There’s something very comforting about the name “Chop House” and that's a plus point that didn’t escape Sir Terence Conran when he set up the Butlers Wharf Chop House, or indeed Mark Hix when he recently opened the Hix Oyster & Chop House. Chop Houses are honest; they are not the kind of places where you get small portions; they are the kind of places where you get top quality meats carefully but simply cooked. Add in the emphasis on regional British cooking, plus the use of unfamiliar but traditional ingredients and you’ll get a feel for both Butlers Wharf and Hix’s new place.

The Butlers Wharf Chop house is a machine, lots of tables inside, lots of tables outside, a bar with yet more tables to eat at. This isn’t an intimate place to eat but it is an efficient one which is probably much more important to the busy people who have crossed Tower Bridge in search of a meal. During May there is a “squirrel and rook” season. When I visited only the squirrel element had kicked in - and the  menu listed “Grey squirrel and rabbit terrine with piccalilli” – the terrine had a good texture, the sweet close-textured squirrel meat ends up pretty much indistinguishable from the rabbit – this would be a great dish for nervous squirrel sensation seekers. On the main course list there is “braised Grey squirrel and Guinness stew with carrots and horseradish dumplings” – very rich and discernibly squirrel, the meat falling from the bones of those long back legs – the dumplings need work, they are a little solid (which need not be a bad quality in a dumpling but can be taken too far) and they also need a bit more of the promised horseradish bite. The kitchen at Butlers Wharf is to be commended, not because every diner yearns for squirrel, but because the chefs are trying to do something new and interesting. The other dishes – steak and kidney pudding with oysters; pan fried red mullet; roast wild boar with spring greens are also done well. This is a very reliable place to eat, and one that understands the importance of grace notes like a decent British cheese board and a post dessert savoury. Expect to pay about £40 a head ex-drinks.

Meanwhile, over in Smithfield, on a site that was previously a restaurant called Rudland & Stubbs,(a fish restaurant that stumbled into oblivion), Mark Hix has opened his first solo venture. He didn’t get to put his name over the door at Le Caprice, the Ivy or Scotts but he does here. The Hix Oyster and Chop House is a small, comfortable, friendly restaurant that already looks weather-beaten and broken in. This place has been set up with a strong and coherent philosophy - British seasonal food - and the menu reads accordingly. Despite the restaurant having only been open for a couple of weeks getting a table is already difficult, they have been bowled over by hordes of enthusiastic customers and as a result the service can be fractured. The food, however, is exemplary. In an earlier blog (4th December 2007 – Le Café Anglais) I commented that Rowley Leigh’s great skill was his ability to write the kind of menu where every single dish appeals. Mark Hix also has this gift. The menu here is perfectly in tune with the times and draws heavily on his rather good book “British Regional Food”. Starters range from simple dishes such a asparagus from St Enodoc in Cornwall served with hollandaise sauce; to fried skate knobs with caper mayonnaise; rabbit brawn with a pea shoot salad; or a pennywort salad with Little Wallop goats’ cheese. These options all have something in common – they are all simple and unfussy, they are all delicious. The mains are equally unadorned, this is the kind of cooking that Hix does very well indeed. St George’s mushrooms come with a Welsh onion cake; there’s a Wiltshire bacon chop with laverbread and cockles; there’s a mutton chop curry; the steaks are good (perversely decent steaks seem to be one of the measures of a good chop house). The beef flank and oyster pie is exceptional – great pastry and stellar gravy. Worth a detour. But the hanger steak with bone marrow is pretty good as well, and when you get to dessert spare a thought for the Bakewell pudding. This one will run and run – expect to pay around £32 a head ex-drinks.

Charles Campion

Butlers Wharf Chop House, 36e Shad Thames, SE1 (020 7403 3403)

Hix Oyster & Chop House, 35-37 Greenhill Rents , EC1 (020 7017 1930)