Split over three floors, with a courtyard out the back, the best place to sit is in the basement out front. The best place to sit when you are in the basement is at the counter. In fact, there are two: one has a view of the (unhurried) cooking, the other (equally calm) of the man shucking oysters. Now I know we were having a late lunch on Saturday, and the place was hardly humming, but you get the impression that the chefs do not do flapping.

Oysters are the raison d'être of Wright Brothers: the specials board lists a half-dozen different varieties, including ones from the owners plot in Devon. I suppose, therefore, that it was a bit sacrilegious not to try them, but they had fish soup and I'm a sucker for a good fish soup. This one was very fishy: that may be what you'd expect, but this was a rough and ready soup, thick with fish, rather than a more refined, saffron infused one of French brasserie fair. And none the worst for it either; piping hot and replete with the necessary rouille & Gruyère to float on the thin slices of crispy French bread. A lovely amalgam of tastes and textures.

The menu doesn't split between mains and starters, but the other starter priced dish that we had was a fine whitebait and tartar sauce. Prices are interesting here: we avoided the oysters and the “build your own” plateau de fruits de mer, and we came out pretty well (less than the indicated cost above, quite easily). I can, however, see how, if you start with a half-dozen oysters and move on from there, things could get very messy on the bill front pretty quickly.

The main sized dishes came from the daily specials board: a gorgeous fish stew, with chunks of fish, mussels, squid and cockles, in a tomatoey/fish broth and a fish pie. This later was a serious hot-pot of salmon, covered with crusty, cheese-topped mashed spud. Comfort food for a cold January lunchtime at its very best. All the food was beautifully fresh, was presented in a plain, unfussy manner and came with no added frills or fripperies.

We washed the whole lot down with a reasonably priced muscadet, from a short list which, as well as the French classic fish wine, has the oh so trendy (but oh so good with fish) Spanish Albariño. There is beer and cocktails too (including that Sweetings classic, the Black Velvet, and something called an oyster shot, which may or may not be a good thing), although the locally brewed Oyster stout was alas, still brewing.

The only complaint were I to have one, which, now that you mention it, I do, was the service – when we got there they were solicitous and helpful. Throughout the meal they were cheery too, coming over to check everything was ok, topping up wine and water etc. It was only when we came to pay that the staff all melted into the background. Why does this happen? Surely this is the bit that you want – payment and your tip. And then we had to retrieve our own coats (which had helpfully been whisked away when we arrive). Early days in Soho for the brothers Wright, but service goes the whole way through the meal, from when you walk in the door to the moment that you leave; not just until the last plate has been cleared from the table.

How much more romantic a setting do you want? OK, the crackle of electricity as the train's pylon connects with the overhead wire isn't quite the same as the bellowing clouds of smoke belching from a Class A3 Pacific, but the whiff or romance hangs heavy in the air; the hint of illicit liaisons, being whisked off to Paris, and all that entails.

The bar runs the length of the platform, and is partitioned off between booths and bar stools. The booths come complete with heated seats and blankets for the colder months, or simply for snuggling under. The service, as noted before, can be a bit odd some times, but then at others, it is spectacularly good. Like premiership refs, a bit of consistency would be much appreciated.

The champagne list is, like the bar itself, long but, and this is where the analogy falls over, it is dull. Yes there is a lovely English sparkler in there (the Balfour Brut Rose) but other than that it plays it way too safe: think Bolly, Moet, Veuve etc. Where are the small producers, the cutting edge Grand Crus? OK Salon and Selosse are here (at £270 and £165 a pop respectively), but these are hardly “finds”. Where is the Egly-Ouriet, the Larmandier-Bernier or the Jacquesson? Kettners, that’s where.

So what you have here is a wonderfully romantic location, but let down by indifferent service and a list that plays it safe on the champagne front combined with stonkingly high prices. And yes, they really no how to charge: Bollinger at 20% more than Kettners. Why? How on earth can you justify a 20% hike in price just because of the location?

My advice is stick to the Dom: £165 may sound a bit of an ask for a bottle of poo, but at nearly a ton retail, it is the closest thing to a bargain that you will find on this list.

What an excellent operation in the middle of the desolation that exists between London and Tower Bridges. OK, the mayor's headlamp building is here, as is EY's London offices at More London, but it is hardly an up market address for such an up market operation.

Let me get the niggles out the way first, as they are few and I don't want them to detract from the rest: they had run out of roast goose. How can you do this? It is in season (and the season is short) and you'd have thought that, goose being so popular, they'd have enough. This was lunchtime too, so woe betide anyone coming that evening who wanted any. I can just about forgive this, but running out of choclates (more of which, below) is unforgiveable: they are always in season, you must know how popular they are and should have enough for a convention of chocoholics. Not even to have enough for a table of six is so, so wrong.

OK, I have got that off my chest, and now to the good part: this is a sensational restaurant. Not grand, not trendy, not some big named chef with a fancily designed dining room, just a couple of rooms, with some plain tables and a menu that had me wishing I could stay here for a week. The style is British provenance, with French inspired dishes: so the duck may have come from Aylsebury, but the idea of “confit” is totally French.

I could happily have had all of the starters, and all of the mains (if they hadn't run out of the goose). Instead, I opted for snails and bone marrow to start: big, plump, garlicy snails, their chewiness offset by the melting bone marow, all atop some crunchy sour dough toast. Perfect for a winter's lucnh. Others round the table cooed over the smoled eel with remoulade, the smoked anchovy and the generous helping of proscuittio. All stunning, all washed down with a lovely Chablis.

Next up mains, and no respite from the exquisite assault on the tastebuds: confit duck was beautifully rich, coming with a crunchy potato tart that accompanied the Chateau Musar perfectly. In fact, the lamb, the black pig and all of the mains went down exceptionally well.

Service is fine, if a little stingy on the bread, and I cannot comment on the wine list, as I was being taken, so didn't get a chance to look: the aforementioned Chablis and Musar were, however, perfectly excellent.

We finished with coffee and the utterly sensational caramel chocolates: crunchy chocolate encasing a liquid salt caramel. Salty chocolate balls at their very best: according to one of our number, these were simply the dog's danglers.

The dining room at the Almeida is one that others trying to do the whole “French brasserie comes to London” thing could learn from. Tables are large, well spaced and there is a mirror running the full length of the room, so that not only can everyone get a good gawp at what is going on around them, but the room feels far bigger than it is.

That is the good news. The food is another story: it is not bad, but it doesn't live up to the expectation that the lovely, welcoming room gives. The charcuterie plate that we shared was perfectly fine. This is advertised as a trolley service, but, we were told, the trolley couldn't get to our table, so the waitress would chose for us. As we were on an outside table, rather than in the maelstrom of the innermost tables, this seemed a little odd. Her choices, however, were fine: some nice Bayonne ham, some smooth (and really a little sweet) foie gras pate and some really wrong rillettes. Rillettes should be fatty and shredded lovingly (and boringly) by hand, using a pair of forks, so that it retains a certain fibrous quality. The tasty pork and rabbit varieties that we were given were too dry and had been whizzed in the food processor, so were way too smooth.

Main courses too proved a bit of a let down, as, whilst the venison was still on the menu, the advertised accompaniments had all gone, so the dish was offered with the same as one of the other dishes; the duck. That would generally have been fine, but, as the duck was what my companion had ordered, it meant that we had identical meals, other than the main protein piece. Of the too, the duck was the better; properly fatty, properly pink and served with a nicely piquant pepper sauce.

The wine list is good, with many good quality, good value wines at reasonable (by London standards) prices.

Service is hit and miss: the waitress was very friendly, but didn't know the wine, got distracted by another table and then took an age to get the bill (which, when it came, was sans the wine. Alas, a mistake not deliberate).

The really good thing the Almeida has going for it, however, is that it is directly opposite the theatre of the same name: the night we were there, striding in as we left was the luminous Gemma Arterton, resplendent in high heels, with her modesty covered by a pubic pelmet.

Dotori is a gem amongst the dross that surrounds Finsbury Park Tube. Now don't get me wrong, I've been coming to this part of the Seven Sisters Road for many decades to feed another of my obsessions, played down the road at Highbury and now New Highbury, but this is the sort of area where a pound shop is seen as up market. A lovely little wet fish shop lasted about six months, before being replaced by another tat shop, selling goods that have been pre-designed to fall apart half way through the first usage.

Set opposite the smoking tent for the Twelve Pins Pub (think the barn of a place from Once Were Warriors, but without the pathos), Dotori is a tiny place, that is always packed to the rafters. The reason is immediately clear: the food is terrific. A mixture of Japanese and Korean, with a sushi chef out front, and a band of Korean chefs out back.

Now I don't know my bibimbap from my bulgogi, but I do know excellent food. And the bibimbap here was excellent: on a cold December night, with the prospect of watching another nerve-wracking performance, full of skill and trickery, followed by over-ellaboration and being crap at the back, it was good to have something filling and hot (both heat and spice) inside.

We started out going Korean: sticky rice sticks, a vegetable pancake and some lovely deep fried oysters, which came with a nice hot chilli sauce and were sweet and spicy together. In fact, we ordered a lot of chilli-sauced food: chilli vegetable and squid, the aforementioned bibimbap (for those of you, like me, who didn't know what this is, it is a big hot bowl of rice, veg and, in our case, beef, together with a raw egg, that is mixed up at the table with chilli sauce, the super-hot bowl cooking everything together) and a tofu and kimchi dish. All were fantastically good, but the best was probably the Japanese dish that we had: we had gone totally Korean, but saw the mixed tempura and had to have it. Light batter, a plate growning with prawns and veg. Delicious.

Service is a bit hit and miss, but it is always friendly. The portions are enormous and the price the opposite. In fact, what is there not to like about this?

ps if you cannot get in here and want a quick snack before the game, there is a kebab place between the Twelve Pins and Lidl (I told you this was a classy part of town), that does some of the finest kebabs you'll find: go for the chilli rather than the garlic sauce though.

It may be a big gamble for Angela Hartnett taking on Murano herself, but with food this good, I really hope that she succeeds. She certainly deserves to flourish here, with a free hand to run the kitchen as she pleases.

The restaurant itself is all muted pastels: beiges, creams and that non-entity of a colour: magnolia. The atmosphere too is muted and hushed, maybe so as to allow the hedge fund billionaire clientele to hear what their nieces, some of whom were young enough to please Berlusconi, have to say, without the need to resort to their ear trumpets.

We settled for the a la carte menu, rather than the lovely looking set menu that comes complete with matching wines should one wish. Tasting menus are good for two reasons: firstly, they allow the chef to show of his (or indeed here, her) skills; and secondly they take away the element of choice. Now choice is generally a good thing: would I choose to support Arsenal? Of course; which fan of fine footballing skills would think of doing anything else? Would I cover myself in honey and run through an apiary? No. Well, not unless it was for Angelina Jolie. The trouble with Murano is that the menu contains so many of my kind of dishes that making a choice reduces me to Robbie the Robert, fused into a state of incapacity, unable to decide between the myriad right answers.

We pondered this dilemma over a glass of passion fruit bellini and some excellent amuse bouche (surely there is an Italian word for this? Divertire bocca perhaps?). Indeed, so excellent were they that, having seen us devour the first plate, the attentive waiter immediately replenished the parmesan balls with a far healthier portion. The waiting is attentive without being overbearing, the sommelier (again, surely there is an Italian word for this too?) guided us through the wine tome and the head waiter did that really annoying thing of taking everyone’s order without writing it down. And getting it place-perfect.

Finally decide we did, and none of the dishes was anything other than excellent: the pumpkin tortellini was smooth, rich and sweet, with the pasta perfectly al dente and the crumbled amaretti biscuits working far better than it sounds as though it should; the grilled red mullet was a sizeable dish, replete with a smear of basil puree; and the sweetbreads cooked to perfection.

A main course of chicken wings with halibut was an odd, but excellent, combination and the beef fillet a nice slab, cooked as asked atop a mound of berlotti beans. The beef was apparently Casterbridge beef. Now I am no Hardy scholar, but I thought that he made the place up? Whatever, it was lovely: maybe it had been hung for the last 130 years.

Following on from the pre-desert sorbets, the desert-deserts were again all lovely: we were warned that the tiramisu was nothing like we would ever have had before, and the waiter was right. All the ingredients were there (chocolate, mascarpone, coffee, cream etc), but the whole had been deconstructed, with each main flavour having its own place on the plate, leaving you to reconstruct or have separately.

With all the superlatives (the food, the service etc) there are downsides/niggles/downright silliness: the atmosphere, as noted above, is not really there and do you really need three foot high decanters to pour the wine? Yes all very trendy and all that, but the poor pourer practically had to stand at the next table to deliver the wine. These are as mere nothings to the prices. Yes this is Mayfair, yes we had a couple of bottles of wine between us and a cocktail each and yes I know that there are always those little add-ons that add up, but how a £60 per head menu for four of us came to over £160 a head is beyond me. Gawd knows how much it would have been had we been trying to impress our nieces.

My follower on these pages (thank you mum) will realise that I am on something of a personal quest to fine the perfect French bistro in London. Cigalon, whilst far from perfect, is an excellent addition to the mini-revival of the French bistro in London.

Not so much French, as Provençal, this small restaurant sits atop a fun little wine bar. The room is lovely light and airy, with a big skylight running most of the length of the room, although was half empty when we went. The kitchen is at one end of the room, open to the world. Down the middle are a series of semi-circular banquettes, and these are the nice ones to go for. Service is friendly and warm, although when we were there, the atmosphere was a little thin: we had been moved away from a table of nine, as the staff were worried about the noise that should eminate from such a large group. Maybe they were all accountants from the nearby Deloittes office, but even they couldn't raise the buzz above the piped-in sound of cicadas that, I assume, is supposed to remind you of a sunny day in the hills above Aix.

We started with a lovely fresh vegetable soup with pistou and a slowly braised beef in cannelloni. The former was light and fresh, the latter unctuous and satisfying, a lovely treat on a cold, miserable November day. Mains too held up well – the pied et paquettes (tripe and trotters), was the finest example that I have ever had: far, far better than many actually tried in the heart of Provence. The loin of pork too was well cooked, coming with a smear of green and an artichoke. OK, this doesn't strike me as a “smear” kind of restaurant, but what the heck, they can have their one nod to a modern trend.

The wine list is, as you would expect, heavy on Provence and prices are good. We had a lovely white from Chateau Carnogue: a very picturesque vineyard that featured heavily in Ridley Scott's A Good Year. Truly dreadful film; truly lovely wines.

And just to prove that every day is a school day, I found out that the grouse on offer had not been shot by some be-tweeded toff on the heather of bonny Jockland, but had instead been shot by some Gauloises smoking aristo in Haut Provence. Now I didn't know that they had grouse in France (and wikipedia is no help whatsover on the subject), but my trusty RSPB guide to European birds does indeed confirm that the Black Grouse lives (and dies) in South Eastern France too.

I will be back, but be warned: if you decide to repair to the downstairs bar afterwards, there is a boule range (field/court or whatever it is called – again, wikipedia, where are you when you are really needed?). This may sound like a lot of fun, but after a long lunch and a snifter or two, it is utter madness to allow people to throw two pound steel balls around. I should just like to apologise in advance for everyone I am going to annoy in the coming months.

Having been somewhat underwhelmed by the Maddox Street branch, it was without too high hopes that I visited the City branch of Goodman. Now I don't know if it is becuase it is the City rather than Mayfair, but this place is in a different league from the one out west.

The setting is very similar: brown leather, brown wood and a more casual bar. The menu too is identical: huge great slabs of prime Irish, US, Canadian and UK beef and the odd nod to chicken and fish thrown in. Service too is of a similar high standard, friendly French waiting staff (is that a first?), knowledgeable about the different cuts and happy to let us take a late, long and very relaxed lunch.

The difference was the cooking: my complaint with the west end version was that the meat hadn't been cooked at a hot enough temperature, so was not properly charred. No such problem here: the 1kg bone in rib-eye (shared between two of us, I hasten to add) was one of the finest peices of steak I have ever had – not as rich as the kobe beef at Steak Ron, but brilliantly cooked to perfection, by somebody who knows their steak. A big hunk of meat, seared and charred to the point of burning on the outside, that dark shade of red that Alex Ferguson goes as the hairdryer treatment is meted out to some hapless official who has the temerity to award a penalty against his sinless charges at Old Scumford on the inside, dripping with juices.

WE didn't make deserts, nor did we bother with a starter: with beef this good, what would be the point?

There has been a plethora of recent openings of French style brasseries in London, from the very good (Luc's and Pierre Koffman) to the unispired (Bar Boulud); Les Deux Salons falls emphatically into the former grouping. The room (or rather, as the name suggests, rooms) are authenticly big, high-ceilinged, brasserie affairs, with the obligatory banquettes and booths; all vaguely red and dark woods.

We arrived after the theatre and had a booth upstairs. This is the quieter of the two rooms, although with a good view of the more crowded room downstairs. We were swiftly seated and menus produced, along with some nice French bread. The food is traditional brasserie fare, but with a mixture of English dishes (cottage pie and a Barnsley chop, for instance) thrown in.

The first thing to mention is the wine list: a terrific one. Not the tome of classic old world wines, with the occaisional Grange thrown in as a nod to the new world, but a single page on the back of the menu. A mixture of old and new, with carafes as well as bottles, and nothing over a ton.

Starters were uniformly lovely: onion tart was sweet and came with a crumbly goats cheese, a textural counterbalance to the crisp pastry of the tart; the wild mushrooms on toast presented some fine examples of the fungus, topped by a beautifully poached egg; and the lamb sweetbreads the outstanding dish. This latter came in a little vol-au-vent case. That's not fair: vol-au-vent is very Abigail's Party and cheese and pineapple on sticks, this was a bouchée à la reine. Whatever you call it, it was lovely: the pastry of the vol/bouchée might have been a little undercooked, but the sweetbreads were cooked to perfection; nut brown on the outside, gently cooked through and lightly coated in a cream suace. I would go back just for these alone

Mains too started well with a perfectly pink Barnsley chop and a top notch cottage pie: this latter coming in its own pot. Andouillette too came in a separate dish: a frying pan with the juices from the cooking in it. This led me to believe that this was the pan in which it had been cooked but no, the pan was cold. Why would you take a hot dish and put it in a cold pan? Yes, presentationally it was great, but all it did was serve to cool the AAAAA too quickly, which, if it did have the advertised mustard sauce with it, was so weak and un-mustardy, that I had to get some extra to jazz it up. Andouillette is THE classic braseerie dish. It should be piping hot and come with a mustard sauce that tastes of the ground up seeds.

Deserts were, alas, a bit mixed: we were warned off the ice cream by our excellent waitress so settled for a floating island, a Paris Brest and the chocolate mousse. The mousse was light and creamy, but adorned with an unnecessary layer of apple. The Paris Brest was not as exciting as it sounds, being a choux pastry doughnut, filled with a praline cream (we were with Americans, so this made them feel very at home); all perfectly fine, but nothing to make you go wow. The floating island, however, was just wrong: the island was a lightly poached egg white (as it should be), but moulded into shape in a ramkin rather than into a quenelle, and, worst of all, flecked with a crunchy red sugary substance. OK, the custard was lovely, but there should be a big puddle of the stuff on which the egg floats in a large plate, not a smear, adhering the egg to the tiny dish.

I have eaten at Arbutus on a number of occasions and always found it enjoyable. I have not (yet) tried Wild Honey (although I did have my hair cut there once: no, it is not some sort of hair dresser/restaurant combo, but it did used to be an up market barbers). Les Deux Salons is very different from them both. It is not Soho frenetic or Mayfair posh, it is Covent Garden French: this may seem an odd comment, but, with the excellent Terroirs bistro almost opposite, William IV Street in Covent Garden has two of the finest (cheaper) French restaurants in London. And cheap(er) it is: there were four of us, we had three courses each, three bottles of wine between us and coffee all for under £60 a head, including service. Recommended, but I'd skip the desert next time and maybe try the cheese.

I booked Needoo for three reasons: (1) a friend from out of town wanted to go have a real curry; (2) I had heard good things about it; but (3) I couldn't book a table at Tayyabs. Let's be fair, there was bound to be a comparison to Tayyabs at some stage in this review, so let's make it in the first sentence.

There is no getting away from the fact that Needoo will always be compared to it's more famous cousin around the block. They both serve excellent Pakistani (rather than Indian) style “curry”, they are both in the heart of Whitechapel and they are both dirt cheap. The big differences between the two are the atmosphere and the service: whilst Tayyabs is always jammed to the rafters, buzzes and has a (rightful) reputation for short tempered waiting staff who are in a rush to get people through the door and feed as quickly as possible, Needoo has a more low key feel, with Bollywood blaring from the big screen TV at the end of the room. The most noticable difference, however, is the service: nothing could be further from Tayyab's rush here. The room (a truely forgettable red, mirrored affair, with that omnipresent TV) is not as packed. The hoardes aren't (yet) queing around the block, and this means that the waiting staff have time to attend to their customers.

We arrived, sat down, were served with some excellent popadoms and chutney and given a cork screw. A nice touch that: knife, fork, spoon and corkscrew; the essentials. The waiter came over a few minutes later and asked if we were ready. Our “could you give us five minutes?” was met with a smile and no problem. In Tayyabs, we'd have been thrown out. Or at least glared at, with the waiter hovering behind until we'd been cowed into ordering.

The food is generally very good – as always, we overordered: chicken tikka, some kebabs and some onion pakora for starters. The first two were gorgeously spiced. The chicken was moist and cooked to perfection. The kebabs chared beautifully. The onion pakora, however, was one of the oddest I've ever had: it wasn't that the spicing was wrong (just the right hit of chilli and coriander), it was just that the proportion of potato to onion was too high. Potato should be there to give a little body, not take over.

Mains, which come before the starters are finished (the owner, after all, still has his roots at Tayyabs), were all very good too: the pick was a “dry meat” dish (lamb), which was succulent meat, slow cooked with a hint of spicy gravey. Not, maybe, your usual dish for a Pakistani grill restaurant, where sauces are more often built up rather than reduced down, but executed marvelously. Butter chicken was a little over generous with the ghee, the dal makhani was creamy and the lamb chops perfectly fine. For a restaurant special, however, this latter dish was a little disappointing. Pakistani grills all specialise in lamb chops. They should be thick slabs of chop, well spiced and seared to buring point on a hot, charcoal grill. These were just that little too thin to really be able to stand the time on the grill needed to sear the flesh. Nice, but not the best ever.

As with most east end curry joints, this is BYO (hence the corkscrew), although they serve the usual lassis and soft drinks, and water is tap not bottled.

Even though we had overordered (we rounded off the food with rice and na'an), the bill came comfortably under forty notes for four of us: with the tip, two bottles of wine and the taxis too and from the restaurant, four of us were well fed and watered for less than the cost of a main course in some posh joints in the west end.

All in all an excellent restaurant, with excellent food at an unbeatable price; perfect for those looking for a fantastic Pakistani grill, without the surley atitude offered at some places nearby.

Sunday brunch should be leisurly, of that there is no doubt. However, it doesn't take an hour to make an omlette and eggs florentine, especially when the next table arrives half an hour after you've ordered and then gets served first (well, they got two of their four dishes first, then one after we had got ours, then the last as the first pair were finishing up, so it wasn't just us who didn't like the service).

When it arrived, the food was pretty fair, brunchtime food. The omlette was a little over cooked (it had perhaps been sitting under a heating lamp for a while), but the eggs florentine was lovely; eggs beautifully poached, tart spinach and slathered in a wonderfully tangy hollandaise.

We got a free glass of wine as a apology, which was nice, but getting the timing right would have been nicer.

The restaurant is more like a deli that has tables, sort of like Bills Produce Store in Brighton, but on a much smaller scale, and without the fishfinger butties.

First up, let me make a confession; I'm an enormous fan of Pierre Koffman. Not in a stalking, Richard Ramirez kind of way, but I do have a signed menu from the original Tante Claire framed and hanging in my kitchen.

Like the bone marrow with parsley salad at St John, I've never before managed to avoid the pigs trotter with sweatbreads and morrels when visiting a PK restaurant. I've tried it at Tante Claire in both Royal Hospital Road and at the Berkley, as well as last year at the Koffman pop-up place at Selfridges. Here though, I thought I'd try something else. Fortunately, the amuse bouche was pigs trotter with young leaves, so my strike rate of always having trotter at a Koffman restaurant is intact.

The room is a downstairs affair, all beige and trendy pastels, but light and airy, with a gentle hum, rather than a loud buzz. Decor consists of collections of old milk bottles and jam jars, stuffed with dead leaves, as though somebody popped out that morning to Hyde Park and picked up bits and bobs lying around. Were I to criticise, however, it wouldn't be these elements of the decor, but what is missing: the way that French brasseries make the room seem bigger, as well as allowing the gentlemen sitting on the outside of tables lining the walls to see what's going on in the room, is to hang room-long mirrors. Cafe Luc has done this to good effect recently. It would seem obvious to do it here. Instead, if you're sitting on the outside of the tables lining the walls, you look at the beige, vaguely flocked wallpaper. Not unpleasant, but not inspiring.

There's a partially open kitchen too; I couldn't see in (as I was facing the flock), but I don't believe that the great man was there: the report back from my companion was of young men, none of whom had beards.

Bread tasted freshly baked, and our choice was a bacon and onion fougasse, a tomato and a crunchy brown, all of which were lovely. Water was offered, but then not topped up, which sort of summed up the service; it was very friendly and, when we arrived, very attentive. Once the mains had been cleared, however, it took 45 minutes to get the desert list, and only then because we asked for it. Nobody came to take the desert order, so we had to flag somebody down for that too. When the deserts came, they got one of them wrong. Quickly fixed, but a little sloppy for a top joint like this.

Anyone who reads any of the other comments I've made on brasseries, will know my love of fish soup. So I had to try it here. It was lovely; not as thick as some I've had, but with a lovely fishy/saffron taste, with thick, garlicky roulade and grated gruyere. This is what fish soup should be. My companion had the mackerel terrine. This came wrapped in cucumber, with lots of little bits (caramelised bread, red currents, a caperberry on some apple mush), that were maybe a little too much.

Having eschewed the pigs trotter, I went for the rabbit with mustard and lovely it was too; not done with a creamy, mustardy sauce, as I'd imagined, but with a light, grain mustard jus. This too comes with lots of bits, like artichoke, broad beans, baby leek and tomatoes, but they all added rather than overwhelming. My companion had the cod, nicely rich and moist with a crunchy top, chorizio and butter beans.

Desert, when they got them right, was a super rich chocolate mousse and the Île flottant. The latter was a gorgeous, lightly poached meringue atop a honeycomb crunch (think crunchy bar) and a lovely creme anglaise (ok, vanilla custard). The only downside was that it was slathered in caramel, that was just too sweet for the whole. It was so sweet, in fact, that it made the monbazillac that I had with it seem dry in comparison.

Talking of wine, the shortish list is excellent, with a good selection by the glass or carafe. The vast majority on the list are under £75 and only a few, silly trophy wines to show that this is a big hotel in Knightsbridge, although the surly French sommelier did his best to remind us of this.

Overall, I was slightly surprised at the size of the bill (considering that our bottle of wine was a mere £29, although the two glasses of champagne did come to more than this on their own), but it is Knightsbridge, so hardly unexpected.

Finally, a word about the table next to us: a family, mum, dad and three kids, I'd guess 5, 7 and maybe 11? Tables are close, but not so close as to be annoying. Anyway, the eldest boy had the famous pigs trotter. There is too much talk these days of the young only being interest in McDonalds and turkey twizzlers, and the death of this country's epicurean culture. I don't know who you are young man, but I salute you.

There has been a lot of talk recently about Boulud and Koffman going head to head in brasseries in Knightsbridge hotels. On the evidence of my recent trips to them both, there is only one winner; PK by a country mile.

I have eaten at Hix on a number of occasions, both at the counter and at tables, and both for lunch and dinner. Our latest trip was a late dinner. The restaurant was packed to the rafters. The space is such that this works pretty well: high ceilings and a big room, with tables, whilst close on the banquette side of the room, not so close that you find yourself in your neighbour's food. There is a bar downstairs too, which is more intimate, and which has twiglets as a bar snack, so can't be all bad.

The decor is enlivened by a series of mobiles: fish in glass, bits of wall, for example, which are all very cheery and conversation inducing. I'm not sure that I'd want to sit under the one that has a collection of bricks hanging from it though. It reminded me of Quo Vadis under the MPW regieme, so it comes as no surprise to find that they are Damien Hirsts.

Service is friendly, if a little dotty some times: our waiter brought bread, but then wandered off before we could order. The wine arrived after the food, having been sitting on the end of the bar. But lots can be forgiven when the waiting staff are so friendly (ok, the front of house lady was suitably haughty, and the cloakroom attendant engrossed in his book, but the actually waiting staff were very pleasant).

I'd misread the menu, reading marrow as bone marrow: having politely told me of my error, our waiter asked if I'd like bone marrow anyway as, although not on the starter menu, they had it and the kitchen could rustle me up some. It was lovely; scooped out and done with breadcrumbs, parsley and lots of garlic.

Alas, I had also wanted to try the squeaker (baby grouse) that we'd seen on the menu a few days before, but the (clearly short) season was already over, so had to settle for the full grown version. And very nice it was too; not too gamey, nicely pink and accompanied by an unctiously rich jus, some perfectly adequate bread sauce and (a twist on the classic game chip) some parsnip chips; a less deep fried, and probably far healthier, option.

To wash it all down we had a couple of carafes from the short but fine wine list: a Picpoul de Pinet white and a Terrasses du Larzac red.

The bill, whilst not small, wasn't as big as I'd thought, and represents pretty good value for this part of town and quality of food: the bone marrow coming in at the cheapest of the starters, and the grouse, never a cheap option, still not as high as many other restaurants are charging.

Overal an excellent place to grab a late night snack, with a buzzy atmosphere, good wines and big, flavourful grub.

Goodman looks like it has been transported whole from Lower Manhatten. Dark wooded booths, attractive and attentive waiting staff, and big, thick, USDA prime beef. All things that wouldn't be out of place in the Big Apple.

What is out of place is the wholly British drunk. Having a bar in a restaurant makes perfect sense: you can sip a martini before dinner and then move on to your table. Here, a group that had clearly been going since lunchtime hogged the place, leaning over the tables unfortunately too close to the bar. The polite but firm waitress tried to get them to keep to one side and not disturb people, but to no avail. It is rare that I find myself thinking that they've got something right in the US, but here I do: there is no way that this situation would have been allowed to happen in NYC. It isn't that our American cousins are any less prone to getting drunk, it is just that an up market restaurant wouldn't allow them to get to this stage in the first place and, if they had, wouldn't have politely asked them not to get in anyone's way, they'd have thrown them out.

Before people think I'm getting too sniffy about people having fun, I really don't mind, so long as their enjoyment doesn't translate to misery for other. Remember that this place isn't cheap. In fact, at around £30 a steak, it is expensive compared to other, serious meaty competitors. It is upmarket. It is in Mayfair. There are families. There is a time and a place for getting rowdy in a bar. This isn't it.

That said, we were moved from the bar to the dark wooded etc. table at the back and the serious business of devouring steak began. I had always thought that vegetarian hell would be St John, but that is just too light and airy. No, if you want to make a vegan cry, this is the place to do it. The steak is introduced to you like a Hatton Garden jeweller bringing out the wedding rings: laid out on a silver platter, from the 250g grass fed Irish fillet (the single carat, internally flawless, D, round princess cut) to the 1.5kg USDA T-bone (the twenty carat, yellow, Graff bling).

Each one is lovingly described: the fillet (pronounced filit, rather than fi-ˈlā), being grass fed, we are told, will be stronger tasting. The USDA, being corn fed, will be more marbled and succulent. We settled on a couple of USDA rib-eyes, a fillet and lamb chops. I know; why lamb in a steak restaurant? Well actually, the non-beef dishes are pretty fine too.

Starters ranged from a so-so mozzarella and tomato salad (which had been reformed into a cylinder for no discernable reason); some lovely hot smoked salmon and, the pick of the bunch, some beautifully light and crisp tempura prawns. The lamb too got the double thumbs up, and the chips were perfectly fine examples. It was, however, the steak that recieved a mixed review. It wasn't that the steak wasn't excellent; it was. Both the Irsih (which was stronger tasting) and the USDA (which was, as advertised, noticably juicier) were lovely cuts of meat. It was just the way that it was cooked. Rare doesn't mean not cooked. It means seared hard on the outside, and running with myoglobin when cut through. It isn't easy to achieve at home, as you need a really, really hot pan. In a restaurant, especially a steak one, it should be easy to get right. My tip for ordering here is, even if you like your steak rare, the USDA is so juicy that, if they are not going to get the temperature of the pan right, a medium rare works best.

The wine list is good and solid, vearing very much to the top end red from around the globe: we had a Californian Zin and a St Emillion Grand Cru. Both stood up to the steak admirably.

Service is good; attentive but not overbearing and prices are Mayfair.

Overall a very nice place, for a beautiful steak. Just avoid the bar.

I went to Daniels in New York some years back, and was severly underwhelmed. Having heard so many good things about this new brasserie, however, I thought that I'd give M. Boulud another try. (By the way, is it a brasserie or is it bistro? I think brasserie, which tends to make one think of a bigger, place, rather than smaller bistros. Despite its name, it is certainly not a bar). I wish I'd gone to Hix.

Bar Boulud isn't a French brasserie at all. It is a NY take on a French brasserie: everything screams NY, from the “you're welcome” that the (certainly non-US native) waitresses deliver Pavlovian like, to “fingerling” potatoes, corn bread and feather steak, rather than spud, polenta and rib. Even the font in the menu is NY brasserie font.

Now I like NY style French brasseries: I still go back to Balthazar when I'm in NY, many decades after it ceased to be this week's greatest restaurant of the century. I like French French brasseries too: big high ceilings, all day service (and, in some cases, all night too) and fish soup. I do not like Bar Boulud. It is authentically big, but equally cramped and claustrophobic. Of course the tables are close together. That is authentic. What is not authentic, as a cursary glance at the black and white pictures of glorious Parisian and Lyonnais brasseries that lovingly adorne the walls would testify, is the ceiling. It is low. Way too low to get the right atmosphere; it feels like a brasserie in a dungeon.

The effect is that you get the feeling of sitting on top of the person next to you. Somehow, even in the sort of Parisian place where there is only a passing nod at a gap between the tables, you feel apart from your neighbour. Here, with nowhere for the hot air to escape upwards, it is pushed sideways, and you get to be part of your next door neighbours conversation, as they are to yours. So I can tell you that the sort of people we had next to us were wonderfully stereotypical; the American's who moaned about how things in this country weren't like they are back home and so had to be much worse, and the British BB wanabe, who'se oversized shoulder bag nearly took out our bottle of wine and glasses as she sashayed between the tables (clearly only a wanabe; even I could tell that it wasn't a Birkin). Given, however, that this is a big old hotel in Knightsbridge, these are probably the sort of people that they are aiming for.

Going with the recommendations of those who have reported before, we stuck to the meats. A very pleasant plate of charcuterie, with pates and saucisse. Bit stingy for £14.50, but very pleasant. It was interesting to note too that the next door table had the same, but their waiter described the pates as being completely different to ours, even though they were identical. Did I mention that you can hear everything from the next table?

For mains, we forewent the pulled pork burger (a signature dish I believe) and went for (another signature dish, we were told) the burger with foie gras. What is pulled as a style anyway? Pork wasn't the only thing that was pulled that night – so too was the rabbit. Is it a bit like being back at the Southend Roxy: “get your coat you've pulled”?

The burger was pretty good: was done rare as asked for and came with some lovely chips (or, more probably, freedom fries). The chicken too was a large slab of breast, nicely succulent, having a light, crispy skin and with little other than its own juices to go with it and the spinach. A really nice dish.

Chocolate tart was a fine desert, not easy to mess up, but nothing inspiring either.

The waiting staff were friendly, the waitresses just the right side of familiar, without being the sycophantic, first-name-giving waiting staff of US infamy. Service is a bit hit and miss still: small things like food arriving before wine; the main course taking an hour to arrive once the starter had been cleared. That sort of thing. Not bad waitressing, but service not clicking.

Then the wine list. Clearly this is a big hotel in an expensive part of an expensive city, but this is supposed to be a brasserie (or even a bar for goodness sake). How then can more than half of the wine list be over £100, and more than a quarter be over £200? There are some good value wines in there (more so it looked to me on the white than the red), but there are as many £300+ wines than £50- ones. Why? We had only a £20 odd retail bottle, yet even with only one starter and one desert, we still managed to rack up a bill taking us over a ton-and-a-half, which leaves you wondering how? And why?

I'm sure that this isn't top of the concerns of the hotel, where they have a capitve audience and a named chef. They are not going after the typical brasserie crowd, but the hotel guests: those Americans on expense accounts who want to be back in NY; the C list wanabes who want to be seen at the in place. Then there are the rest, who, like us, seem to have stumbled in to some godawful nightmare vision. A New York brasserie in the bowels of hell.