AA Gill is unimpressed by the seafood at Rosso in Manchester

AA Gill is not impressed by the maître d's recommendations at Italian restaurant Rosso in Manchester where the seafood proves to be utterly disappointing.

The famously acerbic food critic for The Sunday Times says a dish listed as prawns in garlic was nothing of the sort but rather a "brochette of mixed fish on a slimy mattress of exhausted vegetables".

"It was generous in quantity, which wasn't actually a good thing, because it was very meagre in quality," he complains. "The fish was reluctant to give up the security of the skewer, but, when it did, it fell to bits into dry shards of misery. Altogether it tasted coarse and loud, like something from the party selection of the freezer cabinet."

Meanwhile, London Italian restaurant Tinello, the first solo venture by Giorgio Locatelli protégés Frederico and Max Sali, continues to get rave reviews. This week The Guardian's John Lanchester says that as far "as Italian restaurant pedigrees go, it doesn't get any better" than this.

Writing in The Observer, Jay Rayner says that faultless ingredients and execution make dining at the Kingham Plough in Chipping Norton, Oxfordshire, an almost too-civilised experience.

The Times' Giles Coren gives his local restaurant Kentish Canteen 10 out of 10 and praises both the simple food and the funky interiors, while The Independent on Sunday's Amol Rajan says when it hits the spot, there is not a Spanish restaurant in London that can match Cambio de Tercio.

John Walsh finds the Russo-Uzbek-Kazakhstani cuisine at Samarqand in London is an acquired taste, and an enchanted Zoe Williams writing in The Sunday Telegraph says thanks to some visual tomfoolery, the food at fish restaurant Verveine in Milford-on-Sea is magical in more than one way.

For these reviews in full and more, see What's on the menu? Visit Guide Girl for the latest gossip from the fine-dining world.