Brat

Tomos Parry’s Brat (he also runs Brat x Climpson’s Arch in Hackney and Mountain in Soho) loosely pays homage to Basque cooking. Indeed, the first thing to hit you as you ascend the stairs is the smell of the grill; the second is the sound of eating, drinking, chatting and laughing. There’s no such thing as a quiet lunch in this tightly packed dining room. If funds allow, come with friends and enjoy a whopping great turbot (from £200, to feed four) or a juicy beef rib. Otherwise, the menu covers a lot of ground, from Menai oysters to crustacea, sausages and chops. It’s often the simplest things that surprise: peppers from Flourish Produce are essentially pimientos de Padrón, fashioned in the Spanish style but here tossed with chopped herbs. Next, there’s Insta-famous grilled bread with anchovies, while velvet crab soup looks spectacular with its crown of crab shells and bobbing mussels. Mains might be plaice pil pil with cockles or paella-esque roast duck rice served with the bird's heart and slices of rare breast. To finish, there’s textbook crème caramel. The one-page wine list has a good choice of styles and grapes from across Europe.