Around £75 for two with wine and service Scores 1-9 stay home and cook 10-11 needs help 12 OK 13 pleasant enough 14 good 15 very good 16 capable of greatness 17 special, can't wait to go back 18 highly honourable 19 unique and memorable 20 as good as it gets Second helpings: More restaurants with shops First Floor, Harvey Nichols Dundrum Town Centre, Sandyford Road, Dublin Tel: 00 353 1 291 0488. So you've been to the Fifth Floor, Fourth Floor and Forth Floor (in Edinburgh). Now, the new Harvey Nichols Dublin turns the first floor into a glam food market, wine shop and restaurant, where chef Thomas Haughton uses the best of Irish. Caff?arluccio's, 108 Westbourne Grove, London W2 Tel: 020 7243 8164. The twenty-third Caff?arluccio's just opened in Notting Hill with the same value-for-money, all-day Italian caf?bruschetta, spaghetti vongole) and well-stocked Italian deli (cheeses, salami and biscotti).
The Real Eating Company, 86-87 Western Road, Hove, East Sussex Tel: 01273 221444 Everything in this deli-wineshop-bakery-fromagerie-caf?s drop-dead desirable. Stay for the good cooking coming out of the all-day caf?itchen, or scoff in the privacy of your own home.. For three months every year, the woods and forests of La Corr? in southern France undergo a strange transformation. From September to November, the woodland floor comes to resemble a baby hedgehog convention as thousands of spiky balls lie among the fallen leaves, waiting to be gathered up. Autumn here is chestnut season, when anyone with a mind to can wander the woods, helping themselves to an abundant natural harvest.
"There's no such thing as a 'chestnut grower'," says Mark Leatham. He is the founder of Merchant Gourmet, which is the UK's largest importer of chestnuts. "It's not a controlled operation, you just walk into a forest. It's free." In Britain, chestnuts are associated with Christmas. They're as much a part of the festive season as mulled wine, as shown by the fact that 80 per cent of the 200 tons of pre-cooked chestnuts Merchant Gourmet sells in the UK each year is whisked off the shelves in November and December. But, while chestnuts may make an admirable stuffing for the Christmas turkey or enliven a dish of boiled sprouts, we're only just starting to realise that their uses can extend beyond 25 December.