Fox & Grapes

9 Camp Rd, London

This is how a Michelin-starred chef should run a pub. It’s not about taking over a locals’ local and transforming it into the kind of eaterie that serves food that looks more like an art installation – it should be about doing good pub grub exceptionally well, and that is what Claude Bosi (of two-starred Hibiscus fame) is doing with his brother Cedric just off London’s Wimbledon Common. With the best Scotch egg you’ll find in these parts (crisp on the outside, oozing yolk in the middle), pork scratchings and a pork pie, piccalilli and Little Gem salad, this is definitely more Manor Inn than Le Manoir. But you’ll be telling everybody about this place and the dishes nonetheless. There’s some work to be done in the pub to make it truly cosy but the warmth of the mains makes up for it – roast Cornish pollack, chicken Kiev, sausage and mash with red onion gravy, bavette steak (go for the blue cheese sauce), even ale-battered fish and chips. The home-made mint choc chip ice cream (so much mint) and the dark chocolate tart it’s served with melts on your tongue and gives reason enough for Bosi’s two stars.