Bites: Racing certainties
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Your support makes all the difference.As weather conspires with foot-and-mouth disease to threaten fixtures, check before setting out for a day at the races. The following, all close to courses, are good bets.
As weather conspires with foot-and-mouth disease to threaten fixtures, check before setting out for a day at the races. The following, all close to courses, are good bets.
George Hotel, Great Wormald, Harrogate, North Yorks (01765 677214). Daily lunch and dinner. Olives, with its glass-topped tables, is the more informal of two dining rooms in this pub turned restaurant. The chef once worked for Charles and Diana. It's popular for dinner after Ripon race meetings, but enticing beforehand with a lunch menu at £7.95 for two courses. Dishes are as fishy as meaty, with queen scallops, salmon fishcakes, and chargrilled shrimp alongside roast lamb with ratatouille. Around £20 for two courses counts as good enough value to merit a Bib Gourmand in the Michelin guide.
Becher's Brook, 29A Hope street, Liverpool (0151-707 0005). Mon-Fri lunch and dinner, Sat dinner. Named after Aintree's best known hurdle, this Liverpool city-centre restaurant occupies a Georgian terraced house. There's a lunch and pre-theatre menu at £17.95 for three courses; à la carte dinner could come to around £30 without wine. Cooking is idiosyncratic, original, excellent: Aberdeen Angus with Madeira and truffle jus, and white- and dark-chocolate mousses, would be two of the more conservative dishes; others are more eclectic.
Le Champignon Sauvage, 24 Suffolk Road, Cheltenham, Gloucestershire (01242 573449). Tue-Sat lunch and dinner. When the Cheltenham Gold Cup was postponed you could have got a table at the top restaurant in Cheltenham one of the best in the country at the last minute. Except on Saturday, when it's fully booked long ahead. It's the brilliant, refined take on cuisine de terroir that makes David Everitt-Matthias's cooking such a draw; loin of pork with pork-belly barley risotto, for example. Lunch and the daily dinner menu are a steal at £19.50 and £21.50 respectively for three courses. The main dinner menu is £33 for two courses, £39 for three but then this is a two-Michelin star affair.
Brazz, Castle Bow, Taunton, Somerset (01823 252000). Daily lunch and dinner. Jazzy brasserie attached to the Castle Hotel makes a modish place to stop for sandwiches and snacks at the bar, or for lunch or dinner from £15-£30. Heartening dishes range across time and space, but are essentially English: from a revived prawn cocktail or duck liver parfait for starters, on to fish and chips, braised lamb with winter vegetables and bubble and squeak, to crème brûlée or fruit salad.
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