Launceston Place, London | Pintxo People, Brighton | Mason's Bistro, York | Orestone Manor, Maidencombe
Launceston Place London
1a Launceston Place, W8 (Tel: 020-7937 6912) 1986 menu: two courses £8.50, three courses £10.50

Launceston Place, the upscale but downbeat Kensington local, turns 20 this month. So they're serving a menu of 1986 favourites - at 1986 prices - from April 24 to May 6. Cooking is sturdy, flavoursome Modern British, from the days when that meant a reaction to the minimalist excesses of nouvelle rather than another variation on fusion. Gentlemen's club favourites like scotch woodcock or devils on horseback sit alongside palate pleasers like smoked haddock mousse or steamed mussels in cider and the odd dateable dish: think Brie parcels with cranberry sauce, or spinach roulade with tomato coulis. Attentive staff ply their way through intimate, print-filled rooms lined by a loyal and long-standing clientele. It's all very classy and very English. Book now and take your parents.
Theodora Sutcliffe

Pintxo People Brighton
95-99 Western Road (Tel: 01273-732323) price per head, £25

Plenty have aspired to bring metropolitan dining to Brighton, but few have achieved it. Pintxo People is an uncompromisingly London-style restaurant and all the more welcome for it. A downstairs deli serves the Basque bites for which the restaurant is named. The glossy first-floor restaurant claims a Catalan sensibility, and in the spirit of the region's capital city, an appetite for eastern flavours. Fine ingredients, careful cooking and the odd experiment marry up nicely. Fried cheese ravioli arriving crisp and pungent atop apple and celeriac salad are very good. Roast vegetable terrine topped with meaty anchovies is a sunshine taste of the Med. Wild pork fillet from Spain, cooked to tender pink, is excellent, needing neither the pineapple nor the heavily curried lentils that shout over it. Stilton and apple ice creams provides quite a finale.
Karina Mantavia

Mason's Bistro York
13 Fossgate (Tel: 01904-611919) price per head £25

Once home to George Mason's, a typically English grocers of some repute, 13 Fossgate has bid farewell to the bacon slicer, cheese wire and Marmite to concentrate on the produce of sunnier climes. Bowlfuls of fragrantly steaming mussels, scallops seared to vanilla sweetness, butter-soft steaks and seductively browned fish perfumes the air. Diners, stoked-up on Italian meats cured to smoky perfection and terrines of carefully hand-chopped ham-hock await main courses that carry further Mediterranean influence. These include sweet, melting belly pork, the crackling redolent of salt and fennel, paired with a simple, cream-laden stew of bacon and savoy cabbage, emboldened with mustard. Slow-roasted lamb shank is doused in red wine and lifted with rosemary and a whiff of garlic. Further gustatory bliss is found in figs, roasted, split and stuffed with chocolate, almonds and mascarpone.
Andrew Haigh

Orestone Manor Maidencombe
Rockhouse Lane, Nr Torquay, Devon (Tel: 01803-328098) price per head £40

For once, the tidal wave of hype which greeted January's award of a Michelin Star to Orestone Manor was justified. Darron "Bunny" Bunn really does create some very special dishes from a staggering "amuse bouche" cappuccino of truffle oil, wild mushrooms and white beans through to the orange marmalade ice cream and chocolate marquise pudding. In between, a circle of scallops from nearby Start Bay is interspersed with blobs of roast cauliflower puree and lightly battered cauliflower beignets. Fresh Dartmoth crab is fashioned into a terrine atop a spiced tomato vinaigrette with slices of grilled avocado. A handsome slab of juicy roasted Brixham turbot is paired with a foam of cream leeks and truffle oil plus wild mushrooms while moist sea bass is more than equal to an adventurous mussel, clam and tomato fondue.
John Mitchell