Bristol is famous for its music and culture, and it has a vibrant food scene to match. Updating our first cheap eats guide to the city, we pick 10 more great restaurants to eat for under £10

The Canteen

Could it get any more Bristol? Slap bang in the centre of Stokes Croft, the city's radical, graffiti-tagged heart, the Canteen cafe-bar occupies the ground floor of Hamilton House, a former office block, which is now a non-profit creative community hub. Its work spaces are occupied by everything from radio stations to costumiers, while hosting classes that cater to every urge in personal growth, be it drumming or hatha yoga. Naturally, there is a huge Banksy mural, a few feet from the entrance.

The Canteen kitchen's ethos is of a piece with all this. Its aim is to offer honest, home-cooked affordable food, with an emphasis on local supplier networks. Getting into the spirit of things, I opted for a vegan winter vegetable casserole of remarkable creaminess (it's the coconut milk, the friendly kitchen staff explained). All the ingredients – from kale and celery to chickpeas and cauliflower – were cooked to a T. Topped with toasted seeds it was a quiet riot of good flavours.

Meat eaters rest assured, the Canteen also does a cracking sausage roll (£2.50), while it's daily-changing menu might include pork loin with Jerusalem artichoke, wilted spinach and cider sauce, or intriguing "jerk mussels", cooked with Scotch bonnet and all spice in milk stout. Likewise, there is nothing worthy about the bar, which carries cask and craft-keg beers (from £3.50 a pint) from local breweries, such as Bristol Beer Factory and Arbor Ales, among others. The former's dry, hoppy Sunrise was in fine, easy drinking form.

While we're up this end of town, it is also worth mentioning the Gallimaufry (brunch dishes £3.50-£9). It was closed for refurbishment on my visit, but this Good-Food-Guide listed, late-night bar/ music venue has a good rep for, in particular, its brunch menu of eggs Benedict, eggs Florentine, gussied-up sandwiches and populist sub-£10 mains, such as macaroni cheese and beer-battered fish and chips. It's hot on local suppliers, too; all its meats come from Bristol's foremost butcher, Ruby & White.
• Dishes, £4.50-£10. Hamilton House, 80 Stokes Croft, 0117 923 2017, canteenbristol.co.uk

Flinty Red

One for the hardcore foodies, this small Clifton restaurant deals in sharp southern Mediterranean food, and its £9.95 lunch is a great way to sample these polished peasant dishes such as potato gnocchi with duck and smoked pork ragu; fried ling with mustard and lentils; or a cauliflower and Seville orange salad. Portions aren't huge – you pick an hors d'oeuvre and a small main – but served with bread (excellent sourdough with a beautifully sharp, sunflower yellow olive oil), you won't leave hungry.

A thick stew of (marginally undercooked) black beans was smoky with chipotle and lifted with lemon oil. A rustic dish of twice-cooked kid with a quarter of chargrilled cabbage, was a first on both fronts. Not unlike lamb breast, kid is challengingly fatty, but it was cleverly paired with capers and a light vinegary sauce, to give the dish a cutting edge. It was, if nothing else, a very interesting lunch. If you want to splash out a little, Flinty Red also offers a wine of the day for £3 a glass. And as the restaurant is co-owned by nearby vintners Corks of Cotham, expect the wine choices to be as intelligent as the food.

Talking of foodie adventures, I didn't get a chance to try the long-standing and much-loved Clifton deli-cafe, Papadeli (dishes £4.95-£10) but its £10 Italian lunch dishes – such as a risotto of roast garlic and artichoke hearts, or a smoked pancetta, black bean and butternut squash broth –certainly whet the appetite.
• Two-course lunch £9.95. 34 Cotham Hill, 0117 923 8755, flintyred.co.uk

Yume Kitchen

This neat Japanese takeaway and restaurant over two floors – its gun-metal grey basement brightened by cherry blossom art and cute paper screens – does a solid line in the classics (katsu curries, teriyaki, donburi rice bowls, ramen and other noodle soups), at keen prices. A bento box of sweet, smoky miso-marinated mackerel with rice and a little salad of edamame beans and vivid green, translucent strands of wakame seaweed, was light, clean and true in its flavours. On the side, a typically bland, inconsequential miso soup was trumped by first-rate gyoza, their thin, crisp shells yielding a well-seasoned chicken filling.
• Main dishes £5-£8. 9 Cotham Hill, 0117 200 2888, yumekitchen.co.uk

Edna's Kitchen & Eat A Pitta

Researching this piece, I found Eat A Pitta was the top tip of pretty much every Bristol foodie that I spoke to, and little wonder. Utilising his Algerian gran's recipe, Dan Levy's stall doles out falafel in pittas and salad boxes, ram-jammed with bright colours and zingy flavours for £3.95. My outsize pitta – more of a catcher's mitt – was overflowing with pickles and mixed salads, hummus and couscous, plucked from huge piles and then dressed with tahini and lemon oil. It was very good.

However, two minutes walk away, in Castle Park, Edna's Kitchen is arguably even better. Eat A Pitta has the sunnier salads and pickles, but Edna Yeffet's falafel – verdant with herbs and seemingly rolled in tiny seeds for extra crunch – edge it. They are fresh, fragrant, remarkably light and dangerously moreish. Her chilli sauce is also sensational. A spritzy, blitzed mix of herbs and green chillies, it seems almost fruity before its smooth heat hits hard, leaving your lips tingling.

As well as falafel, Edna serves Middle Eastern salads, such as roast aubergine sabich (an Israeli sandwich), served with her insanely creamy hummus, and eija, a frittata spiced-up with a little spicy matubucha tomato relish. My advice? If you're in Bristol for a couple of days, do the taste-test yourself. Eat A Pitta versus Edna's Kitchen: everyone's a winner, whatever your verdict.
• Eat A Pitta, 1-3 Glass Arcade, St Nicholas Market, 07825 659525, eatapitta.co.uk. Edna's Kitchen, Castle Park, 07928 436212; ednas-kitchen.com (menu items £3.95–£5.95)

Bagel Boy

Former street-food slingers Mitch Church and Leo Thompson are now permanent residents at this trendy St Nicholas Street gaff, all big, weathered salvage-wood tables, indie soundtrack and craft beers from, among others, Bristol's Arbor Ales. The choice of bagels is almost bewildering, ranging from a classic, locally-smoked salmon and cream cheese, to a slow-cooked chilli bagel with cheddar, creme fraiche and guacamole. Bagel Boy also does a range of bagel burgers, featuring such exotica as a Thai-spiced pork patty. If in doubt, go for the signature salt beef with pickles and mustard. The bagel itself is the real deal, dense and chewy; and the salt beef fibrous, gelatinous and full of flavour. I was less impressed with a side of barbecue beans, but no matter. On its own, the bagel would make a filling lunch or provide quick, cheap ballast before a night on the tiles. The staff are friendly, and, usefully, Bagel Boy is open until 11pm, too.

Talking of street food operators who've grown-up and settled down, you may be wondering where Meat & Bread is in this list. Unfortunately, it has recently had to suspend its operation at the Three Tuns pub but keep an eye out for its return, as almost everyone I spoke to in Bristol raved about M&B's gourmet sandwiches, made with its own, home-smoked and cured meats and fish. In the meantime, if you like good beer, make a beeline for the Three Tuns anyway (pint from £3.40). An Arbor Ales pub, its seven cask pumps, four keg lines and shortish but thoughtfully compiled bottle list, make it something of a boozy gem.
• Bagels from £3.50. 39-41 St Nicholas Street, 0117 922 0417, bagelboy.co.uk

Fishminster

Even before you taste anything, you can tell that you are in safe hands, here. Not only does this Bedminster chippy fry to order, it also makes many of its own sides, such as coleslaw and curry sauce, fishcakes, fish fingers and, erm, falafel burgers. It's good to see a chip butty (£1.70)on the menu this far south, too. Cod and chips doesn't disappoint. The chips are fat and fluffy, and the superlatively fresh fillet is encased in a silky, delicate (glossy-not-greasy) crisp batter. Personally, I prefer a chunkier tartar sauce, but flavour-wise it hit the spot. Unless you are staying this side of the river, or perhaps visiting the Tobacco Factory, it is a bit of bind to get here from the city centre – but if you crave fish and chips, it is certainly worth the detour. There is also a licensed Fishminster takeaway and restaurant in Clifton (133 Whiteladies Road, 0117 933 5599).
• Fish and chips from £5.55. 267 North Street, Bedminster, 0117 966 2226,fishminster.co.uk

Mark's Bread

Mark Newman's small craft bakery and cafe is a refreshingly low frills operation. Housed within the Bristol Beer Factory brewery, they have painted the breezeblock walls a sunny yellow and posted some bits of info-tainment about bread, but otherwise this is very much a light industrial workspace. Those sacks of flour stacked in one corner look less like dressing, than stock. The bakery supplies a number of Michelin-starred restaurants in the Bristol area with its breads (many of them, wild yeast), and it is clear why. Its sourdough is terrific. A pain au raisin (£1.30), is exemplary, almost treacly with caramelised sugars and packed with fruit.

Not unsurprisingly, the cafe menu revolves around bread: toast, soup served with a trio of sourdoughs, bacon butties, a rarebit and filled baguettes, all featuring local ingredients and the fastidious home-making of everything from baked beans (wot, no Heinz!?) to jam and ginger beer. A sample croque monsieur was very good, the cheese topping worked into a creamy emulsion, and the dish given a clean edge by the addition of two little hillocks of celeriac remoulade and a shredded beetroot and pumpkin salad. Of course, the cafe also serves Bristol Beer Factory's bottled ales (£3.80) and traditional Severn perries and ciders.
• Dishes £2-£6.50. 291 North Street, Southville, 0117 953 7997, marksbread.co.uk

Grillstock

Like Eat A Pitta, Grillstock is one of several stalls that make St Nicholas Market (St Nicks, as locals know it) a prime destination for good, cheap chow. Grillstock specialises in slow'n'low, US-style barbecue and puts on an annual festival in Bristol to celebrate "America's only true cuisine". Its tight menu was confined, on this visit, to just a brisket roll with burnt ends; brisket with ox chilli and cornbread; and its signature 18-hour hickory smoked pulled pork roll. Many of you are probably sick to death of "dude food", and pulled pork in particular, but this is a £4.50 reminder of why it once seemed so exciting. Generously piled onto a robust roll with a smoky, not overly sweet sauce, the fibrous, moist meat, just crisped at its ends, is a serious mouthful. Be warned, you will end up with meat juices dripping off your wrists, if not elbows.

Grillstock also has a permanent site in Clifton, where several of its barbecue plates, hot dogs and burgers come in at under £10. It has a decent craft beer selection too, including bottles from Brutal, Brooklyn and Somerset brewing aces, Wild Beer.
• Takeaway, £4.50-£6.50. Glass Arcade, St Nicholas's Market; grillstock.co.uk

Tiffins

When talk turns to curry in Bristol, the conversation rarely gets further than legendary local mini-chain, The Thali Cafe (formerly One Stop Thali). But there are others cooking good Indian food in the city. For 10 years, Nick and Jay Jethwa have been dishing-up Gujarati curries – predominantly veggie, spicy, less oil and no ghee – from Tiffins, a small, colourful takeaway cafe. They serve the dishes either hot or cold to reheat later. "This is how it would taste in India," I'm promised, as I pick and choose from that day's dishes.

They were certainly right about "spicy". A tomatoey cabbage curry starts out innocuous enough, but packs a deceptive residual heat. It's a bomb with a long fuse. Not that these dishes are all about chillies, of course. For a spinach dish, Tiffins' saag paneer is remarkably sweet and fruity; while its urad daal is smooth, comforting, wholesomely savoury. If the keema and channa masala curries will be familiar, there were some more interesting dishes on offer, too, such as kichadi (a mixture of split green lentils and rice), that's served dressed with khadi, a yoghurt soup.
• Mixed curries with rice £5.50-£6, larger curries with rice around £8. 151 St Michael's Hill, High Kingsdown, 0117 9734 834, tiffins-bristol.com

Pickle

A good sandwich is a beautiful thing, and the hot sangers served from this Portwall Lane trailer are, as they say in Brizzle, gert lush. Filled with, for example, three cheeses and ale chutney or honey-roast ham, Dijon mustard and pickles, fat Herbert's Bakery baguettes are then grilled flat, sandwiched between two hotplates, until their exterior takes on a crisp, buttery crunch. My sample "rumpy pumpy" (no, that really is its name) was A1, not only huge, but packed with unusually tasty chargrilled rump steak and plump gherkins, and slathered in a garlic mayo that was melting into a fine red cabbage slaw.
• Breakfast sandwiches £2.95-£3.95, otherwise £3.50-£4.50. Portwall Lane, 07870 460009

Travel between Manchester and Bristol was provided by Cross Country Trains Accommodation was provided by Brooks Guesthouse, a smart, contemporary bolthole, it is very central and has doubles from £55 a night. For more information on Bristol, see visitbristol.co.uk.

Quayside in Whitby is officially Britain's best fish'n'chip shop – but it had to fight off strong competition from a new wave of top-quality chippies

Britain has a new fish'n'chip shop of the year. On Wednesday night, Quayside in Whitby, North Yorkshire, went head-to-head with the nine other regional finalists at the 26th annual National Fish & Chip awards to take the industry crown. If past years are anything to go by, the winners, brothers Stuart and Adrian Fusco, will enjoy a cash bonanza. Calum Richardson, co-owner of The Bay in Stonehaven, Aberdeenshire, last year's top pick, says: "It doubled turnover; it made winter like summer." Frankie's Fish & Chips in Brae, Shetland, earned second place, while Papa's Barn in Kent came third.

For the wider world, this elevation of another name to a growing pantheon of great British chippies is an opportunity to celebrate an industry which, quietly and unpretentiously, is in the throes of a revolution. What's that? You haven't heard about it? Well, no. With the exception of London newbies, such as Poppies and Kerbisher & Malt (which will open three new shops this year), the media has been slow to pick up on this – cough – sea change in fish'n'chips. Battered sausages, it seems, just ain't sexy. But as ex-chef Garry Rosser, who opened the Scallop Shell in Somerset in 2012, puts it: "There is a real buzz in the trade now. The younger generation's enthusiasm is quite exceptional."

With 2,000 of Britain's 10,500 chippies entering this year's awards (that number has increased by 10% each year for the past three years), there is clearly a growing emphasis on quality. Once-pioneering new-wave chippies, such as the Fish Shed in Topsham or the Tailend in Edinburgh, are no longer rarities. In 2011, the awards organisers Seafish introduced a "best newcomer" gong to acknowledge this growing network of new independents, who – often young fryers, many new to the industry – are bringing a foodist rigour to your cod'n'chips.

Craig Buckley, 27, is a former estate agent. He now runs two shops in Crewe, including Crewe Fish Bar, a pristine, contemporary space that features plenty of product information. He also teaches at the National Federation of Fish Friers (NFFF) training school in Leeds, where he meets many people (a significant number retraining after recently being made redundant) who "are spotting tired shops, tired owners in their area and thinking: 'Turn that around, run it better and it could be a good little business.'" Certainly, fish'n'chips is booming: Britain eats 255m portions annually, more than any other takeaway food.

We are far pickier about what and where we eat these days, and intelligent fryers realise that the chippy must adapt. Particularly when big-name chefs and restaurateurs, such as Rick Stein and the former Ivy head chef Des McDonald, are opening glitzy, high-end chippies (takeaway cod'n'chips will cost you £10 at McDonald's Islington Fish & Chip Shop). "There has been a huge change in the perception of what a fish'n'chip shop can be," says Fred Capel, owner of Chez Fred in Bournemouth and an awards assessor. "People used to think it was an easy option. Now, chefs are coming in and giving it a hell of a lot of respect."

What should you look for in a great chippy? First, proper chippies fry to order, rather than letting their fillets sit in a hot box. They use fresh fish, not frozen. Richardson says: "Fresh haddock is sweet, flaky, soft in the mouth, not that rubbery, frozen texture." Chips are an art, too. A chippy should change their potato variety seasonally, not just rely on the standard maris piper. At Crewe Fish Bar, daily sugar tests ensure that the potatoes are up to snuff.

Nearly every chippy buys in batter (or, rather, the flour/raising agent base to which iced water is added), but many owners tweak it by adding eggs, vinegar and various seasonings. Those frying in blander oils, such as rapeseed, want to boost the batter's flavour, whereas the likes of beef dripping already provides plenty of savoury oomph. For The Bay's batter (now also used at the highly regarded Edinburgh fish restaurant Ondine), Richardson developed a bespoke mix of four flours with his supplier.

Side orders should be taken seriously. "Making your own tartare, curry sauce or coleslaw is well within the capability of somebody running their own fish'n'chip shop," says Capel. "It's whether they want to go that extra mile." Crewe Fish Bar does a roaring trade in homemade pies (£2.40).

Aware of the negative connotations around fast food, forward-thinking fryers are also stressing the relative health benefits of their food, by including independent nutritional analysis of their dishes or offering healthier, grilled options. Similarly, they are attempting to green their businesses by introducing recyclable packaging or sourcing from sustainable fisheries.

Nationally, just 30 fish'n'chip shops are certified by the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC). Those 30 serve one or more sustainable species that are fully traceable net-to-fryer. However, many more chippies source from MSC-approved Norwegian and Icelandic fisheries, or follow buying advice from the Marine Conservation Society. Initiatives to lower the cost of MSC certification (currently around £1,000) will, hopefully, make full-chain transparency more common. "Five years ago, I could have sold any white fish," says Buckley. "Now my customers ask: 'Is it cod? Is it haddock?' We're being more responsible in sourcing and top shops are telling that story to customers."

It's all about being honest and open. Sometimes literally. Buckley has a glass prep room, "so when the lads are peeling and chipping potatoes, it's all on show". That said, he still refers to fish'n'chips as a working-class dish and keeps his prices relatively low. According to the stats from the NFFF, and anecdotal evidence, chippies around the country are charging between £4 and £7 a portion (although it shoots up in London). For Richardson, value is key. People will pay £6 for haddock and chips if it's fresh, sourced responsibly and tastes fantastic, he says. "Customers see it's not about greed and squeezing every penny out of that fish supper. I never get anyone complaining."

Fish'n'chips may not be having a fashion moment. It isn't all over the food blogs or trending on Twitter. It doesn't have the hipster cachet of burgers and BBQ, but it is undergoing a genuine, grassroots upheaval. One that should last.

These finalists beat off 2,000 others to make the shortlist

Winner: North East England – Quayside, Whitby, North Yorkshire, Stuart and Adrian Fusco

Second place: Scotland – Frankie's Fish and Chips, Brae, Shetland, Mr John Gold and Mrs Valerie Johnson

Third place: London & South East England – Papa's Barn, Ditton, Kent, Michael and Theo Adams

Runners-up

Wales – Hennighan's Top Shop, Machynlleth, Powys, David and Eleanor Hennighan

Northern Ireland – John Dory Traditional Fish and Chips, Belfast, Mark Polley and Kat Deuchars

North West England – Richardson's Fish Bar, Fleetwood, Lancashire, Chris and Jennifer Richardson

Midlands – Merchants, Stourbridge, West Midlands, Anthony Akathiotis and Christopher Preece

Eastern England –The Boundary, Peterborough, Bill Shaw and Blair Butler

Central & South England – Godfrey's, Harpenden, Hertfordshire, Luke Godfrey

South West England – The Tavi Friar, Tavistock, Devon, Mr John and Barbara Murphy

• This listing panel was amended on 23 January 2014. An earlier version referred to Brae, Shetlands. That should have been Shetland, as cited correctly in the text.

'There are (I think) 24 dishes in all: each a couple of mouthfuls, each gobstopping in its simple complexity… I'm dazzled and vaguely hysterical'

To understand what's happening in this restaurant-clogged metropolis, I go straight to the man. What, I ask New York Times restaurant critic Pete Wells, is currently stimulating the world's most easily-jaded city?

Northern Thai, he says. So we have fiery larb at Zabb Elee and catfish paste at Uncle Boons. Or omakase: I beg and plead for a reservation at Sushi Nakazawa, but no dice. This is a tough town. Or the tasting-only menu at the likes of Torrisi Italian Specialties. I do something I never do and try to pull strings (well, when in Rome), a move that gets me booted on to the Little Italy sidewalk by a sharp-suited snoot. No table, wounded amour-propre and eater.com headlines of the Guardian Restaurant Critic Snubbed variety. Told you: tough town.

So Blanca scares me. A formerly semi-secret adjunct to deservedly-praised Roberta's in gritty Bushwick, where the cast of Girls nosh on magnificent sourdough pizzas and nouvelle-Brooklyn cuisine. It's going to be so up itself, it can examine its own fillings, surely? Just accessing it is a palaver: past graffiti and street kids to Roberta's front desk for a brief languish in the craft beer and beardy tiki bar, then through a dark yard filled with herb-planted hyrdoponic containers. It takes the husband back to his raving days.

Where Roberta's is all grunge and fairy lights, though, Blanca is a white-bricked striking contrast. Twelve leather stools sit around the kitchen, easily as big as the "restaurant" itself. The only decoration is the head of a blue marlin on the wall and two slabs of meat: outrageously marbled, wagyu-style beef (it turns up later, simply seared with vincotto and bitter, creamy radicchio Castelfranco, its burgundy interior as rich and intense as blue cheese) and heavily fatted pork. Dolly Parton warbles from a concealed speaker. I already suspect it's love.

There are (I think) 24 dishes in all: each a couple of mouthfuls, each gobstopping in its simple complexity. They tell a tale of chef Carlo Mirarchi's Italian background by way of Japan and the veg plot. Many are meat-free: Marcona almond puree, salsify, lovage, satsuma and lemon zest, a pastel palette of shy flavours that add up to a startlingly vivid whole.

When the meat kicks in, it kicks like a bruiser. We watch as a duck, head still lolling, is basted and burnished until it shimmers like bronze. It arrives, a couple of fragrant slices and crisp skin, with a chocolatey beetroot dollop, a riff on Mexican mole. That pork has the mouthfilling length of good wine. There are fat, wriggly al dente pici dressed with ripe squab and its innards, as honking as a Roman marketplace; and an insanely pungent raviolo of n'duja.

Curiosities, too: meaty littleneck clams served with "sea grapes", tiny peppercorns of seaweed that spritz seawater as you bite into them. Or rutabaga – finally I get to type rutabaga – with carrots in a limpid vegetal broth with crunch from celtuce (me neither; a kind of lettuce, apparently) and pistachio.

It's Blondie's turn to warble now. I'm dazzled and vaguely hysterical – in a good way. We're thrilled right down to the final fennel pollen marshmallow, the effect a gradual, cumulative and intensely pleasurable sating rather than grande bouffe.

I don't adore it all; vegetable-based desserts can now do one, and there's a plankton agnolotto that should go right back to sleeping with the fishes. But that's the breaks with this kind of deal, and there's nothing that hasn't been thought through with wit and intelligence. Accompanying drinks are every bit as exhilarating: rare organic whites from the slopes of Etna, cider from Upstate NY, Slovenian orange wine. Staff are a delicious combination of clued-up geekiness and warmth. Yes, I'm gushing. Yes, it costs a fortune. Yes, it's hard to get into. But it's a life-enhancing experience, attitude-free and dedicated to enjoyment. There's even one of those Japanese loos that blasts warm water at your bum. Thanks, Pete Wells, I owe you one.

• Blanca 261 Moore Street, Brooklyn, New York 11206, 001 646 703 2715. Tasting menu, dinner only, Weds-Fri 6pm and 9pm, Sat 5pm and 8pm, $195 (£119) a head, plus service.

Food 9/10
Atmosphere 8/10
Value for money 8/10

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A MasterChef is now in the kitchens of Roux at Parliament Square. But the dull place still needs a makeover

Roux at Parliament Square, RICS, Parliament Square, London SW1 (020 7334 3737). Meal for two: £150

Here, in order, are the answers to the questions I get asked most frequently about my time as a judge on the critics' rounds of the various MasterChef franchises: 1) Don't be ridiculous. That would be obscene. 2) It's a staggered start, so happily no. 3) I really don't have a clue. We only drop in for that round.* Well, I'm glad we've got that sorted.

There is, however, a bigger question that's put to me occasionally, about the impact of the show on the way food is served in British restaurants. The argument goes like this: because television is a visual medium, in which the viewer doesn't get to smell let alone taste any of the food, presentation becomes more important than it really should. At which point I should declare my love for all the MasterChefs, and not just because, from time to time, they keep me gainfully employed doing something which doesn't involve physical activity or writing. To those who whine about it I say this. It's food television. A bunch of people cook stuff and nobody dies. It's fun, compelling and beautifully edited.

All that said, I get the presentation point, especially with the professionals' show. If you don't hang about in restaurants much, you would assume from watching MasterChef, that plating up is all about thick sauces made to look like teardrops of giants with conjunctivitis with the back of a spoon, or gels dribbled from pipettes or stuff served on slates.

Each time us pampered napkin-jockeys turn up to do the critics' round we're asked what we're looking for. We always say something like: "Good taste, no self-conscious innovation, no bloody slates." We big up simplicity over complexity; in the last MasterChef pro series we all fell in love with runner-up Adam Handling's lamb dish, even though it was just meat and two veg. It didn't look like much, but God did it taste good.

And yet still the fancy plates come, and I fear it's slipping off the TV screens and on to tables in the real world. My suspicion is that, because so many millions watch and love the show, chefs and restaurateurs now think that this is the sort of presentation punters expect. Replace porcelain with slate. Smear with a spoon. Drip with a pipette. Place ingredients so they look like they were dropped from a foot above the table.

I was thinking about all this over an expensive dinner at Roux Parliament Square. This is a rare re-reviewing. I went when it first opened in 2010, when it was an edible cure for insomnia. It's located inside the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, just off the square and, appropriately, I came out in love with the front elevation. There was nothing else to celebrate. It was a study in dull: dull walls, dull food, staff buffed to dull. It was an upmarket home-furnishings catalogue with canapés. Given that I'm a big fan of Michel Roux Jr, sticking the boot into one of his restaurants was not fun. His flagship, Le Gavroche, is warm, enveloping, a ludicrous indulgence of the very best kind. This was death's waiting room with gutter-to-gutter shagpile.

And then last year, a new head chef was appointed: Steve Groves, winner of MasterChef: The Professionals in 2009. Who can blame Roux Jr for using the show to find talent? I'd be lying if I claimed to recall eating Groves's food at the critics' round. It all merges into one eventually. But I did see a more recent episode where he was now leading the current crop of contestants through a punishing restaurant service. And his food didn't look at all dull. It looked colourful and bright. It looked like MasterChef. I decided to go back.

There was a temptation to narrate the food to myself as I ate, in Michel's voice, that seismic weapon which seems to start rumbling around his knees, firing off booming sentences like the thump of a timpani: "Very clean plate… lovely deep sauce… good." And a lot of it really is. There are canapés of long-braised pork, breaded and deep-fried until they become crisped pouches held together only by the action of hot fat on breadcrumb. There is whipped butter and fine sourdough bread.

A fat ravioli of crab is submerged beneath a light champagne velouté and dressed with a dribble of bisque so intense it speaks of the virtuous equation of fish shells multiplied by heat and time. This is enlightened classicism, a clear display of gastronomic literacy. The kitchen has read old recipes and knows how to turn them to the light. A single sweetbread is caramelised and served with a pile of sticky onions, crisp Alsace bacon, and a jus that is long-simmered essence of baby cow.

Goose, rarely seen on menus, arrives looking like duck's grown-up sibling, the thick breast crisp-skinned and served pink, and with a jus that tastes of the bird. Roast partridge with "haggis, neeps and tatties" reads rustic, but is something altogether more refined, the haggis arriving in light rissoles. The menu advertises Balvenie DoubleWood Whisky and here it is, courtesy of a spray. It does not add an enormous amount to the dish, but it's lovely theatre. And it all comes on black plates. Cooking doesn't get more MasterChefy than this. Or much more expensive, with starters in the teens and mains north of £20.

For dessert there is a cardamom custard tart, spiced with the lightest of hands alongside kumquat-ripple ice cream, and a banana soufflé anointed with a Valrhona chocolate sauce. You get the point. Groves really is cooking up a storm. It is not the culinary beige it once was. Appointing him was a smart move.

I just wish I could stop there, but I can't. Because while the food has changed, the restaurant hasn't. Service is desperately formal, comes with a side order of stiff, and is executed in accents so thick I had to have sentences repeated. The mood is dour, the decor still just so much sound proofing. I want to eat Groves's food, but not here, and not like this, to muted male chatter and the scrape of cutlery. MasterChef may have its presentation absurdities, but it is mostly a celebration of great food. Roux Parliament Square isn't a celebration. It's a solemn place of worship, and sadly I am not a believer.
*1) Do you really eat all that food?
2) Isn't it cold by the time it arrives?
3) Do you know who wins?

Jay's news bites

■ If you want to try other MasterChef contestants' food, there's a growing choice. Marianne Lumb, a finalist with Steve Groves in 2009, now cooks at her tiny, eponymous restaurant, Marianne, in Notting Hill, which has just 14 covers (mariannrestaurant.com). The winner in 2012, Anton Piotrowski, is still to be found at his pub, the Treby Arms at Sparkwell in Devon (trebyarms.co.uk). And the 2011 winner, Ash Mair is shortly to open a London outpost of Bilbao Berria (ashmair.com).
■ London theatreland has lost one of its own: Jimmy Hardwick, the pianist at the actors' hangout Joe Allen from its opening in 1977, has died. He was originally employed to provide the live music needed to secure a late licence, but quickly became a vital part of the place. Jimmy could segue effortlessly from whatever he was playing to the relevant tune for the West End musical star who had just walked through the door. He was still playing at Joe's until just a few weeks ago.
■ Terror in crumble land: this year's crop of much prized Timperley rhubarb is down by up to 50%, due to bad weather. Expect prices to rise.

Email Jay at jay.rayner@observer.co.uk. Follow Jay on Twitter @jayrayner1

TV chef's company cites challenging climate for the decision to close branches in Holborn, Chiswick and Winchester

Jamie Oliver's attempt to revive traditional British grub in his unashamedly nationalistic and nostalgic Union Jacks restaurants appears to have foundered with the closure of three of the four outlets.

The TV chef's company cited the "challenging climate" for the decision to close Union Jacks branches in Holborn and Chiswick in London and Winchester in Hampshire with immediate effect.

The restaurants were aimed at "bringing back nostalgic British classics" such as fish and chips, and bangers and mash.

Only one of the four branches, in London's Covent Garden, will remain open.

A recorded telephone message at the Holborn branch said: "The Jamie Oliver Group has made the decision to close its Union Jacks restaurants in Chiswick, Holborn and Winchester. After a full review it was concluded that these businesses were no longer sustainable in the current challenging climate."

It added: "All of our amazing staff have been fully consulted and we very much hope that we can transfer them to other restaurants in the group."

A notice announcing the closure was placed in the window of the Winchester branch, according to the Southern Daily Echo.

The remaining Covent Garden branch still offers a range of "proud British flavours", including fish and chips with mushy peas at £14.95; pork belly, banger and mash for £14.50, and sticky toffee pudding with clotted cream at £6. Punters can wash it down with a range of "spectacular British wines".

The self-consciously retro menu features a message from Oliver and co-founder Chris Bianco. "Union Jacks is all about Bringing Back Nostalgic British classics using the best of artisanal ingredients. Hope you like it as much as we do," it says.

Underneath the message is what now appears a prophetic picture – of British Leyland's Austin Allegro, a symbol of British naffness and failure.

Now three-quarters of the Union Jacks operation has gone the way of the Allegro.

The Twitter feed of Union Jacks said: "It's no secret that the industry has been affected by the tough climate & a proposal has been made to close UJ Chiswick, Holborn&Winchester.

Meanwhile, Oliver's chain of more than 30 Italian restaurants continues to expand.

Last week, the company announced plans to set up a branch of Jamie's Italian in Newcastle in a move that will create 120 jobs. It also said it was setting up a Jamie's Italian in the Swedish capital, Stockholm.

"I'm really looking forward to kicking off our first restaurant in Stockholm. It's going to be epic," the chef said in a statement.

A spokesman for Oliver said: "The Union Jacks site in the Piazza in Covent Garden is trading well and will remain fully operational.

"The group is confident in being able to deliver a robust performance in 2014 and is looking forward to a number of restaurant openings, in the UK and internationally. This will include developing the successful Trattoria model which is doing well in its first location in Richmond."

After decades of Cantonese food adapted to sweet western tastes, British diners can now try bold, spicy specialities from Sichuan, Hunan, Shanghai and Guizhou

Kai Wang and her friends like to sniff out the latest regional Chinese restaurants: a tiny cafe in east London specialising in food from China's north-east, or one near London Bridge serving numbing and hot crayfish. Kai, 26, is a media professional who came to the UK from Beijing in 2008, first to study and then to work. "When I arrived in London I thought I was really going to miss Beijing food. I love traditional Beijing cuisine, but also the spicy regional cuisines that have become popular in recent years: Sichuan, Hunan and Hubei. When I came to the UK, the Chinese food here all seemed to be so sweet and westernised, with a focus on the Cantonese style, which is too light and delicate for Beijing tastes. But more and more authentic Chinese regional restaurants have opened in the past few years, not just in Chinatown but all over the city."

It is people like Kai who have been one of the driving forces in a revolution in Chinese cooking in London and Manchester, and increasingly all over the UK. Unlike the older generation of Cantonese immigrants who arrived decades ago, bringing with them Hong Kong flavours adapted to western tastes, Kai and her contemporaries want to eat bolder, spicier food, and the trendy dishes that remind them of home. "So many westerners order dishes such as sweet-and-sour pork, char siu buns and stir-fried rice noodles with beef, which I really don't like," she says.

In the mid-1990s, a restaurant called Baguo Buyi opened in the Sichuanese capital, Chengdu, giving a glamorous new spin to Sichuan folk cooking and setting off a nationwide craze for Sichuanese flavours that is only now beginning to cool. Since then, Hunanese food and the hearty cooking of the north-eastern or Dongbei region have also enjoyed their time in the limelight of Chinese culinary fashion. More recent Chinese arrivals to the UK, who include not only students but also businesspeople and tourists, are just as likely to come from Fujian, Shanghai or Liaoning as the Cantonese south of China, which means that Chinese restaurateurs no longer need to adapt their tastes to an old stereotype of Anglo-Cantonese food.

Many establishments, including Liao Wei Feng in Bethnal Green and Local Friends in Golders Green, have menus divided into two sections. They have one list of the usual Anglo-Canto suspects, including lemon chicken and crispy duck, and another offering some of the most authentic Hunanese food available in the capital, with dishes such as "stir-fried fragrant and hot fish" and "steamed belly pork, Chairman Mao-style".

North-eastern and Hunanese cuisines are not the only ones making gradual inroads into British restaurant culture. Large numbers of Fujianese immigrants have joined the catering trade, although they are often inconspicuous in the kitchens of Cantonese restaurants. Fujian province lies on the south-eastern Chinese coast, and is known for its delicate soups, appetising street snacks and gentle way with oysters and other seafood. A handful of Fujianese cafes have come and gone in London: only one remains, Fuzhou in Gerrard Street, which is the place to go for gorgeous fishballs stuffed with minced pork and cabbage-and-clam soup with slippery rice pasta.

Shanghainese food has traditionally been hard to find in Britain, although the city lies in one of China's richest gastronomic regions. The city itself is best known for the xiao long bao "soup dumpling" and for its sweet, soy-dark braises, but the wider region is the source of exquisite river delicacies such as crab, eel and shrimp, and famous dishes including beggar's chicken and dongpo pork. For a glimpse of Shanghainese cuisine, seek out the elegant dishes created by Shanghainese consultant chef Zhang Chichang at the Bright Courtyard Club in Baker Street, or the modest, homestyle stir-fries such as green soya beans with pork and pickled greens at Red Sun in New Quebec Street.

Sichuan and Hunan are China's best-known spice regions, but chillies are also adored in Guizhou province. Maotai Kitchen in Soho, named after the famous local liquor, offers Guizhou food. The jovial chef, Zhu Shixiu, grew up in the beautiful hills near the Guizhou-Hunan border, and, after years working in Cantonese restaurants, has been given free rein with the menu. His wife makes the "villagers' pickled Chinese cabbage", a delicious salad laced with coriander, fermented black beans and chilli. Many of his rustic dishes share the sour-hot characteristic of Hunan cooking, but the intriguing lemongrass note in some of them comes from litsea oil (mu jiang you), a Chinese medicine used as a condiment in Guizhou and a few other regions. Maotai Kitchen is part of the same group as Leong's Legends, which serves Taiwanese specialities.

While there has been a flowering of regional cuisines in London, only Sichuanese cuisine has really broken out of the capital and begun its long march all over the country – a sign, perhaps, of its decade-long status as China's trendiest style of cooking. Red N Hot has branches in Manchester and Birmingham, while Red Chilli has expanded from its original Manchester HQ into Leeds and York: the spicy menu charmingly promises to look after "your pocket, stomach and soul". And in Oxford, My Sichuan has taken over the old school house at Gloucester Green, where chef Zhou Jun from Chengdu presides over a kitchen offering all the classic Sichuanese specialities.

As China's changing culinary fashions continue to cause ripples in the restaurant scene in London, the range of regional flavours is only likely to increase and spread across the country. In the meantime, Sichuanese cuisine has already radically changed the face of Chinese food in many parts of Britain. No one, it seems, need go for long without dry-fried beans or a bowlful of sliced sea bass in a sea of sizzling chilli oil.

The chef has many successes on his plate, but his attempt to reinvent the pizza with all-British toppings was not one of them. Now he should concentrate on what he does best

Jamie Oliver is a businessman, not an idiot. The three Union Jacks restaurants being closed in Chiswick, Winchester and Holborn clearly weren't working for Oliver and his partner, Arizona pizza king Chris Bianco. The apparent lack of trade can't just be due to punctuation pedants protesting the missing apostrophe by staying away. But while Union Jacks blame a challenging climate, could it be that the natives just don't find Oliver's bright, positive, large-scale approach to Brit nostalgia palatable?

It is not every tourist who passes through Chiswick, Holborn or even Winchester, home of Europe's longest medieval cathedral. But many might have a passing tussle with Covent Garden, where the remaining branch of Union Jacks continues to "trade well" with prawn cocktail with Morecambe Bay shrimp, pizzas topped with Westcombe cheddar and British salami, and fish and chips (with skinny chips. Yes, it's an outrage. Take it elsewhere).

When the Holborn branch opened in 2011, around the same time as the Jamie's Great Britain book and TV series were wafted in front of us, it wasn't bad. Some critics liked some of the food, though calling their hot, thin, topped breads "flats" – wisely, they're now known as pizzas – was daft. But there was always going to be a problem.

Oliver can do whatever he likes to Italian food. Indeed, he has been very successful doing it – if he wasn't, what with all the Rose'n'Ruthie connections and the bronze-die pasta and the deep, profound love of pouring olive oil over everything, we'd be worried. New branches of Jamie's Italian will open soon in Piccadilly and Newcastle, with sites in Canada, Moscow, Bali, Stockholm and Australia all on the expansion list and a new brand, Jamie's Trattoria, already doing it relaxedy-style in Richmond.

You will notice that Italy is not on the list. And I repeat: he is not an idiot. This is the man who brought shoddy school dinners and unpleasant farming practices to the nation's attention, even though not everyone wanted to listen; he's the dyslexic who has sold gazillions of cookbooks, but first read a novel aged 38. We might be happy to accept Italian food through the Jamie looking-glass, but he wouldn't be so foolish as to try to feed Italians (apart from the chefs and passers-by in his TV series) Italian food. And now the three less-touristy branches of Union Jacks have closed, he is, blessedly, not trying to sell patriotism on a plate to us either.

The thing is, we can get it better, more "authentic" elsewhere, and we know it. The Great British food revival, no matter how complex and flawed and niche, is best expressed in the littlest restaurants and pubs around the country (among many, many others you will be wanting The Salon, Aumbry and The Quality Chop House, the tiny-production cheeses (give Claire Burt a bell), the oddball farmers and the mini chicken-men of Sutton Hoo. Union Jacks, notwithstanding its decent Brit-booze selection, is not in this spirit.

It might be a food pipedream that many of us leave in the supermarket car park, but we want (or think we want) a semblance of independence with our island nation nostalgia. Jamie might have grown up in a pub named after a kind of quintessentially British summer foolishness, but he is not the little guy any more. Neither are many of his Union Jacks suppliers – the kitchens of a four-strong chain place a serious demand on producers that the smallest are unable to meet, resulting in a menu full of good but relatively (and it is relative) commonplace British ingredients. The roll out-ready scale of Union Jacks, and the size of Oliver's brand, could have compromised its bulldog spirit. The tourists are welcome to it.

'With a menu as gorgeous as this, each dish winking at you like a saucepot, who needs an interior designer?'

Pork: what a thing of wondrousness it is. Traded like money, eaten in reverence, reviled as unclean; the stuff of myth and legend and breakfast. Open my fridge any day of the week and you'll find bacon and sausages – chorizo and Cumberland, salumi and charcuterie, black pudding; a shoulder, maybe, to be slow-cooked into Korean bo ssäm or Mexican cochinita pibil; or a tenderloin absorbing Chinese spices.

Pork carries about it a thrilling little shimmer of transgression, the worry that we humans are a bit too closely related to clever pigs; and the knowledge that, cooked, we taste a bit too like them. It's the fragrance of crisping bacon, the olfactory equivalent of Walter White's crystal meth, that turns vegetarians and Jews away from the path of righteousness. Yes, I love the stuff.

I also like Allegra McEvedy, an intuitive and unpretentious chef whose food is both sensible and seductive. So news that she has opened a restaurant devoted to the pig and called after that aristocrat of the species, pata negra, has me hurtling over to Blackfoot faster than you can say sossidges.

The reclaiming of what was that increasingly endangered species, the London pie-and-mash shop, is further incentive. The small, loud space looks as though it could have been artificially "distressed", like its dim rival Paesan down the road, but tiles and booths are original, from the recently-demised Clarks. A counter features a beautiful piece of Italian porchetta, scented with fennel pollen, rosemary and thyme, to take away in a ciabatta bun with piquant salsa verde, plus, if you eat in, red wine-laced lentils. Rosy and aromatic, it's as good as the stuff I've eaten in Italy, but with the added true-Brit flourish of crackling.

We're upstairs in a featureless, orange-painted room, but with a menu as gorgeous as this, each dish winking at you like a saucepot, who needs an interior designer? There are ribs and stews and steaks, all piggy. Sure, you can have clams or monkfish or a bruiser of a veggie burger, but really, why would you? Might as well go to KFC for the salad.

We have precision-cut slivers of 24-month-aged Trevelez jamón, sweeter and nuttier than more pedestrian Serranos. There's whipped lardo, melting languidly over sourdough toast, meatier than this snowy backfat usually is and packing a porcine punch. Tacos are messy and immoderate, stuffed with slow-cooked pork (of course), their ripe corn still discernible through the sweet-sourness of muscovado sugar and cider vinegar, earthy little black beans and sludge of guacamole. Neatly sliding off the bone, baby back ribs come in a treacly, smoky marinade that's far less sloppy and badly behaved than their "just the way Elvis would have wanted" billing suggests. Sides, too, are devil-in-the-detail good: pecan-laced red cabbage coleslaw, lightly dressed; proper chips; chilli "crackling" that's as crunchy and puffy as chicharrones.

With all this going on, it's something of a jawdropper to come across a truly bad dish. On paper, Vietnamese belly salad ticks all the boxes. On the plate, it's a shocker: the pork so dry and tough, it's more like bark, the rice sodden, the long peelings of vegetables collapsing exhaustedly so that mooli looks like lardo (leading to an entertaining table game, Pig Or Plant?). There's more of the crackling flung on top. Flavours aren't Vietnamese-vibrant, but stagnant and muddy. I hoover up a serviceable eclair, spring's on-trend dessert, to take away the taste.

This aberration aside, Blackfoot is affordable fun. Affordable can often mean skimping on ingredient quality, but not here: producers include highly regarded, "welfare-friendly" Dingley Dell (a name that always leads me to imagine pigs being led to slaughter by fairies and elves). Even if I fret it might be the prototype for a rollout – both McEvedy and business partner Tom Ward helped launch "naturally fast food" chain Leon– it's still a corker. Or should that be porker?

• Blackfoot 46 Exmouth Market, London EC1, 020-7837 4384. Open Mon-Sat, noon-10.30pm. About £30 a head plus drinks and service.

Food 7/10
Atmosphere 6/10
Value for money 8/10.

Follow Marina on Twitter.

When Jay headed to the Wright Brothers' new outpost in Spitalfields, the last thing he expected was to catch crabs

8-9 Lamb Street, London E1 (020 7377 8706). Meal for two, with drinks and service: £110

A wet Wednesday lunchtime and I am making a life or death decision. On my say so, a creature will breathe its last. This isn't very different from most mealtimes. Usually when I order lunch something has to die. As far as the vegan community is concerned I am steeped deep in blood. I recognise the point of view. I believe that those of us who eat things with a face need to understand what this means. Accordingly I have worked in an abattoir; have heard the squeals of stuck pigs and dragged their bleeding corpses down the pig tank to be de-bristled. I have watched cattle take the bolt, pulled skins off the still-warm carcasses of lambs. I have literally had blood on my hands. It did not change my eating habits one bit.

Then again none of those animals ended up on my plate. They were proxies for those that have. Today is different. Today I am staring into a tank of water at a heap of fine Cornish brown crabs, very much still alive. I am trying to decide which one should be lunch. You don't have to do this at the new Spitalfield's outpost of the Wright Brothers seafood restaurant group, where the steel-blue tanks are the centrepiece. You could just sit with your back to them, airily order a whole crab and carry on your conversation without noticing the chap come round behind you with the bucket. Or Mister Death, as doubtless they call him in the steel tank.

But where's the fun in that? So, now I stand over the water and point at a good-sized crab. I would like to pretend I know what I'm looking for, but I don't. One of them has to go, and that one there is a nice shade of brown. Look, it's hardly Sophie's Choice. Perhaps it overheard me for, as the cook brings it up, the crab clings to a couple of its neighbours, like a legless teenager out on a Friday night. There are now three big crabs, interlinked, claw to leg, leg to claw. The cook tries to disentangle them, but as he prises open one claw, another slams shuts. With a forced laugh in my voice, I suggest my first choice has won the right to live. I choose a less clingy specimen from the corner.

I would like to say this was a "So what?" moment, but it wasn't. Not really. It was curiously intense. Of course, we've been able to do the same thing in Chinese restaurants for years. But those staff tend not to engage with you and the whole process is drained of moment. Spoil sports. If I'm going to kill my lunch I want eye contact, damn it.

And so to the big question: did this improve the experience of eating the crab? Yes, because it really was fresher and sweeter than any crab I have eaten before. It had that clean light fishiness, as of the air scrubbed clean by the ocean. The same applies to the rock oysters in the tank. They had more clarity and briskness to them, shucked straight from the water, even beneath a silky jalapeño dressing.

On the other hand: I did have to wait well over half an hour for the crab to turn up, which they didn't warn me about. But then perhaps such a process should never be quick. Certainly by the end of the wait all my qualms about choosing the one I was to eat had been replaced by hunger. Which means it didn't die in vain. Happily, this new Wright Brothers is a nice place to linger. The original in Borough is all clatter and elbow. The Soho outpost can feel a little slick. This one, tucked into the edge of Spitalfield's covered market, has a certain classiness to it. You could easily imagine mislaying an afternoon here on one of the banquettes with a bottle of prosecco.

It is dominated by a huge marble bar, its homage to the glorious Swan Oyster Depot in San Francisco, where men with arms like other people's legs spin shellfish across the bar as if shucking were industrial grade manual labour. Here, the waiters are a little too poised for that, but the bar is an impressive lump of glittering stone. Somehow it manages to avoid looking like a Stanmore bathroom. In short this is the restaurant Wright Brothers always wanted to be when it grew up.

There's some of that about the food, too. Crab croquettes are all brown meat with that rich seafood funk people who genuinely like fish hunger for. Stuffed olives are bafflingly large – think golf balls – but turn out to be a mixture of chopped olive, anchovy, lemon and parsley, formed into a ball and dropped in the deep-fat fryer. Pricing is uneven: £12 for a whole crab is OK; £41 for a whole lobster, less so; £7 for those crab croquettes feels within the bounds of London normal; the same, for just one scallop, feels enthusiastic. Though, to be fair, it is a glorious scallop, draped with a thin slice of lardo, the cured back fat of the pig just beginning to melt from the heat.

From the list of specials comes a pearly tranche of hake with a mess of buttery leeks and mushrooms. And then that cracked crab, no longer a moral dilemma, now just so much lunch. It comes with implements and a pot of mayonnaise. Stubbornly, Wright Brothers refuses to do chips. I'm not sure why – it's shamefully chippist. But at least they now go halfway there with a thick, salty, crisp potato galette. It does the job.

Dessert requires me to murder nothing but my resolve. There is a very good take on the rum baba, with a Grand Marnier syrup instead of rum and a cooling blanket of whipped cream. Another plate brings defiantly adult flavours: thin shards of dark chocolate-coated Florentine, nose down in a heap of cream whipped with custard, studded with sticky bits of candied grapefruit. It is bitter and sweet and full on. That one dessert defines the place. It is a serious seafood restaurant for people who really do like the stuff. The live crabs and lobsters in the tank are a statement of intent. It means business. So do you really have to choose which animal will die for you to get that full experience? No. But it probably helps.

Jay's news bites

■ For more serious man-on-seafood action, visit the classy ground-floor seafood bar at Richard Corrigan's Bentley's just off London's Piccadilly. There's a smart upstairs dining room, but I'm not quite sure why you would bother. Pull up a stool at the counter downstairs and watch chaps with scarred hands shuck oysters to order. It's not cheap. It's not even on nodding terms with cheap. But it is very good indeed (bentleys.org).

■ For those of us addicted to Vitamin P – that's P for pig – there's a new, must-buy American book available via import online. Bacon 24/Seven by Theresa Gilliam apparently contains every bacon recipe you could ever need including one for apple pie with bacon strudel and another for bacon baklava, plus a method for a bacon Manhattan. Boy, could I use one of those. Don't judge me.

■ Spare a thought for Harrow in north-west London: it's the site of the first in a new chain of Dunkin' Donuts. The US brand attempted to launch here in the 90s, but the reception was so underwhelming they pulled out. Now they're trying again. Poor Chelmsford will follow (dunkindonuts.co.uk).

Email Jay at jay.rayner@observer.co.uk. Follow Jay on Twitter @jayrayner1

Chef says he is 'erring on the side of extreme caution' after two diners and three staff were found to have winter vomiting bug

Food poisoning has a habit of repeating on you, as Heston Blumenthal– top chef and creator of original and expensive menus – has found to his cost.

Dinner, one of Britain's most exclusive eateries, in Knightsbridge, central London, has fallen foul of the same winter-vomiting bug that hit the chef's Fat Duck in Bray, Berkshire, five years ago.

Yesterday, Blumenthal closed Dinner for a week to ensure it was "completely safe and norovirus free" after five customers and staff were confirmed to have the highly contagious infection. In all, 10 customers had reported feeling unwell in recent days.

Environmental health officers have told staff at the two Michelin star restaurant to wash their hands more often, an embarrassing order for those preparing evening starters beginning at £12 and main courses ranging up to £42. A three-course set lunch in the restaurant at the Mandarin Oriental Hyde Park is a more economic £38.

Apologising to customers for their cancelled reservations, Blumenthal said: "We understand how contagious this winter flu bug can be and will take every precaution necessary to protect our guests."

The restaurant had first called in council officers after diners had said they felt ill but initial results of tests had proved negative, Blumenthal said. The restaurant was advised that the situation was contained and closure was not necessary. After "a six day period of quiet", said Blumenthal, another guest said they had felt unwell after dining and the restaurant had contacted officials once more. This time infections were confirmed.

Blumenthal had earlier told the Mail on Sunday: "We are in a unique position of having an insight into the behaviour of this bug and I will always err on the side of extreme caution. As the Who sang, 'I won't get fooled again'."

James Armitage, Westminster council's food safety manager, said: "Test results … have shown that there has been an outbreak of norovirus at the Dinner restaurant at the Mandarin Oriental hotel in Knightsbridge. The operators have now temporarily closed the restaurant and we believe this is the responsible thing to do."

Officials had already inspected the restaurant premises and working practices and "will continue to work closely with Public Health England and the restaurant operators until the restaurant is given the all-clear", said Armitage.

"We have already asked the restaurant to improve some of its hygiene procedures – including telling staff to wash their hands more often. All the changes were made immediately."

A spokeswoman for Blumenthal said staff who felt sick did not report for work and did not return to work for three days after symptoms cleared up.

Blumenthal's Fat Duck restaurant was hit by an outbreak involving at least 240 people in 2009. It was later said to be the worst norovirus contamination at a restaurant.

Paris is home to some of the world's finest – and priciest – restaurants. But a new breed of affordable places to eat means the budget traveller needn't feel hard done by. We pick 10 places where you can dine on excellent French cuisine for €20 a head

Eating on a budget in Paris often used to leave you feeling like the spectre at the feast, or rather sadly deprived of the city's gastronomic excellence. To be sure, there were always a few wallet-friendly French places where the food was better than average, plus some great ethnic options, but cheap eats rarely equated with seriously good food. Happily, a new generation of innovative restaurateurs are rebooting the French capital's offer for pennywise travellers, with food that's good enough even if you aren't counting your centimes. Oh, and in case you were wondering, Chartier, probably Paris's most famous budget restaurant, soldiers on as a place people go to get a meal for a tenner (euros, bien sur), just because you can.

Bistrot Victoires

Just a short walk from the Louvre, this cheerful bistro with a nostalgic decor worthy of a Parisian postcard (globe lights, frosted glass windows) is a local favourite for tasty Gallic grub such as steak frites (here served with a smouldering sprig of thyme), confit de canard (grilled preserved duck) or roast chicken. Skip a starter and share a dessert instead, maybe the tarte tatin or the profiteroles with lashings of hot chocolate sauce.
• 6 rue La Vrillière, 1st arrondissement, +33 1 42 61 43 78. Open daily for lunch and dinner, average two-course meal €20. Métro: Palais-Royal-Musee-du-Louvre, Pyramides or Sentier

Boco

At this clever mini-chain of three restaurants in the heart of Paris, five three-star chefs – including Anne-Sophie Pic, Régis Marcon, and Emmanuel Renaut – were recruited to create recipes for a selection of eat-in or takeaway starters, mains and desserts using mostly organic produce. Most dishes come in recyclable glass jars (bocal, pronounced "boco," is French for jar), and they run from Pic's starter of coddled egg with lentils and red onions, to Renaut's polenta lasagne with mushrooms and spinach, and Marcon's braised beef parmentier (shepherd's pie). Don't miss star pastry chef Philippe Conticini's black sesame cream and pistachio crumble for dessert. And note these are also great places to pick up a picnic.
• Boco Opéra, 3 rue Danielle Casanova, 1st arr, +33 1 42 61 17 67, boco.fr. Other branches at Bercy-Village and Saint-Lazare. Open Monday to Saturday for lunch and dinner, average three-course meal €20

Breizh Café

The Marais branch of an excellent crêperie from the seaside Breton town of Cancale, serves buckwheat galettes and crêpes made with top quality ingredients – organic wheat and buckwheat flour, farmhouse butter and Valrhona chocolate. The freshly shucked oysters here are a worthy splurge, or you can go right to one of their crispy-edged and neatly folded savoury galettes, maybe the Cancalaise, filled with smoked herring, crème fraîche and herring roe, or the complet, which comes with an egg, ham and cheese, and can be dressed up with extras like mushrooms or artichoke hearts. For dessert, follow the regulars with a salted caramel and vanilla ice-cream crêpe. Wash it all down with one of the 15 different artisanal ciders on offer.
• 109 rue Vieille du Temple, 3rd arr, +33 1 42 72 13 77, breizhcafe.com. Open all day Wednesday to Sunday, closed for three weeks in August, average €15. Métro: St-Sébastien-Froissart

La Cantine de la Cigale

Right in the heart of honky-tonk Pigalle, talented bistro chef Christian Etchebest's recently-opened restaurant offers excellent eats from south-west France at surprisingly affordable prices. It is ideal for those feeling weary after a tour of the local shops selling life-size dolls and fur-lined hand-cuffs, or, more decorously, on their way back from visiting the Sacre Coeur. Portions at this friendly place serving non-stop from 8am-2am are generous, so share a slice of the excellent pâté, then go for the sausage with white beans or cod in sauce vierge, and finish up with some Ossau-Iraty cheese from the Pyrenees with black-cherry jam or maybe a slice of mirabelle tart with almond cream.
• 124 boulevard Rochechouart, 18th arr, +33 1 55 79 10 10, cafelacigale.com. Open Monday to Saturday for breakfast, lunch and dinner, average two-course meal €20. Métro: Pigalle, Abbesses or Anver

L'Ilot

Though it's landlocked, Paris is one of the best cities in the world for seafood lovers, because it's well supplied from French ports on the Atlantic and the Mediterranean. Usually, a good French marine feast is expensive, but at this easygoing little place in the Marais, you can share a starter – maybe some taramasalata or half a crab, and then tuck into a dozen oysters or a plate of smoked fish without a major wound to your wallet.
• 4 rue de la Corderie, 3rd arr, +33 6 95 12 86 61, no website. Open Tuesday to Friday for lunch and dinner, Saturday dinner only, average two -course meal €20. Métro: Temple, République or Filles du Calvaire

Frenchie to Go

Chef Gregory Marchard's bistro Frenchie (he acquired the nickname when he was working for Jamie Oliver in London) in the Sentier, Paris's old garment district, is one of the hardest reservations in town to land, and beyond the reach of budget diners. You can still sample his wares, however, at this casual takeaway or eat-in shop with a moreish menu that runs to first-rate Reuben and pulled pork sandwiches, fish and chips, cheesecake, doughnuts and homemade ginger beer. They also serve breakfast all day long.
• 9 rue du Nil, 2nd arr, no phone, frenchietogo.com. Open Tuesday-Saturday 8am-6pm, with lunch from 12-4pm, breakfast served all day, average €15. Métro: Sentier or Strasbourg-Saint-Denis.

Le Petit Clerc

Just around the corner from the chic bistro La Fontaine de Mars, where the Obamas famously dined, Le Petit Clerc is its excellent-value sibling and ideal for a meal before or after a visit to the Eiffel Tower. Popular with the locals – so book – this place offers everything from croques (open sandwiches) to omelettes and well-garnished salads, making it relatively vegetarian friendly. There's a different hot dish served daily for €12.50, including roast veal on Tuesdays and roast chicken on Sundays, and steaks come with garnishes of a jacket potato and salad. You'll never feel like you're penny-pinching either when you can tuck into cheese from Marie-Anne Cantin, one of Paris's best-known fromagers, or sorbets and ice-cream from local legend Berthillon.
• 129 rue Saint-Dominique, 7th arr, +33 1 47 05 46 44, fontainedemars.com. Open daily for lunch and dinner, average two-course meal €20. Métro: École Militaire or Pont de l'Alma (RER C)

Le Richer

The 10th arrondissement, an old working-class district in the heart of Paris, is in a sweet spot right now. The recent influx of young creative Parisians has added some excellent bars and restaurants to the neighbourhood without gentrifying local businesses like African hair-grooming salons or Balkan groceries out of the mix. Le Richer, a popular cafe-bar-restaurant that's the annex of the popular L'Office bistro across the street, is one the best deals in the quartier, too. Sit at the bar and get a beautifully cooked main course – maybe braised beef cheeks with buttered cabbage, salsify and pears with a glass of red for €20. Or you could share a couple of starters – maybe trout tartare with cauliflower and tomato-citrus mousse and wild rabbit terrine – instead. Lunch is even cheaper and they also serve breakfast. Friendly service and a great crowd.
• 2 rue Richer, 9th arr, no phone, facebook page. Open daily 8am-1am, average lunch €15, average dinner main course €16. Métro: Cadet or Grands Boulevards

La Pointe du Groin

Escape the fast-food cluster around the Gare du Nord for a cheap and delicious meal at chef Thierry Breton's third restaurant; his Chez Michel and Chez Casimir, a few doors down, are among the better bistros in Paris, and you get the same quality here for a lot less money. The name refers both to a peninsula in Brittany and a pig's snout, the latter hinting at the menu, which runs to rustic barnyard eats like pig's snout with tapenade and oxtail with celery root puree. There are sandwiches, including a few vegetarian ones, made with Breton's baked-on-the-premises bread, for less adventurous eaters, and Breton desserts like a delectable chocolate kouign amann and far Breton, a thick flan with prunes, are not to be missed. The box wines served here do no harm and keep the prices down, too.
• 8 rue de Belzunce, 10th arr, no phone or website. Open all day Monday-Saturday, average €20. Métro: Gare du Nord or Poissonnière

A la Biche au Bois

Though this place tops out at the high-end of the €20 bracket without drinks (the price ceiling that defines budget eats in Paris these days), it's eminently worth the splurge as one of the last old-fashioned no-nonsense seriously good workaday bistros in Paris. If you need to stay in the shallow end of things, go for a main course – maybe venison with homemade potato puree, since this is one of the rare restaurants in Paris where game is still affordable, and a glass of red wine. If you can manage a little more, however, the €25.90 prix fixe menu comes with all sorts of goodness, from a very good steak with real (as opposed to frozen) chips and a lavish cheese course, to a stewed sanglier (wild boar) and freshly-made fruit tart. They also do a heart-warming range of old-fashioned bistro dishes, including coq au vin, and wines are reasonably priced, too. Always busy, so book.
• 45 avenue Ledru-Rollin, 12th arr, +33 1 43 43 34 38, no website. Open Tuesday to Friday for lunch and dinner, Monday dinner only, main courses from €17, prix fixe three-course meal €29.50. Métro: Gare de Lyon

• Paris-based Alexander Lobrano is the author of Hungry for France and Hungry for Paris.

A new exhibition highlights chefs' ideas about avoiding waste, including dishes such as mackerel scratchings and bin-end pilaff

• Chefs' recipes to beat food waste – in pictures

Waste is the most pressing problem in modern food (unless you don't have enough of it – but that's another post). Home cooks are endlessly lectured about cutting back the 30% of usable food we are said to throw away. The government-backed Wrap agency, with its Love Food, Hate Waste campaign, has been at the job for 14 years. Now the supermarkets are issuing their own finger-wagging advice (which is sort of hypocritical, because it is in food production and retail that most waste occurs). Tesco admitted recently that it throws away 30,000 tonnes of food a year – including a third of all the bags of salad it puts on sale.

At the restaurant level it is all rather different. For a start, food is a relatively minor expense compared with staff costs and premises. The more high-end restaurants make little, if any, money on their food; the profit is in alcohol. Good restaurants order ingredients according to what the bookings and experience dictates, and managers hold chefs to account if they have overdone the buying.

So avoiding waste becomes more of an issue of pride and morality – that, at least, is the attitude of five big-name chefs who have contributed ideas to a photo exhibition and conference being held in London this week by the Sustainable Restaurant Association and the Dutch embassy.

The results are dishes of ugly fish, wonky carrots as served at Grain Store, mackerel scratchings, prawn heads, cuttlefish testicles prized by chef Peter Weeden and some of the far extremities of farm animals. Wahaca's Thomasina Miers came up with dishes to make the most of Sunday roast leftovers, and Henry Dimbleby made a "bin-end pilaff".

Last month I watched two Michelin-starred Andrew Fairlie working in his kitchen at the Gleneagles hotel. "Using the whole beast is a great way to cook," he said, pulling out a bucket of pink pigs' tails. "It's cost effective. Buying local? Using the whole beast? It drives me mad when people boast about these things. Any self-respecting chef should be buying local and using as much of the animal as possible."

Fairlie cooked us his glorious "pig bits" signature dish. It is a celebration of the far ends of the animal, so often discarded in Britain, though not in more sensible places such as Thailand or China. On the plate you get a series of intriguing riffs – roulade of head, confited and smoked pork belly, crispy pig's tail, creamy boudin noir – served with crispy bacon, jus, tarragon mustard and caramelised apple. "We're using every bit of the pig except the bones."

This parade appears on the menu simply as assiette de porc. It has been a favourite since Fairlie opened his restaurant at Gleneagles 13 years ago, outselling every other main course. Over the years, the only change is that the medallion of pork loin was dropped. Customers wanted the odd bits.

In the kitchen, we watch Fairlie's chefs prepare the different elements of the dish. It is time-consuming. "Most of the expense is the labour," he says. But the ingredients are insanely cheap. Pig heads are just 50p each. The big bucket of pigs' tails were free from the supplier. From that bucket and six heads will come as many as 140 portions, the main part of a dish selling for more than £20. You'd have thought the economics of that might inspire a canny restaurateur – but, of course, there are some fine old-fashioned skills needed.

"The young chefs need to be taught. We had this young guy, 26 or so, he's worked in some great restaurants but this was the first time he'd seen a whole pig's head. He was so excited. Boning a pig's head is an amazing skill.

"Chefs have to understand the anatomy of the animal. It drives me nuts when you see people chucking the head of a beast away. Go to the farm, meet the farmer, see what he goes through. You wouldn't toss good food away again."

Campaigner and author Tristram Stuart sees tackling food waste as a global crusade. "We, the people, do have the power to stop the tragic waste of resources if we regard it as socially unacceptable to waste food."

He quotes the recent report by the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, which estimated that 30-50% of the 4bn tonnes of food produced globally each year never reaches a human stomach due to "poor practices in harvesting, storage and transportation, as well as market and consumer wastage". Even a partial solution would go a long way to solving the problem of feeding the nine billion people expected to inhabit the earth by 2050.

How to get started: ask your butcher for a pig's head and do this, with advice from St John's Fergus Henderson. Sourcing cuttlefish testicles may be a little harder.

A new exhibition offers some extreme ideas for reducing food waste, with chefs demonstrating how to make tasty meals from potentially unappetising ingredients ignored by other cooks

Splitting trotters, boning loins, removing ribs – how would a meat novice cope with a crash course in pork butchery?

• Five of the best butchery courses

This article is a preview from the February issue of Do Something, which is free with the Guardian this Saturday

I'm not much good with meat. I can carve a chicken, and that's about it. I did once butterfly a leg of lamb while watching a YouTube video of someone demonstrating the procedure, but the result was pretty untidy. I suppose if you didn't know it was a leg of lamb to start with, you might not have noticed.

To overcome my considerable ignorance of this branch of cookery, I've signed up for a hands-on evening class at the Ginger Pig butchers in London. I've chosen pork butchery, because I figure pork is the meat I know the least about. I rarely buy it from a butcher, because I hardly know what to ask for.

When I arrive at the Ginger Pig at 7pm, most of my classmates are already changing into smart butcher's coats. Some are newcomers, some veterans. "I did the beef course two years ago and there was a bit more of a gender balance," says one. Not tonight – we are, to a man, men. "There must be something about pork," he says.

To get an idea of how a pig is put together, we're going to take one apart – or half of one, at any rate. We are gathered round a long butcher's block on which a side of pork (about 35kg; I tried lifting it) is resting, inside up.

"Before we begin," says Perry, our instructor, "have we got any vegetarians here tonight?"

We start with some basics, for which I am always grateful. While beef and lamb benefit from a certain amount of ageing, pork does not – you want to buy it fresh and wet, as with fish. Generally speaking, the cuts from the front of the animal, where all the work gets done, reward slow cooking at lower temperatures. Toward the middle, things get a bit expensive. At the back end, you find mostly sausage meat.

After an obligatory safety speech ("Guys, knives are sharp, yeah?" says Perry), the pig is broken down into its constituent parts. This work is divided between Perry and any brave volunteer wishing to try their hand. This gives two distinct impressions of the craft. First, Perry makes splitting a trotter look easy – one whack with a cleaver, and it's in two neat halves. Then one of us steps in to make it look impossible.

As the cuts are separated, they are passed round. We are encouraged at every stage to get our hands on the meat, to feel its texture, smell it, see for ourselves how fat, sinew and bone are arranged. You don't get that from a YouTube video.

When the pig is disassembled, we are charged with putting it back together, like a puzzle, from the tail forward. I immediately grab the easiest parts I can reach, but when I try to fit them in they're either in the wrong place or the wrong way round. It's quite late on in life for me to discover I'm pork-blind.

Perry demonstrates how to chine a rib roast – that is, how to separate the section of spine running along its length, while leaving it partially attached for cooking. It's one of those techniques I could watch all day without really understanding it. Then he effortlessly bones and rolls a pork loin, tying it up with three neat butcher's knots. It doesn't matter if I don't understand this, because I'm about to have a go myself.

I'm given my own expanse of butcher's block, a sharp knife, a Kevlar glove to stop me cutting my fingers off, some string and a chunk of pork loin from the rib end. Scoring the fat is easy enough – you just have to make sure you don't cut all the way through to the meat. Removing the ribs is trickier: I have to feel my way through it slowly, keeping the knife as close to the bone as possible. It's incredibly satisfying when the ribs finally come away in one piece. The cut side is seasoned with garlic and ground fennel seed, then rolled and tied. This is the only part I'm good at: while others are struggling with their string, I'm finishing off my last knot with a flourish.

My loin is wrapped and weighed (it's nearly £40 worth of meat, I notice), and I am rewarded with a glass of wine. Then comes the food: slabs of perfectly cooked pork from the same cut we've just been operating on, and heaps of dauphinoise potatoes piled on to plates.

"There's no salad," says Perry. "You don't want salad, do you?"

We don't want salad. We eat standing up, still in our coats, until we can eat no more. If this be butchery, sign me up as an apprentice.

• The Ginger Pig's pork butchery class is conducted at their Moxon Street shop in London. Classes last three and a half hours, and cost £135, wine and supper (no salad) included

'The whole thing is outrageously lovely, the stuff of sticky dreams and abandoned diets'

The small, black, cast-iron baking tray and its contents look innocuous enough. Glossy liquid laps around the sides of the corn bread – for it's that most pedestrian of items – but by the time we cut into the loaf seconds later, the liquid has been slurped up. It's butter, melted, slightly sweetened (with honey, I think). With the help of the roasting-hot metal tray, it gives the bread nutty, caramelised edges and the most seductive exterior crispness. The cornmeal is slightly coarse, so the texture is squidgy-crunchy, oozing with that butter. The whole thing is outrageously lovely, the stuff of sticky dreams and abandoned diets, and the desire immediately to order another to replace the one that's mysteriously disappeared in seconds.

That chef Brad McDonald takes such care with a side dish is enough to make me all a-quiver. The Lockhart has been around a while, concentrating on a more familiar-to-us iteration of "American" food: I have fond memories of its mac'n'cheese and lobster nachos. But new recruit McDonald comes with more serious credentials: born in Mississippi – hence the new deep south-influenced menu – and draped in plaudits from a couple of NYC hotspots. So far, I haven't managed to try gumbo in its native Louisiana, but I've eaten McDonald's duck and fingerling potato hash at his former gaff, Colonie in Brooklyn Heights, and I'd say the two American couples who own Lockhart are very clever to have lured him to Marylebone.

His cooking is thrilling: there's a gumbo made from smoked mallard that makes full, palate-flooding use of the wild duck's moody flavours. The rice is Carolina Gold, an unusual new-crop grain with a clean, delicate flavour that acts as a sponge for the meaty roux. There's thickness from okra, a vegetable I loathe but almost welcome here, cubes of confit meat and a little allium crunch from spring onion. Something described brusquely as "liver and onions" turns out to be a chicken liver mousse of such airy lightness, it almost floats off the spoon, the onions a blob of intense jelly, dark and rich as molasses. It's as sophisticated as the best bitter chocolate.

After the gloop I endured at Jackson + Rye, I'm reluctant to order shrimp and grits, but feel I should, for the comparison. There isn't any: these are a different beast altogether, the grits creamy and smooth and ripe with good cheddar, the prawns bouncing about with a party of woodland mushrooms, chunks of crisp bacon and an afterglow of heat. And venison – no, wait, honest, the Appalachians are big on berry-fed deer – comes with red-eye gravy, made from the pan-scrapings of fried bacon with an alluringly murky note: coffee, or tannic red wine, or both. There's apple for lightness. The British meat is rosy velvet, the sauce the closest this place gets to the US "dirty" style, but if you can do bacon dripping with a light touch, they've managed it.

I don't hold with deconstructed desserts, but "lemon meringue pie" that turns up as a scoop of vibrant, custard-thick lemon ice-cream, buttery "graham cracker" crumbs and a ring of toasted Italian meringue as blowsy as a Scottish teacake is enough to make me hold my tongue. "Calas", little fried beignets, lightened with cooked rice and more usually seen on New Orleans breakfast tables, are ambrosial. They're dusted with fennel pollen – such a Brooklyn ingredient, that.

This is all just great. But I wish the restaurant itself were a little more user-friendly. I don't mean the staff, who are brilliant, but the layout – some tables appear to be (brrr…) communal; some, with high, padded seat-backs, are almost part of the kitchen; others, such as ours, are marooned in the middle of the wide space, leaving us feeling chilly and exposed. It wouldn't take much – a booth or two, a little reorganisation – to imbue the space with the same warmth we're getting from the food. But that's just shallow of me. And, like McDonald's cooking, it seems it pays to go deep.

• The Lockhart22-24 Seymour Place, London W1, 020-3011 5400. Open Tues-Sat, noon-2pm, 6-10pm. About £35 for three courses, plus drinks and service.

Food 8/10
Atmosphere 6/10
Value for money 7/10

Follow Marina on Twitter.

Has the Marriott Hotel taken a wrong turning? Its senseless street food concept leads diners up a blind alley

The Marriott Hotel, 140 Park Lane, London W1 (020 7647 5664). Meal for two, including drinks and service: £100

Here is a lesson in impotence. It doesn't matter how often I bang on self-importantly in this column about how much I hate menu concepts, how they make me want to stab forks into soft body parts. It doesn't matter if I keep repeating myself. I will still be ignored. They just don't care, these people. And so it is that within minutes of being seated at Lanes of London in the Marriott Hotel by Marble Arch we are approached by a waitress who makes "suited and booted" look like part of her job description, and she says: "Can I explain the concept of our menu, today?" Oh God. Clearly it's not: here's a list of dishes, you choose, we bring.

Oh well. I suppose you want to know what that concept is. The Marriott has noticed that street food is now a Thing; that the capital's roads are clogged with reconditioned campervans knocking out stuff that makes sauce dribble down your forearms, some of which is great and a lot of which is stuff in a bap flogged for £6.50. The Marriotts – I want them to sound like an awful dysfunctional couple you once invited round for dinner by mistake – have clearly decided that the only thing wrong with street food is the street bit. Very breezy, streets.

Far better to bring it all inside a room with blaring Now That's What I Call music, windows that appear to have UPVC double-glazing, and bogs that are a country mile's walk away through the Minotaur's labyrinth of a tourist hotel. Hence the menu is divided up between Brick Lane for Indian food, Kingsland Road for Vietnamese, Edgware Road for the Middle East and Portobello Road for burgers and fried chicken because that's all they eat there, poor souls.

There's also a list of haute pub meat dishes, another of fish and a lazy attempt to fob off vegetarians.

As exercises in missing the point go, they don't come much better. The Marriotts haven't just missed the point. They've studied the point, taken a few notes, turned away from it, gone on a long country walk, ended up in a pub, got drunk and woken up in their clothes the next morning with scribbles on scraps of paper from which they have cobbled together a menu.

It's not that all the cooking is truly awful (though some of it re-defines the word). It is more that it presents the opportunity to create a meal that makes no sense whatsoever. It's discord fashioned from calories; it's dinner as curated by Stockhausen. Still, at least I now know that Vietnam's pho does not go with an Indian butter chicken. And none of it goes with a limp fattoush salad. No single kitchen can be fluent in all these traditions.

Vietnamese food is not something you can just turn your hand to, like crochet or housebreaking, as their pho proves. It should be a deep bowl of nourishing broth and noodles and beef. Here it comes in small bowls with two tiny, limp pieces of beef sliced as thinly as tissue paper. The beef stock should have a deep, rich flavour. This just makes us mutter about Bovril and think about how good pho on Hackney's Kingsland Road really is.

We then have a long wait. Silly street-food vans with their almost instantaneous service. They don't have leather banquettes for you to sit on so you can study the wine list with its opening price of £28 a bottle while you wait. Eventually our fattoush salad arrives, with not enough deep-fried pitta bread in it and no hit of zesty sumac. Eating this literally three minutes' walk from the Edgware Road while mouthing the word "Why?" with my mouthful, is an experience that will stay with me.

To be fair the butter chicken from the Brick Lane list is bang on. It's as appallingly over-sweetened and claggy as any version you could find on Brick Lane, where the curries are uniformly dire. Think chicken in tomato soup. The rice is curiously wet, the breads far better. Deep-fried onion rings taste of last week's oil. And whoever wants to dip one in a Marie Rose sauce? I mean it. Who?

There are bizarre inconsistencies. From the "meat" list, devilled kidneys brings deftly prepared offal, still viscera-pink inside, seared outside. I can't find fault with their cooking. The sauce, however, is bizarre. It tastes of sticky demi-glace and red wine. There's no punch from cayenne pepper at all. They are called devilled for a reason; the cayenne isn't optional.

The Portobello Road section offers the greatest high and the lowest low. The latter is a piece of fried chicken, coated in a bright orange breadcrumb case that flakes off like scabs to reveal pallid-skinned hen underneath. It looks like a boulder that has been badly coloured in by a child. It may be half a very small bird. It's hard to tell. Either way the £12 price tag is outrageous. The honey and sesame dressing next to it tastes of sugar, vinegar and low self-esteem.

But then come their sliders, which are glorious and make me hum happily to myself. They are made from braised brisket, reformed and seared and dressed with a little veal jus, and perched inside tiny brioche buns. Alongside is a pot of pokey horseradish cream plus two hunks of roasted bone, the slippery beads of marrow within topped with breadcrumbs. For £7.90 it's also good value. It's when we eat these that it becomes obvious there are people in this kitchen who can cook, as long as it's from their natural repertoire. Instead they have been smothered by a bloody concept. Did I mention how much I hate concepts?

The kitchen's skills become even more obvious at dessert. Poor Knights of Windsor sounds like a rowdy bunch of mercenaries from Game of Thrones. It brings crisp-fried eggy bread with honey-glazed apples, a Calvados ice cream and a jug of custard. Jammy dodgers served in their own cutesy tin are shamelessly crumbly shortbread biscuits sandwiching strawberry mousse with, on the side, a glass of chilled strawberry liquor. These desserts almost banish the memory of the strangeness that has gone before. But not quite.

It's pleasing to imagine the Marriotts might eventually come to their senses. The problem is they've embossed the name of the restaurant into the front step in brass. They came up with a concept. And now they're stuck with it.

Jay's news bites

■ For proper devilled kidneys, head to the Farmcafé on the A12 at Marlesford. It's essentially a roadside caff, but one that takes its food very seriously, especially when it comes to breakfast items. Then again the pickings round here – Suffolk is famous for both its pork and smoked products – are rich indeed. The full breakfast costs £6.90 – kidneys extra – but will set you up for the day. Afterwards you can browse the farm shop next door (farmcafe.co.uk).

■ I try lots of new products. Few have made me widen my eyes in appreciation more than cock scratchings made by a young chap called Ed Jones: deep-fried chicken skin, salt, pepper and that's it. Well what did you think they'd be? They're available at the dozen or so branches of the independent bar chain Brewdog (brewdog.com).

■ Closure news: serial restaurant entrepreneur Alan Yau has shuttered his rather odd pan-Asian café Naamyaa in Islington, London. No matter. He has new places opening this year including a "Chinese gastro pub" encouragingly named Duck and Rice.

Email Jay at jay.rayner@observer.co.uk. Follow Jay on Twitter @jayrayner1

Tipped workers in the US make $2.13 an hour as base pay. The very people who feed us often can't feed themselves

Today is 13 February. For millions of Americans, it's an especially important day. Across the country, advocates are organizing, rallying, and speaking out in support of raising the US tipped minimum wage of $2.13.

Yes, you read that right. Tipped workers include parking lot attendants, bellhops, baggage porters, manicurists, and barbers. They also include many people in the restaurant industry – waiters, waitresses, and food deliverers. They haven't seen a raise since 1991.

For decades, tipped workers received roughly 50% of the federal minimum wage. But in 1996, Congress abandoned the 50% rule, and raised the minimum wage without increasing compensation for tipped workers. Nearly 20 years later, the minimum wage has risen to $7.25, while the tipped wage has remained frozen at $2.13.

The disparity is even more stark now that President Obama has signed an executive order making the wage for federal contract workers $10.10 an hour. That means the people who work in the cafeterias and concessions stands of America's federal buildings and parks will soon get a nice raise.

Workers who rely on gratuity have been pushed to the brink. Restaurant employees use food stamps at twice the rate of the general US workforce, and are three times more likely to live below the poverty line. In real terms, $2.13 in 1991 is worth $1.24 today.

Women have been disproportionately affected. Women constitute nearly two-thirds of all tipped workers, and 70% of restaurant servers. Many are adult mothers, who don't make enough to support themselves, let alone a family.

In theory, tips are supposed to make these employees whole. But that often doesn't happen. For starters, many Americans don't know who to tip. Food deliverers and wheelchair attendants at airports, for example, make $2.13 an hour but often receive only a pittance in gratuity.

Tips also fluctuate widely. This is especially true in the restaurant industry, where weather, time of day, geography, and general economic trends are all important. On a snowy day in an economic downturn, there might be no tips to count. This lack of predictability puts workers in an impossible position. How can they pay fixed monthly expenses, when their income is so uncertain?

In the event that tips are lacking, employers are required to top-off wages so that they reach the federal minimum of $7.25. But that, too, doesn't always happen. Many employees don't know their rights, or are afraid to exercise them. Low-wage workers – many of whom live paycheck to paycheck – sometimes choose silence rather than claiming what's rightfully theirs.

There's also the prospect of employer misconduct. Indeed, stories of employers stealing tips, and lawsuits alleging wage theft, are legion. In one famous report, the New York State Department of Labor audited a random sample of car washes, and found tip abuse at 21% of car washes statewide (pdf).

The Fair Minimum Wage Act of 2013 would gradually increase the minimum wage to $10.10, and the tipped wage to 70% of the full minimum wage. Both amounts would then rise annually with inflation. This badly needed legislation would help restore dignity and value to a vital component of America's workforce.

Critics argue that increasing the tipped wage would hurt employment and small businesses. However, many states have independently raised the tipped wage, and not seen a concomitant loss in business. California, for example, has a universal minimum wage of $8, and its restaurant scene has flourished.

Moreover, in the most comprehensive study to date (pdf), a group of economists analyzed 16 years of data, and compared counties where the minimum wage increased to neighboring counties where it didn't. They found no negative impact on employment. Studies that have focused exclusively on the restaurant industry have reached a similar result.

Some economists have even suggested that a wage increase would stimulate business. They contend that raising the wage would increase worker productivity, reduce employee turnover, and add money to the economy.

The plight of tipped workers has an all too familiar explanation: special interest politics. The National Restaurant Association, the "other NRA", employs nearly 1 in 10 Americans, and spends millions safeguarding its members' profits. It has strong ties to both political parties, and is largely responsible for the continued erosion of the tipped minimum wage. But behind the money and rhetoric lies a shameful reality: the very people who feed us, often can't feed themselves.

'If I could clone Sticky Walnut, I would. I'd plonk its like the length of the land, replacing every Frankie & Benny's and La Tasca and Café bloody Rouge'

I have no time for people who slag off Twitter, chaps who intone, as David Cameron did, that "Twitter is for twats", fancying this to be exquisite wit. Me, I love it. Apart from the odd salvo of abuse from keyboard warriors – usually "your writings crap", swiftly followed by "are u single?" – it has been nothing but a blessing, a rich source of info that I'd never otherwise have unearthed, especially the discovery of restaurants not trailed by big PR budgets.

Sticky Walnut in Hoole came to my attention not via its swaths of slavering local reviews, but by its chef/owner Gary Usher's gung-ho way with a tweet. His, um, robust ripostes to the kind of numpty who likes to say "the lady wife and I" on Tripadvisor quickly went viral among industry types, and I remember tweeting "Like his style". The response was an unexpected one: "Please don't travel to eat here," he typed, "it's just a bistro"; and "we are not worth 400 mile trip".

Well, bubba, sorry, but that's the reddest of rags to this here Taurean. So hello there, Gary. *waves * Turns out I love your restaurant, sorry, bistro. I love its informality and warmth, the friendly butcher's-aproned staff and the walls covered with menus and the bookshelves lined with cookery books and the rickety wooden tables and chairs. I love that the wine we order is one we last enjoyed in swanky Forte dei Marmi. And, yes, I love the food, from the cushiony, oily herb focaccia to the lemon tart whose progress Usher tweets like a proud papa: it's exactly the sort of thing you'd like to eat any day of the week, any time of the day.

There are sticky walnuts – of course – candied and served with beetroot that tastes as though it has been slowly confit-ed, a sultry Lollobrigida of a root; crunch comes from toasted pumpkin seeds and delicacy from little puffs of fresh ricotta. The dish is nothing new, nothing to make one gasp and stretch one's eyes, but it's beautiful. At the risk of coming over a bit Partridge, the chicken liver pâté is textbook. They're not afraid of a cheap cut or a dod of offal: lamb's tongue is crumbed, fried until crisp and split to reveal its rosy, liverish interior, the gaminess piqued by chermoula and soothed by goat's curd and a smoky chickpea puree.

Everyone is doing truffle and parmesan chips. (I think it was Jamie who started it, and Usher has worked in Jamie's Italian, as well as the altogether more luminous Chez Bruce: you can detect both their influences – Oliver's knockabout brio and Poole's virtuoso technique.) These are wonderful: dark-crusted, as if fried in animal fat, the interior fluffy and truffly – workaday luxury. They come with slow-cooked, sapid, sticky beef shin that's almost too intensely beefy until you scoop it up with a dollop of mollifying white onion puree. But the clincher is pork, the sweetest cheeks I've eaten, fat melted through for almost spoonable meat. It's nudged by little butternut croquettes, bonbons of deep-fried pleasure; scattered on top, a minuscule dice of apple, nut and dried fruit with a bracing acidity – cider vinegar, perhaps. There's fillet, too, served medium-rare, a bravery permitted by the quality of the pig. Where does it come from? Our lovely server goes off to ask chef. The answer: "The butcher round the corner."

If I could clone Sticky Walnut, I would. I'd plonk its like the length of the land, replacing every Frankie & Benny's and La Tasca and Café bloody Rouge. I'm beyond glad I ignored Usher's instruction to stay away. But I can understand why he wouldn't want the likes of me sticking my nose in, trailing a wake of metropolitan plate-sniffing "foodies" all ready to be underwhelmed, all peering in local estate agents', muttering, "They call it Notting Hoole, you know?" and disenfranchising the current happy, normal clientele. Sorry, Gary. Couldn't help myself. Tweet me, yeah?

• Sticky Walnut 11 Charles Street, Hoole, Chester, Cheshire, 01244 400400. Open lunch, Mon-Sun, noon-3pm (2pm Fri and Sat), dinner Mon-Sat, 6-10pm. About £35 a head for three courses plus drinks and service.

Food 8/10
Atmosphere 7/10
Value for money 8/10

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At the Gunton Arms they cook hunks of meat above a roaring fire… It makes Jay want to rip his shirt off and howl

Cromer Road, Norfolk (01263 832 010). Meal for two including drinks and service: £120

The Gunton Arms, not far from Cromer in Norfolk, has an Elk Room. In the Elk Room is a vast open fireplace with, above it, the skull of an ancient elk with huge flat antlers like the sails of some battered old yawl. Beneath the skull, flames leap and lick in the brick-reinforced fireplace and smoke dances, pressing itself against the underside of a thick slab of steel. On top of the superheated metal they cook meat. Lumps of prime rib, a few inches thick, the brilliant colour of the outflow from a severed artery, are oiled and salted and seared.

If ever there was a room crying out for the use of exclamation marks, it is this one: Elk! Fire! Smoke! MEAT! There is an overt, comedy maleness to the whole thing. Excuse me while I rip off my shirt, daub myself in ash and beef fat and indulge in a little primal screaming. What else should I do while I await this lunch? Certainly it's worth waiting for – the Gunton Arms is there to feed you. It's the kind of place where, having eaten, you crave a lie-down.

But not everything is quite as it seems. Oh, sure it plays the part of country pub. The heavy lump of old pebble-dashed building sits on the very edge of a rolling deer park. You have to go through the metal perimeter fence to reach it. It's all but impossible not to stand on the grassland and just stare out at the sizable herd of fallow deer that are farmed on the estate, striding about in the distance against a winter sky like soured milk.

Inside, the rooms are knowingly scuffed. Men – proper grown-up ones, who might talk soon of knee replacements and prostate issues – play pool, pints of frothy ale perched on the edge of the table. It's all very country pub. Until you walk into one of the dining rooms where is hung a neon sign in a handwritten font that reads: "I said don't practise on me". There is another that reads "Trust me". I have seen something like this before. They are by Tracey Emin. Out by the loos there is a Gilbert and George. And look, here are a couple of the butterfly paintings by Damien Hirst. (Apparently in the women's there's one of his spot paintings.) Back in the Elk Room there are glorious pen-and-inks by Paula Rego of women in various states of booze-inflicted disarray; vomiting never looked so artful. There is one of Julian Opie's cartoonish portraits, the chap's pupils like full stops. And then there is the oil by Jonathan Yeo which seems to be just curling leaves until you look closer. "Lots of lady parts and boy parts," says Simone, who runs front of house, pointing out the images of genitals curled into the foliage. "The young farmers do like that one. And the old ladies think it's just leaves."

I do a little maths. The art on the walls and around the building – there is a piece by the sculptor Anthony Caro in the garden – is worth more than the building itself. At least it wears all this lightly, or as lightly as you can wear a couple of tonnes of red-painted steel by Caro. It is just a pub. With a Saatchi's worth of art.

And so to the explanation: the pub is owned by art dealer Ivor Braka. He's a friend of the chef Mark Hix, long known for his involvement in the British art world. When Braka bought the pub he approached Hix for advice on what to do with it. Hence the former head chef of the original Hix Oyster and Chop House in London, Stuart Tattersall, is installed here, bringing the flavours of Farringdon to the Norfolk countryside.

Or perhaps, to be more accurate, returning the flavours of the countryside whence they came, for there has always been something self-consciously farmyard about the cooking of the Hix empire, as if a bunch of urbanites nipped across the M25 one night and swiped the lot. It's all animal fats and largesse and appetite. So, of course, there is pork crackling with Bramley apple sauce on the menu (as there usually is at a Hix restaurant) only here it arrives properly hot and thick, the muffin top of salty fat under the crisped skin melting on your tongue. The portion is huge for £2.50.

After last week's disappointing devilled kidneys experience, the opportunity to have devilled venison kidneys from the specials menu is irresistible. Here, on a deer park, they will never want for deer offal. I have no idea whether deer wee is especially unique, but I can say that the organs which do the filtering of it are; they have an uncommon richness and creaminess, even when slightly overcooked. The sauce is dark and sticky and fiery and right. By contrast a single fried duck egg with nutty brown shrimps, sea vegetables and a squeeze of lemon juice brings sunlight to the table.

And then the beef, which we watch being seared and then rested and then sliced so that the rosy muscle unfolds like the pages of a good book. There are goose-fat roasted potatoes with crisped, golden, crenelated edges and the seriousness that only lubrication with animal grease can offer. There is a huge jug of frothy béarnaise. The rib of beef for two costs £60. Except it would easily feed three. We have beef left over. I have failed this test of maleness. I am boy; hear me squeak. We get them to make it into a sandwich to take away. There are roasted root vegetables the colour of gnarled logs and sprout tops with shards of bacon. Could you cook all this at home? Sure, if you had an Elk Room with a huge bloody fireplace and a massive elk skull over the top. Which you don't.

For dessert we have Eccles cakes of crisp, sugared pastry with the massively sweet hit of currants alongside the salty punch of the Norfolk hard cheese, Dapple. There is a thick-set posset flavoured with the fruity tones of sea buckthorn. As a man of appetite I conclude the real art has been not on the walls today but on the table before me.

We drink a reasonably priced carafe of chenin blanc, admire the art some more and, as the sunlight drains out of the broad Norfolk skies, slip gently into a meat stupor. I want to go back to the Gunton Arms. I want to go back soon.

Jay's news bites

■ The Harwood Arms in Fulham, London, a collaboration between Brett Graham of the Ledbury and Mike Robinson of the Pot Kiln in Berkshire, has described itself as a country pub in the city. It may have won a Michelin star, but its approach is anything but prissy. It is the place for ox tongue braised in stout, or belted Galloway beef with creamed potatoes. And don't miss out on their doughnuts (harwoodarms.com).

■ The best excuse for drinking beer yet: the Two Fingers Brewing Company has been founded to raise funds for research into prostate cancer, which kills one man in the UK every hour. All profits from its first beer, a 4.8% golden ale called Aurelio, will go to the charity Prostate Cancer UK. Aurelio is available at 200 Tesco stores nationwide and each purchase will raise 10p for the cause (twofingersbrewing.co).

■ Good news for sweet-toothed vegetarians. A new company, Freedom Mallows, has launched animal-gelatine-free marshmallows, using a binding agent from lilypads. Available online from freedommallows.com.

Email Jay at jay.rayner@observer.co.uk or visit theguardian.com/profile/jayrayner for all his reviews in one place. Follow Jay on Twitter @jayrayner1

A whisky-themed pub with rooms offers stunning views, a great location for walkers and fishermen, and fine if unadventurous local food. But it's the drams that make it particularly memorable

Speyside is whisky country: a land steeped in Uisghe Beatha, or Water of Life, and generously sprinkled with more than 50 distilleries – so where better to stumble after a dram or two than a whisky bar with rooms?

The Mash Tun in Aberlour, a pretty, low-slung village on the banks of the Spey, is a quirky, ship-shape – literally – little pub designed by a marine architect for sea captain James Campbell in 1896. It was originally called the Station Bar but, after the Strathspey Railway closed in 1965, the name was changed. The new name is just as fitting, however: a mash tun is a giant vat (up to eight metres wide) used to mix malted barley, water and yeast. The floor of the bar, and the cosy bar itself, are made from old wooden "washback" vessels, also part of the whisky-making process. Mark and Karen Braidwood bought the pub 10 years ago and converted five upstairs rooms into whisky-themed, but not gimmicky, B&B accommodation.

Karen led us up the steep, wood-panelled stairs to our room, The Macallan, in the eaves. A snug twin with iron bedsteads, sheepskin rug and whisky memorabilia including a Macallan-branded mirror, it also has stunning views of the Spey.

Britain's fastest-flowing river is popular with anglers (it's a top salmon beat) and kayakers. This makes the Tun a handy and picturesque base for fishing, for walking the Speyside Way, and for the Malt Whisky Trail, a tourist route linking nine distilleries and the Speyside Cooperage (where they make the barrels). Aberlour also has its own distillery, and is home to Walkers Shortbread.

I sneaked a peek at the other rooms. The Glenfarclas and the Glenfiddich are manly doubles, with strong colours and chunky wooden furniture; the Aberlour suite can be used as a family room; most popular is the Glenlivet, with its romantic wrought-iron bed, luxurious roll-top bath, and sweeping views of the river.

We headed straight back down to the bar, with its beams and burgundy banquettes, for dinner. The menu flags up fresh, seasonal local produce. Scottish staples of smoked salmon and Aberdeen Angus steak with chunky chips, grilled tomatoes and pepper sauce were simple and straightforward.

The whisky, however, is a cut above. There are more than 100 single malts and blends, including the exclusive Glenfarclas Family Casks, a collection of 46 single-cask whiskies, kept in a glass cabinet by the bar, one for each year from 1952 to 1997. The price for a 35ml dram of the 1952 is an eye-popping £224.25. "The only year we've yet to uncork is 1956," Karen told me. Maybe in 2016 someone will crack it open…

I went local with the 18-year-old Aberlour, made half a mile away. Slightly oaky on the nose, it tasted zesty and spicy, with a nutmeggy finish. It was long, rich and warming – perfect for an icy winter's night.

• Accommodation was provided by The Mash Tun