No matter how good the starters on the menu are (and there are always some tempting offerings), nothing can compare to the bone marrow on toast, and it gets me every time. I know that I should try something else, but once again I failed. Four pieces of melting bone marrow, encased in burnt bone, with a parsley and caper salad. There is truly no finer single signature dish in London. OK, the great Piere Koffman is back with his pigs trotter stuffed with thyroid glands. That is hard to beat; but Fergus has been doing this for fifteen years without a break, and it never tires.

Why though is it every time that I go that Mr H is sitting eating here? Surely he should be behind the stove? I remember not too long ago that this was the case: you would see the great man in his apron, directing traffic. Now he sits and eats. Maybe this is like going to a Chinese restaurant full of Chinese: go to a restaurant where the chef is eating.

There is nothing fancy on offer here (even if it does now boast a Michelin star); if the menu says Old Spot, that is what you get: one perfectly cooked pork chop, perhaps accompanied by its cooking juices. If you have the time (and the numbers), I recommend the whole sucking pig. Not the tiny little fellas that grace the tables at Segovian restaurants: all single servings, cut with a plate. No, a slightly bigger version, ready to feed ten or more, served whole. Head on (alas no apple though). If you don't have ten, nor have you ordered the day before, there are always good specials, as well as the staples.

Today it was grouse. I love grouse. It is probably my single favourite dish, and the reason why I love autumn above all other seasons. I am always pleased when St Johns has it on the menu as it is one of the finest there is in London. Here and Rules. Unlike Rules, however, you get proper bread sauce. Yum. The season has just started, so the grouse, whilst flavourful, is not as strong as it will get by December. My companion had the aforementioned Old Spot, another staple that never fails to impress: smoked and pot roasted today, and very fine too.

The wine list is a decent one too, with plenty of mid ranking bottles: the grouse and old spot went beautifully with a bottle of cote du Rhone, at a more than reasonable £26 a bottle (and £6.50 a glass!).

There are some niggles; even since the revamp, it is basically still an austere, white on white decor, which isn't to everyone's taste (the bar is a more buzzy place to be, without being brash and overbearing), but worst of all, the service can be extremely slow. I'm sorry, but the bored looking waitresses really should liven up just a little bit. Prices are keen but not cheap, and you are supposed to be helping those that wish to dine here: ungrump please.

These are, however, mere niggles for what remains, after more than a decade-and-a-half, one of London's finest restaurants and, should you believe the hype, one of the top restaurants in the world.

It is a real shame that the previous two reviewers didn't get a chance to try the cocktails here, as they are without doubt, fabulous (sorry, but did you book Pearl by any chance? Same name, different spelling, easy to do, not Purl's fault?).

To be fair to them, the booking process is a bit haphazard; I called to book, was told it was probably ok but somebody would get back to me. They didn't, so I called back. It was all fine, but nobody bothered to tell me. When I called on the day to bring the booking forward an hour, there was no problem, but when we arrived, we were sat on high stools at a former bench-turned-bar in a corridor. Fortunately, our attentive waitress was able to find us a table with the minimum of fuss. In fact, service all round was very good – from the friendly, clip-board wielding door guard at the top of the stairs, to our Hibs supporting, Scottish waitress.

The space itself is really odd: it feels like it wants to be Milk & Honey, all dark, sophisticated and mysterious, but is stuck in a space that is a series of small rooms, interconnected by corridors, where random tables are set. There are two nice alcoves (the old coal holes, under the street) and a big room, which housed a large group. The level of the music, however, is such that you have to be intimate with your drinking companion, as sitting more than a few inches apart makes conversation difficult. The potency of the cocktails ensures that such conversation is fluid.

The cocktail list is short, but interesting. No whatever-the-latest-take-on-a-flavoured-martini-is here. No, the closest that the list comes to mainstream is a Hemingway Daiquiri, which is served with a potently laced marischino. There is a martini, the KetelN2, but this bubbles and spits nitrogen, as it stirred in a nitrogen bath, so that it is served at -50 degrees. Whilst Heston would be proud, it is suggested to guests that they don't start drinking until the bubbles have subsided. Surely nowhere else produces a martini that you have to wait until it warms up before you can drink it. Of a similar theatrical nature, Mr Hyde's Fixer Upper is a dark rum based drink, that is borne to the table in a cooler spewing dry ice, in the middle of which is a flask of rum and smoke! Not quite as dramatic, but the highlight for us, is the Street Urchin: this is a delicate bourbon and pear conconction, that comes in a medicine bottle, which is wrapped in a brown paper bag. no glass; you drink directly from the bottle. The last drink we had, before needing sustenance, was the Backward Bellini, with the fruit (pomegranite, rather than the more usual peach) as a foam on top of the proseco, rather than at the bottom of the glass. Hence backward.

At this point, we did need food, and this is where there is a problem. Most bars will offer something to nibble on. After all, these are highly charged drinks, and something to soak the alcohol up is generally a good thing, especially if you want to sell more alcohol. Purl doesn't offer anything, although the waitress let us have some olives. To be fair, we also saw a takeaway pizza disappear down towards to the large group, but we left to get something to eat. Maybe this will work well, but given that bookings are for an unlimited time (unless somebody is squeezed in before a later booking), and it seems difficult to get in without a booking, if people use this as a pre- or post- dinner place only, surely they are missing a trick. It doesn't need to be much, just something that will make people linger for another cocktail or two, or even move on to the (again short, but well priced) wine list.

As for the cost, well £8-10 for the astonishing cocktails is, in this part of town, excellent value: nearby there are bars at some of the big hotels (Ten Manchester Street, HUNter486 at the Arch, Claridges and the Connaught, for instance), all of which have excellent cocktails (and nibbles). None of them are in the same league as the cocktails mixed at Purl, and all of them will be nearer to twice the price, once the discretionary service charge they all have (and Purl doesn't) has been included.

Whilst Mayfair may have two Nobu's, Marylebone has some of the best sushi counters in London, with both Dinings and Defune being amongst the Capital's best places to watch the artistry of the Itamae.

Dinings, which bills itself as Japanese tapas, shares a fair amount with Nobu in the style of food, with more inventive use of sashimi than just a few lumps of perfectly fresh fish and some daikon and wasabi. Sauces are light and each perfectly suited to the type of fish being used. Rolls are inventive, although call me old-fashioned, but I'm not sure that foie gras ever deserves to be wrapped in rice, no matter how amazingly cooked it is.

We started this time with tar-tar chips: basically, these are crisps with a small dollop of fish or meat filling. A bit like tiny tacos. The special was a wagu beef one. A single delicous bite of beef and wasabi; crisp on the outside, melting on the in. Like so many things, one is never enough, so a beautiful toro with jalapeno followed. Another sensational mouthful.

Sashimi came in the form of yellow tail with a yuzu garlic sauce and a toro with yuzu ponzu. No I don't have a clue what a yuzu is (let alone a ponzu), but I'd guess it was a citrus, so making the dishes a bit like ceviche, with the acid of the fruit “cooking” the fish ever so slightly. The effect is a sharp sauce that adds bite to the perfect raw fish in a more subtle way than the wasabi and soy sauce staple. I do love this about Japanese food: finding something that you don't know what it is, but finding it is amazing.

A spider roll was excellent. I once managed to convince a dining companion that this was actually a spider: this is clearly made easier when the legs are sticking out the top of the roll, very much like a tarantula might. I am sure that, could they get hold of a reliable supply, Dinings might actually try this. Eel sushi and a California roll were both lovely too. I don't usually go for the California roll, but this was like no California roll I have ever seen before, being almost a deconstruced version of the US “classic”, using mango (I'd guess) and fresh crab.

Everything is beautifully presented, with garnishes that look as though they are merely there for show, but actually each subtly add to the flavour or texture or overal mouth feel in some way, which is so much more than can be said for most western garnishes.

The drinks list is short and has the usual beers, plum wines etc, but also a well thought out list of wines that go with the sushi: I know matching wines with sushi isn't really the done thing, but so what? Sure stick to beer, but when the restaurant itself is branching out in non-Japanese ways (that foie gras again, or truffles, or cavier; they are all here), why not try something new too.

If I were to make a criticism, it would be the service. It isn't that it isn't friendly; it is. It is welcoming in that rutualistic way of Japanese, with a universally shouted “Irasshaimase”. It is just, well; relaxed. Actually, shambolic would be a better way of describing it. Dishes get forgotten, there are vast gaps between dishes arriving, followed by a rush of dishes together; after about an hour, and only a handful of our many ordered dishes having arrived and been consumed, our waitress politely asked if there was anything else that we wanted. Well the rest of our order would be nice!

I've never been downstairs, as I have always enjoyed sitting at the counter. It is here that you see the subtle interplay between the Itamae: the teachings, the tellings off, the respect from the younger to the master. But never hissy fits. Never scaulding with knives or cutting clothes. Just calm, professional and cool. And slow. Not only do I fear that you would lose this element of the experience were you to descend into the bowles of Dinings, but I fear you may lose a few more dishes along the way too.

Don't let the service put you off, and do try the foie gras rolls or the cavier or truffle laced dishes; this is surely one of London's very best Japanese restaurants.

I really hate the term “Hidden Gem”. It is used by middle Englanders about the lovely trattatoria that they “discovered” in Chiantishire last August, which only the locals know about. As if the locals hadn't discovered it perfectly well by themselves thank you very much. Alas, I can think of little other way to describe Pham Sushi. It is a hidden gem.

Well, it isn't really that hidden, but it is in the middle of Whitecross Market, which doesn't boast the most original of restaurants. There are some wonderful falafal, Indian and BBQ stalls in the market itself, but, other than Alba (which I haven't been to, but am told is pretty good), there is little that stands out in this side street, running north from the Barbican underpass.

It is, however, a gem: not as polished as others, maybe, but perfectly classy. The fish is good and fresh, with more modern takes on sashimi than most of the other, more traditional City Japanese, but with the classic staples there too for the less adventurous. The rock shrimp tempura is not as good as the Nobu version, but still perfectly servicable. The Bento boxes at lunch are enormous, and good value at around the £15-16 mark.

Well worth the stroll north out of the CIty, or south down from the more trendy Hoxton area.

There seem to be two sorts of two star Michelin star establishments in London now: the formal, grand ones, often found in big hotels, and the more intimate ones. The Ledbury falls within the latter.

No grand hotel lobbey to fight through, but straight to the front desk, bottle in hand. Yes, a two star Michelin restaurant with a BYO policy. Given how much top end restaurants make from the wine list, it is refreshing to see such a sensible approach being taken. Maybe this is because the Ledbury started as a neighbourhood local or maybe it is becauses the chef is Australian: in Australia, almost all restaurants seem to be BYO. In this country, the concept seems stuck with Brick Lane curry houses. Whatever the reason, I applaud you.

As an added bonus, throughout August the Ledbury has an arrangement with Bordeaux Index that provides for clients of BI to have the otherwise £25 corkage charge waived. How could we resist?

After the obligatory amuse bouche, we started with the snails (from Hereford, of course), enveloped in a herb mouse and wild boar with baked celeriac. Both were gorgeous. The latter was a deep fried disc (a kromeski, no less) of chopped boar, but the theatre was in the celeriac. I have been to restaurants where whole birds are carved at the table, or the cooked fish is presented before being whisked away to be filleted, but I have never before been introduced to a celeriac. Until now. The root, borne to the table on a wooden board, is encased in a salt pastry crust. It looks like a baked potato. This is then sliced in half, and one half of the ash coated root popped out, for the table to inspect. The next time you see it, it is thinly sliced and under the boar. Does seeing how it was cooked add to the taste sensation? No, but it says a lot about the restaurant's style.

Of the mains the suckling pig was probably the least interesting dish that we had. It was a perfectly fine piece of meat, perfectly cooked, with a properly crispy skin and moist meat, but is was somehow a little uninteresting, and lacking in punch that the other dishes had. The lamb, on the other hand, which came in two cuts; one cooked pink, one slow roasted, was superb. Of course both cuts were cooked beautifully, but somehow this dish, coming with a lovely baked aubergine that perfectly complimented the meat, in the same way that white carrots didn't with the pork, just worked in every way.

We could smell the cheese the moment we walked in the door, and it was certainly worth the wait. A small cheese board when compared to some establishments, with a dozen beautifully kept, and wonderfully smelling, British and French cheeses. After the pre-deserts, we finshed with the souffle. This was again a little bit of a miss: wonderfully light and fluffy, but overly sweet, masking both the souffle's taste and that of the thyme ice cream that came with it.

Service is friendly, unfussy, unhurried and unobtrusive. The ratio of waiting staff to diners may not be of three Michelin star standard, but that is far from a bad thing. I don't need somebody filling my water glass up every time I take a sip, followed by somebody doing the same twenty seconds later with the wine. A lot of restaurants could learn from the relaxed way that the front of house is run at the Ledbury.

The only downside seems to be that, in order to cram as many people together in what is a smallish dining room, the tables are uncomfortably close together. I now know, for instance, that one of the ladies on the next door table has a flat mate whose alarm goes off too early, so he keeps hitting the snooze button every ten minutes until he decides to get out of bed; the names of the children of the couple two tables down; and way too much about the sex lives of the trustafarians in the corner.

This aside, the Ledbury is a fantastic restaurant, blending a relaxed atmoshpere, with some wonderful food. Add to that the BYO policy and you have a knock-out hit.

The craze for converybelt sushi has generally lead to overcook, cold rice and average at best sushi and sushimi. Kurumaya's converybelt is always packed with fresh, well prepared food; the uni is lovely, the soft shell crab hand roll a staple and there is always a dish that is not your usual “salmon and tuna”. In fact, unlike so many places, I cannot think of a bad mouthful I've ever had here, and I go a lot. Add to this the exemplary service, and it is a place that it is difficult to find fault with.

OK, it is not inventive, it is not going to win Michelin (or even Squaremeal) stars and it is not the cheapest of lunchtime options in the City (a place not known for its cheapness), but it is the best overall Japanese in the City and, like the previous reviewer, Kurumaya has become my canteen.

I'd add too, that I think recently standards have dropped a little. Nothing too serious, but I've started to think that the fish at Ribon, which has clearly upped it's game recently, is fresher, and overall is a better place for lunch.

Forget any preconceived notions that you may have of conveyor belt sushi: this is nothing like Yo Sushi or Moshi Moshi. In fact, the only thing that these all have in common is the conveyor belt.

Unlike most other like sushi places, at Kulu Kulu the sushi is freshly prepared. Not here pre-made sushi and rolls kept in the fridge for the rice to solidify. No, the rice is kept in a tub at room temperature as it should be and used as and when needed. The classics are all here (tuna, salmon, eel, squid, softshell crab etc.), as well as tempura, hand rolls and various other dishes; this is what is so great about Japanese food. Whilst so much of it is now familiar (thanks, it has to be said, in no small part to Yo and Moshi etc.), there are always wonderful looking dishes, that I have no idea what they are. The fish is beautifully fresh, in big, thick chunks. The tempura is light and again, comes out freshly cooked.

Another distinction between here and other conveyor belt places in London, is that there are a fair number of Japanese here too. Being in soho, there is also a fair collection of tourists. Etiquette in conveyor belt places is pretty simple: don't put a dish back once you've taken it off the belt and don't lean over somebody to get to the food. Perhaps they should have a note to this effect up. In French would be helpful here.

I've said before that Kurumaya is one of the better conveyor belt sushi restaurants, and I still think it is (although I think standards there have slipped recently); Kulu Kulu is, in my view, even better.

What a terrific place: nothing fancy, but a small, cosy, mediterranean-food-inspired place, set close enough to Soho to be known, but far enough off the restaurant track not to be outrageously expensive or overcrowded.

The (summer midweek) evening that we went, it was full, which means a maximum of about 30 covers. Tables are close together, so conspiratorial conversation is hard, although joy of joys, no canned music to contend with. Only places that are totally comfortable with the atmosphere that their dinners will create are bold enough to get away with this. Good for the Giaconda.

The menu is remarkably long for what looks as though there is only one person in front of the stove: the back wall of the restaurant is a wall of wine with a gap in the middle, allowing a view through to the tiny kitchen. The food is simple enough: in our group of four, we had the daily soup special (a rich crab bisque), the risotto of the day (summer truffle) and the crispy pigs trotter. The latter was not, as we had hoped, a whole trotter, but a wobbly square of glutinous trotter meat, toped off with a crispy crust of parmesan, atop soft boiled eggs and some salad leaves. Really rather good.

Mains too hit the spot: the duck confit was beautifully crispy (and came with a simple watercress salad); the steak was as rare as asked for, with good (skin-on) chips; steak tartare perfectly acceptable; and the the ham hock hash, a sort of ham-patty, crumbed and topped with anchovy and fried egg. Again, all really rather good.

The wine list too is in keeping with the food: lots of interesting, regional wines at seriously good prices, although with the odd higher priced example (Chasse Spleen 1989 at £103, about double retail). We had a Bergerac Blanc and a very passable Chinon, both in the mid-twenties.

Service is friendly, in that died-blond, Eastern European way that is taking over in London, and the bill was, for this part of town and this quality of food, exceptionally reasonable.

The restaurant's tag line of “we aren't flashy or grand and that suits us just fine”, sums Giaconda up perfectly. Don't go here expecting foams, smears or anything remotely trendy, but do go for fine, honest cooking, a good atmosphere and fair prices.

I really don't mind spending good money on top restaurants. I don't even mind the meal taking hours, but here the bill was stratospherically high and the pace at which the food arrived was more dead slug than live snail.

When it did arrive, the food was gorgeous; the Kaseiki menu offers lots of small, beautifully prepared, beautifully presentated and subtle tasting morsels. The trouble is, you need a hamburger between each course to stave off the hunger pangs, and could easily have time to go and get one from the nearest Burger King, which is, I am reliably informed, in Barnes. Matching with wine too was a mistake – it seemed like such a good idea at the time; lots of different wines and sake to go with the different flavours to which they are perfectly suited. The trouble is, the wine for the next course came immediately after the previous course had been cleared away, so you either sat there thirsty as well as hungry, or drank it in the interminable wait and then had nothing to complement the food.

Yes, we could have come on an off night, but at these prices you cannot afford to have an off few minutes, let alone a whole night.

Unlike some places where the whole experience puts you off, the food was just so good (and the Calpis Martini so unlike it sounds as though it should be), I would go back. this time, I'd sit at the sushi counter though and order as I went along. That way I could make a swift exit if the food was not so swift in arriving.

28-50 is fast becoming my watering hole of choice in the City (run close by the Planet of the Grapes, in Leadenhall Market).

Located at the Fleet Street end of Fetter Lane, 28-50 is a champagne cork's pop from the grande dame of City wine bars: El Vino. It is also streets away from the Rumpole of the Bailey style that pervades at El Vino. There is nothing wrong with El Vino: it knows its clientele, and that clientele knows exactly what it is going to get there; solid food, solid wines, solid atmosphere. 28-50 is different. It is lighter, hasn't been ravaged by the effects of smoke and time, and is designed for a different, more oenophile than dipso, audience.

The bar breaks the golden rule for restaurants and bars everywhere by having an entrance with stairs going straight down. This means that nobody can see the bar from street level, so passing trade is going to be limited. I'm not sure that this is a bad thing, so long as sufficient people know about the place to make sure that it is prospering. It certainly hasn't harmed Fino and, judging by the number of people who found their way through to the high ceilinged, surprisingly light and open, bar on a Tuesday night in the height of summer, it isn't going to be a problem here either.

No, what is going to harm the financial success of 28-50 is going to be the absurd generosity of the owners: £325 may sound a lot for a bottle of wine, but this is the 1989 Mouton Rotshchild. Alain Ducasse (never a man to be backward in pricing) sells this same vintage at £1,490. Retail it is a touch over £300. A mark-up of around 10%; a lot of places could learn from such generosity.

It is not just at the top end of the wine list either: there are 30 or so wines by the glass (and they sensibly do small 75ml tasting glasses as well as more normal 125ml glasses), carafe and bottle. These, when we last went (and they are ever changing), included a Slovenian Sylvaner at £2.80 a glass (not the cheapest offerings, I should add, that award being claimed jointly by a Spanish red and an Italian white (not a Pinot Grigio either) at a mere £1.95), a Sicilian Grillo (no, me neither), Coteaux du Languedoc, a Pinot from the Mornington Peninsula and some serious Meursault and St Emilion Grand Cru. The latter two were the most expensive at a mere £5.45 a glass.

There is food too; nice platters of meats and cheeses, simple starters and mains, but really, this is about the wine.

This place really deserves to do well: it offers great wine, at a great price, in a great underground cellar. I just hope that this latter point (or indeed, two points) doesn't (or don't) cause it to fail.

Oh My God [or, for the twittering classses: OMG ;-))))!!!]. Wow: this is seriously grown up food, served in a seriously grown up restaurant with SERIOUSLY grown up prices.

Yes, let's start with what everyone seems surprised at. The prices. Alain Ducasse is a famous French chef. His restaurant has three Michelin Stars. His restaurant also happens to be located in one of the most expensive hotels, in one of the most expensive areas of one of the most expensive cities in the world. Of course it is going to cost a lot. But maybe here a little perspective is called for: the tasting menu at Alain Ducasse is £115. Not cheap. Anne-Sophie Pic has a tasting menu at €320, with a starter on the a la carte at a mind alteringly €145. So the eponymously named Maison Pic has a starter that is more than a seven course meal at Alain Ducasse.

You might expect that Maison Pic would have to be in Paris, maybe in the 8th, maybe in the George V, for that would be a fair comparison. Maison Pic is in Valence. For those of you who don't know where that is, it is a industrial truck stop of a town, about an hour-and-a-half south of Lyon on the Autoroute du Soleil. It is nowhere. Blink and you miss it. It is an afterthought of a town on the race to the beaches of the Cote d'Azur. Yet it has a restaurant where a starter costs more than a seven course meal at one of the most expensive restaurants in London. Go figure.

So it is expensive. But is it worth it? Well the restaurant was packed. It was clear by the number of people getting deserts with candles in that there were a lot of birthdays being celebrated, and this maybe what M. Ducasse is going for: a destination restaurant. Somewhere you go once, for a seriously special occasion.

The restaurant is, as the name suggests, in the Dorchester hotel. It doesn't have its own entrance, so you come through the overly oppulent, overly ornate, Hello! magazine/footballers wives hotel lobby, to be ushered into a calm, understated, almost plain room. This is clearly not about the decor, this is about the food.

Oh and what food: excellently prepared, excellently presented and excellently executed, although not every dish hits the spot. The amuse bouce of a tomato reduction cleansed the palate properly (that is, after all, what an unordered dish to start off the meal should do). The chicken and lobster with pasta was gorgeous: small rectangles of crisp skinned chicken, juicy lobster and seriously al dente pasta. Alas, the other starter (soft boiled egg with crayfish and mushroom), whilst good, was a little over-indulgent on the ingredient front: adding more flavours is not always best, when here, the effect was to overpower the delicate crayfish. The fish course was fantastic: Halibut succulent and sweet, the sea bass with razor clam wonderful too, a serious tranche of fish with a stuffed razor clam shell balanced atop it. Then another duff: the beef with foie gras. The foie gras was gorgeous, the Périgueux sauce nicely rich in truffle, but the slab of beef was, well; bland. At these prices, how can that be? I almost asked for some mustard to pep it up.

Fortunately, it was then straight back to dazzling form: deserts are just fantastic (and no poncing around with a pre-desert). Lime souffle was light and limey, accompanied by a Sichuan pepper sorbet (I wouldn't actually have picked it as being Sichuan pepper, but it went beautifully) and the crispy chocolate came with a lovely pink grapefruit sorbet (no mistaking that). This last dish proved the only difficult one for our excellent sommelier: in the end, he suggested two half glasses, one to match the chocolate and one with the sorbet.

Ah yes; the wines. As you might expect, not cheap. Actually, worse than not cheap: really bloody expensive. We had a lovely Pur Sang from Didier Dagueneau's final vintage, which is around £40 retail; here, it was four times that! There are a few bottles below the ton mark, but the list is very serious and very seriously priced; four grand for a 1934 D'Yquem anyone? Well, apparently not: they have a single bottle (just for the list), and nobody has wanted to pay that for it (although interestingly our sommelier did say that somebody had tried to haggle over the price. Good luck!).

As with our sommelier, the rest of the service is polite and friendly; for a place of this price you often find that the waiting staff can be stuffy and stand-offish. Not here (maybe it is because there were no French waiters: ours all seemed to be Eastern European or antipodean?).

This is very traditional French cooking: no foams, no drizzels, but deep reductions to produce intense flavours. Is it as good as Maison Pic? No; Maison Pic is extraordinary and extraordinarily inventive in a way that Alain Ducasse isn't trying to be. Maybe he was twenty years ago when he got his (first) third Michelin Star, but at least here he seems to have settled in to a comfortable, high standard, high priced, destination restaurant.

Kettners shouldn't be thought of as a restaurant with a champagne bar attached, but as a champagne bar that offers food.

The champagne list is far and away the best in London; I know that the champagne bar at St Pancres gets all the plaudits (and it is a beautifully romantic place to have a glass of bubbly), but the champagne list there is safe and, dare I say it, a little boring. Yes they have Salon, yes they have Krug, but where are the small, independent Grand Crus?* Kettners has them, that is where: Egly-Ouriet, Larmandier-Bernier, Jacquesson, they are all here. Sure you could go mainstream Veuve here, but why bother when there are so many better choices at much better prices?

As for the food, well it is fine: the confit of duck was a fair example, the risotto far from the worst I've had, but that sort of misses the point. Go to Kettners and chose a top quality champagne. If you're hungry, grab something to eat (my 8 rating for food and drink combined is a 10 for the drink and a 6 for the food, averaged out).

Service is friendly and the atmosphere buzzing (it is Soho after all), with the throng enjoying themselves loudly in a room that is big and open enough for it to work well.

Whilst far from as romantic or elegant as the champagne bar at St Pancras (Edward VII, Lillie Langtry and Oscar Wilde are all rumoured to have frequented Kettners in the past, but their ghosts cannot beat the frisson of romance that St Pancres holds, with its promise of being whisked away on Eurostar to Paris, Brief Encouter style), for the champagne, it is a better choice.

• OK, they have Jacques Selosse, but that is it. And it is expensive. Nearly twice the price of Kettner's Larmandier-Bernier Grand Cru.

If there is a better value restaurant in London, then I have to find it: forty notes for four people; BYO vino; the best lamb chops ever. What is there not to like?

Well, judging by the complaints about the waiting staff, there is clearly that. But come on, this is a curry house in the heart of the east end; what do you expect? It is noisy, cramped and hot. It buzzes. The Ritz it ain't. If you want fancy curry, with fancy waiting staff and a (fancy) tablecloth, Rasoi Vineet Bhatia would get my vote. Mind you, it's not really a curry house is it; I mean, its in Chelsea. If you don't know that when you arrive, boy do you find out when they present the bill. And its not really curry either; yes it has lovely spicy flavours, beautifully cooked, perfect proportions etc, but really, where's the chicken tikka? No, if you want a true London curry experience, Tayyabs is very hard to beat.

The other niggle seems to be the queue. Now I know that this may be odd, but if you call their telephone number beforehand, you can make what is called a “booking”. Very hi-tech and slightly off-beat, I know, but give it a whirl. It works. Then you get the chance to swan to the front of the queue and wonder at the people who hadn't thought of it. Makes you feel all superior. Always a good way to start dinner.

The food itself is standard curry fair, but at a much higher standard than you'll find down the road in Brick Lane; the aforementioned chicken tikka is there, the tandoori terrific, the chops legendary and the keebabs just fine. And it is BYO, so you can have a Corton-Charlemagne Grand Cru should you desire. I'd stick with something from Alsace myself mind; whether that is an Adelscott or a Trimbach is really down to taste.

A final word of warning: do not, under any circumstances go for a romantic dinner a deux. The couple next to us last time had done this. Mistake. Big, big mistake. This is a four-of-you-or-more kind of place; lots of dishes, lots of sharing, lots of fun.

Wiktionary defines local as: “one's nearest or regularly frequented public house or restaurant”. (It used to say bar, but such is the joy of all things Wiki, I changed it. No doubt it will have been changed back by now, but I will have made my point anyway). Hardy's is my nearest, although not most regularly frequented, restaurant; thank heavens too that the Barley Mow has been thoughtfully and carefully restored, and has reopend as a boozer. This lovely gem of a pub was closed for way too long, but I now have a local “public house” within falling distance too.

Hardy's is not, nor has ever had any pretentions of being, a hip or cool place to hang out. It is never going to win a Squaremeal star, let alone a Michelin one, but that misses the point. This is a local. A restaurant that you can walk to in a few minutes, that you know what you're going to get and you know that it is going to be cooked well. No surprises; no foams, no drizzles, no smears, but the sort of place where you go if you fancy fishcakes (traditional, not Thai), beef (roast, not pan seared with an aromatic jus) and lamb (rump, not rare breed).

The wine list is surprisingly long, arranged carefully by style rather than grape, and with some crackingly good value wines at the lower price range, with a few more expensive ones for a special treat. The descriptions are great too: each wine has its own two line write-up, generally talking about the grape, the aroma, the character but, in one memorable description: a Vogue covergirl, not a Playboy centrefold. I have no idea what that means, but surely worth a try.

One of the most insidious afflictions that has crept into the London restaurant scene over the last few years is the idea that you get a table for a set period of 2 hours. SoS (or at least the second floor restaurant) has gone one stage further; one-and-a-half hour time slots! Fair enough possibly, but why did nobody tell us this when we booked, so that we could have gone somewhere else? Maybe that is exactly why they didn't tell us.

I admit that it was our fault (well, one of our group's fault) that we were nearly 30 minutes late, but then to be told that this meant that there wasn't enough time for us to eat, as the kitchen couldn't cope, was absurd. With much grovelling and protestations that we'd forego starters, we were allowed to grace the restaurant with our money.

The set up on the second floor is pretty starightforward: starters are all 7 1/2 Pounds and mains either 13 or 15 Pounds (pretentiously never £s). Of course, we were barred from even considering starters, so went straight to the mains. Steaks all round. £15 for steak and chips isn't so bad these days, and the rare was bloody, the medium nicely pink and the well done like shoe leather, so everyone was happy.

We had, however, only expended half an hour of our by now one hour long slot. So we could have had starters after all. Instead, we got another bottle of wine. Come the end of the alloted hour and a half, and even though there were other empty tables, and nobody queing for a seat, we were presented with the bill and politely told to sod off. Sorry, we were told that we were welcome to sit downstairs at the bar.

Maybe the City really is going soft, and boozy lunches are now banned, but even for a half decent break at a half decent restaruant, an hour-and-a-half just doesn't give you enough time to really enjoy it without feeling rushed. For a leaving lunch, that was supposed to be long, lazy and relaxing, it was just deflating.

At the risk of sounding like my mother (who rates a place bythe quality of its loos above all else), one thing that has always interested/ bugged me about SoS is the loos. The urinals at the Mandarin Oriental in Tokyo have a floor to ceiling window behind them, allowing one to admire the vista of that most marvellous city spread out forty floors or more below, whilst doing the necessary. I like this. At SoS, the window runs the length of the loos, from about waist height to the ceiling. Instead of looking down onto, or even out over, the roof tops of London, you look out over the Circle line (which is at ground level here) and straight into the next door office. Now I can see what they're doing, so???