David Levene takes a stroll down Omoide Yokochō – Memory Lane – to try out old school Japanese delicacies such as salamander, loach and viper wine. It’s all good for the stamina

I’m often asked about veganism. It’s simple, I believe discrimination against species is as distasteful as any other kind

I have been a vegan for seven years. I prefer chocolate cakes to lentils, I don’t spend my evenings sifting through layers of moss in search of nutrients, I won’t eat it just because you made it and I don’t value sea kittens above humans. Although I had already been vegetarian for four years, I waited until I was about to leave home to tell my parents I was going vegan. Mum looked at me across the dinner table. “You’re not going to be awkward about it though, are you?”

I went vegan for ethical, not dietary reasons. I do not think humans have the right to oppress or abuse other species simply because they are intellectually weaker. Toddlers are intellectually weak, but you’re unlikely to find one in a casserole. To me, human rights and animal rights go together. Humans have a responsibility to care for animals and other humans because both have the ability to suffer. Both are capable of experiencing pleasure, fear and pain. I find discrimination on the grounds of species as distasteful as discrimination on the grounds of race or sex.

Ethical vegans are often asked variations of the same dilemmas. “If you were stranded in a barren wasteland, starving, and someone offered you a beef burger, would you refuse to eat it?” The answer is no. If I was literally starving and the hummus wells had run dry, I would eat the burger because my survival depended on it. But I don’t live in a barren wasteland, I live in Manchester, and since Media City was built we’ve had shops here. It is unnecessary for me to consume animal products for nutritional purposes. Vegans can obtain all the nutrients available in an omnivorous diet with the exception of vitamin B12, which many vegan foods are fortified with.

In recent years, there has been a vast increase in the number of dietary vegans; the most high-profile being Bill Clinton and Mike Tyson. Some people go vegan as a way of losing weight or lowering their cholesterol, but they choose not to look into the ethics of their diets. They know how many calories are in a raisin, but they don’t know that male dairy calves, useless to the dairy industry, are usually killed at birth. The same fate awaits newborn male chicks in egg farms and hens that cannot lay the unnaturally high number of eggs their industry demands. Many people are not aware that dairy cows are separated from their calves just days after they are born so humans can drink their milk. Free-range and organic farming methods are no exception. Animals, like humans, should not be viewed purely as economic commodities.

Another thing vegans are often questioned about is their priorities. “Why would you care about intensive cattle farming when there are children dying of malaria in Ethiopia?” There doesn’t have to be a competitive element to compassion. We don’t have to pick sides. “Sorry, I’m afraid I can only care about one thing at a time, and today’s thing is sustainable recycling in Honduras. Now be a dear and pass me the stilton.”

There is not a clear divide between ethical and dietary vegans, and dietary vegans have certainly increased the availability of vegan options. When I went vegan, most soya milk curdled in instant coffee, and the one commonly available brand of vegan “cheese” looked and tasted like plasticine. Vegan cupcakes are now impossible to avoid in the more self-consciously fashionable parts of town, and for this I thank the dietary vegans.

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Only in Tokyo can you sample the finest sushi from a skycraper, try tofu beside a carp pond or taste tempura under an oversized fedora. Robbie Swinnerton picks the best upmarket restaurants

• As featured in our Tokyo city guide

Kozue

No other restaurant in Tokyo has a setting to rival Kozue. Perched far above the fray on the 40th floor of the Park Hyatt, Kozue is still as swish as the day it opened in 1994, with a contemporary look (soaring ceiling, stylish tables and chairs) to match the confident modern inflections on kaiseki (japan’s version of haute cuisine). The menu features torafugu puffer fish in winter, ayu sweetfish in summer, matsutake mushrooms in autumn, and year-round shabu-shabu of perfectly marbled beef from premium wagyu cattle. Book a window seat to enjoy a peerless view of the western hills and even (if the weather gods are smiling) Mt Fuji’s cone silhouetted in the distance.
• Park Hyatt Hotel, 3-7-1-2 Nishi-Shinjuku, Shinjuku-ku, +81 3 5323 3460, tokyo.park.hyatt.com, lunch from ¥3900 (around £34), dinner from £115. Open daily 11.30am-2.30pm and 5.30pm-10pm, closed Wed. English spoken

Mikawa Zezankyo

Tetsuya Saotome produces flawless tempura, succulent morsels of premium seafood and vegetables served straight from his deep-frying wok to your plate. He follows the classic Edomae style, using only ingredients that (with a couple of exceptions) would have been available in 150 years ago. He works solo, which is why he can only seat nine at his counter. The cuisine and configuration may be traditional, but the eclectic decor – from European antiques to traditional lacquer-work and an extractor hood in the shape of a fedora – certainly isn’t. There are many contenders for the crown of Tokyo’s finest tempura, but none take it to quite the same level of idiosyncratic artistry. Zezankyo is hidden away in the residential back streets to the east of the Sumida river, but it well repay the effort and taxi fare to get there.
• 1-3-1 Fukuzumi, Koto-ku, +81 3 3643 8383, lunch from £90, dinner from £140, mikawa-zezankyo.jimdo.com. Open Thurs-Tues 11.30am-1.30pm and 5pm-9pm. English not spoken

Nodaiwa

The speciality at Nodaiwa is unagi, charcoal-broiled freshwater eel. This is one of Tokyo’s unsung plebeian pleasures, but here served with refinement and a grand setting – a transplanted timber mountain farmhouse. The fifth-generation owner-chef uses eel caught in the wild rather than from fish farms and the flavour is incomparable. The cosy ground-floor dining room is fine for a simple (but rich and satisfying) lunch of unaju (juicy eel fillets broiled golden-brown, on a bed of white rice). Up the stately staircase, the private rooms are best for a full banquet. The highlight: shirayaki, eel that’s lightly steamed and grilled, then topped with caviar. Perfect with a bottle of crisp local koshu wine.
• 1-5-4 Higashi-Azabu, Minato-ku, +81 3 3583 7852, nodaiwa.com, set menu £60, a la carte from £17. Open 11am-1.30pm and 5am-8pm. Some English spoken

Nihon Ryori Ryugin

Ryugin sprang to prominence on the back of chef Seiji Yamamoto’s imaginative application of modern cooking techniques to classic Japanese cuisine. These days, he has no need for any molecular magic: his vibrant contemporary kaiseki speaks for itself. Yamamoto is now at the top of his game (as recognised by his third Michelin star), drawing massive depths of flavour from his premium ingredients – such as sakuradai snapper, from the Naruto Strait close to his hometown, creamy an-kimo (monkfish liver, known as the foie gras of the ocean), or hand-reared Iwate wagyu beef. Yamamoto’s candy pear dessert nitro-chilled to -196C and served with a sauce of the same fruit heated to a scalding 99C, is the stuff of legend.
• Side Roppongi Building 1F, 7-17-24 Roppongi, Minato-ku, +81 3 3423 8006, nihonryori-ryugin.com, dinner £200. Open Mon-Sat 6pm-1am (last sitting 10.30pm). English spoken

Aronia de Takazawa

Chef Yoshiaki Takazawa’s bijou restaurant has long been one of Tokyo’s most intriguing secrets, more talked about than actually visited. Hardly surprising, since Aronia only sits two tables (maximum eight people) each evening. His French-Japanese signature dishes include: a ratatouille terrine, with vegetables layered into multicoloured cubes; carpenter’s salade niçoise, with sashimi tuna and tapenade sauce solidified in the shape of spanners and screws; and his hot balloon of seafood slow-cooked with bamboo shoot and seaweed. Takazawa stands centre-stage in this hushed, windowless chamber, with its sleek wood panelling and dramatic spot lighting, preparing or finishing each course himself, while his wife Akiko serves and explains in faultless English. • Sanyo Akasaka Bldg 2F, 3-5-2 Akasaka, Minato-ku, +81 3 3505 5052, aroniadetakazawa.com, from £140. Open daily 6pm-9pm (last sitting). English spoken

Les Creations de Narisawa

Creativity lies at the heart of the eclectic modern cuisine dreamed up by Yoshihiro Narisawa at his impeccably polished Aoyama restaurant, with its swish, modern dining room and gleaming kitchen revealed through massive picture windows like a balletic silent movie. The fundamentals may be French but Narisawa’s ideas and execution are his own: from the foraged herbs and edible soil to the damper-style bread cooked at the table. At times, it all feels overly cerebral, but his delectable char-cooked vegetables and wagyu beef bring a sensual satisfaction, and the desserts seem to never stop arriving. Narisawa also boasts a cellar especially strong in Burgundies, as well as a groaning cheese trolley.
• 2-6-15 Minami-Aoyama, Minato-ku, +81 3 5785 0799, narisawa-yoshihiro.com, lunch from £65, dinner from £185. Open Mon-Sat noon-3pm and 6.30-9pm. English spoken

Sushi Mizutani

Sushi doesn’t get much finer than at Mizutani – or more austere. There is virtually no decoration on the plain ochre walls of the small 9th-floor room where Hachiro Mizutani holds court. Nor are there tables, just one long counter; a single massive timber of smooth-scrubbed cedar and 10 plain chairs. The air is crisp with the faint aroma of rice vinegar and the atmosphere is hushed. Sushi veteran Mizutani is taciturn in his own language and speaks no English, but there’s little that needs saying, except to specify beer or sake (there’s only one brand of each). The sushi arrives in a set order, determined according to whatever is in peak season. A succession of flawless morsels of seafood on lightly vinegared rice kept at exactly skin temperature, it will include several cuts of the finest bluefin you have ever tasted, and the best abalone too. A couple of caveats: perfume is frowned upon, as are cameras and mobile phones. Nothing is allowed to disturb the serenity.
• Juno Ginza Seiwa Building 9F, 8-7-7 Ginza, Chuo-ku, +81 3 3573 5258, lunch from £130, dinner from £180. Open Mon-Sat 11.30am-1.30pm and 5pm-9.30pm. English not spoken

Tofuya Ukai

In a city of contrasts and surprises, few are greater than discovering the traditional garden, carp ponds and sprawling low-rise wooden architecture at Tofuya Ukai. There is no central dining room, just a warren of private chambers (most with tatami mats and low tables, but some with chairs) with garden views built around the timber buildings of a former sake brewery. The multi-course kaiseki meals focus on tofu, produced freshly at Ukai’s own small workshop in the hills west of Tokyo. In winter, the house-special tosui-tofu delivers a triple whammy of bean goodness: cubes of tofu cooked down at your table in a creamy, savoury casserole of soya milk blended with chicken broth, topped with layers of yuba tofu skin
• 4-4-13 Shiba-Koen, Minato-ku, +81 3 3436 1028, ukai.co.jp, lunch from £50, dinner from £75. Open daily 11am-10pm (last sitting 8pm). English spoken

Bird Land Ginza

Toshihiro Wada was one of the first artisan chefs to elevate the humble craft of grilling skewers of chicken (yakitori) to a cuisine of substance and subtlety. He uses only top-quality free-range shamo gamecock, cooking the morsels of meat and offal over premium Bincho charcoal. Open the meal with his trademark liver pate, continue with wasabi-coated rare sasami white meat, and don’t miss the sansho-yaki, succulent breast meat dusted with piquant Japanese pepper. In another break from the tradition of smoky neighbourhood grills, Wada stocks a small cellar of Burgundies and New World wines – perfect with grilled fare of this caliber. • Tsukamoto Building B1F, 4-2-15 Ginza, Chuo-ku, +81 3 5250 1081, ginza-birdland.sakura.ne.jp, dinner from £55. Open Tue-Sat 5pm-9.30pm. Some English spoken

Akasaka Kikunoi

From the bamboo-lined, lantern-lit path to the simple, traditional wooden decor of the rooms (with either chairs or tatami mats), Kikunoi is a microcosm of traditional Kyoto. The Tokyo outpost of one of Kyoto’s most illustrious kaiseki houses, it serves the rarified cuisine of Japan’s ancient capital – expect to spend a good three hours at table if you’re having the full-course dinner. For a more concise, affordable introduction, the lunchtime Kodaiji bento is an exquisite tasting menu in miniature, served in a lacquered box with several side dishes. Owner-chef Yoshihiro Murata is revered for the depth of umami he coaxes from the dashi soup stock that underpins all his dishes.
• 6-13-8 Akasaka, Minato-ku, +81 3 3568 6055, kikunoi.jp, lunch from £45, dinner from £140. Open Mon-Sat noon-1pm and 5pm-9pm (last sitting). English spoken

For more information go to the Japan National Tourism Organisation’s website: jnto.go.jp/eng

• Robbie Swinnerton writes the Tokyo Food File column for The Japan Times

Whether you fancy sushi, noodles or top tempura, it’s easy to find good, cheap restaurants in Tokyo, says Robbie Swinnerton

• As featured in our Tokyo city guide

Kanda Yabu Soba

In a city that has celebrated the understated flavour of soba (buckwheat noodles) for centuries, no restaurant is as revered as Kanda Yabu Soba. Founded more than 100 years ago, it’s a handsome, free-standing wooden villa in its own tranquil garden courtyard with the feel of a traditional tea house. Kimono-clad waitresses bustle about, ferrying food and drink from kitchen to table (either with chairs or on tatami mats). Locals prefer their noodles cold, as zaru soba (plain noodles with a dip) or ten-zaru (the same with batter-fried shrimp). In winter the classic dish is kamo-nanban, hot soba in a rich broth with slices of duck breast and leek.
• 2-10 Kanda-Awajicho, Chiyoda-ku, +81 3 3251 0287, norenkai.net/english/shop/yabusoba/index.html, soba noodles from around £6. Open daily 11.30am-8pm. English menu

Tsunahachi

Tempura – batter-fried morsels of seafood and vegetables – is one of the supreme delicacies of Japanese cuisine and, like sushi, at the upper end it can cost a prince’s ransom. Hidden away on the upper restaurant floor of a mall close to Shinjuku JR Station, Tsunahachi proves it doesn’t have to. Bright, modern and drawing a youngish demographic, it brings some innovative nuances to the tradition, such as serving a choice of four different kinds of salt with the tempura instead of just the standard soya-based dipping sauce. Drop in for a quick, affordable lunch of tendon (shrimp and a few cuts of vegetables served on rice), or settle in for a leisurely dinner, picking from the considerable side menu of sashimi and other Japanese delicacies.
• Lumine 7F, 3-38-1 Shinjuku, Shinjuku-ku, +81 3 3352 1012, tunahachi.co.jp, lunch from ¥1,260 (£10.50), dinner from ¥2,625 (£22), English menu. Open daily 11am-11pm

Sushi-Bun

Tokyo’s central fish market is an essential part of most visitors’ itineraries, and so is breakfast at one of its legendary hole-in-the-wall sushi counters. The seafood could hardly be fresher, and the sushi is as good as you’d expect at places charging four times as much. Sushi-Bun is one of the best in the market – it’s just as tiny (10 seats at the counter at a pinch) and as tasty as the others, but it’s left out of most guidebooks so the queues are usually shorter. Most people go for the set sushi menu (from £22 for eight servings of whatever seafood is in season, plus soup), which includes their succulent house-special, anago sea eel. The rough sake they serve with it, though, is far from premium.
• 8 Chuo Shijo Building, 5-2-1 Tsukiji, Chuo-ku, +81 3 3541 3860, tsukijinet.com, sushi chef’s menu (omakase) from £22, English menu. Open Mon-Sat 6am-2.30pm, closed Sun and holidays

Kushiwakamaru

Yakitori – bite-sized cuts of chicken (and some vegetables) skewered, grilled and then seasoned with salt or slathered with thick soy sauce – is classic blue-collar fare: cheerful, affordable and best washed down with flagons of lager, sake or shochu. The cheapest places tend to be raucous and smoky, and often specialise in offal, but Kushiwakamaru hits just the right note. The feel is casual and accessible, while the charcoal-grilled chicken is well above average. There are always a few specials, such as duck or quail. And don’t miss the negima (chicken and leek), the tsukune (balls of minced chicken) or the tebasaki chicken wings (forget chopsticks – these you pick up and gnaw with your hands).
• 1-19-2 Kami-Meguro, Meguro-ku, +81 3 3715 9292, r.tabelog.com/tokyo/A1317/A131701/13003193, yakitori from £1.60/stick, English menu. Open Mon-Fri 5.30pm-midnight, Sat-Sun 5pm-midnight

Nogizaka Uoshin

Five minutes’ walk from the opulent Roppongi midtown complex, the Nogizaka branch of the Uoshin group sets the template for the genre that’s come to be known as fish shack dining. Fresh seafood served any which way you like, at prices that reflect the rudimentary decor: bright lights, colourful fishermen’s banners and no-frills seating. Uoshin’s parent company is a seafood wholesaler, guaranteeing freshness and a great variety of seasonal seafood. You can’t go wrong here: generous sashimi platters; whole squid or other fish grilled to order; warming winter fish stews; and humongous portions of sushi.
• 9-6-32 Akasaka, Minato-ku, +81 3 3405 0411, uoshins.com, full meals from around £30, including two hours of all you can drink. Open Lunch 12-2pm on weekdays; dinner 5pm-12am; Sunday and holidays 4pm-11pm

Maruni

Maruni does barbecue in a style all its own. The building is an old converted rice merchant’s store that somehow got left behind among the modern office buildings close to Shinbashi Station. The decor is all gaudy black and red. Instead of tables and chairs, there are half a dozen oil drums, each with a charcoal grill set into the top. You just order a plate or two of meat, then grill it yourself. The beef is all from the famously pampered Japanese wagyu cattle. Maruni doesn’t serve the super-premium steak grades so it’s all highly affordable.
• 1-11-1 Shinbashi, Minato-ku, +81 3 3572 1129r.gnavi.co.jp/gar6100/lang/en/, grilled beef from around ¥550 (£4.60 a plate. Open Mon-Thurs, Sat 5pm-midnight, Fri 5pm-4am. English menu

Ippudo

Ramen is Chinese in origin, but it’s unquestionably Japan’s de facto favourite late-night fast food. You find ramen counters on virtually every street corner, serving up nourishing, steaming hot bowls of wheat noodles in rich, meaty broth, invariably topped with slices of chashu pork, half a boiled egg and chewy strips of menma bamboo. Within the genre, though, numerous regional variations have evolved: all are available in Tokyo. Where to start? You can’t go wrong with Ippudo, a chain (now with a New York outlet) that flies the flag for Fukuoka ramen. The noodles are light and the tonkotsu soup (made from long-simmered pork bones) rich and satisfying.
• 1-3-13 Hiroo, Shibuya-ku, +81 3 5420 2225, ippudo.com/store/tokyo/ebisu.html. Open Mon-Sat 11am-4am, Sun 11am-2am　

Shin-Hinomoto

There’s nothing in the West quite the equivalent of an izakaya: neither pub nor restaurant, it’s a place for eating — often well and always cheaply — as much as for drinking; and, just as importantly, for de-stressing after work. Shin-Hinomoto is a classic example. It looks unpromising, a cramped room full of noise and cigarette smoke shoehorned in under the railway tracks in Yurakucho. It’s a typical izakaya in all but one respect: the master of the house is British. Known to one and all simply as Andy, he married into the business and now runs it. Seafood is his speciality, which he sources each day from Tsukiji market. But you’ll also find chicken, cooked vegetables and simple salads alongside the tempura and sashimi.
• 2-4-4 Yurakucho, Chiyoda-ku, +81 3 3214 8021, andysfish.com/Shin-Hinomoto. Open Mon-Sat 5pm-midnight, English spoken

Little Okinawa

The food and drink of Japan’s southernmost prefecture are so distinctive they could be a totally different cuisine. The Okinawa archipelago is far closer to China than to Tokyo and the influences are marked. Little Okinawa is a welcoming, long-time (yes, and very compact) bastion of this subtropical culture, and it serves all the island exotica. Start with umi-budo, seaweed resembling miniature grapes, and jimami-dofu, a tofu-like custard made from peanuts. Continue with goat sashimi and pig’s ear (crunchy, but served with a nice vinegar-sharp sauce). And don’t miss the goya-champur (scrambled egg, tofu and bitter gourd) and rafutei, pork belly soft-simmered till you can cut it with a chopstick. Wash it all down with shots of awamori, a fiery liquor that can pack a wallop.
• 8-7-10 Ginza, Chuo-ku, +81 3 3572 2930, little-okinawa.co.jp, ramen from £6.50, English menu. Open noon-1.30pm, 5pm-3am Mon-Fri, noon-1.30pm, 4pm-midnight Sat and Sun

Tonki

The first thing you notice about Tonki is how bright it is: it’s as spick and span as an operating theatre. The chefs wear spotless white uniforms, the kitchen gleams and the wooden counter and tables are scrubbed smooth. Quite remarkable for a place where the only form of cooking is deep-frying. Tonki’s speciality (in fact the only thing it serves) is tonkatsu: cutlets of pork that are dipped in breadcrumbs, then fried till the outside is a crispy golden-brown and the meat inside perfectly tender and juicy. You have two basic choices: rosu (blubbery-rich belly meat) or hire (lean loin “fillet”), though the latter is also offered as kushi, bit-sized cuts cooked on skewers. Most people order the set meal, with rice and miso soup on the side, leaving as soon as they finish.
• 1-1-2 Shimo-Meguro, Meguro-ku, +81 3 3491 9928, tonkatsu from £7, set meals from £14. Open 4pm-10.45pm, closed Tues and third Mon of the month

For more information go to the Japan National Tourism Organisation’s website: jnto.go.jp/eng

• Robbie Swinnerton writes the Tokyo Food File column for The Japan Times

A simple salted crisp is a fine thing. Why do manufacturers insist in drenching their latest creations in weird-tasting chemicals?

Following their horribly named “Do us a flavour” marketing campaign of a couple of years ago, Walkers have just announced a new irritating gimmick – what’s that flavour? – introducing three “mystery” crisp flavours for the public to identify. I’ve just tried them. Packet A tastes of salt and stale milk, and a glance at the ingredients reveals it contains “mystery dairy seasoning”. Packet B smells of concentrated tomato syrup and tastes of dried blood (that’ll be the suitable-for-vegetarians “mystery meaty seasoning”); while packet C is vaguely curried and yoghurty and may turn out to be chicken tikka masala (it has pictures of chicken breast, chillies and coriander on the packet “for inspiration”).

I pine – don’t you? – for a time when crisps were just crisps. Why this need to take nice shards of fried potato and dust them in weird chemicals that never resemble what they’re supposed to? Walkers have decked their latest packets in pictures of fresh sage, chives, ripe tomatoes, crumbly parmesan and – good God – yellow peppers. This is presumably supposed to make the crisps look more upmarket, but it just seems grasping and odd.

“Posh crisps are the biggest scam of our time,” said Jay Rayner a while back. Four quid is too much for a small sachet of fried potatoes, even if the spuds have been “fried in extra virgin olive oil” (a stupid idea) or “dusted with pink Himalayan rock salt” (posh salt being an even worse scam than posh crisps). India Knight is another journalist who can’t abide expensive chips. They’re “annoyingly crispy,” she says, “so there’s no meltiness at any point, only these spiky shards – and to me they taste overwhelmingly of stale oil … Crisps are fried potatoes. They are not a thing that needs to be faffed about with.”

The trend for fancy flavoured crisps began in the 1950s with the appearance of then-exciting flavours like cheese and onion or salt and vinegar. Rayner Banham’s delightful essay The Crisp at the Crossroads, written in 1970, explains the rapid changes British crisps were undergoing at that time, how advances in packaging and processing were making possible new flavours and longer shelflife, and increasing profits for manufacturers. “The old basic salted crisp,” Banham wrote, “has lost almost half the market to new fancy flavours”.

The situation has only worsened. High-end crisps – this should be an oxymoron – seem unable to stay happy as cheese and onion or salt and vinegar, but powder themselves instead in the supposed aromas of Parmesan and shallot, or balsamic vinegar and Alaskan sea salt. Many posh crisps, with their airs and refinement, seem to insinuate the cost renders them somehow less unhealthy than cheap ones. (And a baked crisp is no crisp at all.) Most loathsome of all are those crisp flavours that seek to shake off their snacky heritage and try instead to imitate proper dishes: chicken chow mein, roast beef and yorkshire pudding, or scallops with coriander foam.

Knight calls Walkers’ ready salted “an honest crisp”. The market leader makes 11m packets a day and, somewhat worryingly, is the most recognised brand of any kind among children aged seven to 15 (above The Simpsons, McDonald’s, Coca-Cola and the Wii). Plain Walkers are excellent crisps – pleasantly flimsy, if a mite oversalted. But even before this new adventure in flavour experimentation, their “Sunbites” range featured the likes of sun-ripened sweet chilli and sour cream with cracked black pepper. Yeurgh.

I went to the Burts factory in Devon a couple of years ago – there’s a truly gripping video of me stirring the crisps here – and though I was sure the owners made a decent crisp, I’m still unconvinced that lobster or bloody mary are acceptable flavourings for them. Tyrrells are nothing special. I admit to a fondness for the firm crunch of a Kettle Chip, for the way those crisps wriggle and curl like scratchings, and for that company’s relatively green credentials. But a simple crisp is a fine and perfect thing. It needs no adornment other than salt. It should stand proudly as a democratic, egalitarian food, enjoyed by anyone – not as some shibboleth of lifestyle, wealth or taste. What other food is so meet and fitting in that other great leveller, the British pub?

The sap won’t be rising for a few weeks, but when it does you need to be ready to tap it

Nothing in the forager’s calendar is more seasonal than birch sap. Blackberries, wild garlic and most other wild foods are around for months; with birch sap you have two weeks, three at the most. In Dorset, where I live, it is approximately the middle two weeks of March, but it can be slightly earlier or later, depending on the weather. It may seem a little early to talk about it now but you do need to be prepared for birch tapping – mentally, physically and administratively – so I am giving you a head start.

I am going to come clean. I do not see the point of birch sap wine. With most alcoholic drinks the ingredients are there to provide the flavour or the sugar and sometimes both. Birch sap wine contains very little of either so it cannot do these things – it just supplies the water. But I know that a lot of people swear by the stuff and will disagree with my dismissal of what they consider to be a first class wine. If you like birch sap wine let me know and tell me why I am wrong. No, really.

Having said all that, I do love collecting birch sap so, apart from the odd batch of wine to remind myself how right I am, I make birch sap syrup to pour on my pancakes. I boil the fresh sap down until half of the water has gone, then transfer to a bain-marie (to stop it “burning”) and continue until only 10% is left. I then strain out all the bits through some muslin and add sugar to form the syrup. You can reduce it all the way to a syrup (less than 2% of what you started with!) without adding the sugar but the flavour is far too strong and bitter for most people.

So how do you go about collecting this arcane ingredient? First, of course, you will need to find some mature silver birch trees with trunks at least 25cm in diameter (downy birch won’t work) and obtain permission to drill holes in them from the owner – not always easy. (The ones outside the Tate Modern in London are too small, by the way).

You’ll also need some kit. A hand drill and drill bit, a bucket to collect the sap (I sometimes use a four litre milk container with a hole strategically cut in the side near the top), some tapered wooden plugs (candle waxed at the sharper end to seal them), a mallet and something to carry the sap home in.

You will also need some spigots or spiles. These are virtually impossible to obtain in the UK so you will have to find them online from Canada or the US where they are uses for sugar maple tapping. You can rig up something with tubes and pipes but I have never been able to stop it all leaking. Check, using a scrap of wood, that your plugs and spiles tightly match the drill bit you will be taking with you.

Off to the woods. Drill a slightly upward slanting 5cm deep hole into your chosen tree at waist height. If nothing comes out when you are half way in, the tree is dry. Stop drilling, hammer in a plug and try another tree. After three no-shows it will be worth waiting another week. If all is well, hammer in a spile, hook on your bucket through the little hole you will have made in the rim and cover it. Come back the next day to collect your sap – if you are lucky you will get about two to three litres from each tree. Very carefully plug the holes – if you don’t the sap will continue to flow and the poor tree may not recover from this added insult.

Birch sap tastes almost exactly like water – but the freshest water you have ever tasted, with just a hint of sweetness (0.7% sugar is the highest I have ever found). It does not keep very long – about four days in the fridge – so use it as soon as you can. Here is how you make the wine.

4.5 litres of birch sap
200ml white grape juice concentrate
Juice from two lemons
1.2 kg white sugar
Sachet white wine yeast
Yeast nutrient – follow instructions on packet

Gently heat the sap in a pan with the lid on to 75C and keep at that temperature for 20 minutes. Take off the heat and stir in the sugar until it is dissolved. Closely cover the pan and allow to cool. Transfer to a fermentation bucket and add the lemon juice, grape juice concentrate, yeast and yeast nutrients.

Keep the bucket closely covered for five days then siphon into a demi-john, fit the bubble-trap and leave for about two months. Rack-off into a fresh demi-john and bottle when it is all nice and clear. This stuff goes bad for a pastime, so be extra careful making sure everything is sterile and the bottles well sealed.

The flavour? Light, dry, fruity, with a faint piquancy of wet paper bag.

Cookery books thankfully no longer have ‘invalid cookery’ chapters but food has always been used to combat colds and bugs. We turn to soup but have you considered savoury jellies?

Once upon a time, most general cookery books included chapters on “invalid cookery”, conjuring images of valetudinarians, coaxed into spooning up bowlfuls of thin gruels, arrowroot jelly and sago milk pudding. I thought of this recently when my family were beset with endless rounds of colds and bugs. Modern cookery books aren’t much help – recipes are either too rich and indulgent or focus on specific diseases, with little on general illness. So I find myself supplementing advice from mother and aunt with that from the older books.

Colds aren’t so hard – adults are happy with toddies, soup and anything spicy, my mother-in-law keeps me supplied with Johar Joshanda which is better than any Lemsip, and the kids love fruity, honey sweetened jellies and sorbets. It’s harder to find nutritous food for stomachs upset by medication or gastroenteritis. The general advice is solid common sense. Don’t ask your patient what they want – choose easily digested food you know they like. Avoid unexpected textures – gristle, bone, lumps. Small, varied portions are best, think tempting morsels. My mother was brilliant at this and an expert at arranging a tray – I try to do the same for my family now.

The recipes in the books I looked at had changed little from the 1700s to the 1950s. There are strange omissions – potatoes (good for bland starchiness) don’t get a look in, which I find odd, as they are the first thing I want to eat when ill (crisps, chips or mash). Honey is almost always overlooked in favour of sugar. Herbs, spices and vegetables are under-used. One of the few references to curry comes from the pseudonymous Mistress Dods and contains a healthy amount of garlic, chilli, ginger and turmeric. Few specific illnesses are addressed, although Hannah Glasse bizarrely offers a sage liquor for treating thrush in children.

Many dishes don’t suit the modern palate; tripe, gruels, milk puddings (also not good fare for phlegmy colds) feature frequently, as do some very odd combinations – Agnes Jekyll recommends a lunch of toast, spread with chestnut puree, topped with slices of pheasant and garnished with gravy and warmed plums. At least this has flavour, but I find it is unpalatable as Mrs Beeton’s toast sandwich – I prefer instead Marguerite Patten’s marmite or bone marrow on toast. Incidentally, Marguerite Patten is a great believer in Vitamin B rich marmite – she also adds it to milk and soup as it helps “combat the fatigue of illness” and gives flavour to otherwise bland food. I would add that anything umami can help increase a listless appetite.

All the books acknowledge that fluids are key with any illness, so I tried a few variations. Barleywater was the surprise hit – it’s cheap and simple to make and soothing on the stomach, especially if you don’t add lemon. Whey turned out to be a good alternative when milk was too rich. Soups, jellies, custards are perfect for slipping down easily, though chicken soup – seen as a universal panacea – is trumped by the cookery writers back then by beef tea. I prefer chicken but beef tea (really beef broth) is excellent if you are self-medicating – turn it into bullshot with a good glug of vodka.

My other main success was savoury jellies. When I mention them the majority reaction is disgust. I have no idea why – they are restorative, sustaining and championed by some of my favourite chefs (Fergus Henderson’s trotter gear, Simon Hopkinson’s chicken in aspic) and a cooling alternative to soup. The children in my family had no preconceptions and loved them, especially a beef one I coloured with beetroot. My absolute favourite takes Jewish penicillin to its xenith – Fanny Cradock tells us to smash up some chicken, put it in a jar, cover with cheap brandy and simmer (a slow cooker will do it) for 24 hours before straining. As she says – it’s miraculous.

Have you ever discovered an archaic recipe which you turn to in times of illness? Have you any recipes handed down to you that you swear by?

We’re looking for the best budget eats in Cheltenham and Gloucester. Can you help? Review our chosen 10, then have your say on the Word of Mouth blog

Calling the Cotswolds! Shout out to Stroud! Big up Stow-on-the-Wold! Yes, the Guardian’s crack squad of cheap chow aficionados (that’ll be me, then) has been busy running the gastronomic rule over Cheltenham and Gloucester, in a bid to find a variety of venues where visitors can eat well, on a budget, between race meetings and cathedral tours.

Regular Word of Mouth readers will know the drill by now: you need to be able to eat for under £10 a head. That means the list might range from a sensational chippy or sandwich shop to a great gastropub or a good restaurant that does a notably cheap lunch. You can review my choices in Gloucester and Cheltenham here.

But, as ever, this post is more an opportunity to chew over the places that I either missed or couldn’t get to. My 10 included Vanilla, El Bahdja, Pepper’s, Blue Thai, Svea and the Swan, but what of Cheltenham’s Gusto (recommended to me by a couple of in-the-know locals, but they were shutting-up shop at just gone four, on a Thursday, despite what it says on the website) or Gloucester’s C&W African Experience? The latter is a reputedly brilliant find, but it was closed at lunch the day I was in town.

In Gloucester, I was also stymied in my attempts to try a Pilgrim’s Pie. It sounds great, but the cathedral cafe was having none of my attempt to get them to serve me one before midday. Did I miss out? I recently wrote a tongue-in-cheek preview of how 2012 was going to pan out in food, in which I predicted that the coming together of several key restaurant industry trends (specialisation, austerity, speed) would lead to someone opening a venue that sold nothing but toast. Little did I know that down at Gloucester docks this is already a reality. Kind of. On Toast serves all sorts of gubbins: from cheddar, leeks and tabasco, to (yes, I realise how ridiculous this sounds) Mars Bars and Curly Wurlys, either on or in toast. Frankly, my mackerel, lemon and horseradish didn’t work. Lemon juice doesn’t react well to being heated in a Breville. But are there better savoury options?

Over in Cheltenham, there were quite a few places that, for a variety of reasons, just failed to make my shortlist. Should sausage and mash specialists the Railway have made the cut? Is the cream tea at the Daffodil one to bear in mind? Is Brosh all it’s cracked up to be? I felt it would be squeezing it in, slightly – over other, more useful venues – to include its evening bar menu, from which you would only be able to afford two or three tapas dishes for under £10. Would they satisfy an appetite? If you’re picky about what you eat, would it nonetheless be worth visiting Brosh and sticking to tap water?

The Royal Well Tavern has a good rep, but is currently closed for a refurb. Is it one to check next time around? Heading out of town, is the Royal Oak in Prestbury worth visiting at lunch? Has anyone out there tried interesting Ullenwood social enterprise, the Star Bistro? And what of the Cotswolds’ hinterland? Can you suggest other competitively priced destinations as good as the deli at Made by Bob in Cirencester?

Whether you’re visiting for the rugby or the races, Gloucester Cathedral or Cheltenham Jazz Festival, it pays to know where to find good affordable restaurants, cafes and pubs

• See our interactive map of Britain’s best budget restaurants
• If we’ve missed your favourite, tell us on our blog

Vanilla

If you’re looking for “cheap eats” you could easily overlook this smart basement restaurant. It is located below an upmarket hairdresser and beauty salon in one of Cheltenham’s many handsome Regency buildings. The window, moreover, is dotted with Michelin stickers – not usually a signifier of keen value. But don’t hover at the door: get in there, because Vanilla delivers sharp cooking at very competitive prices. Between 6pm and 7pm, it offers a two-course menu for £10. That menu is also available at lunch, alongside a selection of sandwiches, salads and simple mains. It is crowd-pleasing stuff, rendered with style and precision: Gloucester Old Spot sausage and mash; haddock fishcake with wilted baby chard and chive velouté; chicken liver parfait. Whisky and honey gravadlax (£7.50) arrived atop an incredibly light pillow of a blini, accompanied by clean, lemony blobs of creme fraiche, tangles of nicely modulated pickled beetroot and a mound of bright, sharply dressed salad leaves. The salmon’s dressing smoothly melded honeyed sweetness and cockle-warming single malt flavours, too.
• Lunch, sandwiches from £3.95, light meals/mains from £4. 9-10 Cambray Place, Cheltenham, 01242 228228, vanillainc.co.uk

Svea

This small, charming Swedish restaurant is a cafe by day, offering decent, non-stewed filter coffee (£2.25) and first-rate baking (try the kanelbullar cinnamon buns, £1.90). The lunchtime menu runs from open sandwiches, such as the Hönö – falukorv sausage and cheese with a fried egg, served with a green salad – to the definitively Scandi Kungshamn – herrings, new potatoes, creme fraiche and crisp bread. A sample hagasmörgås on a thick slice of rustic bread is sound: the ever-so-slightly dry pork and beef meatballs coming alive when mixed with the creamy beetroot salad below. It is a happy to and fro of sweet and savoury flavours. On the menu you will find various useful phrases translated into Swedish, including “I hate flatpack furniture” and – either a typo or very subtle satire, this – “Sven bought out the best in English football”.
• Lunch, dishes £4.95-£9.95. 24 Rodney Road, Cheltenham, 01242 238134, sveacafe.co.uk

The Swan

A literally and figuratively beige gastropub, complete with the obligatory Chesterfield sofa by the front door, the Swan won’t win any awards for design originality, but the food is good, the price is right and the staff are on the ball. It is a perfectly if generically pleasant place to hang out. The kitchen uses good-quality artisan products, including O’Hagan’s award-winning sausages, and air-dried ham and cured meats from Oxsprings in Worcestershire and Monmouthshire’s Trealy Farm. A sample burger, topped with a fried sliced of Diana Smart’s renowned, robustly flavoured double Gloucester, was spot on (£6, lunch menu). The coarse ground patty was well-seasoned with herbs, cooked to a moist pinky-purple and had a decent exterior char. The beer – the Swan has five real ale pumps – was also in excellent condition. A glass of Brakspear’s Oxford Gold (pint from £3.30) sang with flavour, its bristling, almost peppery hop tang giving way to a mellow caramel sweetness. Food prices climb a little at night, but all the main dishes (sausage and mash, fish pie, ploughman’s) come in under £10.
• Lunch dishes from £4, evening mains from £7.95. 35-37 High Street, Cheltenham, 01242 243726, theswancheltenham.co.uk

Well Walk Tea Room

Look closely at the myriad antiques that fill every nook of this (very friendly) tea room, and you will notice they are all priced. Who knew that you could pay £250 for a piece of what, to the untrained eye, looks like distinctly amateur 19th century needlepoint? Not that you’ll be buying, of course. Not if you’re travelling on a budget. Instead, you can take all this in, while enjoying some fantastic, traditional baking and speciality teas. Although, winningly, Well Walk serves no-nonsense Yorkshire Tea as its house brew. The pot arrived correctly primed with two bags, too. The baking includes several low-fat and coeliac-friendly options, which, judging by a slice of moist courgette cake filled with homemade raspberry jam, are much less worthy than you might imagine. The wider menu includes a variety of affordable old-school snacks, such as Gentleman’s Relish on toast and potted stilton (£2.50). A retro soundtrack which toggles between Adam Faith, Frank Sinatra and similar icons adds to the convivial atmosphere.
• Snacks and sandwiches from £2.50, cakes £2 a slice. 5-6 Well Walk, Cheltenham, 01242 574546, wellwalktearoom.co.uk

Simpson’s

Simpson’s is one of those slick new-school chippies – half takeaway, half cafe – attempting to bring a modern foodist rigour to fish ‘n’ chips. It does the right things (sourcing sustainable cod from the Barents Sea; using freshly chipped local spuds; cooking to order as much as possible) and the result is a superior fish supper. The chips could have been a shade crisper, perhaps, but were buttery- soft within. The fish was great, encased in a light, nicely seasoned, largely greaseless batter. The only significant flaw was the homemade tartare sauce. Tartare should be clean, sharp and, preferably, full of capers and gherkins. Simpson’s almost smooth version had a curious cloying sweetness. Not good. Still, overall it was worth the 20-30 minute walk from the centre. Away fans note: it is not far from Cheltenham Town’s Whaddon Road ground.
• Fish and chips from £5.75. 73-75 Priors Road, Cheltenham, 01242 521964; simpsonsfishandchips.co.uk

Red Pepper

There is a lot going on at chef Richard Whittle’s three-storey cafe, deli and bistro. Scan the blackboards outside and you may well find a sub-£10 bargain on that evening’s bistro menu. For instance, on the Thursday night I visited, you could snaffle a plate of gussied-up sausage and mash for £8.95. The bistro also offers a two-course £10.95 pre-theatre menu – the Everyman Theatre is just down the road. However, if you’re really watching the pennies, get a takeaway, or head downstairs to the “coffee lounge”, a rather dated basement of black floor tiles, red leather armchairs and blonde wood furniture. It serves from 9am to 5pm, the menu morphing from eggs Benedict, through a populist lunch menu (homemade burgers and pies, quiche and potato salad, pea and pesto risotto, around £6/£7) to late afternoon cakes from local bakery Vanilla Pod. The bourbon-spiked pecan pie is highly recommended. A sample smoked bacon and mushroom soup was very good. It delivered great fungi flavour, a slight smoky tang at the edges and, thanks to some tiny flecks of chilli, an understated base note of heat. To conceive and enact such a combination successfully takes thought and skill.
• Coffee lounge, breakfast from £2.50, hot dishes from £4.15. 13 Regent Street, Cheltenham, 01242 253900, redpeppercheltenham.co.uk

Cafe El Bahdja

Gloucester is hardly the most frenetic of places, but this North African cafe is a notable oasis of calm, the dispatch of good food accomplished not with the usual crashing of pots, pans and plates, but smoothly under cover of esoteric ambient music. It is a place, perhaps, to linger after you have eaten over mint tea or El Bahdja’s brilliant baklava. The menu includes lamb and chickpea harira soup, “ratatouille-style” chakchouka with baked eggs, minced beef borek and several tagines. A sample dish of Moroccan lentils served with a semolina-topped khobz bread roll was just the thing to brighten a wintry day. The lentils had been cooked with tomatoes and onions almost to the point of disintegration. The heat, such as it was, was residual and mellow. The whole thing was an advert for patient slow-cooking and the judicious use of spices and herbs to draw out fathoms of flavour from simple ingredients. Prices are low anyway, but takeaway prices are a real bargain. The lentils cost just £3.40.
• Mains from £4.50. 59-61 Westgate Street, Gloucester, 01452 545178, elbahdja.co.uk

StanMan’s Kitchen

All blackboards, bunting and wicker baskets, this deli-cafe and gift shop is a popular haunt among Gloucester’s foodies. The simple snacky menu is all about good-quality artisan products, many from the Cotswolds. It includes, for example: a handmade scotch egg with mustard; a rather good locally made open beetroot and goat’s cheese pie with chutney and pickled cucumber (£5.95); a local cheese plate; and a selection of good-looking cakes and scones. Typically, a breakfast sandwich uses dense bread from Hobbs House (the local baker du jour) and tasty Gloucester Old Spot sausages from Nick Brown, butcher in Longlevens. Said bangers were, however, almost overwhelmed by a layer of strident, very jammy onion marmalade. Service is refreshingly bright and cheery.
• Dishes from £3.50. 42-44 Westgate Street, Gloucester, 01452 412237, stanmanskitchen.co.uk

Peppers

You will find this tiny hive of making ‘n’ baking activity, which places a high emphasis on organic, seasonal produce, down an alley off Westgate Street. It is but a stone’s throw from the cathedral and the Folk Museum, and well worth hunting out. It is rare for a salad bar to set the pulse racing, but the one at Peppers is a real treat: thick glossy coleslaw; an interesting colourful mix of giant couscous and vegetables; and a moreish savoury amalgam of wild rice, peppers and seeds among its highlights. Alongside those, a caramelised onion quiche struggled to shine, a little, the onions not as evenly distributed throughout the filling as they should have been. But the flavour was there. Peppers’ filled baguettes looked good, too. Hot dishes include soups and pizza, alongside specials such as curry, chilli and hot pot. There are also multiple vegetarian options. If you eat in – there’s seating upstairs and in a “hidden” courtyard – you can also chug on an organic beer from Stroud Brewery (£3), regional ciders and English wines from St Anne’s Vineyard.
• Baguettes from £2.95, dishes from £3. 2 Bull Lane, Gloucester, 01452 384343,

Blue Thai Kitchen

This small, cash-only cafe-restaurant is a no-frills affair. The strange leatherette tablecloths look makeshift, the floor is worn and the A-board outside has seen better days. But there is a reason why it is packed at lunch: it’s cheap, cheerful and, for the money, pretty good. The daytime menu includes a core of mainstay Thai dishes, such as tom yum soup, pad thai and green and yellow curries, as well as stir-fry noodle dishes at £3.99 and £4.99 (£4.50 take away). My massaman curry was a little oilier and less creamy than you might expect, but all the constituent parts (potato, a good scattering of cashews) were present and correct, and the notably fresh vegetables were accurately cooked. What it lacked in sophistication it made up for in flavour, and the fact that, on a freezing day, it left a ringing chilli tingle on the lips.
• Eat in, lunch mains, £4.99, evening from £6. 19 St. Aldate Street, Gloucester, 01452 526531

• Tony travelled from Manchester to Cheltenham with CrossCountry (crosscountrytrains.co.uk). For more information on things to do and see in Gloucester and Cheltenham from thecityofgloucester.co.uk and visitcheltenham.com

Most US states have ended the practice of fingerprinting food stamp recipients; only in Arizona and New York City does the practice persist.