Nights Out in the Kitchen: The new cookbook from the Sunday Times bestseller, featuring recipes and stories from a restaurant critic's life

‘It’s time to share a little more of my love for home cooking and the merry dance of appetite and technique that lies behind the dishes I make, to bring to the table more of the home cook that I have become.’

Following his bestselling Nights Out at Home, Jay Rayner returns to the kitchen to offer more inspiration to roll up your sleeves and reach for your favourite knife.

Nights Out in the Kitchen features an irresistible combination of recipes sparked by the dishes that Jay has fallen for during more than a quarter of a century as a restaurant critic, alongside 20 of his very own recipes; family favourites refined in his kitchen at home. From meatballs with braised spaghetti, to shaved fennel and lemon zest salad, tartiflette tart and slow cooked tandoori lamb shoulder.

There are accessible, home-cooked versions of Little Dumpling King’s haggis dumplings with crispy chilli oil, a take on Jacuzzi’s vitello tonnato croquettes, Claro’s squash three ways and a whole section dedicated to the joys of good things on toast, all created with the blessing, and often the help, of the chefs who inspired them.

As well as delicious recipes, Nights Out in the Kitchen is seasoned with stories which walk both sides of the ‘home’ and ‘away’ line in Jay’s life. From the problem with dinner parties and the route to a less painful Christmas lunch, through the lexicographical challenges facing a restaurant critic who wants to describe flavour without resorting to ‘mouth-watering’, ‘moist’ and ‘sumptuous’, to the burning question of whether, given the large number of wretchedly negative reviews he’s written, Jay might actually be a total scumbag.

Jay’s love of restaurants and his passion for great home cooking spill off every page of this beautifully written, warmly inspirational cookbook.

© Jay Rayner 2026 (P) Penguin Audio 2026