Modern British restaurants in England
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Anthony's
Anthony's serves top-notch Modern British cuisine to a clientele so eager that they'll think nothing of booking a month in advance. If you go at any other time except Saturday evening, you'll get away with making your reservations a day or so in advance.
reviewed
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Quod
Bright, buzzing and decked out with modern art and beautiful people, this joint dishes up modern brasserie-style food to the masses. It’s always bustling and, at worst, will tempt you to chill by the bar with a cocktail while you wait. The two-course set lunch (£12.95) is great value.
reviewed
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Bank
Huge glass front panels make this swanky restaurant a bit of a culinary goldfish bowl, but most diners don't complain - the sophisticated modern-Brit dishes are quite special.
reviewed
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Broad Street
A refreshingly innovative restaurant. Décor is rough meets smooth: whitewashed walls and exposed stone; crisp white linen and beige Hessian. Seating is on old chapel chairs - complete with the slots for hymn sheets on the backs. The food also has flair; confit of duck, roast tomato and beetroot puree sits alongside pot-roast pollack with spinach and leeks. Impeccably sourced ingredients, their local credentials are outlined on the menu, include wild garlic gathered from the woods.
Booking essential.
reviewed
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Roast
The focal point at this unique restaurant and bar perched directly above Borough Market is the glassed-in kitchen with an open spit, where ribs of beef, suckling pigs, birds and game are roasted. The emphasis is on roasted meats (featherblade of beef, lamb’s kidneys) and seasonal vegetables, though there are lighter dishes such as salads and grilled fish. Also open for good breakfasts (Monday to Saturday), trading days at Borough Market (Thursday to Saturday) are the restaurant’s busiest. If you’re on the move, join the queue at the handy takeaway outside the main entrance at ground level for pork belly with Bramley apple sauce (£6), bacon butties (£3.20) or devil…
reviewed
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Mark Addy
Another contender for best pub grub in town, the Mark Addy owes its culinary success to Robert Owen Brown, whose loving interpretations of standard British classics – pork hop with honey-roasted bramley, pan-friend Dab with cockles and spring onion et al (all locally sourced) – has them queuing at the door for a taste. It recently opened a riverside deck, so you can eat by the river where, during the 19th century, local publican Mark Addy rescued 50 people from drowning.
reviewed
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Bush Bar
You have to keep an eye out for this bar/restaurant, housed in a converted warehouse and with its entrance down an alleyway off Goldhawk Rd. It's light and breezy with a wonderful tented terrace, and the decent restaurant and bar attract a trendy media crowd after work with their great cocktails and food. The menu is familiar and comforting - London Particular, salt beef with braised cabbage, smoked haddock fishcakes - rather than inventive.
reviewed
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London Carriage Works
Liverpool's dining revolution is being led by Paul Askew's award-winning restaurant, which successfully blends ethnic influences from around the globe with staunch British favourites and serves up the result in a beautiful dining room – actually more of a bright glass box divided only by a series of sculpted glass shards. Reservations are recommended.
reviewed
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Abbey Restaurant
This cutting-edge British bistro has been garnering serious praise, not least from the boffins at the AA and Michelin guides. Underpinned by top-quality produce, the Abbey turns out consistently fabulous food in the light-filled dining room, and nibbles, cocktails and aperitifs in the crimson-walled bar downstairs. It's not cheap, but tucking into your roast monkfish or hot chocolate soufflé, you'll feel it's money well spent.
reviewed
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Criterion Grill
This beautiful Marco Pierre White restaurant is all chandeliers, mirrors, marble and sparkling mosaics - one breathless wag has compared it to the inside of a Fabergé egg - but its most spectacular feature is the classic French food, which ranges from the delicate tian of Devon crab to roast suckling pig mussel. The daily lunch specials (usually British favourites like shepherd's pie and fish and chips) are a snip at around £13.
reviewed
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Harwood Arms
A food-reviewer friend of ours with impeccable taste buds lists this gastropub as one of his favourite places to eat in London – sorry mate! – and returns not infrequently for the likes of game tea accompanied by venison sausage roll, grilled salted ox tongue with Jerusalem artichokes and/or Berkshire wood pigeon with Cumbrian air-dried ham. Carniphobes should hightail it west to the Gate.
reviewed
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Modern
Top fare on top of the world, or an excellent meal atop Manchester's most distinctive landmark, Urbis (soon to be home to the National Football Museum), is one of the city's most enjoyable dining experiences. The food – mostly modern British cuisine – will not disappoint, but being able to sit at a table close to the floor-to-ceiling windows makes this place worthwhile; book a table in advance.
reviewed
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Butlers Wharf Chop House
A poster child for early Modern British cuisine, the Chop House continues to create upmarket variants on bangers and mash, bubble and squeak and fish pie, as well as ‘new-old’ arrivals like Old Spot pork from Gloucestershire and spatchcock chicken. A great view of Tower Bridge (which could be your main reason for visiting) is part of the deal but best enjoyed from an outdoor table.
reviewed
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Ransome’s Dock
Diners flock to this restaurant not because it’s trendy or on the dock of a bay (rather a narrow inlet of the Thames) but for fresh and very thoughtfully prepared food: smoked Lincolnshire eel fillets with buckwheat pancakes and crème fraîche; duck breast with apple sauce; and red cabbage organic lamb noisettes with roast root vegetables. Weekday two-course lunch is £15.
reviewed
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Lime Tree
The ambience is refined without being stuffy; the service is relaxed but spot on; and the food is divine – this is as good a restaurant as you'll find anywhere in the northwest. The fillet steak in peppercorn sauce (£21.50) is to die for; the second time we visited we opted for the pan-fried Goosnargh duck with a cranberry and ginger compote (£15.95). We'll be back. And back again.
reviewed
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Magdalen
You can’t go wrong with this stylish dining room (with a couple of tables optimistically positioned outside). The Modern British fare adds its own appetising spin to familiar dishes (grilled calves’ kidneys, creamed onion and sage, smoked haddock choucroute). The welcome is warm and the service excellent; a true diamond in the rough.
reviewed
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Market
This much talked-about addition to Camden’s reliable yet slow-changing eating scene is all about simple, good British food. The light and airy space reflects this simplicity, and the menu manages to make classic cookery memorable with delights such as Rose veal with anchovy butter, spinach and chilli, and whole plaice with caper butter and chips.
reviewed
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Bonds
There are two good reasons for coming to this very smart hotel restaurant: one is to glimpse the awe-inspiring lobby of Threadneedles Hotel; the other is the food. It's a mix of the traditional with the unusual, with dishes like braised pigs' cheeks with chorizo or smoked haddock tortellini with black pudding and buttered leeks.
reviewed
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RB's
Sleek and very chic, RB's is all slim leather chairs, cream wood and brown napkins with sparkling silver rings. The food is pretty stylish too: local guinea fowl with bacon, pork wrapped in Parma ham, and vegetable and potato frittata. Save room for the treacle crumble tart with Devon clotted cream for pud.
reviewed
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Brasserie 44
Brasserie 44 is regarded as one of the best restaurants in Leeds. Like the Michelin-starred Pool Court, it is attached to the hotel 42 The Calls, but this place is less formal than its sister operation. It serves up excellent Modern British/Continental food in surrounds featuring leaf and leopardskin.
reviewed
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Colley's Supper Rooms
Who said dinner parties were dead? Supper at this swag-heavy restaurant feels like dining in his lordship's drawing room, with rich drapes and wine-dark colours and a stiff-backed waiter describing the dishes in painstaking detail - duck à l'orange, bread and butter pudding, roast fowl.
reviewed
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Venn
Modern British cuisine in all its cool, posh guises hits Hull and - guess what? - sticks nicely. This trendy brasserie serves fancy sandwiches, pizzas and salads, while the more upmarket upstairs restaurant goes to town with dishes like leg and saddle of local rabbit with Parma ham…gorgeous.
reviewed
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Simpsons
Simpsons is far from the centre in a gorgeous Victorian house in Edgbaston, but it's worth making the journey for the imaginative creations sliced and diced by Michelin-starred chef Andreas Antona. You could even stay the night in one of the four luxurious bedrooms upstairs (Tuesday to Saturday only). Reservations recommended.
reviewed
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Mallams
With its subdued lighting and old stone walls this romantic harbourside eatery has been a feature of Weymouth's restaurant scene for more than 20 years. Find out why it's lasted so long by sampling tasty, often organic, fare – it might be a risotto-style, saffron-infused speltotto or lemon sole with crab and ginger butter.
reviewed
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Daffodil
A perennial favourite, the Daffodil is as loved for its top-notch modern British brasserie-style food as for its flamboyant surroundings. Set in a converted art-deco cinema, it harks back to the Roaring Twenties and features live jazz and blues every Monday night. The atmosphere is suitably bubbly and the food consistently good.
reviewed