Milestone, 84 Green Lane, Sheffield (0114 272 8327). Meal for two, with wine and service, £50-80
In the early part of the last century, anthropologists had a habit of wandering into rainforests, only to reappear with the proud announcement that they had discovered a lost tribe. This pissed off the subjects of all the attention mightily; they were neither lost nor in need of discovery, for they had known exactly where they were all the time. Restaurant critics beware: we have our own version of this, the stumbled-upon restaurant that we claim as a find simply because we have never heard of it before, despite the fact that lots of other people know exactly where it is.
And so to the Milestone Bar and Restaurant, which is hidden away in a defiantly ungussied-up corner of Sheffield full of glowering old mill buildings, many of the windows long ago knocked out to leave angles of glass. Inside the Milestone, there is an elegant rough-hewn look. It's all dark, gnarly wood and clean lines. In the bar they serve things like ox liver with barley and pancetta or 20oz panhandle steaks, which sound like aggressive clinical treatments for chronic anaemia. Upstairs, in a vaulted room of beams and shadows, is the more ambitious restaurant, where we ate. All of it shouts heft and animal fats. That said, it is curiously unfixed in geography: I could imagine this dining room being anywhere in Scandinavia or Canada or those parts of the US where they still speak with a Norwegian twang. It felt comfortingly Saxon – Anglo or otherwise.
But then I was probably always going to love a place which serves, as a canapé, a shard of its own cured bacon cooked to a crisp, with a dollop of tapenade and a curl of roasted pepper. They do love their pigs at the Milestone, so much so that a month or two back they ran an entirely pork-based menu. Given my recently expressed opinion that there are few dishes which cannot be improved by the application of a little light pig, they were bound to win my affections. As they did with a starter of seared scallop, with a disc of long-braised pig's head and strands of squid, the whole flavoured with the latter's ink. This reads as robust, and flavourwise it was – the porkiness and the fishiness playing a neat game of tag. On the plate it was anything but, the ingredients presented as a miniature in the middle of an arctic expanse of white porcelain. The same was true of a starter of more of their bacon with the slenderest of asparagus and poached quail's eggs bound by a thick truffle vinaigrette in place of the more obvious hollandaise. It looked small. It ate big.
Out of curiosity we also tried the vegetarian starter, an over-thickened pea panna cotta served with "shoots, seeds, soil and flowers". As a piece of whimsy it was a delight, a smear of black olive tapenade standing in for the soil, the scattering of nasturtium leaves across the serving slate lending colour. I only wish it had tasted a little less like the garden it was mimicking. No complaints about rabbit loin with more of the same, shredded and mixed with tarragon and served as a cannelloni in a wrap of mandolined courgette, though I'd love to know where the advertised pig's tail was. Perhaps it was roasted down into the sauce. Mention pig's tail and I want to see pig's tail. Another main of lamb – two pink cutlets and a roll of braised breast with a trompette jus and wild garlic purée – was big boys' food. Which, for various reasons not unrelated to my boyness and bigness, suited me perfectly.
We finished with infantilising desserts: a banana cheesecake with salted peanut butter ice cream, and a riff on rhubarb, including a pot of crumble dressed with an impeccable custard. I once got into trouble for mentioning, as proof of its lack of interest in food, that Sheffield had failed to support a branch of Pret A Manger for more than three months. Oh but the city's citizens were cross. Even now Sheffield, which has wells of money and taste, is not overendowed with good places in which to eat. That makes the Milestone even more welcome. I'm glad locals directed me to it with enthusiasm. For me it is a rare and lovely find; they, of course, have known it was there all along.
Email Jay at jay.rayner@observer.co.uk or visit guardian.co.uk/profile/jayrayner for all his reviews in one place
