Unlikely Restaurant Hotbeds

[Nayan Gowda]

Pike End Farm sell at my local farmers market at Ashton under Lyne. 'Tis truly great tasting meat.

Cheers for the heads-up. I'm spending some time with my folks in Glossop; will have a squizz at the end of the month.

[Harters]

Well worth a shopping trip. Not only Pike End but a couple of other good meat sellers (another local farm just doing lamb and some folk from Anglesey who do a range of good stuff). And don't forget the cheese - Bourne's Cheshire & Sharrocks Lancashire.

[Matthew Grant]

Croydon - huge catchment area and about 50 restaurants in a row in the high street and not a decent one amongst them (apart from the tree house which tries hard but doesn't quite pull it off)

On the evidence of my lunch there on Tuesday, Croydon now has at least one decent restaurant in Albert's Table http://www.albertstable.co.uk/. It was also impressively busy for early week in January

(Its at 49b/c South End so Matthew's statement may well still be true.)

On this evidence I went along. Crab tart tasted of little, let alone crab, it was served with a decently cooked scallop, some pancetta, a prawn and a prawn soup (If I remember correctly). Venison was a decent piece of meat but let down by non-descript sauce. Neals yard cheese always gets my vote, well if i were Neals yard I would stop selling to this restaurant, appalling condition, tired and small pieces of 4 or 5 cheeses.

Nothings changed, though I will concede that this is probably the best restaurant in town along with Le Cassoulet. It's just all so boring and old fashioned and wouldn't encourage me to get on the bus. Bloody awful room as well, not even half full on the Thursday night we went.

[Alan Smeaton]

Newcastle is pretty poor given its size and reputation for night life. Cafe 21 stands out like a beacon together with its sister restaurants Caffe Vivo and 21@Fenwicks. There's Jesmond Dene House and also a new owner of the Fisherman's Lodge. Even the McCoys had two attempts up here and gave up, the second one lasting less than a year.

Agree that York is poor apart from J Baker's and Meltons.