olicollett

Awesome.. i'm off in less than 2 weeks :)

Hmm my folks have recently moved to near Bury, might give the great house a try sometime

The most by far was £300/head at a 2* place.. most of that was on some Krug. Worth it? Probably not, I guess I found out that Krug isn't for me the hard way. But the food was excellent.

Thanks Scott, great post! I'm an occasional buyer because i don't really have a lot of storage room and i wanted to buy a couple of nice bottles this weekend whilst i'm in London. I'm in London every month or so though so i'd like to find somewhere that i want to return to! I'll definitely check out some of those on your list

Could anyone recommend some decent wine merchants in london? Only one i know of are berry bros, but i'm sure there are plenty of others to check out? Preferably in and around central london.

Not just out of season, but non-local too. Is he going to lock himself up for using bresse chickens, foie gras etc.? I can see just about every asian restaurant in the UJK getting shut down now..

Now that is very impressive. Can we guess which ones you haven't been to? I reckon Rockpool Fish, Chateaubriand, Dom, Tetsuya's, Le Bernadin, Hof Van Cleve, Philippe Rochat, Vendome, Die Schwarzwaldstube and Tantris. Are you tempted to "get the set" as it were? ← oooh, good job, you get 7 out of 10! Am I tempted to get the set? Lol, I am not a restaurant collector, notching my belt with trophies. I happen to travel a lot and make an effort to try the best places out there. Next time I'm in Brazil I may check out D.O.M. However, I am not going to make a special trip out there just so I can say I've been to all 50 on Restaurant Magazine's latest list. I have to say that of the 40 I can talk about, only a dozen or so would make it to my personal best restaurant list. I also find the order of the list very arbitrary and strange, but that is a function of the voting system. For example, my top 5 restaurants according to the voting rules would be different from what I consider to be the top 5 restaurants currently in the world. ← I have a question for you - have you been to Japan, if so have you visited some of the top restaurants there and how do they compare to some of the places mentioned on this list?

Once again, Bukhara is rated the top restaurant in Asia. I don't think it is even the top restaurant in India and probably not even New Delhi, let alone all of Asia. While it is not bad, I do not understand its stature. Last I knew Japan and China were still considered parts of Asia. ← Damn, i'm off to Tokyo in a fortnight and now you're telling me there's not a restaurant there to compare to even the lowest on that list! No seriously, if a couple of Zumas and a Nobu can make it.... ← I think this is probably the biggest oversight of the awards.

What a great debate. Dish A sounds awful, you must have a bad palate if you disagree with the judges. If people didn't try "different" or "unusual" combinations then cooking wouldn't go anywhere.

What's going on with the sous-chef's? Anthony's got the same guy Sat had, who won masterchef last year!?

I still think they missed out on a trick not having Delia Smith competing with her shepherd's pie made with 6 months matured "on the shelf" mince and rehydrated pomme puree & dairylea topping.

Thought 9 months was quite a while!! I'll be going back soon enough, i've had some very, very good meals this year but i don't think any of them were better than my meal at Sat Bains last september!

i tried to get a table at petrus for dinner in april and unless i wanted to eat at 1030 the earliest i could get was the 3rd week of may which suggests not much needs fixing? ← I tried in January to get a table in march exactly 2 months away and i was told i could only get a 10.30 table! It was a saturday night but still. I don't mean to go off topic but i do find it odd in London that you can get a table at some 2 *'s easily enough but other equally well regarded restaurants seem to be very difficult indeed. Is it perhaps because Petrus leave a lot of tables aside for certain people? ← They only have about 14 tables or so at petrus if memory serves me right - although having said that the capital can't be much bigger? ← Ah I thought it was bigger than that. I found it easy enough to get a table at the square in comparison with about 3 weeks notice for a saturday evening, I'm guessing the dining room is bigger?

i tried to get a table at petrus for dinner in april and unless i wanted to eat at 1030 the earliest i could get was the 3rd week of may which suggests not much needs fixing? ← I tried in January to get a table in march exactly 2 months away and i was told i could only get a 10.30 table! It was a saturday night but still. I don't mean to go off topic but i do find it odd in London that you can get a table at some 2 *'s easily enough but other equally well regarded restaurants seem to be very difficult indeed. Is it perhaps because Petrus leave a lot of tables aside for certain people?

Seconded.. the Rib I shared there with a friend was delicious and they don't even give you options as to how you want it cooked which I thought was quite good!

I'd like to try Bacchus but it's a bit of a trek isn't it? I think i'll stick with Foliage, you all seem to have a lot of good things to say about it

I'm looking for some ideas for dinner in london on sat 22nd. Budget no issue but obviously it's a bit short notice to get a table at some places (i tried to book petrus over 2 months ago for this weekend and could only get on the waiting list!). I've tried Maze - somewhere i've always wanted to try - but they were completely booked. I'm going to The Square in April so there's not much point going there. I went to Arbutus in January as well. I can get a table at Foliage but i've heard mixed reviews? Any ideas would be most welcome!

The red lion inn is well worth checking out, around 6-7 miles out of nottingham: http://www.theolivebranchpub.com/editorials.asp?d=2&c=18 Sister pub of the olive branch, both are fantastic. Sat Bains is v difficult to get into on a weekend, I had to book around 3-4 weeks in advance to get a weekday booking!!! Fingers crossed for you though, it'll be a fantastic experience if you can get in!

Well, even without Foie Gras, it was still an amazing experience there. I'll definately be returning! (i'll try and do a more detailed report later!)

Damn, no Foie on friday then!!! I'm frustrated out of the principle more than anything, I'm personally not a big fan of it from an ethics point of view but it is rather nice... What I don't understand with these ***** is that the police know who's behind it, they admit to it, yet they don't do anything??? This kind of thing sets a really bad precedent and we all know that it won't end here.

I met some of these protesters in Nottingham a few months ago. Spoke to one chap who seemed sound enough, but sadly completely miss-lead. I first asked him if he knew anything about the history of foie gras and how it came about, and he knew nothing about animals overfeeding before migration and that it was natural to happen. I agreed that some of the practices in Foie Gras production are terrible, but like many people in this thread i pointed out that there are far worse crimes going on in food production. He was actually quite willing to listen and I furthered my discussion into how i thought it was good that producers are now looking at ethical methods to produce veal and other produce that was previously reared in a manner considered barbaric - although it was not surprising to hear he didn't realise the alternative that most Veal calves faced. It was after I mentioned the raised standards of meat production in other areas that one of the protesters clearly got angered at my (for once) calm discussion with this chap and decided to start telling me "but it's not ethical because your still eating animals" and another woman started telling me "meat is murder". Neither of them looked like they had washed in months and looked like archetypal animal rights people. They were clearly irate and I decided to leave, and told them: "well, I'm all for freedom of speech, so have a good evening. But don't make too much noise otherwise you'll wake up the people living around here." "WE'LL MAKE AS MUCH NOISE AS WE BLOODY WELL LIKE!!!" - vegetable person.

Sounds like my experience a couple of weeks ago.. i'll write it up fully this weekend but the amuse i had was with roquefort ice cream and was one of the worst dishes i've ever had!! I could still taste it after my starter and did anything but cleanse my palate!

I went a few weeks back for dinner and I was very impressed. The sea bass dish I had for main was particularly stunning. Yes the service and decor wasn't jaw dropping but for me it got the most important part of a restaurant spot on - the food. I also thought it was particularly good value. Does it deserve a star? I don't see why not. The food is delicious, whether its simple bistro food or not, i thought it was very well executed.

Has anyone been here lately? I'm going down at the end of the month, not sure what to expect!

I'll try to attempt some kind of writeup later! I don't think anything is afoot, I'd say that both Perry St and WD-50 are up there with some of the best places I've been in the UK, but Bouley was just a big let down. Maybe it was just a bad night, these things happen I guess.