A top food critic has heaped praise on a new restaurant in the county - describing the dishes as “hard to fault” and likening one dish to it “revealing its inner Willy Wonka”.

The Guardian’s Grace Dent visited The Counter in Tunbridge Wells, which opened earlier this year, to try their £95-a-head eight-course tasting menu. And it left her purring.

It was certainly very different to the last time she reviewed a Kent eatery - which resulted in a scathing write-up of Canterbury’s Sekkoya in which she described her main course as tasting of “precisely nothing”.

But it was a different story after her visit to the spa town to experience chef Robin Reed’s outlet which opened in Calverley Road in April.

Upon entering she wrote: “Gosh, this is a gorgeous room: rustic floorboards, high ceilings painted black, spotlights, peculiar art, fine cutlery and informal yet sleek, kind service.”

Before adding: “It’s hard to fault anything about the Counter, because this is precise, accomplished cooking that feeds you classily but plentifully, then aims to finish you off entirely with the dessert courses.”

She was particularly enamoured with the final dish called ‘the sweet treat tower’ which contained soft fresh fudge, caneles and chocolates.

She concluded: “I am heavily pro such moments at the end of clever, slightly worthy dinners, when the kitchen suddenly reveals its inner Willy Wonka and starts treating the Veruca Salt in all of us with pure imagination. The Counter is delicious and charming, and my love for Tunbridge Wells remains unbridled.”