Russell Norman is opening restaurants at a rate that is thicker and faster than an Irish sprinter. The latest, the fifth in the last year and half or so, is in Covent Garden, next door to the terrific Opera Tavern and opposite Shrek. The musical, not Wayne Rooney.

So does the fact that he has opened up five restaurants make this a mini-chain? Well, four of the five do have a bit of a theme, with a bar as the central point. They all serve small tasting plates and cocktails and all employ more tattoos and lower riding jeans than is strictly necessary. The music is rock/blue grass/country, and noisy, but only two could be said to be sisters. The others are all very different: the sisters (the original, Polpo, and the penultimate, Da Polpo) share an almost identical menu and look interchangeable. Polpetto is similar in menu, but very different in restaurant layout; crammed into the first floor of a pub, with no bar in sight, other than the one downstairs in the (separately owned) pub. Spuntino is American influenced and Mishkin’s, the latest of the quintet, is Jewish deli inspired.

In fact, it is very different in feel and style from any of the others. It has that US diner feel, with booths on one side of the room and a counter as you walk in. This is where the action is, so we forewent our reserved seating and sat at the counter/bar.

The menu is, if I am honest; odd. It starts with a series of sandwiches. These are big, and are heavy on the salt beef, but there are plenty of sandwich bars around here where you can get a salt beef on rye that doesn’t cost this much. So we passed on these, and instead settled for a nice bowl of duck scratchings whilst we sank our cocktail and spent time studying the menu.

The cocktail was lovely: gin based (as all are – there being a full bar of lovely gins, from Hendricks, through Sipsmith and Juniper, to Tesco’s Value), which came in a jug sprouting a crop of mint that would keep a mojito maker happy for a month, and with a couple of jam jars. We assumed that these were to drink from, as no glasses were proffered, so did. I cannot comment on the duck scratchings, as they never arrived. This is a theme of RN restaurants: the service isn’t as bad as at that homage to him that is Duck Soup, but it can sometimes border on the wrong side of casual.

Having decided against sarnies, and thinking that we would start with just a couple of dishes and see how we went (which is the joy of RN’s places) we ordered, and received, a very fine couple of dishes in the shape of a duck hash and fried egg, which came with a side of liquor (a sort of super-strength jus) and an oxtail and bean concoction, both being main course sized, so enough, with a mixed plate of chips and onion rings, for a whole meal. Although that didn’t stop us having an equally terrific lemon drizzle cake for afters.

The crowd is an odd mix; some look as though they are extras from Shrek over the road, whilst some are drop in tourists and others, like us, just locals looking for a good nibble at lunchtime. The booking policy is a good idea, especially for groups of more than two, which are always difficult to seat at places without one, yet this is also certain to get a high level of passing trade, given its location.

Overall a confusing place: is it an expensive sandwich bar, a starter followed by main course followed by desert restaurant or a small, sharing plate place? Or is it all three? Whatever it is, the food is very good and, overall, I liked it, but it would probably the least amongst the group that I do.

And no, it is most assuredly not a chain, which implies identikit food, atmosphere and dress. RN is clever enough to realise that you can have a simple theme that unites different restaurants, but let each develop its own character. I can’t wait for the next one.

Would you go to a restaurant for the atmosphere rather than the food? The answer for a lot of people, given the huge popularity that the Ivy still garners after many decades of mediocrity, would seem to be yes. 34 too could become another of those restaurants where you go to gawp, rather than to enjoy the food.

There was nothing exactly wrong with the food, but nothing memorable about it either, although there is no denying that the atmosphere is pretty good, some feat for a restaurant that has only been open for a few weeks.

Given that this is Mayfair, you are guaranteed a number of things:

• there will be a bar, and they will serve fine cocktails;

• there will be some hoorayed idiot(s) that you will want to punch; and

• service will be hit and miss.

And so it was with 34.

The bar is small, along the far right as you come in, has some fine spirits and a piano. Well I don’t remember the piano being there when we arrived, but it was there, being tinkled, when we left, so I suppose it must have been. The hooray Berk was at the table next to us, moaning loudly to anyone who would listen (not his companion, she being far to engrossed in her iPhone) about the steaks, and how could the waitress not know the exact provenance of each cow that had sacrificed its life to provide him with sustenance. Perhaps in this day and age, every member of the waiting staff should be expected to know not only the type of cow, but its name, date of birth and inside leg measurement. And service was indeed, hit and miss. More generally than not, it was a hit, but seemed to stumble over small things, like the second bottle of wine, which got lost in the ether between cellar and corkscrew.

So nobody famous was there, alas, but the clientele had that well-heeled glow, that only copious amounts of cash can engender. The buzz that they give off, and not just from the mobile phones that adorn every table, when not pressed firmly to ear, is a contented, happy with life one. The 1% at repast.

Food is solidly protein based, with two or three cuts of four different styles of beef (USDA, Scottish, Argentinean and Australian Wagyu). Admittedly the waitress should have been able to say what the general differences between these were but, when she couldn’t and went to find somebody who could, surely we didn’t have to put up with hooray Berk telling us that she should. What I can say is that the Argentinean was a superb piece of beef; juicy, strong tasting and cooked rare as asked. Maybe it could have been a little more charred on the outside, but that is nitpicking. The USDA went down well with our American co-diner, although I’ve always found that, whilst USDA is really juicy, it can be a little bland.

Rewinding to the starters, these too were perfectly acceptable, and as perfectly unmemorable as you’d expect from a place like 34. The onion tart (from Lincolnshire; the onions I am guessing, rather than the tart) came with a huge helping of almost totally tasteless sweetbreads. The chicken salad and caesar salad both got thumbs up, again, without being outstanding.

Despite skipping the deserts, the bill still came in at a hefty helping, but hardly extraordinary when you are in Mayfair, paying for the privilege of being seen with the other people paying for the privilege. So why then add a cover charge? That too is deeply, deeply annoying. I know it is only a couple of quid, but so what. Include the bread in the price, or at least let me decide if I want to have bread or not. Don’t plonk it down, unbidden and then charge for it.

I am sure that 34 (like the Ivy, Scotts etc.) will do just fine, despite what any reviewer says. That is because reviewing 34 as if it is a restaurant where people go for the food is simply looking at it the wrong way. It is the place to go, just to go. So go, enjoy the atmosphere, look at the way the moneyed crowd look, then go back to being one of the 99%.

Now I hate Jamie Oliver as much as the next person, but, whilst every time those grating Sainsbury commercials come on I just want to take something large and heavy and batter him around the head, he does have a great brand. This brand comes from actually being able to cook, plus being a great marketer. It is just a shame that the latter is now more important than the former.

Much like the boy himself, Barbecoa seems to divide opinion very neatly between really hate and really love. I wouldn’t put myself in the really love this restaurant category, but it is no where near as bad as, having read some of the reviews below, I thought it was going to be. Maybe they have upped the game since opening, but I actually kind of like this place. Not so much that I wouldn’t still batter the living crap out of the annoying little tic, but I’d eat at the restaurant again.

Many years ago my office used to be on the site of what now looks like the stealth boat from Tomorrow Never Dies. Our canteen, which was on the ground floor, directly under what is now Barbecoa, was nothing to write home about, but I did once have an office that shared the same magnificent view over St Pauls. And this is a great selling point: big wide windows, terrific view. Shame that the room is L shaped and we were at a table with a view of the table with a view of the table that had the view of St Pauls.

The place is cavernous, double height industrial chic; all bare metal, brick and air conditioning ducts. The kitchen is open (or at least glassed off), with views over the barbeque pit and the grill.

We just had mains, and they were all rather tasty: the Lamb skewer was a couple of kebabs, some so-so mushrooms, and a big slick of what was advertised as ‘wet polenta’, but I’d never have guessed. It was very pleasant. Even if I had wanted the special, which had run out by the time I’d ordered it. Never mind, lamb kebab is never a bad choice, and this was solid chunks of Baa Baa, pink on the inside, charred on the out, with hint of grated lemon rind. The brined chicken came with creamed corn. I hate creamed corn, but it seemed to go down well enough with my companion who chose this, as did the plaice with my other companion. This was simply grilled with a small watercress salad. Simple foods, well cooked. There is little more to say about the food, or indeed little more that you could want from the cooking at any barbeque restaurant.

Service is ok; they got the orders right, they weren’t intrusive, they didn’t try and push us hard to ‘upscale’ with extras and didn’t really bother us, which again is all you really want at a place like this.

I may only have come here as Bread Street Social was fully booked, but I will definitely be back. Hopefully a little closer to the table with the view of the table with a view of St Pauls.

I am sure that there is nothing real about the food at the Real Greek, but so what? It is a great place to grab a snack at lunchtime: a selection of meze plates, a glass of wine, a friendly chat with the waiter. Nothing standout, nothing terribly bad and all at a reasonable price.

In today’s age of austerity, there is little better compliment.

Bright Courtyard stands on the sight of the not at all lamented West 55, a hotchpotch of a restaurant that mixed too many styles with absolutely zero substance. Bright Courtyard advertises itself as a Club, maybe to keep up with the Royal China Club directly opposite, but there is nothing clubby about the operation, which is housed in a glass fronted modern reincarnation of the horrendous sixties M&S head quarters on Baker Street. Like West 55 before it, it is a bit of a hotchpotch – lots of Cantonese, mixed in with sashimi. Why sashimi? And, if there is a valid answer to this, why no sushi? The Japanese were last seriously in China in 1945, and then only in Guangdong in the immediate vicinity of Hong Kong, so can hardly have left a legacy of sashimi.

We only went here is the Royal China couldn’t seat us for an hour, and maybe this will be BCC’s saving grace: given its situation, it will get the cast-off crowd from across the road.

The food is perfectly ok, but no better than the Royal China or a dozen or more places in China Town, and certainly nowhere near as good as Ba Shan. It says something when the standout dish was pea sprouts and garlic, but that really was a lovely dish. But thirteen quid? For a side dish? That is just rude.

Service was perfectly ok, although, whether by accident or design, the wine that I had asked for was replaced by another bottle. Ok, a nice bottle, and my fault for not questioning, but when the bill came, it seems that the cheap bottle that I had thought I was getting had morphed into a stupidly expensive one. In fact, when the bill came, I thought that there had been some mistake: a couple of starters and mains, the aforementioned pea sprout side dish and a bottle of wine in a Chinese anywhere in the world should not come to this much. Or, if it does, it had better be at one of the fancy Michelin three star places in Hong Kong.

I really had wanted to like this place, not least as its forerunner was so poor, and any competition to Royal China should only make them up their game, which has slipped a bit on complacency recently. Alas, it was not to be: for the sort of money they are charging, I’ll go to Defune and have real sashimi, in a great atmosphere. Or have three meals at the Royal China. And keep the change.

Given some of the comments below, I was expecting a frosty reception on a cold November lunchtime, but nothing could have been further from the truth. The reception, the service and indeed the room were all warm.

The restaurant is approached through a lovely looking bar area and has a mixture of modern art on the walls and those intricate light bulbs found dangling from the ceiling in Spuntino and the like, only here encased in glass fish bowls, rather than left bare, faux industrial chic like. Fortunately there is no muzac, and the buzz from the all but full restaurant worked well. I can imagine that late of an evening, however, the noise level (aided by hard wood floors and minimalist walls) could rise to annoying for romantic tables a deux.

Seating is either banquette style around the sides, or a couple of awkward tables in the middle of the room, next to the service counter. Alas, it was on one of these latter tables that we were sat, too close to the champagne bucket as is decent without a straw. Not the greatest table in the house, but it did afford one of us a great view of the kitchen and the other a table of lunching ladies, all fur and jodhpurs, who decamped on masse to the kitchen to have their photos taken with Jason. Fun for them (and him, I am sure), but not so convenient for the waiting staff, all of whom have to get the nod from the great man before a plate leaves the kitchen.

This seems to be a bit of a thing here, like allowing passengers to go into the cockpit to see the pilot (pre 11/9 that is): there was a succession of punters going in to see the chefs at work. How much cooking JA actually got done is hard to tell, as he seemed as much interested with glad handing as he did with setting to at the stove. He was at least there though, which is more than can be said for most Name Chefs.

Having been sat next to the champagne bucket, our white wine was placed by the wall, too far away to discretely nip over and get when the service of this was slow. I have had my gripes before about wine service; it annoys the hell out of me when it arrives after the meal has started. Here the wine arrived, as it should, in time for a little snifter before the food turned up. Then it sort of disappeared. Either leave it on (or near enough to) the table so that I can serve myself, or make sure that you keep an eye on the flow. You don’t have to top it up after every sip, but don’t let the glass go dry.

This is but a trifle annoyance with the service, which was otherwise excellent throughout.

The menu has both a la carte and a set lunch which, should you be there at the right hour, is by far the best way to go: three courses for less than the price of all but a couple of the a la carte mains. All the dishes we tried were lovely: slow cooked egg yolk with smoked haddock and curried puff rice (sort of reinvented kedgeree) had a good combination of flavours, and an added crunch from the curried rice krispies. Ham hock terrine was enlivened with some beans and piccalilli and had a rich streak of foie gras running through it.

Mains too kept up the high standard. Cod came with squid and some pesto spuds which was a terrific combination. I’d never have thought of partridge with bolognaise, but it worked supremely well; rich tasting partridge and a deep reduction of bolognaise, set off with a thick smear of carrot puree. Say what you like about the man, but JA is not afraid of bold tastes. So the bread sauce mousse that came with the partridge might not have worked, but didn’t amount to a total disaster.

Whilst the wine list verges on the serious, there are some good wines in the £30-40 level and, when combined with the set lunch menu, you can get an excellent meal for less than you’d imagine.

As a nod to the ladies what lunch brigade, there is also a special stool provided for hand bags. Whilst the Victoria Tote may look splendid on this, nobody batted an eyelid about the sweaty gym bag we deposited, just to try it out. Maybe when we come back, we’ll put something a bit more befitting on it.

At the risk of putting the tweeters/twits/tw@s (what is the collective noun for somebody who thinks anyone cares what they say in 140 characters or less?) at @hardenbites# to sleep, here's a review from a lawyer, not paid for at all, let alone by the word.

The Rib Room sounds like some feminist gathering place, which is an odd choice for a male lawyer to go, seeing as how our profession is so notoriously sexist. Yes, yes, we all know that senior partners prattle on about how much women add to the profession, with them plugging away to develop a plan to help boost female partner numbers, whilst firing them all. So I went there with a female partner from a Magic Circle firm, before it was too late.

Top Restaurants In Posh Hotels seem to be either cool (Heston) or arrived at through a tart’s boudoir (Alain Ducasse). The Rib Room falls most emphatically into the latter. I know it is the Christmas season (or Holiday Season as our Septic Friends would wrongly have it), but do you really need this over abundance of expensive watches/shoes/bling lining the corridor leading to the restaurant, or the myriad dangly gilded baubles hanging from the ceiling? Come on; is it a hotel or a shopping mall in Dubai?

Once in the restaurant, however, the mood changes. The room is old school; a sunken bar surrounded by brown slate-lined walls and green leather banquets. It feels like the whole has been transported from a Manhattan men’s club. And it is all very masculine: no waitresses, only waiters; nothing prim and proper or soft here, the place is hard edged, screaming Business Deals; the only single people being Business Men, intent on stocking up on protein before The Big Deal.

The menu reveals a different side, however. That side being 1970’s Britain: prawn cocktail; yes. Steak and chips; oh yes. Black Forest Gateaux; yes, yes, oh yes. I kid you not. The menu could have come from a ‘70’s dinner party. I had to see what my parents had been so enthralled by all those decades back. I really wish I’d tried the cheese course too: perhaps it would have come on cocktail sticks, poking out of half a foil covered grapefruit, replete with tinned pineapple chunks.

OK, if you are going to do irony, do it well. And they do. The prawn cocktail resists the temptation of being served in a wine glass, instead coming in an enormous glass bowl affair, bits of lettuce and endive poking out of big mound of prawns Marie Rose. The steak is aged (of course) and comes with a choice of a la mode sauces, including the most excellent bone marrow. The Black Forest Gateaux is not billed as such, instead being cleverly disguised as a black forest “chocolate delice”. They are, however, fooling nobody: it had chocolate, whipped cream and Kirsch soaked cherries. If that’s not a BFG, then nothing is.

Away from Abigail’s Party, the other dishes were perfectly pleasant: lamb sweetbreads came with a foam, just to show that we were in the 21st century and lamb chops were pinkish and tasted of lamb. Oh, and the wine list comes on an iPad (2 no less).

Now that is a first for me, and is genius: forget trying to leaf through a leather bound tome, sweating under the glare of the snotty nosed sommelier. The iPad allows you to slice and dice by grape, region and style, whilst giving you the chance to learn more about each wine by clicking through your preferences. It might not make things any cheaper (and there are some nose-bleedingly high priced vinous offerings here), but it is a really fun way to make the oft painful task of choosing a wine from a ridiculously long, complex list, a lot simpler and easier.

Service is friendly without being intrusive, managing to get the right balance between being there when required and not being then when not needed, with a warmth and genuine helpfulness that is just not there with too many London restaurants. That the waiting staff is all Italian might have helped.

The Rib Room is never going to win awards for the excellence of the fare, but it is a fine enough place for an expense account dinner.

It took Andreas Vesalius in 1543 to point out that women didn’t have a spare rib, but the same number of bones pointing out of their thoracic vertebrae as men. Maybe some time within the next 468 years senior partners of our biggest firms will work out that women have the same ability as their male counterparts. Who knows, by then the Rib Room may have morphed into a Manhattan women’s club instead. Whatever that looks like.

Amongst her many inane witterings, Kate Moss once said that she lives by the motto that “nothing tastes as good as skinny feels”. She has obviously never tasted grouse.

I am sure that the Daily Heil would argue that the Croydon Cretin’s utterance has led to an increase in teenage anorexia, rioting in her home town in protest and foreigners taking our jobs purely out of spite, rather than us Brits being too lazy to plaster a wall. Frankly I don’t care: Ms. Moss, who’s sole addition to the sum of human knowledge is to look good topless, will no doubt be a young, beautiful and (aided by the cocaine and fags she has ingested) very skinny corpse. I, on the other hand, intend to die old, fat and curmudgeonly, having partaken of as much fine food and quality wine as I can afford. Grouse is top of my list, grouse season is upon us and, despite other reservations about Rules, they sure know how to cook the succulent young birds.

The splendid thing about Rules is that it has withstood the ravages of food fashion through the centuries. Pretenders and pretentions have come and gone, but Rules remains true to its British roots: all steak and kidney pud and game.

The room itself is a splendidly ornate affair, oft seen in Parisian brasseries, but rarely seen in London. Lots of stained glass and lots of pictures of hunting parties, displayed en masse, like the smaller rooms at the Summer Exhibition, accompany antlers. Lots and lots of antlers.

Service is of the old fashioned sort; stiff rather than rude, formal rather than brusque, but certainly a lot friendlier than I remember, and others seem to have had. The wine list too is traditional: on the red side there is little of that New World stuff, just good old-fashioned Burgundy, Bordeaux and Rhone. The white is more interesting, with Austria, Greece and some out of the way French regions, mingling with the Chablis and Grand Cru Burgundy. I often find this with what I’d term Red Wine Restaurants. You know, ones where you want meat rather than fish. They will then go and put some interestingly tempting whites on the list, just to throw you.

Undeterred by this onslaught of white wines, it was grouse that I came for and grouse that I had. Now I know my grouse. And the Rules’ ones are pretty fine fellows, done the traditional way: roast with bread sauce (I can do without the redcurrant jelly. I have never seen the attraction of fruit with meat, other than perhaps Meat Fruit at Dinner by Heston) and, perhaps a nod to modernism, some parsnip shavings rather than game chips (posh crisps to you and me). For me, the bread sauce needs to be a bit thicker: it shouldn’t coat the back of a spoon, it should hold it upright. This is but a small trifle of a complaint, mind you, when the juicily beast, perfectly pink breasted, is the main show, brought to the table in its own copper platter, bits of thyme protruding from its derrière, a crisp bit of fried bread with the beast’s innards pated on top.

I shouldn’t forget, in my grouse musings, to mention both the starter and the desert, and indeed my companion’s pie. My Desert Island Discs’ luxury (along with a record player, which it always seems odd that nobody is offered; if I have six records, at least let me have something to play them on) would be a meal starting with potted prawn, moving through roast grouse and ending with stilton. They are all here at Rules.

The prawn is good, not the best, lacking a little in punch, missing a bit of nutmeg. The stilton, however, is magnificent: when it says stilton, that is what you get. A whole stilton and a spoon. And should you not fancy game, the pies are a joy. Juicy, packed with beef, kidneys and lots of gravy, with a crunchy/chewy crust. No mere jus here; no thick, highly flavoursome and most definitely gravy.

Rules isn’t, and I’d guess never will be, the most hip of places to go: if you want hip in Maiden Lane, go to Da Polpo opposite. If you want good, British food, in convivial surroundings, it is hard to beat and, with the addition of the bar upstairs, a great, club like place to sip a cocktail before.

Like most of us, I hate to admit when I am wrong. However, as the exam-board found with too many of the answers on my A level maths paper, I was, it seems, possibly not as correct as I could have been about Scott’s.

I'd wanted to go for ages; the glamour, the elvers, the top-hatted doorman, the possibility of a real celebrity. Instead, when I went a few years back, I hated it. All braying hedge fund managers, bragging about the size of their tigs, with their x-ray wives face-lifted to with in an inch of their lives, grins frozen to their perma tanned visgogs by botox. Now I don't know if the recession has found its way to Mayfair yet (nearly 30 notes for a slice of turbot suggests maybe not), but this time, they'd all gone, to be replaced by Russians. Lots of Russians.

Yes, there was still a sufficiently loud amount of braying going on; this time from the peroxide crew, presumably fuelling themselves for a busy night ahead, but the atmosphere had changed dramatically in the intervening recession.

The room reminds me of the Ivy: heavy wood panelling, that air of money, lots of uncles out with their nieces. Service too has the comically inept level that the Ivy has perfected so well. Not bad in the rude sense, just not good for a place charging the aforementioned 30 notes for a slice of fish. Sides extra. How can you end up with two knives and no fork when the food arrives? How can all the waiting staff suddenly disappear from view when you realise what has happened?

To finish the analogy with the Ivy, the food is never going to be the main point here: it is perfectly fine, but, with few honourable exceptions, never really rises above this.

The menu is split into caviar, crustacean, starters, fish and meat. Oh, and sides, as the mains come with nothing other than the fish or meat mentioned. I always like to try something new, so started with cod tongues. The tongue is a misused part of any animal, seemingly regarded as a nothing cut. Whilst of course I realise that a cod has a tongue, I have never seen one on a menu. Cheeks yes, but they are so last year. You can probably get them in M&S now.

It, or rather they, for the cod’s is small, were delicious, the standout dish, although the oysters (the West Mercia native no.2, as recommended by the waiter) were fine examples of the bivalve.

Then the real test: something so absurdly sounding on the menu that I was drawn to it irresistibly, like a moth to a flame. How could “shrimp burger” be any good at all? Well, it wasn’t, but I just had to try it. Potted shrimp is one of the most glorious British dishes; peeled brown shrimp, mace, nutmeg, maybe some anchovy sauce and butter. Chopping up prawns, turning them into a burger (complete with a slice of pickle) is just so, so wrong. I should have gone with the slip sole recommendation of my companion, who seemed far more to enjoy his than I mine.

To finish, a classic sticky toffee pudding, swimming in extra toffee and floating on some pretty good custard.

The wine list is fine and, for where we are, prices not at all bad, with many by the glass and few hitting the stratospheric heights of other local restaurants, which is odd, given how expensive the food is.

So certainly not as bad as I recall, and a fun evening, but don’t go here for the food; go to be seen, go to view how the other half live, go to meet blond Russian girls. Just take a credit card with a high limit.

The grouse is a delicate bird. It has lived wild on (in this case Yorkshire) heather. Until 12th August it has had a quiet life. From then on be-tweeded City folk pay a fortune to take pot-shots at it. That one of these succeeded and the poor creature has been returned to the City, means one should treat it with respect. Take the time, take the effort: cook it properly. It is a bird best served under- rather than over-cooked. Lutyens needs to work this out quickly, should the place ever want me to darken its doors with my Amex Card again.

Today’s poor creature had been cremated: legs like crispy duck; breast not moist or red inside, not remotely pink even, but dark brown, the texture reduced from firm to flaky. Yes, the bread sauce was there and it was ok, but the game chips looked as though they had come from a packet of Walkers. I half expected Gary Lineker to slap me and steal them from my plate.

Enough of my grouse about the grouse; Lutyens is, like so many places in the City before it, an old office block, whose high ceilings lend themselves to being transformed into a bar/restaurant. The bar is smallish and leads to the more formal dining area, all creams and woods; big and bright; muted tones, a hushed atmosphere, in reverence to the Vampire Squid that squats opposite maybe.

Staff are polite and efficient, although come on; whilst I expect a waitress at TGI Fridays to come and ask me if everything is ok, I do not expect one to interrupt a business conversation at an obviously business oriented restaurant. I also don’t need my water glass filled up after I’ve taken a single sip. Just relax a bit.

Maybe this is it: Lutyens is the City incarnation of Boundary, a hip and happening place in far trendier Hoxton. The Boundary is close enough to the City to get the money passing through, but far enough outside of the Square Mile to be out of the Griffin’s glare, under which nobody in a service industry can relax. Lutyens is slap bang in the Square Mile and is just too stiff for its own good.

Duck Soup has clearly been taking lessons from the Russell Norman school of design. Whereas Polpo et al look as though a lot of money has been spent on making it look as though nothing has been spent on getting that shabby chic look perfect, however, this looks like the real thing. No money has been spent on decor. The walls are white painted brick because they couldn’t afford plaster. Or coloured paint. The wiring is bare as chasing it into the walls would be pointless; there being no plaster.

Nor, it would seem, has any money been spent on staff who are able to take down bookings. Or execute orders. Don’t get me wrong, the waiting staff weren’t rude. Far from it; they were uniformly friendly and cheery. They just weren’t very good at waiting tables.

I'd called a day before and booked for six. The one table that seats this number was booked, so we were sat at the counter. Much better, I was told, than stuck at a table away from the action. With such a large number, I'd been assured that we'd get the corner of the bar, so that we could all sit around in a U shape and talk to each other; easily able to share the plates.

I might have been given the assurance, but nothing had been noted in the booking. The corner seats were all taken, so in a line we were sat; neither end being able to talk to the other, conversation stilted, unable to share anything. I was hardly best pleased.

It is never good to start at a restaurant in a bad mood. To come back from here, you need everything to be perfect. So I ordered a few nibbles to while away the time until we had all gathered. The fried courgettes arrived and were magnificent. So magnificent that we ordered more. Like the olives and cheese that I had ordered with the first set of courgettes, this second batch never did materialise.

When everyone was lined up, we ordered the real meal. In fact, we ordered one of everything. The shortish menu had five starters and three mains. There were six of us, all the dishes sounded good, so the maths worked. The idea, like Polpo and its siblings, is that you order lots and the dishes come as prepared. One starter turned up within about half an hour. More food came out of the kitchen. It all passed us by. A couple more starters arrived, but we had been here for the best part of an hour or more by now and my initial irritation was festering to feverish proportions. Then two things happened: the quail arrived and the table became free.

This wasn’t just any old quail mind. Oh no: this was the mother of all quails. A Goliath of a quail. A quail that had been working out at Virgin Active; big, firm, meaty. Blackened on the outside, moist, tender, juicy on the in, wonderfully cooked in pomegranate and rose water. As perfect a coturnix coturnix as I have ever had. (Aside from the second that, having been successfully ordered, miraculously arrived.)

And the table: instead of six of us strung in a line, we could mix. The food came and we could share; we could talk; we could laugh; we could order far, far more food than we really needed, or could ever possibly eat. The place became fun. The Doors playing on the gramophone (children, go and look both of those up on the interweb) stopped being overbearing and became ironic. The earnest young men and women trying to wait our table went from being comically inept, to just being: occasionally bringing us victuals, but mainly just not there.

And the food just got better: well maybe nothing could top the quail, but the cockles, the buffalo mozzarella, the ceps and parmesan, the fritto misto (aside from the deep fried slice of blood orange, which was just plain odd), the cheeses, the crème caramel and especially the plaice all tried valiantly. That they failed has nothing to do with them being bad. They were all uniformly gorgeous, they just could not match that quail (or those quails, for the second was as splendid as the first).

The place had been recommended to us by a master carver at Brindisa in Borough Market. Whilst he would be appalled at the ham-fisted nature of their carving of the whole leg of Serrano sitting on the bar, he was spot on when he said that the wines were exceptional: regional French, interesting grape varieties and keenly priced.

The bill, like the waiting, was hit and miss: things that we had ordered but that did not arrive appeared on the bill, but drink that had arrived did not. As the menu changes every day, the bill doesn’t itemise the food, so it really is impossible to tell if we'd over- or under- paid.

Really to go far, to try and out-Polpo Polpo, the amateurish nature of the service needs to be eradicated: imitation being the best form of flattery, I have no doubt that Mr Norman would love the idea, love the place and would certainly love the food. He would, however, be appalled by the monumental uselessness of the staff outside of the kitchen.

From my many years of eating and drinking my way through some of the most exotically located bars and restaurants across the planet, I have developed a set of rules. Rule #5 states that: “the quality of fare at a restaurant or bar is inversely proportional to the quality of the view”. The quality of the view from the Paramount bar is sensational. The big advantage is that, being at the top of it looking out, you can't see the eyesore that is Centre Point. What you can see (looking east) is the green dome of the Great Court of the British Museum almost below and in the distance, the Shard, the Gherkin and Canary Wharf Tower (why wasn't that named Thatcher's Needle or something equally daft?) as well as St Paul’s and Tower Bridge.

The views are just magnificent, which means, I’m afraid, that Rule #5 applies. The cocktails aren’t the worst I’ve ever had, but given the renaissance of the cocktail in London, there are myriad other places that you could go to and, for the same price, get a cocktail five times as good.

So don't go for the cocktails, just the view. In fact, if you can avoid buying a drink at all then I'd do so. It isn't that the drinks are expensive (think pub-plus prices rather than top-bar prices) but that the service (whilst charming) is horrendously slow, meaning that it isn't difficult to avoid getting served (tip, if you do manage to order, get the second round in as soon as the first is set down). If this were anywhere other than the 33rd floor of a place with amazing views over London, this would be a serious problem. With this view, honestly, unless you are gasping for a drink, just sit there and drink in the view. It is quite the most perfect way to waste an hour as the sun sets and lights drift on.

Scotland; home to the deep fried Mars bar, cross-dressing men and other soft, southern stereotypes and prejudices. Ok, the national dish is a stuffed sheep's stomach filled with innards and barley (to which the national poet wrote an incomprehensible address), but is that really so much worse than blood sausage? Boudin noir, morcilla and the like may sound exotic (ok, black pudding maybe accurate, but doesn't have the same ring) and are staples of far more refined cuisine, but are essentially just pig's blood and pig fat. Andouillette (which has its own association in France) is pig's intestine, the best of which are supposed still to have a whiff of the farmyard about them. We don’t mock the French for this, so why mock the Scots for haggis?

So lay off Scottish cooking; there are a number of excellent restaurants in Edinburgh and, whilst the Altnaharrie Inn may be long gone, Nick Nairn and others are still pushing forward the boundaries of modern Scottish cooking. Even Sweary Ramsey was once Scottish, before he went all sweary Hollywood and started hanging out with his new BFF, Becks. (I hasten to add that this review is written immediately before the game against England in the Rugby World Cup. Should we lose that by eight or more points, all bets are off. Be as rude as you like about the Scots and their spud heavy cooking).

Alas, Tigerlilly is not one of those pushing anything, other than sweet brightly coloured cocktails on sweet brightly coloured young girls.

On a gloriously sunny, September day in Edinburgh (yes I know what you're thinking, but it really was. OK, it was windy too, if that makes you feel better), two old men found themselves in the totally trendy, totally happening TL; more out of place than a funny joke on Family Guy.

The room is enormous, housed in a Georgian townhouse on George Street, one of the most buzzy streets in town. The bar and the restaurant sort of merge into one loud space, with booths along one side, which is where we found ourselves put. As far away as possible from anything remotely trendy, hidden from view in case the trend police were in and noticed that we were double the average age of the rest of the clientele.

The food is perfectly fine: the scallops were fine Scottish ones, on some pea mush, with texture given to the dish by a piece of bacon. OK, it said pancetta, but this is Scotland: it was bacon. The ham hock too went down well, as did the Borders lamb and the trendy special of slow roast pork belly.

As this is a bar first, the drink’s list is heavy on cocktails, but we did manage to find a Spanish red that was called “The Flying Scotsman”, so had to have it. Why it was called this I don’t know; in fact, whilst this is what it said on the wine list, it didn’t mentioned it once on the bottle.

Service was far better than you’d imagine at a place so packed and seemingly so understaffed – the starters and mains arrived at a nice pace, the friendly waitress didn’t get in the way, and was as good service should be: noticeable when needed and not when not.

I cannot comment on value for money, I'm afraid, as my Scottish companion picked up the tab. That's another southern prejudice that you can put away. Until Saturday at least.

I am not sure that I have ever heard the words “healthy” and “curry” used in the same sentence, except with the pre-noun modifier having “un” attached to it. Indali Lounge, as well as advertising itself as a place where some Big Brother party or other took place a while back, is very keen to tell you how healthy the curry here is.

I suppose one should be worried about health issues when eating, although the millions who gorge on transfat at McDonalds might disagree, but I want to know if the stuff tastes good. If it is healthy for me too, well that is a bonus.

The restaurant is set in a post war arcade of shops, flanked on one side by Galvin's Bistro Deluxe and on the other by the Royal China Club. There is even a little terrace on the pavement, although quite why anyone (even a smoker) would want to sit on the bus filled, four lane drag racing strip that is Baker Street is beyond me. Inside, the decor is muted, unlike the more garish Brick Lane establishments that I was brought up on. Service is a little hit and miss; things not being delivered, or coming late on, but it is so charming that it is hard to get too annoyed.

But what of the taste of this healthy curry? It is fine: the coconut crusted soft shell crabs being particularly tasty, but the sauces and especially the naan (which is blandish to start with) need that pepping up that butter and ghee give: the lamb biryani too was just not rich enough. If this were the only game around, it would be a perfectly fine destination. Alas, with the food at Trishna and Colony, each a mere chakram’s throw away, benefiting from ghee, butter and the added pep that they bring, my money will likely go elsewhere.

Arriving late on a Friday evening, getting a quiet table for two in Theatreland was always going to be tricky. Opera Tavern offered us the bar, but stools and blearing music sent us upstairs to the restaurant. And the two tables of a dozen people each who, judging by the empty plates and numerous bottles adorning each table, had been there for a wee while.

Stuck between a rock and a loud place, we settled on animated conversation over the music. After all, tapas is about sharing. What better way to share every dish on the menu than to get a big crowd together. Although the tables are pretty close together, other than the two big tables, upstairs was pretty empty, so we got two table together, so that we could both sit on the banquette, facing out at the revelry, and allowing us to converse better.

Irony is writ loud and large at OT: from the pig’s trotter door handles, through the Jamon leg beer pump to scotch eggs and pork scratchings on the menu. The latter masquerades as crispy pigs ears but, by any other name, is as fine a deep fried, salty pork skin as you will find. The scotch eggs too were fine, although one was extremely salty and the other not. In both cases, the egg was just cooked with the yolk still runny and the Ibérico pork a tad better than your usual head cheese affair. What made them Italian, I am unsure.

In fact, the odd croquette and crispy squid aside, the tapas are pretty different from the run of the mill Spanish joint; even the croquette was a mushroom, rather than the more common ham, variety. Mini burgers (or large sliders maybe) came with that excellent Ibérico pork again, topped out with foie gras. To complete the porcine theme, we had the grilled Ibérico pressa – shoulder of the self same pig, with capers and lemon.

The wine list is good, solidly Iberian, with a few Italians thrown in, and is split by style. We had a medium bodied Verdjo from Rueda, and very fine it was too.

Service is friendly and unhurried, plates coming as done, as they should, and at no rush to get us through, even though it was late for the kitchen.

Amongst all the noise and bustle, I missed the fact that we had been charged for a bottle of wine that we didn’t have, so called back on Monday to mention this to the restaurant. Kate was extremely helpful, handling the matter swiftly and with charm; it is always pleasing to see professional restaurants act professionally. For this alone I would return. The fact is, however, that the pork scratchings have been calling to me all weekend; like Lord Darlington, I can resist anything but temptation.