Patchetts Green Restaurant Guide

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.

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”.

Three and a half decades since the Andreou family first opened doors, this local fixture (nowadays there’s also a take-away offshoot in Bushey Heath), remains of note for its “consistently good” catch — especially the fish ‘n’ chips, which are a feature of the £16.95 two-course set lunch; there are fans, too, of their gluten-free Mondays.

All-you-can-eat vegetarian Indian buffet with a “good selection of dishes at reasonable prices”. Based in Wembley, where it started out 40-odd years ago as a family-owned market stall, it now has spinoffs in Harrow, Kingsbury and Hatch End (the latter à la carte only). Signature dishes include bhel puri, crispy bhajia and chilli paneer, washed down by a selection of soft drinks.

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.

“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.

The “excellent sushi” at this small chain ensures that “surprisingly decent Japanese food is now available on the local high street” in a handful suburbs on London’s northern fringe – brothers Jason & Adam Balsam launched the group in 2015, and have grown it steadily since then.

A former lockdown project that graduated via pop-ups to a permanent site in 2023, with an enthusiastic social media following: it features New Haven-style pizzas, cooked at low temperatures for a light crust and with a concise choice of toppings. In her March 2024 reivew, the Sunday Times’s Charlotte Ivers declared herself a fan: It’s only pizza, but this one will remind you the magic is still there.

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.