Chandler's Cross Restaurant Guide

2024 Review: “Prime manages to feel special and cosy all at once” – a family-friendly steak specialist where the main event is dry-aged on the bone and “not cheap but well worth it” for a “special occasion choice”. This branch recently added a new canopied gin garden with heating in winter, and you can also check out a trio of siblings in St Albans, Beaconsfield and Berkhamsted.

Away from the main property, with a terrace facing onto the golf course, this casually luxurious venue is open for breakfast, lunch and dinner and would suit a smartly dressed-down weekend family meal. With its brasserie menu incorporating a selection of burgers and chicken and steak grills, fans “prefer it to the generally more highly rated Glasshouse at the same venue” although even some who mark it highly say: “it’s good, but some of the prices are just far too high”.

This enticing multi-cuisine spread at a country estate hotel near Watford is a real bargain at £74 per person (£94 per person on Friday dinner and at weekends) – “if I win the lottery I’ll be here every week”. There’s an impressive array of ‘stations’ to mix-and-match, from sushi, robata grill and Asian, via seafood, roast meats, live pasta, stone-baked pizza and salad bar to cheese & charcuterie, vegan and dessert. All-in-all, it makes for an experience that is entertaining and fun for all the family, if not necessarily very foodie.

This “lovely old pub” in the Chilterns, handy for the Harry Potter antics at Warner Bros Studio nearby, built up quite a reputation for its Anglo-French cooking over nearly two decades under husband-and-wife team Sally & Alvin Michaels. The 18th-century venue is now managed by Alvin’s former protégé Matt Jackson (and part of the growing RedCat pub company) but, on limited feedback this year, its “exceptional pub dining” still makes it a local magnet.

If you’re in the mood for an “excellent steak”, direct your steps to this upmarket establishment – the fruit of a love affair born in the 1970s between a young Englishman and his Argentine sweetheart. The beef – also purveyed in steaks salads and burgers – is sourced from Aberdeen Angus cows reared on the lush Argentine Pampas and then seared to perfection on the legendary ‘V-Bar’ grill; the Northwood branch (there’s also a Gerard’s Cross sibling) also has an appealing downstairs cocktail bar.

“Pleasant country inn” that offers a “great Italian menu (fritto misto, lobster and prawn raviolo)” and “wonderful service, with a smile that is genuine, not forced”. Proprietors James & Magda Harkin “know what they’re doing”, both having worked in leading London restaurants, while James’s parents ran the Alpine restaurant in Bushey for almost 50 years.