From snorkel trails and seafood restaurants to maritime festivals and a ‘museum of fun’, here’s what’s new and exciting around the UK coast

I love walking in Blackpool. The stroll along the prom takes time and a bit of effort – it’s almost three miles from the South Shore to the Grand Hotel – and takes me past three piers and more than a century of architecture including Victorian, art deco, modern and postwar municipal. In her 2023 novel Pleasure Beach, Helen Palmer pastiches Joyce’s Ulysses: her home town perfectly suits its promiscuous, genre-hopping, list-loving energy. The expanses of sand, big skies and far horizons of the Irish Sea always distract and calm the soul.

All the punch of a 1970s trip to Scarborough with Ferran Adrià in charge of the ketchup

Some restaurant folk have a habit of opening restaurants I’d recommend to nobody. They know who they are. Those huge, hulking, fancy openings, always but always adorned with huge, imported chandeliers and calfskin banquettes. Pretty to look at, and they’ll give you a table for eight for Susan’s birthday and serve you pumpkin ravioli, but also guarantee you a soulless, lacklustre experience.

And then you have the likes of Tollington’s. This culinary conundrum of a place is a new fish joint in Finsbury Park, north London, that’s run by people who couldn’t do any of the aforementioned tedious, showy blandness if their livelihoods depended on it.

Our tipsters savour delights at cafes, restaurants and pubs by the sea, from Bangor to Brighton

The cockle chowder served in a cottage loaf at The Peterboat in Leigh-on-Sea, Southend, is to die for (£19.95). The prawn and chorizo linguine at £17.95 equally so! Fabulous location, right on the sea wall, and the service is always excellent. It’s so easy to reach on public transport that customers can enjoy a glass of wine from their extensive list.
Carolyn Simpson

Michelin-starred chef JP McMahon selects his favourite bars, restaurants and beaches ahead of the Galway Races

We are spoiled for choice in Galway: there’s great pizza at Dough Bros ; burgers at Handsome Burger or Bótown ; Wa Café and Kappa-ya are great for an authentic Japanese experience; Ard Bia and Kai are longtime champions of local Irish produce, as are the more recently opened Rúibín and Blackrock Cottage . Dela , on Dominick Street, is the go-to spot for brunch and if you crave a beautifully laminated pastry get to Magpie Bakery early before they sell out.

Following a Michelin star at 26 and restaurants in Dubai and Knightsbridge, the chef is finding contentment with a simpler way of cooking, like these brilliant recipes

To say Nathan Outlaw has had an eventful decade is something of an understatement, like saying he knows his way around a piece of fish. Ten years ago, the Cornwall-based chef was in full-on expansion mode. Adding to three sites in the county, including his eponymous two-Michelin-starred seafood restaurant, he had recently set up shop at the Capital hotel in London’s Knightsbridge. Soon he would make the leap to Dubai, launching at the hyper-luxury Burj al-Arab hotel. He was travelling a lot, writing cookbooks and not doing as much cooking as he’d have liked. “It was a pretty mad time,” he admits.

Then came the contraction. The Capital was sold in 2017 and Outlaw relocated to the Goring hotel in Mayfair, before Covid shuttered the restaurant. The Dubai stint came to an end after a few years, as did his tenure at the St Enodoc hotel and the Mariners pub in Rock. Now, Outlaw’s footprint has shrunk to just a couple of streets in Port Isaac, where he runs two restaurants, a guesthouse and self-catering properties with his wife, Rachel. But despite all the closures and thwarted dreams, as well as some of the toughest years for hospitality in living memory, he has never felt more fulfilled as a chef.

The Darjeeling Express restaurateur and UN World Food Programme advocate discusses kitchen bullying, Marxism and how to balance spices properly

The elite in India are obsessed with MasterChef Australia , says Asma Khan, by way of explaining a decline in traditional home cooking . A naan the size of a surfboard is delivered to our table; she shows me how the bread has been “stabbed” in the back, to stop it bubbling up like the ones you find in your local tandoori. “No one in India eats naan at home,” she says. “You need a tandoor. Your bloody house would catch fire. People’s idea of what we eat is so warped.”

Though known internationally for her Indian restaurant Darjeeling Express, in Soho ( Hollywood celebrities regularly seem to drop in and take selfies), Khan prefers Afghan food to any other, which is why we meet at Watan in Tooting , a vast and fragrant eating house on the high street. Afghan food is free from the tyranny of the chilli and the “addition of tomatoes to everything”, says Khan, who is on a mission to reeducate taste buds about the huge spectrum of “Asian food”. She is on other missions besides: Khan is a UN World Food Programme advocate , and was chosen as one of Time magazine’s 100 most influential people of 2024 for her innovations in food and social progress.

It’s really much, much better than it needs to be, especially this close to Leicester Square

The Bavarian mini-chain Albert’s Schloss has finally reached London, where it has opened a 600-cover pleasure palace. The very thought will probably shake earnest foodie readers to their core. Albert’s Schloss, you see, is all about fun : noisy, determined, oom-pah-pah fun. It is also about wall-to-wall schnitzel, strudel and currywurst. Eat bacon kroissant royale from 9am and schweinshaxe on a Sunday. There’s a live house band from 4-7pm every night, followed by a nightly “Kunst Cabaret” with singalong piano, dancing ladies, DJs and, of course, more oom-pah-pah. So much endless oom-pah-pah, in fact, that never will one’s oom be so triumphantly pah-pahed. No tickets required and, says the website, everyone welcome.

“No thank you, Mr Schloss,” you might well be thinking while sliding under the bed. “Please keep your Weimar Republic-themed booze stampede away from me. It sounds noisy and prone to spillages.” Even so, most people I’ve met who have visited one of the other Albert’s Schlosses in Manchester, Liverpool and Birmingham have fond, albeit woozy memories of late nights and perhaps a little too much Erdinger Weissbier , Stiegl-Goldbräu or Früli beer. They talk of booze, spätzle and fried goods covered in melted Alpine cheese, taken at long benches while sitting next to strangers who only recently became best mates. Nobody ever woke up and thanked God that they’d discovered the rhubarb and custard sour or the quietly lethal and bright blue show bunny, because both of these drinks require you to line your stomach first, perhaps with one of Albert’s Schloss’s giant pretzels with sweet mustard and pickles. The jalapeño pretzel is the best: a hunk of warm, spicy carbs with a variety of dippy things that’s hard not to love.

Chain calls time on five-a-day coffee subscription it launched in UK after Covid pandemic

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Pret a Manger is axing its subscription offering members “free drinks”, almost four years after the deal launched in the UK to attract customers back after the Covid pandemic.

In a move that has upset some customers, the coffee chain said it was “time to rethink” the Club Pret offer, and that instead of providing five drinks a day and a 20% discount on food for a cost of £30 a month, it would charge £10 for a subscription for half-price drinks.

Central to Japanese cooking, it has apparently been around since 200BC – yet has become the taste of the summer in the UK. Chefs explain how it can improve the flavour of almost everything, from ice cream to pasta dishes to cocktails

When the drinks team behind Dram Bar , on Denmark Street in Soho, were getting ready to launch in 2023, they knew they needed a hot toddy. It was November after all. Head barista David Olukitibi came up with something special that, he says, “crossed the line between chai and toddy”. To a slightly peaty scotch he added star anise, cinnamon, honey, lemongrass – and white miso.

The weather turned warm and the toddy didn’t make it to the final menu. But the miso stayed. At breakfast, you’ll find it mixed with the butter served alongside Dram’s croissants. It’s on the current cocktail menu too, lending caramel notes to a Brugal rum number. And it is among the ingredients the team is testing for next winter’s warmer.