Simon Radley at The Chester Grosvenor

The Grosvenor is something of an architectural hodge-podge to look at, its mix of stone and brick façades surmounted by Tudor-style timbering. It stands within Chester's Roman walls, next to the city's landmark, the Eastgate Clock, and has been through several manifestations since its inception as an Elizabethan inn. Reinvented as The Grosvenor in the Victorian era, there can be few who don't know that today it houses what is surely the north-west's most opulent dining experience. Where others might have gone a-wandering, Simon Radley has kept the faith here over the years, and has turned the dining room from somewhere merely very good into a place of grand excitement. He has achieved this with a style of cooking that works with the grain of contemporary British philosophy, yet retains an exploratory edge that produces one revelation after another. The tasting menu remains the ideal, but any of its dishes may be taken individually too. A pairing of pork jowl and sea-fresh scallop strewn with fruit tabbouleh is a bravura opener, but the ante is soon raised when a superb avocado pannacotta, garnished with lobster and crab, turns up. A tribute to Burgundy brings together a garlicky snail, a huge garlicky cep mushroom, a wing of translucently pearly skate, and parsley purée of exhilarating intensity. Just as you imagine that each dish couldn't be topped, another arrives to make you think again, as when a serving of wild mallard, its fat beautifully rendered, comes with crunchy cherry granola, rich liver truffle and a scattering of winter berries. Radley firmly resists any temptation to take his foot off the gas at dessert stage, producing a technically astonishing Manjari chocolate cream, offset with burnt orange and mandarin accompaniments, or there may be a sublime Italianate sponge cake made with Chantenay carrots and Sicilian olive oil, its traditional toppings transfigured into a walnut croquant and cream cheese sorbet.