Lark

Aspirational dining in Bury St Edmunds takes off in the shape of James Carn's classy venue, a Lark ascending into the realms of highly accomplished contemporary cooking. There are a few tables on the pavement and the interior is plainly furnished in café style, complete with a variety of soothing pictures, while staff 'make every customer feel special and appreciated'.

A thoroughly modern menu structure furnishes a wealth of choice for nibbles and small plates, the appetisers perhaps taking in truffled-up wild mushroom arancini, egg mimosa or servings of silky-textured coppa. As the plates get larger, the combinations of flavours and textures become more artful and stimulating – as in halibut tempura with seaweed tartare, monkfish cured in ginger and gin, splashed with blood-orange dressing, or beef tartare with a hash brown, jalapeños and sour cream.  The larger plates sound resonant Mediterranean notes: a piece of cod teamed with a fishcake of salt cod and parsley sauce, or equally inviting Ibérico pork presa and confit potato with chorizo jam and harissa jus. The tasting menu encompasses a very inclusive sweep of the range – well worth considering if you're in the mood to kick back and let the kitchen show its paces.

At the finishing line, desserts mobilise vivid fruit flavours for the likes of passion-fruit posset with pistachio granola and yuzu sorbet, although cacao fiends won't be able to resist the coconut-laced chocolate mousse, made with premium gear from Tosier, (a family producer on the Suffolk coast). Wines are an imaginative spread offered at prices it's hard to argue with – even at the top end, where some glittering vinous treasures await.