Menu Gordon Jones

Visitors heap praise on this ‘delightfully individual’ boutique restaurant – the kind of place that ‘leaves you feeling you’ve had a special experience’. Don’t let the website’s monochrome picture of a dour Scottish chef or the ‘Great produce. No option’ policy give the wrong impression – dining here is great fun. Pumping music, outrageous decor (a large sign by the open kitchen reads ‘Live Sex Show’) and ‘imaginative dishes presented with enthusiasm and pride’ make it feel a bit like being at a supper club. That said, there's nothing amateur about Jones’s cooking, which fuses Indian spicing with top-drawer British ingredients across eight inventive courses, starting with a bag of warm home-baked sourdough served alongside Bloody Mary butter and Jerusalem artichoke syrup. Dining here requires a leap of faith: there’s no menu and there are no substitutions (vegetarians and those with food intolerances must go elsewhere). For omnivores, however, many delights await: say, an espresso cup of extraordinarily rich and velvety mousse, flavoured with chicken of the woods mushrooms (foraged, pickled and dried by Jones) and accompanied by a bite-size vegetable bhaji under a snowdrift of Parmesan. Or how about perfectly cooked tandoori monkfish in a curried cream with apple matchsticks, roast parsnip and toasted pumpkin seeds? Meat could be rose veal with gravy and a comforting but pokey horseradish mash stippled with tiny diced cucumber and candied artichoke. Puddings range from schoolroom to very grown up, as in a warm apple and medjool date cake in a pool of miso caramel with sea buckthorn sorbet and a sabayon of San Zeno dessert wine. If you don’t opt for the wine flights, choice by the glass is limited but the sommelier will see you right. Service is friendly and personal. You won’t want to leave.