Maybe going to a Hunan restaurant, a cuisine renown for the liberal use of both red and green chillies, the night after an evening of sizzling lamb chops at Tayyabs was not the smartest of moves. That said, nothing was going to move me from a dish of Chilli Chicken: a big bowl of red chillies with nuggets of chicken hidden amongst them. A sort of extra-hot lucky dip.

Ba Shan seems to divide critics, who either say that it is not hot and spicy enough, not authentic enough or just not very good. Well I cannot judge the authenticity, but it is certainly as good a restaurant as I have ever been to in China. It also, very authentically for many a restaurant in Asia, has a menu with pictures of the dishes. For a China ignoramus like me, this helps. As did going with somebody who has travelled extensively in the region, although he did confess that we had chosen badly, with too many sweet dishes and not enough hot ones.

As well as the aforementioned chicken dish, we had a lovely cold starter of spinach with sesame sauce, some delicately spiced scallop with green chillies and fish flavoured aubergine. We went for this latter not only as I like the vegetable (yes, I know it is technically a fruit, but usage is everything), but also because the name of the dish reminded me of the Monty Python voiceover sketch, where the Bishop of Leicester declares that a certain beer that he is advertising is “the mighty lager, with the world's first great taste of fish!”. I confess, I wouldn't have picked the fish flavour out, but it was as nice a vegetable dish as I've had in a Chinese restaurant for a while. I also like things deep fried, so, whilst I would normally eschew any tofu dish, deep fry it and I’ll partake. As I did here, with a dish that was just too sweet for my taste.

The room is small, the service friendly and the quality far higher than the majority of the Chinese restaurants in Soho/Chinatown.

Stuck down a dodgy side passage in the otherwise pretty Leadenhall Street Market, Planet of the Grapes isn't an obvious spot for a top notch wine bar. But that is exactly what it is. Not some '80s, Del Boy and Rodney joint, but a place to buy great quality wine, at stupidly reasonable prices.

There seem to be two sort of wine bar in the City: the “old school” Balls Brothers, El Vino, Davy's style, and the new, lighter, style, with the emphasis on seriously good wine, at seriously good prices (like here, the utterly superb 28-50 and, to some extent, Bar Battu). This new wave of wine bar is more relaxed, more focused on the wine than the old school, which seem far more interested in Rioja and sawdust.

PotG has but a few small tables (which can easily be reserved) and two walls of wine. The concept is simple: pick a wine from the wall, take it to the bar, pay the retail price and an Ayrton Senna corkage, go sit and sip. What could be easier? And the wine too is an excellent selection, from every part of the wine making world at great prices.

The service is relaxed and friendly (the bespectacled proprietor enjoys his wine, which shows as the evening moves on) and the food platters simple: cheese, meat and (most excellent) pies.

A brilliant change to the over-blown faux-fun pubs that occupy the prettier parts of the market.

Antipodeans – check

Flat White – check

Bare floors – check

Cool location – er, no.

Hang on – I've written this review before: yes, Leather Lane, so beloved of fashion conscious TOWIE girls, now has not one but two fantastic coffee shops run by our friends down under. They might not be able to play cricket, but the Aussies (and Kiwis) can certainly make a damn fine cup of Java: to prove it, the 2009 Barista of the Year award (a golden group handle) hangs proudly from the wall.

The space is not so achingly hip as Leather Lane’s other Coffee-Shop-Run-By-Antipodes, the Department of Coffee and Social affairs, but has a bigger, lighter feel to it. The art is less trendy, the walls have plaster on them, but otherwise they are much the same. Service is friendly, not to say a little chaotic, and the food stuffs are of the cake and pastry variety. There are also shelves of every conceivable implement for making coffee, from your basic plastic filter holder to a vast array of tampers, spatulas and even brushes, to dust any stray grinds off.

Let’s face it; nobody really goes to the Ivy for the quality of the food, do they? They go for the atmosphere, the effortless service, the chance to bask in the (fake tanned) glow of a D list celebrity, although celebs were pretty thin on the ground this Friday eve.

Nonetheless, the Ivy has sailed through many decades of fads and fancies and remained solidly true to its roots. Or has it? Why would you want to have sashimi here? Or lamb Masala? I mean why bother even putting it on the menu? No, I want steak tartar; I want whole lemon sole, fish cakes, calves liver. In other words, I want comfort food, for it is this that has been done so adequately here over the years. It is there, but maybe the nod to the modern fripperies (gladly no foams) has dulled the focus of this once perfectly average restaurant.

The evening started badly – Chicago with Christine Brinkley. The things we do for love. The restaurant continued this theme where (and this has never happened to me before in all my years of dining) we had a Date Night moment. No, I don’t mean the scene where Tina Fey takes her braces out or (much to my wife’s chagrin) the one where Mark Wahlberg is dressed in just a towel – somebody stole our table! We walked in, presented ourselves to the maitre d’ and were informed that we had already arrived and been seated. I was all for going to find out who had the temerity to want to be me, but we were instead ushered to the bar and given menus. No free glass was proffered as a compensation for the restaurant mucking up, just a seat and a twenty minute wait.

At least this meant that we had the chance to look over the menus so that, when we were eventually seated (in the frozen wastelands by the maitre d’ station) we could order straight away. So why then did have to chase up on the wine that we had ordered but which had failed to materialise? People often complain about bad service. Generally this means rude waiters, snobby sommeliers and maitre d’s who look down their noses at you as they ostentatiously run their finger down the booking list to see if they will deign to allow you to grace their restaurant with your credit card. In my experience, London is an awful lot better than it used to be about this sort of service. The service at the Ivy wasn’t bad in this sense, it was just comically inept. Things didn’t arrive (the table, the wine), they were out of things (cauliflower gratin) and the whole effect was less professional than a Britain’s Got Talent contest.

When the food did arrive, it was actually alright: the duck egg was nicely cooked and came on a crunchy sourdough toast, with a smattering of girolles and a serious slab of bacon. The broad bean soup was a nice mixture of smooth soup and mashed bits of beans, although not a particularly strong taste. Mains too were comforting: whole lemon sole on the bone and a Vienna Schnitzel, with some anchovies and capers.

The cover charge is annoying, and it is far from cheap for the food, but the room is still magnificently oak panelled, the nieces still much younger, thinner and blonder than the uncles treating them to a nibble and there is always the chance to see actors who have taken out super injunctions (sorry, who allegedly have taken them out) at the table next to you.

Tapas bars in Spain are that: bars. In the UK, we tend to think of them as destination restaurants (think the very excellent Fino). Maybe this is why there have been so many people let down by Tapas Brindisa which is, after all, pretty authentically Spanish.

It has a bar complete with stools. It has bustle. The cutlery comes in old pepper tins. You cannot book, but you can sit outside on the pavement. In fact all it lacks is rows of hams hanging from the ceiling, gently oozing fat into those white plastic cones to make it properly Spanish. I am guessing that there is a health and safety issue with this, although it doesn’t seem to have overly harmed our Iberian colleagues.

The food is basic tapas, like jamon (we had the selection of Serrano, Iberica and Bellota, all very pleasant, growing in strength from left to right), which came with the obligatory tomato bread. There was also piping hot ham croquettes and some spicy chorizo on toast. Nothing special, nothing outstanding. Just good honest tapas in a nice friendly bar. Sort of what tapas should be, yet in this country rarely is.

Were there to be a complaint, it would be the price. It is not that the food is any more expensive than, say, Fino, it is just that Fino is a real destination restaurant and Tapas Brindisa is a real tapas bar. That cannot be right: £30 a head for what was a light snack is just plain wrong. Far better to save your pennies and go to Seville: start in the old town behind the Alcazar and just wander. Stand at the bar. Sup a cruzcampo here, taste a tapas there; each bar has a speciality that brings people in, so just follow the locals. A bit like a Spaniard coming to London and doing a pub crawl.

It is perhaps unfair that, after four or five faultless visits to L’Anima over the last few years, I chose this one to write about. Maybe it was the timing; we went late one Wednesday evening, post theatre when the restaurant was thinning out. We were the last to be fed and the table of three ladies-what-cocktail over the far side of the room had been (and continued to be) properly lubricated. Maybe it was just a one-off. Maybe it is just that it is not as good as I remember it.

The room has always been the least interesting part of the restaurant: it is a cavern. High ceilings, a big wall of glass with stark, hard stone floor. In other words, it is not gezellig; you don’t get a warm and cuddly feeling when you walk in. It is harsh. It is hard. You get the shrieking of the cocktail table amplified across the other side of the room. (If you have the private room, you need to keep the door closed, as the noise seems to be funnelled through the doorway, as if through a sonic magnifier, making it quite impossible to hear your neighbour). Given that this is the City, and that Deals are no doubt being Done, it seems an odd set-up.

Nonetheless, the food has always been excellent. Up to this time. I don’t know if I have some anti-food vibe that only comes out on my birthday, but it seems that this time of year brings the biggest disappointment to my meals. A few years ago my birthday evening libations were taken at Scotts (like L’Anima, a Square Meal three star); people had been raving about it and I wanted desperately to find a really great fish restaurant in town. I hated it. This year’s 21st was spent at L’Anima. Same thing: if this had been my first visit, I’d never return. It wasn’t so I will give it another chance.

We started with a perfectly adequate plate of ham and the fried courgette flowers. I love this time of year when courgette flowers are in the markets. Stuff with some cheese, dip in a light, tempura batter, fry until golden and sprinkle some sea salt over them. Gorgeous; light, simple, tasty. Here they had been stuffed with mozzarella (a nice touch, lots of stringy cheese to play with), but then dipped in the sort of heavy batter that gives fish and chips a good name. Yes it was crispy, but it overpowered the flowers and was dripping in oil. Instead of some nice absorbent paper to soak the excess up, it was on greaseproof paper. This repels not absorbs. So the oil sat their, glistening up at me; I am sure that it was daring me to say something, but I couldn’t hear it over the cocktail table.

The ham was perfectly pleasant, if the slices were a little on the thick side, accompanied by a few slices of tomato bread. Nice, but not up there with a good Jamon Iberica and pan con tomate.

The mains were better: it was perhaps my fault for going for a second fatty dish, but the pork belly, whilst as nice a piece of the meat as you will get, had rendered less of its fat during its slow roast than I’d have liked and the smears that accompanied it were unidentifiable. Crab linguine was the star mind: the pasta perfectly cooked, the crab given piquancy by the right amount of chilli. This shows what the kitchen can produce and, at these prices, there is no excuse for thinking that we ordered badly: everything should be fantastic.

The sommelier was very helpful, coming up with a lovely Tuscan to complement the meat and fish. Unless you are in a wine bar, however, the wine shouldn’t be the star. The food should.

So we left, a little deflated, a little disappointed. As we passed the cocktail table, I pretty sure I heard one ask: when shall we three meet again in thunder, lightning, or in rain? Well, I don’t know when I will be back. It certainly will not be my birthday next year.

Looking at Viajente’s website, I thought that I was going to hate the restaurant. It is full of that pretentious crap that curators insist on putting next to a picture in a gallery. You know, that sort of: “the artist was trying to show, through the subject’s nudity, the essential frailness of life; her fragility, yet hidden resolve”. Bollocks: he wanted to paint a girl with no clothes on. Nuno apparently wandered around a bit on some quest for enlightenment and interesting things to cook, all explained in flowery twaddle.

Whatever the myriad annoyances with the website, the restaurant is terrific: imaginative, inventive, achingly cool and stuck on Cambridge Heath Road, opposite the Probation Service and Bethnal Green & Bow Labour Party HQ. It is not, as advertised on that sodding website, on Patriot Square, for the simple reason that there is no such address. I know this as not only did the cabbie not know of its existence but, as he said: “it’s not on Google Maps”. The Knowledge be damned: if it’s not on Google Maps, It Does Not Exist.

Once found we were whisked into the dining room. This is split into two sections, the one that we were lucky enough to be seated in also containing the kitchen, where there seemed to be but three chefs, unhurriedly, unfussily going about their task. Actually “containing” doesn’t do the room justice: about half of the room has seats and the other is the kitchen. I am pretty sure that one of the chefs was Nuno himself, but I didn’t want to ask, just in case he actually spoke like the website is written.

From being seated and with a bottle of pink fizz opened, the dishes came thick and fast. Before the first of the six real dishes, we had six amuse bouche. Yes. Six. It sounds as though that is taking things a bit far, but each was half a mouthful no more. In fact, what with one of the amuse bouches and one of the real dishes each coming in two parts, and the obligatory pre-desert and petit fours, there were actually 16 different servings. I loved every single one.

The universal favourites were the peas with parmesan and the Iberica pork loan. The former came with a tube of pea mouse, wrapped in soy-milk skin (or yuba, as we found out it was called). Simple, intensely flavoured and clean. A truly splendid dish. The pork came with a succulent (and gritless) razor clam and barley. Again, truly excellent tastes, textures and combination. There were then foams of this, smears of that; there was also salt cod two ways (one an homage to Japan, the other to Nuno’s country of birth; Portugal), shrimp soup, paper thin slices of duck “ham”, crab croquettes and much more, each component inventively playing with the main ingredient, but each helping to enhance it, rather than overpowering it.

For our little group the oysters were the least popular, but only amongst the two who just don’t do oysters. It was their own fault: having been told at the outset that there was no menu and the meal would mainly be fish, and then being asked was there anything any of us didn’t eat, they could have piped up. They didn’t, so more for the rest of us who adore the bivalve.

As with the oysters, not every dish was a universal hit: the mackerel was (for the same people who didn’t like the oyster) a bit too fishy and the flowers that came with the fresh cheese amuse bouche failed to pass muster with one of our number. Oh, and that same person wasn’t so hot on the cep mushroom chocolate truffle, although that is maybe a challenge too far for most.

Given that there is no choice of menu, and you don’t actually know what any course is going to be until it arrives and is announced to you, there doesn’t seem much point in a wine list, or indeed choosing a single wine to accompany dinner, so we opted for the tasting selection. All perfectly matched the dishes to which they were accompanying, again being presented to the table with a little description, much as each dish is so announced. (The menu is actually emailed to you after dinner: how cool is that? I bet they send it from an iPad2. Not to be outdone, the wine list is stuck into an old book. In our case Long Way Round, that self-indulgent twaddle from Ewan McGregor and the other one. Maybe Nuno got his inspiration for the website from it).

Service was excellent; friendly, helpful and relaxed; letting us talk when it was clear that we wanted too and introducing us to the wines and the food when it was time.

So the East is the new West then? Well no; much like brown/orange/purple/whatever-colour-the-fashionistas-tell-you is most certainly not the new black, one top foodie joint with an E-something postcode does not a new foodie capital make. For certain this is a top foodie joint, but it is so easy going, so unpretentious, I wondered if I’d got the website mixed up with another restaurant.

I have a theory that the style of a restaurant is as much derived from what went before as to the current chef. Pierre Koffman forsook his three star Tante Claire on Royal Hospital Road and Gordon Ramsay (previously blessed with two stars) took over the place and immediately gained the hitherto elusive third star. Similarly, when PK left his space at the Berkley Hotel it was inherited by Marcus Wareing, who doubled his star count to meet that of the outgoing chef.

Roganic is on the spot that used to be Michael Moore’s restaurant. I like M&M, not least as he is a Gooner. He is also an excellent chef, who was wont to over elaborate. Mr Rogan falls into the same trap: clearly an excellent chef, he is never one to use one ingredient when five will do.

We went during the “soft opening” period, when a restaurant is trying to iron out the kinks. I was (both when booking and when re-confirming) warned that we had a two hour time slot only. Fair enough; forewarned is forearmed. I am not one to begrudge a restaurant wanting to turn tables, so long as you know beforehand. They rightly want to make money from the venture, and the more through the door of an evening the better for them. Three-and-a-half hours into the (no choice) ten course tasting menu, we had to request the bill. Not that the food wasn’t good, the food is far more hit than miss, it was just that we actually did only want to spend two hours there. If you give people a two hour slot, it works both ways: the diner wants to be fed in that time and the restaurant wants you out to get the next person in. If they do want to turn tables, this kink needs ironing.

As with M&M before, the space is a challenge: the restaurant is narrow, with a downstairs kitchen (and loos) and no more than maybe ten tables. The tables are well spaced, however, and, in the hushed atmosphere, there is no danger of being overheard unless you want to be.

Having been sat, we were immediately presented with the wine list. I have been known to order the wine then to work out what on the menu goes with it, but that doesn’t work when you have no choice on the food. So I asked for the menu. This reads like a guide to the hedgerow, with hyssop, orache, chenopodiums, mallow, sweet ciceley and buckthorn all making an appearance. I know that Noma and Faviken have made foraged for food trendy, but they have Christianshavn and the wilds of Sweden respectively as their hedgerow. There isn’t much hedge on the High Street in Marylebone, and I’m not sure that I’d want to eat anything that came out of Paddington Street Gardens. Not unless it was thoroughly disinfected first. Which might alter the taste a little. And thus defeat the point.

When the dishes arrived, they were generally very good: the pick for me was the brill, or rather “Roasted brill, chicken salt, surf clams and rainbow chard”. Which was excellent; perfectly cooked brill with something salty that could have originated from a chicken. A lovely couple of mouthfuls. So too the broad beans (with hyssop, fresh curds and beetroot), the shredded ox tongue (with pickles and sourdough “paper”), heritage spud (in onion ash and bits of hedgerow), hogget (Cumbrian, with artichokes and more hedgerow) and, eventually, the strawberries (with yet more from the hedge). Lovely little mouthfuls all. The emphasis being on the word little. Which is fine, especially when there are ten courses (plus bread, amuse bouche and post-desert). But even eating slowly, they take but a few minutes to devour. There is then the wait for the next course. It reminded me of Umu.

Not everything was a hit: smoked yolk was amazingly executed, but the taste didn’t really live up to the skill involved in creating it, and the addition of honey (sorry, “warm elderflower honey”) to the mackerel (or rather “seawater cured Kentish mackerel”) was something that detracted from, rather than adding to, this otherwise lovely dish.

Service was uniformly polite and enthusiastic, with dishes (or rather, specific ingredients in them) explained to the uninitiated and the sommelier was an excellent aid to the smallish wine list. Given the gaps between courses, we had time to have a good chat with our waiter. The rock on the table, by the way, isn't to chuck at him to get his attention if it has wandered off, but for the butter to be spread on. Butter that has been creamed, whipped and elevated with Maldon sea salt.

This is long term pop-up, being here for but two years (more than a lifetime for some restaurants), so I will be back. Hopefully the kinks will have gone by then and the misses been replaced by further hits.

When you think of things that have come out of Iceland (Vikings, toxic debt, volcanic ash, Björk) none of them are particularly pleasant. If you were to extend this theme to food, it would be a similar result: the national dish involves putrid shark and they have a penchant for puffin and whale. So why on earth would you want to go to a restaurant that’s USP is that the chef is Icelandic?

The answer is that it is really rather good. Actually, scratch that: it is really very good. Very, very good.

Texture is pretty much a local for me, yet this was only my second visit since it opened three or four years back. Having been inspired by a trip to the champagne bar here a few weeks back, however, we took the plunge late on a Saturday night, post open air theatre. For the life of me, I cannot work out why it has taken me so long to return to dine.

The dining room, reached via the relaxing champagne bar, is a high ceilinged affair, with wine displayed in racks along two sides, one dividing the dining area from the bar, the other half-masking the area where the meals are assembled. It doesn’t have the hush of many a Michelin anointed establishment, being very laid back; an approach matched by the (uniformly fantastic) staff, who were relaxed and friendly, helpfully suggesting certain dishes (which we ignored) and interesting wine (which we went along with).

Food should always be the main point of a restaurant, but everything around the food (the service, the atmosphere, the wine) can elevate good food to great, just as easily as great food to rubbish (thank you Gidleigh Park). I cannot think of a better restaurant that I have been to in London for a long time. It is up there with Hibiscus, the Ledbury, the Square and even everyone’s 2011 darling: Diner by Heston B.

The amuse bouche was a pea and mint affair, with the first of the evening’s “snows”. We’ve had smears, foams and other affectations posing as The Next Big Thing, but (other than at Noma), I don’t think I’ve had snow before. This one was green and minty, and came with a green and peay mousse; a delightful mixture of textures, tastes and temperatures.

For starters we had the crab and the asparagus. The crab came in coconut sauce and a gazpacho in two parts; the traditional chilled soup and a pink snow. Lovely; light, great tastes, complimentary textures. The asparagus was excellent too, this time the snow being parmesan. Perhaps the only time you should ever eat yellow snow. Having said that, parmesan snow was the only thing all evening that didn’t really work. Sorry. Nobody is perfect, but parmesan done as a crisp (as it was here too) is the best way for the hard, salty formaggio, and freezing it just didn’t do it for me.

Mains continued the extremely high standard. Suckling pig came in three sections, with meltingly tender meat, crispy skin and being accompanied by the most perfect pork scratching ever. And I know my pork scratchings. The lamb, all the way from the Pyrenees, was accompanied by wild Icelandic herbs. I couldn’t place any of them, but they worked as well as the far more traditional mint sauce.

We ducked the deserts and instead settled on the coffee and petit fours. Again, all excellent, even the one advertised as “fisherman’s friend”, which was a meringue on a stick that indeed tasted of the traditional menthol eucalyptus lozenge.

The wine list is, as you’d expect when compiled by somebody who was UK sommelier of the year at the tender age of 22, terrific; not only in terms of geographic spread, but also price range and in the availability of wines by the glass. 22? I mean come on: when I was that age I had just about worked out that d’Yquem was a rather expensive desert wine, not the noise a Frenchman makes when he sneezes. Sometime life just isn’t fair.

Our excellent sommelier (who was given the rather hard task of pairing a white wine with crab, asparagus, pig and lamb) came up with an excellent Languedoc-Roussillion that was delicate enough not to overpower the crab, but bold enough not to be swamped by the lamb.

All this comes at a price of course, of course, and that price is high. Not Alain Ducasse high, but still not the sort of place you come to if you’re brassic.

So go please, I beg you. Just not so many of you that I can’t get a table when I next want one.

Of the nine circles of hell, I am pretty sure that, along with call centres, shopping malls, low cost airlines and Old Trafford, there is one that is conference hotels. Maybe even a Bolgia for ones on roundabouts. The Park Plaza is as dreadful a conference hotel as you could hope to find.

One thing that I have learnt from time spent in Japan is that the worse looking the restaurant, the better the food is going to be. Joel Robuchon’s three star place in Tokyo is in a grand, faux palace, dripping with gold and chandeliers. It is not very good. Hachiro Mizutani’s equally anointed place is behind an anonymous door, in dingy a basement of a non-descript tower block. It is fantastic; as exquisite a piscine morsel as you will ever put between your lips.

So Ichi Sushi should be right up there. Decor is muted, the one window has a terrific view over Westminster Bridge and the three big fishtanks behind the counter are actually TV screens, showing SIMS Aquarium. In 3D. Which is really rather surreal without glasses. Maybe you’re expected to bring them from the IMAX down the road.

The food is fine, the fish is fresh, the yuzu dipping sauce with the spider roll a nice touch, and certainly more interesting than the standard soy sauce, wasabi and ginger, and the sushi rice perfectly acceptable. No uni though. Always the mark of a good sushi restaurant is if they have uni.

If you happen to find yourself trapped in a conference here, I suggest that you slip out as the rubber chicken is being served at lunch and sit up here at the counter, in this oddly calming monochromatic space.

The bar is essentially an entre into the fabulous restaurant but, with one of the finest champagne lists in London, is worth checking out for itself. High ceilinged, small but airy, with a great view of the 274 bus stop on Gloucester Place.

That is unfair: the best view is the list of fizz, which runs to a dozen or more pages, including all my favourites, and some that are new to me, but with which I will enjoy becoming well acquainted. The range runs from award winning English sparklers (a couple of lovely vintages of Nyetimber), through Austrian, Italian and regional French to Champagne itself. Oh and there are some classics from that fine region: from small, independent producers like Henri Giraud, Egley-Oriet and Jacquesson, through to the Grand Marques of Krug, Salon and Dom. A list compiled with love, devotion and no small degree of care.

The crowd is mixed: suits and pre-dinner lounging, and a pair of very loud trousers, with a voice to match, all sucking down bubbles and snarfing on the bacon pop corn and “crisps” from the restaurant next door. No mere Kettle Chips here. Oh no: crispy cod skin and parmesan crisps are the order of the evening.

Through the throng of it all sails the owner, Xavier, suavely French, unruffled by nervous waiters or loud trousers. You get the impression that, had he been on the Titanic, he would have been calmly handing out fizz to the band as the boat went down.

To misquote ex Galactic President Beeblebrox, this place is so hip it has difficulty seeing over its own pelvis; so cool you could keep a side of meat in it for a month. Just the place for three middle age suits to hang out, pretending not to gawp at the local attractions, tottering in their Jimmies and Loubs.

I’m old enough to remember when this part of Clerkenwell was a desert, grub- and watering- wise, which isn’t that old. Then His Royal Highness, King Fergus, opened St Johns, the Jerusalem Tavern followed a few years later, then Match. Now you can’t swing a cat without hitting a restaurant, bar or feeding-/watering- hole of some sort. None is so cool as Bruno’s Bistro.

The room is nothing special, although you can enter through the sub-zero entrance that is the Zetter Hotel, so as to prepare yourself for the wafting jazz-funk that envelopes the room. The kitchen is small and open, so that you can see BL at work, with his small brigade, and the large windows mean that the whole place feels light and airy, even when pretty full.

Starters were standard bistro style, with boudin blanc with peas and lettuce being especially good: a light, sausage shaped chicken mousse, offset by the richness of the peas upon which it perched.

One of our number knows BL, so we got a nice little in between course, a pre-main if you will: soft duck egg with parmesan. Heavenly. What with amuse bouches and pre-deserts, I really hope the idea of a pre-main doesn't catch on in more Michelin aspirational places.

The mains too were terrific, with the quail and broad beans and bunny wrapped in bacon, smeared with carrot puree, standing out. I am pretty sure that the waitress had told us that the special pasta was lamb’s sweetbreads, but the dish came with artichoke. No real matter, it was excellent anyway.

I am not usually a desert man, but I was told that the chocolate with caramel was excellent, and so it proved. Honestly, however, the salty chocolate caramel truffles at Magdalen are a step above. No mind, an honourable mention to BL for his marriage of chocolate, caramel and salt.

Overall, very good indeed: bistro food done to a high standard, in a jazz-funk cooled environment.

Having recently been disappointed with Galvin’s Bistro De Luxe, it was with a certain degree of trepidation that I booked their recently Michelin anointed City joint, La Chapelle. I should not have worried: all in all, a far more satisfactory experience, and good to see that the brothers are at the top of their game here.

The Chapel was actually most recently a gym for the local girls school, and has the light, high ceilinged air of a gym, but fortunately without the sweaty air of a gym. It also has a hushed feel to it. A nod perhaps to the place, perhaps to the food.

The name La Chapelle doesn’t, as I’d assumed, come from the place being an old Chapel, but from the association with the wine of that name from the Rhone Valley. And there is a good selection of Jaboulet’s finest, from the ’94 (at a relatively sane £190 a bottle) to the mind bogglingly daft ’61 at the best part of £20k. Fortunately the rest of the wine list is more sensibly priced, with many bottles in the twenties and thirties (pounds not thousands thereof), some excellent small producer champagnes and a good selection of both by the glass and carafe.

Food is a good selection of Frenglish, with a lasagne of Dorset crab and broad bean soup sitting next to Mediterranean fish soup and foie gras salad. A fine fish soup too: rich, thick with fish and tangy with saffron and orange, coming with garlicky mayonnaise and croutons. The broad bean soup proved a hit too, slickly smothering the smoked duck.

Mains too were fine, with the red mullet and cod both hitting the spot without being outstandingly memorable.

In fact, whilst the food is good, this isn’t what most people will come here for. It is a serious place to conduct serious business: RBS and the EBRD are next door, and the £1,000 an hour lawyers from Allen & Overy reside on the doorstep. This is a canteen for the suited expense account brigade. To ensure that they keep coming back, the food is good without being challenging, the service is smooth without being obtrusive and the atmosphere is suitable reverent. A chapel is an excellent choice to house this combination.

The question of whether any sequel is better than the original is one that plagues film buffs. Yes, the Godfather Part II is certainly up there with the Godfather and arguably Rocky 2 is better than the original, but Godfather Part III or, heaven forbid, Rocky 4. Spare me both.

So how does Russell Norman Part IV hold up? Has he jumped the shark?

No.

It is perhaps a little unfair to compare Polpo with either Polpetto or Spuntino, as all are really quite different in style. Da Polpo, on the other hand, is essentially a remake of Polpo, with the same styling and a very similar menu, but transported from bustling Soho to bustling Covent Garden. I had the joy of trying Polpo one day and Da Polpo the next, so can give a good feel for how they compare. And they are very comparable, although this time with subtle differences.

DP has the same distressed feel, same bare wire lights and same laid back feel as P, but some things have changed. Clearly when opening P, Mr Normand couldn’t afford matching tables and chairs. I kinda liked that. Now, eighteen months and four restaurants later, at DP he can, so they do.

The menus too compare, with dishes and wines being the same on each, but with some at DP that are new, and with a range of pizzetta beyond the blanco that you get in P. Prices too are beyond fair, wine comes by the glass, carafe (both small and large) and bottle and the staff all friendly: no set uniforms here, adding to the atmospheric nature of the place.

We went for the soft opening, so food was half price. It also meant that the team wasn’t operating at full capacity, with tables left empty for far longer than will be the case once fully open. That isn’t a complaint mind, as I was happy to wait, cocktail in hand, for the table to be deemed ready for us.

And when we were ushered to our seat, the formula from each of P,P&S is repeated: no set starters or mains, but bite size dishes then meat, fish and veg options, all similar sizes and all brought as cooked. Without exception, they were lovely: not haute cuisine, but finely cooked, and all hit the spot. The chilli and garlic prawns was probably the best of the dishes we tried, but the white anchovy pizzetta, the lamb and mint meat balls and asparagus with butter (that's scrambled to you and me) egg and parmesan were all terrific too. Another departure from P is the gelato cones at DP: an excellent way to round off the meal, rich chocolate gelato, proper ice cream cone.

It is a brave move to come out of the comfort zone of Soho, where the passing trade is going to have a much higher percentage of locals, to Covent Garden which is as heavily, if not more heavily, filled with restaurants, and where the passing trade is going to be very much more tourist lead. Is Covent Garden ready for this? I really hope so, as it is another excellent addition to the London restaurant scene.

May 2011

It is always difficult returning to a favoured restaurant to find it changed. I went to the Summerhouse a couple of times last year are really liked its relaxed atmosphere and laid back nosh, as you can see from the review below.

How times have changed. I went again on a Bank Holiday Monday. We had a late booking, but arrived a bit early. The place was heaving. Nonetheless, we were seated straight away. I had asked, when booking, if we could get a waterside table, but was told that there was no booking for this, just turn up and see if you can get one. There were none free, but about 10 minutes after we sat down, a table at the front did come free, so I asked if we could take it. Alas no, others had bagged it. Fair enough, but why then 20 minutes later when we left, was it still empty? Had it been booked?

And yes, we lasted only 30 minutes here. I cannot tell you what the food was like this time, nor what the drink tasted of (not even the tap water) for we were ignored totally for 30 minutes. Not one single waiter (and there were many) found their way to our table. I have never considered waiving my napkin, Michael Winner like to get attention but, after half-a-bleedin’-hour of sitting there watching the surgically enhanced breasts at the next door table carefully take all the batter from her fish, eat the fish and leave the batter and chips, I now know why he does it.

I know I could have said something, but surely I shouldn’t need to? Anyway, when we heard the table behind us moan to the waiter about the 45 minute wait to get their starter, we just knew that it wasn’t going to happen. 30 minutes later we were sitting at the counter in Polpo supping on a Bellini. This is what I said a year ago about Polpo: www.squaremeal.­co.uk/review/Polpo/94079. Unlike the Summerhouse, a second visit a year later only underlines just how superb the place is.

ps as I cannot do a second, separate review with a new set of scoring, I have left the scores from last August about the food and value for money, and amended only those that I actually experienced this time, averaging out the overall and updating service to where it currently lies

August 2010

I am not sure that I fully understand what a “pop-up” restaurant is. Or why. The name “The Summerhouse by the Waterway” and the address “opposite 60 Blomfield Road” hint that this is a transient establishment. Like Selfridges' pop-up restaurant last summer, which was housed in a tent on the roof (a tent of Gerry Cottell proportions rather than boy scout), however, it would be hard to say that the Summerhouse is anything other than a permanent establishment.

Set in a leafy corner of Maida Vale, near Warwick Avenue tube station, this is a brick built, well; building. Ok, it has a clear plastic covered terrace directly on the Grand Union Canal, but it is has not just popped up, nor will it so easily just pop-off. Yes, with the plastic sheeting down, you can see why this might not be so alluring in the winter, but then the Dutch have no trouble with plastic covered terraces on the Amsterdam canals throught the winter, and this year, with the canal frozen over, it would have been a nice change from sitting in front of a fake fire in some anodyne gastro-pub.

Nontheless, we went on a beautiful sunny lunchtime, with the sun reflecting off the tesco bags as they drfted along, being idly pecked at by the coots that hang out under the terrace, clearly looking for their share of the food on offer. Unlike it's sister (or mother?) restaurant just down the road, the Waterway, there is nothing here between the terrace and the canal so, other than looking over the council estate, on a sunny day you could almost be on the Canal St Martin. Almost. On such days you can see why it is so difficult to get a reservation here at the weekend. Mid-week though, it wasn't too difficult and the place was only half full; various chapters of the local branch of the ladies-what-lunch brigade were in, all braying teeth, dyed black roots and leggings. Leggings? Don't these people look in the mirror? Yes, they were trendy once, but nobody out of their teens looks good in them.

The food on offer is standard, no frills fish, with a single vegetarian and a single meat option (steak, of course). We started with perfectly fine squid with a light, but still pleasent, tartare sauce; crispy on the outside, just the right side of chewy on the inside (the squid that is, not the sauce). The main course of fish and chips that we both had was also lovely; firm fish, crunchy batter, good chips. The fact that my companion had ordered the fish pie was a minor point, as the service was so friendly that it was easy to overlook this minor error. Starter prices hover around the £7/8 mark and the mains (other than the whole sea bass) are in their mid- to late-teens.

The wine list too is short and functional, some good prices but £71 for a rose? Please. I know that Domaine d'Ott is uber-trendy, but it is an awfully big ask, even for the self styled “finest rose in the world”.

A great place for a lazy Sunday lunch or, as in our case, a mid-week TBL, given that one of us was between jobs and the other was flying off that evening, so was technically on his way to Heathrow.