Maze

England, Part VI: Gordon Ramsay's spacious restaurant is a soothingly serene venue for lunch, overlooking the gardens of Grosvenor Square.

The menu features a cornucopia of tasting-sized dishes that blend British meat & seafood with culinary influences from across the globe.

Salcombe crab with toast sorbet (yep, this sorbet really tasted like toast bread), sea herbs, pickled black radish & apple vinaigrette. Delicate, fresh and clean flavors.

Pressed terrine of foie gras & eel with compressed apples, celery & cob nut salad. The bits of smoked eel left barely any impact, but the liver was satisfyingly luscious.

Roasted Orkney hand-dived scallop with raisin & ginger vinaigrette, turnips & chicken skin. The scallop tasted ordinary, but the addition of the thin, crisp chicken skin (that stiff strip sticking out on top) was a unique touch that provided a fun interplay of tastes and textures.

Duo of Suffolk pork cheek & belly, with mostarda of pear & swede, quince puree & choucroute. Not bad, but Chinese pork recipes (particularly siu yoke) blow this out of the water. Note (for our own recollection): mostarda is a fruit-&-mustard condiment, quince is a pear-like fruit, and choucroute is sauerkraut with salted meat & potatoes.

Cornish lamb rack & shoulder with English garden mint gel. Probably the healthiest lamb dish we've ever tasted. Perfectly pink, impeccably prepared.

Irish ox "tongue & cheek" with caper raisin, ginger carrots & horseradish puree. Why haven't more restaurants combined ox tongue and cheek in a single recipe? Melt-in-the-mouth succulence ensues.

Roasted hake with piperade, white bean puree, cockles, bacon & fish soup. Puny cockles, but the rest of the ensemble worked well together; these recipes seem complicated and fussy, but there's a method to the madness that makes sense when we're chewing everything up.

Roasted Muntjac deer with pine nut puree, baby beets, oats, seeds & juniper. Looked refined, but tasted rustic. Well, almost. Another side note: Muntjac deer are the world's oldest known type of deer, first appearing up to 35 million years ago.

Booze? Forgot to upload the photos, but the food went well with Alaya Brut Majeur champagne, Chateau Bauduc (Bordeaux) & Costieres de Nimes 'Les Grimaudes.'

And this wraps up our England 2010 series. We'll be back another year, hopefully!

Maze,

London.

J Sheekey

England, Part V: A decidedly old-school establishment specializing in seafood at Covent Garden, a short stroll from London's theater district.

The menu is extensive, featuring fish from some of the furthest oceans. These pickled Arctic herrings with potato salad & dill sauce are an acquired taste, but if you don't mind cold, slimy and sour fish, then this is worth checking out.

Can't really rave about the Irish Carlingford Rock oysters; there are sweeter, more succulent ones to be found elsewhere.

Sauteed monkfish cheeks with girolles & sea purslane. Meaty fish, bordering on chewy (with a chicken-ish texture _ not necessarily a bad thing though).

Fried fillet of haddock. Can't fault the fish _ satisfyingly fresh, moist and flaky _ but we've had better chips & mushy peas at The Magnificent in Changkat Bukit Bintang.

Cornish fish stew with celery hearts & garlic mayo. Piping-hot comfort for a cold night, brimming with sufficient seafood _ but ultimately forgettable, flavor-wise.

J Sheekey,

London.

Albannach

England, Part IV: Not many outlets in London specialize in Scottish food. So saints be praised for Albannach, which scores with a lively crowd at Trafalgar Square.

Haggis with neeps & tatties (turnips & potatoes). The haggis (sheep's heart, liver & lungs, minced with onions & oatmeal, then simmered in sheep's stomach) is produced by Macsween, an Edinburgh-based, third-generation family business that has been dubbed "the guardians of Scotland's national dish." Tender meat, flavor-packed without being gamy (kinda like a cross between beef and lamb).

Cullen Skink soup _ traditional smoked haddock broth. Creamy comfort food.

Inverawe smoked salmon with sweet pickled cucumber & beetroot. Smoked salmon that somehow tastes ferociously fresh _ why can't we have that in KL?

Steak & ale pie, featuring hearty beef cooked with organic Caledonian ale. Might be the perfect body-warming platter for a wintry night out on a Scottish highland cliff.

Il Banchetto Bianco, Italy ('09) & Il Banchetto Rosso.

Albannach,

London.

Waterfront

England, Part III: This restaurant with a view serves quintessential English fare, which customers can enjoy while trying to spot ducks swim across a tranquil countryside lake.

Ploughman's salad with ham. A nutritionally balanced (albeit exceptionally hearty) meal, with crusty bread to provide carbs, alongside ham for protein and crunchy celery, cucumbers, half an apple & pickle relish for fiber & vitamins.

Crayfish & rocket leaves in brown bloomer bread. Crayfish must be plentiful (and cheap!) in this region, since this whopping sandwich cost less than seven British pounds. Lots of juicy crustacean flesh in this, drizzled with a mild salad dressing.

Lamb tikka masala burger. Perfectly logical Anglo-Indian fusion cuisine. The curry was marvelously mild; not spicy enough to scorch our taste buds, barely tickling our lips. The lamb patty was a tad too gamy for our liking, but it was thick and tender.

Char-grilled gammon steak with egg, pineapple, chips & garden peas. The smoked hog thigh had a foul pork flavor and was too tough and salty.

Grilled whole plaice with mixed salad & new potatoes. Moist, fresh fish; a simple recipe, but impeccably executed. We particularly loved the chunky, fluffy potatoes.

Pan-fried lamb liver & pork bacon, with mashed potatoes & onion gravy. Since we adore goose liver and are major fans of chicken & pork liver too, it was no surprise that we'd like lamb liver. Very strong-tasting though, so it's more of an acquired taste.

Strawberry shortcake cheesecake. Luscious; lovably luscious.

Sticky toffee pudding. Steaming hot and sumptuously rich, but not overly sweet.

Waterfront,

Copthorne Hotel Reading, Berkshire, England.

Fifteen

England, Part II: Jamie Oliver's flagship restaurant offers apprenticeship schemes to young people between the age of 18 and 24 to help them acquire career skills in the food business.

Fifteen features a breezy, inviting interior that would be a probable hit if transplanted into Malaysia. The outlet's name is a reference to the first 15 kids who took part in the apprenticeship project when it was launched in 2002.

We were here for breakfast, so the must-order was Jamie's signature recipe of pukkola muesli, with rolled oats, nuts, fruits & honey. Seemed healthy and well-prepared, though it wasn't terribly memorable in either taste or texture.

Kenny's Pancake, with baked cannellini beans, wild rocket & parmesan (Kenny is Fifteen's head baker). Perhaps we prefer our pancakes fluffier; this was somewhat dense, like a cross between cake and bread, with savory but unspectacular toppings.

The "ultimate breakfast sarnie," a porky pleasure featuring a large muffin stuffed with sweet cured bacon, Cumberland sausages & scrambled eggs. But it might be better to visit this place for lunch or dinner, when more ambitious dishes are available.

Isle of Wight tomato juice & grapefruit juice. No booze? Maybe we were hung over.

Fifteen,

Westland Place, London.

Rules

England, Part I: A recent vacation saw us visiting London's oldest restaurant, established in 1798. It still seems to be a firm favorite among domestic diners and foreign fans after 212 years.

Rules specializes in "game cookery," with an intriguing range of meat sourced from the Lartington countryside estate in northern England.

Cropwell Bishop Blue Stilton cheese. An award-winning variety, produced at a family-run British creamery. Dense and flavor-packed; a far cry from mass-market cheeses.

Roast gray partridge on toast with chanterelles. After years of listening to Christmas choruses about "a partridge in a pear tree," we finally managed to munch on this gamebird. Fairly strong-tasting flesh, but with a texture similar to chicken (fowl is fowl, ultimately).

New season grouse. Note how the legs remain feathery at the tip (!). Only available between August and December each year during the permitted hunting period. Not the chunkiest or most tender of birds, but gorgeously aromatic. Served pink (nearly medium-rare), with game chips (thin, crisp chips that are traditionally eaten with roast gamebirds).

Rabbit curry. Thick. hearty and mildly spicy; I can't remember ever having had rabbit cooked in curry before, but it works as well as any other meat.

Highland roe deer with curly kale & ceps. Offers a firmer bite than regular venison; could certainly be mistaken for beef (that's meant to be a compliment, really).

Saint Clair Sauvignon Blanc Marlborough & Buckshot Bullshot (a bizarre, Bloody Mary-like cocktail featuring beef consomme, Ketel One vodka, tomato juice, spices & a celery stick).

Rules 98 (Brut champagne, Tanqueray gin, pear liquor, poire william) & The Grouse (Famous Grouse Scotch whisky, The King's Ginger liquor, bitters).

Will Rules outlive us all and survive another two centuries? Future generations might be grateful if it does; service is sparkling and the sense of classic tradition here is superb.

Rules,

Maiden Lane, London.