Beach vegetables are a chefs favourite

With the World's Fifty Best Restaurants announcement due on April 18, only a fool would bet against the Danish restaurant Noma retaining the top spot it won last year. And where chef René Redzepi goes, a host of other chefs will surely follow.

More and more London chefs are looking for interesting "sea vegetables" - either plants that grow along the foreshore or seaweeds from rockpools. At Hibiscus (hibiscusrestaurant.co.uk), French chef Claude Bosi uses the berries foraged from sea buckthorn to make an amazing, sharp-tasting syrup which adds novel contrast to desserts. Simon Rogan features plenty of "beachcombed" items on his menu in Cumbria and will be bringing them with him when his yet-to-be-named restaurant opens on Blandford Street later this month - how does "Channel wrack with roast cauliflower, razor clams and oysters" sound?

At Rogan's Lake District restaurant, L'Enclume (lenclume.co.uk), you can try a "sea buckthorn mousse with Cumbrian ale malt and blackcurrant".

Because Danish chef Christoffer Hruskova of North Road (northroadrestaurant.co.uk) is a great admirer of his countryman Redzepi, it is unsurprising that his Dorset cod dish comes with cauliflower and sea radish. He also opts for a seaside accompaniment to Cornish halibut - "wild stems, seaweed and roots". But there is also a strong British contingent of chefs feeding us from the shoreline.

At the newly opened St John Hotel (stjohnhotellondon.com) on Leicester Street, Fergus Henderson's menu features an admirably seasidey dish: "Mussels, leeks and laver bread on toast" - laver is a Welsh delicacy made from nori seaweed. Mark Hix (hixsoho.co.uk) has long championed sea purslane, sea beets and sea asters. "These plants introduce interesting natural flavours and are particularly good with fish because of their slight saltiness," he says.

As spring arrives, other luxurious foreshore delicacies will come to market. Between April 21 and May 15 gulls' eggs are in season - the small, rich eggs come from black-backed gull colonies on low-lying marshes. Last year restaurants had to pay the pickers £42 a dozen for gulls' eggs and this year the price will probably be even steeper.

Another great seashore delicacy is samphire or glasswort, but beware - the best British samphire doesn't come into season until high summer, but such is the current beach-combing fervour of British chefs, inferior samphire is already being imported from the Far East.