The Vanilla Pod

A modest townhouse is the setting for this small restaurant in the town centre. It's a welcoming place, with tall-backed chairs at round tables, tasteful table appointments, and efficient staff. The menus show a kitchen in tune with the culinary mores of our day, from a salad of wood pigeon, beetroot and leeks to a main course of roast fillet of brill with oxtail sauce, parmesan polenta and mushrooms. Inevitably, given the restaurant's name, vanilla is a much favoured ingredient, used to judicious effect even in savoury dishes - braised with shallots to accompany rump of lamb with orange and brioche crumbs, for instance - although more classical leanings are seen in, for example, daube of beef with bacon, mushrooms and baby onions. The intrepid could end with a taste of winter: sweet pickled beetroot, confit carrots with vanilla cream, parsnip parfait, orange salsa and sultanas soaked in Sauternes, all served with vanilla ice cream.