I have never eaten in a Michelin-starred restaurant before. I kinda imaged you would need to buy chips on the way home after eating all those insubstantial little towers of food from oversized white plates. My other-half, bless her, bought me the best surprise birthday present – lunch in the Northcote Manor. When you get past the fact you could feed a smallish family for a whole week for the price of lunch here, it’s actually very good value. They are known for celebrating British cuisine, but perhaps more accurately they are able to capture the essential flavours of home-grown British produce and then turn the flavour amplifier up to eleven. It’s just so refreshing to eat somewhere where you know that you couldn’t have sourced or cooked a single ingredient on the plate as well as they do. Best of all though, you actually don’t need chips on the way home.

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