One warm, russety-gold afternoon in the autumn of 1997, I found myself up a north Wales mountain with my girlfriend feeling bored by the spectacular scenery all around us.
We were on a driving holiday, and had planned to spend that day walking near Dolgellau before having dinner at a restaurant in the town that someone had told us about. The restaurant was Penmaenuchaf Hall, a rambling, mountain-top 19th-century pile with big open fires, good food and secret cupboards hidden in the wood panelling. I am interested in such places, and I am also significantly more interested in eating than I am in hill-walking.
It seemed, therefore, that we were merely killing time before the main event. So when my girlfriend suggested an early descent to Penmaenuchaf, my heart skipped like a little Welsh lamb in springtime. A couple of pre-dinner drinks in a panelled bar! Perhaps we would even discover a stooped barman plotting to murder a guest!
I'm not sure if it's me, or if there's been a change in Britain over the past decade in general, but these days I am less self-conscious about travelling somewhere simply because I know there is an interesting restaurant - or shop, or cafe - at the end of the journey. I don't think I'm the only one who reads the restaurant section of a guidebook first.
I'm not just talking about "destination dining" and expensive, high-end restaurants; of course the food has to be good, but the most alluring places are the ones that offer a unique experience rather than the identikit leather banquettes and overstarched tablecloths of the posh set. The scarily windswept pub at the end of a high moorland track, the secret seafood shack beside a river, that family favourite fish and chip shop in the little fishing town; such venues have just as strong a pull on the imagination as anything Gordon Ramsay has to offer.
When I was asked to edit a food guide for BMW, I wanted to celebrate some of these unacclaimed places. In compiling the list, I learned that despite all the chains and the corpo-blanding of our high streets, we still have plenty to be pleased about - and no reason to waste time up a mountain when we could be engaged in some equally worthwhile food exploration.
There's no denying that food brings in the tourists; just ask the citizens of Padstow (Rick Stein), Cartmel (the Sticky Toffee Pudding Company, L'Enclume) or Bray (the Fat Duck, the Hind's Head, the Waterside Inn). Inspired partly by Ludlow's success in aligning itself with the Slow Food movement and reinventing itself as a gastro-hub, local authorities now routinely incorporate food as a plank of their tourism strategy - and it works. Dining is becoming a key influence on our choice of holiday destination.
The best pasta with a movie on the side:
Zeffirellis, Cumbria
It was Bertolt Brecht who said, "Grub first, then ethics," meaning you could hardly expect the proletariat to listen to Marxist philosophising on an empty stomach. But it was the films of Franco Zeffirelli that inspired Derek Hook to take over the fleapit cinema in Ambleside 25 years ago and furnish it with a wholefood cafe that grew and grew. Still owned and run by the Hook brothers and their sister Dorothy as a temple to their twin passions - cinema and Italian food - Zeffirellis now has four screens, two of them in an old school building down the road, including one (of only seven nationwide) with digital projection. The restaurant, now on the ground floor, has been given a Venetian feel by local artists and continues to serve wholemeal pizzas, pasta and ice cream. Some people eat here for years without realising the menu is vegetarian. Upstairs is a jazz cafe with live music, heartily recommended by locals. City dwellers can hardly believe their luck when they stumble across this place. For £15.95 you can see a film, listen to live jazz and eat a two-course supper. The only decision to be made is whether to eat first so you don't spend your movie time thinking about how hungry you are, or watch first so you have something interesting to discuss over dinner.
· Compston Rd, Ambleside (01539 433845, zeffirellis.com).
The best place for a clean weekend:
Winteringham Fields, Lincolnshire
While 90s-style gastropubs and sushi bars are still often lauded as "new", other kinds of dining experiences are growing in popularity with little recognition. One such is the rural restaurant-with-rooms. The dirty weekend, it seems, is dying out, to be replaced by clean weekends in the country with good food, decent accommodation and perhaps a bracing walk. For its intimacy, and tucked-away feel on the banks of the River Humber, Winteringham Fields offers the best venue for such a trip. Housed in a 16th-century manor in the centre of a sleepy Lincolnshire village, ceilings are low and the feel is cosy. Fires roar in winter, the sofas are all-enveloping and the decor is eclectic with stuffed animals and blown ostrich eggs giving it the air of a Victorian parlour. Local produce features heavily with fish from Grimsby, local game and vegetables and herbs grown in the beautiful garden. You could pick blind from the menu and be guaranteed an enjoyable meal; the cheese in particular is a must. The experience is as warm and unpretentious as the county it resides in. Exquisite.
· Winteringham, Lincolnshire (01724 733096, winteringhamfields.com).
The best drive:
Penmaenuchaf Hall, Gwynedd
When you are located halfway up a mountain and are still fully booked for dinner most nights there has to be a reason. At Penmaenuchaf Hall there are three: breathtaking views, excellent food and roaring fires. The hall is situated at the end of a steep and winding drive through mountains, with huge vistas of the coast and estuary below, so the anticipation of arriving is half the fun. Numerous stone walls hide the vegetable gardens, and secret, mossy pathways lead off the drive as the hall majestically appears around the final bend. Whether you arrive dressed for dinner or, post-walk, wet-through and Wellington-booted, you're always made to feel welcome and warm. Wait for dinner stoking and poking one of their many open fires and it's hard not to relax. When dinner is served, around 8pm, you won't be disappointed. Chef Justin Pilkington creates simple, classic dishes that draw on the region's best ingredients such as freshly caught Pwllheli lobster served with home-grown new potatoes and a fresh tomato dressing, or black beef with wild mushrooms and a port sauce. Each dish is presented beautifully in the grand, wood-panelled dining room that hums with voices speaking Welsh and English. If you're stuck for chit-chat between courses try to find the secret cupboards hidden away behind the panelling. There are at least two.
· Penmaenpool, near Dolgellau (01341 422129, penhall.co.uk).
The best dessert:
Lucy's on a Plate, Cumbria
The dessert-only restaurant may be a growing international trend much discussed by foodies since the arrival of New York's trendy ChikaLicious, but in Ambleside this is all old news. For years, sweet-toothed Cumbrians have headed down to town on the first Wednesday of every month to indulge themselves at Lucy's "Up the Duff" pudding club, where starters, main courses and anything savoury are dispensed with in favour of a vast range of sweet courses - accompanied, naturally, by a dessert wine. Janet "Queen of Puddings and Sweet Stuff" keeps the cafe fully stocked with a choice of at least 30 homemade confections that are chalked up on the blackboard. Dishes might include nutty raspberry pavlova, deep-dish egg custard tart, cappuccino crème brûlée and Westmorland toffee apple crumble tart. Lucy is a much-loved Cumbrian institution in her own right, a charismatic and glamorous figure who not only tends to remember her customers by name, but also types individual greetings on the menus for those with reservations. All quite life-affirming, frankly.
· Church St, Ambleside (01539 432288, lucysofambleside.co.uk)
The best riverside hideaway:
The Anchorstone Café, Dartmouth
Nestled on the banks of the River Dart, the Anchorstone Café could have been lifted from an Enid Blyton story. The adventure is best begun on the quayside in Dartmouth, where you can ring a bell to summon a little ferry, painted a jolly shade of blue and bedecked with fluttering bunting. The ferry will carry you up the Dart to Dittisham quay, where, just to the left of the pub, you will find a tiny blue shack - the Anchorstone Café. Most of its tables are outside and have a wonderful view of the river. The crockery and cutlery is higgledy-piggedly, but, as pie-maker Jon Simon of Bristol's Pieminister, says, "They do some of the nicest, freshest seafood you can get ... it's not expensive, just really simple and really tasty." Dishes include Thai tuna fishcakes, huge crab salads, and caesar salad with scallops, as well as spider crab and dart oysters when they're available. The Anchorstone is open most days for lunch and some evenings too, but a word of advice from Simon: "You will need to book about a week in advance in the summer. It's very popular with the locals and not surprisingly they keep it quite under wraps."
· Manor St, Dittisham (01803 722365).
The most picnic-friendly deli:
Picnic Fayre, Norfolk
Picnic Fayre is in Cley-next-the-Sea (pronounce it "Cly" to fit in), a tiny village on the north Norfolk coast. Cley is a refuge for formerly cosmopolitan chefs and therapists eager to escape the rat race and start a local service industry; Terroir, one of Britain's best Slow Food restaurants before it closed in 2006, began here, as did a contemporary pottery studio called, yes you've guessed it, "Made in Cley". Picnic Fayre, an award-winning deli, is set in an old forge. The shop does what it says on the tin - local cheese, speciality breads, a comprehensive antipasto bar, herb-salted nuts and fresh fruit. Make sure you try the Italian sweet-roasted onions, cashews with cumin, Jacmar Norfolk goat's cheese and the olive and onion Mediterranean bread, and don't leave without picking up some of their spice pastes developed by chef Steven Wheeler. (If you fancy cooking chicken mole when you get home, the Latin American chilli and chocolate spice paste is pretty hot stuff.) You can load up the car and head off in any direction to find a suitable picnic place along the bleakly beautiful shoreline, or - and this is perhaps the best choice - simply follow the short walk past the village windmill to the start of Blakeney Point - a four-mile-long shingle spit that leads to a nature reserve nestled among the sand dunes. Here you can watch widgeon, teal, mallard, shoveler and pinetail, and a colony of 400 seals bobbing about, as you work your way through Picnic Fayre's delicacies.
· The Old Forge, Cley-next-the-Sea (01263 740587, picnic-fayre.co.uk).
The best kept secret in seafood:
The Cockle sheds, Leigh-on-Sea, Essex
"There is nothing like the British seaside," says Patricia Michelson, owner of London's La Fromagerie shops, "and by far the most real seaside experience in my view is Southend-on-Sea." But for a real culinary treat on a visit to this east coast resort, she adds, head to its neighbour, Leigh-on-Sea. There, running between the train station and the cobbled streets of the old town, is Cockle Row, dominated by quaint clapboard cockle sheds. These sheds have been passed down through generations of cockle sellers and offer the freshest and cheapest seafood for miles. The same cockles you can buy for pennies here are also supplied to Michelin-starred restaurants in Paris. If you find yourself struggling to choose between sellers, don't worry - they are all reliable and worthy of mention, although Estuary Fish has perhaps the widest selection, and is patronised by Rick Stein. Further along is the original hub of the town, which feels as though it hasn't changed since the days of the smugglers. Armed with a tray of glistening cockles, a pot of silky rollmops and a crusty bread roll from Ivy Osborne's, take Michelson's cue and "sit on the sea wall beside the Peter Boat pub and look out over the mud flats on to Canvey Island and breathe in the wonderful fresh iodine aromas to clear away any cobwebs".
· High St, Leigh Old Town, Essex.
· This is an extract from the BMW 1 Series Good Food Ride, edited by Richard Benson, which has recommendations from more than 100 experts, including Heston Blumenthal, Richard Corrigan and Henrietta Green. It is free and can be ordered at 1seriesgfr.co.uk, where you can also download regional Taste Drive podcasts, tours and maps.
