27th January 2012
Elizabeth Carter's Best Dishes of 2011
Summing up a year of eating in restaurants across the UK in one short list is a daunting exercise. The Good Food Guide 2012 includes a bumper crop of restaurants run by chefs or restaurateurs savvy enough to know that in these straitened times they need to offer customers something more in terms of value, quality and innovation. On casting my mind back over dishes I’ve eaten in the past year, I can recall a number that I would love to have again given the chance. While this is not intended to be a listing of the best restaurants or the best dishes, these are the ones that have stuck in my mind months after I tasted them.
- Louise Varley’s minestrone soup
The Hideaway, Ramsbottom, Greater Manchester
- Regina margherita pizza – mozzarella di bufola, sliced San Marzano tomatoes and basil
Salvo’s, Leeds
- Piggy burger
Bar Boulud, London
- Buffalo mozzarella, baby red beetroot and Sicilian Merinda tomatoes
The Fox & Hounds, Goldsborough, Yorkshire
- Heirloom tomatoes, tomato vanilla gazpacho, tomato sorbet and creamed burrata
Pollen Street Social, London
- Slow-cooked pig’s cheek with a salad of leaves, walnuts and strips of raw celeriac and apple
JoJo’s, Whitstable, Kent
- Braised mutton with shallot textures
Restaurant Sat Bains, Nottingham
- Dark chocolate fondant with salted caramel centre
Wild Thyme, Chipping Norton, Oxfordshire
- Whipped sea buckthorn, soft meringue, raspberries and crispy rice
Tuddenham Mill, Tuddenham, Suffolk
- Vanilla pannacotta with poached Yorkshire rhubarb
Red Lion, Chelwood Gate, Sussex
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