The Big Restaurant Review Of 2017: What We Loved (And Loathed) While Eating Out

Where did you most enjoy eating out in 2017?I want to shout about Cub from the rooftops. This cool collaboration between cocktail genius Andy Lyan and zero-waste chef Doug McMaster in Hoxton instantly invigorated the London scene. I have to remind myself not to recommend it indiscriminately: I know not everyone will relish the dodgy location, thumping music, wacky drinks and hipster customers, but I know I do.

What’s the 2017 trend you’d most like to see the back of? Bottomless brunch. Poached eggs on toast swilled down with pitchers of mimosa? Pass.

What would you like to see more of in 2018? The really exciting projects are happening at the intersection of creativity and sustainability. Unconventional, you could say challenging, restaurants such as Cub in London and Stockport’s Where The Light Gets In are leading the way.

Xanthe Clay

Columnist, Telegraph Food

What was the most memorable dish you ate in 2017? A raw scallop from Vladivostok, eaten at White Rabbit restaurant in Moscow. The cold Russian Pacific gives the molluscs a crisp denseness and intense sweetness. It was sprinkled with Thursday Salt, a traditional condiment from Kostroma, north-east of Moscow, made by baking salt, cabbage and rye flour until it’s black. It has a delicious sulphurous savouriness.

Where did you most enjoy eating out in 2017? Cargo in Bristol – an example of inner-city restaurant development done right. The stacked shipping containers have been filled with tiny local, independent eateries, bars, cafés and food shops. Drinks crammed in among the bottles at wine merchant Corks of Cargo, then dinner at the likes of the exquisite Box-E, veg-centric Root, or modern Chinese Woky Ko, is an evening well spent.

What’s the 2017 trend you’d most like to see the back of? So-called sharing plates that turn out to be a minuscule saucer that a couple of not-very-hungry sparrows would struggle to split. Just mean, and often favoured by chefs who like to put Scandi-style twigs and mossy things on plates: Nordic is so Norbiton these days.

What would you like to see more of in 2018? Food, really (see “trends you’d like to see the back of”). Vegetables: they have been lavished with attention in 2017; let’s not stop.

Michael Deacon

Restaurant reviewer, Telegraph Magazine

What was the most memorable dish you ate in 2017? Braised suckling pig’s trotter at The Oxford Blue in Old Windsor, Berkshire. Stupendously succulent.

Where did you most enjoy eating out in 2017? London Shell Co: a seafood restaurant on a little canal boat, pootling gently up and down the Regent’s Canal. Fun, unassuming, and romantic, in a cute, indie, lo-fi kind of way.

What’s the 2017 trend you’d most like to see the back of? Squid ink. Sour, bitter, grimacingly malignant – and everywhere. One dish I had at Ox Club in Leeds was absolutely tarred with it. It was like licking the inside of a smoker’s lung.

What would you like to see more of in 2018? Better vegetarian options in non-vegetarian restaurants. My wife is bored with having to have a cheese-based starter followed by a cheese-based main. She’s toying with the idea of launching a restaurant that is vegetarian except for a single lazy, tokenistic meat option, eg “Bovril sandwich” or “a Peperami”.

Amy Bryant

Editor, Telegraph Food

What was the most memorable dish you ate in 2017? Seven heavenly ice creams piled into bowls on a long wooden board at Freddy Bird’s restaurant Lido in Bristol. Wild pepper and bay; salted butter caramel; the punchiest raspberry sorbet… after the Pedro Ximenez sherry and raisin concoction I forgot they were for sharing.

Where did you most enjoy eating out in 2016? From my very first step through the front door (head narrowly missing the low wooden beam, but heart immediately warmed by the wood-burning stove), to the last sip of pudding wine after a 10-course tasting menu (or was it 11?) – it’s got to be The Mash Inn in Radnage, Buckinghamshire.

Taming flames across a vast hunk of ironmongery in the open kitchen, chef Jon Parry turns out grilled and smoked meats (along with delicately dressed veg and foraged herbs) while chit-chatting to diners who wander over for a gander. His food is beautiful and intriguing; the pub still frequented by locals.

What’s the 2017 trend you’d most like to see the back of? Menus touting overpriced “small plates” that are clearly starters but that waiters earnestly recommend you order five or six of for fear of going hungry.

What would you like to see more of in 2018? Beers matched with dishes.

Kathryn Flett

Author; restaurant reviewer, Sunday

What was the most memorable dish you ate in 2017? Even allowing for the fact that my answer to this is usually “the most recent”, I adored the whole menu at Rambla – the canelones especially.

Where did you most enjoy eating out in 2017? I had a lot of fun at lunch with my teenage son, Jackson, at Kaia at The Ned. We’re dusty provincials and The Ned is, of course, very London-shiny. Plus, he loves pokē bowls, so his joy was particularly palpable. Meanwhile Spiritland provided myself and Rider, 11, with a memorable summer evening involving both the consumption of excellent food and the acquisition of DJ-ing skillz. As happy meals go, it knocked Maccy D’s out of the park

What’s the 2017 trend you’d most like to see the back of? Cauliflower rice – not cauliflower, not rice, not nice. Oh, and pokē bowls…

What would you like to see more of in 2018? Mexican food with cojones, not clichés.

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Stephen Harris

Chef-patron, The Sportsman; columnist, Telegraph Food

What was the most memorable dish you ate in 2017? The baked potato with seaweed butter at Core by Clare Smyth. I was intrigued because we’re looking into putting seaweed down as fertiliser for the potatoes at the Sportsman, and then I saw the two things together in this dish. It was beautiful to see a great chef get down and dirty with such simple ingredients.

Where did you most enjoy eating out in 2017? Every Wednesday – my day off – I go to Harbour Street Tapas in Whitstable with my partner Emma and our four-year-old son, Stan. The food is great and they love having Stan, which means we don’t have to worry about him walking around the tables chatting to the customers!

What’s the 2017 trend you’d most like to see the back of?I noticed a couple of places trying to revive the dress code – this must stop. I really don’t want to be told what to wear while spending a fortune.

What would you like to see more of in 2018? I love seeing what the next generation is up to. More individual, independent places run by young chefs. We have the Fordwich Arms near Canterbury, and The Old Post Office in Margate. Both are young chefs opening their first place. Can’t wait to try them. I am also loving the “wine shop that does a bit of food” idea. P Franco in Hackney  was the first example I came across, but we have The Folkestone Wine Co opening near us in Kent. Great idea.

Diana Henry

Author; columnist, Telegraph Food

What was the most memorable dish you ate in 2017? Freshly cooked cold-water prawns – served in mounds on a paper tablecloth – with home-made mayonnaise, warm bread and beer.

It was the first meal after a gruelling journey to the Arctic to look at Norwegian fishing. I’ve never seen such an abundance of shellfish. Just goes to show that some of the most memorable dishes require hardly any cooking at all.

Where did you most enjoy eating out in 2017? The Quality Chop House in London. Chef Shaun Searley produces food that is both robust and elegant. I probably think about his chicken liver parfait every day, but everything that passes your lips here has been made with the utmost care: the tangy sourdough and the butter – cultured and produced in-house from raw Guernsey cream – will put a smile on your face before you’ve ordered anything else. The meat is first-class and the front-of-house team one of the warmest and most knowledgeable in London – and the wine list is poetry.

I also went back to Copenhagen for the first time in five years and thought it was an even better city to eat in than it used to be. Amass, as far as high-end restaurants go, was knockout.

What’s the 2017 trend you’d most like to see the back of? It’s not restricted to 2017 – it’s been around for a while – but I’d really like to see the back of dishes that ape the New Nordic but can’t pull it off (i.e. cerebral platefuls of dissonant elements).

What would you like to see more of in 2018? Restaurants that are devoted to particular regions.

Madeleine Howell

Writer,  Telegraph Food

What was the most memorable dish you ate in 2017? A hedonistic dessert served on a gluttonous ski trip in the French Alps: salted caramel, fudge, caramelised nuts, fresh berries, white chocolate and spheres of tempered chocolate with a cheesecakey filling were strewn directly on to a sheet on the table like a Jackson Pollock. Do try this at home.

Where did you most enjoy eating out in 2017? It’s the simple things that stood out for me. Close to home in south London, I’ve thoroughly enjoyed many a helping of gloriously garlicky pan con tomate at The Tapas Rooms in Tooting (paired with a generous glug of Basque wine, and a few experiments with sherry and vermouth), and candlelit Keralan fish curries at my preferred SW17 south Indian restaurant, Vijaya Krishna.

I will also be returning to Padella outside Borough Market for the pici cacio e pepe. The queues are insane, but worth it for a plate of pasta this good (and for only £6.50, too).

What’s the 2017 trend you’d most like to see the back of? I’ve had enough of the markup on mac’n’cheese. It may come with fresh basil or crispy onions, but next year I plan on carrying a camping stove with me everywhere I go to avoid temptation.

What would you like to see more of in 2018? Edible insects and Mexican food – preferably at the same time. While there’s a place for sombreros (I donned one myself recently, as I tucked into the deconstructed banoffee pie taco at Tequila Taquería in Tooting Market – did I mention that I love Tooting?), Ella Canta on Park Lane is riding the crest of a Mexican wave with a fine-dining flourish. I want more – grasshoppers and all.

Ben McCormack

Restaurant reviewer, Telegraph Luxury; editor, Squaremeal.co.uk

What was the most memorable dish you ate in 2017? In London, Club Gascon’s foie gras pudding, served with a Baileys and passion fruit sauce, was hands down the best thing I ate in 2017, a deliriously sweet-and-savoury flavourbomb that is not as bonkers as it sounds when you consider that sweet wine is the perfect match for foie gras. It’s the sort of stop-you-in-your-tracks dish that forces you to press pause on everything going on around you, and it made an otherwise dreary dining experience into one of the year’s most memorable. And a slug of Baileys always makes the world a better place.

Where did you most enjoy eating out in 2017? Some restaurants, like cities, are so famous that you put off going, thinking that there’ll always be a reason in the future to take you there. In 20 years of writing about eating out, I’d never visited the legendary Waterside Inn in Berkshire. I wish I’d gone 20 years sooner. Even on a grey November lunchtime the Thameside setting was magical and it did what so few restaurants actually manage: leave you feeling thoroughly looked after. My test of how much I like a restaurant is always, would I go back and spend my own money there? I’m scrabbling around to find a spare £300 to return – and this time, arrive by boat.

What’s the 2017 trend you’d most like to see the back of? I’m sick of being revolted by over-loaded burgers and magic-potion cocktails that have been created to grab attention on Instagram by being as grotesquely indulgent as possible, with no thought as to taste. It’s one of the worst manifestations of the look-at-me shoutiness of social media.

What would you like to see more of in 2018? Grown-up restaurants serving affordable food and wine with a sense of fun in central London postcodes. Neo Bistro showed the way in 2017 – more please.

Keith Miller

Restaurant reviewer, Sunday

What was the most memorable dish you ate in 2017? It wasn’t a million miles away from something I’d try to cook at home, just done better: a bowl of nutty new potatoes, halved and crisped up, dribbled with a rough stilton sauce and a zippy chimichurri and tossed with ribbons of rare grilled ox heart, at Smoke + Salt in Brixton, in July.

Where did you most enjoy eating out in 2016? The Lone Star, on the beach at St James, Barbados, in June: popcorn shrimp followed by mirin-and-soy-glazed barracuda, all washed down with the sighing of the waves, the whispering of the palms and the happy hullaballoo of a table full of journalists copping a freebie.

What’s the 2017 trend you’d most like to see the back of? As truly scrumptious as they may be in themselves, some ingredients are scene-stealers – the Michael Fassbenders of the food realm, if you will. Lately I’ve noted one or two of these being clumsily overused. It’s a kind of culinary virtue-signalling: heritage beetroot for seasonality and immaculate sourcing, say, or yuzu for a freewheeling global outlook and a willingness to throw in unexpected twists. They jump out at you, and can bend a dish right out of shape.

What would you like to see more of in 2018? With the opening of the somehow thrillingly pretentious Vespertine in Los Angeles – where the building’s by “starchitect” Eric Owen Moss, the servers dress like plastic surgeons and the food is only very dimly recognisable as food at all – I feel we’re being left behind on this side of the Atlantic. At the moment there’s a slightly complacent consensus around the idea of “informal fine dining” – a concept that’s not without validity but which always makes me think of Alan Partridge. So, despite myself, in a way, what I reckon the UK needs right now is a spectacular new pseudfest that’ll make the wildest gibberings of Heston Blumenthal look like Tikka Tuesday at a Yates’s Wine Lodge.

More prosaically, I’d love it if there were some sort of River Café-type place serving austerely immaculate regional French dishes.

Sue Quinn

Author

What was the most memorable dish you ate in 2017? Bread and butter at Ynyshir restaurant and rooms in Wales. I think they put more work into that one plate than many restaurants put into their entire menu. Sourdough bread with a Marmitey crust, whipped wagyu dripping, cultured miso butter. I’d drive all the way back just to eat that.

Where did you most enjoy eating out in 2017? Coombeshead Farm in Cornwall. Chef Tom Adams makes every tiny thing from scratch, from luscious fat-flecked charcuterie to the decadent sour cream served with pudding. Meat dishes are incredible but so are the veg – I still fantasise about his slow-roast celeriac served with a rich butter sauce and a swede reduction.

What’s the 2017 trend you’d most like to see the back of? Sharing plates. I know they have a place in the food world but I’ve had enough now. Can I have my own dinner, please?

What would you like to see more of in 2018? Commitment from more restaurants to reduce food waste and to come up with innovative ways to use so-called scraps. US chef Dan Barber showed us how much can be achieved at his wastED pop-up at Selfridges this year.

Sue’s latest book, Roasting Tray (Quadrille) is available to pre-order from books.telegraph.co.uk