I view Restaurants reservations like job interviews: you book a slot, turn up and expect to be fed or interviewed. I have a simple rule too; 15 minutes grace period then out. So we turn up at Barrica at the alotted hour, to be told that we'll have to wait, as the big table that had booked had more people turn up than they had thought. Now I'm sorry, but how is that my problem?

To be fair, it was something of a miracle that there was a reservation at all; I am all for Spanish restaurants employing Spanish bar staff. After all, it certainly adds to the authenticity. They should at least have some English, otherwise making a reservation is something of a challange. So three calls later, I have (I think) confirmed a table. So it seemed.

Anyway, we waited at the bar, with a beautiful La Bota Manzanilla (and a dry torta on a cocktail stick). So far, so average. Just as the clock turn 15 minutes and we were about to leave for Salt Yard next door, a table appeared.

Things immediately looked up with a lovely plate of Pan Tomaca and some Jamon Bellota. Nicely crisp bread, dripping with tomato; paper thin cuts of sweet, fatty ham. The perfect starter to any meal. The trouble is, other than a gorgeously peppery olive oil (that came with the bread basket) and the wines, it was all a bit downhill from there. Snails weren't at all, they were winkles. This of itself is fine, but I am still no closer to identifying the mojo sauce. The croquetas were ok, but dry rather than runny inside and the smoked mushrooms certainly above average.

A few years back, Fino took tapas restaurants above and away from the cheap and cheerful, La Rueda style, raising the bar for what we think of tapas to be. The likes of Salt Yard, Barrafina, Iberica Tapas, Brindisa Tapas and Dehesa have all kept that bar high. For all its attempts to reach those heights, Barrica falls short. It is a fun place, the food is fine, the drinks very fine, but somehow it doesn't quite get there.

Barrica is very good value for money, would be fun with a good group of people and is small enough to be packed every night. The wine list is the high point: a really good spread of Spanish wines, many by the glass and good value throughout.

It is all too easy to decry LB as having seen better days. Of course it has, but somehow that is not the point. People still pour in, not for the food (heaven help anyone who thinks that this is the epitomy of fine dining), but for the whole experience. Yes, the service is Wong Kei-esq and the food stuck in 1985, but the atmosphere still rocks and the dining room is somehow quaint and cool at the same time.

We started with the fabled spinach souffle with anchovy sauce. Why I don't know; maybe because it is so feted (or rather was, in days gone by). Souffle is supposed to be light, fluffy and airy, not solid. The anchovy sauce was very pleasant, but served merely to mask the blandness of the egg creation.

A main course of lambs kidneys was more like it, perked up with some serious english mustard. The wines are a good selection of reasonably priced bottles, with a fair few by the glass. The coffee is fine too, but the bill leaves you thinking how the hell did that happen? And why?

Would I go again? Of course. If somebody else was paying, I wasn't hungry and somebody more famous than the latest girl to take their top off on BB was there.

In the rarefied atmosphere of michelin starred restaurants, it is the little things that make the difference between two and three stars. Marcus Wareing has garnered two stars and is clearly on the lookout for a third. The food is excellent, the service attentive without going overboard and the atmosphere the sort of subdued buzz that grand hotel dining rooms were built for. Well, actually, on the latter part the main room is like this; there is also a small anteroom with five tables. I am sure that on most nights this is fine, but when we went, there was a table of five (although is seemed like fifty) braying ingrates, doing their best collective impression of a walrus coloney. Only with more swearing. We asked to be moved to the main room, a service that was executed with the minimum of fuss and no drama, and the atmosphere there was the sort of buzz etc. and so forth.

But still, with all the individual elements in place, somehow it is missing that spark that makes a very good restaurant a truly amazing one.

At the weekends there are three set menus, with the second and third building on the standard “menu du jour”. In France, a menu du jour is of the €12 three courses and a carafe of wine type. Here it is the £80 entry level. No wines (unless you pay another £60 for the sommelier's matching selections). We decided to go with the wine list. List doesn't do justice to this tome, a homage to French wine, with smatterings of Italian and the odd Spainish inteloper. It is, as you would suspect, good at the higher price wines, including the 1961 Petrus at a mere £30k. Fortunatley, there are some lower priced wines, although quite how a Nyetimber is £85 here, when you can get the same wine in Canteen at £39 does seem strange. I understand that the hotel has a huge carrying cost as it has to have a wide selection, but how and why prices differ so markedly is always beyond me. Instead, we settled on a lovely Pommard. Not cheap, but as keenly priced as anything the half an hour trawl through the wine tome could come up with.

As for the food, it was, as you'd expect, almost to a point flawlesly executed. Although the menus are set, there are also a couple of specials on offer, and you can mix and match between the various set menus. So in reality, the choice is pretty broad.

Whilst perusing the menus, with a glass of Billecart Salmon rose from the champagne trolley, some nibbles appeared, the highlight of which was a foie gras mousse sandwich. They like trolleys here: as well as the standard cheese chariot, there was the champagne trolley, the digestif trolley and the chocolate trolley. There may have been more lurking too, but we missed them.

The amuse bouche was a creamy soup with the first of the nights foams, a rich nutmeg. For the first of our “real” courses, I went off-piste with a gorgeous tranche of foie gras and my wife had the marinated mackeral with a huge chunk of white crab meat and a smear of brown. The foie gras came with a rhubarb brioche and cranberry compote. I am not usually one to mix fruit with meat, but the cranberries cut the sweetness of the round of foie gras to perfection.

The second of the evenings foams arrived with the quail. Toast foam is a new one on me. A modernest twist on bread sauce, and a clever accompaniment to the lovely little quail breasts and white beans. I am not sure I'd necessarily have called it a foam, it was more of a cream, but foam (and smear) are very trendy these days. So foam it was. With a tasting menu like this, where all of the courses are pretty much the same size, it is not necessarily the case that the next course was the “main”, but the meat course was lamb, pink on the inside, accompanied by fennel, red pepper and an unadvertised sorrel leaf.

A shared plate of cheese was good, the pre-deserts an unncessary addition that, like the pre-amuse bouche (or even the actual amuse bouche), seems to have become de rigeur at restaurants with pretentions of three stars, and the pear tarte tartine that finsihed off the set elements of the meal absolutely gorgeous.

All in all, a wonderful restaurant, striving to be the very best. I hope Marcus gets his third star. Maybe I have become jaundiced by recent trips to Michel Trama, Olivier Roellinger and Michel Bras, but, at the moment, I am not sure that he has that certain je ne sais quoi that takes it to the ultimate level.

How can anywhere that has a dish on its menu at £1.10 be bad? I mean, for the same price as a packet of reconstituted, deep fried, hydrogenated pork rind in your local Slug's Head & Vomit, you get anchovies with chick peas in a terrific restaurant in Soho. Well, an anchovy anyway.

The place itself looks a bit distressed; not in a mental anguish way, just in a “you know that a really trendy designer has spent an awful lot of money to make it look as though nobody bothered to spend any money on it” kind of way. And it works supremely well. The tables are small and close together, but, with the old school chairs, mismatched cutlery and glass tumblers for the wine, the whole works together well, when any on their own would just be naff.

As well as the £1.10 anchovy, the pizetta bianca (sort of thin crust pizza-with-white-cheese bits) was excellent, and I was given a second (unbidden for and gratis) helping when they saw that my companion was late and I was saving a piece for her. Polpette (meatballs to you and me) was also good and the fritto misto not at all greasy.

The wine list is not too long, and has about half of the bottles available by 250ml and 500ml sizes, all of which are well priced, with only a few breaking into the £30+ range. In addition, the prosecco is available by the glass as well, and well worth it as a £5.00 alternative to the over-inflated champagne in most other restaurants.

The service is unhurried and friendly (I think we were served by the owner). The dishes are served as prepared, rather than in a set starter, main course way, and are perfect for sharing. Even though we ordered a fair number of plates, the bill was far less than you often get with this style of food, where the danger of over-ordering many small dishes is great (think sushi or tapas).

This is not a destination restaurant, in the same way that Bocca de Lupo has become, and I am sure that people will compare the two, but, other than that they both serve excellent Italian food, they are poles apart. If you care about appearances, have a large expense account or work in media, go to the Wolf. If you like a smaller, fun place where you don't have to take a second mortgage out, come here.

The Hart brothers seem intent on conquering the Spainish restaurant market in London, and barrafina is a fine example of a simple concept (a tapas bar) executed with style and panash.

Like a sushi bar (or Joel's eponymous L'Atelier), the L – shaped bar grants an excellent view of the chef's at work. The fish sits proudly on display centre stage and the plancha is fired up and ready for action. The action is all fairly low key, less Hell's Kitchen b******ing, more gentle ribbing, amongst the young staff. I do, however, love the fact that, although the chef is directly in front of you, you have just seen him (and they do all seem to be him's) prepare your food, it is then sitting there on his side of the counter, he has to call a waiter to pass it the twelve inches to you! Come on, muck in; it really isn't beneath you to pass the food, especially as the chefs are all happy to chat away with the customers as they go about their business.

Of the myriad dishes on offer, the razor clams stand out, as does the suckling pig and the blood sausage with quail eggs. The tortilla's are perfectly cooked right in front of you and the Jamon Iberica sliced paper thin.

As you'd expect from a tapas bar (although generally don't get in this country), there is a good range of sherry's (try the Pastrana), as well as a short, but keenly priced wine list, of which all are available by the glass. Albarino is one of those trendy grapes at the moment, and the Paxo de Senorans on sale last time is very good, but they also have some interesting Godello and some white blends from wine producing corners of Spain you might not have come across before.

On the niggle side, prices are very upper-end Soho (not individually but, like any place where you order lots of little dishes, they soon do add up), and the no-booking policy can be a pain, but overall, and excellent little place in the heart of Soho.

A very French bistro feel, from the excellent charcuterie to the surly waitresses.

The food is very modish, with small tasting plates rather than a starter followed by main course feel. The potted shrimp were lovely, even if chef might have been a little heavy-handed with the cayenne, garlic snails were plump and garlicky , smoked eel some of the best I've had, served on a bed of crispy celeriac, and the bavette was gorgeous. This last dish was a gorgeous piece of meat, properly seared on the putside, and properly red in the middle, served in its own pan, with some sauted spuds.

The wine list too is long and well thought through, with every region of France represented, as well as some overseas (and even some new world) intelopers. Prices too are keen – we had a lovely Larmandier Bernier for fifteen notes cheaper than I'd had the same wine at Boundary a few days before.

Not everything was a hit: the duck scratchings were too greasy, but that is a minor complaint when stacked next to the service. OK, it was a little crowded, but that's what the restaurant should want and is no excuse for rude, unhelpful service by waitresses who clearly wished that we'd bugger off and let them smoke and be surly in a sterotypically French way. So we did. Shame, good food is too often ruined by this sort of thing.

By far the best way to enjoy this restaurant is to sit at the counter and watch the theatre of the kitchen unfold. No sreaming Ramsay fits, but a group of people who genuinely seem to be enjoying themselves, and who are more than happy to take time out to chat with you about what they are doing.

The red and black, dimly lit decor isn't to everyone's taste, and the elevator music should have been left in the lift, but the staff are friendly, the service attentive and the food is supremely good. The tapas size plates are the most fun, with the ability for the kitchen to show what it can do. From simply sliced Iberica ham and basil infused pan con tomate, to foie gras stuffed quail every dish hits the spot, the highlight being pigs trotter on toast with parmesan. This has all the right ingredients: pork; check, cheese; check, bread; check, and the assembly is a small mouthfull or two of pure heaven.

Okay, so there is clearly a downside to the otherwise unending stream of superlatives; the price. Yes, the aforementioned pigs trotter is terrific, but at £12.00 (before 12.5% service) for a pre-starter size, is on the rich side (the tapas range from £9.00 through to a heafty £19.00!). This, however, is relatively sane when compared to the £100 for a main course of spaghetti with white truffle. A TON. For pasta. Here's my advice; get a Sleazyjet flight to Venice, go to Harry's Bar, have the same dish (with much more truffle), a bellini, get back on the plane and keep the change.

So get somebody else to pay, or splurge, but probably not the place to go for if your peckish and have a few quid to spend.

Roka is a restaurant that feels like it wants to be in Manhatten; big, buzzy, lots of glass, lots of flames, lots of theatre. Alas, it doesn't quite live up to what it wants to be; the buzz is just a heavy, loud bass beat, making conversation possible only at a shout and the theatre would only work if the substance (the food and service) lived up to form (the glass, the flame etc).

The food is fine, sometimes better than fine, but at £22.50 for the black cod, I don't want fine, I want Nobu good. It isn't. The sushi rice was unforgivably soggy, although the rock-shrimp tempura (thank you again Nobu), was on the excellent side of good. Service too was patchy; it took an age to get served, but then everything turned up quickly. The desert menu appeared rapidly, but the deserts themselves must have been lurking at the Canary Wharf branch, and why is it that trying to get a bill at some places is more difficult than getting the (unordered, and soon removed) glass of sake that abruptly materialised from nowhere?

Roka is referred to as Zuma's baby sister, and in a lot of ways there are similarities. The difference is, Zuma works the buzz, works the theatre and works as a whole. Roka falls short. It probably works best as a group place to go, rather than a couple, as we did, and I certainly didn't envy the couple obviously on an early date at the table next to us.

Settle in to the gorgeous banquettes, order some pan con tomate, a plate of Jamon De Jabugo and a glass of Manzanilla, and peruse the enormous tapas menu (being careful not to set fire to it on the table candle, as I managed to do whilst entertaining clients once). Fino is rightly regarded is one of the finest restaurants in London, quite an achievement in itself, made even more so by the fact that its secluded basement setting is never going to catch any passing trade.

Yes, it can get expensive with all those tempting little plates, and yes the menu doesn't change on a particularly regular basis, but the food is never short of superb and the atmosphere just that right low level buzz that allows conversation without having to raise your voice, yet let's you know that you are in what might have been called a happening place in my grand-parent's time.

There is little to commend Il Baretto, but much to dislike, the worst of which is the cramped, dismal basement setting, in which even Ferran Adrià's illuminating cuisine would have difficulty shining. If only the food had been anything better than average, I might have been tempted to try it again, to see if it was just an off day. Alas, I won't be as I fear it wasn't.

First the good point: the food is really very good. Ok, you might think that this is the most important thing in a restaurant and, whilst it is clearly the raison d'être of a restaurant, you go out and spend money for the whole experience. At Trishna, the real problem lies in the decor: bare wooden floors and exposed brickwork may be oh so trendy and look achingly cool, but they also lead to sound bouncing around to such a degree that it is difficult to hold a conversation (the first time we went, we were sat next to a table of twelve: conversation was impossible).

If you go, and it is worth a try, go in summer, so that you can sit outside (or bring earplugs and a pen and paper, so that you can at least write to your companion, even if you can't hear them).

The best way to experience Defune is to sit at the counter and let the sushi chefs do their stuff; they know what is fresh in that day, so put your dining in their hands and let them show what they can do. OK, the atmosphere is a little thin, but it beats the hell out of places where you can't hear yourself think, let alone hear your dining companion's moans of pleasure as another perfect morsal passes her lips.

The great thing about having no choice is that you get all sorts of things that you would otherwise not know to order; the food was excellent, the service much better than some seem to have experienced and the bill, whilst not cheap, not exactly what you'd call outrageous. Arriving for a late sitting, however, we were surrounded by a somewhat garrulous crowd; the raucous crowd on one side had the good grace to apologise, but the drunken kiwi slumped over our table on the other didn't seem to notice!