For reasons that may already be apparent, and that are currently playing on BBC One, I have spent much of 2025 watching people cook scallops and souffles in a windowless television location unit in Digbeth, Birmingham. MasterChef, despite being one of the most exhilarating jobs a girl can do, sucked up most of my waking hours this year and made my free time extra-precious. So the very best restaurants I found this year - those with zinging hospitality and heart-thumpingly good food - became equally extra-crucial.
I'm talking about the likes of Tropea in Harborne, just down the road from the TV studio, and where I've spent a fair few Saturdays eating butternut squash arancini, fresh tagliolini and whopping great deep-fried salted cannoli. Over in Bristol, meanwhile, two absolute gems revealed themselves on the very same trip: Ragù and Lapin, both in Wapping Wharf and both in repurposed shipping containers, but entirely different creatures. Lapin I described as a "peculiar, meta, slightly earnest and definitely delicious" slice of France that serves asparagus with sauce gribiche, gnocchi Parisienne and, well, lapin itself whenever local hunters manage to bag some bunnies. Lapin will add caviar to any dish if you ask for it; they play 80s French pop and serve a mint-green, menthe-over-club-soda diabolo for those French exchange school trip vibes. Ragù, meanwhile, may quite simply be one of the greatest dinners I've eaten this decade: crespelle in rich tomato brodo, artichoke fritti and chocolate budino with sour cherries and amaretti - flawless cooking in completely understated surroundings.
Largely because of those telly commitments, I made it to Manchester only a couple of times this year, but those visits gleaned Bangkok Diners Club and Winsome, both of which are terrifically good ways to fill your stomach and leave jolly. Bangkok Diners Club, in Ancoats, is a Thai restaurant tucked upstairs at the Edinburgh Castle, an elegantly restored 19th-century pub where rich golden beetroot massaman curry is served with decadent chicken-fat rice and where delicate plates of raw bass come with calamansi nam jim and rice bran before a round of fruity rice ice-cream lollies. Winsome, on the other hand, is a stonkingly good modern British restaurant with a wonderful warm devoted crew led by Shaun Moffat whose food is "a scoop of Fergus Henderson; a nod to Mark Hix; a dash of London's Quality Chop House; a teeny touch of Toby Carvery". They serve roast dinners; wild mushrooms with pease pudding; rhubarb jelly with custard.
Another fabulous night spent expanding my waistline was at Bellota in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, a Spanish tasting menu experience where seats are limited but well worth the bunfight to get in. Elsewhere, I was bowled over by Juliet in Stroud, where the local boho community of artists and eccentric toffs currently celebrate their high days and holidays. And, just last month, I loved Dave Hart and Polly Pleasence's new place, Franc, where simple French cooking and a very limited menu are the order of the day: we had world-class duck breast with caramelised endive and a big bowl of fresh chips. Another great dinner in 2025 involved a trip to the blustery British seaside for hake with orange-y sauce Maltaise at Harry's in Camber Sands.
Back in the capital, however, many over-hyped London restaurants left me cold, though there were the odd moments of greatness. The Ukrainian restaurant Tatar Bunar in Shoreditch, for instance, is fabulous for plump mushroom varenyky and borscht; plus I'd advise you to run, not walk to the new Kudu in Marylebone, London's prettiest new restaurant this year, for its confit trout braai and the "Kudu kit kat". Or even just for a loaf of its warm fresh bread with a bowl of obscenely good curry-leaf butter. It would be remiss of me not to remind you about Town in Covent Garden, either, which I still recommend to everyone to solve their dinner-scheduling woes - it's big, bold, delicious and glamorous; take a date, take a client.
I'm also guilty of harping on about Osteria Angelina, a Japanese-Italian hybrid in Shoreditch, and the wilfully eccentric, mock-historical pleasure palace that is Lilibet's in Mayfair, which will discombobulate you with its wild, monarchical faux olde-worldeness and then delight you with an exemplary Dover sole with Café de Paris butter and piles of profiteroles. Finally, creeping in at the end of the year, there was for fancy Caribbean at 2210 Natty Can Cook in south London - think ackee and saltfish spring rolls and deep-fried apple crumble.
Yes, time might have been a bit tight this year for lounging about in restaurants, but I gave it a damned good go and can confirm that the scene out there is roaring. Bring on 2026: the future looks delicious.