Matthew Norman reviews

Thursday, December 20, 2012 - It is the same paean to peach it ever was, the staff remain breathtakingly attentive to a largely venerable clientele, and the menu reads like a memento buried in a time capsule...The veal Holstein, an escalope garnished with capers, anchovies and a fried egg, was, enthused my father, exactly as he remembered it. Steak Diane (filet mignon flambéed in its own juices and Worcestershire sauce) was 'good, tender meat beautifully cooked'.

Friday, January 27, 2012 - Kleftiko with lukewarm chips and Hungarian goulash with excellent saffron rice were fine winter warmers, but the clear highlight was my salt beef in rye bread with sweet and sour pickles. The beef was plentiful, juicy and just as fatty as it should be...With its bustle, warmth and earthy charm, Gaby's is our best answer to the great New York delis. No one survives for 47 years in as fiercely competitive a catering market as central London's, and builds such a ferociously loyal clientele, without serving good food. But what makes Gaby's so special is that it stands almost alone as a beacon of individualism, illuminated by a tight-knit family working almost around the clock, in an ever-more homogenised age.

Sunday, January 01, 2012 - He kicked off with half a dozen (norovirus-free) Loch Fyne oysters, and even though the one I swallowed seemed a touch emaciated or weedy, he was happy enough with them. I was not at all happy with a mushy crab salad which came, for reasons beyond my comprehension, with viciously bitter polenta. 'Oh dear,' said my friend when force-fed a forkful. 'Oh dear, oh dear.' Both main courses were supposed to look winsomely peasanty, but in fact looked plain hideous. My friend's gnocchi with lamb ragu resembled mince and tatties in a Glaswegian greasy spoon, while the mouthful he passed over was dominated by gristle. My lamb cutlets were oversalted, too fatty and stone cold.

Thursday, December 22, 2011 - Three types of chicken wings from the Tex-Mex stall were lukewarm but passable, and slices of pepperoni pizza from the European one were a shade sloppy but hot from the oven. Sushi (makizushi rolls to be precise: no fish) was 'a bit dried out'; beef in black bean sauce was fine, and kung pao pork was tantalisingly close to adequacy. But a Vietnamese noodle soup (pho) - one of many dishes one can have made to order - was 'really good, fresh and nourishing', and a Malaysian medley of vegetables was 'wonderful; cooked to absolute perfection'.

Monday, December 12, 2011 - Two of us had the roast beef - three chunky, deep red slices of South Devon sirloin, a tall and crunchy Yorkshire pud, crispy roast potatoes, roasted root vegetables, curly kale and a rich red wine gravy. Unimprovable. An envious glance necessitated the transfer of several forkfuls to the missus, but she also loved her fillet of brill, which lived up to its name, in an 'unbelievably good', buttery coriander-flavoured sauce...We left this magical place beaming with delight.

Monday, December 05, 2011 - An almost friendly young chap delivered four hot dishes. Quail, not the easiest bird to cook well, came immaculately grilled to a deep brown, crispy-skinned finish and enlivened by sumac, a red powdered berry with a zesty, citric taste most often found in Persian cooking, but increasingly popular with our smartest young modern-British cooks. Smoked trout with lentils and culatello (a very fancy Italian ham) was fine, if forgettable...'Great food, and the ideal restaurant for a bedraggled civil servant with artistic pretensions in 1948,' was my friend's closing judgment, 'but I wouldn't come back.'

Monday, November 28, 2011 - After poppadoms with home-made chutneys, we kicked off with impeccably fleshy king prawn tikka, a whole cod ('masala fish') immaculately fried in a light batter and a chicken shashlik (capsicum and onion) which elicited an awed 'I don't want to drink my wine now because it will mask all the flavours.'...All three balti main courses (cooked not in artery-clogging ghee, as a wordy menu points out, but low-cholesterol vegetable oil) had the authentic zing of freshly chopped and crushed herbs and spices. Achar gosht, tender chunks of lamb cooked in chilli pickle, was utterly delicious.

Saturday, November 19, 2011 - Taramasalata and hummus were patently home made and full of flavour, and mushrooms a la Greek and stuffed vine leaves juicy and fresh. The pick of the bunch, which go together beautifully, were the Loukanika sausage and halloumi, the engagingly waxy ewe's milk cheese...The main courses deepened our happiness. My dad's trout Cleopatra came grilled to perfection in brilliantly light batter and a zingy lemon sauce, topped with more of those shrimps, alongside sauteed potatoes. My stifado was as fine a rendition of that beef and onion stew as I can remember. A huge mound of tender, flaky meat, protected by an honour guard of four crunchy, golden roast potatoes, came drenched in a delectably herby red wine gravy.

Monday, November 07, 2011 - My 'spicy and sour' lacked depth and savour, but she liked her broth of spare rib and lotus root, which has a texture and flavour not unlike artichoke heart. Skewers of cumin-seed-dotted barbecued beef and lamb followed, along with a huge plate of chicken thighs and backbones glazed with a sour barbecue sauce and dotted with white sesame seeds - a joy for lovers of a good gnaw, for 1.20. The prices are so reasonable that you can afford to go a bit mad with the ordering, and we did precisely that, ploughing on with four main courses.

Tuesday, November 01, 2011 - I wouldn't have chosen the faggot had there been a choice, but this one was a blameless orb of porcine goodness, nestling on puy lentils and cabbage, if a touch genteel for such an offally gutsy dish. Also spherical was my friend's 'Essex lamb bun'. The pinkest, most flavoursome lamb cutlet came rolled into a ball, surrounded by first ovine sweetbreads and then brioche pastry. With the cutlet bone sticking out, it looked like an albino toffee apple. 'The meat is so tender, but the overall texture's too dumplingy, and a sharp, fruity sauce would balance it better than this salsa verde. It's fascinating, but there is no situation in which I would order it again.' Chips were good, as was a side dish of kale and ham hock.

Monday, October 24, 2011 - The same may only half be said of my steak. The tenderness of this 14oz rib eye, from Kansas and certified by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), was just sensational - you could have cut it with a plastic spoon - while the blackened surface had that marvellous chargrilled twang. But Americans are phobic about strong flavours and however long the beef is hung (in this case five weeks) I still haven't met a USDA steak with a hint of gamey savour. Herby chips were impeccable, a vast tower of crunchy onion rings superb, and the sauces and condiments a delight (who knew about 'violet mustard'?).

Tuesday, August 30, 2011 - In its short life, Medlar has already attracted plenty of that, and no wonder. This is a small and cosy neighbourhood joint which, in every regard but the small and cosy prices, acts like a giant Michelin superstar...My luscious raviolo of crab with samphire, brown shrimp, a leek fondue and a bisque sauce was another prettily presented, deliciously gentle dish in which every component melded harmoniously with the others. 'Have you noticed,' said my friend during the inter-course hiatus, 'how everyone here looks like the Duchess of Cornwall? Particularly that chap over there?'

Tuesday, August 23, 2011 - A quartet of sizzling tandoori lamb chops, alluringly covered with browned onions, tingled the tongue with ginger, garam masala and much besides. Three huge prawns, perfectly cooked to retain their meaty texture, bore the same imprint of freshly crushed spices...That quail was a revelation, the juiciest of meat in a thick and deliciously coriander-laden gravy. Haleem, a collation of seven types of lentil with steamed, ground lamb and crispy onions was a delight as much for its textural contrasts as the intensely gingery taste.

Tuesday, August 16, 2011 - The third dish suggested Roganic may yet break free of the pebble-fancier-and-edible-flower-buff demographic. Fans of Alice in Wonderland-style spatial paradox should also flock here; for they will find that, by some weird chiastic logic, the smaller the portions, the vaster is the crockery. While 'heritage potatoes in onion ashes, lovage and wood sorrel' arrived on a plate that would have been visible from space, the spuds themselves invited the traditional battle-cry of the disappointed trencherman: 'Hubble telescope to table three!' My friend concurred. 'It looks like there used to be a chop on this plate.'

Monday, August 08, 2011 - The perfection continued with three of the four main courses. Frances's 21-day aged Hereford sirloin steak came precisely medium rare as ordered, with fat chips and a deep orange-yoked duck egg. The boy's confit of duck was correctly crispy-skinned (nothing worse than a flaccid duck), and juicy and flavoursome within. My herb-crusted cannon of spring lamb, properly pink and served with a 'nicoise garnish' of beans and black olives, was spectacular, and the attention to detail (tiny, lightly pickled onions embedded among the beans) as winsome as the presentation.

Tuesday, July 26, 2011 - If English's retains a sliver of fusty charm, this is thanks partly to the niceties (excellent cutlery and napery, and a handsome tiled bar), and partly to the friendliness of a portly and suitably Edwardian manager...Lucy's Cornish sardines were fleshy but mushy, as were my oysters Kilpatrick, served warm with a clumping tomato sauce and salty bacon, which I flooded with Tabasco in a deranged rescue bid...This is by no means a bad restaurant, but it is a complacent and foolishly self-reverential one that needs a jolt of electricity.

Tuesday, July 19, 2011 - The hot oysters, cooked in a piquant Japanese stock, were great. But the ice cream, which on arrival I feared might cause him a stroke, was sublime in its sharp, saline, zingy purity of flavour. 'That,' he said, 'is a taste sensation.' So was my escabeche of quail, glazed in a subtle and savoury barbecue marinade and served with a medley of crushed nuts and seeds, tiny pickled onions and girolle mushrooms and a gloriously delicate chicken liver cream on thin, crunchy toast...''Our committee,' I motion that, after Heston Blumenthal's Dinner, this is the second best opening of the year so far.'

Tuesday, July 05, 2011 - This is one of those places that beguiles you into foolishness, in our defence; that tempts you to waste the entire day drinking and talking rot. Next up came a salt cod fritter, deep-fried to perfection and served with a red pepper aioli; plump and juicy pork belly delectably seasoned with star anise and garnished with glorious crackling; and three fat chunks of tender, pink Moorish lamb. The pick of the bunch came from the main course menu, a chorizo hash brown arriving alluringly crispy and crunchy in its bespoke pan, adorned by two poached eggs and field mushrooms.

Tuesday, June 21, 2011 - I kicked off with field mushrooms on sippets (chef-ese for toast), a decent dish enlivened by a rich red wine sauce and tiny chunks of bone marrow, but somehow more of a savoury than a starter. 'It tastes like 1890, but in a good way,' said my friend, who was happy enough with his Cornish lobster salad in Marie Rose sauce served with fennel...'Really nice food,' was his verdict over the coffee, 'but unless you were a hotel guest or a traveller, why would you want to come back?' Indeed.

Monday, June 06, 2011 - First up were Peshwari lamb chops, marinated in garam masala, ginger, lime and chilli. 'Not as pink as I'd like, but tender and delicious. So is this. Wonderful.' This was spicy soft-shell crab, beautifully deep-fried to a crunchy finish. 'I love the texture and the taste.' My nephew's favourite thing in the world is the prawn, and his eyes lit up with that Christmas-morning glint at a lone but gargantuan 'Ajwaini wild African' jumbo. 'It's the biggest prawn I've ever seen in my life' was amended, two mouthfuls later, to, 'This is the best prawn I've had in my life. It's so unbelievably sweet and juicy.'

Monday, May 16, 2011 - Done out absolutely in the austere St John style, this square room with bare white walls and meat hooks at the sides for that abattoir feel is brutally minimalist by any standards, let alone in so blingy a part of town...We began with three starters, gushing obscenely over them all. What was listed simply as mussels proved the plumpest, freshest, juiciest molluscs, marinated in cider and served on leeks and superb laver bread. 'I want to come back for dinner,' said my friend during his third mouthful. 'This dish is cidery balm for the soul. Amazingly good.' So was a dense terrine of duck leg, liver and suckling pig with pickled quince.

Monday, May 09, 2011 - Anne was happy enough with her roast field mushroom, with rocket, Parmesan and pesto. 'Perfectly tasty, but then you can't ruin a mushroom.' Nick thought his seared scallops with chorizo 'a little overcooked and spongy but not bad'. My haggis came deep-fried, sacrificing much of its taste for a crunchy texture, but a beetroot salad lent some vim...The team was split over the main courses. Nick backed the winner - grilled 'haddie', with poached egg and mornay sauce. 'Beautifully presented, old boy, egg intact, fish fresh and delicious, nice creamy sauce, can't fault it,' was his judgment.

Monday, May 02, 2011 - Although my friend was ambivalent about his braised shoulder of Middle White pork, finding it 'a bit confit style for my taste', he loved the cep mash served with it. My main course was cleverer, an impeccably fresh, grilled piece of that cheap and underrated fish the mackerel, with alfalfa sprouts and orange couscous in a soy and sesame oil dressing. I loathe couscous and would find a bowl of it awaiting me in Room 101 (if Ed Balls was unavailable), but this was sensational. So was a side order of truffle-infused fat chips, a very cute mingling of the ephemeral and the exotic.

Monday, April 25, 2011 - We started with the one authentic local dish on offer. Haggis, neeps and tatties was the star of the show, three large dollops of rich, peppery and delicious haggis being nicely presented with mounds of mashed potato and turnip in a good, strong red wine and onion gravy. We also shared a competent chicken Caesar salad...The puddings were fine, albeit Her Majesty would have had to be brave to bet the crown jewels on either the passion fruit and lemon sorbets or the white chocolate cheesecake being homemade. We paid up and left a likeable, decently priced restaurant which, for all its mediocrities, seems perfectly judged for its market.

Monday, April 04, 2011 - The cheeks, two big discs served with piccalilli, were richly flavoursome, but the fleshy ribs were perhaps the most gnaw-worthy I've eaten, glazed in a deliciously sticky marinade that complemented rather than swamped the sweet pigginess of the meat. For balance we also shared charred chicken wings, barbecued in mint, chilli and ginger, and these were also great. 'It's irritating to have to say this,' said my friend, as we worked our way through a decent and inoffensively priced riesling, 'but this food is much too good for the venue. The knifeage is also impressive,' he added, eyes gleaming as he examined the blade.

Monday, March 21, 2011 - Crab dumplings with sugar snap peas arrived within 90 seconds of being ordered, so neither of us screamed for the smelling salts when they proved less than fresh. The sugar snaps were good and crunchy, but the dumplings tasted solely of stale hoi sin sauce. Warm salmon spring rolls with a five spice emulsion were worse: the salmon cheap and flavourless (though it strove to compensate by leaving a vicious aftertaste)...Perhaps, with its fascinating 'concept', Spice Market will survive: time alone will tell. But if ever a joint deserved to bomb in Wardour Street, this is it.

Monday, March 07, 2011 - A veal chop was grilled to a perfect, pale rose finish, but the meat was dry and dull. Squab pigeon came with a foie gras sauce, which seemed a bit belt-and-braces on the richness front. Pyrenean lamb came in two cuts, both immaculately cooked and full of flavour - confit shoulder in delicate slices and a whacking great lump of neck roasted and stuffed with aubergine caviar...I shivered when the bill arrived, and we left this oligarch's paradise determined to remain strangers until Doomsday at the earliest.

Monday, February 28, 2011 - Main dishes to come, and these proved as inconsistent as they were overpriced. Sweet and sour king prawns were firm and fleshy, and the sauce adequate if claggy, but charging 14 quid for six of them is dead cheeky. Chicken in a lemon-and-honey sauce was dry and lifeless; aubergine with minced pork in a yellow-bean sauce laden with flavour but too squishy; and Singapore noodles, although nice and eggy, stone cold...It pains me to say so after so many outstanding meals, but this Mancunian legend has become a paradigm of self-regarding complacency.

Monday, February 07, 2011 - If there has been a more flawless and exhilarating restaurant opening in the past decade, I missed it. The service was magnificent (of course we were being schmoozed, but the notebook-free folk at the next table were thrilled by the warmth and attentiveness), and the pricing more than fair for such technically majestic and fascinatingly retro-original food. The best thing of all about Dinner is a quality never before associated with a Michelin deity. It is colossal fun.

Monday, January 31, 2011 - 'I really like this room,' said the PM, 'it's fun and cosy. Perfect for winter.' So is a menu that mingles the pleasingly traditional with the faddishly modern. A hybrid of brasserie classics and modern British staples, its special charm is that many dishes come in tapasy 'small plates' for sharing...Short rib of beef in a carrot and celery broth was slow-cooked to a properly melty finish, and those pork cheeks in a sauce vierge were enticingly russet in colour, and packed with rich, savoury flavour. Best of the small plates was soused mackerel with pickled root vegetables.

Wednesday, January 05, 2011 - 'Surprisingly good,' said my friend of his rollmop herrings with onion and pickled cucumber (engagingly priced at 2 pounds). 'Very fresh and definitely not from a jar.' My 'creamy sour' cabbage soup was pleasingly peppery, and if the lurid pink of the chopped sausage brought to mind Winston Smith's canteen stew in Nineteen Eighty-Four, it tasted fine. We shared a bowl of lukewarm goulash: three chunks of tasteless beef in a paprika gravy, with raw onion and, oddly, a pickled chilli pepper.

Monday, December 20, 2010 - My two cutlets of roe deer venison were beautifully cooked to the requested ruby red finish, tender and packed with flavour. My wife raved about the 'beautiful simplicity' of her braised halibut, with curly kale and anchovies. Our friend gushed about his braised hare, an opinionated and liverish dish that can overwhelm the taste buds, kept under control here by skilful seasoning and a calming portion of buttery spatzle (a German pasta-ish, or pastoid, dish). Crunchy hand-cut chips were superb; cauliflower cheese, winter greens and thyme-roasted root vegetables all excellent.

Monday, December 13, 2010 - We were served 16 dishes. A few were brilliant, most were good, but several tended towards the samey and so-whatish. First up came kimchi, the fiery Korean cabbage dish, which arrived flecked with ginger and red eye chillies, and seemed a cute way to blast the palate clean for the banquet to come. Spice-infused minced chicken wrapped in lettuce leaves with spring onion was far better...We were at halfway now; and if we were beginning to flag, the restaurant was beginning to tire, it seemed, of us.

Monday, November 29, 2010 - With the Twinings traditional breakfast came two excellent starters. Five large prawns served in a cup were as fleshy and sweet as you could wish, and came with a fine lemon aioli. A more generous serving of whitebait, most underrated of the smaller piscine life forms, was superb...Also immaculate were the main courses. My cod was also faultlessly fried in light batter and it too hinted vaguely at flavours aquatic. The absence of that beef dripping to macho up the dish was, as always, keenly felt. But chips were golden, fat and crunchy, mushy peas had the ideal consistency.

Tuesday, November 23, 2010 - We set about a Goan crab roti, a lovely, gentle, comforting collation of spicy crabmeat and warm, fresh bread, and properly deep pink Tandoori lamb chops in a gutsy if indistinct marinade, served sizzling with onions. 'I like this food,' was the inter-course verdict. 'It tastes fresh, it's well spiced and despite the flamboyance of the menu, it's unpretentious. This is good, honest cooking.'...Murgh Peri-Peri was a giant baby chicken marinated in 'a fusion of Indian and Mexican herbs and spices'. That's a new international culinary alliance to me but it worked really well to produce depth of flavour and tongue-tingling merriment.

Monday, November 15, 2010 - Hummus kawarmah, in which the chickpea puree was topped with pine nuts and scrunchy chunks of fried lamb, was luxuriantly rich, smooth and creamy, and tabbouleh as zingingly light and herby a parsley salad as you could wish to meet. Moutabel, mashed aubergine infused with sesame paste and lemon juice, had a fabulously deep, smoky flavour, and the alluringly named foul moukala matched the plumpest broad beans to lashings of garlic, coriander and olive oil...Jawane mashwiyeh, five cute little chicken wings, had such savour, and came in such a delectable garlic mayonnaise, that we had to order a second portion.

Monday, November 01, 2010 - This back room, faintly scented with paraffin from the roast-of-the-day trolley, has been repainted various warm, autumnal pastels, its walls newly bedecked by colourful culinary paintings...My father loved his ruby red slices of Fallow deer venison while I had the roast grouse with all the trimmings. Less manly, I had it medium. The pinkish meat was as juicy, musty and intimate as this sovereign of all game birds should be. A dispute erupted over the vegetable. The broccoli, which struck us sons as overboiled, was ideal for the paters. Taste in veg, unlike Wiltons, has changed dramatically down the years.

Monday, October 11, 2010 - A clutch of prawns in a gutsy tomato and chilli sauce were vibrant to eye as well as taste bud. Osso bucco was lustrous, the soft, ribbony veal flaking gently away from the knuckle, and complemented by a fine saffron risotto. We cooed over the pigeon saltimbocca, two plump, juicy ovals of that gamily intimate bird wrapped in the thinnest prosciutto. Zucchini fries were as thin as Belgian frites, and as light and greaseless as the crab, while sprouting broccoli was matched, quite brilliantly, with smoked almonds and chilli. 'Best. Broccoli. EVER,' was the verdict from across the table.

Monday, September 13, 2010 - 'Blimey, what's going on here?' spluttered my friend once a French waiter had deposited the whole bleeding lot in one go. At 60 quid a pop, you expect something more elegant and theatrical than a glorified thali...Most of it was great. The soup, velvety double-steamed oxtail with mooli and Asian celery, was a rarefied beef tea of such regal delicacy that it should have been served to Yul Brynner's King of Siam when he took to his bed. Grilled beef salad was a mingling of succulent meat with chilli, mint, coriander and other herbs and spices.

Monday, August 16, 2010 - 'This place,' said my friend with disturbing precision, 'is as anonymous as a high-class escort.' So was his main course, if much less fun: a fillet of cod, sensationally bland despite being perfectly cooked and receiving the attentions of a sauce of aubergine and olive...We had coffee and departed this wearyingly neutral joint unable to share the staff's discernible conviction that it had been our privilege to eat under the Koffmann banner; and surprised that, for all the abstemiousness, the bill had comfortably cleared the three-figure barrier. Austerity just isn't what it used to be.

Monday, August 09, 2010 - Hot and sour soup was lively without being blistering, though by then the numbness may have spread from lips to taste buds, while crescent-shaped pork dumplings drizzled with yet more chilli oil were gratifyingly plump and juicy little darlings...'Tender bean curd with minced beef' was a squishily intimate delight, but best of all was an enormous bowl of fish and pickled vegetable soup, served unusually as a pudding, the delicacy of the sea bass counterbalanced by a sharp and savoury broth that worked its magic on the nasal passages as well as the sweat glands.

Wednesday, July 14, 2010 - The chicken, a delicately marinated bird flattened and barbecued on the chargrill at the back, was glorious, all juicy and crispy and savoury, and okra with lamb cubes (bamia billammi) a cinnamony delight. If kibbieh shamieh - pastry diamonds stuffed with minced lamb, cracked wheat and pine nuts - was underseasoned, we;d gorged so greedily on the starters that we wouldn't have finished it anyway.

Friday, June 25, 2010 - Basque quail with minced pork and cranberries drew a: 'Wow, there's a real culinary intelligence at work here', while the highlight of highlights was caramelised oxtail in red wine, cooked for 36 hours until it was all dark and gooey and wonderfully melty, and exploding with herby-wino-bovine flavour...'I can honestly say,' declared my friend over coffee, 'that I've never had a better lunch in this country.' Nor have I, and in a bold stab at originality let me state this: you simply have to go.

Saturday, June 05, 2010 - The menu is Franco-American meaty, but all the appeal is provided by brilliant service from friendly French staff in maroon shirts...Neither of us could be done with puds, and we left agreeing that the borderline rapturous reception for this newcomer, elsewhere and on the foodie blogs, must have more to do with imaginary imperial garments than anything else. On this form, Heston will kick Boulud so hard that this mediocrity will take its rightful place as an overflow pen for those who can't get in upstairs.

Saturday, May 29, 2010 - The highlight was a startlingly well-balanced dish in which sweet and tender Iberian pork was matched with savoy cabbage, grated egg and crunchy fried capers. 'Brilliant,' said my friend. 'Everything complements everything else in texture and taste. Why can't he do that with the rest of it?' All I could say was that, for all the inconsistency, Mendes has improved since his Hoxton days to a hit rate of about one in three. Thai basil sorbet with lemon sherbet was a wild miss, hinting coyly at a solvent used in the stripping of car engines, but we liked a luscious dark chocoloate pud with coffee-infused ice.

Saturday, May 22, 2010 - All the usual high-street suspects have been rounded up and, with the exception of the tandoori chicken, which they've taken to swamping in an acrid marinade, all are consistently delicious, particularly the bhuna, dhansak and patia dishes...But those specials from the old country are somethin' else. Ginger chicken was a festival of tongue-zinging freshness, chicken bhutuwa (a sauce based on spring onion) a more subtle delight, and lamb chilli massala an alluringly unctuous and savoury riot of pulse-raising intensity.

Saturday, May 08, 2010 - The real problem is that the food is as bland as the room...Pan-fried scallops with cauliflower, anchovy and beurre noisette were the sweetest, juiciest, nuttiest oceanic little orbs you could imagine. But my wife's roast curried pollack fillet 'tastes of nothing. Maybe fishy Horlicks', while my crab and salmon cannelloni welded the studied inoffensiveness of an M&S pasta dish to an odious gem lettuce sauce that left an acrid aftertaste. Rabbit and foie gras mosaic was 'nice enough, but hardly memorable'.

Saturday, April 17, 2010 - This was totally authentic, gutsy/peasanty French cooking, twice as impressive for its unexpectedness and the fairness of the pricing. A charcuterie board came almost overladen with excellent hams and great, garlicky salamis, while a pork terrine arrived in a vast dish along with the insistence that we should eat as much as we wished...The grilled bavette, or skirt, was a bit chewy but it had enough depth of flavour not to need the peppercorn sauce ordered on the side, delicious though that was.

Saturday, April 10, 2010 - 'Crisp' calamari were soggy. Crab in pastry left a bitter, curry powder aftertaste. And fennel-marinated lamb chops were overcooked lumps of nasty meat. Prawns with the texture of tofu were swamped by grey bacon bits. My 'pot of chicken stew', allegedly flavoured with star anise, cinnamon and much else, tasted solely of lime-infused goat's milk....All having returned to the kitchen barely touched, a chap sidled over to report the chef's insistence that the food was fine. Perhaps so, I said, but he doesn't have to eat it.

Saturday, April 03, 2010 - My father liked his potted shrimps and mackerel, faddishly served in a little Kilner jar alongside a cucumber salad and Melba toast. My mother did dredge up a complaint about her Mauricette snails and meatballs with truffle oil-infused mushrooms. "I prefer snails in their shells. And I can't taste these for the meatballs."...The clearest of winners was a 'revised' Lyonnaise salad, the revision being the addition to the bacon, egg and delicately dressed salad leaves of deep-fried pig's trotter as creamily unctuous and gooily gratifying as that porcine extremity should be. A total classic.

Saturday, March 27, 2010 - It is testament to my dad's good nature that, despite having tasted my starter and winced, he refused to change his main course. The reward for this politesse was a bowl of spaghetti frutti di mare that, though technically edible in a Dolmioissimo kinda way (the spag seemed to have been freshly boiled this time, so progress there), made us sad that a langoustine, some prawns and a few mussels had given their lives for it. My veal al limone also showed improvement, the lemon sauce being only slightly oversalted and the meat - although tasteless, overcooked and chewy - recognisably bovine.

Saturday, March 13, 2010 - In so many regards is Zilli Green a total shocker that it's hard to know where to begin...The main courses ranged from the average to the arrestable. Bone-sucking carnivore though I am, I love vegetarian cooking when it's inventive and vibrant. When it's as lazy, pointless and dementedly oversalted as my spaghetti al quattro pomodori - four types of tomato, each as flavoursome as purified water - the mind turns to the whereabouts of the nearest Burger King.

Saturday, March 06, 2010 - Pot-sticker dumplings were plump, juicy parcels of porcine goodness buried beneath a thin sheet of batter, and dry wok prawns came all crunchy in their shells and suffused with freshly crushed spices. We weren't quite so keen on squidgy 'Chairman Mao red-braised pork', a Hunanese favourite of the Little Red-Braised Book author in which chunks of pork belly are gently fried in rice wine, ginger, sugar and much else. But diced rabbit in a pile of chillies was a nostalgic delight, the sweetness of the meat and sharpness of the dried chillies complementing each other beautifully.

Saturday, February 27, 2010 - It mingles the bustle and slickness of the grand, all-day Parisian brasserie with a determinedly anti-Michelin English menu and a room cunningly designed for that ultra-voguish, modern media Soho clubland feel. The lighting and acoustics are flawless, the service lavishly attentive without being oppressive, and the food, with a couple of minor quibbles, was exceedingly good...Many joints have tried to create the perfect French brasserie serving delectably simple English food, one of us sagely observed, and this is the first to crack the combination.

Saturday, February 13, 2010 - What Gregg would say on meeting my Lancashire hotpot I cannot be sure, but I'm guessing that he'd want to say it with a meat cleaver. It came with unpickled white cabbage and a lump of mash, while the hotpot came with a dry, overcooked slab of sliced potato on top. Steak, mushroom and ale pie was worse, the gravy being more watery than the soup, and the crust brittle and paper-thin...Puddings were much better, knickerbocker glory and apple crumble with custard being the real deal, but it was far too little much too late to begin to excuse some of the laziest, sloppiest cooking I've encountered in years.

Saturday, February 06, 2010 - The splendour there lay mostly with the aesthetics. Ducasse's proxy, Jocelyn Herland, produces dishes that are genuinely beautiful to the eye, but less memorable to the tastebud than that triple-star rating might suggest. The one expression of genius was a signature dish of roast chicken somehow given the texture of souffle with lobster, pasta and sweetbreads in a sensational creamy, truffly sauce. Soft-boiled organic egg with crayfish and wild mushrooms in a Nantua sauce was 'fine but not full of flavour'.

Saturday, January 09, 2010 - Bumpkin melds irksome bucolic sloppiness with rigorous West End prices: 2.50 for bread is a chutzpah, and 7 for a measly starter of devilled chicken livers on toast is a wickedly rapacious mark-up. The livers were overcooked, so they'd lost that alluring squidginess, but a decent chilli kick gave them the edge over my friend's equally mean portion of beetroot-cured 'organic' salmon. Main courses were better. His Buccleuch pork belly with red cabbage was 'perfectly nice, although nothing I couldn't do just as well at home'.

Saturday, January 02, 2010 - By the time my wife was stuck into her starter, a ham hock terrine with lentils and lightly toasted walnut bread, she was beaming. 'Glorious, smoky flavour,' she said, 'and the chutney really brings out the taste.' My butternut squash soup would have been very good, with its perfect texture and the rich tang of melty cheese, but for the addition of chestnut gnocchi that made it outstanding. Frankly, I'd had grave concerns about her main course, assuming that at the first mouthful of galette of quinoa with winter veg and hollandaise, she'd sequester my confit of duck. "I have never eaten anything without meat or fish that's so satisfyingly delicious," was the shock reaction.

Saturday, December 19, 2009 - The main courses were precisely as they should have been, neither smart nor subtle, pretty nor poncey, just big helpings of plainly delicious food. The Heff loved his chicken in a delectably smoky cheese sauce, with creamy mash and crunchy beans. Boeuf bourguignon was almost as impressive, the meat nestling alongside juicy mushrooms and shallots in a gutsy, red-wine gravy that offset a hint of dryness. Even for two portly fellows, pudding was a struggle after that lot, but we dredged up the Dunkirk spirit and shared a flawless chocolate mousse.

Saturday, December 12, 2009 - I was wincing at the worst glass of wine I've ever lacked the strength to send back (from a bottle of pinot grigio that must have been opened in the 80s) when 'a hotpot of slow-braised mutton shoulder & Cuan oyster with pickled heritage beetroot' (Lancashire hotpot in English) arrived. For 8.25, this wasn't so bad, albeit the gravy was watery and way oversalted, the meat astoundingly tasteless for mutton and the potato overcooked. At 16.50, however, it was a calumny.

Saturday, November 07, 2009 - The a la carte dishes, both Beck signatures, hinted at talent, notably carbonara fagottelli, parcels of impeccable fresh pasta filled with a cheesy, bacony cream that shot gratifyingly down the throat as you bit into them. Roasted pigeon was faultlessly cooked, particularly the crispy legs, but the jus was indistinct and the dish unmemorable. And if you are going to serve foie gras, you really must mention it on the menu when so many people won't touch the stuff.

Saturday, October 31, 2009 - Chef Francesco Mazzei's food, having said that, is soulful in the extreme, bursting with the vibrancy of (primarily southern) Italian cooking, and worth the slightly eye-watering cost. My friend began with wood-roasted aubergine and burrata, the light yet lavish cheese made by mingling mozzarella with cream, and glorious baby tomatoes to complete the Italian tricolore. 'Beautiful,' he said of the burrata. 'Imagine the effort that went into producing such flavour.'

Saturday, September 26, 2009 - The main courses franked the early form. Mine was very prettily presented, a large chop of pork loin resting insouciantly on a colourful bed of chorizo, green olive and cherry tomato 'casserole'. The jus was particularly good, luckily so since the meat was a shade dry. But my friend landed the win double with a succulent ribeye steak, marinated in garlic and thyme and served precisely medium-rare as requested, with Jersey Royals and a cute little herb salad. Ice-creams were excellent, as was coffee.

Saturday, September 12, 2009 - If you were served my seared fillet of plaice with crushed potatoes and watercress in a roadside Normandy brasserie, you'd bang on for weeks about the impossibility of finding such a lovely, simple, burstingly fresh-tasting dish in the British provinces. The Idiot loved his halibut, the princely fish coming steamed with lemon-scented potatoes, purple sprouting broccoli and hollandaise: "Perfect in every way. I am so impressed. Now I can't wait for the puds." They did not disappoint: his lavender pannacotta with strawberries was faultless, as was my vanilla pannacotta with poached raspberries. In its unshowy way, this is outstanding cooking in which a commitment to first-rate ingredients is matched with real lightness of touch.

Saturday, August 01, 2009 - The fatoush was as good and fresh a salad as I've had in ages, zinging with herby, lemony loveliness and served with two types of delectable bread. The seductively named foul moukala laced broad beans with coriander and olive oil. Hot mezze were just as good. Grilled halloumi came studded with little black dots the identity of which was not resolved by a game of Guess That Spice with the waiter (my fiver was on burnt cumin, so we can rule that out), but the cheese was creamier and less waxen than usual, and, in a great taste and texture combination, went beautifully with spicy lamb sausages (sojuk sadda).

Saturday, July 25, 2009 - The meal that ensued was in effect a picnic, albeit one from the surrealist imaginings of an earlier Paloma-siring artist. As crab on toast, gazpacho and cold grilled lamb arrived, so did the rain, cunningly slanted to evade the tarpaulin. "It's damp, it's cold," one of my friends said to me with his head on the table, "and I hate you." Ox heart salad, coppa and salami, red and green tomatoes, and grilled aubergines and courgettes with that anchovy sauce made their way, and wouldn't have been out of place at the bar of St John.

Saturday, July 11, 2009 - 11.95 for a salade Nicoise starter is a bit rich for a bistro. It came with enough fresh tuna for a main course but, apart from a shallot and caper vinaigrette, was nothing you couldn't have produced at home in 10 minutes. However, 'Justine's favourite' onion soup was delicate and delicious, and my gravadlax the sweetest, freshest dill-cured salmon you will find...Puddings were magnificent, especially the one that led my wife to adorn my notes with, 'Best creme brulee ever!!!' Then came an unordered hint of genius: a scoop of sensational popcorn sorbet served on a tall column of ice.

Saturday, June 27, 2009 - My Barnsley chop, cooked to an ideal light pink, had the gratifyingly fatty, palate-sucking flavour of top-notch lamb, and came with a ratatouille-esque collation of shallots, peppers and pimentos, as well as fresh mint. My friend's roast pollack was beautifully cooked...Although the chef shows real delicacy in balancing flavours so they complement rather than swamp or confuse each other, the portions tend toward the rustic, and we'd have needed a tapeworm to cope with a pud after that lot.

Saturday, May 09, 2009 - It would be misleading to claim that Madsen pushes back the tide of disinterest that has seen more feted Scandinavian places close in London lately, because it's been ignored by so-called rivals since opening last autumn. But it deserves attention because the food is good and fairly priced (especially given the location opposite a Lamborghini showroom), the room is a delight and the service enchanting… I can pay Madsen no higher compliment than that it does its homeland proud.

Saturday, April 25, 2009 - He was the warmest of hosts, expertly guiding us through a wine list as impressive in range as in pricing, and then unveiling a weird depth of knowledge about the rare breeds of pigs that make the charcuterie the highlight of a vastly enticing…All the charcuterie was magnificent, in fact, not least a terrine studded with pistachios, as were buttery, peppery potted brown shrimps.

Saturday, March 07, 2009 - All the traditional tapas were good. Anchovies marinated in sherry vinegar were superbly fresh, and enlivened by pools of oily-green garlic of the kind you see oozing out of a snail shell…Decent tapas is such a crowded market now that Tendido Cuatro wisely looks for a USP in the guise of "Gourmet" paella. The two we tried were aesthetic triumphs, that uniquely absorbent bomba rice having soaked up a delicious, winey, garlicky stock and turned a deeply alluring shade of brown in the pan.

Saturday, February 21, 2009 - The low-ceilinged room is plainly but pleasingly done out with splodgy paintings, a wine rack filling a fireplace and bright red curtains half-drawn to give a view of the church. The staff are young, French and friendly. The wine list is an ode to price-conscious ingenuity. And the set menu is a lunchtime steal…The food is what many of us crave: unfussy, accurate and delicious bistro cooking of the kind recalled with almost mythic reverence from childhood hols across the Channel.

Saturday, January 24, 2009 - It's a space full of character and energy, and as useful an antidote to the first-class airport traveller's lounge look long favoured by smart central London Italians as the pricing policy is to the traditional fleecing that has now acquired the aura of the suicidally passé. Were the food merely decent, this would be an attractive and exuberant restaurant, but the brilliance of the cooking raises it to the first rank.

Saturday, January 17, 2009 - Thai food in Britain has become so homogenised that it often seems a south-east Asian McDonald's, the same ersatz dishes tasting identical wherever you order them. This place, however, is so authentic and popular with compatriots that it prints the prices in Thai currency as well as in sterling. The cuisine is from the north-east (Esarn, or Issan, being a province), where they like their food devilishly hot.

Saturday, January 10, 2009 - There is far more to a cracking restaurant, of course, than what its kitchen churns out, and by every criterion Corrigan's is a triumph. The service is magnificent, the pricing policy carefully calibrated for these challenging times (at £23.50 for three courses, with a 250ml carafe of wine chucked in, the set menu is a beauty), and the place is well designed to entice you to linger…game that dominates the menu. There is plenty of fish and no shortage of other meats, but as befits one who grew up poaching for the pot in bucolic Ireland, Corrigan is passionate about game and cooks it superbly.

Saturday, January 03, 2009 - Low expectations can distort the critical judgment, the relief luring you into inflating the competent into the outstanding, but by any standards the Modern Pantry is a gem. Sited in a pair of listed town houses in a quiet square, the small and more informal downstairs room (a posher one has since opened upstairs, and there's a deli attached) is bright but functional, with gleamingly white furniture, refectory table in the centre of the space, open-plan kitchen, obligatory Farrow & Ball bluey-grey walls, and conical copper lamps, while the staff are tolerant to the edge of saintliness.

Saturday, December 20, 2008 - At first glance, there is something a touch pantomimic about this cosy, flickering candlelit fin de si�cle bistro, its windows covered in elegant lettering on the outside and net-curtained within, the space done out plainly but engagingly with advertising prints and blackboards. But soon it became obvious that the owner, erstwhile Marco Pierre White stalwart Jean-Christophe Slovak, is a total charmer with a neat sense of self-parody and his place a recession-proof delight. "This place is exactly as it should be in every way," enthused my wife, and we were all enraptured. Almost all, anyway.

Saturday, November 15, 2008 - The menu, if a tad long ("It should all be on the one page, like a CV," one of us rebuked), is pleasingly authentic, ranging from terrines and snacky treats such as croque monsieur to the luxuriance of those fruits de mer. The service is determinedly Gallic, in the traditional "so ferociously French he must be from Peckham" manner, and we especially enjoyed the theatrical flourishes of a talented maître d'.

Saturday, November 08, 2008 - In its way, Dragon Castle's presence in so dispiritingly hideous a centre of urban deprivation is just as incongruous as finding Jim's sitcom crumpet on the bridge of the USS Enterprise. Certainly it's a shock to walk through a door on such a gruesome main road and be greeted by a gently splashing fountain, and to find an ocular feast of red paper dragons, tassel-strewn lanterns and golden chandeliers so luminescently vulgar, they'd be asked to leave a Las Vegas casino on grounds of taste.

Saturday, September 20, 2008 - Much has changed in the intervening years, and at what is now Hélène Darroze At The Connaught there is more chance of finding confit of syphilitic Peruvian mountain llama than a steak and kidney pudding. Yet for all the veneration of Mademoiselle D - a double Michelin star holder in France and one of the planet's top-ranked female chefs - it is still the service rather than the cooking that dominates…

Tuesday, July 22, 2008 - The room, patrolled by phalanxes of overzealous waiters and pin-striped managers, has a slightly soporific colour scheme of beige, brown and mocha, the pièce de résistance being a metallic ceiling sculpture suggesting a copper-plated Mini Cooper totalled by a juggernaut. Its purpose, apparently, is to lead the eye towards the vista, in our case of the smog covering the Serpentine like a filthy net curtain.

Saturday, May 24, 2008 - 'Is this a tribute restaurant to Sir Alex Ferguson?" inquired my friend hopefully as we took our seats at Saf. Then she added that the acronym by which the Manchester United manager is commonly known "was the only thing I could think of". Mind you, I had asked her to lunch with strict instructions that on no account was she to Google the name of the restaurant to which I'd be taking her, or to indulge in any other research, for fear of ruining the surprise.

Saturday, April 05, 2008 - Waiting for L'Autre Pied to drop its reliance on faddy culinary clichés seems futile, because chefs, like the rest of us, are slaves to the silly little orthodoxies of the age. Perhaps one day Eaves will look back on his current menu and wonder what he was thinking. The tragi-comic irony is that if and when he does, most of us will actually be of a toothlessness to relish those purées, rather than resent them.

Saturday, December 15, 2007 - There are those who believe that Claude Bosi's cooking is the future of grand gastronomy in Britain. Myself, I hope and pray it soon becomes the past, because seldom have I encountered a wider chasm between the opulence of a chef's talent and the paucity of joy to be had from his food.

Saturday, July 28, 2007 - Saka's talent was confirmed by a dish of his own invention which, for Italianate reasoning that remains opaque, he calls murgh aur masala ki milan: a sharp, piquant and spectacularly good chicken in another beautifully spiced gravy. Deep-fried okra was pointless, but sizzling shallots with chilli was as sparkling a side dish as I've eaten in a long time.

Saturday, March 10, 2007 - Within two minutes of arriving at Benja, which promises "a new type of Thai cuisine" based on "the flavours and tastes of Royal Siam", it was to the inspirational advice (expirational advice, technically, but we'll let that pedantry pass) of a certain Anna Leonowens that I found myself turning. "Whenever I feel afraid, I hold my head erect," Missus Anna taught us in song, as she struggled to acclimatise to life with Yul Brynner, "And whistle a happy tune/So no one will suspect I'm afraid."

Saturday, October 14, 2006 - As readers of his autobiography, the startlingly well-written and drolly titled Humble Pie, will know, Gordon Ramsay hated his time in Paris under the aegis of fabled chef Joël Robuchon. "I was like a tortured child," he said a few years ago. "You know how arrogant the French are. Extraordinary." Extraordinary indeed.