The Dining Room at the Railway Hotel, Faversham, Kent Jasper Gerard, The Telegraph, 10 May "East Kent was always poor and this is a poor pub. Past brown swirly walls, you are into The Dining Room and even here the paint is yellowy; courtesy, one fears, of Woodbine, not Farrow & Ball. But all else is transformed. We even have that must-have restaurant accessory: a forager." "I try Thanet cauliflower soup purely because it sounds so dull it's positively Darling-esque. I'll be impressed if it tastes even half interesting; and it does, with 'forager's grissini' giving a crispy bite." "I follow with Sussex pedigree rib-eye of beef with goat's cheese, red onion tarte tatin and, yep, foraged leaves. You have to hack through fat to reach the steak and the tart atop is overcooked, yet the red onion and cheese lend richly intoxicating flavour to the perfectly pink meat." Bath Priory Hotel, Bath Zoe Williams, The Telegraph, 11 May "M [friend] had the scallops with almond purée and roasted almond nibs, with lemon verbena froth. I have to warn you that, with the obvious regret that it isn't fudge, M likes everything, so it was left to me to complain about the froth, which was a milky, regurgitated cuckoo-spittle-alike, and didn't taste of enough to take your mind off that image. The scallops burst with flavour, though, and vitality, if you can say that about a cooked thing. I had the quail: roast breast, boudin of quail meat and garlic chives, a quail's egg and a daub of chervil. I'm going to dissect that; stop me if you think I'm being patronising." "I had very high hopes of my oxtail, with its purple riot of beetroot (in a 'laminate' – by which they meant sliced very thinly, in the manner of a gratin dauphinoise), red cabbage (as a purée) and blackberry (as a rogue agent, just sitting there all alone, like it owned the plate). The meat was tender but not flaky and beautifully unctuous. All that purple provided a variety of different tangs to take the edge off the depth of the meat. It was exceptional. M had the rabbit shoulder and confit, with smooth carrot and orange, and a coriander seed spume. Of course I want to fulminate about the word spume. I bet the coriander would roll in its grave. But the rabbit had exactly the wildness you're looking for when you order something that isn't a chicken. If there is one thing I'd say, it's that you do have to concentrate with this food – the meat cuts are small enough that you could well disappear them without noticing, and only stop to wonder about the taste once you'd got to the spume." The Foragers, East Sussex Terry Durack, The Independent, 11 May "The lovely thing about this place is that it hasn't been transformed into a paint-by-numbers gastropub. It's just a pub, a local boozer where groups gather to gossip on the outdoor tables, downing pints of Harveys Sussex Best Bitter, and oldies play cards in the cosy bar. There's a big beer garden, a DJ on weekends and a comedy night on Tuesdays, but Misich and Hutchison are hoping that it's the food that will draw the crowds. "As well as using a team of foragers who comb East Sussex in search of wild chervil, wood sorrel and radish leaves, Misich also sources local seafood, mushrooms and Sussex-reared beef. It's time and place that writes the menu here, from beetroot, spinach and roasted garlic risotto, to St George's and Judas Ear mushroom pudding with puy lentils, pennywort and bitter cress, and local line-caught halibut with kohlrabi, wild yarrow, watercress and pink fir potatoes." Divo, Waterloo Place (pictured) Matthew Norman, The Guardian, 10 May "My friend's herring salad, moulded together with sections of beetroot, boiled egg and mayonnaise beneath a top layer of egg to resemble a mescaline user's notion of a Neapolitan ice cream, was amazingly good. 'I'm amazed,' he said, as if to confirm the point. 'This is really delicious.'" "We also shared a tri-pickle