Shop Eight Food and Wine, Christchurch, New Zealand

It must take guts to open a restaurant in Christchurch. Four years after the devastating earthquake that demolished much of the historic city centre it still looks like a war zone in places with yawning gaps where local landmarks once were.

Why, you wonder, do they not do more to get the country’s second biggest city back on its feet again? Apparently it’s complicated. Records indicate the region is still earthquake prone (not that that’s unusual for New Zealand) and businesses have got used to operating in the suburbs. Bureaucracy moves slowly.

But there were signs on a summer’s evening on my recent trip that the heart is returning to the city: a busy bike mending project, wasteland turned into urban gardens, a group of kids practising their dance moves in a parking lot and, most impressive of all, Shop Eight, a small restaurant in New Regent street, a row of shops that miraculously survived the quake.

The restaurant was set up a year ago by Liz Phelan and chef Alex Davies an Essex lad who moved to New Zealand as a boy and who still retains his accent despite having spent most of his adult life in the country. 95% of the ingredients the restaurant uses are locally sourced, determined by what is available that day. Most are organic, all sustainable.

The short boldly imaginative menu changes every night. The night I was there (as a guest of the North Canterbury winegrowers* whose wines feature on the all-local list), it included a fragrant umami-rich fish soup with gurnard, clams oyster and summer truffles, a tomato salad with smoked mussels and basil, a punchy dish of spring onions and sprouted seeds with a slow cooked egg and chilli oil and a simply stunning main course of hare with red kale, beetroot, plums and red currants that seemed (probably was) designed to go with the local pinot noir.

There was two beautiful hand-made cheeses, a goats cheese and a deeply flavoursome ‘single origin’ washed rind cheese’ from a cow called Isobel (below) made by Biddy Fraser-Davies, a 72 year old cheesemaker from Cwmglyn farm between Wellington and Napier. (You can read about her battle with the authorities here.). And some warm buckwheat and honey madeleines to finish. This is food that you’d be impressed by if you found it in Paris or London, never mind Christchurch.

Shop Eight is a restaurant that keeps the community at the heart of its operations. Everything down to the furniture which was made by Rekindle from reclaimed wood from the quake is thoughtfully sourced.

If you’re in Christchurch don’t avoid the city centre. Go and celebrate its regeneration at Shop Eight

Shop Eight is at 8 New Regent Street, Christchurch and is open from 4pm from Tuesday to Friday and from 2pm on Saturdays. Closed Sundays and Mondays. To book email bookings@shopeight.co.nz or phone 03 390 0199. Its menus during February 2015 will be meat-free. You can keep tabs on them on Twitter and Facebook.

Another restaurant well worth visiting in Christchurch, I’m told, is Roots. I also stayed in a very comfortable luxury B & B out by the university called The Establishment - about 10-15 minutes from the airport.

*I tasted wines at the dinner from Bellbird Spring, Greystone, Mountford, Muddy Water, Pegasus Bay and Tongue in Groove. More on these in due course.

Sea Containers at Mondrian: much more fun than it sounds

I may have been handicapped by knowing the building previously as an office block but even the name Sea Containers at Mondrian has a corporate ring that makes the heart sink.

The food though is far, far better than you’d expect from a hotel restaurant with some original and delicious dishes devised by New York chef Seamus Mullen of Tertulia who has been brought in as a consultant.

We arrived late for lunch by which time the vast dining room was half empty. This is obviously a place used for business lunches by nearby office workers (there’s a 3 course deal at £24)

Our waitress arrived to explain the ‘concept’ which was ‘sharing’ (gah!) but there were enough tempting “seasonally contemplated” dishes to make us over-order.

The first wave was in many ways the best: a cracking kale, apple and pecan salad (recipe here) which would convert any kale-loather and which we liked so much we insisted on keeping to hand for the whole meal; some delicious smoky 'charred eggplant’ with mint labneh and dates (right) and a plate of artfully draped salmon ‘crudo with fennel and dill yoghurt. By the time we’d scoffed that lot we were already full.

We’d dithered over whether to order the smoked and roasted cornfed chicken (below) on the basis that two gals didn’t need to eat a whole chicken but a charred lemon vinaigrette had sold it. We did have it with braised greens and mushrooms rather than chips or mash which made it slightly more virtuous but made more inroads on it than we’d intended. (The slightly bitter lemon vinaigrette is a winner and great with the light Morellino di Scansano we were drinking)

We were less keen on the flatbread with sobrassado, a rather ungenerous pizza with slow cooked egg yolks (bleugh) perched on top but it was the only duff dish of the meal.

We managed - God knows how - to find room for a dessert - well, rude not to really with a pear soufflé for two with an extra shot of poire william on offer. A splendidly posh fine dining pudding you wouldn’t have expected to find in a relatively casual restaurant like this.

Other plusses and minuses: a decent but quite pricey wine by the glass selection (most of the interesting ones about £10-12 a glass but well served at the right temperature in proper glasses). Slightly scatty service. A request for bread totally threw them - and when it finally arrived it looked like the toasted leftovers from breakfast. Flatbread apart, I don’t think they ‘do’ bread*. Slightly annoying background music.

By and large though Sea Containers was much better than I expected in a dramatic room with stunning views overlooking the Thames and St Paul’s. Cosy it ain’t but it’s a great place to eat if you’re staying (by no means true of all hotel restaurants), to take visitors to London, especially at night or even lunch with a greedy girlfriend … If we’d stuck to those 3 first courses and a glass of wine it would only have cost £20-odd a head.

I ate as a guest of Sea Containers at Mondrian. I’m guessing the full bill would have been more like £60 a head if you ate a normal amount of food.

Sea Containers at Mondrian is at 20 Upper Ground, London, SE1 9PD. Tel: +44 (0)20 3747 1000. It's open on a Sunday which is useful.

* Borne out by the title of Mullen’s book: Hero Food: How Cooking with Delicious Things Can Make Us Feel Better,”

4 of the hottest new London restaurants (updated)

It's hard to keep up with London restaurant openings these days. The latest hotspot seems to change from week to week but these four should definitely be on your radar in spring 2015.

I wrote the original reviews before Christmas, updating Kitty Fisher's once I'd been there on New Year's Eve. Since UK prime minister David Cameron took his wife Samantha there last month it's been even harder to get into. Try lunch.

I've also replaced The Greek Larder in the original post with Blacklock - not because I don't rate GL but I think it belongs better in my London breakfast round-up.

Smoking Goat, Soho

Smoking Goat (above and right) has all the prerequisites of a hip London hangout, except possibly being in Shoreditch. It’s tiny, you can’t book and it does cocktails and dirty food in the form of Thai barbecue (Thai looks like being one of the trends of 2015 - see also Som Saa which I haven’t managed to get to yet but have heard great things about.) Hitting it on a Monday - probably a wise move in terms of the queues - we missed the dirtiest dish of all, the epically messy crab but managed to score the fabled fish sauce wings, slow roast duck - like a Thai-spiced confit - and a special of pork belly which was also insanely good. The wine list, compiled by Zeren Wilson of Bitten & Written is far better than you'd expect from a place of its size (see my match of the week a couple of months ago). Note they don't serve the full menu until 7pm though are now open for lunch. And they stay open late - until 2-ish, I believe. Told you it was hip.

7 Denmark Street, London WC2H 8LZ. Nearest tube, Tottenham Court Road. Photos of Smoking Goat © Paul Winch-Furness

Rex & Mariano, Soho

The latest creation from the Goodman and Burger & Lobster team, Rex & Mariano has the stamp of an equally successful roll-out. Its USP is affordable seafood though not with quite the NY/Italian vibe the name might suggest. There’s a lot of raw fish in the form of carpaccios, tartares and ceviche, some demon red prawns we had them grilled) and a generous but slightly bizarre fritto misto that contained fried tuna and salmon (some might not object as much as this fritto misto purist). Some clever ideas have gone into the place - iPad ordering (great fun), wine on tap, including some cool Californian reds and only 5% service (here's hoping the staff don't take the hit.) Fresh, modern, fun and affordable it’s somewhere you could take anyone (barring a fussy fish-hating 5 year old) for a stylish central London meal.

2 St Anne’s Court, London W1F 0AZ. (Just off Dean Street) Tel: 0207 437 0566. Nearest tubes: Tottenham Court Road or Leicester Square

Kitty Fisher's, Mayfair

I’ll write this up when I eventually get there (see below for update) but thought it was worth including as it’s already attracted rave comments on Twitter from Times restaurant critic Giles Coren. Billed as a ‘louche dining experience’ it looks warm and clubby. Specialities includeTaleggio on Grilled Bread, Mustard, Ale & London Honey - a good enough reason to go there in my book though the Galician beef for two, cooked on the wood grill, is said to be the thing.

I did make it on the last day of 2014. I wouldn’t have said it was louche - not at lunchtime anyway - it reminds me of the kind of restaurant I used to go to in the 70s, all dark wood and dusky pink velour banquettes. The food is bang on trend though. Being over the Christmas holiday they didn’t have the Galician beef but a home-grown, well-matured and slightly gamey version. No toasted cheese either but some really fabulous grilled leeks with brown butter and smoked almonds (right) and burrata, beetroot and clementine - they’re particularly imaginative with veg. The highlight though was some incredibly more-ish rough-hewn toasted bread with whipped butter, dusted with powdered burnt onion (above). Doesn’t sound that appealing, I know, but you’ll have to trust me. Steak tartare, not on when I went, is said to be great too.

Kitty Fisher’s isn’t cheap - we are talking Mayfair after all. I spent just under £150 for two of us with only one dessert, a glass of Cava and one bottle of wine but it is original and charming. Exactly the sort of place to take a visitor to London who wants something typically English. Or a prime minister . . .

10 Shepherd Market, London W1J 7QF. Tel 020 3302 1661. Nearest tube: Green Park.

Blacklock, Soho

You only have to learn that a restaurant specialises in skinny chops finished with a flatiron to fancy going there (unless you’re a veggie of course) so I was ready to fall in love with Blacklock before I took a single bite.

Coupled with £5 cocktails and an inventive assortment of sides this new basement restaurant just up the road from Piccadilly Circus adds to Soho’s claim to be the epicentre of the cool end of the London dining scene.

The best deal is the ‘all in’ - a selection of ‘pre-chop bites’ (cheese and pickle which is topped with freshly pickled veg is my fave), beef, pork and lamb chops and a choice of side (I strongly suggest you go for the 10 hour ash-roasted sweet potato which is the best sweet potato dish I’ve ever eaten). Or the charred baby gems. That’s £20 a head for a minimum of two. Oh, and the best bit is the fact the chops come on chargrilled flatbread which soaks up all the meaty juices.

The downside, as with Smoking Goat, is you can’t book which given its popularity may make getting in in the evening a bit of a pain but lunchtime at the moment is fine - and rather less noisy if you’re over the age of 40. There are also wines on tap and craft beers (‘course there are) and a wicked white chocolate cheesecake served ‘family style’. In other words in unhealthily large portions though there is poached rhubarb on the side to kid you it's a healthy choice ...

Blacklock is in the Basement at 24 Great Windmill Street and is open Mon-Sat from noon to 11.30 and Sunday until they’re sold out. Nearest tube: Piccadilly Circus.

Disclosure. I was comp'd my sides, pud and a couple of free cocktails at Blacklock. Not that it would have broken the bank if I hadn't been.

Blunos - posh fish in Bath

One of the biggest problems hotels have is how to keep their guests in the building for meals. The solution is generally to employ a celebrity chef and that’s what the County Hotel in Bath has done with Martin Blunos. (Sadly this restaurant has unexpectedly closed.)

If you haven’t heard of him, you should have done. With his engaging personality, distinctive walrus moustache and warm West Country burr this larger than life TV chef is hard to miss. (Think a 1990s version of Tom Kerridge.) I first met him 20 or so years ago when he was cooking at Lettonie, a restaurant for which he earned two Michelin stars.

It was a bit of a shock to find him in this rather bling brasserie-style dining room with its gashes of lime green and orange* - not that anything has been skimped on fitting it out. Reassuringly for a fish restaurant though, there’s a display of fish worthy of a high class fishmonger together with an extensive list of daily specials. “Today’s oysters are from Poole and Porthilly" it announced.

Fortunately they were among the dishes that Blunos sent us out to try (Disclosure: I was lunching with wine writer and consultant Angela Mount who had drawn up the wine list). There are some utterly delicious grilled ‘Asian oysters’ with sesame, chilli and sake you mustn’t miss if they’re on. We also tried the crisp salt and pepper squid with a nuoc cham dip, potted shrimps with salmon served in a dinky can (great idea - salmon definitely adds to the texture) and some fabulously airy crab tortellini (below), a worthy 2 Michelin star dish.

We then managed to consume the best part of a grilled seabass with salsa verde that could have easily served three - expensive at £49 but perfectly cooked and incredibly fresh. (Not all the mains are as expensive. A whole mackerel with ginger would only have been £18 and you could easily make up a meal from the ‘small plates’ which, oysters, crab and tiger prawns apart, mainly hover around £7-10)

Wine follows a similar pattern, pricewise. You could spend a bomb on a bottle of Dom Perignon which at £200 is the same as at Rick Stein’s Seafood restaurant but the very decent Devaux house champagne is available at £11 a glass. The fabulous Greywacke Wild Sauvignon - a worthy alternative to Cloudy Bay - is a toppy £65 but you can order the zesty Godello do Monterrei from Mara Martin - their best seller - for a far more affordable £29 or £5.50 a glass. Basic Chablis is pricey at £55 a bottle but there’s a good Languedoc chardonnay for £30.

So Blunos can be expensive, as befits a Michelin star-standard restaurant. It would be ideal if you wanted to book somewhere in Bath for a celebration but it’s also a good place to go for some great fish and a lighter meal - though I can imagine the cooking might not be quite as precise if the man himself was not in the kitchen**. (Those tortellini, in particular, are a hard act to pull off.)

Treat it like a seafood tapas restaurant, share a few small plates, especially the daily specials, have a glass of white wine or prosecco and you could get out at under £25 a head. Which for cooking of this quality is great value.

PS There is also (a distinct boon in Bath) off-street parking.

Blunos is at The County Hotel, 18-19 Pulteney Rd, Bath BA2 4EZ. Phone: 01225 481188. Closed Sunday and Monday and - note, late eaters - for reservations after 9.30pm in the evening on other days. Also closed for refurbishment in January 2015

I ate at Blunos as a guest of the restaurant

* I may be on my own on this. Several reviewers on Trip Advisor love the decor ;-)

** which, to be fair, he generally is. And often bringing dishes to the table and chatting to the guests.