At some point in the next few paragraphs, I will swoon over the memory of a rabbit and black pudding pie encased in an ornate glazed-pastry case so shiny, so golden, you could wave at your own reflection in it. I will rave about a ludicrously cheap tasting menu of uncommon thrills, a playing field-sized kebab platter and a noble globe artichoke. Because a great plate of food really is a source of happiness. But before we get to the high points of 2023, let’s deal with the low. If 2022 brought fierce economic headwinds for the hospitality sector, this year was simply worse. It was a story played out not in my reviews, but in the “news bites” that appear beneath them online.
Usually, it’s a roundup of pop-ups, charity fundraisers and openings, and there was quite a lot of that. But those news bites were dominated, sadly, by reports of closures. It started in January with the announcement that D&D group was closing Klosterhaus and East 59th in Leeds, as well as the longer-lived Blueprint Café and Avenue in London. In all they closed six businesses this year. In the summer, we lost two of the UK’s more venerable restaurants, Bully’s in Cardiff and Le Chardon d’Or in Glasgow. Both owners cited rising costs. In Worthing, former MasterChef winner Kenny Tutt closed first Bayside Social and then Pitch, and in Ramsbottom, Levanter Fine Foods went. Then the Belgian-born chain Le Pain Quotidien closed all but one of its 10 UK branches. On and on it went. If you can afford to, please support your local restaurant. You’ll miss them if they go.
But let’s hear it for the openings. This year we critics impersonated sheep and piled in to Bouchon Racine, the rebirth in London’s Clerkenwell of chef Henry Harris’s much-loved Racine, originally in Knightsbridge. Then we all said how bloody marvellous his armpit-ripe, butter-smeared bistro cooking was: his snails properly swamped in garlic butter, the calves’ brains with capers, the tête de veau with sauce ravigote, and a cream-whorled Mont Blanc. It was all the best wobbly rich things. We could, I suppose, have ignored Bouchon Racine. But there’s surely always a place for some wet-lipped fandom.
Further into London, the gold and glitter-crusted Criterion at Piccadilly Circus finally got the restaurant it deserved courtesy of the Indian Masala Zone. At the end of that review, I complained about them handing out tablets for instant feedback; apparently that has stopped. Likewise, at the Parakeet pub in Kentish Town it turned out they had withdrawn their pro-dogs policy even before my whinge about the boxer rubbing its arse on me during dinner appeared in print. Still, it inspired a jolly debate, with lots of dog lovers thinking I was the worst human in the world. The row should not have detracted from Ben Allen and Ed Jennings’ impressive live-fire cooking, especially the taut-skinned, funky mutton sausage and the grilled and glazed lamb belly, topped with courgette and salted anchovy.
However, the experiences that really stayed with me this year were, as ever, the less glossy, unmarketed ones. Courtesy of the Sportsman Club in West Bromwich I finally got to try a Desi pub, serving the food of the Indian subcontinent, hard by the pool table and the trilling fruit machine. I adored the brazenly red chilli fish and the soothing, iron-rich saag aloo. In Plymouth at Toot, it was all about the fluffy, buttery Persian rice and the ludicrously generous platters of smoky kebabs. As we left, the manager asked us sweetly if we could leave a review on Tripadvisor. I told her I would try to do better than that. I hope I did. Meanwhile, in Salford, there was the Hong Kong café cooking of the tiny Sakura, tucked into the ground floor of a block of flats: the brow-wrinkling mapo tofu, the spicy instant noodles and the outrageous barm cake, slathered in butter and condensed milk. It took weeks to convince them to let us photograph the place. I’m glad they finally said yes.
Glasgow gave me two of the best meals of the year. There was the vegetable-led menu of Rosie Healey at Gloriosa, starting with her stunning focaccia. It went upwards through the chilli butter and roasted aubergine flatbreads, to reach her noble globe artichoke with chive butter. But there was also 111 by Modou, which came with a terrific backstory: its chef, Senegalese-born Modou Diagne, arrived in the city as an asylum seeker, landed a job as a pot-washer in one of chef Nico Simeone’s restaurants and advanced to run the kitchen. Eventually, Simeone put his name above the door. But that wouldn’t have been interesting were it not for the fabulous cooking, served in a “Total Trust” five-course tasting menu for just £25 a head: the oxtail croquette with black garlic purée, the warm cheesy mousse with chive oil and crispy onions, the salmon raviolo with a dill emulsion. Wow.
Glasgow is great. However, two of my greatest experiences this year actually came from a long way south. First, in Aldeburgh there was the Suffolk Sur-Mer, George Pell’s shabby-chic seafood pub, a gull’s wing from the shingle beach. There, I got wistful over asparagus with a frothy brown crabmeat hollandaise, and garlicky lobster and chips. It was all the good things done very well indeed. But it was Lark, housed in a one-time bus shelter turned tiny dining room, that really took my breath away. Chef James Carn produced gorgeous plates of perfectly poised deliciousness: muntjac tartare on a crisp-edged hash brown, lozenges of sherry-cured trout with ribbons of kohlrabi, trout roe and ajo blanco and, of course, the rabbit and black pudding pie.
It was an extraordinary piece of work. I described it as the love child of a “Wellington and a Scotch egg”. It was bound in a shiny pastry lattice work, and sat on a silky pea purée, itself within a pond of girolles-studded jus. Sometimes, we crave simplicity. Sometimes we need it. But there’s always a place for brilliant, talented chefs showing us exactly what they can do. The rabbit and black pudding pie was certainly my favourite dish of 2023 and Lark, my restaurant of the year.
Next year marks my 25th anniversary of writing this column. I’d like to tell you I was thin when I started back in 1999, but I really wasn’t. Still, cooking as good as I’ve been privileged to experience in 2023 doesn’t help. I’m not complaining. I’m very lucky. Here’s to a happy new year.
Email Jay at jay.rayner@observer.co.uk or follow him on X @jayrayner1
• This article was amended on 31 December 2023. A typographical error caused an earlier version to refer to salmon raviolo being accompanied by a “dull emulsion”, when dill emulsion was meant.
