Jay Rayner reviews

Sunday, November 09, 2008 - Here, they treat ingredients with the utmost care and sensitivity. It's also a smart space. Where Tapas Brindisa is all bare wood, an attempt to build a local artisanal vibe for City boys just over London Bridge, this is sleek and airy: white and olive-green tiling, a vault at the back where there is a bar next to the open kitchen. The only problem is the tables, which are tiny. A meal here is part feast, part jigsaw puzzle, as waiters and diners collaborate to find space.

Sunday, October 05, 2008 - Hanging on the walls of Launceston Place are sombre, brooding pictures of bare-naked trees in winter holding their own on a frosted field. The walls are dark grey and the carpeted floors only a slightly lighter shade of same. Even allowing for the backlit pieces of colourful glassware propped up here and there, the effect is serious and concentrated...

Sunday, September 21, 2008 - A conversation with my companion, upon reading the menu at Market in Camden Town. 'Well, I know what I'm going to have.' I shake my head: 'You're not having that.' He looks at me. 'I haven't told you what I want yet.' With a world-weary sigh, I say: 'You want the pig cheek, trotter and apple pie and you can't have it.'

Sunday, August 31, 2008 - At number 9 Denmark Street was the Giaconda Cafe, where David Bowie found his musicians and the Clash drank tea in downtime from being awfully cross about a lot of things. But those days are gone and now naturally enough the site has been reinvented as a restaurant called the Giaconda Dining Room.

Sunday, August 03, 2008 - Other than the choux pastry, my one quibble is with the computerised booking system, a feature of so many new restaurants these days. It forces the receptionist to ask for your first name when you make a booking. I don't want to be on first-name terms with these places. I don't want to marry them. I want lunch. So I have taken to refusing to give them anything other than a made-up surname. When the restaurant has proved itself they can have the rest. Which, where Quo Vadis is concerned, is now.

Sunday, June 22, 2008 - Towards the end of my first visit to Hix Oyster and Chop House, when I had eaten deep-fried sand eels and a salted ox cheek and green bean salad and crisp-skinned roast chicken, another diner asked me whether my presence there was not altering the nature of the experience. To be specific, he referenced Schrödinger's Cat, which at first I thought might be a menu item I had missed, the chef here being a rustic sort of chap.

Sunday, February 03, 2008 - And that sums up the place. Sake No Hana is a genuine attempt to introduce people to something new. It's not their fault that some of us have come across this sort of thing before. The fact is there's no pleasing some people, and in this case one of those people is me.

Sunday, January 20, 2008 - A restaurant is more than a menu. A restaurant is the menu and the room in which it is eaten, the glassware and the napery, the waiters and the buzz, and the sense of wellbeing you get from being there. Or at least most restaurants are. Le Cafe Anglais is different. It really is first and foremost a menu, a beautifully written one. It is poetry in four dozen dishes. If all you had to guide you were the words on the card you would want to be there. It is swoon- and dribble-worthy.

Sunday, December 30, 2007 - Ducasse is capable of brilliance, but apparently he doesn't think London deserves that. The bandwagon has rolled into town, but all the key musicians have been left at home. My advice: stay outside the door and admire the twinkling lights. It's cheaper and won't make you mad as hell.

Sunday, July 30, 2006 - Breakfast, like taxidermy and foreplay, is a simple idea, but very hard to get right. There is nowhere for the kitchen to hide at breakfast. At lunch or dinner they can divert attention with curious flavour combinations and elaborate saucing. They can pelt you with amuse-bouches and pre-desserts, hose you down with veloutes and coulis. At breakfast - by which I mean a proper breakfast of the kind no one needs - there are only two things that matter: ingredients and generosity.