1851 Restaurant at Peckforton Castle

If you like gothic mansions, you'll love this: Peckforton Castle is a Victorian-built, mock-medieval fortress on a grand scale, surrounded by impeccable grounds in the heart of the Cheshire countryside. It was built in 1851 - hence the restaurant's name - for a wealthy Cheshire landowner and MP, and at the time it so impressed the architect Gilbert Scott (famous for his gothic-style design of St Pancras Station) that he called it, "the largest and most carefully and learnedly executed gothic mansion of the present". Praise indeed. Today, in the hands of the Naylor family who fell in love with the castle and bought it after their eldest son got married here, it continues to wow the many visitors who pass through its doors. And many pass through its doors specifically to dine in the elegant and stylish 1851 Restaurant, with its deep-pile tartan carpets, thick napery, highly polished glassware and sparkling silverware - a truly magnificent setting for the assured modern British cooking of head chef Mark Ellis. Only the finest Cheshire produce, including salmon, cheese, Goosnargh duck and beef, finds its way onto the menu, and dishes display classic French techniques but with a modern interpretation. A meal may begin with some excellent homemade bread, perhaps flavoured with cheese and onion, before an amuse-bouche of mushroom velouté with a gentle accent of sage. Seared fillet of mackerel, faultlessly cooked, may follow, served with 'beetroot textures' (firm pieces and a sweet puree), along with apple and an appropriately cooling 'horseradish yoghurt'. For the main event corn-fed Goosnargh poulet with 'langoustine pot au feu, pressed then pan-fried knuckle, pochè- grillè breast, truffled soft egg' might appeal: an immaculately presented, imaginative dish of contrasting textures and flavours that all come together as one delicious whole. A skilled hand at pastry is in evidence at dessert stage in a morello cherry frangipane with fine, crisp pastry and a perfectly textured filling with sharp and richly flavoured cherries, complemented by licorice and blackcurrant ice cream'.