Looking for restaurants in Herefordshire? Want to know where to eat in Hereford? Food and travel writer Suzy Bennett takes us on a foodie road trip through Herefordshire, stopping off at farmhouse kitchens, rustic chic restaurants and fruit farms.

Lunchtime on a blustery day in the foothills of the Brecon Beacons, and forager Liz Knight sips from a steaming pot over a stove in her cosy farmhouse kitchen. The sweet, wintery scent of her latest recipe, a spiced rosehip syrup made from ingredients gathered near her Herefordshire home, fills the air. “That’ll go perfectly in prosecco,” she announces, after a moment’s thought.

The scene is the stuff of English country-living dreams: in Liz’s home, rustic wood floors are scattered with wicker baskets brimming with just-picked quinces and crab apples, wooden trays are lined with magenta-hued heads of drying sumac, and shelves and French dressers are piled high with jam jars full of fruits, berries, syrups, compotes, essences and preserves, all made with ingredients she’s foraged sustainably from hedgerows, trees and meadows.

Liz is one of a small group of progressive, environmentally aware food suppliers who are being brought together for the opening of Pensons, a new restaurant headed by Lee Westcott, former head chef at The Typing Room in Bethnal Green. Filling a culinary void left by the closure of three Michelin-starred restaurants in nearby Ludlow, it’s the most exciting launch the region has seen in a decade. Liz, a highly regarded forager who runs regular courses and sells her products online under the Forage Fine Foods label, has the job of teaching Lee about local wild food.

Pensons is on the edge of Netherwood Estate, a 1,200-acre swathe of untrammelled, privately owned land between Bromyard and Tenbury Wells, straddling the Herefordshire Worcester border. I am the first journalist to visit, and arrive just as the finishing touches are being installed.

A former threshing barn dating from the 15th century, it’s a study in rustic chic, with a stripped-back interior that sets off the barn’s beautiful bare bones – cruciform brickwork, stone floors and weathered elm boards. Original features have been meticulously restored, including hay-loft hatches and a manger that’s been ingeniously repurposed as a lighting rig.

The textures are as compelling as the visuals: handmade willow lampshades, blue and ecru upholstery woven in a mill on the estate, and walnut-handled steak knives, hand-forged with a hammered finish by a blacksmith just a few hundred yards away.

Industrial-style, floor-to-ceiling doors and windows, built into former wagon entrances, flood the interior with a soft, diffused light, and at each end of the space is a raised mezzanine area. One has widescreen windows, which by day give way to panoramic views of sheep-dotted pastures, and by night to star-filled skies. Outside is a pretty courtyard studded with crab apple and cherry trees, and beyond is a kitchen garden and orchard planted with native, home-grown fruit trees from specialist Frank P Matthews, in Tenbury Wells.

The estate bursts with life: woods and lakes teeming with pheasant, woodcock, partridge and duck; Muntjac bound around meadows; sheep chomp in lush pastures; fields sway with rapeseed; and there are beehives, kitchen gardens, cider apple orchards and endless foraging opportunities. “It’s inspiring to be back in touch with the produce and the seasons,” Lee tells me. “I’d lost touch with that when I was working in London.”

His estate-to-plate menus make use of the bounty on his doorstep, with modern British dishes that include beef tongue with turnip, chestnut and watercress; jerusalem artichoke, celeriac and truffle; and a 72-hour-cooked lamb belly served with gently braised baby turnips, creamy potato terrine and sticky roasted onion. Desserts have a savoury hint – the sweetness of a silky chocolate mousse is balanced by earthy beetroot and a scattering of pickled and dehydrated blackberries that give a deliciously chewy finish.

The other significant driver behind Pensons is Netherwood’s Peta Darnley, who set up the restaurant with a desire to galvanise her community. “For centuries this estate would have been at the heart of the community, but we’ve lost that. I wanted to find a way to re-engage, create jobs and bring people to the area,” she says.

Walking my dog through Netherwood’s grounds the following morning, I meet Matt Prosser, who has been the estate’s gamekeeper since he was 18. To ensure traceability, Matt breeds his own birds, rather than buying them as poults (seven week old chicks), as is the more common practice. “That way you know exactly what you’ve got and you can keep them healthy,” he tells me.

This commitment to provenance is echoed by many other local producers. Kim Hurst is a Chelsea gold medallist and Royal Horticultural Society judge who runs The Cottage Herbery, near Newnham Bridge. One of the UK’s best herb gardens, with more than 500 varieties grown on a six-acre, Victorian hop and fruit farm, it also hosts occasional open days. Kim’s husband, Rob, developed the UK’s first organic, coir-based, peat-free compost, made from Sri Lankan coconut husks, in which Kim grows all her herbs. Kim gives me a tour of her greenhouses, plucking leaves for me to taste as we go: green ginger rosemary, liquorice-scented agastache, lemon verbena, African blue basil, Vietnamese coriander and lemon rosemary. Pensons’s kitchen garden is brim-full of her creations.

At Neal’s Yard Creamery, set among the folds of the Malvern Hills, with the Wye Valley an ambrosial backdrop, the latest batch of turret-shaped Dorstone goat’s cheeses have just been laid out on trays in fridges by white-hatted makers. Much of the cheese produced in this small outbuilding is destined for stellar British chefs, among them Jamie Oliver, Raymond Blanc, Gordon Ramsay and James Lowe, as well as the country’s best cheese shops. They are also a firm fixture on Pensons’s cheeseboard. According to owner, Charlie Westhead, the success is all down to the quality of milk, which he buys from the Fletcher family farm just down the road.

Ludlow

Drawn by the foodie reputation of the region’s rural towns, I spend the following day in idle exploration. Ludlow, just across the border in Shropshire, was described by poet John Betjeman as “the loveliest town in England”, and doesn’t disappoint. I buy a just-baked pastry and hot chocolate from a market stall and stroll through narrow cobbled streets, ogling the creaky black-and-white half-timbered buildings that lean drunkenly against each other, and peering in at fishing-tackle shops, traditional sweet shops and steamy-windowed coffee houses.

Bromyard

Bromyard, back in Herefordshire, is a dinkier version of Ludlow, with a high street lined by charming antique shops, delis and boutiques. I stop in at Legges to meet owner Anthony Legge, a fifth-generation farmer who took the progressive step of opening his own butcher’s shop and deli so that he could bypass the supermarkets and sell his free-range meat direct to the public. His shelves showcase the bounty of the region, with more than 50 local products, including Chase gin, Peter Cook’s artisanal bread, Wye Valley ales, Myrtle’s Kitchen preserve, locally roasted Method coffee, and natural cider from Little Pomona, which also supplies Pensons.

Hereford

Surrounded by orchards and rolling pastures, and straddling the River Wye, the cathedral city of Hereford has an old-school, genteel air. But there’s a fresh breeze blowing in. In 2020, Herefordshire’s only university is due to open in the city, bringing with it a wave of young people and a vibrant new food culture. “It feels as if we are on the cusp of a big change,” says Dorian Kirk, who owns two city restaurants, The Burger Shop and The Bookshop, with his brother Edwin. “I can see this area becoming one of the coolest independent quarters in the Midlands.” Dorian’s suppliers list makes impressive reading: high-welfare meat, organic vegetables, free-range chickens, smoked fish, traditional cider, ethical small-batch coffee and Neal’s Yard Creamery cheeses.

On my final day I visit blacksmith Joel Black, who made Pensons’s steak knifes using walnut felled from the estate. Joel’s commitment to recycling goes way beyond the ordinary: he makes knives from the suspensions of vintage Land Rovers and BMWs, and runs two-day knife-making courses for the public.

My final visit is to Daniel Harris, who wove Pensons’ napkins, sofa covers and rugs using wool from Netherwood’s sheep, in a mill he converted from an old pig shed on the estate. “It’s a circular economy,” he tells me over the clackety-clack of his looms. “The sheep live on the estate, are shorn on the estate and the wool will be woven on the estate.” In 2011, Daniel set up the London Cloth Company – the first woollen mill to open in London in a century – and has worked for fashion houses including Ralph Lauren, Tommy Hilfiger and Ben Sherman. Crammed with vintage looms, and smelling of oil and sheep, the Netherwood mill is a living museum – tours can be booked by appointment. Another convert from Hackney to Herefordshire, Daniel, too, is enjoying the artistic freedom of country living: “Being here has brought back my creativity,” he tells me. “I have time to think.”

Words and photographs by Suzy Bennett, March 2019

Follow Suzy on Instagram @suzybennett.photography

Looking for Oxford restaurants? Check out our ideas for eating and drinking in the university city, from Jericho to Summertown and beyond…

Best coffee shops in Oxford…

Society Café – best coffee shop in Oxford

A 10-minute stroll from the station, tucked down St Michael’s Street, Society Café is a vibrant space that acts as a hub for local creatives. As fans of its sister branches in Bath and Bristol will know, this café is one for real coffee lovers.

Upstairs, a minimal space with grey-washed walls and hanging lights makes for a buzzing work area. Grab one of the wooden tables for two, or a high stool at a communal bench table, and add to the sound of tapping laptop keys and the background whirr of the coffee machine. The cosy downstairs area is a calmer space, where friends play games of Monopoly from the help-yourself board games selection, and coffee enthusiasts flick through copies of Caffeine and Society (the café’s own paper featuring short stories, case studies about the industry and photo essays).

Peruse an open counter laden with squidgy almond croissants, slabs of gooey peanut butter brownies and slices of cinnamon and walnut loaf while you decide on your coffee. Classic options include flat whites, cappuccinos and espressos (helpfully labelled with tasting notes), all made with Origin beans – which you can buy in bags to take away. Various guest coffees are available too, sourced from suppliers such as Horsham Coffee Roaster and Belfast’s Bailies Coffee Roasters. If you fancy something caffeine-free, grab a bottle of Jarr kombucha, or a hot chocolate made with Willies Cocoa.

society-cafe.com

The Handle Bar Café and Kitchen – best café in Oxford

Whether you need your bike fixing, or just fancy a chai masala tea, the Handle Bar Café and Kitchen can provide. Wooden tables are cosied up with hessian coffee sack cushions while strings of fairy lights and Penny Farthing bicycles suspended on the walls lend this coffee shop cum restaurant cum bar an eclectic air. It’s laptop free between 11.30am and 3pm and from 6.30pm onwards, so if you need a tea fix while working, head there in the late afternoon.

Dig into hearty veggie breakfasts complete with plantain chips and smashed avocado for brunch (and order a pot of JING loose-leaf tea on the side). Or, save yourself for roast squash salads with feta and dukkah come lunchtime.

If you’re after something stronger, head downstairs to Le Bar, a 1920s-style speakeasy serving tea-infused cocktails, from the Chai Chai Again (a concoction of bourbon, chai spice-infused sweet vermouth and Campari) to Chamo Sour (chamomile-infused rye whiskey, fresh lemon, sugar and egg white).

handlebaroxford.co.uk

Turl Street Kitchen – best brunch in Oxford

For an egg-focused brunch, head to Turl Street Kitchen. Housed in a Georgian townhouse, this all-day dining spot is split across three floors, with stripped-back wooden floors, rustic tables and teal tiles. Local artwork (all of which is available to buy) hangs on the mint green walls, while natural light floods through the striking windows.

There are plenty of nooks and crannies to sit in, from seats at the bar to a separate cosy coffee lounge, and the focus is on affordable seasonal food, with all profits going to Oxford Hub, a programme promoting volunteering with local charities. Order the poached eggs with Wye Valley smoked salmon on a slice of freshly baked bread, and be sure to get a side of the lightly whipped avocado.

turlstreetkitchen.co.uk

Best restaurants in Oxford…

Pompette – best French food and wine bar in Oxford

Pompette, meaning tipsy in French, is the latest addition to Oxford’s independent food scene. Opened in November 2018 in the Summertown area, this modern wine bar is a hit with locals and visitors alike.

Run by husband-and-wife duo Laura and Pascal Wiedemann, the focus is on French classics with European influences, from the food to the design (white plates with ‘Pompette’ printed on them are inspired by the crockery of classic Parisian bistro Paul Bert while crisp white napkins come with a red cotton trim). Deep blue walls are peppered with an eclectic mix of artwork, from Louise Sheeran screen prints to Lucy Manhan charcuterie line drawings, while a striking bar takes centre stage with high stools to perch at (or sink into moss green leather seats tucked around marble tables).

Start with warm bread (all of which comes from local French bakery Gatineau), slathered with butter and sprinkled with sea salt from dinky pots on the table. If they’re on the menu, order the piping hot croquettes to share, oozing with a gently spiced roux sauce and nuggets of ham. Slices of sweet pumpkin and buttery spinach sit on a bed of super-soft polenta, with a blanket of winter truffle dusting the dish, while a generous portion of meaty roast brill flakes onto juicy Umbrian lentils, finished off with a kick of chilli and chargrilled lemon.

Desserts are not to be missed, from hearty choux buns laced with boozy cherries and a glossy chocolate sauce to crisp meringues loaded with lightly-whipped vanilla cream, chunks of juicy rhubarb and pistachios.

Wine is the focus when it comes to drinks, from natural and low-intervention to sweet orange options from Georgia but it’s the French wines that really shine. Click here to read more about what to drink at Pompette…

pompetterestaurant.co.uk

Cherwell Boathouse – best fine-dining in Oxford

For a lunch with a view, book a table at Cherwell Boathouse. Tucked out in Park Town, this Oxford institution serves a modern European menu (expect everything from Jerusulem artichoke arancini to guinea fowl with celeriac fondant).

Set on the river bank, the old Victorian boathouse, with its exposed beams and brickwork, has a traditional approach to décor, with tables laid simply with white linen cloths and laid-back, unpretentious staff. In winter, try to get a window seat to make the most of those views or, in the warmer months, sit outside and watch as people punt past you down the river.

Choose from an à la carte menu, or, if you’re visiting on a weekday lunchtime, go for the set menu which offers three courses for £17.75. On our visit we tried crisp brown shrimp fritters with a gently spiced carrot and caraway purée and sweet onion chutney. Pink duck breast came in a rich blood orange sauce with tender kale and buttery Pommes Anna, but desserts are where it really impressed. A fudgy slice of sticky toffee pudding with a slice of caramelised banana perched on top had the right balance of sweetness, with a rich caramel sauce and quenelle of cooling milk sorbet, while biscuit nuggets added a welcome hint of salt.

cherwellboathouse.co.uk

Oli’s Thai – best Thai restaurant in Oxford

It’s not far from East Oxford’s hip, studenty Cowley Road, but hidden amid houses on an unassuming suburban street, Oli’s Thai is deliberately discreet. “We wanted a traditional neighbourhood restaurant,” explains Rufus Thurston, who runs Oli’s (named after their son), with his Thai wife, Laddawan. “A lot of my favourite restaurants are in Brooklyn, and it’s not obvious where they are. They’re plain, food-focused and the customers are people who walk there.”

It is ironic, therefore, that this bright, simple canteen has become one of Oxford’s hottest restaurant – such is the power of Ladd’s cooking. The shelves are decorated with Thai groceries but she is no slave to tradition. Instead, Ladd uses Western techniques confidently (confiting duck for her panang dish, slow-cooking pork for her green curry), to bring a new depth to dishes beyond their radiant Thai seasoning.

The oven-roasted pork belly on rice in a dark soy broth – its glassy crackling swathed in a fresh chilli and lemongrass paste – is a glorious example of this East-meets-West process.

olisthai.com

Gee’s Restaurant and Bar – best for date-night dining in Oxford

Housed in a listed Victorian conservatory, this cosy restaurant on the Banbury Road, just north of the University Parks, has been going strong since 1989. Flooded with natural light from floor-to-ceiling windows, the light and airy space has a greenhouse vibe, with its tiled floors and potted olive trees. An outdoor terrace is the perfect place to relax come summer while soft lighting sets an atmospheric tone after dark in the winter months.

From weekend brunches to Sunday roasts, the Mediterranean inspired menu focuses on cooking over fire. Dig into sweet potato and oregano risotto, burrata with rainbow chard and sides of wood fired courgettes with beetroot and dill. Puddings include British classics like pear and apple crumble and sticky toffee pudding, while crema catalana and chocolate nemesis take inspiration from Spain and Italy.

gees-restaurant.co.uk

Best food shops in Oxford…

Jericho Cheese Company – best cheese shop in Oxford

If you’re looking to stock up on cheeses, head to Jericho Cheese Company. Set up in 2016 by an ex-Neal’s Yard Dairy cheesemonger, the shop sells a variety of cheeses from across the British Isles. Ask the shop’s enthusiastic staff for a recommendation; options range from raw Isle of Mull cheddar to Suffolk’s St Jude.

Other shelves are stocked with loaves of sourdough, local free-range eggs, jars of Radnor Preserves chutney and bottles of Herefordshire’s Townsend Farm apple juice, while a fridge holds Neal’s Yard yogurt and Kentish butter. If you’re visiting on a Saturday, book in for one of the shop’s monthly evening cheese and wine tastings. You’ll taste the most exciting cheeses of the season, with bread and butter and wines to match alongside.

jerichocheese.co.uk

Oxford Covered Market – best food market in Oxford

This indoor market doesn’t just sell food but it’s worth a visit to stock up on fruit, vegetables and local beers. Wander down the aisles, stopping off at Bonners Fruit and Veg for a colourful array of seasonal produce. Pick up candy beetroots, brussels sprouts and radiccio before heading to Teadrop, a tiny micropub (part of West Oxfordshire’s Church Hanbrewery) serving cask ales to drink in, as well as local draught and bottled beers to takeaway.

If gelato is what you’re after, head to iScream for scoops of chocolate, hazelnut and stracciatella. Founder Graham was inspired to open a gelateria after holidaying in Tuscany over 10 years ago. Cream and milk comes from Guernsey cows in Wiltshire, while the production equipment comes direct from Italy. Classic Italian flavours include pistachio, coffee and hazelnut or, in the summer, keep cool with a cone of lemon sorbetto.

oxford-coveredmarket.co.uk

Objects of Use – best kitchen accessories in Oxford

Be sure to check out Objects of Use while you’re on Market Street. A kitchen shop selling only useful, albeit beautiful, objects, it acts as a treasure trove for cooks, with wooden tables laden with cast-iron baking tins, Japanese brass trivets, Korean kettles, can openers and no less than 25 different brushes, from vegetable brush no. 1 to a three-ring dusting brush.

objectsofuse.com

G & D’s Café– best ice cream in Oxford

An Oxford institution, G & D’s (originally George and Davis) now has three branches across the city, but the original still stands proudly in Jericho. Open from 8am until midnight every day, it’s the place to head to (or the central St Aldate’s branch) for a take-away cone to lick while you sight-see.

All made on site, flavours veer towards student-friendly favourites, from classic vanilla to Oxford Blue (blueberry) and Daim Bar Crunch. Don’t see anything that takes your fancy? Sign the petition book in each of the cafés, and if your flavour suggestion gets enough support, it’ll go on the menu.

The cafés serve more than just cones, with ice cream sundaes, banana splits and bagels all best-sellers too.

gdcafe.com

Natural Bread – best bakery in Oxford

You might have to drive 20 minutes north of Oxford city centre to find the bricks-and-mortar version of the Natural Bread, in the market town of Woodstock, but you’ll find the bakeries artisan sourdough in many restaurants and coffee shops across the city. With a philosophy of ‘take it slow, keep it natural’, all the flours used are locally milled and mixed only with sourdough starter (left for over 48-hours), water and salt.

There are eight loaf varieties to choose from, including the classic Oxford, made with just white wheat and rye, to the Pugliese, created with organic durum wheat from Puglia. The carbs don’t stop there, with yeasted breads like challah, focaccia and farmhouse also on offer. If you’ve got a sweet tooth, be sure to pick up a cinnamon bun or pain aux raisins.

You’ll find the company’s freshly baked goods six days a week at 2 North Parade and its brioche buns at Turl Street Kitchen but, if you’re around on a weekend, you can also pick up a loaf at East Oxford or South Oxford markets.

naturalbreadcompany.co.uk

Best places to stay in Oxford and Oxfordshire

The Porterhouse

Only a five-minute stroll from the station, this restaurant-with-rooms is the perfect base camp for a weekend in the city. Downstairs, a bar and restaurant focus solely on steaks cooked over charcoal, while seven bedrooms upstairs are simply yet stylishly furnished.

Midnight-blue walls, teal velvet headboards and exposed filament lightbulbs add a sense of modern luxury, while exposed wooden floors and latch windows give it a timeless townhouse feel. A communal help-yourself fridge comes stocked with milk and bottles of water, with a bowl of fruit set above it.

If steak is what you fancy, head downstairs hungry. All steaks are cooked within a bertha (a type of indoor charcoal oven) using charcoal sourced from the Oxford Charcoal Company to give them a smoky flavour. If there are two of you, opt for the juicy cote de boeuf, aged for 35 days, or, if you’re a party of four, go for the Porterhouse which comes with both sirloin and fillet. Fluffy fries and crisp walnut salads come on the side, and you can choose between a selection of sauces to drizzle on top (our money is on the punchy salsa verde).

A succinct yet impressive gin menu is where it’s at in drinks terms, with eight to choose from including Toad dry gin and Twisting Spirits earl grey, both of which come from Oxford. Try them with a splash of tonic, or get them made into negronis.

theporterhouse-oxford.com

Artist Residence

In a sleepy village in rural Oxfordshire Justin and Charlie Salisbury, the duo behind quirky Artist Residence hotel group, have restored a 16th century Cotswold-stone farmhouse and opened it as their fourth property, Mr Hanbury’s Masons Arms.

A community-focused pub, with five perfectly put-together bedrooms upstairs, Mr Hanbury’s (the name is a fictional nod to colourful characters associated with the pub historically) is split into two areas – a cosy bar area with a classic pub menu (the heart of South Leigh village life) and a more sophisticated dining room where guests can enjoy a fine dining menu beneath up-cycled crystal decanter lamp shades.

After fine-tuning his skills in professional kitchens across the UK (most notably Michelin-starred gastropub, the Pony & Trap, in Somerset), young talented chef Leon Smith has taken the reigns at Mr Hanbury’s Masons Arms. Hyper-local produce from the Oxfordshire countryside is the order of the day, whether that’s lamb from just across the road or kohlrabi from Leon’s own allotment. And everything is homemade, from elderflower-infused Aperol to brighten up punchy negronis, and wild nettle puree folded into pan-fried homemade gnocchi to toasted marshmallows served with strawberries and lime curd for pud.

Click here to read our full review of Artist Residence, Oxfordshire

Words by Ellie Edwards, Tony Naylor and Alex Crossley

Looking for restaurants in Madrid? Want to know where to eat in the Spanish capital? olive’s sub editor Hannah Guinness shares her insider tips for the best restaurants in Madrid, along with where to find the best salt cod, artisan cheeses and squid sandwiches.

Looking for places to stay in Madrid? Click here for our top Madrid hotel recommendation.

olive’s must-visits for foodies in Madrid

Casa Labra – for salt cod

In Madrid’s central Sol district, Casa Labra (going strong since 1860) is packed with locals who throng the restaurant’s elegantly austere, high-ceilinged interior for the house speciality – salt cod. Served by efficient, white-jacketed staff, it’s best eaten deep-fried or cooked in plump, creamy croquetas, paired with a little glass of vermouth.

casalabra.es

Quesería Cultivo – for artisan cheese

Enter cool, charcoal-grey Quesería Cultivo for shelves stacked high with hefty wheels of cheese, and a counter home to even more. It’s a collaboration between three master Spanish cheesemakers (they’ve recently opened a second branch on Carrera de San Francisco), who wanted to showcase smaller, artisan producers from across Europe. Try nutty Catalan Puigpedrós or buttery Asturian Rey Silo, paired with a freshly baked loaf from new wave bakery Panic, just a few doors down on Calle Conde Duque.

queseriacultivo.com

Taberna La Bola – for cocido

Cocido madrileño is a beloved local dish, and at the venerable Taberna La Bola this hearty chickpea-based stew made with sausage, bacon, chicken and potatoes is slow-cooked over charcoal for hours in serried ranks of individual clay pots, before being served over two or three courses. First the intense, savoury broth, eaten with noodles; then the pulses and tender meat, alongside cabbage fried with garlic.

labola.es

Toma Café – for speciality coffee

Toma Café was one of the pioneers of Madrid’s burgeoning coffee scene, and remains a must-visit if you’re craving something beyond a traditional café con leche. Its Malasaña site comes with airy, high ceilings, trailing hanging plants and white-tiled walls, making it a pleasing spot for a hipster caffeine fix. Their speciality coffee is the main draw – from orange cappuccinos to espresso tonics and overnight cold brews, but do also try the subtly bitter hot chocolate, spiked with warming chilli.

tomacafe.es

La Casa de las Torrijas – for Spanish eggy bread

Colourful tiling, plates of huevos rotos (‘broken eggs’) with crispy potatoes and slivers of jamón, and chilled cañas of local beer are all reasons to drop into La Casa de las Torrijas. But the clue to the chief attraction lies in the name. Torrijas is an Iberian take on French toast, and this restaurant’s version – thick slices of bread soaked in milk, egg and sugar (and sometimes sweet wine), then deep-fried until deliciously wobbly, with a creamy centre – is irresistable.

910 25 29 02; 4 Calle de la Paz.

Mercado Jamón Ibérico – for Ibérico ham

Mercado Jamón Ibérico is a temple to one of Spain’s finest exports. Pick up a few hand-carved slices or a whole leg of cured ham, as well as artisan cheeses, wines and olive oil. It’s also worth sitting at the tiny bar for a platter of silky, ruby-red, acorn-fed bellota diamante (the very best), with a glass of velvety crianza.

mercadojamoniberico.com

La Campana – for squid bocadillos

Madrid loves its seafood, despite being landlocked, and one of its favourite on-the-go meals is a bocadillo de calamares. Queues can snake out of the door at La Campana (located on a side street off the Plaza Mayor), but the wait is worth it for a baguette stuffed with freshly fried tender calamari, a lemon wedge its only necessary adornment.

6 Calle de Botoneras; 913 64 29 84

Santos y Desamparados – for a gothic cocktail bar

The team behind the acclaimed 1862 Dry Bar opened Santos y Desamparados in Huertas last year. It’s a warren-like collection of dimly lit rooms with a quirky gothic vibe (rock music and a Catholic iconography-heavy décor) – try offbeat cocktails such as Pearl Harbor, a delicate, Asian-inspired twist on a piña colada with umeshu, rice milk, coconut, lime and sesame oil.

facebook.com/Santos-y-desamparados

Taberna La Carmencita – for authentic madrileño dining

Though pretty, Taberna La Carmencita feels traditional, with its classic tiling and zinc bar (it’s one of the city’s oldest taverns). Owner Carlos Zamora introduced a focus on farm-to-table ingredients when he bought the restaurant a few years ago, giving a new lease of life to traditional Spanish dishes such as grilled razor clams with sherry, slow-cooked oxtail stew and roast kid goat. Even the simplest dish is elevated, like his tomato salad: thick, steak-like slabs of perfectly seasoned giant tomato, drizzled with peppery, grassy olive oil.

tabernalacarmencita.es

Devour Tours – for a gastronomic guide

Devour Tours has a team of engaging and friendly guides, who are armed with hyper-detailed local knowledge on the history, gastronomy and culture of Madrid. For a useful introduction to the city’s eateries, try the Ultimate Spanish Cuisine tour – you’ll get hot chocolate at a 162-year-old family-run pasty shop; a tasting of Madrid’s most expensive cured hams; and a chance to see one of the city’s oldest kitchens at work.

devourtours.com

La Venencia – for sherry

With its walls burnished by decades of tobacco smoke and faded posters, La Venencia hasn’t changed much since its 1930s heyday, when it was a watering hole for Ernest Hemingway and Republican Civil War soldiers. The bar’s strict house rules – no photos and no tipping – date from that period: the first to deter fascist spies, the latter in accordance with the socialist character of the bar’s patrons. There’s only one thing to drink here, and that’s sherry – there are five different varieties available. Sit at the long, rustic wooden bar with a bone-dry fino or manzanilla, served straight from the barrel, with the tab written up in chalk on the bar.

7 Calle Echegaray, 7; 914 29 73 13

La Tasquería – for fine dining

Javi Estévez’s elegant offal dishes earned the chef’s restaurant, La Tasquería, a Michelin star in 2019. Surf and turf-inspired plates especially impress – order crispy, golden lamb sweetbreads with sweet slices of raw scallop and creamy egg yolk; or tender pork cheek and red prawn tacos. And, if you’re feeling confident, tackle the whole deep-fried suckling pig’s head.

latasqueria.com

Vinoteca Vides – for unique wines

Wines from Rioja and Ribera del Duero dominate most of Madrid’s bars, but to explore other varieties head to Vinoteca Vides in the lively Chueca neighbourhood. Bottles line every wall, and owner Vicente champions lesser-known vintages and regions – he’s produced a carefully curated, lengthy and diverse wine list, with plenty available by the glass. Perch at one of the high wooden tables with a glass of something special and a platter of cheese, soaking up the chatty, friendly vibe as you sip.

vinotecavides.es

La Hora del Vermut – for vermouth

Vermouth is a national institution in Spain and it’s available on tap throughout Madrid (traditionally served with ice, a slice of orange or lemon, an olive and perhaps a splash of soda water), but vermuterías are neighbourhood bars that actually specialise in this bitter fortified wine. La Hora del Vermut started out as a stall in the Mercado San Miguel, but has since branched out to a second location in the Ibiza barrio, a few streets away from Retiro Park. It’s a brightly coloured art deco-style bar that stocks some 80 different types of red, white and pink vermouth from across the country.

lahoradelvermut.wordpress.com

Where to stay in Madrid – Only YOU Hotel Atocha

Usefully positioned opposite Puerta de Atocha railway station, Only YOU Hotel Atocha impresses with its buzzy industrial-chic lobby (complete with barber, patisserie and restaurant) and complimentary glass of fizz on arrival. Spacious rooms have a sleek mid-century feel, and the hotel’s rooftop Sép7ima bar (with panoramic views of the city) puts on a lavish buffet every morning that includes pastries and churros, charcuterie and cheeses, fresh juice, fruit and cooked breakfasts.

Book your foodie hotel in Madrid here

onlyyouhotels.com

Written by Hannah Guinness in February 2019

Photographs by Diego Puerta

More places to eat and drink in Madrid

La Bodega de la Ardosa

A typical Spanish taverna, La Bodega de la Ardosa is set in the lively Malasaña district and has been open for more than a century. Within its beautifully tiled walls, sit and enjoy salmorejo, croquetas and pincho de tortilla.

Sala de Despiece

At Sala de Despiece Javier Bonet has created a cool tapas bar decorated along the lines of a fishmonger’s, with an open kitchen, a bar counter and a smart young team. Choose between beef carpaccio with truffle, octopus or simple marinated tomato topped with crispy basil.

academiadeldespiece.com

El Corte Inglés restaurants

Head to the seventh floor of the El Corte Inglés shopping centre for its Gourmet Experience collection of restaurants. StreetXo, the tapas bar from David Muñoz (of three Michelin-starred DiverXo), stands beside Cascabel, informal sister of Punto MX, and there’s an ice-cream cart by Jordi Roca, of El Celler de Can Roca. On your way out, stock up at the sixth-floor food hall.

Sylkar

One of the best places in Madrid to try a proper Spanish tortilla (which should be creamy and still a little liquid) is Sylkar. The recipe hasn’t changed at this family-run cafeteria in over 45 years, and with good reason.

Calle de Espronceda 17, 00 34 915 545 703

Il Tavolo Verde

An antiques and homewares shop as well as an organic café, stylish Il Tavolo Verde, near the Retiro Park, is the perfect place for a relaxing lunch or afternoon tea. The menu changes daily, but there’s always a good selection of homemade cakes, cheeses, soups, salads and quiches.

Cristina Oria

Opened just last Christmas, Cristina Oria stocks a wide range of foods from around Spain. It’s the ideal place to pick up gourmet gifts, from delicious ibérico hams to wines, flavoured oils and lemon cakes, all stylishly packaged.

Triciclo

At beautifully designed Triciclo three young Spanish chefs have created an affordable but polished restaurant serving clever twists on traditional dishes using fresh-from-market produce. Try the Nikkei ceviche made with corvina fish, lime and yuzu juices, soy and coriander, or the roast pigeon with mushrooms, truffle and liver pâté.

Magasand

For a quick sandwich or salad, Magasand’s three coffee bars are a cut above the competition (try a Hot Vegas sandwich – rye bread, hummus, chipotle, avocado, tofu, dried tomatoes, spinach and red onion). They also serve great weekend brunches.

B de J

The main attraction at this upmarket sandwich bar is its five-star produce. Though it also sells cheese plates and gazpacho, the focus is on the ultimate Spanish ham sandwich, made with freshly baked bread and fabulous Ibérico ham. All to be enjoyed with a glass of cava if you like.

bocadillodejamon.com

HOW TO GET TO MADRID

Return flights from Birmingham, Manchester and Stansted to Madrid start at around £50 (ryanair.com).

Trust olive: Marcela de la Peña writes the My Little Madrid blog and guidebook with her sister Almudena.

Looking for Windermere restaurants? Want to know where to eat in Cumbria? Head on a foodie road trip through Cumbria, stopping off at roadside restaurants, market towns and local delis.

It starts with black pudding bonbons served with Cumberland sauce, then chunks of bread made with Sneck Lifter, a strong, dark Cumbrian ale, and juicy Morecambe Bay shrimps, spiced and served with local honey mead. The menu at The Old Stamp House in Ambleside makes much of the fact that its food is inspired by its Cumbrian setting. Chef Ryan Blackburn offers Holker Estate fallow deer and, when it is in season in March, Herdwick hogget. Reared on the fells here, it’s a rich, almost gamey meat from sheep that are older than lambs but younger than mutton; it tastes better than either.

Swooning over Blue Winnow cheese from Thornby Moor Dairy, served with honey-roasted figs and warm Westmorland pepper bread, I ponder how Cumbria’s county recipe book grew. Take the pepper bread: rich with spices and fruit, it harks back to times when Whitehaven was one of the gateways to the Americas, where pepper, allspice, ginger, mace and rum were imported.

At The Old Stamp House’s simple, white-washed basement dining room, the set lunch is great value, but it’s worth paying for the evening tasting menu  – a dance through the best of Cumbrian produce.

This fondness for farm-to-table eating is something I find throughout Cumbria. I stay at The Cottage in the Wood, a coaching inn high up in Whinlatter Forest with a dining room that looks, spectacularly, over Bassenthwaite Lake, Skiddaw and the North Western Fells. In the evenings, head chef Ben Wilkinson presents dishes that include Whitehaven turbot, Eden Valley pork and Goosnargh duck.

Down near Penrith I find the slightly eccentric marmalade museum and tearooms amid the stunning gardens at Dalemain mansion. Owner Jane Hasell-McCosh runs the annual World’s Original Marmalade Awards from here each March. An on-site shop sells the winners as well as the Dalemain marmalade collection which includes an apple and brandy flavour.

Crossing the county, I head southwest, down towards the village of Cartmel, famous for sticky toffee pudding and for being the place where chef Simon Rogan began his small empire of restaurants.

You don’t have to have a fat, L’Enclume-sized, wallet to eat well here. At the Pig & Whistle, Rogan’s ‘fine little boozer’, I have one of the best pub lunches I’ve had in ages – small plates of brawn and black pudding fritters, pigs in blankets with mustard mayo and home-made scotch egg. There’s a nice selection of ales here – Hartleys XB, Robinson’s Dizzy Blonde and Hawkshead Lakeland Lager – but it’s a short hop to Unsworth Yard Brewery and a lovely little collection of artisan food shops, including Cartmel Cheeses.

Down at seaside town Grange-over-Sands, at Higginson’s Butchers, a beardy, straw-boater-wearing Stuart Higginson tells me what makes a good Cumberland sausage without actually divulging his secret: ‘My Cumberlands are 90% meat, rare breeds whenever possible, with fresh herbs and spices. They’re different depending on whose recipe it is, but they must always be sold in a coil. And they need to be cooked slowly.’

Rare breeds are also the speciality of farmer and farm shop owner Steven Airey, who provides specialist meats from Lakeland and Herdwick sheep for restaurants in Cumbria and London. Airey loves his sheep: ‘the Herdwick has a bigger and better carcass, it’s slow growing and very gamey – it has PDO status. It is thought to have been introduced to the area by the Vikings at least 900 years ago.’

Back in the kitchen of The Mistral, a converted barn that’s my home for the night, I gather my supper. Buttery Morecambe Bay potted shrimps and toast to start, then rings of Higginson’s Cumberlands – meaty, dense and peppery, but with no overbearing spices – served with that prize-winning marmalade, cooked slowly as Higginson urged. Utterly delicious.

Looking for restaurants in Porto? Want to know where to eat in Portugal’s northern riverside city? Local food writer André Apolinário and the olive team travel experts shares their insider tips for the best restaurants in Porto, along with where to find the best custard tarts, sandes de pernil (pork sarnies) and port houses.

olive’s top 10 must-visits for foodies in Porto

Flor dos Congregados – for traditional tavern vibes

At Flor dos Congregados, every dish is cooked with passion. Try the terylene sandwich, a double-layered roast pork and ham affair that takes a full day to cook; or a slice of sericaia cake (a kind of egg pudding) and a glass of chilled port.

11 Travessa dos Congregados, 00 351 222 002 822

Manteigaria – for custard tarts

Fans of Lisbon’s cult custard tart shop, Manteigaria, will be pleased to know that Porto has its own branch now. Watch chefs work with spirals of butter and pastry (the kitchen walls are made entirely from glass), transforming them into crisp wheels that are then filled with cinnamon-spiked custard. Stand at the counter and down an espresso, or head to the adjoining minimalistic canteen to savour your tart with a glass of port.

R de Alexandre Braga 24

Taberna do Largo – for pre-dinner drinks and snacks

At modern drinking hole Taberna do Largo, the menu takes you on a journey through Portugal via some of the country’s best small-scale producers. Local wines, cheeses, meats, olive oils and even teas are covered… order a Porto tonico while you choose.

69 Largo de São Domingos, 00 351 222 082 154

A Casa Guedes – for sandes de pernil (Portuguese pork sandwiches)

Queue alongside locals for this traditional tavern, if only for the crunchy bread rolls stuffed with juicy roast pork leg and a one euro glass of Portuguese wine (try the ever-so-slightly-sparkling vinho verde). Perch on one of four stools at the tiled counter and watch your roll come to life: the bread is cut and filled with a thick slice of cheese, then passed down to the tavern owner, who carves the pork and heaps slices of the stuff directly into your sandwich, with plenty of roasting juices. There’s a patio around the side for sun worshippers.

Facebook.com/a-casa-guedes

Cozinha Cabral – for date night

One of Porto’s more modern-looking restaurants, with white-washed exposed brick, clothless tables and mood lighting, Cozinha Cabral has a mix of the contemporary – monkfish chips with guacamole, crêpes with Portuguese egg cream – and the traditional (inspired by the chef’s grandmother, who lives locally). The latter is expressed in the form of spider crab croquettes and the most tender oven-roasted octopus, served at the table in the tin it was baked in, along with rice, plump with red wine, and a sticky-and-sweet layer of shredded onions.

cozinhacabral.com

Mo-Mo Gelataria Artesanal – for ice cream

A few steps down from the university, away from the crowds queuing for a glimpse inside that Harry Potter bookshop, and looking across to the lush Jardim de João Chagas, Mo-Mo is a surprisingly inclusive, hole-in-the-wall gelato shop. Whether you’re after super smooth farm-to-cone Portuguese hazelnut, creamy cashew and Himalayan salt, or vegan banana and matcha, there’s a scoop for everyone. (And some very Instagrammable blue and white tiles just outside for that perfect shot!)

facebook.com/momogelataria

Taylor’s port house – for port

Clamber up the steep, cobble street on the Gaia side of the Douro river (accessed by crossing the Luís I bridge) to reach Taylor’s port house and its peaceful, rose-filled courtyard. Pull up a chair (mind the resident cockerel, who likes to make his voice heard occasionally) and order the Introduction to Taylor’s tasting flight – five ports ranging from simple white to easy-drinking LBV, brown tawny (popular amongst Brits) and a sought-after 20-year old vintage.

Taylor.pt

Central Conserver Invicta – for tinned fish

Portugal is famed for canned fish, and Central Conserver Invicta is the place to find it. Shelves groan with sardines, tuna, cod, mackerel, sea bass, gilt-head sea bream, eels, lamprey and mussels. Sit down to sardines in spicy tomato sauce, bread and a glass of vinho verde.

115 Rua Sá da Bandeira, 00 351 912 833 884

Cafetaria da Bolsa – for a traditional Portuguese meal

With an unassuming frontage, other than a blackboard with that day’s specials, this small, family-run restaurant is the perfect spot if you want simply cooked fish and seafood at great prices. The tiny open-plan kitchen occupies one corner of the room, and from it comes giant prawns, still in their amber coats of armour, which arrive fighting for space on giant plates alongside hunks of garlic and bay leaves. Sweet clams, clattering in their pretty ivory shells, come cooked in garlic, chopped herbs and olive oil. Try the sardines, grilled and tender, with new potatoes, grilled peppers and onions, and chips on the side (because if you can’t double carb on holiday, when can you?). And, for something a little more unusual, try the salted codfish mashed with potatoes, boiled egg, black olives and plenty of herbs.

Largo São Domingos 23, 4050-253 Porto

Rosa et Al Townhouse – for brunch and the best foodie hotel in Porto

This six-room hotel is a lesson in boutique design. Rooms blessed with original wooden floorboards, cornicing and sash windows that lead to balconies are made even more beautiful with claw-footed baths, contemporary furniture and local art. If you’ve already sorted your accommodation, it’s worth soaking up Rosa et Al’s chic and cosy vibe over brunch. 50 jars of tea (some made with herbs from the garden) cover a large serving table; you can choose your own Portuguese tinned cod or sardines; and there’s a dinky walled garden out back where you can sit around tiled tables, eating eggs with spruced-up sides and drinking freshly squeezed orange juice in the sunshine.

Rosaetal.pt

Other places to eat and drink in Porto

Sol e Sombra Bifanas –best bifana sandwiches in Porto

You probably won’t be able to order anything specific at this bar, perched on one of Porto’s many hills, unless you speak fluent Portuguese. But trust in the warm owner. He’ll bring you seriously cheap bifana bread roll sandwiches, filled with pork steak and cooking liquor – which simmers happily in the window, luring customers inside – flavoured with garlic, chilli and secret spices. Bacalhau (croquettes of salted cod) are pre-made and served cold, and even if you ordered a round of vinho verde (like we did), or bottles of Super Bock beer, you’d still have change from a €20 euro note. Look out for the caracóis (aka Portuguese snails), too!

facebook.com/Sol-e-Sombra-Bifanas

Cantina 32 – best trendy bistro in Porto

This laid-back restaurant is popular among young, trendy locals, with two sittings (one at 8pm, the other at 10pm to reflect the Mediterranean way of life) around large communal tables and smaller spots for two or four people. Start with fresh, warm bread and banana butter, before diving into large terracotta sharing dishes, including roast octopus with sweet potatoes. There are modern twists on classic Portuguese plates, too – try fresh pink tuna with pineapple, seafood and chorizo stew, and cheesecakes disguised as plant pots.

Cantina32.com

Padaria Ribeiro – best bakery in Porto

Get some energy for sightseeing along Porto’s cobblestone streets with breakfast at Padaria Ribeiro, open since 1878. Order the pirilampos (little worm-shaped crunchy biscuits), or a lanche – a sandwich-like snack filled with ham, sausage and bacon.

padariaribeiro.com

Mercado do Bolhão – temporarily closed – best market in Porto

The 19th-century Mercado do Bolhão dazzles with fruit and veg, cured hams, regional cheeses and freshly caught fish. Take a break at Bolhão wine house and snack on smoked ham from the butcher across the hall, sardines from the nearby fishing village of Matosinhos, and a glass of Moscatel do Douro.

1 Loja, 00 351 222 009 975

O Paparico – best supper club in Porto

At O Paparico you have to knock on the door as you would at a friend’s house. Exquisite presentation and sophisticated cooking hint at Michelin aspirations, but, for now, this modern Portuguese restaurant is still something of a local secret. Try the octopus ceviche with olive oil, onion and coriander.

Olivia & Co – best olive oil in Porto

If it’s made from olives, you’ll find it at Olivia & Co in Ribeira, Porto’s UNESCO-protected historic heart. From cookies, cakes and paté to face creams, it’s all here alongside a great range of olive oils.

Tavi – best donuts an sunsets in Porto

The juxtaposition of the Douro river and the Atlantic ocean make for some spectacular sunsets, especially in the Foz district. At the Parque da Cidade, the Tavi bakery is famous for its bolas de Berlim (custard-filled donuts) and ocean-view terrace.

PROVA – best wine bar in Porto

There’s more to Portugal’s wines than port. Explore the distinct qualities of each of the country’s wine regions at PROVA bar, kicking off with a glass of dão and a carefully paired selection of cured meats.

Tascö – best pestiscos (tapas) in Porto

With its stylish décor, great music, top-notch staff and traditional Portuguese food, Tascö is wildly popular. Petiscos – tapas-like portions of larger dishes – are the thing here. Try the pataniscas (similar to a frittata, with cod or octopus), or moelas (stewed gizzards in a spicy tomato sauce).

Updated by Alex Crossley and Laura Rowe in March 2019

Written by André Apolinário in 2016

Photographs by Getty, Alex Crossley and Laura Rowe

Llanerch Vineyard, Cardiff

Served in a restaurant overlooking a Welsh vineyard, afternoon tea at Llanerch is not your average tea, cake and sarnies affair – chef Ryan Davies and his team make everything from scratch each morning on site, guaranteeing freshness. The menus are seasonal and the top two tiers of the cake stand might include lavender sugared Welsh cakes, rhubarb crumble and custard tart and blood orange posset with rosemary tuile. The savoury lower tier features classic sandwiches like egg and cress but also a more contemporary chicken and sun-dried tomato mayonnaise. The restaurant has a stunning view of the vineyard, and in the summer the bi-folding doors can be opened to enhance the experience, particularly with a glass of sparkling Welsh wine.

llanerch-vineyard.co.uk

Coworth Park, Ascot, Berkshire

Located on the edge of Windsor Great Park, Coworth Park is part of luxury hotel group the Dorchester Collection, which also includes The Dorchester in London, Le Meurice in Paris and The Beverly Hills Hotel. It’s also the only hotel in Britain with its own polo club, not to mention an equestrian centre and stables for 30 horses within its 240 acres of grounds. In summer, the colourful meadows of wild flowers and lavender provide the backdrop to a visit to Coworth Park. Oh, and Prince Harry spent the night here on the eve of his Royal Wedding last year.

Once a girls’ school, the house dates back to 1776 and although the public rooms have been given the modern country house look, there is an abundance of original features and a discreet equestrian theme throughout, including the elegant Drawing Room in the main Mansion House, where an award-winning afternoon tea is served twice a day. Enjoy traditional sandwiches (including roast Windsor estate beef and mustard mayo), scones and classic pastries, as well as daily cakes like Bakewell tart or praline and orange loaf near one of The Drawing Room’s open fireplaces, with the resident harpist playing at weekends. To drink, choose from a tea menu with more than 20 varieties including Coworth Park’s own Meadow Blend featuring lavender picked from the hotel’s grounds.

dorchestercollection.com/en/ascot/coworth-park/

Cliveden House, Taplow, Berkshire

An Italianate mansion located on a 376-acre National Trust-owned estate in Berkshire, Cliveden has been one of the UK’s most important houses for three centuries. This is where Christine Keeler first met John Profumo, a meeting and affair that led to one of the biggest political scandals of all time. It’s also where Meghan Markle stayed before her Royal Wedding last year. Afternoon teas served in the Great Hall are so popular that you may need to book at least three weeks in advance but they are well worth the wait. Expect faultless finger sandwiches (smoked salmon, cucumber, crème fraiche on granary, perhaps, or beef and horseradish on caraway bread) alongside freshly baked scones with homemade jam and clotted cream, miniature bite-size cakes, pastries and aromatic Cliveden blend teas. Seasonal treats might include almond financier with rhubarb and white chocolate or beetroot cake with bergamot buttercream.

clivedenhouse.co.uk

Running Fox Bakery, Felton, Northumberland

Beside the River Coquet in rural Northumberland, Felton lost most of its shops and meeting places when the nearby A1 was diverted away from the village. That didn’t deter ambitious local resident Kris Blackburn from taking over the village coffee shop eight years ago. Having spent years in catering, she thought a village bakery would work and Running Fox launched in 2011, opening seven days a week and selling a range of bakery goods and local produce as well doubling up as the local newsagents. As well as becoming the community hub – the local WI and history club are regulars – the Running Fox has made the most of its position and become a destination afternoon tea venue in the middle of an Area of Natural Outstanding Beauty close to beaches, ancient castles and historic Alnwick. Think rustic and filling rather than dainty (Kris’s words). For £15 per person, they include a sandwich, slice of pie or quiche, fresh cheese or fruit scone and a wedge of homemade cake served with ‘endless’ tea or coffee. It’s clearly a winning formula as Kris has since opened a second café in nearby Longframlington and a third in Shilbottle.

runningfoxbakery.co.uk

Titanic, Belfast

On the exact spot where the British passenger liner RMS Titanic was built and launched in 1912, Titanic Belfast’s Sunday afternoon tea allows guests to step back in time to a period of luxury, elegance and five-star service. Set in the opulent surroundings of the Titanic Suite, featuring the replica staircase recreated for a few scenes in the 1997 film, afternoon tea here features a selection of finger sandwiches, scones with Cornish clotted cream, cakes, éclairs and savoury bites inspired by those served on board the original boat. Wash it all down with a selection of loose-leaf teas served in replica White Star Line crockery. The teas are supplied by Belfast’s Thompson’s Tea, a family-run business that pre-dates the Titanic itself. Its luxury Titanic house tea is a blend of second flush Assam and high-grade Kenyan teas, but the Irish breakfast tea and six champagnes are also worth a look in.

titanicbelfast.com

Mrs Danvers, Liverpool

Within the landmark Port of Liverpool building on the city’s docks, Mrs Danvers is named after the housekeeper in Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca and the café is themed around the character and elements of the novel. Described as “like stepping back in time to a housekeeper’s private parlour”, it’s a 1930s-themed tea room serving traditional afternoon teas and even slices of retro quiche on vintage bone china. Visit Mrs Danvers with a healthy appetite as portions are generous. Every diner gets a three-tier platter comprising of sandwiches, savouries and cakes to themselves – expect leftovers to take home.

mrsdanverscafe.wordpress.com

Budock Vean, Helford Passage, Cornwall

Close to the beautiful Helford River in South Cornwall, the Budock Vean hotel occupies an idyllic rural location and makes for a tranquil spot to enjoy a ‘proper job’ Cornish afternoon tea. Whether it’s a meal in the restaurant or afternoon tea, the kitchen uses as much local produce as possible, including clotted cream from Trewithen Dairy, jam from Boddington’s of Mevagissey and tea grown on the Tregothnan estate 17 miles away. A full afternoon tea at Budock Vean includes Cornish smoked salmon and cucumber sandwiches with crisps and salad, two freshly baked scones with clotted cream and Cornish strawberry jam and a slice of cake, with a pot of tea or coffee from Cornwall’s Origin roastery.

budockvean.co.uk

Assembly House, Norfolk

In the heart of Norwich, the Assembly House is a Georgian gem which has been delighting diners for decades with dainty Norfolk ham sandwiches, fruit scones with strawberry jam and savoury scones with cheese, chive and local Colman’s mustard. Served in an elegant period building by uniformed staff, every single element of afternoon tea has been carefully considered, from the cake selection to scones and three-cheese toasties served warm from the oven. Swiss-trained pastry chef Mark Mitson (formerly of The Connaught and Claridge’s), designs an ever-changing selection of cakes and desserts and the kitchen works closely with local schools and colleges to help train the pastry chefs of tomorrow, ensuring afternoon tea isn’t a tradition that will be lost in Norfolk. And then there’s the Assembly House’s tea and tisanes list – it’s all loose leaf, including a bespoke afternoon tea blend, green tea and fruit teas. And, for those with dietary requirements – don’t worry, you’ll be well looked after here. “Whether customers are gluten-free, nut-free, soya-free, coeliac, vegetarian, vegan, lactose-intolerant or just extremely discerning diners who like to design their own individual sandwich fillings, we cater for everybody,” assures chef director Richard Hughes. Look out for the popular themed afternoon teas, too.

assemblyhousenorwich.co.uk

Horto, Rudding Park, Harrogate

Take afternoon tea in Rudding Park’s kitchen garden-led restaurant, housed in the country hotel’s swish spa. The restaurant has a relaxed, funky vibe with neon canvasses, mustard and teal velvet booths, and flashes of florals that creep in to complement the garden view.

Chefs incorporate homegrown produce into the cakes and pastries – try macarons laced with blackberry syrup, mini choux buns with rose-infused cream, and delicate carrot cakes. Pickled onions for the ham sandwiches are homemade, and the scone course is spruced up with Horto jams (gooseberry, raspberry and elderberry).

Horto makes the most of its proximity to Taylors of Harrogate tea merchant and offers classic Yorkshire Gold as well as afternoon darjeeling, earl grey, peppermint and super-fresh and delicate green tea.

Read our full review of Horto restaurant here…

The Angel Hotel, Abergavenny

This former coaching inn, now a characterful hotel, stands in the historic Monmouthshire market town of Abergavenny, on the edge of the Brecon Beacons, and its afternoon tea is a must-order. It’s served in the Wedgewood Room, a smart, contemporary, low-lit dining room brightened by tall plants, large mirrors, big windows and parquet flooring. Tea, on floral bone china, is laid out on starched white tablecloths. Kick off with a glass of Bollinger before indulging in warm savoury pastries (crisp sausage rolls and flaky duck-filled filo), homemade sandwiches (thick-cut ham and mustard, and sweet coronation chicken) and moreish sweet treats (raspberry meringues, soft coffee profiteroles and mini lemon and poppy seed fairy cakes). Afternoon tea comes at £26 pp without champagne or you can choose high tea at £31 pp with a selection of warm, savoury pastries.

angelabergavenny.com

The Priory, Bath

Everything in this honey-stoned country house hotel on the fringes of Bath is preserved as it has been for decades, from the ticking clocks and carefully plumped sofas in the library to the starched white tablecloths and synchronised cloche flourishes in the dining room. You’d be more likely to bring your partner or parents here, than perhaps a first date – the dining room is formal rather than funky and there’s a distinct lack of music. The bonus at lunchtime, though, is the dreamy views over four acres of gardens. Traditional afternoon tea is served from 3-5pm every day in The Pantry, lounges or on the terrace with dreamy views of over four acres of gardens. Opt for the full afternoon tea at £34 pp, or £46 pp with champagne. Expect classic finger sandwiches such as ham and mustard, creamy smoked salmon and classic egg mayonnaise; homemade British cakes including zesty lemon drizzle, moist carrot cake and fresh raspberry tart. Finish off with fluffy, warm plain or fruit scones with thick clotted cream and local jam.

thebathpriory.co.uk

The Salt Room, Brighton

Many people head to The Salt Room to enjoy the catch of the day with a view of Brighton’s seafront, but we recommend going for the afternoon tea. It’s a step above the norm with its comforting crumpets, crisp mini toasties (try our top 10 toastie recipes here) and a sweet stand heaving with chocolate pebble truffles, scones with elderflower jam, and sticks of candyfloss to take away. Afternoon tea comes at £27.95 pp without champagne or £337.95 pp with a glass of Collet, Brut.

saltroom-restaurant.co.uk

Belmond British Pullman, London and Kent

Setting off from London Victoria, the British Pullman train carriages are super-glamourous, offering afternoon tea, lunch or murder mystery trips from various destinations across the country. We were invited aboard to indulge in the new themed Mary Poppins afternoon tea. The train itself is spectacular with every carriage restored to its original 20s-30s style – we were welcomed onto the oldest carriage, built in Italy in 1925. The carriage was made up of tables for two, each with pristine white tablecloths, elegant nouveau lamps and Belmond’s own duck egg blue and white bone china. Comfy vintage seats with art deco upholstery surrounded the tables. Afternoon tea is taken throughout the three-hour journey: start with a generous, crumbly, warm goat’s cheese tart with caramelised onion; followed by a selection of finger sandwiches (classic coronation chicken was sweet and came in a fluffy brioche bun; salmon could have done with a bit more cream cheese; classic egg mayonnaise hits with a strong taste of truffle; and traditional cucumber with minted crème fraîche on fluffy white bread). This was followed with crumbly scones served with jam and clotted cream for two. Our feast finished with a number of carefully crafted pastries: a baby pink jellied mousse square with sugared flowers; dainty macaroons; a squidgy miniature salted caramel brownie; and a not-quite-crunchy-enough vanilla biscuit topped with blackcurrant mousse. Afternoon tea on the Belmond costs from £235 pp with a glass of English sparkling wine.

belmond.com

Castle Howard, North Yorkshire

There’s a lot to explore at Castle Howard: an impressive stately home, 1,000 acres of land, and fragrant gardens filled with roses and rhododendrons, among other delights. So it’s worth arriving a couple of hours early before settling down to afternoon tea in the Grecian Hall.

Built in the 1750s, the hall was originally household staff quarters, but is now home to much grander affairs. Roaring fires, tables laid with crisp white linen and vases of fresh flowers created a welcoming environment. There was a quiet hum of music playing in the background when we arrived, but the room felt a little still. Slightly louder music might have been nice, and maybe a little colour in the furnishings.

The tea menu offered plenty of variety, including a few loose leaf options. Organic white tea (although not loose leaf) was refreshingly subtle in flavour, with slightly floral notes. Sandwiches were cut symmetrically and the bread was soft. Classics such as cream cheese and cucumber were pleasing, but the stand out had to be the coronation chicken: creamy and spicy, with a freshness from the added grated carrot and coriander. We’d have welcomed seconds…

Click here to read our full review of afternoon tea at Castle Howard…

Hendricks G&Tea/Gentleman’s Afternoon Tea Laguna Kitchen, Cardiff

Laguna Kitchen is tucked away on the ground floor of the Park Plaza Hotel; a little quiet oasis of luxury just off the main shopping street in central Cardiff. Choose between the main dining room or a plush sofa in front of a fire in the equally swish lobby area.

In a cute, boozy twist on a traditional afternoon tea, the G&Tea includes a Hendrick’s Elderflower Collins served in a china teapot and cup along with dainty finger sandwiches, light-as-air scones and sweet patisserie such as lime jellies with mint and cucumber, macaroons and chocolate opera gateau. (Try our gin and tonic cake recipe here)

The Gentleman’s Tea (also enthusiastically offered to ladies) offers more savoury than sweet with offerings such as chorizo scotch eggs, mini Brecon venison burgers, roast Welsh sirloin in mini yorkies and Severn and Wye smoked salmon blinis, as well as mini chocolate mousse and rum baba. From £19.95 pp

parkplazacardiff.com/laguna-restaurant-and-bar

Oh Me Oh My, Liverpool

Liverpudlians will know LEAF, the hip Bold Street café and arts venue. Less well known is that it also runs a weekday grand café in a Grade-II former bank opposite the Liver Building. A bright, airy space of high-ceilings and enormous windows, nattily decked-out in vintage and modern furniture, Oh Me Oh My is a relaxing setting in which to enjoy head baker Matthew Rhodes’ afternoon tea.

It includes sandwiches (the mini brioche croque monsieur is a favourite), scones and mini-desserts, which usually include his classy crème brûlée. Teas are presented at the table so guests can touch and smell them first. Try Tea Desire’s champagne cassis, a white tea flavoured with lemongrass and redcurrants. From £15.95pp.

ohmeohmyliverpool.co.uk

Fitzbillies, Cambridge

For nearly a century, this tearoom and bakery – identified by its gorgeous, art deco wooden façade – has kept Cambridge in sticky pastries. Its squidgy Chelsea buns are legendary. In recent years, Fitzbillies has been given a spruce makeover by food writer Tim Hayward and his wife Alison Wright.

While retaining key talents (head baker Gill Abbs has been here for 40 years), the pair has expanded its cake selection to include friands, florentines and the lesser-spotted Japonaise – a praline meringue sandwich (a bit like an XL macaron). Either drop in for cake and coffee or go for the full afternoon tea, which now features Fitzbillies’ own ceylon and earl grey blends. Bakery from £1.80, afternoon tea £18pp.

fitzbillies.com

Sopwell House Hotel, St Albans

Sopwell House Hotel is a grand affair, with over 100 rooms, two restaurants, a spa and 12 acres of grounds to its name. But of it all, our favourite place to relax is where they serve afternoon tea – in the cocktail lounge.

It’s a long, breezy room that begins with a marble-topped bar and stretches all the way to an end fireplace and library, with little coves and floor-to-ceiling sash windows dotted along the way. Striped monochrome wallpaper, convex mirrors, fabric armchairs and lustre cushions make for a modern feel; but there’s also parquet flooring, a huge central marble fireplace and white linen tablecloths to create the kind of traditional afternoon tea ambience that most guests would want.

It’s a comfortable place to sit (there’s a soft, chunky armchair per guest), so you’ll likely be here for at least a couple of hours. Begin with a choice of Twinings loose-leaf tea or coffee – not a particularly long or fancy menu, but something for most tastes nonetheless – and plates of elegant finger sandwiches filled with the usual suspects…

Click here to read our full review of afternoon tea at Sopwell House Hotel, St Albans

The Royal Crescent, Bath

The Royal Crescent Hotel has carved out a niche as one of the best afternoon tea stops in Bath thanks to its range of five imaginative and decadent tea menus. From the classic Royal Crescent (largely sweet) to the Duke of York (largely savoury) and a vegetarian selection, most tastes are catered for.

It’s the nod to local flavours that takes the Royal Crescent’s afternoon tea up a level. Bath Chaps is a local delicacy – brine-pickled pork cheek that’s boiled and coated in breadcrumbs (think cooked ham) – and their bite-sized reworking of it is a triumph. Look out for the Royal Crescent’s perfectly sticky take on a Bath Bun (complete with ready-to-smear whipped cinnamon butter) and kaffir lime panna cotta topped with Bath Gin gel and a tiny crescent-shaped juniper biscuit.

olive editor Laura’s favourite is the Duke of York which eases back on the sweet treats and goes big on awesome savoury bites, including Bath chaps beignet; mushroom croquette with mushroom ketchup and aged parmesan; and hay-smoked salmon, horseradish yogurt and caviar. The smoked Chinese tea is a good earthy partner for such rich and meaty morsels. £34pp.

Click here to read our full review of afternoon tea at The Royal Crescent, Bath

The Spiced Pear, Holmfirth, Yorkshire

Like its ingredients, this retro-modern tearoom has good provenance. It’s owned by accomplished chef Tim Bilton and run by his wife, Adele. We have Tim to thank for The Spiced Pear’s gentleman’s afternoon tea, a kind of Yorkshire tapas.

Alongside the usual home-baked scones and pastries, it comes with bread ‘n’ dripping, Yorkshire pudding filled with beef and gravy, a pork pie and scotch egg. “All the sins,” laughs Adele. While admiring the views over the West Yorkshire moors, you can sip a pot of Yorkshire Tea or a pint of Acorn’s Yorkshire Pride ale (£3.60). £16.95pp.

thespicedpearhepworth.co.uk

The Black Swan, Helmsley, North Yorkshire

A cluster of buildings, which date back to the Elizabethan era, this hotel also contains a tearoom where manager, Alison Souter, shares her love of, say, Ying Zhen Silver Needle white tea or the Cygnet blends she helped to develop. These are accompanied by chef Alan O’Kane’s sandwiches and patisserie. On sunny days, take tea in the gardens. From £19.95pp.

Find out more about The Black Swan, Helmsley, here…

One Square, Edinburgh

Not only does the Sheraton Hotel’s bar-restaurant have a vast collection of gins – including the eponymous One Square, created in Edinburgh by artisan gin-maker Pickering’s – but, in summer, its afternoon tea menu is given a distinct juniper twist.

Pastry chef Colin Hall uses gin-infused ingredients in his creations and designs them to pair with the botanicals in that season’s gin – this summer, it’s No.3. A No.3 cocktail (using cardamom and seville orange syrup, pink grapefruit ‘mist’ and coriander bitters) will be served with afternoon tea.

You can also book a tutored tasting of four premium gins on the side (£25pp). Designated drivers have a choice of 13 loose-leaf teas prepared in Russian samovars. £27pp.

onesquareedinburgh.co.uk

Grand Hotel, York

The polished, modish Grand will suit all ages. Its tea menus range from a Hendrick’s gin special (including a teapot of gin ‘n’ tonic) to a kids’ tea menu that includes jam sandwiches and jelly (£17). Talking of the ankle-biters, the Grand hosts monthly Charlie & The Chocolate Factory-inspired and Mad Hatter tea parties. From £24.50pp.

thegrandyork.co.uk

Cherwell Boathouse, Oxford

On a fine day, this restaurant on the River Cherwell is positively idyllic. Afternoon tea must be booked in advance. Larger parties (eight plus) eat in the pretty tea hut in the leafy grounds, and individual guests can take tea in the conservatory or on the lower boathouse terrace (3.30pm-5.30pm).

Afterwards, hire a punt (from £16/hour) and gently work off some of those calories navigating down the Cherwell towards to its confluence with the Thames. £12.50pp.

Cloud 23, Manchester

The 23rd-storey view out to the Cheshire Plain is only one attraction of this plush cocktail lounge. Guests can take a glass of fizz with afternoon tea or, indeed, a four seasons tasting flight of Pommery champagnes.

Alternatively, pair your candied pineapple scones with one of Cloud 23’s signature cocktails. The Japanese-influenced Mission To Manchester sees Hendrick’s gin combined with sake, genmaicha tea syrup, yuzu and rose water. Cream tea from £12.

cloud23bar.com

Waterloo Gardens Teahouse, Cardiff

Love tea? You will be in heaven at Waterloo. It carries over 50, some from farms so tiny they only produce 100kg of that tea each year. The menu moves fluidly with the seasons, but its staff are as enthusiastic about the classics, such as jasmine pearl, as they are the freshest, most refined white teas (created from young leaves dried before they oxidise).

Waterloo even purifies its water and brews at four different temperatures in its quest for perfection. Its food is similarly fastidious. Afternoon tea is served with homemade truffles and seasonal fruits, and includes scones and interesting sandwiches (green harissa chicken, Welsh cheddar and plum chutney), which are all made to order. Excellent cakes, too. £15pp.

waterlootea.com

The Merchant Hotel, Belfast

A dazzling display of gilding, plasterwork and chandeliers, dominated by its soaring Victorian glass cupola, the Merchant Hotel’s Great Room restaurant serves an afternoon tea that is similarly hi-spec. Warm scones arrive wrapped in linen and you get a box designed by local artist, Mark Reihill, to take home any yuzu crèmeux choux or honey pain d’épices macarons you cannot finish.

At weekends, classical musicians serenade diners. For the ultimate blow-out, the hotel serves an afternoon tea that includes beluga caviar and a bottle of Krug Grande Cuvée, a champagne in which multiple grapes, harvests and vintages are blended to create what the Krug family has dubbed its ‘symphony’. From £22.50.

themerchanthotel.com

Ellenborough Park, Cheltenham

As you follow the curve around Ellenborough Park’s long sweeping drive it’s easy to forget that you’re in the busy Cotswolds’ spa town. The golden stone of the Manor House and its modern extensions (including a spa and some 61 rooms and suites) sprawls across its 90 treasured acres of land, in a prime spot, overlooking the equally historic Cheltenham racecourse. A stone statue of a filly breaks the view from the drop off, outside reception.

Afternoon tea is to be taken in the tudor-inspired Great Hall. A double-height ceiling makes room for grand chandeliers, oil portraits and a deep-set fireplace that was still being lit even in late April when we visited.

Try and nab a seat in the nook if there are only two of you – this part of the building dates back to the 15th century – otherwise make yourself comfortable on one of the pristine sofas…

Click here to read our full review of afternoon tea at Ellenborough Park

Betty’s afternoon tea, Harrogate

Coffee and cake at Betty’s in Harrogate is always a treat; but the Lady Betty afternoon tea is even more so. Taken in the elegant Imperial Room upstairs, it begins with a glass of Hébrart Premier Cru champagne, Moutard Rosé champagne or a kir royale cocktail and, unusually for an afternoon tea, a savoury appetiser – prawn cocktail, served in a little shot glass and sprinkled with paprika.

Next, more miniature savouries including a Yorkshire pork and Bramely apple pie with golden pastry and an accomplished smoked salmon and dill roulade. Sandwiches are soft and pretty, with succulent roast Yorkshire ham and tomato pâté being the best, and are refreshed if needs be; try them with a pot of Betty’s own afternoon tea blend (Assam and Darjeeling with a delicate floral finish), served in bone china cups.

Everything is presented on a traditional silver cake stand, including aromatic Yorkshire lavender scones (a highlight of the afternoon) and a selection of beautiful pastries. Grand Cru chocolate mousse cloaked in cocoa butter and finished with sharp raspberry is utterly decadent; a sweet ‘n’ sticky toffee-apple macaron comes hand-decorated; the miniature Battenberg is covered in good, homemade marzipan; and a coffee religieuse is all light choux pastry, billowy whipped coffee cream and crisp sable biscuit.

Price: £32.95 without champagne; £39.95 with champagne

bettys.co.uk

Historical Dining Rooms, Bristol

The phrase ‘hidden gem’ gets bandied about sometimes, but in the case of the Historical Dining Rooms (HDR), you can use it with conviction. These guys only launched last summer, and have already garnered a gathering of loyal foodie fans. Tucked above the Star and Dove tavern, to enter you’ll need to ring an old-fashioned butler’s doorbell on a non-descript black door.

As you’re greeted by name and led upstairs, HDR claims to transport you and your tastebuds into the mists of the past. To me – thanks to the haunting memory of history documentaries about gruel and lard cake slabs – that felt more like a threat than a promise. Happily, such fears were swiftly banished by the expert service, unusual surrounds and truly beautiful food…

Click here for our full review of afternoon tea at the Historical Dining Rooms…

For more afternoon tea inspiration in London check out our guide to the best here…

Photographs by Victoria Harley, Mai Davidson, Ian Boys, David Chalmers, Simon Dewhurst, Sopwell House Hotel

Words by Mark Taylor, Amanda James, Alex Crossley and Ellie Edwards

Looking for Kyoto restaurants? Here are our favourite restaurants in the Japanese city, plus where to get the best prawn tempura, chicken ramen and matcha tea.

Ten-yu tempura – for tempura set lunch

The zen entrance of this tempura restaurant reflects what you’ll find inside – immaculate service, minimal interiors dominated by a single, 10-person, wooden counter (booking is essential!) and a hushed atmosphere broken only by the sound of prawns sizzling as they plop into a bashed-copper fryer.

The set lunch is a great option if you’re in a hurry or on a budget – a tray neatly arranged with a selection of superbly light and crisp tempura (on our visit prawns, fresh-water fish, lotus root, shiitake mushroom and bittersweet shishito peppers) to dip into a dashi sauce garnished with finely grated daikon, plus a bowl of fluffy rice and another of miso soup. If you want the full experience, order the kaiseki tasting menu and marvel in a succession of bitesize tempura, presented with a bow from the chef.

299 Shimohakusanchu; 00 81 75 212 7778

Bar Bunkyu – for whisky

In true Japanese style this pint-sized bar is hidden down a narrow alleyway on a Kyoto backstreet. Recommended to us by the head distiller at Kyoto Gin Distillery, it’s a truly unique spot – dimly lit and centred around a chunky wooden table with stools for eight. In a little alcove bartender cut out of the table, Nao serves his cherry-picked selection of first-class spirits.

Order a Kyoto Gin Distillery gin spruced up with a dash of yuzu and some Japanese pepper, or a Nikka Coffey whisky highball (whisky topped up with soda to allow the spirit to shine) then swap local tips with Nao (ask for details of his regular karaoke spot and he may just take you there himself!).

barbunkyu.jimdo.com/english

Torisei – for yakitori

Housed in a scorched wood old sake brewery, this izakaya-style restaurant is known for its yakitori. This popular snack literally means ‘skewered chicken’, and here you can get it in all forms – from chicken thigh pieces to more adventurous liver, neck and crispy skin. The menu isn’t limited to skewers so, if you fancy something different, try fried chicken skin dumplings or a fresh chicken salad served with ponzu dressing. You’re in Kyoto’s sake brewery district so order a Kuradashi Nama-genshu sake to sip with your food.

torisei.com

Fushimi sakegura kouji – for sake tasting

Enter this ‘sake village’ from Nayamachi Street and snake your way through a warren of restaurants until you arrive at a busy space lined with food kiosks, and multi-coloured sake bottles of all colours and sizes. Hop onto a stool and order a 17-taster tray of sakes to sip, from across Japan – Kuramoto Shuzo (in the mountains of Nara) and Heiwa Shuzo (in a valley in the Wakayama region, south of Kyoto) were among our preferred brews.

While you’re there, choose a selection of snacks from the various kiosks – don’t miss salty dried firefly squid, sweet sardines and sakura ebi (cherry blossom shrimp – named because of their colour) cooked on your own table-top charcoal grill. Other highlights include karaage (fried chicken) with grated daikon and citrusy ponzu sauce, and kushikatsu (deep-fried skewers of bittersweet shishito peppers, similar to Spanish padrón peppers), crunchy lotus root, prawns and shiitake mushrooms.

fushimi-sakagura-kouji.com

Weekenders – for coffee

You’re unlikely to stumble across this speciality coffee shop by chance unless you’re driving around Kyoto, as it’s tucked away at the back of a car park in the city centre. A takeaway-only kiosk, it’s a microcosm of old-world Kyoto style, with traditional machiya house features such as sliding doors, lots of wood and an immaculate pocket-sized garden framed by bamboo.

The baristas prepare espresso-based and pour-over coffees with the utmost care, using beans from Ethiopia to Guatemala (request the latter from Finca La Sierra for a super smooth and floral cup with a sweet lychee edge). There’s an outdoor alcove for two to linger in, or take your coffee to explore Nishiki food market’s foodie corridor – look out for dried seaweed covered in sesame seeds, squidgy mochi and vitamin-rich Kyoyasai (Kyoto vegetables).

weekenderscoffee.com

River ramen – for ramen

Join the queue outside this contemporary ramen joint along tree-lined Takase canal in Kyoto’s Kawaramachi district, then punch in your order to the ticket machine at the entrance. The speciality is kohaku yuzu chicken ramen – a light, fragrant yuzu-spiked chicken broth bowl filled with thick, chewy noodles, topped with slices of char siu pork, greens and ‘dancing’ katsuobushi flakes.

facebook.com/riverramenkyoto

Senmonten Kyoto Gion Head Shop – for gyozas

Sit at the counter at this casual spot in the Gion district and order gyozas in batches of 10. Be warned, you will definitely keep ordering more; the golden pouches, stuffed with pork and dark green Kyoto spring onions, are super moreish and smaller than your average dumpling. Pair with a mug of beer, and practice your Japanese on the friendly staff. Make sure you take a turn down some of the surrounding streets to explore the wooden machiyas, and look out for geishas gliding gracefully past.

380-3-2-chome Kiyomotocho; 00 81 75 532 0820

Ippodo – for matcha tea

The matcha tea at this longstanding shop is the real deal – vibrant green in colour, sweet in aroma and thick in texture. Choose from various grades of tea powder to take home as a souvenir (you can try before you buy) or linger in the calming Kaboku tearoom (have fun preparing your own brew using a traditional kyusu teapot). If you have time, you can stay on to join a tea class and enjoy a good grounding in the preparation and lingo of matcha (learn the difference, for example, between tea ceremony-grade koicha tea and more everyday usucha tea).

ippodo-tea.co.jp

Otsuka Arashiyama – for wagyu beef

This lunch-only garage-turned-restaurant, hidden at the end of a residential street in Arashiyama (a short train ride from Kyoto centre), specialises in wagyu beef sets. Sit on tatami mats at low wooden tables in the homely dining room and choose between cuts such as chuck top blade, wagyu sirloin and the top-grade Murasawa sirloin (a rare breed with super umami levels and a marbling of extra-sweet fat).

The queue can be three-hours long so make sure you pop your name on the list first thing on arrival in Arashiyama, giving you time to meander through the nearby bamboo forest walkway and surrounding temples before returning for lunch. Top tip: our favourite temple was the quiet Jojakko-ji, set slightly apart from the more popular ones on a moss-covered hillside studded with maple trees, pagodas and small shrines.

steak-otsuka.com

BEER PUB Takumiya – for craft beer

Head to this contemporary craft beer joint to mingle with local hipsters and beer lovers (opt for bar seating if there’s space). It specialises in Japanese brews. Try the city’s own Kyoto Brewing Co beers; these include a rich, chocolatey Belgian stout, Kurishio No Gotoku, and a fruity American amber with caramel notes. The bar also stocks fome top-notch IPAs from nearby Nara Brewing Company; try the tropical-yet-dry Monolith SMaSH American IPA.

takumiya.beer

Specialist tour operator Inside Japan Tours provides unique insider experiences in Kyoto and across Japan; from tea ceremonies and whisky distillery tours to soba noodle-making and green tea harvesting. We recommend their guided city tour of Kyoto to track down lesser-known foodie districts, quieter temples and cherry blossom and maple trees without the crowds.

For more information, visit seejapan.co.uk

Words by Alex Crossley

Looking for restaurants in Normandy? Want to know where to eat in Verneuil-sur-Avre? Food and travel writer Lucy Gillmore takes us on a foodie road trip through Normandy, stopping off at elegant b&bs, pear orchards and saffron farms.

It’s a misty morning, colourless apart from the vivid piles of purple petals on the grass. At the Domaine de Gauville, an organic saffron farm in Normandy, a handful of pickers are crouching close to the ground to collect crocus flowers in woven wicker baskets. The blooms are plucked in the early morning when the buds are still tightly closed. As they open, the precious red stigmas are carefully extracted.

For centuries saffron, dubbed ‘red gold’, has been the most highly prized – and most expensive – spice in the world. Some 90% of the world’s saffron is grown in Iran, but the saffron cultivated in France is sought after, renowned for its high quality.

It was the Crusaders who first brought the bulbs back from their travels to far-flung lands during the 11th century. By the 1300s, saffron production was firmly rooted in French culture, and heavily taxed. However, a combination of three consecutive hard winters, bulbs weakened by disease and the intensity of labour (the flowers are harvested by hand) led to the decline of the industry during the 19th century.

“The last saffronerie closed in 1956,” Myriam Duteil tells me as we kneel on the damp earth, filling our baskets with delicate blooms. Recently, however, there has been a revival.

Myriam was a media executive, working in New York for the Public Broadcasting Service before returning to France and launching the French Food Network in 2001. A decade or so later, her focus shifted. Her mother and grandmother had been farmers and she felt drawn to the land. By 2015 she had a six-hectare plot, an entrepreneurial spirit and 20,000 bulbs imported from India. Last year she produced one kilo of saffron (France as a whole produces 200 kilos), making her a key player.

“Its powers are not only culinary, it also has medical properties,” she explains as we carry our baskets back to the kitchen. “It helps digestion and is a natural antidepressant.”

Saffron has to be dried the day it’s picked, so Myriam’s mother is working at the kitchen table carefully removing the spindly red threads, and placing them on a linen cloth to absorb any moisture. Myriam unscrews a jar and holds it up to my nose. It smells of honey.

“I always sell the saffron in threads as it’s easy to grind it to a powder using a pestle and mortar,” she explains.

“Saffron is expensive but you only need a couple of threads per person – say a gram per family each year.”

She brings out a tub of homemade saffron ice cream and hands me a spoon. I struggle to identify the flavour. “Vanilla?” She smiles. There’s no vanilla in the recipe. “When you combine the saffron with milk and sugar it creates the aroma of vanilla.”

Myriam sells the saffron at local farmers’ markets and to nearby restaurants such as Le Logis de Brionne, where I’m heading for lunch. Chef Alain Depoix’s menu showcases seasonal ingredients in a series of intricate dishes. The highlight of the lunch is an egg: ‘L’oeuf parfait aux truffes’, with purée de céleri and émulsion mascarpone tartufata. Slow-cooked for an hour and a quarter at 63 degrees with celery purée and mushroom emulsion, it’s dish-scrapingly cloying and sweetly rich, yet pungent as a forest floor and light as a chick’s downy feathers. The saffron makes a star appearance during dessert: a pear poached in a blood-red saffron sauce with almond cream.

Normandy, just a hop over the English Channel, is one of the most easily accessible regions of France for a gourmet short break. It boasts no fewer than 30 Michelin-starred restaurants and a packed calendar of food festivals throughout the year celebrating its natural larder, from the Fête du Camembert in Orbec in June, July’s oyster festival in Denneville, the Foire aux Fromages in Livarot in August, the scallop festival in Ouistreham in October and an annual cider festival in picturesque Beuvron-en-Auge.

With 370 miles of coastline, menus are brimming with seafood. The region’s oysters have their own AOC (appellation d’origine contrôlée) and Port-en-Bessin’s scallops are justifiably famous – this is the home of coquilles St Jacques. The countryside is lush and green, grazed by native dairy herds, the region’s cheeseboard showcases the big four: livarot, neufchâtel, pont l’évêque and camembert de Normandie. The rolling hills are also blanketed with orchards of apples and pears, used to produce cider, calvados and poiré.

After a hard day’s grazing I’m bedding down in the east wing of Château de la Puisaye, a rambling 18th-century property in Verneuil-sur-Avre, now an elegant b&b. British owners, Diana and Bruno Costes, have spent years renovating the Napolean III château, and now offer a handful of rooms in the main house, a studio over the stables and a holiday cottage: the old hunting lodge. Breakfast in the wood-panelled dining room is a delicious spread of home-baked bread and jams, fruit from their orchards, and local cheeses.

The following day I’m on the hunt for poiré, heading to the Ferme de l’Yonnière. Jérôme Forget is one of only 20 producers who make poiré, a sparkling PDO (protected designation of origin) pear cider and Normandy’s answer to champagne. At his bucolic 15-hectare farm, grazing cows keep the grass low, clear the lower branches and fertilise the soil. It’s a complete eco-system. From August to October, when the fruits start to fall, he moves the animals, to prevent them trampling or eating the apples and pears. The grass cushions the fruit as it falls and keeps it cool.

“You can hear them thudding to the ground through the night,” he smiles, picking up a tiny apple for me to taste. It’s crunchy, tart and incredibly juicy, yet mouth-puckering and tongue-strippingly astringent.

He has around 300 old trees, some between 200 to 300 years old, and 400 young trees. “They say it takes a pear tree 100 years to grow, 100 years to live and 100 years to die,” he says.

The fruit is pressed in an old barn. In another he shows me the sparkling fermentation tanks. There’s a small tasting room next door, crammed with cases of poiré, pear and apple juice, cider and calvados. On the bar are plates of warm bread from the local boulangerie, one oozing with pont l’évêque and pear, the other camembert and apple.

He pours me a glass of Poiré Domfront. It’s dry and crisp. “It goes well with sea trout,” he says, “and you can use it instead of white wine with mussels and cream.” He uses the champagne method to remove the sediment and create finer, tighter bubbles. The fermentation is natural.

My next stop is a Michelin-starred gourmet bolthole on the edge of the Andaines Forest, Manoir du Lys in Bagnoles-de-l’Orne, an old hunting lodge turned family-run hotel. Chef Franck Quinton offers cookery classes and foodie breaks. Mushrooms are a signature, from the artwork around the hotel to the moreish mushroom bread and mushroom butter served in the restaurant.

During the autumn the hotel runs mushroom-themed events with guided jaunts in the surrounding forest with a local mycologist, wandering through the dense undergrowth collecting fungi in baskets (from cèpe de Bordeaux to bolet orangé) before returning to the hotel to label and discuss the day’s finds over a mushroom-focussed dinner (the mushroom ravioli has a sweet, sublime earthiness).

My final stop before catching the ferry home is the Ferme de Billy in the little village of Rots, a fifth-generation family farm dating back to 1651. Most of the 24,000 apple trees on the 120-hectare estate are in regimented rows – apart from those sprinkled around the 13th-century chapel, now an eye-catching exhibition space. This is the new breed of cider farm from the next generation of cider-makers.

“In Normandy cider is popular, but everyone makes cider around here. We need to give it a more modern image.” Olivier Vauvrecy worked in Paris and New York before returning to the farm with a host of new ideas.

He recently ran a pop-up bar in Paris to showcase cider cocktails, and has collaborated with Barney Butterfield, a Devon-based journalist turned cider-maker, to create a blend of Norman and English cider called The Collaborators. With his brother, Olivier has also turned the barn-like buildings into a rustic chic restaurant serving a sprawling buffet brunch at the weekends, spilling out into the garden with its low-slung seating and firepit.

He opens a handful of bottles for a tasting at the bar. They make a range of aperitifs, pommeau de Normandie and digestifs, as well as cider. The two-year-old calvados works well in cocktails with champagne or tonic water, mint and apple juice, he explains, while the deeper, darker, oak-aged, five-year-old can be drizzled over vanilla ice cream.

But it’s the ciders that Olivier wants to highlight: their versatility and the fact that they can be a modern alternative to wine. “The brut is the one to drink with dinner. It’s slightly tannic and bitter.” The recently launched fraîcheur is more acidic. “It goes well with dessert, pont l’évêque and fish,” he smiles. Which, just a pebble’s throw from Normandy’s bustling harbours, gives it more than a fighting chance to make its mark.

Words by Lucy Gillmore, March 2019

Photographs by Getty, Lucy Gillmore and Laura Rowe

Follow Lucy on Instagram and Twitter @lucygillmore

Looking for Sheffield restaurants? Check out our ideas for eating and drinking in the Steel City, from West Bar to Endcliffe Park and beyond…

Best restaurants in Sheffield…

Jöro – for scandi-Japanese fusion

Housed inside four upcycled shipping containers, Sheffield restaurant Jöro specialises in what head chef and co-owner Luke French calls “new Nordic” cuisine, inspired by the Scandi approach to locality, care of ingredients and a simplicity of cooking. But there’s also a nod to Japanese cooking techniques. “In a nutshell, we call it a ‘Scandi-Jap mash-up’,” says Luke, whose signature dishes include asparagus, pickled spruce and blackcurrant leaves, and brown butter ice cream, aerated white chocolate and miso. And it’s not just lucky locals who appreciate Luke’s food – Jöro entered the Good Food Guide after only a few months of business, its inspectors praising the “no-holds-barred seasonal cooking”.

jororestaurant.co.uk

Ashoka – for curry

This beloved Sheffield institution on bustling Ecclesall Road opened in 1967, and is one of the best places to go for a curry. Rahul Amin took over in 2004, and has crafted a restaurant that expertly blends the traditional and contemporary (inside it’s all black and white floor tiling, and elegant wooden dining booths). Start with crispy poppadoms piled high with chopped onions, cucumber, coriander and chaat masala, plus a ‘1960s pickle tray’ of punchy dips, before moving onto toweringly puffy, light-as-air puri filled with the likes of spiced chicken liver, or cubes of potato tossed with Henderson’s Relish.

For mains, traditional dishes are well represented on the busy menu, but it’s worth seeking out the restaurant’s quirkier dishes: fiery and rich Reyt Spiceh Curreh (a tribute to the super-hot dishes traditionally consumed by inebriated late-night customers), and Taxi Driver Curry (smoky chicken tikka with garlic minced lamb). Cool down with a citrussy Bradfield Farmer’s blonde beer – brewed in Sheffield.

ashoka1967.com

Butcher & Catch – for local produce

The clue’s in the name at this brightly decorated restaurant in Broomhill, which has a menu that revolves around showcasing prime, sustainably sourced meat and fish (the former reared in Sheffield and the surrounding area, the latter sourced from day boats on the British coast). Start with a few Pyefleet Pure oysters – served au naturel, panko breaded or topped with local Little Mester cheese and poached pear – before moving onto the likes of confit Moss Valley pork belly with seared scallops, parsnip crisps and purée, or catch of the day (try spankingly fresh mackerel) served with a mound of buttery greens. Those with heftier appetites should attempt sharing platters such as Block & Tackle: buttermilk chicken wings, oxtail yorkies, seared bavette steak, fried cod cheeks, glazed pork belly, deep-fried oysters, crispy whitebait, grilled sardines and slaw.

butcherandcatch.co.uk

Best bars and places to drink in Sheffield…

The Fat Cat – for Sheffield-brewed beers

The Fat Cat, a charming traditional watering hole in the city’s old industrial heartland, is the place to go for a pint from one of Sheffield’s most iconic breweries. Kelham Island Brewery crafted their first beer in the pub’s garden in 1990, and although the brewery is now a few yards away in Alma Street, The Fat Cat still offers Kelham Island stalwarts, alongside an array of guest beers. Order a pint of their award-winning fruity Pale Rider ale, soak in the cosy vibes and chat to the friendly punters.

thefatcat.co.uk

Public – for cocktails

The Steel City has a growing number of first-rate cocktail bars, and one of the best is Public, adjacent to Sheffield Town Hall and squeezed into what was once a public toilet. The team behind fellow Sheffield bars such as the award-winning Picture House Social and Great Gatsby has done an amazing job of turning the tiny space into a sleek cocktail bar, with a jewel-toned mid-century aesthetic and intimate, café-style booths.

It is the use of local ingredients – picked from hedgerows, moors or scrubland – which impresses at Public. They shine through in the Queen of Jalisco, where a house-made hazelnut syrup and a chicory root tincture (a liquid extract) meet with lovage-infused tequila for a lighter cocktail served over ice. The same can be said of the Hedgerow Negroni, which adds blackberries infused with Tanqueray 10 gin to a mushroom tincture, crème de mure, Benedictine and Genepi for a sweeter, more subtle range of flavours.

publicpublic.co.uk

Turner’s Craft Beer Bottle Shop – for craft beer and Yorkshire gins

Looking for an eco-friendly way to buy beer? Then pay a visit to this Abbeydale Road bottle shop. As well as an extensive selection of bottled brews, they also have four kegs available – the idea is to fill up your own growler bottle from them. Expect to find nationwide beers (in bottle form and on tap), from Cornish Verdant and Tottenham’s Pressure Drop to northern breweries including Cloudwater and Thornbridge.

If you’re not a beer fan then there’s still plenty to explore. There’s a wine list curated by  Sheffield wine merchant Olive & Vine Wines, and a robust collection of Yorkshire gins – we spotted Sheffield Dry Gin, Masons and Brockmans on our visit.

@TurnersBeer

Best cafés and bakeries in Sheffield…

Birdhouse Tea Bar and Kitchen – for tea

Spread over two floors in a former cutlery-machine factory, this calm, laidback café is all high ceilings, exposed brick walls and dried flowers hanging from beams. Award-winning, ethically sourced tea is the star of the show, with a lengthy menu to choose from (including house blends crafted in Birdhouse’s Nether Edge tea studio). We loved the smoky, complex Kelham Island, made with darjeeling, lapsang souchong, apple and safflower petals; it came in a dinky teapot with minimalist glass cups and a timer for optimum brewing.

Elsewhere on the menu there’s coffee from Sheffield-based Foundry Roasters; tea cocktails; and hearty dishes including luscious pancakes with coconut blossom syrup, blueberry compote and whipped coconut cream. Or for something savoury, try the Sheffield rarebit: toasted sourdough with grilled cheese, mustard, Yorkshire ale and Henderson’s Relish – make sure you add a side of earl grey-glazed ham.

birdhouseteacompany.com

Eve’s Kitchen – for donuts

Enter Lauren Eve’s chilled out café on indie-style Sharrow Vale Road to discover a counter lined with serried ranks of handmade donuts. They’re all proudly plump and dusted with sugar, and fillings include dark chocolate and honeycomb, milk chocolate hazelnut crunch, apple crumble, and rhubarb and custard. There are also decadent French toast dishes available – just in case you haven’t quite got your sugar fix.

evekitchen.co.uk

Forge Bakehouse – for artisan bakes

Martha Brown started The Forge Bakehouse in 2012 following a year studying at Nottinghamshire’s School of Artisan Food. It’s become a community hub and in the past five years, Martha’s tiny shop has grown into larger premises where you can buy a large range of sourdough, long-fermented bread and pastries. What’s on offer changes regularly – the loaves, ciabatta, baguettes and batards can cover anything from dark and dense Nordic-style bakes to creamy white sourdough, with an imaginative approach to flavour (raisin and rosemary, apple and oat, rye and caraway and beetroot and cumin).

Patisserie is equally tempting: highlights include morning buns and chocolate tarts. They also have a light-filled space upstairs where you can sip brews from North Star Coffee, and enjoy dishes such as harissa-fried eggs in sourdough with avocado, labneh and hazelnut dukkah; or homemade banana bread granola with yogurt, cherry compote, poached pears and toasted pumpkin seeds. Martha also runs regular bread-making classes that range from an introduction to bread-making to mastering the intricacies of sourdough and French loaves.

forgebakehouse.co.uk

Best food market in Sheffield…

Moor Market

Tall, sculpted and glass-fronted, the acclaimed Moor Market houses some 90 independent traders. Butchers and fishmongers are especially well represented, with 10 of the former and four of the latter, as well as bakers, specialist grocers, artisan delis and more. Its gastronomic offerings are impressively diverse, including enormous, cream-filled elephant’s foot buns (a local delicacy) at Turner’s bakery; pretty crêpe cakes from Mr Gao’s Hand Made Baking; Nepalese thali at Hungry Buddha; traditional pork pies at Waterall Brothers (they even offer a wedding cake version); and Chinese wontons and steamed buns at Sichuan Steamed Food.

sheffieldmarkets.com

Where to stay in Sheffield

Brocco on the Park

Positioned on the edge of leafy Endcliffe Park, with easy access to Ecclesall and Sharrow Vale, this imposing red-brick Edwardian villa is a cool, calm, Scandi-esque boutique hotel decorated in a palette of soothing neutrals. Rooms are named after different birds (from Owl’s Burrow to Robin’s Hollow), and as well as invitingly capacious beds and luxuriously outfitted bathrooms (The Dovecote has a beautiful freestanding copper bath), part-Finnish owner Tiina Carr has added plenty of smaller but equally important hygge-like indulgences. These include sumptuous bed linens, Bronte lambswool blankets, fluffy white robes, organic toiletries and homemade cakes.

Head downstairs to the hotel’s restaurant, Brocco Kitchen, for breakfasts such as smoked trout with potato and onion rosti, spinach, poached eggs and hollandaise; blueberry and lemon porridge with chia seeds; and spinach, mango and kale smoothie. Plus there are seasonal bellinis on offer, spiked with elderflower or violet liqueur. They also offer afternoon tea, and smorgasbords-style small plates for lunch and dinner.

brocco.co.uk

Click here to book your stay at Brocco on the Park

For more information, visit welcometosheffield.co.uk

Words by Hannah Guinness, Joel Harrison and Mark Taylor

Looking for Manchester restaurants? Want to find the best local café in Manchester’s Northern Quarter? After the best brownie in the city? We’ve found the best places to eat and drink in Manchester, from the trendy Northern Quarter, to revamped Salford.

olive’s top 10 must-visits for foodies in Manchester

Rudy’s – best pizza in Manchester

Rudy’s is a unanimous favourite among Manchester’s foodies. With its original site in up-and-coming Ancoats and a newly opened branch on Peter Street, it’s a go-to place for pizza and cocktails with your pals.

Pizza dough is made on site twice a day and cooked for no longer than a minute to produce a springy base. Choose from toppings including classic margherita with buffalo mozzarella, spicy ‘nduja sausage with tomato and fior di latte, or white pizza with smoked mozzarella, Tuscan sausage and wild broccoli.

The aperitivo list uses some of our favourite Italian brands to create twists on classic cocktails – gin fizz is spiked with Cynar (a bittersweet artichoke leaf liquer) and Disaronno is mixed with Limoncello, lemon juice and fresh basil for a refreshing Amaretto sour. Otherwise go for a creamy dolci colline prosecco, bright and citrusy Sicilian white or forest-fruity Puglian red.

Rudyspizza.co.uk

Bundobust – best casual dining in Manchester

Bundobust is many things (craft beer haunt, Indian street food hangout, veggie restaurant) but it sells itself as a ‘beer and Indian joint’. The basement bar is filled with casual, communal tables that encourage interaction with fellow punters, and has a relaxed order-at-the-bar system that keeps the crowd mingling.

The food menu is all about vegetarian Indian street food. We suggest opting for one of the combos that arrive on wooden trays – a modern twist on the thali. Plant-based are filled with paneer and mushroom tikka skewers marinated in yogurt curd, crisp onion, broccoli and kale bhajis spiced with fennel, and tarka lentil dhal to mop up with deep fried bhatura flatbread. Our highlight was the bundo chat – layers of crisp samosa, sweet-and-sour tamarind and frilly little crunchy bits on top.

Beers include collaborations with Leeds brewery Northern Monk and several Manchester breweries (see some of the best in the Beermoth section below). There’s simple house chai for a booze-free option, though you can add a dash of bourbon or cognac if you’re after more of a kick.

Bundobust.com

Umezushi – best sushi in Manchester

You wouldn’t expect to find this zen little space hiding down an alley near Victoria Station. Blond wood benches, panelled walls and a spotless sushi counter help to create a calm ambience in which to enjoy some sushi.

All the Japanese classics are there – neat little nigiri rice piles topped with wagyu sirloin or freshwater eel, sashimi slices (pickled mackerel, sea bream, scallop) cut with precision, and tightly-rolled maki cylinders filled with salmon and avocado, hand-picked crab or pickled veg.

There’s a whole section dedicated to unique cuts of tuna, ranging from lean akami to fatty otoro. Daily specials include salmon head, lamb rack and pork belly on springy sushi rice. Book in advance, as this tiny room gets rammed.

Umezushi.co.uk

Pollen Bakery – best bakery in Manchester

If you’re in search of comfort then head to this canalside bakery for indulgent brownies and stay for cuddles with Maru the chow chow (aka lion dog).

The light and bright space beside New Islington Marina is kitted out with sleek scandi furnishings (concrete, pale wood, muted tones). Behind a counter heaving with freshly baked loaves and cakes there’s a huge area dedicated to baking. Pollen is famous for its sourdough loaves (try the Pollen rye, oat porridge, five-seed sour) and Manchester tart cruffins, but don’t miss the moist and zesty lemon and poppy seed cake and the decadent salted caramel brownie topped with cocoa nibs.

The owners support small foodie entrepreneurs with supper clubs and pop ups, so check out the website for Asian food from Pippy Eats and more…

Pollenbakery.com

Federal – best brunch in Manchester

This popular antipodean cafe drags loyal Northern Quarter locals out of bed at the weekend for its epic brunches. Emily’s homemade banana bread is treacly and dark, spiced with cinnamon and nutmeg with a fragrant vanilla mascarpone. If you’re really hungry, the hefty French toast is very popular, laden with homemade summer berry compote, almonds, whipped vanilla mascarpone and salted caramel; while corn fritters with a choice of toppings make a worthy savoury choice.

Federal’s owners are committed to excellent sourcing, with sourdough bread brought in from Lovingly Artisan in the Lake District, and coffee carted up from London’s Ozone Coffee Roasters (try a signature espresso martini made with vanilla infused vodka and Ozone espresso).

It’s a lovely spot to spend a few hours – above wooden floorboards mustard banquettes hug two sides of the almost triangular corner room, and lush green plants spill out of tiny hanging pots.

Federalcafe.co.uk

Hatch – best street food market in Manchester

This trendy foodie outlet sits under the flyover near Manchester Met and Manchester University. Strings of exposed light bulbs cast a hipster twinkle over the self-contained courtyard, and there’s a sun-soaked garden filled with long wooden tables where you can while away summer afternoons.

Peruse the artisan beers on tap and by the bottle at Öl nanobrewery. Try one of their own brews or go for the local Cloudwater IPA, brewed under the railway arches around the corner. Otherwise sit in the shipping container above Takk coffee and sip espressos or iced lattes from sleek black bamboo cups.

The rotating street food offering showcases Manchester’s up-and-coming vendors. We tried Firebird Hope chicken sandwiches – the crunchiest outer shell covering extremely succulent pieces of chicken thigh with Koji mayo and green slaw.

Hatchmcr.com

Takk – best coffee shop in Manchester

With the main space in the Northern Quarter and a funky outpost in one of Hatch’s shipping containers, this sleek coffee shop is an ode to Scandinavia. The owners are obsessed with all things Nordic (particularly Reykjavik), so opened this ode to the region complete with the house Nordic Style espresso (roasted by Clifton Coffee in Bristol), cosy ‘hygge’ vibes and trendy baristas.

At the Oxford Road shop, there’s a more contemporary Scandinavian them, with a turquoise coffee machine, plenty of blonde wood and funky grey tiles create a calm backdrop to enjoy your coffee, or purchase one of the handy reusable cups and get an iced coffee to take away.

takkmcr.com

El Gato Negro – best tapas in Manchester

This upmarket tapas restaurant opened in 2016 and has quickly gained a reputation as Manchester’s go-to spot for a splash-out dinner.

Set over three storeys of a converted townhouse, there are plenty of choices when it comes to seating – a ground floor bar framed with shiny black tiles and seats that spill out onto the pavement, and red leather stools overlooking the open kitchen on the first floor, allowing punters to inhale aromas from the Josper grill. Then there’s el Gato Negro’s trump card, a swish rooftop dining area, complete with sliding roof, where you can enjoy a glass of fresh and fruity Albariño wine from Galicia.

The restaurant’s small plates menu sees chefs adding modern twists to traditional tapas dishes. Though we thought some additions weren’t needed (Galician octopus, for example, was so soft and beautifully finished on the Josper grill that it didn’t need the punchy pickled shallots), other dishes really shone – long, slim heritage carrots were drenched in walnut pesto, miso and aubergine purée, while croquettas entailed an extra cheesy béchamel encased in crisp breadcrumbs.

Elgatonegrotapas.com

Beermoth – best bottle shop in Manchester

This small shop on buzzy Tib Street is jam-packed with bottles, cans and kegs of beers from Manchester, as well as from the UK and across the globe.

Brews from the inner city include neon-packaged Runaway Brewery (smoked porter, summer saison, American brown ale), Track Brewing Co. (visit its weekly brew tap events under the arches of Picadilly), and Cloudwater, which has gained a global reputation for itself over the past few of years.

The friendly staff sure know their porters from their DIPAs, so make sure you pick their brains. We came across a fab new favourite from Northern Ireland after describing our preferences.

Beermoth.co.uk

Adam Reid at The French

Hidden behind a curtain in a corner of the grand lobby of the Midland Hotel, there’s more than a feel of Alice in Wonderland as you are transported through mirrored doors into the dining room of The French. Soft grey and sage green tones give everything a muted luxurious feel and there are two huge cylindrical chandeliers which throw light back and forth via the mirrored panelling around the room.

Chef Adam Reid’s cooking is inventive and playful but executed with real precision and flair. (He’s the bold chef that took over the helm after Simon Rogan left at the end of 2016.) A nibble of the creamiest smoked cod roe with puffy squid ink wafers kicked the six-course tasting menu off in style. Crispy pig’s trotter to start, proper came as fall-apart meat slowly braised in a rich deep umami soy base then breadcrumbed and deep fried into a crisp nugget, with pickled onion purée. Courses to follow include corned beef and potato hash, brill with silky artichoke and basil purée and suckling pig belly served with fermented cabbage and punchy cherry sauce.

Reid won the Great British menu in 2016 with his Empire apple dessert – a blown sugar apple filled with a meadowsweet custard mousse – and our incredibly pretty pud is a take on that, this time a shiny orange clementine sugar shell filled with airy white chocolate mousse. It’s a little piece of cooking wizardry which perfectly reflects the rest of the menu at this magical place.

Click here to read our full review of Adam Reid at The French…

The Bagel Shop by Eat New York – best bagels in Manchester

This Northern Quarter newcomer is the latest hangout for hip young Mancunians. There are screens indoors to enjoy the footie, or grab a bagel or burger and set up camp in nearby Piccadilly Gardens for a gourmet picnic.

Bagels are top-notch – tempura-battered aubergine is meltingly soft and really holds itself up to the doughy bagel base. For something more classic, go for the homemade salt beef or pastrami smoked for 15 hours in ‘Old Buddy’ the smoker.

Eatnewyork.co.uk

Where to stay in Manchester – The Cow Hollow Hotel

Looking for a boutique hotel in Manchester for a foodie base? When a hotel’s reception doubles up as a cocktail bar you know you’re in for a good time. After a friendly Northern greeting, continue up the statement stairs to a cosy reception area that’s all exposed red-brick walls, gilt-panelled mirrors and hanging plants.

This unique style continues through to the hotel’s sixteen bedrooms; the building was previously a textile warehouse, so some come with impressive marble fireplaces, wooden floors and original beams.

Owners Muj and Amelia have catered to every need for an inner-city break, with super comfy beds, REN toiletries and even hair straighteners and curling tongs to prep for a night on the town (plus earplugs to block out any unwanted wake-ups).

Make the most of the complimentary early evening prosecco and snacks, or sit at the hotel’s swish marble and wood bar to order classic cocktails. There’s no restaurant, but the central location means favourites such as Bundobust and Rudy’s are a five-minute stumble away. After dinner, kick back and watch Netflix in bed with a round of milk and cookies (delivered to your room before 11pm), or head out to embrace the buzz of the Northern Quarter’s bars.

Cowhollow.co.uk

More places to eat and drink in Manchester

Restaurant MCR

As Manchester House, MCR was at the forefront of fine dining in Manchester. It’s now reopened with new owners, menus and vigour and has stepped up with dramatic tasting menus (dishes include pig’s head croquettes, duck breast with plump, nutty morels, and toasted coconut Manchester tart) and impeccable service in a spacious loft that marries industrial design with muted 60s comfort.

Read our full review of Restaurant MCR here

Mana

Progressive, sustainable, creative – all words that have been bandied around concerning Simon Martin’s new restaurant. The 28-year-old Shropshire chef worked at Noma and Restaurant Gordon Ramsay before opening Mana, his first restaurant, in October 2018. With an aim to be “casual”, “accessible” and celebrate the “best of our island’s produce”, the restaurant serves a seven- or 14-course set menu (£65 or £105) in just 1 hour 45 minutes.

Little-known ingredients have raised eyebrows among foodies – from dessicated spruce and bark to reindeer moss and lacto-fermented barley – and there’s the option to go for juice, beer or wine pairing. Eight-metre-high ceilings make this minimalist, modern space feel bigger than its 28 seats. Dark wooden floors, grey walls, cream leather, wood-framed chairs and statement drop lighting provide the backdrop for the main attraction – a £300,000 bespoke open kitchen, with compressed stone surfaces, and the brigade of chefs who double up as servers. The ever-evolving winter menu (served until the end of this month) focusses on shellfish, fish and winter greens, and is available four days a week.

Read our pro vs punter review of Mana here

Common

Common is the quintessential hip, arty N/4 hangout. Look out for New York Jewish delicatessen specials, the homemade salt beef sauerkraut stack for instance, or Common’s pastrami-topped Reuben burger and classics like lamb kofta kebab.

aplacecalledcommon.co.uk

Hanging Ditch

Wine buffs should head to vintners Hanging Ditch for friendly, down-to-earth advice and the chance to try before you buy.

hangingditch.com

TAST

Executive chef Paco Pérez, who holds five Michelin stars across seven restaurants around the world, is behind the Catalonian menu, which starts with three types of bread and tomato, cheese and charcuterie, and canapé-like tramuntanades, including toasted cheese and truffle sandwiches.

‘Tastets’ are similar in size to tapas, and beg to be matched with the all-Spanish wine list, Catalan gins and out-there cocktails (try vodka with apple, black garlic and basil oil). Order a couple of tastets each – whether Iberian ham or roasted chicken croquettes, or plates from the ‘garden’, ‘sea’ or ‘mountain’ – then move on to shared rice platters, or the likes of Iberian pork presa and bone-in sirloin steak cooked in a charcoal oven. Can’t decide? Let Paco choose, with a £40 menu of his favourites.

With space for 120 covers across three dining areas (the private Enxaneta on the second floor, main dining room Folre, and Pinya bar), the décor is slick but understated, with plenty of natural light.

Click here to read our pro vs punter review of TAST…

20 Stories

D&D London group’s all-day restaurant, bar and grill, 20 Stories, on the 19th floor of the No1 Spinningfields building in central Manchester.

The modern British menu in the main restaurant showcases local produce, with the majority sourced within a 50-mile radius of the city. Herdwick lamb sits on potato gnocchi and chanterelle mushrooms, poached John Dory is served with a smart langoustine velouté and white asparagus, and butter-poached salsify is topped with burnt leeks and parsnip purée. There’s also a more casual brasserie focussing on the grill, serving the likes of Yorkshire beef steaks, grilled heritage beetroot salad, and bone marrow burgers topped with beef cheek, mushroom and an onion ring.

With 360-degree views, the swish space also brings the outside in with glamorous interiors inspired by nature (plenty of wood, hanging plants, stone features). The bar and outdoor terrace is dedicated to cocktails, including the signature 20 Stories cocktail made with Tanqueray gin, vermouth, honey and herb cordial, and grapes shaken with fresh lemon.

Click here to read our full pro vs punter review of 20 Stories…

WOOD

Fine dining made casual with a modern spin on British classics, in the shiny First Street development just outside Manchester’s city centre.

High ceilings tower over dark wood and teal furnishings, with cosy booths and dim lighting. An open kitchen gives diners a view of the MasterChef at work.

There are four menus to order from, to reflect the different ways you might like to dine here. A tasting menu is kept as a surprise for the night you visit, they call it a mystery tour. The lounge menu focuses on the Josper grill with flat-iron steak, smoked gnocchi, rocket parmesan pesto and leaves on offer, while the low-key theatre menu is restricted in choice, but expansive in flavour, with the likes of belly pork, cider, granny smith apple, and sage and onion popping up as a starter.

Click here to read our full review of WOOD…

Australasia

Australasia (1 The Avenue), a glam subterranean bar-restaurant goes on late and gets busy. Visit pre-dinner to enjoy a rose and lychee martini.

Check out our full review of Australasia here…

Teacup

Co-owned by DJ/tea enthusiast, Mr Scruff, bright, busy Teacup majors on top regional ingredients and simple, honest dishes. Its baked beans with smoky bacon bits on home-baked sourdough is ace.

teacupandcakes.com

Peggy’s

Peggy’s has recently closed, but keep an eye out from the next project…

This backstreet drinking den is a hidden secret (look out for the leaf motif above the inconspicuous door). Though it’s above ground, the cocktail bar feels like a speakeasy, with candles flickering on wooden tables, brown leather booths hugging a mottled black and white brick wall, and a record player spinning blues and rock and roll.

Apron-clad owners Adam Day and Shane Kilgarriff mix up clever concoctions behind the white-tiled bar. There’s an unsung commitment to zero waste – no garnishes and a constantly-changing menu that allows the guys to utilise small-batch cordials, vermouths and bitters made in-house using hyper-local produce foraged from the outskirts of the city.

Examples of cocktails on our visit were a Twinkle that incorporated Chorlton elderflower cordial and fennel bulb liqueur, a Sour Butter Gimlet with lemon-and-asparagus-infused gin, and Whisky Mac (homemade ginger wine and blackcurrant leaf-infused Scotch). For something really boozy, go for the Rabo de Galo, served martini-style with cachaça, homemade vermouth and an intense grapefruit caramel.

Peggysbarmcr.co.uk

Words by Alex Crossley and Tony Naylor

Trust olive Food and arts journalist Tony Naylor was born, lives and works in Manchester. olive’s digital editor Alex Crossley has family in Manchester and visits regularly.

Looking for foodie road trips across Europe? Want to know the best road journeys through America? Here are the best foodie road trips to take this year.

Coastal Slovenia

Flanked by the Italian port cities of Trieste and Venice to the north and Croatia’s beaches to the south, Slovenia’s coastline is, at just 28 miles, a neglected treasure. But this little seashore flaunts a surprisingly eclectic mix of culinary influences, where northern Italian and Croatian dishes morph into brilliantly off-key versions of the originals.

Here you’ll find thick fusi pasta, yellow with egg yolks and rich with butter and truffles; melt-in-your-mouth Boskarin stew tossed through fat gnocchi or piled onto oozy polenta; dry-cured Karst ham; pungent sheep’s cheeses; and an unending supply of fresh fish. For the latter, head a few miles out of Koper – the largest coastal town – to Gostilna Trattoria Norma, a family-run taverna serving exceptionally fresh shellfish, including razor clams, scallops and king prawn-stuffed ravioli doused in Istrian olive oil, all paired with crisp wines from their generations-old vineyard. A little more up-market, Restaurant OKUS in Koper is a must-try, in particular for its overnight Venetian-style fish stew. Skip dessert for ice cream at Sladoledarna, a local institution with flavours that range from apricot and lavender to coffee and stout.

Further down the coast, stop at the colourful fishing village of Piran before heading to Rizibiz in neighbouring Portorož (try the truffle tasting menu). Istrian Bistro is an equally popular spot for a bottle and a bite, its ingredients supplied by a handful of small-scale local producers. One such producer is the Butul family farmstead. Set in an oasis of olive, pomegranate and fig trees, beehives and vines, it offers B&B accommodation as well as meals. Everything here is made from scratch: the breakfast spread includes three-day fermented bread, home-preserved anchovies, tangy pickled aubergines, thick honey, and fig jams. Keen ambassadors of a slow Mediterranean way of life, the Butuls are a genuine representation of Istrian Slovenia.

São Miguel, Azores

A Portuguese outpost, flung into the Atlantic, the Azores archipelago has fermented its own food culture, and each island has independent tastes. Not least main hub São Miguel – the ‘green island’ – which offers some of the Azores’ most dramatic volcanic scenery and some of its best produce: tender beef, grilled with roast garlic and sautéed peppers; cozido (meat stew); small-yet-sweet Azorean pineapples; sea-salty lapas (limpets) grilled with cumin; and fluffy, muffin-like bolo lêvedo bread.

Stay in capital Ponta Delgada, where the marina-front Azor Hotel has a rooftop bar where you can drink Azorean wine and scan for passing whales, and a restaurant that majors on local flavours – limpet rice, pork rinds, pineapple strudel. Grab breakfast at Louvre Michaelense, founded as a grocery store in 1904 and now a hip spot for pastries.

With a quick stop at the Augusto Arruda pineapple plantation, to tour the greenhouses and buy ananás liqueur, follow the south coast to Vila Franca do Campo to try traditional queijadas (cheese tarts) created by the town’s nuns in the 17th century. Lunch on cozido in Furnas, where this hearty concoction of pork ribs, pig ears, blood sausage and yam is simmered in volcanic hot springs for eight hours. Drive cross-island to the north coast for a cuppa at Gorreana, home of Europe’s oldest tea plantation, which has cultivated organic teas since 1883. Then head on to Porto Formoso, where family-run Quinta dos Sabores serves intimate farm-to-table dinners.

Continue west along the coast to the affluent plateau-top town of Ribeira Grande, with its charming old centre. Find coffee and artisanal truffles at O Chocolatinho and great sushi by the sea at Santa Barbara. In São Miguel’s far west is Sete Cidades, a protected landscape of blue-green crater lakes. It’s also home to Quinta da Queiró, where a handful of barns has been converted into apartments and a teahouse lays on sweetmeats, liqueurs and other regional produce.

Asturias, Spain

In northerly Asturias, mountain and sea collide in beautiful, belly-filling fashion. Attractive fishing villages spill over with hake, monkfish, lobster and crab, and prickly sea urchins can be plucked right off the rocks. Inland, where rare-breed livestock roam alpine pastures, farmers are fuelled by pantrucu and sabadiego sausages, and by fabada asturiana – a rich stew of white beans, pork shoulder, bacon and black pudding.

Start in medieval Oviedo, capital of Asturias. Buy a box of Moscovitas from Rialto, which has been baking the almond-chocolate biscuits for more than 80 years. Then head north to the coast: Asturias has 200-odd beaches, but remains pleasingly undeveloped. Stop in Gijón to shop for almond-praline Gijonesa cake and gorgeously packaged sardines at La Gijonesa. Pause in Lastres to see fishing nets being made the traditional way. In the harbour town of Ribadesella, visit a sidrería, where expert escanciadores pour Asturian cider from up high to aerate the brew. At Sidrería la Guia, order fresh mussels or Galician octopus.

After pretty seaside Llanes, turn inland. It’s amid the mountains that you’ll find Asturias’s 40-odd cheeses, from nutty Gamonéu to creamy Afuega’l Pitu and potent blue Cabrales, which is aged in caves. Some queserías offer tours – try Francisco Bada. The Sidrería Casa Niembro, in Asiego, is owned by the family who run the town’s Ruta’l Quesu y la Sidra tour; its menu features local produce including Cabrales, tortos (maize pancakes) and cod croquettes.

With the Picos de Europa range to your left, head west, via Cangas de Onís. Two delightful spots to stay lie hereabouts. La Casona de Con is an old hamlet converted into a countryside retreat, while Posada del Valle is a family-run farmstead set amid organic orchards and pastures that supply the restaurant. Book a table at Michelin-starred Corral del Indianu, in nearby Arriondas, for inventive dishes such as a modern take on fabada.

En route back to Oviedo, stop in Redes Natural Park, a Biosphere Reserve protecting the Cantabrian Mountains and producers of the intense Casín cheese.

Argyll, Scotland

A scenic hop-skip north of Glasgow lies a loch-pocked region oft overlooked by those dashing for the Highlands. Slow down to eat your way around Argyll, where the fish is fresh and abundant, and a foodie revolution is underway.

Following the Clyde north, aim for Helensburgh, the riverside Victorian resort that’s fast gaining a reputation as a gastronomic hub. Opened in 2017, neighbourhood bistro Sugar Boat is the sort of place you always hope to stumble upon – from its open kitchen comes seasonal, local produce at reasonable prices; try the thick, saffron-infused bouillabaisse. The grass-fed, well-aged Aberdeen Angus beef at Cattle & Creel is an excellent alternative. Finish with chocolates from CocoaMo – master chocolatier Ruth Hinks uses ethically sourced cacao, foraged ingredients and local inspiration to create ever-changing flavours.

Next, curl round onto the Cowal Peninsula, ignoring (for now) Loch Lomond and the Trossachs, to discover Argyll’s secret coast. Here, looking over Loch Fyne, sits Inver, an inconspicuous crofter’s cottage that’s producing some of the most highly rated food in the country. Chef Pam – who worked at Copenhagen’s Noma – creates modern Scottish miracles, from pig’s head with pickled greengages to ginger-hot whipkull (Shetland custard). Stay overnight in one of Inver’s bothies to make the most of the natural wines and own-recipe Fyne Ales.

Further north, via Loch Awe and Loch Etive, is Oban, Scotland’s ‘Seafood Capital’. Opened in 2018, Etive has added to the port’s high-class offering, with an estimable whisky list and innovative use of local produce. Return to Glasgow via Loch Lomond. Martin Wishart’s restaurant – and the rest of Cameron House Hotel – is set to re-open in autumn, following a post-fire restoration. In the meantime, stop off instead at Tarbet’s Skipness Seafood Cabin where seafood – creel-caught langoustine, salmon from Skipness Smokehouse, Loch Fyne oysters – is served no-frills and super-fresh. Finish at Auchentullich Farm Shop, a family dairy farm that’s branched out into homemade ice cream.

Transylvania, Romania

Exploring the food scene in mountainous Transylvania isn’t about finding hot new chefs using foam and blowtorches. This is a rural region where you’re as likely to eat in a local home as a restaurant; where ingredients are fresh and organic; where dishes – paprika-y goulash, olive oil soaked aubergines – are simple and delicious.

The uni town of Cluj-Napoca is a good starting point, and a shot of civilisation before heading into deepest bear-roamed Transylvania. Consider a raw/veggie dinner at hip Samsara before dishes swerve meat-wards. Head south, stopping at a vineyard – the Transylvanian terroir and climate is perfect for white wines. Jidevi sits in the Târnave region, where viticulture dates back to 600 BC; the vineyard produces wines from a range of grapes including the dry, fresh Romanian variety, fetească regală.

Continue towards the tiny Saxon village of Copșa Mare, where original, pastel-hued houses have been converted into guest accommodation. Breakfasts comprise honey, yogurt, fresh bread and apple juice from nearby Mălâncrav, where Prince Charles has an estate. Detour to Moşna to meet Willy Schuster, who campaigns for peasant farmers and hosts lunches on his organic farm. The walled old town of Sighișoara, alleged birthplace of Vlad the Impaler, is close. Here, amid the Dracula-themed tat and cobbled alleys, look for restaurants serving Romanian specialities: sarmale (pork-stuffed cabbage rolls), barbecued mititei (skinless sausages) and ciorbă (sour soup). Located in a 16th-century townhouse, Casa Krauss serves truly Transylvanian dishes such as tocăniţă din ardeal – pork neck seasoned with cumin and tarragon, topped with pastry. It has guestrooms too, featuring canopied beds and frescoed walls.

A little south, the village of Saschiz is home to a chapter of the Slow Food movement. Here you can see traditional Transylvanian food culture in action: small gardens full of vegetables (eaten fresh or pickled); vines draped over every courtyard; sourdough bread baked in outdoor ovens; sheep’s milk churned into cheese by the shepherd; and chickens ranging free. Join a courtyard dinner, and raise a shot of pálinka, the potent home-distilled fruit brandy that accompanies every meal.

The Hudson Valley, New York State

30 minutes by train from New York’s Grand Central Station, the city of Yonkers is where Manhattanites flock at the weekend to escape the mayhem (and to fill up on beer and crunchy fried sprouts at Yonkers Brewing Co). It’s a green spot, with forests, farmland and quaint towns, sweeping waterways and vineyards. Beneath the sleepy façade, however, the region is home to a hive of entrepreneurial activity. Sprout Creek Farm, for example, makes award-winning cheese – Doe re mi is a creamy, fresh goat’s cheese while margi has a buttery sweetness, like brie. Try earthy green garlic soup with manila clams at their restaurant, with a glass of rkatsiteli (like a chenin blanc, and the first grape planted in New York State).

Stay over at Hotel Tivoli in sleepy Tivoli, a cluster of pretty, pastel-painted clapboard houses 30 minutes north of Hyde Park. Owned by artists Brice and Helen Marden, the hotel is a colourful, eclectic little place with contemporary artworks on the walls and the farm-to-table Corner Restaurant. Devon Gilroy’s Mediterranean-inspired menus feature a knockout fresh mackerel escabeche with periwinkle broth and tear-and-share Moroccan bread.

North again, the town of Hudson in Columbia County, two hours by train from New York, has long been on antique-hunters’ radars. However, since a bunch of Brooklyn hipsters decamped here recently it’s also seriously upped its gourmet game. Among said hipsters is chef Zak Pelaccio, who opened Fish & Game in an old blacksmith’s forge. Studying the menu, mint julep in hand, you pick tapas-style, or order a whole aged spit-roast duck or steamed black bass for the table. The garganelli is exceptional: pungent pork ragù and hand-rolled penne.

Also in Hudson is Grazin’, an original 1940s burger joint with a modern outlook on fast food. Not just field-to-plate, Grazin’s sign brags ‘Farm-to-Table-Direct’. All the meat served here comes from owner Dan Gibson’s nearby farm, his herd of grass-fed Black Angus cattle producing fantastic burgers.

Find more places to eat and drink in Hudson Valley here…

Sylt, Germany

Sylt is the largest island in the North Frisian archipelago and, at its widest, is eight miles long (but only 320 metres across in places, where you can see the sea on both sides of the road). It’s famous for its wild, white sand, a continuous stretch fringed with towering grass- and wildflower-sown dunes.

The Landhaus Stricker is a quaint and cosy Relais & Chateaux hotel in the island’s distinctive cottage style. Try the seven-course tasting menu at the Michelin-starred restaurant, including lukewarm gorgonzola foam served with sweet beetroot, fig confit, wild herbs and sauternes vinaigrette. Kiosks nearby sell the island’s famous fish sandwich, a crunchy roll filled with matjes – marinated herring with onion.

Sansibar, a legendary beachside bistro, is a sprawling wooden shack with rustic tables and a huge covered deck. It’s a prime sunset spot for a cocktail or cold beer. Try the local seafood platter of matjes, sweet beetroot, salmon with sour cream and dill, and brown shrimp.

In Rantum, just a little further on at the narrowest point of the island, is Hafenkiosk 24, a tiny makeshift café and smokery. Inside are trays of butterfish, salmon and eels hanging from hooks. On the marina there’s also a whisky distillery Sylter Trading and, around the harbour, a Fairtrade coffee roaster, Kaffeerösterei Sylt, with a contemporary café. Here, sacks of beans sit in one corner while piles of cakes line the counter (including Frisian torte, made from puff pastry, cream and plum jam).

There’s no shortage of seafood joints on the island and, on the revamped harbour, there’s one of many branches of Gosch, a maritime-themed restaurant chain that’s now nationwide, along with a fish market selling anything from matjes rolls to fish soup.

List is where you’ll find the latest venture from another of the island’s top chefs. Alexandro Pape had a Michelin star. Now he’s gone back to basics, producing sea salt (sylter-meersalz.de). In August 2016 he opened a microbrewery in the same building. You can take a tour and stock up on artisan jars of salt and beer in the sleek shop, before heading to Keitum to his new low-key eatery Brot & Bier. The open sandwiches – shrimp and egg on rye – are piled artistically high.

Check out our full road trip in Sylt here…

Uzes, France

Uzès is surrounded by truffle plantations and hosts a truffle festival every January, while confectionary giant Haribo opened Le Musée du Bonbon here in 1996. Today, spindly liquorice plants line the entrance to the museum and even the air outside is laced with a sugary sweetness. Your ticket comes with a bag of sweets to suck as you wander from room to room. Pressing a button releases a puff of vanilla, cacao or liquorice into the air.

This less well-known corner of France (the Gard) is just 40 minutes from Avignon, where you can jump off the Eurostar as it hurtles on to Marseilles. The area has no fewer than a dozen AOP/AOC and five PGI products that have gained protection, including beef and rice from the Camargue, olives, olive oil and strawberries from Nîmes, sweet onions from the Cévennes and Pélardon goat’s cheese.

Today, Uzès is a honeypot, but until about 50 years ago it was a rundown little town. The French government designated it a ville d’art et d’histoire and helped to restore the ruined buildings. Parisian restaurateurs and hoteliers soon began to trickle down opening chic b&bs such as L’Artemise, an old mas (farmhouse) a short walk out of town, its rooms splashed with contemporary art.

Spend a night at La Maison d’Uzès, where the restaurant (all parquet floors and vibrant velvet chairs) has a Michelin star and its chef, Christophe Ducros, celebrates the Gard’s local produce. An eight-course tasting menu includes a dish of local asparagus with slithers of kumquat and salty caviar with an orange vinaigrette was light and zesty.

The nearby Place aux Herbes is crowded with stalls piled high with local asparagus and strawberries. Graze on local Picholine olives and Pélardon goat’s cheese, sampling artisanal olive oils and stocking up on pungent tapenades and garlic confit, a tub of addictively fragrant white spheres. Join the queue at boulangerie Fougasse d’Uzès for fougasse, the local speciality, a hot flaky focaccia-style bread, filled with anchovies and olives.

More places to stop off in Uzès here…

The Fleurieu peninsula, Australia

The Fleurieu has a Mediterranean climate, laid-back vibe, wild, windswept beaches, swathes of silvery olive groves, a clutch of field-to-fork eateries and farmers’ markets along with more than 70 boutique wineries.

Within the peninsula, McLaren Vale is the birthplace of the South Australian wine industry and home to some of the world’s oldest grapevines. McLaren Vale’s d’Arenberg Cube, a dazzling glass and steel structure that has been dubbed ‘Willy Wonka’s wine factory’, materializes out of the vines like a half-finished Rubik’s Cube. Sample wines with names as intoxicating as the vintages: The Anthropocene Epoch, for example, is the company’s first biodynamic wine, all ballsy beetroot and berries. Or try Alpha Box & Dice, one of the new kids on the block, where the wine cellar is a ramshackle old stable strewn with vintage armchairs, a piano, pinball machine and stuffed armadillo.

For lunch in the McLaren Vale, head to Bocca di Lupo. It combines contemporary Australian and Italian cuisine in innovative dishes such as baby beetroots, liquorice sponge, walnut and chocolate. Or eat at Star of Greece, a rickety beach shack teetering on the clifftop at Port Willunga. At The Salopian Inn, chef-owner Karena Armstrong serves contemporary Australian dishes such as soy-braised kangaroo tail with chilli caramel and szechuan salt.

Next, graze your way round Willunga Farmers’ Market. Willunga is a picture-postcard heritage town with just a whiff of the Wild West. Mooch around stalls of organic fruit and vegetables, local honey, charcuterie and cheeses and buy bags of juicy peaches and tiny, crunchy Paradise pears. Little Acre Foods stand has long queues but it is worth the wait for moreish mushroom panini oozing deep, dark mushrooms smeared with melted raclette and gruyère.

After a few days in McLaren Vale, venture south to the tip of the peninsula, jutting into the Southern Ocean. Driving through quaint Port Elliot with its low-slung old buildings, cool beach boutiques, old-fashioned grocery stores and heritage trail, clock the queue snaking out the door of the legendary Port Elliot Bakery, famous for its meat pies.

Salento, Italy

Le Stanzie farm is the place to start – its field-to-plate farmhouse restaurant produces everything it serves, from homemade ricotta to bread baked in an original stone oven. Inside there’s a cool warren of rooms, where rustic tables are spread with jauntily checked cloths. At a table beside a fireplace the size of a studio flat, the dishes come thick and fast: bowls of beans cooked on an open fire, creamy ricotta, and the local specialty, orecchiette cime di rapa (handmade ear-shaped pasta with bitter turnip tops and pane cotto).

Those in search of modern elegance can check into La Fiermontina, a 17th-century house turned luxury hotel, replete with cutting-edge art. Or into one of several revamped masseria (fortified farmhouses) that pepper the local landscape – places such as Masseria Trapana and newly refurbished B&B Don Totu. Helen Mirren and her filmmaker husband, Taylor Hackford, even own a chic little bar here, the Farmacia Balboa in Tricase.

There’s an 18th-century winery in the village of Scorrano. Giovanni Guarini’s family has been producing wine and olive oil here for 25 generations. The vineyards are organic and in the summer there are tours, tastings and alfresco dinners at the Duca Carlo Guarani winery. Their mandarin oil is a revelation – it’s exquisitely delicate, perfect with pasta, fish and salad.

Luxury villa company The Thinking Traveller offers a range of Think Experiences drawing on their local expertise, such as cheese-making at Le Stanzie and a hands-on course learning how to make pasticciotto, Puglia’s signature pastry, with award-winning chef, Giuseppe Zippo. They also give suggestions on where to eat, including rustic seafood restaurant Osteria del Vico for antipasto dell’ osteria – a moreish medley of fish featuring Gallipoli’s famous red shrimp served crudo with olive oil and crumbled hazelnut, fried mussels with ricotta scianti (strong ricotta) and breadcrumbs. Don’t miss Zippo’s bakery Le Mille Voglie, in the medieval village of Specchia, and its pasticciotto leccese (a short-crust pastry filled with creamy custard).

Words by Sarah Baxter and Lucy Gillmore

Photographs by Getty

Looking for restaurants in Valletta? Want to know where to eat in Malta’s capital? olive’s editorial assistant Ellie Edwards shares her insider tips for the best restaurants in Valletta, along with where to find the best octopus tagine, ftira pizzas and salted pistachio ice-cream.

Looking for more restaurants to visit across the island? Click here for our full guide to Malta.

olive’s must-visits for foodies in Valletta

Noni – for a modern Maltese dinner

Valletta’s Republic Street has been a hub of eating, drinking and merriment for over 250 years, and Noni, with its cast iron doors and stone vaults, is at the heart of it all. It’s Maltese/Mediterranean cuisine, with a touch of French modernism – try rabbit confit croquettes; slow-cooked octopus tagine with marjoram oil; and te fit-tazza, a dessert of black tea and condensed milk mousse, served with lemon ricotta. To drink, order a glass of the island’s citrusy, straw-coloured Meridiana Chardonnay.

noni.com.mt

Nenu The Artisan Baker – for ftira pizzas

Run by Carmelo (also known as Nenu) and his wife Angela, family-owned bakery Nenu The Artisan Baker specialises in ftira, a ring-shaped, leavened bread often used for sandwiches, tarts and pizzas. Order a classic Karmni s-Sultana pizza, which comes with potatoes, tomatoes, anchovies and fennel seed; or go for a tomato-free base, topped with potatoes, pork belly strips, ricotta, rosemary and broad beans. Whatever you choose, it will be made with ingredients indigenous to Malta.

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Is-Suq Tal-Belt – for a cool lunch spot

This once-derelict Victorian building now thrives as a striking indoor food market. Spread over three floors (giant deli in the basement, selling everything from fresh fish to spices and oils; food stalls at ground level, offering tapas, pulled meat and gelato; and a chill-out space upstairs, where live bands sometimes play), Is-Suq Tal-Belt is the place to stock up on bottles of prickly pear liqueur; salmon poke bowls; and ricotta-filled pastizzi pastries (Malta’s national snack, made with flaky pastry).

issuqtalbelt.com

Caffe Cordina – for a luxurious setting

Established in 1837, and facing Piazza Regina, old-school Caffe Cordina is worth a visit for the striking marble staircase and decorative domed ceiling (embellished by Maltese painter, Giuseppe Cali) alone. It comprises tea rooms, a pasticceria, a coffee bar and a gelateria; sit down inside or out, and waiters in black waistcoats will bring pretty patisserie to your table – try a pudina (Maltese bread pudding with candied fruit, walnuts and chocolate hazelnut cream) or kwarezimal, another traditional sweet made with a hazelnut crumble base, spices, honey and almonds.

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Legligin – for Maltese meze in a stone cellar

Legligin, meaning ‘one who drinks a lot’, is a charming restaurant-cum-wine bar serving Maltese meze alongside a selection of 30-odd stellar wines. Squeezed inside the cellar of an original townhouse, its red shutters, stone walls punctured with holes (for wine bottles) and mismatching crockery give the whole place a rustic feel. Feast on breads with olive oil; homemade caponata with chunks of local sausage; arjoli (a rich blend of sundried tomatoes, olives, anchovies and capers); honey-glazed pork; and shots of limoncello.

facebook.com/pages/Legligin-Valletta

Amorino – for pretty ice cream

Choose your cone size, then pile it high with as many flavours as you fancy at esteemed gelateria, Amorino. It’s all made with whole milk and freshly-picked fruit (they only use just-ripe ingredients), plus there are several organic and vegan options. Go for silky salted pistachio, cool coconut or refreshing lime and basil, and watch as it’s carefully sculpted into an ice-cream rose.

amorino.com

Hammett’s Macina – for a tasting menu

Marble tables, velvet sea-blue booths, brass furnishings and cool grey walls give Hammett’s Macina at the Cugó Gran Macina Grand Harbour hotel a luxury feel. A five-course tasting menu includes local burrata with foraged herbs; Ġbejna cheese (a traditional Maltese ‘cheeselet’, so-called because it’s little and round); and risotto made with nine-year-aged rice. There’s also a bar, serving over 100 different wines (including Marsovin Chardonnay from north Malta’s Wardija Valley) and cocktails made from homemade syrups – start the night with a Cugo’s, comprising of gin mare, basil syrup, rose water and ginger beer.

cugogranmalta.com

Café Society – for an authentic bar

This is the kind of place where locals play chess on the pavement tables outside. Squashed between other palazzo-style townhouses on beautiful, stone-stepped St John Street (which leads down to The Grand Harbour), Café Society is a cool-yet-cosy bar that serves both classic cocktails and craft beers. Perch on a stool and listen to live jazz, funk and retro tunes, while sipping an Old Fashioned.

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The Harbour Club – for dinner with a view

Make the most of picturesque Grand Harbour views with a table on the sleek, sloping terrace at The Harbour Club. Seafood is a must at this French-influenced restaurant, originally built as a warehouse in 1712, so try the fish of the day with heirloom tomato relish and candied lemon zest; saffron risotto with calamari; or local red prawn carpaccio, all served in bespoke crockery made by local ceramicist Sue Mifsud. It’s just as mesmerising inside, where the golden-hued wooden floor once belonged to the deck of an old American ship.

theharbourclubmalta.com

The Mediterranean Culinary Academy – for a cookery school

Hand-roll your own cannelloni and then fill it with irkotta (like Italian ricotta, but made from fresh milk as opposed to milk whey), fresh herbs and lemon on A Taste of Malta cookery class at The Mediterranean Culinary Academy. You’ll try other Maltese specialties throughout the three-hour course, including bigilla (a broad bean dip) and salty goat’s cheeselets, and learn about how the island’s central Mediterranean location has helped shape its cuisine (guess who Malta inherited its love of tea from?).

mcamalta.com

Words by Ellie Edwards, March 2019

Photographs by Ming Tang-Evans and Ellie Edwards

For more information visit visitmalta.com

Looking for restaurants in Wales? Want to know where to eat in St David’s? Food and travel writer Suzy Bennett takes us on a foodie road trip through south-west Wales, stopping off at 17th-century hotels, artisan coffee roasters and craft gin distilleries.

For a moment, I could be in Williamsburg. Behind a marble-topped espresso bar, a barista nods to a bassy house track as his customer savours a single-origin Chemex-brewed coffee. Amid reclaimed furniture, copper lighting and exposed piping there’s a wood-fired pizza oven, communal dining table and hessian bags bulging with coffee beans hailing from exotic lands. It’s only the barista’s accent that reminds me I’m not in New York but in a shed on an industrial estate in south-west Wales.

By owner Scott James’s own admission, Ammanford, in Carmarthenshire, is perhaps the least likely place in the UK to find an artisanal coffee roastery and canteen. A former mining community where the final pit closed in 2003, Ammanford has an unemployment problem, and a high street where only pound shops, charity stores and betting shops remain. If I hadn’t been tipped off, I’d have driven straight through it, pushing on to the tourist honey pots of Pembrokeshire in the west. But Scott’s business, Coaltown Coffee Roasters, is a vibrant enterprise where the customer is as likely to be an 80-year-old former coal miner as a hipster.

Born into a local mining family, Scott was just 19 when he started roasting coffee in his father’s garage. Buoyed by the popularity of his coffee subscription boxes, he opened a small café on Ammanford’s high street, then upsized in November, aged 25, to launch an open-plan roastery, espresso bar and canteen in a warehouse backing on to the coal-train railway on the edge of town. It might have been safer to launch his venture in an area with a well-established café culture but Scott wants to breathe life back into his community.

“I’m a home boy. I love my town and didn’t want to move away,” he tells me. “When the mines closed, the town lost its purpose. I want to bring industry back to Ammanford, to show that there’s no need to move to the city, that you can do something special in your own town.”

Scott employs 28 people from local mining families and plans to create more jobs by opening cafés in other ex-mining communities. His fairtrade coffee is sold in Selfridges and the Houses of Parliament.

His roastery has become a must-visit destination on Wales’s foodie map, attracting coffee lovers who come to sample the brews, watch the roasting process and join home barista courses. “Coffee is Ammanford’s new black gold,” Scott says, playing on the monikers for coal and coffee. His team is currently restoring a 1958 cast-iron Probat roaster the size of a car. When it’s complete, Coaltown will process four tonnes of coffee every day.

Further west, in Pembrokeshire, I visit another fledging business. When Sherill Evans gave up her job as an academic researcher to become a Thai reflexology practitioner, she decided to save money on foot scrubs by making her own salt: boiling seawater from her local beach. Soon after, in a serendipitous twist, she met boyfriend Josh Wright, who happened to be a mineral expert, and the Pembrokeshire Sea Salt Company was born.

Operating from a small unit in their garden near Dinas Cross, the couple collect seawater in buckets, filter it, then heat it to crystallise it into salt. The USP of their salt is that it forms in perfect pyramids, a result of letting the crystals develop individually, rather than en masse. “Chefs love using them as a garnish,” Sherill tells me, snapping a sharp-edged pyramid between her fingers. “And they have the perfect crunch.” I leave with a pot of salted caramel sauce so buttery that it doesn’t survive the day, and a pack of flavoured salts: black truffle salt for mashed potatoes, saffron for fish and wild garlic for Welsh lamb.

My next stop is St David’s Kitchen, near St David’s Cathedral, run by the Walshes, an eighth-generation farming family. Headed by Neil Walsh, the kitchen serves meat from the family’s pedigree Welsh cattle, which graze on 60 acres of heathland all summer, and from Welsh mountain sheep provided exclusively to the restaurant from Ramsey Island RSPB reserve. Meat dishes include mutton with roast onion purée, cider carrots and buttered savoy cabbage, and a duo of St David’s Welsh beef fillet served with beetroot purée, mushroom, Little Gem and truffle mash. On sunny days, Neil can be found foraging on Ramsey Island for water mint and bell heather for his latest venture: a range of Welsh dry gins, created in craft distillery In the Welsh Wind, in nearby Aberteifi.

Set in a converted barn amid wildflower meadows, In the Welsh Wind is run by Alex Jungmayr and Ellen Wakelam as a ‘white label’ distillery, producing small batches of bespoke gins for companies and events. Its most recent commission is a Maltese gin made with prickly pear and pomegranate. The distillery is a glamorous yet cosy space, with exposed stone walls, shiny copper stills, a log burner and oak wine barrels brimful of juniper and dried orange peel.

I am treated to a gin-making lesson with tutor Will Suiter, selecting samphire, laver, grapefruit peel and dandelion root from a dizzying array of exotic and locally foraged botanicals to produce a bottle of Welsh-style gin to take away with me. As the spirit drips gently out of the still, we dip our fingertips under the tap to sample the flavours: first come lighter notes of grapefruit, lemon and dandelion, then spicy, earthy flavours of coriander, orris root and aniseed.

I’m staying at The Grove, a 17th-century hotel near two of Pembrokeshire’s prettiest and most prosperous towns: Narberth and Tenby. Headed by Allister Barsby (previously of Gidleigh Park in Devon) the restaurant serves some of the most accomplished and imaginative dishes in the region. A loyal supporter of local producers, Allister uses heather-scented Coedcanlas honey in his pastries, Welsh goat’s cheeses, foraged foods, hand-dived Tenby scallops, and herbs and vegetables from the hotel’s kitchen garden. Highlights on the eight-course tasting menu include diced cured salmon, punctuated by hillocks of home-smoked mussel emulsion and tiny orbs of caviar; a rose-pink fillet of Welsh beef with frilly, pan-fried king oyster mushrooms and kale from the kitchen garden; and a rich chocolate delice with a creamy peanut ice cream and crunchy caramelised banana popcorn.

For those seeking a more secluded base, Nantwen is an airy, wood-beamed holiday cottage for two near Newport. Run by foodies Daniel and Jemma Slade-Davies, it comes with a generous welcome hamper that serves as a gourmet armchair tour of south Wales: a packet of Coaltown coffee, a jar of fruit-packed Coedcanlas Welsh raspberry preserve, Welsh cakes and a pot of Pembrokeshire Sea Salt for cooking while at the cottage.

The next morning, I’m coastward bound. Charlie Langrick and his partner Claire Pepperell took over the tenancy of National Trust-owned farm and YHA hostel Runwayskiln in 2018 and converted the former piggery into a lively café, with 100 outdoor seats that give way to extraordinary views of Marloes Sands and Skokholm Island. On the menu is a hearty cockle, bacon and brown-ale chowder; plump Gower mussels; grilled mackerel with beetroot butter; classic Pembrokeshire crab sandwiches; chunky seafood stews; and – the star of the show – spiced cauliflower and onion pakoras. Charlie and Claire source bread from Farm Cottage Bakery in Haverfordwest, lobster and crab from Solva, sausages from Trehale Farm (a rare-breed pig farm that runs regular community events and food festivals) and Gethin’s Pembrokeshire Cyder.

Across the Milford Haven waterway, in Freshwater West, Café Môr is a converted fishing boat that serves coastal-inspired street food (fresh fish, and burgers flavoured with beach-foraged laver) plus a range of products including seaweed butter (delicious drizzled over lobster), laver caviar for scattering over chowders, kelp ketchup, samphire mayonnaise and a warming laver-infused spiced rum.

My final visit is to Cwlbox, a converted vintage horsebox café that sits directly on Saundersfoot beach. I arrive hoping to try the fabled cockle popcorn – the cockles pop when they are deep-fried – but the cockle collector is off today. So instead I opt for a box of crispy squid served with chips and salad.

Sitting on the sand, I wrap myself in a blanket, raise my face to the sun and dip the succulent beer-battered hoops into a dollop of silky homemade mayonnaise. It is a deliciously British experience.

Words and photographs by Suzy Bennett, April 2019

Follow Suzy on Instagram @suzybennett.photography

Cabin stays have become more and more popular, thanks to the scandi “hygge” trend and our lust for cosy campfire vibes. We’ve found some of the best cabin lodge breaks in the UK, including self catering accommodation in forests to unique holidays in the countryside.

Shepherd’s Hut, Artist Residence, Oxfordshire

At the bottom of Artist Residence Oxfordshire’s abundant kitchen garden, a wooden trailer nestles in the shade of a gigantic fir tree. Inside, quirky fabrics embellish wood-panelled walls and floors, including foliage-patterned curtains, a burnt-orange velvet window seat, and hand-woven cushions in muted tones. Though compact, the tiny space is kitted out with the venue’s signature luxuries – Bramley toiletries to enjoy in the rainfall shower, a flat-screen TV to watch from the double bed, and individual pouches of infusions from Joe’s Tea Co to sip in front of the diddy, tile-backed log burner.

Potter through the herbs and vegetables growing in the quintessential allotment to dinner in the 16th-century Cotswold-stone farmhouse. Choose between the cosy bar area with a classic pub menu or the more sophisticated dining room, with its up-cycled crystal decanter lamp shades, to enjoy the likes of lamb loin and crisp courgette flower bhajis, followed by peaches with elderflower cream and delicate puff pastry beneath.

Click here for our full review of Artist Residence Oxfordshire

Tinwood Vineyard Lodge, West Sussex

Simply standing on the decking of the cabins on tranquil Tinwood Estate might be enough to make you feel tipsy. Tucked on the edge of the South Downs National Park, Tinwood is renowned for its fine sparkling wines, and the estate’s three neat wooden hideaways gaze out across the serried rows of vines. The cabins are crisp and contemporary in design – think wooden floors, white walls, big sliding patio doors. They’re also comprehensively kitted out, with king-size beds, Jacuzzi baths, barrel saunas and, naturally, a fully stocked wine fridge. If you want to know more about the estate’s brut, blanc de blancs and rosé, you can book vineyard tours, where the winegrowers themselves will walk you around the grounds before talking you through a tasting.

From £175pn (vineyard tours extra); sleeps 2; tinwoodestate.com

Read our full review of Tinwood Estate lodges here

The Blue Cabin by the Sea, Berwickshire

The first task here is finding the place: drive an hour south of Edinburgh (check out the best places to eat and drink in Edinburgh), park up, chuck your bags in a wheelbarrow and walk, via a tunnel, to reach the beach. There sits this cute cornflower-blue bolthole, tucked into the grasses above a tiny traditional harbour – which the cabin raises funds to maintain. It’s the sort of place to spend days rockpooling, shore-strolling, bird-spotting and, if you dare, wild swimming. Owned by an architect-sculptor couple, the cabin itself is small but thoughtfully designed and creatively decorated, from the vivid-green boxed beds and Orkney chairs to the iron-seaweed cupboard handles and extensive library. Outside a small veranda looks over the sea, the ideal vantage for watching the fishermen who go out every weekday, and who’ll sell you crabs and lobsters direct from their pots for a couldn’t-be-fresher seafood barbecue.

From £800pw; sleeps 4; bluecabinbythesea.co.uk

Cedar Falls, Monmouthshire

This bijou but bonny wooden-shuttered bolthole is named for a nearby waterfall – and you may well leave the place quite well-watered yourself. Cedar Falls is tucked into the leafy garden of owners Edward and Tori, who also run the award-winning Kingstone microbrewery in nearby Tintern; the brewery often hosts tastings, and samples are available to buy. Tori offers private bread-making classes too, so you can spend an afternoon baking a variety of styles and flavours, and then eat the spoils for breakfast the next morning, either cosied up in the woodburner-heated open-plan living room or out on the little deck, which gazes down the Wye Valley (read our guide to the Wye Valley here).

From £90pn; sleeps 2 (plus 2 kids); canopyandstars.co.uk

The Arc, Cambridgeshire

A wood-burning oven, an alfresco firepit, antique saucepans, jars of spices, a whole library of cookbooks and every utensil you could name… The Arc may be compact, but keen chefs will want for nothing here. Owner Lotte, a trained nutritional therapist (and bookable for cooking courses if you like), will even leave a selection of local goodies – bread, jams, a lemon drizzle – to start you off. Or you can pop to one of the nearby farm shops or farmers’ markets for supplies. The cabin itself is bright and cheery, with pale walls and wooden beams enlivened by colourful crocheted throws, vibrant textiles and twinkling fairy lights. The latter lace the veranda too, adding extra magic to an evening meal eaten outside looking over the fields and the lazy River Nene.

From £120pn; sleeps 2-4; thearccabin.co.uk

Riverside Lodge, Herefordshire

This timber-clad rustic-luxe cabin sits on a stretch of riverbank midway between Hereford and Hay-on-Wye but feels completely removed from the rest of the world. There’s no TV or internet here; you’ll hear only trickling water and tweeting birds, and maybe the frothing of your private hot tub. Foodie options are varied. Owner Katherine can organise fishing rights (at extra cost), so you could be cooking your own catch in the large outdoor kitchen, with its gas barbecue and pizza oven. The perfect accompaniment is a drop of Herefordshire cider – embark on the local ‘Cider Trail’, which links 16 of the best producers, or pop to the award-winning Orgasmic Cider Company, whose extensive orchards are only a few miles away.

Swot up on your cider knowledge with our ultimate guide here

From £167.50pn; sleeps 4; qualityunearthed.co.uk

Check out our best BBQ recipes here, including:

• Ultimate vegan burger
• BBQ buffalo chicken thighs
• Miso-glazed ribs
• Beer-braised lamb tacos
• Home-smoked brisket

 

Tinhouse, Isle of Skye

This lonesome shack does what it says on the, er, tin, but in the most stylish fashion. Winner of many architectural awards, its simple tin-clad exterior hides a cool, modernist inside, with white wooden walls, cement floors and, best of all, generous windows so the wild Skye coast seeps in. It’s well placed for windswept walks, dolphin-spotting boat trips and visits to ruined castles. It’s also well placed for foodies. Two of Scotland’s best restaurants are close by: Michelin-starred Loch Bay (read our restaurant review here) is less than 20 miles away while The Three Chimneys, voted number 28 in the Top 100 UK Restaurants Outside London in 2018, is only five. If you’d prefer to eat in, make the short walk downhill from the Tinhouse to Meanish Pier, where fresh seafood can be bought direct from the fishermen.

From £895pw; sleeps 2; tinhouse.net

For some of the best places to eat and drink on Isle of Skye, click here

The Old Apple Shed, Kent

Used to store apples and cherries up to the 1970s when the land was a working orchard, then left to slump into its surrounding meadow, this little black clapperboard shed has now been transformed into a shabby-chic cabin for two. A woodburner, board-games, flower-flecked curtains and an iron-framed bedstead strung with fairy lights all help create the cosiest of atmospheres. Expect to find a home-baked cake waiting on the apple-crate coffee table too. Outside you might find Toast, the New Forest pony, grazing on your doorstep while two beehives are hidden across the field – you can buy a jar of their honey if you like. Bethersden village is a five-minute walk, with its two country pubs, village shop, artisan butchers and deli; Biddenden, England’s oldest commercial cider producers and vineyard, is only five miles away.

From £120pn; sleeps 2; theoldappleshed.co.uk

Check out our best apple recipes here, including:

• Classic apple crumble
• Apple and blueberry pie
• Toffee apple cinnamon buns
• Easy tarte tatin
• Toffee apple cake

Kudhva, Cornwall

An off-grid glampsite near Trebarwith Strand, Kudhva means ‘hideout’ in Cornish and this former quarry site truly immerses you in the natural world. Among willow groves and dense woodland are tree tents and four kudhva – compact, futuristic cabins on stilts designed by Ben Huggins of New British Design.

Each cabin has its own firepit, or you can cook in a shared kitchen. At nearby Hilltop Farm Shop stock up on locally made wines, beers and gins, Davidstow cheddar, clotted cream and sourdough (check out our guide to sourdough here). Slightly further afield, Boscastle Farm Shop sells homemade quiches, pies and cakes, and has a butchery selling meat from its Ruby Red cattle.

If you prefer a less DIY approach, seafood specialist Tan & Mor and boutique caterers Beautiful and the Feast will send chefs to cook for you on site. Breakfast hampers can also be arranged and monthly Sunday Services see Kudhva combine locally sourced food and cocktails, with music from local DJs.

Cabins sleep two and cost from £122 per night

Click here to read our full review of Kudhva

One Cat Farm, Ceredigion

Just south of Aberaeron, One Cat Farm is home to four cosy cabins. These heated, grass-roofed ‘dens’ blend seamlessly into a buttercup-dotted field. Inside, comfy double beds are topped with woollen blankets, and hammocks swing outside in the sun-dappled shade. Showers and toilets sit at the top of the field, as does a communal kitchen, home to a mini honesty shop offering marshmallows, Fentimans ginger beer and bars of NOMNOM chocolate.

Stop off at Watson and Pratt farm shop, in Lampeter, to stock up on tubs of creamy Neal’s Yard Dairy yogurt, and country loaves and croissants from Lampeter Bakehouse (and at Aberaeron for scoops of honey ice cream from Hive). In the evening, watch the sunset from an outdoor wood-fired bath, then sit by the fire pit with mugs of fresh mint tea as the sea mist gently engulfs each den in a mystical haze.

Cabins sleep up to four and cost from £160 for two nights

Click here to read our full review of One Cat Farm

Babington House, Somerset

If you’re seeking a rustic hideaway but don’t want to rough it, The Cabin at Babington House is a neat solution. A two-bedroom wooden lodge (adults only), set overlooking a lake, it may have a wood-burning stove and a kitchen that’s a lotta Little House on the Prairie but, beneath the country styling, it’s every bit as pampering as the hotel’s other rooms.

There are two bathrooms, a kitchen supplied with grocery basics and the best hotel drinks tray we’ve seen (including craft mixers). Guests can also wallow in the hotel’s spa, outdoor and indoor pools, fill up on (free) afternoon tea pastries, or book in for dinner in the restaurant – think charcoal-grilled meats, or Cornish plaice served with sweet little shrimp and a buttery lemon sauce.

The Cabin sleeps four and costs from £565 per night

Click here to read our full review of Babington House

Words by Alex Crossley, Sarah Baxter, Ellie Edwards, Rhiannon Batten and Hannah Guinness

Images by Alex Crossley, George Fielding, Rhiannon Batten

Want to venture further afield for a cabin stay? Head to Stedsans in the Woods in the Swedish forest for the ultimate cabin vibes, complete with floating sauna…

Check out the best restaurants in Birmingham and other places to eat and drink in Birmingham with our local foodie guide… 

Opheem – best new restaurant in Birmingham

Originally from Aston, North Birmingham, with Bangladeshi parents, Aktar Islam has made a name for himself as one of the Birmingham’s leading chefs, and Opheem is his first solo restaurant. Focussing on Indian culinary traditions married with modern techniques, this is fine dining with dialled-up flavour. Choose from Herdwick lamb loin with tongue beignet and bone marrow sauce, or tandoori cauliflower with lentil bhaji and coconut milk, and curd dumpling with milk sorbet and finger lime.

The room is dark with a large twinkly-light chandelier dominating the dramatic space, with brown leather chairs, clothless dark wooden tables and grey walls. There’s also a private dining room, and a bar, where you can have small plates and snacks.

Click here to read our expert review of Opheem, and find out which dishes to order…

Purnell’s – best for service and fine dining in Birmingham

“Fine dining doesn’t have to be stuffy,” says Sonal Clare, sommelier and restaurant manager of Glynn Purnell’s eponymous Birmingham restaurant. Sonal won Best Sommelier at this year’s GQ Food and Drink Awards – a timely accolade for his 10th year of working at Purnell’s, where he started as a waiter.

For the past five years, he has been restaurant manager, during which time he has stamped his personality on the relaxed-but-professional service style. Sonal has also curated the Book of Wine, a 25-page drinks list that includes a section of wines currently being enjoyed by the staff, as well as vintage champagnes at £3,400 a pop.

“We don’t have linen tablecloths or serviettes, but what we try to do is pass on the philosophy, ethos and personality of Glynn through the food and service. People see his fun personality on TV, so that’s what they come to the restaurant for.” With a Michelin star since 2007, Purnell’s has forged a national reputation for its food and service; Sonal says it’s all about adding theatre to a meal.

“I don’t see a problem with a bit of romanticism or ‘va va voom’ during the dining experience. There’s nothing nicer than a smart and sophisticated waiter or waitress attending to your table, and as long as the table chat is genuine and in good nature, then everyone leaves feeling happy. Personalities are very important here at Purnell’s – we certainly aren’t robots who all look and act the same.”

purnellsrestaurant.com

Yorks Bakery Café – best brunch in Birmingham

Weekends are built for brunch in Birmingham, as is small local chain, Yorks Bakery Café. Head to its latest opening, in the Ikon Gallery, and order a locally roasted coffee while deciding between avocado smash (with feta, sumac, mint and lemon) and shakshuka. yorksbakerycafe.co.uk 

Loaf – best bakery in Birmingham

Distract yourself from Cadbury World, just down the road, by taking a cookery class at Loaf in Stirchley. Learn to make your own sourdough, dosas, danish pastries and more (there are also expert pig-butchery courses), then grab a croissant from the bakery on your way out. loafonline.co.uk

Loki Wine – best wine bar in Birmingham

A wine merchant and bar with its own tasting rooms, Loki has two sites in Birmingham and more than 800 wines on its list. Customers can enjoy any of these bottles on site for a nominal £7 drink-in corkage charge and Loki’s wine dispensing machines enable the bars to serve tasters of some 70 wines, which tend to be exciting new discoveries such as bottles from Japan, China and Israel, alongside classic wines from the New and Old Worlds. As well as charcuterie and cheese, sandwiches and scotch eggs, Loki also works regularly with street-food businesses to provide guest pop-ups.

Click here for the best wine bars across the country

Baked in Brick – best pizza in Birmingham

The 60-seater pizzeria in Birmingham’s funky Custard Factory is seriously relaxed with rough-and-ready wooden-clad booths, tables and chairs, exposed industrial ceilings, with looming fans, and a Mini Cooper breaking through the wall.

There’s charcuterie (learn how to make your own charcuterie here) and cheese, and the odd salad, but obviously the star attraction here is the pizza (discover our best pizza recipes here). The majority are served with mozzarella and San Marzano tomato sauce, which is a good start. Beef shin ragu and wild mushroom calzonewon the title of best street food dish at the British and European Street Food Awards, and its meltingly tender meat with rich sauce stands up. The dough, too, is impressive – bouncy, crisp and with plenty of flavour – and works well in another iteration, topped with goat’s cheese, caramelised red onion and grape chutney, with wild rocket and a slick of onyx balsamic.

The Wilderness – best British restaurant in Birmingham

Cooking that focusses on native, often foraged, British ingredients and a theatrical, boundary-pushing approach (don’t be surprised to find an arrangement of ants on your plate) have made The Wilderness the hottest restaurant in Birmingham. Book early and enjoy the ride.

Click here to read our expert review of The Wilderness, along with which dishes to order…

Warehouse Café – best vegetarian food in Birmingham

Allison Street has played host to a vegetarian restaurant for over 30 years and the Warehouse Café is a Birmingham institution. Visit for unpretentious vegetarian and vegan food such as spinach and buckwheat fritters, tofu curries or beetroot bhajis. thewarehousecafe.com 

Opus – best value meal in Birmingham

If you want a real treat but you’re on a budget, book a table at Opus and order from the prix fixe menu: £25 buys you three elegant courses such as ham hock terrine, Brixham Market fish of the day and vanilla crème brûlée. opusrestaurant.co.uk 

Raja Monkey – best curry house in Birmingham

Birmingham is famous for its baltis and the Balti Triangle, in the south of the city, is where you’ll find the highest concentration of curry houses. If you’ve only got time for one, head to Raja Monkey on the Stratford Road. It does great dosas and puris but the thalis are the way to go here; the Rajasthani version includes a rich mutton curry. rajamonkey.co.uk

The Edgbaston – best cocktail bar in Birmingham

The art deco-inspired cocktail lounge at The Edgbaston is the ideal spot for a tipple. Toast your evening with a Howzat Highball (Tanqueray gin, elderflower, cucumber, fino and violet leaf) or go earlier in the day for afternoon tea with a kick. theedgbaston.co.uk 

Digbeth Dining Club – best street food in Birmingham

Multi award-winning Digbeth Dining Club was the city’s first street food event and continues to welcome some of the best vendors in the country to Birmingham every Friday and Saturday (plus local favourite Baked In Brick, which cooks chicken tikka over charcoal under the bonnet of a Mini). digbethdiningclub.com 

Eight Foot Grocer – best deli in Birmingham

The area around Eight Foot Grocer, in Birmingham’s Jewellery Quarter, is becoming known for its bars and restaurants as much as its gold, and this pint-sized deli is a great place to stock up on locally produced items (including Pip’s Hot Sauce and Cuffufle preserves), or to grab a sandwich, salad or soup to go. the8footgrocer.com

Original Patty Men – best burgers in Birmingham

Cutting their teeth on the street food scene before partnering with Siren Craft Brew to launch their own restaurant, Original Patty Men serve the best burgers in Birmingham. Big Vern’s Krispy Ring is a meat patty encased in a doughnut; it sounds weird but it works. originalpattymen.com 

Where to stay in Birmingham

Double rooms at Saint Pauls House cost from £90, room only.

More info: visitbirmingham.com 

Words | Laura Creaven, Laura Rowe and Mark Taylor

Photographs | Jack Spicer Adams, Team Loaf, Tom Bird Photography, Wesley Alcorn

Laura Craven runs Full to the Brum, a Birmingham-based food and drinks blog (fulltothebrum.co.uk).

Looking for Saint Lucia restaurants? Here are our favourite restaurants on the Caribbean island, plus where to get the best rotis, rum cocktails and fish curry.

With a fruitful climate, the plentiful Caribbean Sea and culinary influences that stretch from East India to West Africa, Britain and France, it’s no surprise that food is a central element of Saint Lucian culture. Fish soups and chicken stews are often found on local menus, while breadfruit, figs, pineapples, bananas, yams and scotch bonnet peppers are easily available. Fried and baked dough products are also commonplace on Saint Lucia, perhaps best experienced in the national dish: Johnny cakes (think savoury donuts) with salt fish (sautéed fish with peppers and onions).

Best street food on Saint Lucia

Jump Up

If you’re staying in the north of the island don’t miss this street party, which takes place every Friday night in Gros Islet. Rum shacks and grill stalls start setting up shop at around 6.30pm, but the drinking and dancing don’t get fully going until much later; if you’re there to party, don’t even think of going before 10pm. For a more gentle experience, go at around 7pm and head to Duke’s Place for some of the best, home-cooked fish on the island. At a bank of metal-drum barbecues, huge quantities of lobster, marlin and mahi-mahi are cooked. Join the (fast-moving) queues to take your pick, then move along makeshift tables choosing rice and “auntie’s” fig salad (doused with a gorgeously garlicky dressing, the ‘figs’ are actually green bananas, prepared as a vegetable rather than a fruit) to go with it. Next, head over to the Duke’s Place bar to order a rum punch, then take your haul over to one of the adjacent picnic tables to chat to a mix of locals and tourists while you eat; a huge dinner and a couple of rum punches will cost you less than a tenner.

Bay Street, Gros Islet

Liz Hot Roti

They may be a traditional Indian flatbread, but, for Saint Lucians, rotis are a delicacy in their own right. On Reduit Beach, in Rodney Bay, Liz (look for her ‘Liz Hot Roti’ sign) fills them with everything from marinated goat meat to shrimp, plus homemade hot sauce, for the perfect beach lunch. It’s just a makeshift stall, which Liz also sells warm coconut cake and fruit juices from, but it’s so successful that imposters have taken to mimicking her… so be sure to buy the genuine article!

Reduit Beach, Rodney Bay

Best beach bar on Saint Lucia

The Naked Fisherman

Part of the Cap Maison resort, this Smuggler’s Cove beach bar serves casual lunches and dinners on some evenings (snow crab claws, lobster cocktails, burgers, creole barbecue boards…) at beachside tables. Even if you’re not staying at the hotel, it’s worth going for a sundowner. Not only does the bar serve its own, island-brewed, Naked Fisherman IPA, but it’s also known for its signature rum cocktails (try Saint Lucia’s treacly Chairman’s Reserve Rum in a Spicy Mango, with mango purée, lime juice and homemade jalapeño syrup).

If you want slightly more refined dining, head to the resort’s main restaurant, The Cliff at Cap. It’s open-air with a dramatic clifftop setting: below you, frigatebirds swoop over the ocean and, if you squint, you can see over to the island of Martinique. The menu veers towards creative French/West Indian cooking (signature dishes include ceviche of reef conch and ahi tuna, and Kurobuta pork belly with razor clams, squid and coconut foam), but The Cliff is also a great spot for a drink: the bar has an impressive selection of rums.

nakedfishermanstlucia.com; capmaison.com

Best chocolate experience on Saint Lucia

Boucan hotel

See exactly where the cocoa in your Dizzy Pralines comes from at Hotel Chocolat’s 250-year-old plantation (and adjoining boutique hotel), near Soufriere. Set against the Piton mountains, 1,000 metres above the Caribbean Sea, Boucan hotel is as indulgent as a Rocky Road slab. Relax with a pick-your-own cacao-oil massage (try heady cacao-rose, or fragrant cacao-cinnamon), take a dip in the infinity pool, head off on a plantation tour or make your own chocolate bar on a bean-to-bar experience. Rooms, called ‘luxe pods’, have four-poster beds, open-sky rainforest showers and lush Petit Piton views from your own private veranda. Plus they’re decorated in rich mahoganies and ivories, to subtly reflect those chocolate hues.

The restaurant (perfectly placed for Petit Piton panoramas) makes use of the entire cocoa pod: fresh, tangy pulp in cocktails and sorbets, and roasted cacao nibs for spice. Try yellowfin tuna with a cacao nib crust and garlic cacao butter sauce, with a side of white chocolate mash. And Rabot Chocolate Lava for dessert, inspired by nearby Soufriere volcano – a dome of chocolate sponge with a molten chocolate interior, made entirely from Hotel Chocolat cacao beans.

hotelchocolat.com/uk/boucan

Best casual dining spots on Saint Lucia

Jambe de Bois

There’s a Robinson Crusoe vibe at this Pigeon Island café, with its driftwood furniture, brightly painted rope swings and waterside setting. The island (now connected to Saint Lucia by a causeway) is popular with day-trippers from hotels in neighbouring Rodney Bay, who come to snorkel just offshore, or hike up to the Fort Rodney. Many of them detour into this appealingly hippyish spot along the way.

Home cooking is the order of the day, with simple dishes such as callaloo soup, homemade crab cakes and banana crumble. It’s also a great spot to sit and sip a Piton beer overlooking the water.

Pigeon Island, 00 1 758 450 8166

Martha’s Tables

Run by a local mother-daughter duo, Martha’s Tables sits just beneath Petit Piton in Soufriere and serves straight-up home-cooked food on its verandah. Try breadfruit balls (the prickly oval fruit tastes like freshly baked bread when cooked), and freshly-caught mahi mahi in Martha’s rich and spicy special sauce.

marthastables.com

Hardest Hard

In Castries, Hardest Hard is where locals go for lunch. It’s a humble menu – six-or-seven ‘plates’ to choose from, and the same number of drinks (try tamarind juice) – that gives a great flavour of Saint Lucian cuisine. From gentle saltfish bake to not-for-the-faint-hearted salted pigtail bouyon, it’s all piled high on bright yellow plates; although the kitchen runs out of food quickly at lunch time, so get there early.

facebook.com/hardesthard.rb

Flavours of the Grill

Flavours of the Grill promises just that: locally-caught seafood or meat, simply grilled and served in curries (shrimp in coconut curry is a favourite) or alongside garlic potatoes, rice, okra and green beans. The simple, modern restaurant is just south of Rodney Bay (it’s recently moved from its original Gros Islet location), and there’s live jazz every Friday night – enjoy it with a banana daiquiri in hand.

Close to the Windjammer Landing, near Rodney Bay

Best romantic dining spots on Saint Lucia

Orlando’s

It’s strictly local ingredients here (including pure vanilla pods and extra virgin olive oil), transformed into light, elegant dishes. Set at the northern end of Soufriere, Orlando’s is an al fresco restaurant – you eat in a courtyard garden – that serves ‘Ti Manje’ (small plates) of Caribbean food: cucumber and saltfish salad, for example, and mahi mahi with sweet potato crust, skewered on sugar cane sticks.

orlandosrestaurantstl.com

The Coal Pot

Across the bay from Castries, and next to genteel Vigie Marina, The Coal Pot has been cooking fresh fish for over 50 years. Try kingfish, barracuda, dorado or lobster, served with ratatouille and fiery ginger sauce, or authentic St Lucian ‘crab back’ – local crab sautéed with herbs in a garlic-butter sauce. Food is served on patterned plates painted by the owner, flickering lanterns lend the space a romantic feel, and its waterside location makes for the perfect (if slightly smug) holiday snap.

facebook.com/The-Coal-Pot-Restaurant

Best market on Saint Lucia

Rough-around-the-edges Castries market, first established in the 1890s, is the biggest on the island, with over 300 regular vendors and a Vendor’s Arcade annex (a far more recent addition) on one side that acts as a showcase for local restaurants and craftspeople. You can buy everything from green figs to banana ketchup, hats made of grass and raw cocoa sticks here (grate the latter and mix with bay leaves, cinnamon and nutmeg to make Saint Lucian hot cocoa tea). The best time to visit is early on a Saturday morning – when in-the-know locals do their shopping.

John Compton Highway, Castries

Best places to stay on Saint Lucia

East Winds Resort

For a pampering experience with a more local flavour than some of the larger resorts – and a more intimate setting (there are only 30 guest cottages plus a beach house) – this leafy, all-inclusive retreat, right on La Brelotte beach in the northwest of the island, is a recommended option. Accommodation is scattered between pretty gingerbread cottages and older rondel-style suites in the extensive gardens, plus a handful of beach apartments; all are spoiling, with vast beds, luxury bathrooms and conscientiously stocked mini bars (unlimited chilled champagne can also be supplied if you really want to celebrate).

At the heart of the resort is a beachfront bar, restaurant and open-sided lounge area, while just behind them are two elegant pavilions – one for expert yoga and pilates classes (included in the price), the other home to a spa. Other activities included in the rates are watersports, garden tours (ask to see the on-site banana ‘museum’, where several varieties of the fruit are grown) and cooking classes (ours, with chef Linton, taught us how to make posh battered fish, the delicate crispy coating a blitzed-up mix of onion, garlic, hot sauce, sage, basil, sweet peppers, olive oil and lime juice).

Breakfasts are a highlight, with a different fresh smoothie or juice available every day and, alongside the usual suspects (toast, local jams, tropical fruits, bacon and eggs), a choice of fresh pancakes and omelettes made to order. Local flavours pop up, too: johnny cakes with green figs and saltfish, perhaps, or little homemade coconut and cinnamon rolls. Lunches, meanwhile, are different every day but revolve around marinated and barbecued meats and fish (weeks later, one of our party is still talking about East Winds’ barbecued spare ribs), stews, paella and brightly coloured salads and sides (jackfruit salad, buttered greens, pickled veg, dasheen balls…). If it’s on offer, try the shrimp soup, a wholesome-tasting light, peppery broth laced with plump seafood.

In the unlikely event that you get hungry during the day, homemade cake is served in the lounge each afternoon (we happened to be there over the island’s Independence celebrations, and also got to try local sweets such as sour-sweet tamarind balls and coconut fudge) and there’s an all-day bar menu listing items such as grilled fish skewers. Save space, though, for imaginative four-course evening dinners. Overseen by aptly named executive chef Tomislav Čukman, elegantly presented dishes range from tuna confit with potato salad to Caribbean-style green banana bouillon, seared barracuda with cauliflower and wasabi cream and chocolate and raspberry entremets (traditionalists can opt for the likes of grilled pear with prosciutto crisp, roast rack of lamb and banana donuts with spicy toffee sauce).

As for the bar, while it’s all-inclusive at East Winds, a grown-up crowd means no-one overdoes it. Piton beers and house wines are popular and fruit punches (with or without rum) are always available. There’s usually a cocktail of the day, but our advice is to try the local rum. Chairman’s Reserve, produced on the island, is a smooth, failsafe choice with honeyed, tropical fruit notes; but if you want something a step up from the standard, ask for a glass of Admiral Rodney rum, with its vanilla and toasted oak flavour.

eastwinds.com

For more information on the island, see stlucia.org

Words by Rhiannon Batten and Charlotte Morgan

Photographs by Rhiannon Batten, Steve Barnes and Hotel Chocolat

Looking for restaurants in County Cork? Want to know where to eat in the Irish county? olive’s food director Janine Ratcliffe shares her insider trips for the best restaurants in County Cork, along with where to find the best whisky cocktails, fresh oysters and Italian cheeses.

olive’s top 10 must-visits for foodies in County Cork

Greenes, Cork – for fancy dining

You’ll find Greenes down a narrow Harry Potter-style alleyway, opposite a waterfall (yes, really!). It might be one of Cork’s oldest and most established restaurants, but Greenes has recently overhauled its menu and is ticking all sorts of trendy boxes (squid ink crisps, leek ash, fermented barley and the like). The combinations can read a bit out there (pork belly with black pudding porridge for one), but what’s delivered is thoughtful plates of food that showcase delicate cooking. The list of local suppliers on the front page of the menu gives a clue to the restaurant’s ingredient-led focus. Book a table with a waterfall view if you can – it’s a truly magical sight.

greenesrestaurant.com

Cask, Cork – for expertly crafted cocktails

Next door to Greenes, Cask is a low-lit temple to finely crafted cocktails. The interior is a mix of plush and stark with deep blue velvet chairs and booths, and warm exposed brick walls fitted with twinkly filament lights. The cocktail menu is updated every 12 weeks to make the most of seasonal herbs, fruits and foraged ingredients, including rhubarb, bramble leaf and sorrel (and there’s always a seasonal shrub on the menu for non-drinkers). We tried With the Fairies: a heady mix of whiskey, blanco tequila, lustau blanco, burdock, spruce and soda. If you want something to buoy up the booze, there’s generous cheese, charcuterie and antipasti boards to share, as well as a small plates and street food menu (try glazed chicken wings, sourced from Cork’s English Market, with blue cheese foam).

caskcork.com

Arthur Maynes Pharmacy, Cork – for a bar with a twist

Housed in a 120-year-old chemist shop (the old sign still hangs outside), every inch of this quirky bar is lined with original cabinets that house vintage medicine, perfume bottles and make-up. The bar is the old glass counter, where the very first chemist ledgers can still be found. As well as various craft and traditional beer offerings, there’s a decent wine list and food served until 1am for late nighters. Climb up narrow rickety stairs to find an even smaller candlelit cocktail bar, Arthur’s Upstairs.

corkheritagepubs.com

Café Paradiso, Cork – for legendary vegetarian food

Chef Denis Cotter has been reinventing veggie food here since 1993, and this Cork institution has become a must-visit for meat-free eaters (and omnivores). The intimate, relaxed dining room is only open for dinner with a two-or-three course fixed-price menu that aims to make veg the hero of the plate. Cooking is refined and adventurous, with many elements expertly balanced on one plate. Try roast carrots, mozzarella, burnt aubergine, honey, pickled fennel and ras-el-hanout crumb; or feta and pistachio couscous cake, smoky greens, lemon chickpeas, coriander yoghurt, zhoug oil and date jam. You’ll need to book ahead, as it’s often full well in advance.

paradiso.restaurant

The English Market, Cork – for exploring Ireland’s larder

If Cork is the larder of Ireland, then the English Market is its showcase. This covered market is a warren of food and drink stalls – grab an artisan sourdough from the Alternative Bread Company, antipasti and cheese from the Real Olive Company, and a slice of chocolate mousse cake from Heaven’s Cakes, and you have yourself an instant picnic. If you’re going further afield, Kay O’Connell’s award-winning fish and seafood stall will vac pack your fish and send you away with a cool bag to keep it fresh. Upstairs, the Farmgate Café sits on a balcony overlooking the stalls and serves a breakfast and lunch menu using products from the market – enjoy a traditional Irish fry-up, or a plate of fresh oysters with a glass of Eight Degrees Knockmealdown Stout .

englishmarket.ie

Jacques, Cork – for a lunch pit stop

Bang in the middle of bustling Oliver Plunkett St, Jacques is a buzzy restaurant that’s perfect for a quick break from shopping (having said that, it’s also great for a more leisurely lunch or dinner). The sandwiches here are famous, and for good reason – they’re so enormous that we’d recommend splitting one with a friend. Don’t miss the Cork Reuben, stuffed with Tom Durcan’s spiced beef, Ballinrostig cheese, gherkins and pickled red cabbage, that’s best chased down with a West Cork Brewing Co. The Rapids Rye, a spicy, nutty IPA. Dinner is a bit more refined with an a la carte and tapas menu, plus a great selection of natural wines.

jacquesrestaurant.ie

Toons Bridge Dairy, Macroom – for Italian cheeses, olives and pizza

Making mozzarella in West Cork countryside might seem like an odd choice for a cheesemaker, but Toons Bridge Dairy doesn’t just stop there. Oozy, creamy burrata, smoked scamorza, fresh ricotta and caciocavallo are also made here using sheep, cow and buffalo milk. Founders Toby Simmonds and Jenny-Rose Clarke travelled to Italy to learn the craft, and they employ both Italian and local cheesemakers in the dairy today. The duo supply some of the best restaurants in Ireland, as well as selling at The English Market, online and at their own dairy shop. From April onwards, visitors can also stop by for lunch or dinner – a wood-fired pizza oven is in action from 12.30 on a Friday, Saturday and Sunday, for Neapolitan-style pizzas, tapas boards, flatbreads and salads.

toonsbridgedairy.com

Ballymaloe Country Hotel House and Restaurant, Ballycotton – for dining at a national treasure

Ballymaloe in its current incarnation encompasses hotel, restaurant, kitchen garden, shop, grain store venue and cookery school. Dinner at the house is an occasion: a five-course celebration of the food produced in the walled garden, farm and locally (the evening menu isn’t totally finalised until Brenda’s 4pm fish van visits with that day’s catch). The dining room is a warm, welcoming, tranquil space with no hint of country house stuffiness, although the crisp white linen and twinkly glassware give a hint of the refined dining experience to come.

The food, as you’d expect, is really special. A simple salad of St Tola goat’s cheese comes with roast beets, a hazelnut dressing and leaves from the garden; and East Cork lamb is perfectly blushing pink with a mint béarnaise and leek mousse. Dessert is a revelation – a trolley loaded with a selection of puddings including chocolate torte, caramel ice cream, pears poached in cardamom syrup, crisp little shortbread biscuits and a traditional carrageen moss pudding that has never been off the menu. You’ll be encouraged to try everything, so save space!

ballymaloe.ie

Fishy Fishy, Kinsale – best for fresh seafood

This harbourside restaurant serves only spankingly-fresh fish caught in the Irish Sea and landed in Kinsale, so the menu changes according to what’s good that week. There’s plenty of simple classics (including fish pie and fish and chips), as well as more adventurous dishes such as lobster bisque – a deeply savoury seafood base with a little cream added. Other winners include pan roasted scallops with cauli purée and delicate fillets of plaice in a buttery caper sauce. There are two bright and airy dining rooms (one upstairs, the other downstairs), and in the warmer months crowds spill out onto a sunny outdoor terrace.

fishyfishy.ie

Kinsale Mead Company, Kinsale – for a taste of ancient history

Mead is the world’s oldest alcoholic drink and after years of being sold only at dusty shops at the back of monasteries, it’s having a bit of a comeback. At this small Kinsale meadery (the first in Ireland for hundreds of years) you can sample and buy three different types of award-winning mead, and even enjoy a mini tour and fascinating history lesson from makers Kate and Dennis Dempsey if you book ahead. We loved the Atlantic Dry Mead – crisper than you’d imagine, with an almost dry sherry-like character – and the Hazy Summer Mead, touched with a sweet berry edge from Ballykelly blackcurrants.

kinsalemeadco.ie

Words by Janine Ratcliffe, April 2019

Photographs by John Allen

More places to eat and drink in County Cork

Sage, Midleton

We’ve been drawn to Midleton by Sage, where chef Kevin Aherne is a real talent. For a small town, this informal, bustling restaurant’s food is remarkable. The ‘12-mile’ ethos – the majority of its free-range, line-caught or organic produce is sourced within 12 miles – is a rare, successful demonstration of locavorism at work. Its 12 Mile Sharing Board offers a croquette of sweetbread; sticky pigs’ cheeks with a suggestion of local chocolate; white pudding topped with a crisp of pork crackling. A courgette fritter – like the Turkish classic – is light and lovely.

The presentation is sophisticated, and nothing is too much trouble – if we want to substitute hake for cod, it’s done with grace. It’s a proper community restaurant, too, with a legion of local fans. The friendly front-of-house welcome comes from Kevin’s wife Réidín; there’s a lot of blarney talked about Irish charm but Sage has it in spades.

sagerestaurant.ie

Tannery, Dungarvan

We do a quick skip out of county to Waterford. Well, with a restaurant as wonderful as Tannery in Dungarvan, it would be rude not to. Here, chef Paul Flynn – a well-known face on Irish TV – and his warm, charming wife Máire have transformed a former leatherworks into one of Ireland’s best restaurants.

The food is a clever meeting of classic technique, glorious produce and Flynn’s distinct touch: a ‘pie’ of duck with, maybe, a flawless pithivier surrounded by wild mushrooms; or short rib of beef left to languish for days in stout before slow cooking to jammy tenderness. Mash is gorgeously buttery, and a raviolo of lobster with pickled ginger is a stellar dish.

tannery.ie

Cliff House, Ardmore

The restaurant making the biggest noise round these parts is Michelin-starred Cliff House. But we leave the intricate, complex dishes of chef Martijn Kajuiter for another time, choosing instead to catch some delicate, unseasonal rays on the bar terrace. This has got to be one of Ireland’s loveliest locations, and eating a hummock of sweet crab from Yawl Bay piled onto soda bread with lemon mayo while looking out over Ardmore’s golden sands feels like a rare privilege.

cliffhousehotel.ie

Words by Marina O’Loughlin, January 2015

Looking for places to stay near Salcombe? Want a rustic-chic hotel in Devon? Read our review of Gara Rock in South Devon.

Gara Rock in a nutshell

Devon’s hippest new hotel, perched on the bluff of a cliff near Salcombe, has 12 rustic-chic bedrooms, a relaxed restaurant with sun terrace, indoor and outdoor heated pools, and a clutch of stylish self-catering family-friendly cottages – all of which are cleverly positioned to make the most of magnificent coastal views.

The vibe

Set on the South West Coastal Path, at the end of a tangle of narrow high-hedged country lanes, Gara Rock has an edge-of-the-world feel, where zero mobile signal and patchy internet lends it a refreshingly low-fi, analogue vibe. Clean-cut families, couples, hikers and dog-walkers are drawn by its laid-back, beachy atmosphere, staying for leg-pumping rambles, beach picnics, coastal cuisine and spa treatments – or just to gawp at the epic views.

Interiors have an earthy, ethnic bent and are furnished with artisan products from Devon-based store, Nkuku (hand-loomed Rajasthani block-print jute rugs and armchairs, rattan lampshades handwoven in Indonesia, and Cambodian seagrass baskets).

Which room should I book?

There are no bad choices, with all rooms sharing the same cosy feel, and most enjoying sea views from balconies, terraces or gardens. Loft suite 5 is the most impressive, with an open-plan living area, freestanding bath, contemporary wood-burning stove, and a super king bed and terrace facing the sunset.

Bathrooms have powerful walk-in showers, fluffy towels and bespoke organic toiletries. Fresh milk is provided for a morning brew, but there’s no mini bar. The new penthouse and signal house are geared for large groups, while the uber-romantic secret suite is a luxurious, hidden-away option for lovebirds.

The food and drink

Gara Rock’s restaurant and terrace is its main draw, offering a relaxed vibe, a limited but reliable menu that caters for all culinary persuasions, and panoramic vistas through floor-to-ceiling windows (tables 115 or 117 have uninterrupted views). The kitchen was in a state of flux during my visit, with the arrival of head chef Chris Warwick, but Lancashire-born Chris promises coastal cooking with a northern twist, weaving in personal favourites such as Ampleforth Abbey cider, Lancashire Bomb cheddar, black pudding, and sweets including Bakewell Tart, Eccles and lardy cakes.

Dishes are still in development, but look out for the rump of lamb with ricotta, wild garlic, turnip tops and shepherd’s pie sauce; or smoked Cornish lobster with mashed potato and lobster claw gravy. Local suppliers include Riverford Farm and Rusty Pig charcuterie. The hotel’s small kitchen garden provides herbs, salad leaves and summer fruits, while flowering rosemary is foraged from cliffs. There are two bars stocked with West Country gins, including Salcombe Gin (distilled in a former sail loft in town), Luscombe fruit juices, Devonshire ciders and Dartmoor ales. For an on-the-go lunch, the ‘Garavan’ – a retro Citroën van parked on Gara’s cliff edge – serves fortifying takeaways such as pasties and sausage rolls.

Breakfast

Also in the throes of change, but a forthcoming menu promises all the favourites, as well as more imaginative offerings including ricotta and honey toast with nutmeg, corned beef hash with fried egg and Worcestershire sauce, and an English breakfast tartine. The already excellent buffet will be jazzed up further with homemade heather-honey granolas and conserves, foraged cordials and Devon-made charcuterie.

What else can foodies do?

Work up an appetite with a 45-minute coastal walk to sandy Mill Bay beach, refuel at the cute little Venus beach café, then hop on the jaunty passenger ferry from East Portlemouth to Salcombe, where you can make your own gin at Salcombe Gin, watch ice-cream being made at Salcombe Dairy, and tuck into chargrilled scallops at cheery, bunting-garlanded beach café, The Winking Prawn. Overbeck’s, a National Trust property, serves a mean cream tea in tropical gardens overlooking the estuary. Gara Rock offers complimentary Land Rover pick-ups from East Portlemouth dock for those who overindulge and can’t face the walk home.

Is it family friendly?

Five self-catering cottages are geared for families, comprising three bedrooms, two bathrooms, an open plan kitchen and small garden. There are two heated pools – one indoor and one outdoor – and several sandy beaches nearby with shallow swimming (though no lifeguards). There’s a crowd-pleasing children’s menu and a relaxed attitude to tearaways in the restaurant. A private cinema shows daily child-friendly films, as well as those for a more grown-up audience. The hotel’s proximity to cliff edges rules out allowing young children to roam free.

olive tip

Don’t miss the sunrise clifftop yoga sessions in summer, which are followed by brunch.

Words by Suzy Bennett, April 2019

For the best deals on rooms at Gara Rock, click here

gararock.com

Looking for foodie adventures across the world? Want to know the best cycle tours across Italy? Here are the best foodie adventure trips to take this year.

Italy

Freewheel Holidays’ eight-day Venice and Prosecco Lands self-guided cycle tour is an adventure with extra sparkle. It’s an easy-grade ride that includes a night spent in pretty Bassano del Grappa, where you’ll try the eponymous local liqueur. There’s more cycling along the waterways of Treviso and Padua, and across the Venetian islands of Lido and Pellestrina, though in Venice itself bikes are banned. Here, explore on foot, all the better to seek out the best backstreet cicchetti bars.

freewheelholidays.co.uk

New Zealand

Food always tastes better when you’ve worked up an appetite. Nature and Nosh’s six-day Heart of the North trip combines hiking in North Island’s offbeat Waikato region with a buffet of foodie experiences. As well as walking amid waterfalls, bird sanctuaries and native rainforests where few others go, there are tastings at family-owned vineyards, tours of award-winning cheeseries and pretty picnics by lagoons.

natureandnosh.co.nz

Sweden

Think of it as Robinson Crusoe gone gourmet. Do The North’s four-day Culinary Adventure explores the Saint Anna archipelago by sea kayak – paddle between rugged pine-and-spruce-cloaked islands, camp by the water’s edge (spot the seals) and live off nature’s spoils. By day you’ll explore and forage, collecting wild shoots, roots, mushrooms and berries, as well as local-grown veg and the freshest fisherman’s catch. By night you’ll learn to cook creatively: you might make wild venison stew with lingonberries one day, and waffles (grilled over an open fire) with homemade strawberry jam the next.

dothenorth.com

India

Travelling at slow pedal pace is the best way to see – and smell – the south Indian state of Karnataka. This aromatic enclave bursts with vanilla, cinnamon and cardamom estates, banana and coconut groves, and lively fish markets. Village Ways’ nine-night Cycling the Spice Gardens in Karnataka trip is split between two rural community-run guesthouses – one amid the Western Ghats, the other on the Arabian Sea. Both provide a sustainable income for locals and eye-opening insights for travellers. Head out on daily cycles amid the palms and plantations, and return to home-cooked curries; there’s an opportunity to make your own coconut chutney and banana roti, too.

villageways.com

Spain

Finca Las Encinas, a rustic, rambling farmhouse perched on the edge of a Moorish village, gazes at ancient olive groves and the peaks of the Parque Natural de La Sierra Subbética. Temptations here are twofold: the owners offer wine tastings and masterclasses in Andalucían cookery (make shellfish soup with fino wine, or chilled almond soup) using seasonal ingredients sourced from the finca’s own organic veg garden or neighbouring farms. But there’s also that natural park on the doorstep, where a trainline once used to transport the region’s olive oil has been converted into a 58km Green Way for hikers and bikers, still complete with viaducts, old stations and magnificent mountain views.

sawdays.co.uk

Scotland

Obviously, you shouldn’t drink and drive… but exhilarating mountain-biking followed by a wee dram makes a fine blend. H+I Adventures’ eight-day Cairngorms trip matches single-track rides through Caledonian forest, along glens, across moors and down mountains (including the longest descent in the Highlands) with quality refuelling, from the best cake cafés to real ale pubs. There’s also a stop at Speyside cooperage to watch the barrel masters at work and a visit to an independent distillery, to sample a whisky or two.

mountainbikeworldwide.com

Mexico

The quiet fishing town of Sayulita, on Mexico’s jungly Pacific coast, was discovered by surfers in the 1970s and is now boho hangout for boarders – and foodies. The waves here suit all sorts: beginners can book lessons by the sandbar with Lunazul Surf School, while the rocky promontories offer bigger breaks. Sayulita is most delicious behind the beach, where simple stalls and hip cafés sell everything from fresh coconuts and cold-pressed juices to sizzling chilli chicken, crisp tacos and potent margaritas. Stay at Petit Hotel Hafa, a bright six-bed bolthole with a roof deck overlooking the ocean, so you can keep an eye on the surf.

lunazulsurfing.com

Portugal

Though better known for its port wine and prehistoric rock art, Portugal’s peaceful Côa Valley is rich in animal life, especially vultures, wild Garrano horses and Iberian wolves. A five-night expedition here with the European Safari Company incorporates a stay at a tented Fly Camp within the Faia Brava reserve – a camp supported by Rewilding Europe, an organisation that works to bring back the continent’s lost biodiversity. As well as expert naturalists, you’ll get a tour of a local vineyard plus five-course wine-paired meals, eaten outside, overlooking the Côa and Duoro rivers.

europeansafaricompany.com

Greece

Swimtrek’s seven-day Greek Cyclades trip incorporates a range of swims, from paddles in protected coves to coastline tracing, tunnel and cave explorations, and isle-to-isle crossings. Being based on two different islands over the week also means there are twice as many bars and tavernas to try: on Schinoussa, seek out local specialities such as octopus pasta and thyme honey; on Koufonissi you’ll stay by the harbour – the best place to order fresh, grilled fish.

swimtrek.com

Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka is the destination of the moment, not least because it’s the most delicious of adventure playgrounds, offering thrills for both body and belly. Intrepid’s 13-day Hike, Bike & Kayak trip around the teardrop isle works up an appetite in varied ways. Cycle through leafy tea plantations, hike amid the herb-scented Knuckles Range, make the pilgrimage up Adam’s Peak (stopping at the trail-side food stalls en route) and spend three days paddling down the Kaluganga River and camping in waterside villages. Coconut-infused curries, hot sambal and fluffy crisp hoppers fuel the fun.

intrepidtravel.com

Words by Sarah Baxter

Photographs by Sawday’s, H+I Adventures, Juan Carlos Muñoz, Intrepid

Looking for where to buy cinnamon rolls? Here are the best cinnamon buns in the UK and where to buy them.

Cinnamon buns are also known as cinnamon rolls and kannelbullen, and in Denmark they are even called Kanelsnegl; ‘cinnamon snail’. These sweet dough spirals are layered and sprinkled with cinnamon to make a popular teatime (‘fika’ in Swedish) snack or breakfast treat. We also love cardamom buns, which many of the places below also sell.

From Swedish cinnamon bun makers who have opened up cafés across London, to traditional buns in Yorkshire and cinnamon treats in the South West, our cinnamon rolls UK spots make the best in the country.

Every year on 4 October the Swedes celebrate Cinnamon Bun Day (or kannelbullensdag, if you prefer), but we eat them all year round. 

Here’s our best cinnamon bun recipe to try at home

Fabrique, London

We think these could be the best cinnamon buns in the UK. Whether cinnamon or cardamom is your bun of choice, Fabrique Bakery is a great place to enjoy a spot of fika. This Swedish stone-oven bakery originated in Stockholm and has brought its Swedish expertise to London, plying in-the-know citizens with squidgy buns and sourdough fresh from the oven. The original Fabrique Bakery is on Geffrye Street next to Hoxton overground station, where the bakery still lies, but due to popular demand branches have opened up in Covent Garden, Notting Hill and Fitzrovia so West Londoners can get in on the cinnamon bun action.

Baltzersens, Harrogate

For us at olive no journey to God’s Own Country is now complete without a trip to Balterzens (or, if we’re lucky, its dinnertime counterpart, Norse, full review here). The Nordic inspired menus here prove that Scandi cooking doesn’t have to mean stodgy, with exquisitely presented trays of freshly baked cinnamon buns laid out at the coffee counter every morning alongside sultanaboller (sultana buns), skolebrod (cardamom buns dotted with custard and sprinkled with coconut) and all manner of other treats. baltzersens.co.uk

The Pudding Stop, St Albans

Giant helter skelter-shaped buns, served warm if you get up early enough, don’t hang around for long at The Pudding Stop in St Albans. Perhaps it’s those swirls of pillowy pastry made squidgy with epic amounts of sugary cinnamon butter; or that chewy, caramel-like base that makes them so irresistible.

Or maybe, as Pudding Stop owner Johnny Shepherd (he of Bake Off fame) puts it, it could be ‘the amazing butter and flour we use in our recipe. That and building up the lamination to make our buns super flaky, crispy and delicious.’ 

Read our full review of The Pudding Stop in St Albans here

Söderberg, Edinburgh and Soho

Get your cinnamon bun fix in Edinburgh. This  bakery now has seven outlets in Edinburgh and recently opened in London’s Soho. The company has made a name for its own-brand crispbreads and now serves pizzas, brunch and all manner of baked goods. Including signature cardamom buns as well as cinnamon and vanilla with seasonal fruits. soderberg.uk

Looking for more places to eat and drink in Edinburgh? Here’s our foodie guide.

Nordic Bakery, London

For a quick Nordic pitstop in the city centre you can’t go far wrong in one of these pared-back, wood-lined Scandinavian cafes (one is in Soho and one in Marylebone). Their open rye sandwiches are the stuff of lunchtime legend but that doesn’t detract from their cinnamon buns in any way. nordicbakery.com

Cottonrake, Glasgow

When Scandi café and lifestyle store Swedish Affär closed its doors last month Glasgow’s cinnamon bun lovers might have thought they were about to settle into a winter of culinary discontent. Not so. Over in the city’s West End artisan bakery Cottonrake has been going from strength to strength with its pretty patisseries and crusty sourdoughs and the secret soon got out that it also does a fine line in cinnamon buns. Get there early in the day, while stocks last. cottonrake.com

Here are our favourite places to eat and drink in Glasgow

Svea Café, Cheltenham

If you’re craving a dollop of granny chic with your kannelbulle this cosy Cheltenham café is the place for you. There’s no Nordic minimalism here. Just pretty ribboned curtains, green pastel paintwork and a smorgasbord of traditional Swedish eats, from, er, monthly smorgasbords to seasonal crayfish parties and Lucia celebrations. And, fear not, it also serves a steady stream of cinnamon buns. sveacafe.co.uk

Here’s another easy cinnamon bun recipe to try at home

Author: Rhiannon Batten, Alex Crossley and Charlotte Morgan

First published: October 2015, Updated January 2018