The Walnut Tree, Abergavenny

The Walnut Tree at Llandewi Skirrid has been on my radar for as long as I've been interested in eating out. First under Franco Taruschio and now Shaun Hill, it’s been a place I’ve returned to every couple of years, always wondering why I don’t go more often.

This week, when we visited for my husband’s birthday, was no exception. True, the gaffer (Shaun) was in town that night, the clientele a little more elderly than I remember, the bar and dining room stuck in bit of a 90s timewarp but the welcome and the food were as great as ever. And it didn’t rain. Hallelujah!

Being with two of our (grown-up - in theory at least) kids we gave the menu a thorough working through. My OH and I kicked off with fish - always Hill’s forte. Mine an unusual combination of plaice with cucumber and mustard sauce I remember from his Merchant House days, his a more indulgent dish of red mullet and scallops in a rich langoustine bisque I ended up sneaking off his plate.

My veggie daugher had light-as-air malfatti of spinach and ricotta that were worthy of Franco’s era and skinny meat-eating son a generous platter of Spanish charcuterie about which he unusually didn’t complain there wasn’t enough.

He was as pleased with his perfectly seared skirt of beef with crispy shallots - as was I with my rabbit fillet and liver with rabbit pudding, a light wobbly dome of delicate rabbit flavoured mousse that I’d chosen to go with the very good value 2010 Colinot Irancy Vieilles Vignes that we’d ordered. On the other hand it went equally well with OH’s very fresh skate with shrimps and dill. Only veggie daughter’s spring risotto seemed slightly off-key - a tasty but slightly garish plate of veg-dotted rice that would have met with strong disapproval from any self-respecting Piemontese.

We couldn’t agree whether to have puds or cheese so had both - sharing a generous cheeseboard for £10 (why can’t other restaurants do this rather than charging a fortune for a stingy cheese plate?) then ploughing in to coffee crème caramel with praline (perfect and I don’t even like coffee flavoured desserts), roasted nectarines with basil ice cream (unseasonal but lovely) and walnut tart with Poire William ice cream with which I made the mistake of having an extra Poire William on the side. It was that kind of evening.

Our bill came to a total of £267.50 for four including a half bottle of champagne, and a bottle of Leon Boesch Pinot Blanc, another well priced option from the very good wine list. More than we normally spend but great value for a special occasion. You could spend considerably more if you didn’t exercise restraint with the wine list. On the other hand the very good value set price lunch only costs £22 for two courses.

One thing fellow Walnut Tree followers might have noticed is that the cooking and presentation have become slightly more 'haute' in the last couple of years - a harkback to Hill’s more refined cooking at the Merchant House and Gidleigh Park - which is obviously why it now has a Michelin star.

Don't let that put you off though. The kitchen doesn't go in for foams, streaks or blobs - just good fresh ingredients respectfully treated. The Walnut Tree is a comforting sort of place. Hill won’t be there forever so go while you have the chance.

The Walnut Tree is at Llandewi Skirrid just outside Abergavenny. Te: 01873 852797

PS There are a couple of cottages down the road you can rent for the night if you don’t want to drive after this kind of orgy and a regular taxi service to and from Abergavenny. I’d take advantage of that if I were you (we rented one of the cottages)

The Tasting Room at Le Quartier Francais

When I first went to Le Quartier Français in Franschhoek around 10 years ago I was blown away. Since then its chef Margot Janse has become one of the world’s most high profile chefs and the food more experimental. Would the experience be as memorable?

I remember sitting outside on a warm evening and eating by far the most delicious meal I’d had on the trip - Janse was way ahead of her competitors then in terms of use of ingredients and technical skill.

There was one dish - one of the ‘boks’ with a sweet, spicy cure - I was so impressed by that I persuaded her to give me the recipe and adapted it to a Chateaubriand in my book ‘Steak’ (now sadly out of print*).

This time the meal took place in a smartly designed room with a neon sign outside from a no-choice 8 course ‘surprise’ tasting menu for which we were advised we should allow 3 1/2 hours - although I think we managed it in 3. Surprise is the right word. It was a roller-coaster of an experience involving a kaleidoscope of different colours, tastes and textures.

You’ll be relieved to know I’m not going to talk you it through course by course, specially as my companion had a slightly different menu which meant I tasted 13 dishes in all - plus amuse-gueules. But the highlights for me were:

• one of the simplest dishes, described as 'a summer walk through Franschhoek' (right) a fresh-tasting salad of young vegetables and salad leaves that went perfectly with the subtle, delicious 2011 Reyneke Chenin Blanc we were drinking.
• a marron (crayfish) with gooseberry water and lemon verbena - a delicate accompaniment pitched just right for the super-fresh shellfish
• quail with amasi (a yoghurt-like fermented milk) savoury granola, shallots, corn puree and sprouts - my favourite of the main course dishes - I liked Janse’s use of grains
• Karoo Wildebeest loin with wild grains, sorghum, rainbow carrots and celeriac purée (right) - the prettiest dish of the meal
• Swartland guineafowl with fennel, porcini and liquorice root - again, a great looking dish. Meat and game are clearly Janse’s forte
• and two really inventive cheese courses - a gooey, fondue-like Dalewood lanquedoc custard with vinegar ‘flings’ and crisp shards of leek and jagged hunks of Klein river gruyere with rusks, mebos (dried plum) custard and raisins (below).

I was less wowed by a slightly tortured starter of a beetroot sponge ball with buttermilk labne and dill and cucumber granita which had lost touch with its beet roots and a rather messy looking dish of oyster with a thick vichyssoise purée and roasted cos lettuce where again the flavour of the oyster had been lost in translation. And the service, while charming, was almost too full-on - a bit like being jumped on by a labrador puppy. It would be hard to go there and have a an intimate meal.

But my main reservation - and this is my beef with most fine dining restaurants - is that there was too much repetition of favoured techniques. Too many crumbs, smears, blobs and pools of puree. Although many were visually arresting it was all rather overwhelming but that may say more about what I’m looking for from a restaurant these days than Janse’s undoubted prowess in the kitchen

We could also have had wine pairings with each course - they looked well chosen but cost another R400 (£29) a head and I’m not sure it wouldn’t have made the meal even more of a sit-up-and-pay-attention performance. After the Chenin we drank a deliciously gamey Eben Sadie 2010 Sequillo - a Rhoneish blend of Syrah, Mourvedre and Grenache which worked particularly well with the game dishes.

Interestingly although Janse continues to pick up awards she no longer appears quite as consistently in the San Pellegrino top 50 as she did in the 'noughties', an indication, perhaps, of how much the restaurant world has moved on since then but also of the fact that staying at the top is tough as chefs seek new ways to grab the critics' attention. I’m not sure I didn’t prefer it the way it was.

If you’re a fan of top-end fine dining experiences you should add it to your bucket list but there are other restaurants in the Winelands where you'll get equally good food and a slightly more relaxed vibe. I'll be writing about some of them shortly.

I ate at Le Quartier Français as a guest of the restaurant. The menu is R770 (£56), R1170 (£85) with wine pairings - expensive for the area but not by comparison with similar restaurants internationally.

Le Quartier Français is at Cnr Berg & Wilhelmina Streets Franschhoek, Western Cape, 7690. Tel: 0027 21876 2151. You'll need to book well ahead.

*actually I was expecting to find, like most of my books, that it was selling for 1p on Amazon but turns out the UK edition is fetching £48.99. Should have kept more copies!

Apologies for appalling pix, due to the low light (though why should chefs light their restaurants for customers who want to snap their food?) Here’s a slightly better set from a similar meal by blogger Jason Bagley

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