Gavin Convery

I'm biased but will say North Essex/Suffolk. This is what you could do: - Company Shed at West Mersea - Banquet 1482(?) in Stanway Wyevale Garden centre! I know but it is a fabulous chinese restaurant with superb dim sum - Crown at Stoke by Nayland for superb wine list. - Sun Inn at Dedham for egulleteer Bakerestates italian gastropub plus great winelist. - Crown at Bildeston - UK upcoming chef of the year in the GFG - Pop into the Adnams shop in Hadleigh on the way back to the A12. - Jimmy's Farm near Ipswich for a steak sarnie and stock up on great meat. - Woodbridge - the Waterside Cafe by the river is very nice for lunch - Orford - Crown and Castle - Walberswick - Ship Inn - nice gastropub - Aldeburgh - Lighthouse or 192 or fish and chips - Southwold - the Adnams pub, can't remember its name

I always seem to remember the cheap meals rather than the expensive ones - must be my tight scottish roots. But one of the most expensive ones has to be when I took my friend to Paris for the day on Eurostar to eat at Le Cinq - can't remember the exact figure but I think it was around £700 all in. If you're wondering "Why Le Cinq", well there aren't many top class restaurants in Paris open Saturday lunchtime. I would prefer to remember the great value meals like £15 a head 3 course lunch at Roellinger's place a long time ago - still lives in the memory. Unfortunately, I also seem to remember the poor value ones like my recent trip to L'Enclume - hey I like cutting edge food along with the best of them, but this was just awful and more to the point lacking in flavour...I really can't understand people who like this place..... :-(

Hmm, L'enclume....don't get me started....I hated it during a recent visit. Too pretentious for me without the balance of great taste. Cartmel is lovely though... Now I can't believe Can Roca has gone down! Superlative restaurant - that is how you do pretension with proper taste! And how can we take any poll seriously where the UK arm is run by someone who won the Weakest Link (and looked very pleased with himself too!)!

On the subject of reservations - I requested a reservation for a spread of days for lunch in August and got Sunday the 3rd of August confirmed today. Can't wait to go back as it is over 10 years since we ate here - last time we both had food poisoning (from the night before in Spain) and were forced to stay an extra night....even so it was still extraordinary. Now we have 2 children and we shall see how they cope with a fussy 5 year old and an adventurous 10 year old (she loves foie gras and snails!). Any experiences of Bras with children??

I don't know whether this qualifies as marmalade but my current favourite is Wilkin's Rhubarb and Ginger (Wilkin's is what people are calling Tiptree - Tiptree is a place just south of where I live ;-)). I could eat buckets of this. BTW if you are ever in the vicinity of Tiptree, then Wilkin's have an excellent factory shop with lots of unusual and one-off varieties....there is no other reason to go to Tiptree (other than the brilliant butchers).

As I am going here at the end of November, any more recent reports. Has it settled down, especially wrt the desserts?

Put my request in on the 17th...no rejection so far. But I am fairly phlegmatic about it - already plan to go to the Fat Duck if I don't get in...or do they have similar issues now?

I ate here back in April and had pretty much everything Docsconz had. Clearly I was in a better frame of mind as this now stands out as one of the great culinary experiences of my life, only to be equalled by my more frequent trips to Maisons Bricourt. However I see that one of my favourite dishes of sea urchin isn't on Docsconz's list..... The wine selection for each course was also fantastic - I particularly remember the Gewurz from Rebholz and the late harvest Condrieu from Cuilleron. Hopefully I will get my reservation to El Bulli next year to compare and contrast......

First time lucky hopefully.....after a wonderful experience at El Celler Can Roca this spring, I want to see how El Bulli can top that.

Well, I think you will find a few posts of mine - I think I already did a review of the Palmerston which was always my favourite and I much preferred it Franklins. You forgot to mention Green and Blue - excellent wine shop with attached bar to sample the wines at low prices.....and what about the Sea Cow - is that still there? I've lost touch since I cashed in my equity and moved out to Essex ;-) East Dulwich was just becoming a bit too chi-chi for me....

Any thoughts on the Harden guides demotion of RHR? Personally, I'm not surprised.....

Oh that did make me laugh..... :-) But then I do live in Essex

Finally went here the other week. Wow! This is a superb chinese restaurant....even on the Tuesday lunchtime after the Bank Holiday it was pretty full, mostly with Chinese people. Dim Sum was everything Bakerestates described. Favourite for me was the fried turnip cake - sounds boring but was delicious. The spare ribs were transformed from the usual scarce pieces of meats in radioactive sauce to thick chunky local pork ribs with vibrant deeply flavoured sauce. We requested the egg custard tarts for dessert and were politely told that if we didn't mind waiting they were just cooking them....arrived a few minutes later fresh from the oven....delicious. Service was friendly and very competent. Decor was surprisingly stylish for a restaurant attached to a Wyevale garden centre. Good winelist from Lay and Wheeler. Back there next weekend and I may take my camera. Thanks Bakerestates! For those of you off to Suffolk from London, an easy stop off as it is right by the A12, probably an exit marked Marks Tey...

One other point - a lot of chefs/critics from other regions are much more likely to have visited Europe (esp France) as part of their culinary journeys than e.g. China (IMHO) and therefore there will tend to be a European bias to the list and a bias away from the less popular regions.

Ok so if we're being logical about this: the list appears to be compiled using a transparent voting mechanism, and at least from the UK point of view the panel members are a reasonable cross-section of well respected chefs/critics (pace Andy Lynes). So if you disagree with the list you are really disagreeing with the collective view of all these voters - I don't think we should blame Joe or his Magazine for this. They are entitled to use this as a means of publicising their magazine - as Alan Sugar would say " this isn't a fucking tea party, this is business". Now you could argue that the selection of panel members is not reflective and I real can't argue about that for anywhere other than the UK (but Paulbrussel thinks the Benelux panel is maybe not so great). At the end of the day there will be some lowest common denominator restaurants who sneak in in odd places - to use a perhaps bizarre analogy - you may have voted for Tony Blair for PM but still end up with John Prescott as Deputy PM. But, still given all that I still don't understand how Hakkasan made the top 20! Joe, I would love if you could reveal (without going into the details) how that happened.

Bryan, Not having experienced the restaurants you mention in the US which you see as being more creative or thought-provoking than the ones in Europe, I would be interested to know in what way they are different. I may need to plan a trip to the US....! Certainly in Europe food in most countries is steeped in a long tradition (I exclude the UK to some extent, although we are rediscovering some of our history, slowly) and when something like El Bulli comes along it is maybe a jolt to those traditions, but especially I think in France, creativity is not necessarily done for its own sake but rather with one eye on the past. Their attitude to wine is similar...but they still produce the best wine in the world.....

Congrats Phil - I look forward to my revisit at the end of April....maybe I could star in one of your videos like last time ;-)

Bryan, One practical question I have as I am off to Can Roca in a couple of weeks - which station do you go to in Barcelona to get to Girona and what is the cost. We have a table at 1:30 too, so I guess leaving at about 11am is more than early enough, if not too early?

Thanks for the website address - I think that shows that during the week is probably more interesting menu-wise than the weekend. I feel a kid-free evening coming on soon!

Hmm, yes I didn't notice that...I'll have to check next time I go back. In terms of sourcing, not so much on this menu but I know they use Priors Hall Farm for their pork - their non-Sunday menu is more italianate with lots of pastas. Sunday's obviously caters to more of a "roast" crowd. Either way I am not making claims that this is the greatest gastropub around but it fits the criteria of not too far away, not too expensive, simple, tasty food and nice location. If you want more than that...then you probably need to go to your place ;-)

Maybe it's my photographic technique ;-) Well, this is pub food and at the end of the day the taste was good and I guess that's what counts - if you saw the TV series I'm sure you're aware that the guy is not that experienced and I just have some respect for someone being thrown in at the deep end like that and making a go of it. The food was certainly not expensive - about £10 for mains and £5 for desserts and considering what crap you can get served up for that sort of money these days then I certainly will be going back regardless of presentation...

As promised....reporting back. A lovely day in Essex, not a cloud in the sky all day and the Cock Inn (fnarr!) is situated in glorious countryside and best of all only 20 minutes from my house through the backroads. The pub has not been overdone, mainly due to cost constraints and is all the better for it. First impressions though are mixed as the manager seems to lack something in communication skills, first acknowledging us and then keeping us waiting while he served someone else without really explaining what he was done. Our waitress was however lovely and overall the service here is excellent. First up we had a look at the menu and then the wine list (please forgive the state of any of the following photos as this is my first time posting) For this part of the world, the wines are not particularly cheap but we went for ever reliable Pieropan Soave (the basic classico). Then starters: Gnocchi with smoked eel - I would have preferred the eel less mashed up. The Gnocchi were "super-light" as promised. But very tasty.... Variation on the prosciutto and melon theme, with pecorino cheese - again tasty and simple. Main courses - there were lots of roasts but we wanted something more interesting: Melanzane Parmigiana - what you probably can't see are the capers and pomegranate seeds. Both made this a delicious dish...yumm. Good one for vegetarians.... "Seaside" risotto - lots of different types of fish in this one - a real aniseed flavour, perhaps from pernod and some depth of flavour from the stock it was cooked in - again delicious. Here is the dessert selection - a difficult choice: And we chose: Tiramisu with candied nuts and blood orange - I liked the deconstructed presentation of this. This was totally delicious and a benchmark Tiramisu. Apricot Frangipane with Vin Santo cream - tasty but not as good as the Tiramisu. Time for coffee: This was an excellent Macchiato and the cappuccino was good too. All in all an excellent meal - whether it is worth the trip from London is another question but for those in the area this is an excellent little pub in a beautiful location - once the outside furniture is sorted this will be a lovely place to spend a summer's afternoon.

Sounds good to me! And it's the right side of Colchester for me - thanks for the heads up. I must say I am intrigued by the "Pig's Skin with Tulip and Fish Balls"! Even the winelist looks OK - in fact looks like it's from Lay and Wheeler. I'm off to "Jamie's Pub" on Sunday, so shall report back on that.....

You saw the television series and all the trials and tribulations of the prospective pub owners...it has now been open for a few months and I popped in the other week to check it out and make a reservation. They haven't spoiled the interior - on the contrary this really feels like a nice country pub just with a nicer carpet and hopefully nicer food. The menu certainly looks tempting with very reasonable prices, probably because a good section is homemade pasta around the seven quid mark. Now we know the chef who won had won prizes for his pasta so this could be a good bet. Also, there are certainly no frou-frou menu items but just honest food with an italian twist. The best thing of course is that it's only 20 minutes from my house - but I guess I need to wait until I've been at the beginning of April before I know if it really is a good thing. I shall of course report back....

He is still there! Although not shucking oysters but talking to punters. Had a lengthy chat with the man, in what is a fantastic oyster bar. Great atmosphere in the place. I ate a delicious rarebit and delightful crozier blue soaked in Banyuls. Only wished I had saved myself to try some more of the excellent dishes on the menu. The Oyster stout is too good and the jazz pianist a nice touch. Richard Corrigan is a consummate host and his personality lights the place up. He also has some very high opinions of certain members on here ← Hmm, do tell.... I've always defended the Lindsay House on here so perhaps a free meal is in the offing