My Top Ten Tables

The Good Food Guide is one of the best food guides to restaurants in the UK and Ireland, and the new edition sends our blogger down mealtime memory lane

If you are what you eat then I'm lucky. I've been privileged to eat in some of the UK and Ireland's best restaurants, most of which are in the Good Food Guide whose 2007 edition has just come out, and is reviewed in my Articles posting. For me food and travel are inseparable, for work and for pleasure, and usually both.

The new Good Food Guide set me to thinking. What are my own top ten meal memories, my own personal choices from the places I've dined at? It's a very subjective thing, obviously, and I've certainly not eaten everywhere. I've probably forgotten a few that I'll remember tomorrow too. I could also easily choose more than ten and still have every one of them mouthwateringly memorable. But then if I chose 15 I'd want to choose 20, so let's limit it to ten.

• Gordon Ramsay, London
• Buckingham's, Chesterfield
• Rick Stein's Seafood Restaurant, Padstow
• Le Manoir aux Quat' Saisons, Oxford
• Witchery by the Castle, Edinburgh
• Ubiquitous Chip, Glasgow
• Cayenne, Belfast
• Merchant House, Ludlow (RIP)
• La Lanterna, Scarborough
• The Bow Window, Ramsey

A few comments on the names familiar and maybe not-so-familiar. I've eaten at Gordon Ramsay's Chelsea restaurant twice, and they have been the two best meals I have ever had in the UK or Ireland. No question. The only better meals anywhere in the world have been at Alain Ducasses's in Paris. Raymond Blanc's Manoir comes close, especially if you're also staying at the lovely Manoir hotel after the meal.

You won't find Buckingham's in any guide as the owner of Buckingham's Hotel and One-Table Restaurant doesn't believe in them, and doesn't court the inspectors. If you dine at his One-Table Restaurant you might be the only diners, as my wife and I were one night. When you've got the chef personally preparing every dish for you, without a menu but based purely on what you've told him at breakfast that you like eating, you're guaranteed an unforgettable meal.

And the Bow Window in Ramsey? That's the town where I live in Cambridgeshire and the Bow Window is where we had our wedding breakfast not long ago. The food was superb, and it's certainly the most memorable meal of my life!

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