1. Canteen
Spitalfields, London
You have to love a place that puts pork scratchings on as a bar snack. Canteen, housed in an airy, bright glass box in a new East End development, is the kind of place the capital has been crying out for. The menu is built on British classics, competitively priced and well-executed. The kitchen does its stuff from first light to well beyond last. So you can have breakfast, and try Welsh rarebit or bacon, fried eggs and bubble and squeak; lunch on devilled kidneys on toast; or you can make a day of it with the daily roast.
Jessica Stevenson: Why I love Canteen
This is such a great place to meet up with friends. I came here on Mothers' Day and slowly, over the day, 20 of my friends and family took over the whole place, with our kids running around safely outside. It's exactly the kind of food you'd want to eat at home: devilled kidneys on toast, steak and then jelly, ice cream and shortbread. It's as though someone thought, "why is there nowhere really relaxing to hang out, where you can eat the very best of British food and where everything is British produce?" and then came up with this perfect answer. I've been friends with the chef, Cas, for years so that makes it even more of a treat to come here .
2. The Hind's Head
Bray, Berkshire
News that Heston Blumenthal was to open a pub was met with suspicion when it broke a few years ago. This was the man famed for flavouring chocolates with tobacco and making snail risotto. What would he do with good old-fashioned British pub food? The answer was treat it with devotion and respect. The potted shrimps are exemplary, the pea-and-ham soup a true comforter, and it's hard to imagine a better Eton Mess. The space is elegant while still pubby, and there is a good selection of ales.
3. Rules
Covent Garden, London
Now in its third century on the same site, London's oldest restaurant remains one of the capital's greatest British restaurants. The dining rooms are red plush and mahogany, and the walls are hung with portraits of the great, good and notorious (including Margaret Thatcher slaying a dragon). The food is robust: steak, kidney and oyster puddings; the ribs of beef, served on the bone, with Yorkshire pudding for two. Owner John Mayhew supplies game from his estate in the Pennines.
4. Longridge Restaurant
Longridge, Lancashire
Paul Heathcote has never been one for frilly adornments, preferring to champion the ingredients and dishes of the North West, where he lives and cooks. New season asparagus comes with wild garlic and shallots. The terrific black pudding, shot through with chunks of fibrous ham hock, turns up in a baby-gem salad with soft-boiled eggs and salad cream. Skate wing comes with capers and new potatoes; shoulder of Cumbrian lamb is flavoured with rosemary, and there's bread-and-butter pudding to finish. Hearty stuff, just as it should be in the heart of the Ribble Valley.
5 St John
Clerkenwell, London
Chef Fergus Henderson has become a cult figure, and sometimes some of that hype can hide the virtues of this back-to-basics restaurant housed in a former smokehouse. Yes, Henderson's interest in offal can make the menu look like a contrived joke to those of unadventurous appetite. But, beyond the crispy pig's spleen and braised squirrel is a solid menu of grounded dishes perfectly executed. Try the smoked eel and potato salad, roast marrow bones with parsley salad or faggots and peas.
Canteen, 2 Crispin Place, London E1, 0845 686 1122
The Hind's Head, The High Street, Bray, Berks, 01628 626151
Rules, 35 Maiden Lane, London WC2, 020 7836 5314
Longridge Restaurant, 104-106 Higher Road, Longridge, Lancashire, 01772 784969
St John, 26 St John Street, London EC1, 020 7251 0848
