kilo though I would guess ours was more like 300-400g and the walls were lined with expensive looking bottles including Dom Perignon, Cristal and Portugal’s famous Barca Velha.

But you don’t have to eat the ridiculous amount of food that we did though I would place yourself in their hands rather than ordering from the menu to get the best of what’s on offer that day. Giving them a price to work to, I suggest.

Toupeirinho is the kind of restaurant you yearn for when you travel, somewhere that couldn’t be anywhere else and full of locals rather than tourists though admittedly it was December. If you’re staying in Porto don’t miss it.

Toupeirinho is at 27 Rua Godinho, 4450 Matosinhos Tel: 229 387 016

You can get to Matosinhos via the blue line of the Metro do Porto.

I ate at Toupeirinho as a guest of the restaurant

The Quality Chop House: a very well-connected wine bar

From the outside, the re-opened Quality Chop House in Farringdon may look like yet another retro restaurant revival but the big draw is the wine list put together by its well-connected young proprietors.

They’re not making a big deal about it but Will Lander is the son of top wine writer Jancis Robinson and restaurant critic Nick Lander and his business partner Josie Stead (formerly general manager of Heston Blumenthal’s Dinner) the niece of Stephen Browett of Farr Vintners. As a result they’ve managed to get their mitts on some impressively rare bottles and vintages which you can both drink in the bar or restaurant or take away (of which more below). At the time of writing, for example, they have 1950 Banyuls by the glass.

The wines are by no means all expensive, though. The list is scattered with really interesting well-priced buys in the £20 to £40 price bracket including the Colet Vins Vatua, a delciously rich, peachy Cava-like sparkler (a bargain at £5 a glass) I kicked off with which just about managed to penetrate a heavy cold.

We also ordered a white garnacha (Verd Albera from Marti Fabra, a bargain at £21) which was given the thumbs up by my snot-free companion and rich, plummy (I think) glass of Les Clos Perdus Corbières that came with the £13 'chop and a glass' offer. (The chop was a choice of Middle White pork or a Barnsley chop and mash. Smart idea.)

The sensibly short menu - at lunchtime at least - is typical gastropub fare as befits the establishment's Chophouse roots but is not a million miles either from that of Green Man French Horn where Josie’s boyfriend Ed Wilson is consultant chef (I imagine there were some battles over divvying up the charmingly retro French plates that appear at both establishments).

We shared a nice fresh piece of mackerel and beetroot relish (at least my companion said it was nice) and a chunky game terrine followed by the chop and a wholesome plate of roast shoulder of Middle White pork and stuffing. (They apparently also do sandwiches to take away based on the weekday menu).

In the evening they have a more ambitious but well-priced four course set menu for £35 and, according to the website, ‘open a few magnums’ so you can have a glass of something decent while you decide what to drink.

The all-day (from 11am) bar offers charcuterie, cheese (from Neal’s Yard) and cake and would be an immensely civilised place to hang out for a couple of hours if you were in the area.

The only problem? The shop. Well, not really a shop but a line of seductively presented bottles along a shelf which you can buy, Parisian-style, to take away. Very, very tempting if you’ve just discovered a wine you enjoyed and fancy another bottle to drink back at home. But they’re only £5 less than the restaurant price which makes them, for the most part, considerably more expensive than they'd be elsewhere, retail*.

A magnum of 2007 Chateau Rauzan-Segla Cuvée Segla Margaux for example is £90 to take away yet you could buy it for £59 a bottle from, say, The Old Bridge Wine Company. On the other hand you can buy a bottle of 2000 Ornellaia from the ‘Collector’s List’ for £130 (or £125 to take away) instead of £148.75 a bottle at Lay & Wheeler or £365 at L'Anima only a mile or so away in the City. Many of these wines you wouldn’t easily be able to get hold of at all.

So, in summary, a great hangout for winelovers, great value if you drink in, just don't go mad with the takeout in a boozy post-meal spree. As I probably would have done if I hadn’t had that dratted cold . . .

Quality Chop House is at 92–94 Farringdon Road, London EC1R 3EA. Tel: 020 7278 1452 and on Twitter @QualityChop

*The restaurant (I'm guessing Will) has just posted this about their wine pricing on their Tumblr blog. Interesting to see how people react.

Simon Rogan at The Cube

It’s a complete indictment of my lazy southerner mentality that I’ve never made it up to Simon Rogan’s restaurant L’Enclume despite glowing reviews that would have had me charging half way across France for a similar experience.

But I was sufficiently impressed by my meal at his London outpost Roganic a couple of years ago to jump at the chance of eating at his recent pop-up at The Electrolux Cube.

It’s a weird venue - what feels like an Anglian conservatory perched on top of the Festival Hall, reached by some rather dodgy looking back stairs and a black grass carpet.. Fortunately it was a stunningly beautiful day which made for a jaw-dropping view over London and the afternoon sun poured onto our table for the duration of our seven-course lunch.

Rogan’s food is admirably light, elegant and colourful so every plate was a visual treat, kicking off with a spectacular irridescent ‘cod yolk’ - an egg yolk shaped salt cod mousse encased in saffron jelly served with kale, sorrel and squid ink.

The pairing for that was a 2011 Hunters Marlborough riesling which I thought was a shade too sweet. It was also paired with the next dish - a broth of turnip (Baldrick eat your heart out), the most fantastically light, delicious Westcombe cheddar dumplings, English truffle and apple marigold, one of many ingredients on the menu that were grown at L’Enclume or foraged from the surrounding countryside.

The cryptically named Aynsome’s Autumn Offerings (below) turned out to be an exquisite little plate of local root vegetables with flowers and herbs served with fresh curds and pork skin. That was matched with an accommodating Satzen Gruner Veltliner, Kremstal from Weingut Manfred Felsner - probably my favourite style of wine for this fresh-tasting kind of vegetable dish.

An intensely buttery dish of plaice poached in brown butter with red russian, mussels and oxalis root proved the best match of the lunch with a Domaine Roche Bellene 2010 Montagny 1er cru - no surprise there: white burgundy loves creamy, buttery sauces.

We then had the one red of the meal, a Domaine Serge Lafoue Sancerre Rouge 2010 with the only meat dish, ‘Reg’s Guinea Hen', leeks and offal, pennyroyal and Cowmire cider - which althrough it was cooked in Rogan’s elegant register was still too robust for such a delicate wine. (I’d have gone for a red burgundy with a bit of bottle age.)

Finally two desserts a rather strange, blackcurrant and stout concoction topped with a lozenge of sea buckthorn cream (that egg yolk shape again) paired with Quady’s Elysium Black Muscat and a dramatic-looking crunchy assemblage of pear, lemon verbena and hazelnut which was matched with a Paul Cluver Noble Late Harvest riesling. I’m not sure that desserts are Rogan’s strongest suit - they were pretty but not quite sweet or indulgent enough - or it made have just been I was suffering from sensory overload by this stage.

All in all though, a truly dazzling meal in an amazing location - as it needs to be given the prices they’re charging though I have to say I’ve paid more for less accomplished meals in a Michelin 3-starred restaurant.

And it does make me want to go to L'Enclume which I guess is the object of the exercise for Rogan at least. Harder to see quite what Electrolux gets out of it though. Would you buy a fridge or a dishwasher on the strength of a slap-up meal? I'm not sure I would.

I ate at The Cube as a guest of Electrolux.

Simon Rogan is back at the Cube from December 27th to 31st. Other chefs being featured include Tom Kerridge of the Hand and Flowers, Johnray and Peter Sanchez-Inglesias of Casamia in Bristol, Claude Bosi of Hibiscus, Atul Kochhar of Benares, and Daniel Clifford of Midsummer House. Bookings are taken for lunch at 12:00 for £175 a head and dinner at 19:00 for £215 (prices includes champagne reception, a minimum 6 course tasting menu and matched wines). Check the website for who's on when and call +44 (0) 207 288 6450 to book.

* It’s interesting how white wines dominate the pairings for this kind of cooking. But is that what you’d order if you went out for a meal that cost this amount?