wgallois

Good: Fatafeet, an Egyptian restaurant on the Creek. Super location overlooking the water, a very big range of Egyptian and Lebanese dishes, and very good ingredients used in standard dishes such as tomato and cheese salad, and fatayer (the sweet fatayer with honey and nuts was the standout dish on this first visit). About $8-12 a head which is a fair bit more than many restaurants of this type, but this is a notch above the competition. They also serve shisha. Bad: Da Gama, a Portugese restaurant in Century Village which, for some unexplained reason, mainly serves Mexican dishes. Not actively bad, but overpriced (c.$35 a head for two courses with a few beers and some shisha) for what it is, especially as all the Tex-Mex dishes are inferior to cheaper options like Chillis. It is in a complex of restaurants surrounding the Dubai Tennis stadium, whose chief virtue is the fact that you can eat, drink and smoke shisha outside. The Irish Village pub on the other side of the stadium is probably a better bet.

It's not in London, and I'm not quite sure if it's still there, but Pepper's Burgers in Oxford cooked mean quarter and halfpounders when I lived there. There was a choice of great relishes, such as blue cheese or garlic mayo, and the chips were also excellent. The guy running it was from the States and his USP (aside from the great burgers) was that he wouldn't give you extra sauce for the chips. There was another burger place, in a shack near the station, where they would sell you extra sauce, though the burgers weren't as good. While one waited for your burger to cook, they always had good shoot-em-up video games in Peppers.

Matthew, On the rice and noodles front, when we went to Hunan in December I was puzzled by the absence of rice from the meal, but for some reason a small amount of rice arrived with our last savoury course. It was pretty desultory stuff and by that time I had realised that I could live without the rice as it is something that I would usually gorge on simply because I wanted to get full-up. Having said that we were given some excellent very-eggy crispy noodles which were dressed with chillis and spring onions - one of the best parts of the meal.

Could anyone let me know whether the Michelin Red Guide to Europe is any good? Does it cover all the starred restaurants mentioned in the country-specific guides and, indeed, does its coverage of restaurants go beyond those countries which are served by specific guides? Thanks a lot.

Thanks for all the tips on Prague restaurants. I would recommend Restaurace U Medvidku for anyone looking for hearty, local food, though you might want to take some kind of mask to cope with the smokiness of the place. We tried smazeny syr (fried cheese), pivni syr (beer cheese), starocesky kuba (a stew of barley, marjoram, garlic and mushrooms) and pikantni zelnysalat y krenem (sp? hot cabbage salad with horse-radish). All the dishes were excellent, as was the Budvar, and the attached hotel is cheapish, central and atmospheric. Also enjoyed the Pilsner Urquell brewery cafe/restaurant in Josefov, where they have a great cheese platter, that also features the delicious beer cheese.

Alexandra, I am a relatively new vegetarian (3.5 years), and in that time I have noticed that middling-to-good restaurants in Britain have moved from serving me some sort of goat's cheese as a main course, to offering me wild mushroom risotto. Could you tell me how many years I will have to wait until a new vegetarian main becomes available in such restaurants? I am led to believe that staples such as nut roasts and stuffed peppers dominated menus for many years, and I am not sure how many more wild mushroom risotti I can take.

Suvir, if you are interested in the kind of Indian dishes available at restaurants in the Emirates, let me mention some highlights from the menu of The Clay Oven, which I praised earlier in this thread: Paneer Bhujiya: really smokey (as all the cooking is there) and with quite a chilli kick. Palak Paneer: much more flavoursome than versions I have had in Britain as it is made with stacks of fresh spinach and finished with coils of ginger. Malai Kofta: I can't say I'm wild about these dumplings as they are pretty chewy. Pindi Channa: their version is a very rich proposition indeed, with a paste rather than a sauce very heavily spiced and flavoured with onions. 'Yellow' Dal: again, much hotter and smokier than those I have tasted in Britain. Dal Makhni (described as 'black lentils smoked overnight and cooked in aromatic spices and a creamy tomato sauce'): very nice, but I can't remember the taste... Sarson Ka Saag: I am still not quite sure what this dish consists of. We ordered against the advice of the waiters, who felt that it would not suit our palates. They were right about this, but i could see how it might become an acquired taste. I imagined that it might be like eating asparagus for the first time. Vegetable Kadahi: the Kadahai cooking at this restaurant is superb. The dish of peas, carrots, potatoes, chillis and spices in a tomato sauce comes to the table sizzling, and it is one of the most complex Indian dishes I have ever tasted. Kulcha: These cheese or potato stuffed breads are greasy and delicious. As my wife and I are vegetarians I could not comment on the other items on the menu, though I have eaten with friends who enjoyed dishes such as Malai Tikka, Fish Tikka (made with cubes of hammour I believe - hammour is the most popular fish here) and Chicken Kadahi. As I mentioned before, the Emirates has a great subcontinental eating scene, and my feeling is that the Clay Oven is at the top of the tree.

Have posted on Cape Town restaurants before. My personal favourite was The Savoy Cabbage which produced really interesting fusion cuisine; not fusion of convenience at all, but a genuine attempt to reflect the different culinary traditions and ingredients of southern Africa.

Thanks a lot for all the really interesting replies. In reply to Steve Klc's question, I can't say that I have ever ordered puddings with any knowledge of a particular pastry chef in a restaurant. I think that this is a function of the British media's only having an interest in celebrity (head) chefs, at the expense of all others who work in restaurants. Restaurant reviews here rarely mention anyone other than the head chef, and I think diners (myself included) rarely have any sense of the food on their plates coming from a team rather than an individual.

In the past year or so I have changed the way in which I pick puddings in restaurants, and thought I would share my method and ask others' views. I used to simply pick the chocolate pudding because I like chocolate a great deal and also because I felt that such a dish would make absolutely sure that they I felt satisfyingly full at the end of the meal. My one variation was to sometimes choose a plate of cheese. Great though chocolate and cheese are, I began to get somewhat bored with this routine and rather envious of the more exotic puddings I saw being enjoyed by my wife. This led me to my great pudding discovery which is that it can become the best course in a meal so long as you choose the dish which you think that you would like least, or the dish that you think is the wildest flight of fancy. In my case this means avoiding chocolate, any kind of gooey pudding, caramel, tarts, other cakes or cheese, and instead embracing lemon-grass creme brulee, nougat with passion fruit, or banana sabayon with liquorice ice cream. Even if this approach leads one to some duds, the highs more than make up for it, and I think that this is partly because wild desserts simply seem to be more creative exercises for good chefs than more standard puddings. In general one also feels less belt-bustingly full when taking the counter-intuitive pudding route.

In response to Garry's query about Michael Caines, we ate at Gidleigh Park in the summer and really enjoyed it. The restaurant is in a very cute Cluedo-style country-house hotel and the service and cooking are very good. Lunch for two with a bottle of house wine and two extra cheese courses added to the set lunch menu was about £110 before service. The dishes that stick most in the memory were a very simple tomato tart, really well-dressed salads and a huge array of petits fours. I imagine that dinner is considerably pricier. Caines also has a mini-empire in Exeter, where he runs the food operations for the Royal Clarence Hotel. This consists of a pretty boring deli, a cafe-bar, a pub, a really nice champagne bar, a restaurant: Michael Caines @ The Royal Clarence. The restaurant has a great setting as it is on the Cathedral Close, and the look inside is a nice mix of starched linen, modern art and dim lighting. The dish that sticks in my memory was a poached egg on salted spinach with wild mushrooms and a hollandaise sauce. Some friends have had quibbles with some dishes, but on the basis of two very satisfactory dinners I would have thought that it would deserve a star in the new Michelin. I saw Michael Caines on a local TV programme where they quizzed celebs on specialist topics and can report that he has an amazing knowledge of South-West history.

Thanks to Paul Bell and others on egullet for recommending this restaurant in Chagford, a stannary town on north Dartmoor. Chagford is small, pretty and prosperous (as well as 22 Mill Street there are other restaurants in and around the town, including Gidleigh Park, and there is a deli with a great selection of cheeses). On a very cold night, the bright shop-front of 22 Mill Street was a very welcoming sight, and the food and drink made the later brisk walk back to the car much easier. The chef-proprieter is involved in all stages of the meal, from greeting you on arrival, taking drinks orders, discussing the menu, and dashing back into the kitchen to co-ordinate the cooking. The hallmark of the restaurant is this personal touch, and it was quite clear that the place is run by people who care about food and about ensuring that diners have a good time. The restaurant was full with 21 covers and I had the impression that most of the others were returning customers. We began with parmesan crisps whilst we looked at the menus. These were delicious. All three of us ate from a vegetarian menu which had been arranged in advance (four dishes on the carte, each available as a starter or as a main, at £26.50 for two courses , £29.50 for three; there is also a five/six course set menu at c.£35). The four dishes were an aubergine canneloni with goat's cheese, spinach and lemon truffle oil; a risotto with chanterelles; asparagus with rocket, parmesan and oilve oil; and a tomato tart with basil. The choices seemed to be the kind of dishes that could easily disappoint if they were not cooked with precision, but one of the nice things about the restaurant was that the menu descriptions often undersold the complexity and satisfyingness of the dishes in reality.The canneloni was a good example of this as it had a great combination of flavours, with sourness of the lemon combining with the smoky aubergine, the salty spinach and the creamy cheese. The flavour was added to by its neat appearance: there was something very satisfying about cutting through the aubergines serving as canneloni with the cheese/spinach pushing outwards, and then mopping the morsel through the truffled lemon oil. Before these courses had arrived we had enjoyed the other stand-out dish which was a pre-starter soup of haricot beans with truffle oil - warming, rich and savoury. The bread – buttermilk or onion and cinammon – was very well-made. For puddings two of us had a blackcurrant souffle with cinammon ice cream and one had iced nougat with chocolate and passion fruit (again I liked the simple naming of dishes, especially when it concealed surprises such as the manner in which the nougat would be served - covered with chocolate in the shape of an inverted comma, with passion fruit syrup and ice cream on the side). Coffee was good, strong espresso and the petits fours were pleasant. We tried some wines by the glass - a New Zealand Chardonnay, a South African Sauvignon Blanc and a Californian Cabernet Sauvignon - which were all good, and as has previously been mentioned, the wine list itself is very reasonably priced. Sometimes one's memory of dishes the following day leads one to think that a restaurant was not quite as good as it seemed in the thrill of the eating, but one of the nicest things about 22 Mill Street is that the quality of the food seems even better the next day.

Thanks for all the interesting posts on this thread, which have inspired me to further investigate an interesting phenomonon that one finds in the United Arab Emirates: namely the fact that many, many Indian restaurants here also serve Chinese food. The majority of the population here is Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi and Sri Lankan (about 60-70% of the total, with locals making up 15% or so), so it is not surprising that most restaurants focus on subcontinental food, but I have always been curious as to why Chinese food was so often also featured on menus. I should add that some places offer a triple whammy of Indian, Chinese and Arab (Lebanese/Syrian) dishes, but I think I now need to establish whether the interesting kinds of cross-pollination discussed earlier in this thread are taking place in these restaurants. One reason that I have been so curious about this phenomenon is the fact that the Chinese/Indian mix is by no means confined to the weakest restaurants in the area. I hope to report back soon.

Thanks to Simon and others for recommending Hunan. Went there for the first time on Saturday and had a very enjoyable meal. Having read this and other threads I prepared our party by telling them that they had to be very cheery with Mr Peng and to stress that we wanted 'adventurous' and 'exciting' dishes. This enthusiasm seemed to do the trick as we were served a lot of good dishes and were impressed with two aspects of the service: firstly, they really looked after the two vegetarians in the group and ensured that they had as wide a range of dishes as the omnivores, and, secondly, there seemed to be a high staff-customer ratio, so all our needs were looked after very quickly. Since it was a Saturday night we really were looking for entertainment as well as a good meal, and Mr Peng did not disappoint on that front. Having said that I wasn't the one who was fed dishes like a child... This isn't a complaint, but an observation on the kind of experience one might have there. Since we didn't see a menu, I can't really speak in much detail about the dishes, other than to say that they were much better at the beginning of the evening than the end. The dishes served as small portions/amuses tended to be much more interesting than the more generic Chinese offerings of meat/fish/vegetables in sauce that predominated later (pudding was also pretty unmemorable). Four standouts were the green beans in tempura, the lettuce wraps of diced, chillied vegetables, the crunchy noodles with egg and chilli, and the spinach and coriander parcels wrapped in sesame seeds. Most of the best dishes did come with a fair amount of chilli (as Simon alluded to), so I would make sure that you let them know if you like hot food. Mr Peng asked where we had heard about the restaurant, but didn't seem to be up on egullet! One final plus for the restaurant is that they will feed you until you are full, and were quite happy to bring dishes until we had decided we were done (stuffed emoticon). The food was about twenty eight pounds each, as reported in the new Time Out guide.

Thanks nightscotsman, boaziko and Miguel. More reviews from the Gulf coming soon.

The Burj al Arab is one of the landmarks of modern Dubai; a spectacular multi-starred hotel situated on an artificial island off Jumeirah Beach. Its 'signature restaurant' Al Muntaha is situated in a space-age pod suspended from the body of the building, overlooking the Arabian Gulf and the city. The views are spectacular and everything about the restaurant is to do with looking, style, surface, image, glamour; with those qualities also applying to the food served in the Al Muntaha. In some ways Al Muntaha is no different from the many other generic Mediterranean 'signature restaurants' in Gulf hotels, offering spectacular locations, showy menus and hefty price tags. If you go to such places then you should know what to expect - Gordon Ramsay's Verre in the Dubai Creekside Hilton most definitely and honourably excepted - but what annoyed me about Al Muntaha was just how great the gap had become between the glitz and cost of the place on the one hand, and the quality of the food on your plate on the other. We began with cocktails at the bar (too small for the number of patrons they are willing to accomodate), which were served with vegetable crisps and curried cashew nuts and almonds. The drinks and the nuts were fine though the service was rather slow and perhaps directed at those who seemed to have a bit more glitz and clout than we had. We were seated at a rather poor table in the middle of the floor, though since we had booked late in the day that was no fault of the restaurant. No amuses or other freebies were offered in spite of the considerable cost of the meal. We began with basil-scented goat's cheese with peporonata and tomato and a wild mushroom and potato ravioli with leek fondue. The former was fine, if unexciting, whilst the potato-stuffing in the ravioli seemed to be somewhat of a mistake. Though the dishes were not bad they lacked flavour and one characteristic of the whole meal was a failure to provide any complexity of flavour through sauces or by other means. Choosing the vegetable gateau with a sharp gherkin salad was a mistake that I was aware of when I ordered the dish, but I opted for the gateau, over tasty-sounding pastas on the basis that if I am going to ask a professional chef to cook me dinner he ought to be able to do better than a tasty pasta which I should be able to knock up at home. The tower was a fairly dull set of layers of vegetables inadequately seasoned, the gherkin salad was small and tasty, and there were some soggy and not very charming vegetable crisps of some sort by the side. The bread served with the meal ranged from some good tomato and olive bread to some really tasteless Viennese/French bread. The puddings - Bakewell tart with cherry compote (absent when plated) and vanilla ice cream, caramelized lemon tart with blackberry and oatmeal parfait - were good, though they should have been at 50dhs apiece (about ten pounds sterling for rather small portions). No coffees, no digestifs and a bill of 617 dhs before service. Speaking of which, much of the service was lazy - in a city where service is often superlatively good - and while the restaurant has the pretensions of fine dining, it fails on the delivery and execution of the touches that you expect in really good restaurants. It is somewhat frustrating to be seated at your table watching your food grow cold on a serving station metres away from the table, after the food had been dumped there by a waiter. Having said all this, the people there seemed to be having a good time and it is a pretty flashy experience. Just don't go there for the food. Instead try somewhere like the Lebanese Village which we enjoyed the night before - a maginificent buffet of perfectly cooked and prepared Levantine food, with drinks and all courses included for 33dhs (less than the cost of a single glass of house wine in Al Muntaha).

Beware the artisans! I spent much of the past summer in Devon and Aix-en-Provence. Both places have lots of excellent local produce but the difference in prices between England and France was staggering and I attribute some of this to the willingness of the gullible to buy anything described as 'artisanal' in Aix. Almost every shop there claims its stock was made by artisans, from tatty souvenirs to local specialities such as calissons d'Aix. I remain rather bitter about the calissons as I wanted to try them but I couldn't find a packet that wasn't artisanal and obscenely expensive, so I spited myself and passed up the opportunity. Basildog, if you are ever in Devon try to visit Devon Country Cheeses in Topsham (they used to be in Exeter too) which is a great example of a Westcountry deli, totally committed to local produce and to introducing people to Devonian and Cornish cheeses at reasonable prices.

When visiting in June we enjoyed some great street food, the best of which was sliced, salted cucumbers near the Gala Tower. Also good were the pretzel-style breads sold on many street corners and the pancakes filled with potato, spring onion and white (ewe's milk?) cheese (sorry I cannot remember the name of these snacks, but you will recognise the places serving them by the fact that they will have a little old lady making them by an open oven). The one 'good' restaurant we visited was 'Vogue' which has sensational views and provides interesting people-spotting, though the food is standard international cafe-bistro fare. It is the kind of place whose emptiness does not preclude you being asked if you have a reservation, followed by a five-minute search for an available table (and they had some choice...). The frozen berries with white chocolate sauce (from the Ivy?) are very good and they have some excellent Turkish wines. Have fun!

The white port made Asara in Stellenbosch is excellent.

Thanks for the recommendations thus far. My experience of finding vegetarian menus in both France and Britain has been very positive. Given advance notice most restaurants will come up with a vegetarian menu, though one's statement of vegetarianism takes longer in France, since you will be asked if chicken, seafood etc. are OK. This summer we ate at Jacques Maximim's restaurant in Vence where we had a so-so, herby gazpacho, a fantastic green bean and truffle salad, a gratin of cocoa beans and cream, a great cheese course (with roasted garlic and walnuts), and a classic pear pudding whose name I forget. In Britain, the best vegetarian meal I have had was at Overton Grange in Ludlow (whose chef now runs Hibiscus), but also very good were Gidleigh Park in Devon and Shaun Hill in Ludlow. I currently live in Dubai, where Gordon Ramsay's restaurant, Verre, offers a good vegetarian carte and tasting menus. When asked to, good restaurants really do deliver, and they provide infinitely better experiences for vegetarians than middle-of-the-road restaurants which want you to enjoy yet another variation on goat's cheese, often charging you just as much a really good restaurant, since my impression is that better restaurants really do charge less for cheaper ingredients, whilst middling restaurants want a fixed minimum for all courses, no matter how cheap the ingredients. Bourdain writes on this with some glee in 'Kitchen Confidential'. Eating as vegetarian in good restaurants is great because one's demands force chefs to come up with inventive meals.

'Can you be a vegetarian and a gourmet?'... snatch of conversation overheard at The Merchant House in Ludlow. They thought not, though I was trying to be both. Who was right?

Any good recommendations for restaurants in Dubai or Sharjah? Personal favourites are The Clay Oven (great Indian restaurant in Sharjah), The Automatic restaurant (a sometimes good Lebanese place in Sharjah) and Verre (Gordon Ramsay's restaurant in Dubai).