Review from 'The Independents favourite restaurants'

Second helpings of the first-rate From an Italian café with dishes to assuage the biggest appetite, to a pub with an extraordinary wine list, Caroline Stacey applauds The Independent's favourite restaurants of the past year.

Of 50 restaurants - mostly new, almost half outside London - we reviewed this year, a handful stand out. A few of these weren't new. Aux Fin Gourmets in Paris, Sol in Shrewsbury, The Old Woolhouse in Northleach, Gloucestershire, Nantyffin Cider Mill in Crickhowell, Chor Bizarre in London were some of the stalwarts far and wide we enjoyed for the first time. One new restaurant, The Good Cook, didn't even make it to the end of the year. We hope the following go from strength to strength.

Crooked Billet, 2 Westbrook End, Newton Longville, near Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire (01908 373936). An ordinary-seeming pub with an extraordinary wine list. John Gilchrist, award-winning former sommelier of Brown's Hotel in Mayfair, and chef Emma Sexton combine his knowledge and massive range of wines by the glass, and her gutsy and imaginative food without any pretentions and with prices that make a wine and food matching package unusually accessible. Wines from £3 to £30 a glass, plus dishes such as bouillabaisse and daube of beef or monkfish Wellington amounting to around £20 for three courses, make a satisfying evening's eating and drinking.