So what is Sticky Walnut really like?

This is not so much a review as a report from the front line on the UK’s most unlikely gourmet hotspot, Sticky Walnut in Chester.

From their Twitter stream you’d imagine it was the kind of place that would play visual jokes on you of the Heston purple-jelly-tastes-of-orange/orange-jelly-of-beetroot variety but that's not their schtick.

For those unfamiliar with it, the account which is run by chef Gary Usher is utterly manic, peppered with bizarre, deliberately misspelt tweets and regularly changes its name. (At the moment it’s ‘&expensive’, presumably a reference to an adverse Trip Advisor review). Despite sending up his own restaurant - the current biog reads “Winner of the international best photo of an apple on a restaurant wall 1996. Runner up in best use of the word 'and' on a restaurant menu 1999/2000” Usher has managed to raise £100,000 on Kickstarter (including a contribution from yours truly) for his next restaurant, Burnt Truffle (yes, Burnt Truffle) which should open in early summer 2015.

Sticky Walnut is in a modest neighbourhood of Chester called Hoole, sandwiched between an estate agent and an Indian takeaway. You could easily overlook it walking past - it looks more like a cafe than a restaurant, let alone a place that offers food worthy of a Michelin star.

We ordered 3 starters as the prices were so good - dark earthy glossy oven roast beets with the eponymous sticky walnuts and fresh ricotta, some deeply charred quail with carrot, dukkah and a vegetable nage (a surprisingly cheffy word for Sticky) and seabream with moreishly crispy ‘puffed’ chickpeas and mango salsa, a combination I’d normally run a mile from but which turned out to be a beautifully judged combination of flavours and textures and a top match with a glass of Amalaya torrontes and riesling from the very decent wine list.

I also went for fish for my main course - some fabulously fresh hake with kale, brown shrimps and a velvety smooth lemon and fennel (I think) purée while my host had a rather less exciting warm brassica salad with pickled romesco and caramelised cauliflower - a good stab at providing an interesting veggie option but I would venture to say veg isn't Usher's strongest suit.

Desserts, which we indulged in out of sheer piggery, were an outrageously rich chocolate tart with blood orange sorbet and a rhubarb trifle/crumble hybrid I’d like to try and make at home. Spot on.

The kitchen at the back of the restaurant remained subdued throughout. I’d expected a real life version of the SW Twitter stream with constant noisy joshing between the staff but it was utterly focused and professional. Usher who I’d briefly met at a social media conference in London was reluctantly prised out to say hello and is far shyer and more modest than the tweets and the tats (right) would suggest.

Like I said Sticky Walnut is full of surprises. If you’re in the area don't miss the chance to go.

Sticky Walnut is at 11, Charles Street, Hoole, Chester CH2 3AZ. Tel: 01244 400400. And on Twitter @stickywalnut

I ate at Sticky Walnut as a guest of Lemon Zestful PR but am guessing the bill was about £38 a head including service.

Three hot restaurants to visit in Paris in spring 2015

Deciding where to eat in Paris is just as stressful as where to eat in London. There’s just too much choice

Fortunately my husband is an assiduous researcher and came up with these three - all within (energetic) walking distance of the flat where we’re staying in the Marais.

They’re from a new breed of Parisian restaurants that offer short menus of light contemporary food - and natural wines which may be a deal-breaker for some of you (though They Are Not All Cidery as I never tire of saying. Try to keep an open mind!)

We had lunch at all three this week. Evenings would be more expensive, obviously.

Le Servan

Le Servan was the only one of the three we’d been to before back in November where we were charmed by the simple seasonal food that chef Tatiana Levha, who runs it with her sister Katia, produces. It’s an unspectacular spot off the rue Roquette, occupying a corner site that looks as if it might have been a tearoom or a rather genteel lady’s boutique in a former life. The only touch of luxury is the very beautiful Japanese knives they provide to eat your food.

Levha, who has an impeccable pedigree having worked at Arpège and L’Astrance, manages to give all her dishes an unexpected twist - tete de cochon, served crisply rather than pressed into a terrine, is worked into in an Asian-style warm salad with lightly cooked celery, cockles and pinenuts. Other entrées included a very pretty dish of leeks topped with flocons of foie gras fluttering like bonito flakes and a gravlax of trout with endive and just the right amount of orange to make you realise most places use too much. A deep sticky braise of beef and cooked and steamed carrots - still with their leaf stalks - showed she can handle the bistro repertoire too though fish (lieu jaune) on this occasion was slightly bland, less well handled than the previous time we went. Desserts might also not satisfy the sweet-toothed although I’d have been more than happy with the tatin-like caramelised apple on a slice of warm crumbly cake with salted caramel sauce if I hadn’t opted for cheese. (A simple slice of blue served with a mâche salad.) Oh, and you don’t need to take my word for it It’s one of former Figaro critic Francois Simon’s favourite spots.

Le Servan is at 32, rue St.-Maur, Paris 75011. Tel: 01 55 28 51 82 Nearest Metro Voltaire.

We drank: A bottle of Alice and Olivier de Moor’s Le Vendangeur Masqué 2013, a Chablis-like chardonnay made just outside the region, a glass of Muxagat Tinta Barrocca and an Arbois Chardonnay-Savagnin from Patrice Hugues Beguet. Servan offers the most mainstream wines of the three.

We paid: 157€ (£113.67) for 4 of which food came to 25€ a head

Yard

Yard is about 7-8 minutes up the road from Servan in an equally unglamourous area off rue de la Folie-Regnault near the Cimetière Père Lachaise. It’s even smaller than Servan with the kitchen at the back of the dining room and has more of a bistro feel about it. Tables of two, largely occupied by locals, are grouped in a block down the middle of the room.

The lunchtime formula is similar - a short, seasonally inspired menu of small - but not too small - plates: fresh radishes with fromage frais, super fresh mussels with celery, cabbage and bergamot (lovely), a great piece of seared cod cooked to perfection with broccoli rabe and anchoiade on the side and a more robust dish of crisply fried boudin noir with eggs which even my eggophile husband couldn’t finish. That would have been just 15€ but we paid an extra 3€ each for an impeccable warm tarte au citron and a blood orange salad - an eminently copiable fresh tasting dessert of sliced oranges, walnuts, dates and shredded mint.

Yard is at 6 rue de Mont-Louis, 75011 Paris. Tel: 01 40 09 70 30. Nearest Metro Philippe-Auguste. Note you can't book at lunchtime.

We drank: A couple of glasses of La Peur du Rouge, a funky chardonnay/viognier blend from Axel Prufer’s Le Temps des Cerises (23€), taking the rest back home with us. Wines by the glass start at 3€.

We paid: 59€ (£42.65) for two. The best bargain of the three.

Heimat

This recent opening from natural wine bar pioneer Pierre Jancou is In the upmarket 1st rather than the hipster 11th and is quite different in style from his previous venues, Racine and Vivant., The big stone-walled rooms and 80s-style bentwood chairs make it sparse almost to the point of being clinical though I suspect it would be more cosy in the evening. The lunch menu offers just 6 dishes including dessert and is quite fierce given what turns out to be quite a conventional-looking all-female clientele: two of the six were bulots (which we’d had the night before) and tripe. Fortunately there turned out to be a satisfyingly savoury special of veal tongue on which my husband leapt.

The other starter was a beautifully elegant plate of chinchard (horse mackerel) tartare with shaved radishes and coriander sprouts. We both opted for the non-tripey main, a spicy seafood linguine dusted with what looked like soot but turned out to be burnt sage. Weird but rather good - much nicer than it sounds. The natural wine list is hugely impressive as you’d expect from Jancou and well explained by our waitress.

Heimat is at 37 rue de Montpensier just by the Palais Royal (don’t miss the gorgeous garden). Tel 01 40 26 78 25 Nearest metros Palais Royal or Bourse

We drank: Camerlengo's Accamilla, an 'orange' malvasia from Basilicata, Les Cailloux de Paradis Quartz from the Sologne and Vuillaud's Sang Neuf 2013 a dark, robust Beaujolais. All quite hard core but the helpful waitress spoke good English and could almost certainly steer you to a less exacting choice.

We paid: 89€ (£64) for 2 courses, 3 glasses of wine and 2 coffees. Evenings are quite a bit more.

Borago: cutting-edge cuisine in Santiago, Chile

Recently voted the eighth best restaurant in Latin America, Boragó is to Santiago as Noma is to Copenhagen. Food and travel writer Qin Xie experiences it for herself.

"Rodolfo Guzman, the young chief at the pass, was out foraging in the Atacama Desert to the north of Chile when I arrived for supper. The sizeable team, chaperoned by the even younger sous chef, Shannon Martincic, who I had mistaken for a stagiaire, was running on its own steam and to a good rhythm.

From what I gather, Guzman was with a group of international journalists. Entertaining scribes seems part and parcel of culinary stardom these days though Guzman hasn't shirked his kitchen duties - assurances were given that the chef had foraged for the restaurant that morning before jetting off.

Guzman trained under Andoni Luis Aduriz at the two-star Michelin Mugaritz in Spain and that education hasn't gone unnoticed in the dining room or the kitchen. Like the menu at Mugaritz, the dishes have a certain unexpectedly playful element about them. And like Mugaritz, Boragó has a development kitchen upstairs where the team try out new recipes between service each day.

But, that's where the similarities ended as the 10 course Endémica menu (55,000 pesos, about five times the price of an average restaurant in Santiago but reasonable by London standards) is one hundred per cent Chilean, covering every region from high up in the Andes down to the wilderness of Patagonia and out into the icy Pacific Ocean. A bottle of Vigno by Garcia Schwaderer, an old-vine Carignan from Maule, perched to the side. It's instantly recognisable after the previous night's MOVI tasting with Derek Mossman Knapp, flying the flag for Chile's indie wine producers.

Boragó's rocky history echoes the familiar tale of fine dining concepts everywhere – it was barely scraping by until the arrival of the international press. The results can certainly be felt in the Nordic-esq dining room as the flutter of conversation was largely American with a few oriental faces appearing from a separate dining room.

The slow symphony starts with a selection of indigenous ingredients which, after a fortnight in Chile, were familiar stops on the food map.

The challengingly fleshy texture of piure, a mollusc akin to sea urchin, was transformed by way of a bitter mandarin mousse, into something quite delicious. Pickled vegetables, combined with the smoky spice of the merkén chilli, gave a respectable nod to churrasco, the Chilean way of barbecuing.

The playfulness also showed in the loco (Spanish for crazy, above) that appeared half magic wand and half spirit stick. This, a squid-inked bread stick, charcoal black and partially glossed with “moss”, leaves and blossom, was served in a leaf-lined metal pot of coriander seeds. But while the painted end proved tantalising, I wasn't quite so sure what to do with the rest.

Then there were the rocks of Quintay (a seaside town in Valparaíso to the west of Santiago). In a shallow bowl came a small pavé of smoked conger eel, wrapped in volcanic black tempura. Its companion, a large granitic rock, was carefully smeared with an even coating of black farinaceous purée. At the table, a rich, herbal broth, made from a root plant used to teeth babies, washed over the top. To complete the scene, a cumbersome wooden spoon, too awkward to fit between the rock and the bowl, was the instrument offered, ensuring minimum dining sophistication. The joke was definitely on me – how long should one wait before requesting a real spoon?

The subtle smoke and delicate texture of the conger eel made fine feasting though, especially with the Casa Marín Lo Abarca Pinot Noir 2010 that Diego, the sommelier, poured to match.

It's never just about the food of course. There's a certain element of visualisation too, of the Chilean terroir. A nectar-centred quail's egg, slotted into a dehydrated mushroom nest, balancing gingerly on top of the fine branches of a stripped bonsai, painted a picture of a bird's nest out in the desert. A lemony ice cream and wisps of plant-based cotton candy made up the camanchaca (thick fog) and rica rica (a Chilean bush plant) from the Atacama.

And speaking of terroir, the Andes had its salad of wild plants, matched with a dry Zaranda Muscat 2011 from Itata, while the Patagonia offered a venison tartare with a Sol de Sol Chardonnay 2010.

Interestingly, the wine matches (30,000 pesos/£31) weren't always wine as Diego strayed into beer and liqueur too. To his credit, these turned out to be both imaginative and very agreeable.

The dessert of pine mushrooms, a rocher of earthy sorbet resting on sandy, sweet and salty walnut praline and piped droplets of dulche de leche, arrived with a small glass of Granizo pale ale. The bitterness of one found complemented the earthiness of the other.

Chile's national aperitif, the Bitter Araucano, a prickly, liqueur version of cola, was the memorable last pairing. Paving the way was an equally testy bitter chocolate ganache, infused with hawthorn.

Travelling the length of the polarising landscape of Chile on the Endémica, some 20 morsels and bites had elapsed since we began the journey three hours previously. The menu had inspired, challenged, mocked and left plenty to reflect on.

The final gong, a minty, nitro-cooked meringue in one bite, was the perfect glacial rendition of After Eights. Like breathing in the pristine air of the Andes during the first break of spring, it was cooler than cool."

Borago is at Avenida. Nueva Costanera 3467, Vitacura, Santiago 7530078, Chile

Qin Xie is a food, drink and travel journalist and photographer. You can find her website here.

5 fun places to have breakfast in London (updated)

Have you noticed the number of restaurants which have started offering breakfast - and I don’t just mean a full English?

Breakfast seems to have become the new lunch though goodness knows how hard-pressed execs have time to chat over a bacon naan* (see below) before they hit their desks. Maybe they’ve already been there since six and this is their mid-morning break ….

It makes sense of course from a business point of view. Restaurants have to be open to prep lunch so they might as well offer breakfast to cover their overheads. And for customers breakfast is cheaper than lunch and certainly dinner. No alcohol for a start.

I’ve taken to breakfasting with friends regularly so here are five of my current favourites (updated from back in July 2014) together with five more you might enjoy . . .

The Modern Pantry, 47-48 St John’s Square, Clerkenwell

One of the first restaurants to become creative about breakfast, Anna Hansen’s bright, light Modern Pantry offers a dazzling selection of breakfast dishes that’s only slightly less extensive than their weekend brunch. Options range from homemade bircher muesli with roasted pineapple, raspberry compote and toasted seeds (£5.80) to sugar-cured prawn omelette with green chilli, spring onions, coriander and smoked chilli samba (£9.20) - still my favourite though I enjoyed the sweetcorn, feta, green chilli and curry leaf waffle the other day. Breakfast is served from 8-11am. It gets rammed so you need to book

Fischer’s, 50 Marylebone High Street (Marylebone Village)

One of my new favourite breakfast - and frankly any-time-of-day - spots, Fischer’s is the latest opening from Chris Corbin and Jeremy King of The Wolseley, Brasserie Zedel and Delaunay fame. Like The Delaunay it has an Austrian vibe - only even more so - it feels just like one of those grand Viennese cafés. Sadly it doesn’t serve strudel for breakfast - or didn’t when I went - but the Gröstl (£11.25), a robust country-style fry-up of eggs and paprika-spiked potatoes, will make up for it. Pretzels are excellent too. Monday-Sunday 8am-11.30am

Honey & Co, 25a Warren Street (near Great Portland Street tube)

Honey & Co’s tiny restaurant is famously hard to get into - I imagine even more so after the publication of their hugely successful book - but at breakfast you at least stand a chance. I rocked up at 9.30 recently and walked straight in. The dilemma is choosing between healthy middle-eastern options such as flatbread with egg, spinach, yoghurt and pickles (about £7-ish) or cake - if you’re lucky the plum (or cherry), coconut and pistachio cake will be on. Stay all morning and you can justify both. From 8am.

Koya Bar, 50 Frith Street, Soho

If you fancy a Japanese breakfast, Koya Bar (next to the original Koya) is the place to go. It has the Japanese classics like salmon onigiri and miso soup but also, when I last went, clever riffs on classic British offerings such as ‘kedgeree’ (porridge with smoked haddock and poached egg) and English breakfast noodles with egg, bacon and shiitake mushrooms. Sound a bit hard core? Admittedly you need to wake up feeling adventurous but I love the deeply savoury flavours and sitting up at the bar watching the chefs at work. From 8.30am.

The Greek Larder, King's Cross

The Greek Larder sees the welcome return of the talented Theodore Kyriakou whose The Real Greek was one of my favourite restaurants of the early noughties. He now has a new place in uber-trendy Kings Cross, just up the road from the Guardian and round the corner from Grainstore, Caravan and the latest branch of Dishoom (see below) whose bacon naan you shouldn't overlook either. As the name suggests it’s a deli, takeaway and wine shop as well as a restaurant with all kinds of Greek goodies it’s hard to find anywhere else. I went for breakfast and had some delicious baked eggs with pistachio-infused goats cheese, Koulouri (sesame bread) and Greek mountain tea.

1 York Way, London N1C 4AS. Tel: 020 378 02999. Nearest tube: Kings Cross/St Pancras. There's a useful map on the website if you're not familiar with the area.

And 5 others worth trying . . .

Either branch of Dishoom (in Covent Garden or Shoreditch) for their bacon naan roll* (£5.20) - a thing of beauty. Some delicious-sounding new spicy egg dishes too I haven’t tried. 8am-11.30am.

Duck and Waffle, Heron Tower, Bishopsgate (City)

For an early morning breakfast after a late night’s clubbing or, simply for the stunning views - it's on the 40th floor. The signature duck and waffle (£15), never mind the Full Elvis Belgian waffle, is a touch sweet for me. Try the ox cheek benedict (£11) instead. 6am-11am.

Newman Street Tavern, 48 Newman Street (Fitzrovia)

One of those quiet under-the-radar restaurants that never lets you down. The Newman Street Breakfast includes roast suckling pig - great value for £10. Excellent bacon and egg sandwich too made with huge doorsteps of white bread. 7.30-11am.

Quo Vadis, Dean Street (Soho)

Worth going just for the stylish room and beautifully drawn menus (see top of post). Last time I went I had tomatoes on toast with goats curd which doesn’t seem to be on the menu currently. But bacon 'manchets' are. The kind of place to indulge in a kipper. 8am-11am.

Hawksmoor Guildhall, 10 Basinghall Street (City)

Declaration of interest - this is my son Will’s restaurant but if you feel in the mood for steak (or pig’s cheek scrapple) for breakfast - £22 or £8 respectively - washed down with an ‘anti-fogmatic’ cocktail this is the place to go. (Monday-Friday 7am-10am)