West
Jan Ostle
Chef and co-owner of Wilson’s Restaurant, Bristol
After work, I often go to Easton Grill House (Stapleton Rd) in Bristol for a shish kebab with bread and a salad. It grills amazing meats over fire – the spicy lamb kebab is delicious. Just off the M32, there’s a massive Chinese restaurant called Dragon’s Delicacy (Eastgate Rd) with lots of gold and mirrors and murals of dragons, which is right up my street. I go at lunchtime for dim sum and that’s me set up for the day. The burger from Milk Bun (25 The Mall) is really delicious. And on Sunday nights I go to The Clifton pub (16 Regent St). It does a 20%-off industry night serving small plates using up leftovers from the week.
Paul Ainsworth
Chef-owner of No.6 and Caffé Rojano, Padstow, and The Mariners, Rock
The Golden Lion (19 Lanadwell St) is the quintessential Padstow pub that does a great roast dinner on a Sunday and very good fish and chips during the week. A guy called Lewis Cole has converted an old horse trailer into a wood-fired pizza oven called Wildbake. Me and my family visit him whenever he comes through Wadebridge. Strong Adolfos (St Breock, Wadebridge) does great coffee and a fantastic roast chicken sandwich with lemon and tarragon mayonnaise. It’s just a cool place. My daughter loves The Clementine Cakery (1 Trevanson St, Wadebridge) for beautifully made cupcakes and brownies. It’s one of those places that makes you feel good before you’ve even ordered.
Dan Cox
Chef-owner of Crocadon, Saltash
Kyowa (58 Ebrington St) is a sushi and ramen bar in Plymouth. It’s a super-small place, just a few seats, but it does great ramen and sushi – try the soft-shell crab. The gyoza is pan-fried so they’re all stuck together with a lacy, crispy batter. I always look forward to going there with friends or for a date night. Also in Plymouth, Zephyr (8 Drake Circus) does an excellent smashburger and french fries. The burgers are pretty special, with proper aged-beef patties. For breakfast or lunch, Gorse Bakery (7-8 Lanteague Studios, Scotland Rd, Newquay) is cool. It does incredible pastries and bread and there’s always a queue out the door. It’s one of the best bakeries in Cornwall.
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Midlands
Aktar Islam
Chef-owner of Opheem, Birmingham
Soi 1268 (1268 Pershore Rd, Stirchley) started out as a Thai street-food stall and now it’s a lovely little restaurant. The spicy chicken panang is exceptional, and my partner loves its beef massaman. The flavours are very reminiscent of what you get in Thailand. The fried chicken at Bonehead (8 Lower Severn St) is simple but fantastic. Tropea (27 Lordswood Rd, Harborne) is a small-plates Italian restaurant that’s great value for money. Last time I went, I had courgette flowers filled with ricotta, followed by pasta with ragu. Imagine someone’s living room turned into a Malaysian restaurant and that’s Kopitiam (21 Augusta St). It’s not glamorous but the flavours are punchy and the food has real soul – it does an incredible rendang.
Dorian Kirk and Rupert Davidson
Chef-directors of A Rule of Tum, Worcester & Hereford
Waylands Yard (6 Foregate St) is a brunch place in Worcester that does really good coffee (it has its own roastery) and classic breakfast stuff: hash browns, Turkish eggs with chilli butter. The Paul Pry (6 The Butts) is a small pub that does a cracking Sunday lunch – you can get pork belly with all the trimmings for £17. Our team absolutely love it, they go most Sundays. Daphne’s (53 High St) in Presteigne is amazing for pizza. It’s a tiny, family-run place with a small menu, just three or four pizzas using lots of foraged ingredients. The Bull’s Head in Craswall is the most beautiful pub with big hearth fires and sensational bar snacks – welsh rarebit croquettes, homemade charcuterie – to go with local beers. It’s a great place to end up after a walk in the Black Mountains.
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North
Frances Atkins
Chef and co-owner of Paradise Café at Daleside Nurseries, Harrogate
In Harrogate, chef Bethany Haresign has created a super little restaurant called The Wild Plum (34-36 Hookstone Rd) over her mother’s shop. It’s extremely creative and frightfully popular, with great long queues every day. She’s doing dishes such as crispy beef with chilli sauce and Asian slaw. These are fabulous with a glass of wine and don’t rock the boat as far as price is concerned. Also in Harrogate there’s an Italian called Pranzo (31-37 Cold Bath Rd) that serves very good homemade pasta – I’m a big fan of its tortellini. Another new place that’s really swinging is Jesper’s (71 Station Parade), where you can get really nice Mediterranean-influenced dishes. Think lamb kofta, Greek salads and pan-fried sea bass.
Luke French
Chef and co-owner of Jöro, Sheffield
Butta La Pasta (280 London Rd) is a tiny Sheffield restaurant where the pasta is made from scratch. You can get three courses for under £25. Last time I went, I had butternut squash and gorgonzola tortellini and it was absolutely banging. The food at The Orange Bird (78 Middlewood Rd) is South African-inspired with unique flavours. It cooks everything over a charcoal grill: I had a dirty burger served with interesting pickles in a fermented potato bun. Lemongrass Thai Street Food in the Moor Market (77 The Moor) serves super-authentic Thai food. The noodle dishes are absolutely great, with loads of fish sauce, chillies and garlic. Every Sunday, I go to Crumb Bakery (992 Abbeydale Rd) for pastries and I’ll order a focaccia sandwich with mortadella and rocket pesto to go. It’s just fantastic.
Gary Usher
Chef-owner of Sticky Walnut, Chester, and Hispi, Manchester
Paysan (61 Bridge St) is a cosy, candlelit wine bar in Chester that does brilliant wines and cheese boards. Upstairs, you can get chicken in a basket with chips and aioli for £11.95. Death by Tacos (53 Watergate St) has a bit of a heavy metal thing going on, and really well-priced cocktails and tacos. It changes its menu all the time – I’ll grab whatever taco special it has on. Stile Napoletano (49 Watergate St) is run by an award-winning Naples pizza chef who moved to Chester via London – the pizza is great value and tastes fantastic. At the restaurant, we always grab takeaway from Peak Sandwiches (34 Charles St) just around the corner. It is creative with fillings, particularly the veggie ones, and the bread is lovely.
Sam Grainger
Chef-owner of Belzan and Madre, Liverpool
Xiao Long Bao popped up a couple of years ago inside Liverpool’s Ejoy Asian supermarket (8-10 Myrtle St). It makes the best soup dumplings I’ve had outside of Asia – the pork and prawn are my favourite. Raggas (58 Smithdown Rd, Toxteth) serves the best Caribbean food in the city. Get the goat curry and rice and peas. Bundobust started in Leeds and now has sites all over the north, and it’s my favourite place to grab a bite – check out the okra fries and vada pav. In Manchester, Nell’s at Kampus (22 Minshull St) serves New York-style pizza that you can buy by the slice and it never breaks the bank. The Lancashire cheese and onion pizza is very northern but it’s phenomenal.
Photograph: Jon Super/The Observer
Minal Patel
Chef-patron at Prashad, Bradford
Sarto (Munro House, Duke St) serves homemade pasta that’s done right – you won’t go wrong with the pan-fried gnocchi, and my family always squabbles over the last arancino. If we left it up to my daughter, Maitri, we would visit Pho (27 Albion St) every time. It’s Vietnamese street food: colourful summer rolls, salads packed with flavour and textures, steaming bowls of pho with fresh herbs. For speedy sandwiches and classic filling combinations, we go to Things in Bread (15 Boar Ln). The generous fillings are sandwiched between thick slabs of shokupan (milk loaf). At Get Baked (15 North Ln) in Headingley, it’s a toss-up between the honey peach slice and the Mr Pistachio pie. They’re just too good.
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East
Galton Blackiston
Chef-owner of Morston Hall, Morston
Allium (26 High St) is a small family-run restaurant in Downham Market. The dad is an antiques dealer and one of the sons is a hairdresser to the stars but loves cooking, and he runs the restaurant. I’ll often go with friends for a classic Sunday lunch. You can eat very nicely at The Gunton Arms in Thorpe Market (Cromer Rd) and its sister restaurant The Suffield Arms down the road (393 Station Rd). The latter has great tapas – cured meats, croquettes, octopus with capers. Down in Winchester there’s a very good fish and chips place called Shoal (Guildhall, The Broadway). You can get hake and chips to take away for under a tenner.
Alex Rushmer
Chef-owner of Vanderlyle, Cambridge
Eclipse Bakery (190 Mill Rd) sells fantastic sourdough and pastries. The cardamom bun is a firm favourite and a perfect accompaniment to a coffee from Urban Larder (9 The Broadway) over the road. Chai Walla food truck (Unit 1, Christ’s Ln) brews up the most authentic, warming, heavily spiced chai I’ve tasted outside of India and it makes an epic samosa chaat – easily the best way to spend a tenner and feel both warmed and full. Scott’s All Day (111-113 Mill Rd) makes the best pizza in Cambridge: pure, blistered perfection. The Detroit-style focaccia-based pizza is ideal for chilly winter evenings. Coconut Cambridge (23 Barnwell Rd) is a new Sri Lankan restaurant and takeaway outside the city centre. The black pork curry is not to be missed.
James Carn
Chef-owner of Lark, Bury St Edmunds
Peck (66A St John’s St) in Bury St Edmunds uses Suffolk chickens and buns from a local bakery to make tasty buttermilk-fried chicken burgers, costing £7 to £8.50 – a welcome staff treat on the weekends. Benoli (5 Orford St) is an independent Italian restaurant in Norwich that’s great value. They do bread and homemade pastas – the gnocchi with Jerusalem artichokes and truffles I had recently was lovely. Guerrilla Kitchen is a van that goes around Cambridge serving steamed bao. The classic pork belly bun is delicious. If we’re going into Cambridge we’ll always try to get there. Pea Porridge (28-29 Cannon St) in Bury St Edmunds is the best-value Michelin-star restaurant in the country: it’s £40 for three courses and the Moorish-influenced cooking – tagines, aubergine stews, duck-heart skewers – is outstanding.
Tom Payne
Head chef at The Suffolk, Aldeburgh
Alde Cafe (Hall Farm Lane) near my house has a real old-school feel to it. I usually have beans on toast with a side of black pudding for £6, or a full English if I’m off at the weekend. It’s comfortable and friendly and exactly what you want from a local breakfast spot. Pinch (Maple Farm, Kelsale) in Saxmundham is where I’ll go for a black coffee and a cruller, which is a deep-fried choux pastry doughnut with a nice glaze. The Anchor (19 Quay St) in Woodbridge, where I grew up, about 20 minutes from Aldeburgh, is a classic pub – not too fancy, not crazy expensive, and full of locals. I always go for the burger and chips, which is consistently good.
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Scotland
Roberta Hall-McCarron
Chef-owner of The Little Chartroom and Eleanore, Edinburgh
Mirin (9 Albert Pl, Edinburgh) used to be called Gulp Ramen but it rebranded and now focuses on Japanese snacks. You can drop in for a quick bite – I love its crunchy, sticky veal sweetbread skewers – or devour everything on the menu. Alongside all its delicious pastries, Kitchen Table (22-24 Easter Rd) has a great brunch menu, with hash browns with kimchi, greens and fried eggs for £12.50. Hobz Bakery (106 Leith Walk) makes an incredible reuben croissant, with pastrami, gherkins and cheese laminated into the pastry. If I’ve finished work late, I’ll often pop into Razzo (59 Great Junction St) for a quick pizza. I’ll usually go for margherita with cured beets on top.
James Ferguson
Chef and co-owner of The Kinneuchar Inn, Fife
I have Mondays and Tuesdays off when most fine dining restaurants are shut, so I tend to gravitate towards budget places. Saints Sizzle (The Scores) is a burger joint near the aquarium in St Andrews, so you can watch the seals while you’re eating. It’s £6-8.50 for a delicious burger. In Edinburgh, we always go to Noodles and Dumplings (23 S Clerk St). It makes its own hand-pulled noodles and steamed dumplings, and the chicken-heart skewers are good too. A lot of chefs eat there. The Hospitalfield Garden Cafe in Arbroath does brunch and lunch at really reasonable prices. The sage-fried eggs with black pudding and toast is totally delicious, and their Sunday roast is a smack-on bargain at £25 for three courses.
Rosie Healey
Chef-owner of Gloriosa, Glasgow
1841 (14 Vinicombe St) is a coffee shop in Glasgow that does amazing toasted cheese sandwiches – you can have them with fennel salami or pickle and they are just so delicious. Banana Leaf (192 Vincent St) is a great South Indian restaurant. I always get its soups – they’re so tasty and spicy and the veg soup costs just £3. Sunny Acre (745 Pollokshaws Rd) is a cafe in the south side of Glasgow which does really well-made quiches and salads – and it’s a lovely place to sit. Beirut Star (450 Paisley Rd West) does great Lebanese vegetable dishes such as smoked aubergine with onions, tomatoes and coriander or broad beans cooked for ages with lots of lemon and olive oil. They’re really fresh and really, really good.
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Northern Ireland
Gemma Austin
Chef-patron of A Peculiar Tea, Belfast
Pi Guy at Trademarket (14-16 Dublin Rd) does the best pizza in Belfast. I often order a few for the staff and tell him to be as creative as he wants. The Beesting with salami, roquito pearls, honey and mozzarella is amazing. Kubo, also at Trademarket, does fantastic Filipino food. The pork belly marinaded in banana ketchup is so flavourful. You’ll have to queue for Belfast Bap Co at St George’s Market (East Bridge St), but the breakfast baps – malty, charry and filled with bacon, sausage, egg and black pudding – are worth the wait. Suitor & Co (45 High St) in Holywood, outside the city, does a phenomenal brunch menu with huge plates of food for under a tenner.
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Wales
Si Toft
Chef-owner of The Dining Room, Abersoch
Two Islands (Lon Pen Cei, Abersoch), just up the road from me, is an ice-cream place but it’s the cakes and coffee we go for. My wife sends me there for amaretti biscuits – they’re the size of your hand and they’re stunning. At Caffi Ni in Nefyn, everything’s homemade: massive chunky bowls of soup and proper bread and pies. There’s a lot of frozen food being served in pubs around here, but Y Sgwar (12-16 Market Sq, Tremadog) does things properly and its early-bird dinners are very reasonably priced. Braf is a big shed on the beach in Dinas Dinlle. It does really good daytime stuff, making its own baked beans for breakfast. It’s really nice and massively underpriced.
James Sommerin
Chef-owner of Home, Penarth
Our go-to place in Penarth is The Busy Teapot (27 Glebe St). It’s a little builders’ caff where you’re guaranteed a good laugh, a good breakfast and a good cup of tea. I’ll go with my wife and kids and order fried eggs and bacon. We also frequent The New Court Inn (62 Maryport St), a little pub in Usk. Sunday lunch is really good value – two courses for £22.95. It’s not trying to be pretentious, it’s just really good beef or pork with roast potatoes and veg. In London, I really like going around Borough Market and I’ll always stop at Richard Haward’s (35 Stoney St) for oysters.
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London & South
Shuko Oda
Chef and co-owner of Koya restaurants, London
I’ve been going to Kowloon bakery in Chinatown (21-22 Gerrard St) since I was a teenager. If I’m peckish, I’ll get the mochi cake filled with adzuki beans, or the glutinous rice wrapped in bamboo leaves for £4. It’s tasty and it hits the spot. Kaieteur Kitchen (Castle Sq) in Elephant and Castle serves Guyanese food in big fragrant, flavoursome portions. We’ll grab lunch from there – spinach rice, coconut lamb, fish curry, plantain – when I go to Elephant Springs with the kids in summer. The weekday lunch menu at Ganapati (38 Holly Grove) in Peckham is such a good deal: £13.25 for a fish thali with dal, rice, salad and poppadoms. It’s really satisfying to eat and it’s such a charming restaurant.
Chet Sharma
Chef-patron of BiBi, London
It’s handy having the restaurant in Mayfair: there are lots of places nearby if I need to grab something quick to eat. Attendant Coffee is quite weirdly located – inside a French Connection (55 Duke St) – but it’s really good for banana bread and stuffed focaccias. Royal China (24-26 Baker St) is consistently very good – I’ll get a few plates of dim sum and a pot of tea and be in and out in an hour. The Brass Rail at Selfridges (300 Oxford St) is great for hot salt beef sandwiches – you can get a regular one for under a tenner. And in Ealing, where I live, No. 17 Dickens Yard (Longfield Ave) has street food stalls on a Saturday morning selling things like suya, gözleme and samosas.
Angela Hartnett
Chef-owner of Murano and Café Murano, London, and co-host of the Dish from Waitrose podcast
There’s a really good pizza place in Spitalfields Market called Sud Italia (16 Horner Sq). The dough is delicious with crispy edges and it uses good quality cured meats and cheeses. I like Xi’an Biang Biang Noodles (62 Wentworth St) for a lovely bowl of spiced noodles with veg. Kennedy’s of Goswell Road is great for fish and chips. The batter’s light the fish is good quality, and I like the fact it’s old-school – it is not trying to be anything it’s not. You can get a meal for under £20 in Dastaan (447 Kingston Rd, Epsom): rice or naan bread with a delicious curry – it does the most incredible butter chicken. It’s bloody miles away but it’s good when you get there.
Ayo Adeyemi
Executive chef at Akoko, London
I live in Tottenham Hale and sometimes my housemates and I do the Beer Mile on Blackhorse Lane. On the way home we’ll end up in Yasar’s Kitchen (8 Blackhorse Lane), for beautiful kofta with salad and flatbread. Just around the corner from our restaurant in Fitzrovia is Dino’s Deli (15 Charlotte Pl), an Italian place that does parma ham and mozzarella on focaccia. Kaffeine (66 Great Titchfield St) is my go-to coffee place and they do amazing croissants and baked sandwiches. My sister introduced me to 50 Kalò (7 Northumberland Ave) and now it’s one of my favourite pizza places in London – I’ll get anything with nduja on it. When I’m craving ramen, I’ll go to Tonkotsu (branches around London), where the ramen is reliably tasty.
Rob Taylor
Chef and co-owner of Tallow, Tunbridge Wells
There are a few places in Tunbridge Wells I really like. Most Monday lunchtimes, my wife Donna and I end up at a sushi restaurant called Kitsu (82A Victoria Rd). The decor is quite basic and it’s BYO but the sushi is really good. For breakfast and coffee, I like the Bicycle Bakery (118-120 Camden Rd). Jamie, the owner, makes the best pastries – the croissant cube with apple crumble filling I had recently was pretty epic. Cantuccio (42 Camden Rd) does pizza simply and really well – they don’t overcomplicate the toppings, there’s no gimmicks, it’s good wood-fired sourdough pizza. I like the piccante padrino with a whole burrata on top.
