Andy Hayler - Blog

From Euston to Hammersmith

Master Wei in Hammersmith (there is also a Holborn branch) served a wide range of noodle dishes and some other options too. Kung pao prawns were very good here, while the noodles themselves are authentic and well-made. This is casual, inexpensive place where the food is on the money.

Diwana Bhel Poori is a Euston institution, serving vegetarian Indian snacks and dosas for decades. The bhel poori and chaat here are very good indeed, and at an almost absurdly low price. The atmosphere is casual, with bare wooden tables and booths, and the service is efficient. This is surely one of the best value restaurants in London.

From Clapham to Westbourne Grove

Ploussard is a very enjoyable French restaurant in Clapham, serving well-made dishes from an appealing menu. A duck pithivier was a particular highlight, but so was a red mullet dish, and the standard of the dishes was fairly consistent throughout the tasting menu that we opted for. The wine list is also good, and the service was friendly.

Materia Prima in Westbourne Grove serves mainly Japanese dishes, with many ingredients imported directly from Japan. The technical skill in the kitchen is high, and there were some elaborate dishes that worked well despite their complexity. Across the tasting menu there were several really lovely dishes, and essentially no duds, with the ingredient quality shining through. The price is high, not helped by a heavily marked-up wine list, but servicew as excellent.

From Wandsworth to Soho

Frites Atelier is a casual restaurant in Soho specialising in chips with assorted accompaniments. This is the first UK branch of a little chain based in Belgium and the Netherlands, backed by Sergio Hermann, who earned three Michelin stars for Oud Sluis. This is a simple place but the chips were indeed excellent, and a Flemish beef stew was a nice way to set them off.

Chez Bruce has been operating for well over two decades, overlooking Wandsworth Common in the premises that were once the legendary Harveys. The menu at Chez Bruce is particularly appealing, and the star dish was a stuffed pig trotter dish that was adapted from a Pierre Koffmann dish that was also served at Harveys.

In unrelated news, I have a book out, but not about food. This is all about artificial intelligence, and if you are interested in this subject, then I hope this book will help you understand AI and its implications a little better. There is even a section on the use of AI in the wine industry.

From Twickenham to Mayfair

Hakkasan Mayfair is the solitary Hakkasan in London now, and although it is now twenty-five years since the original Hakkasan opened, the formula still works. The décor is still smart, the lighting is clever, the menu is appealing, and the staff are charming. This may not be the latest in London food fashion, but that is not the point.

Delhi Social is a terrific Indian restaurant in Twickenham, with a head chef who used to run the kitchen at Black Salt, part of the Dastaan family of restaurants. The food at Delhi Social is high-class, with fine tandoori lamb chops and a particularly good methi chicken amongst the dishes we tried at this latest meal. This is all priced fairly, at a fraction of the price of fancier (and less good) places in central London.

In other news, I was interviewed for Vittles magazine.

From Petersham to Mayfair

The Cocochine’s cooking continues to develop, with some new dishes at this visit, including a langoustine canape and a new dessert, as well as an interesting lobster kedgeree dish (pictured). As ever, the quality of ingredients here is dazzlingly high, with the restaurant being blessed by an investor who owns a large farm and also a private island with a fishing port in Scotland. The restaurant gets first pick of the produce from both these sources. The chef, who was formerly head chef of Michelin-starred Petrus, is well versed in classical technique but now adds Sri Lankan touches to many of the dishes to reflect his heritage. For me, this is very interesting and brings a distinctive element to the cooking.

The Dysart, whose kitchen is run by Roux Scholar Ken Culhane, is one of my most regular fine dining haunts. It has a particularly relaxed dining room, with widely spaced tables, no music blaring and very welcoming service. The cooking is sophisticated, using top-quality ingredients and old-school classical technique. Sauces and stocks are made from scratch. Some dishes, like the charred bream, are fixtures on the menu, but others vary, such as a lovely Arnaud Tauzin chicken dish at this visit.

Both Dysart and Cocochine are places that I actually prefer to the current crop of 3-star Michelin restaurants in London. In other news, I did an interview that was posted in online food magazine Luxeat.

From Soho to Marble Arch

Florencio is a pizzeria near Marble Arch. Sister of Zoilo, it serves thin-crust New York-style pizzas from a limited menu, in a cosy dining room and with very capable service. It works very well, and I would happily go back there. The room is quite small, with an overflow dining room downstairs.

Zedel is a vast basement brasserie just off Piccadilly Circus, on a site with some history. Its huge scale means that it needs to fill seats, and it does so by producing a very appealing, lengthy menu of bistro and brasserie classics. It executes these dishes quite well, the star dish for me being a very capable lemon meringue tart. The room is quite grand, and even on a weekday lunch in January, it was very busy, so they clearly have hit upon a successful formula.

From Petersham to Knightsbridge

Nanyang Blossom is a smart Chinese/Malaysian restaurant in Knightsbridge. The food was good on this visit, with enjoyable seafood dishes such as chilli prawns and a capable beef rendang. The price is a little high, but you are, after all, eating in Knightsbridge, and the service was excellent, and the place is nicely decorated at least.

The Dysart near Richmond is one of my favourite restaurants in the capital. The cooking is of very high quality, the kitchen being led by Roux Scholar Ken Culhane. The ingredients are impeccable, and the technique is intricate and old-school, with sauces and stocks all made from scratch. As a bonus, the dining room has widely spaced tables, and the service is charming. It is a joy to eat there. This restaurant outperforms most restaurants in the capital, including most two and three-star Michelin places.

A Trip to Bangalore

We had some winter sunshine for a week in Bangalore. This is my 24^th visit to India, and although Bangalore is not the most obvious tourist destination in India, it has some advantages. You can fly direct from the UK, it is quite leafy (it is the “garden city” of India) and, above all, its position high on the Deccan Plateau means that it is cooler than most of India. Whereas in January, Goa and Kerala average around 32C or more as a high, in Bangalore, it is 27/28C high, with the temperature in the evening around 23C. This means that you can dine outside at night and not be frazzled too much during the day.

We stayed at the Leela Palace hotel and tried three of the four restaurants there. Citrus is their all-day casual restaurant, Zen serves (mostly) Chinese food, while Jamavar is the flagship Indian restaurant. There is also a European/American-style place called Le Cirque. Outside the hotel, we tried Indian Durbar and Ssaffron (not a typo).

From Ealing to Chiswick

After all the rich food at Christmas, something simpler seemed in order, and I went back to an excellent pizzeria L’Oro di Napoli, in Ealing. This does excellent Neapolitan-style pizzas, and is up there with the best in London. It has been consistently good over multiple visits that I have made here.

I also tried a local Japanese restaurant in Chiswick called Kuyamoto, run by Filipino brothers. The front of house staff were friendly, but the cooking was very ordinary indeed, with a tendency to slather dishes in mayonnaise. A dried-out salmon teriyaki was all too typical of the cooking, sadly.

Hope that you all had a lovely break, and wishing you a very happy 2026.

From Mayfair to, well, Mayfair

Michael Caines at The Stafford is a new restaurant in St James. This was very enjoyable, with especially charming staff and food that was of a generally high standard. The beef and pigeon dishes were particularly good, and the dining room was elegant and blissfully free of music and hard surfaces, so conversation was easy.

I had another excellent meal at The Cocochine in Mayfair. As well as the dinner, I had a separate set lunch the same week, to take advantage of the £39 three-course lunch, a genuine bargain given that it features dishes like lobster ravioli. The dinner was to the usual high standard, with dazzling langoustines and lobster and superb sika deer among the many highlights.

Hope that you all had a great Christmas.

From Mayfair to Surbiton

Bonheur is the much-anticipated restaurant opening on the site of the late, lamented Le Gavroche. Matt Abe has a fine culinary track record, and the food was good, while the service was of an unusually high standard. The drawback is the stiff pricing, particularly of the wine list, which is one of the most marked-up lists I have ever encountered. This is a pity, as the rest of the experience was good.

Koyal continues to deliver the best Indian food in and around London. Dishes such as the wild boar vindaloo are spectacular, and even humble dishes like mustard potatoes and vegetable bhajias are elevated to an impressively high level. With sufficient notice, and not on weekends, you can pre-order (for a supplement) the ultra-high-quality Arnaud Tauzin chicken, which can be made into dishes like chicken tikka and methi chicken. This bird has a very special flavour, but even without this extra elevation, the dishes here are very special indeed.

From Queensway to Mayfair

Lambombe is the sister of Trivet and is in a smart Park Lane Hotel. The food was pleasant enough, though the best thing I ate was actually a pate en croute, which was bought in rather than prepared in the kitchen. There was also a pleasant breaded veal chop with cabbage, though £48 for this dish gives you an idea of the target audience.

The Taste of Lahore in Bayswater is one of a small group of Pakistani restaurants in London. The tandoori lamb chops were nice, but to be honest, the rest of the food that we tried was very ordinary at best, with some quite disappointing dishes mixed in with the average. Even though the price was fairly moderate, I could not really recommend this restaurant.

From Fulham to Mayfair

The Harwood Arms is the only Michelin-starred pub in London. It specialises in game, and features a signature venison Scotch egg that is a king amongst Scotch eggs. The fallow deer here was also excellent, and was a honey tart for dessert. This is a highly consistent restaurant, with a very good wine list as a bonus.

The Cocochine is tucked away off Berkeley Square and has several unusual features for a fine dining restaurant. Firstly, it has access to some remarkable quality produce via the farm and Scottish fishing port owned by one of its investors: the scallops that appear here are the largest I have ever seen, for example. Its cooking has developed significantly since opening, now still based on classical French technique but reflecting the Sri Lankan heritage of its head chef, Larry Jayasekara.

From Hammersmith to Surbiton

Shilpa is a Keralan restaurant in Hammersmith, run entirely by staff from Kerala. At my meal, I had the best dish by some margin was the masala dosa, though the paratha was also very nice. Not all dishes were quite to that standard, though the overall standard was entirely reasonable, and prices were modest.

Koyal in Surbiton is blessed with a gifted head chef, and the food that it is producing is as good as anything in London. A recent menu addition, a variation on pork vindaloo that used tastier wild boar, was fabulous. I also love the chicken dishes here, especially those made using a high-quality bird from Arnaud Tauzin in France (this dish must be pre ordered and is not available at busy weekends).

From Queensway to Mayfair

Garum serves Roman-style pasta in the unlikely setting of the Chinatown area of Queensway. The pasta was decent, but it did not compare well to my recent visit to Rome. The chef was very engaged, but the wine list is rather heavily marked up. It is quite hard to find really outstanding Italian food in London at present.

Gymkhana continues to be wildly successful, booked up months ahead. I had a very pleasant experience there with the tasting menu, along with nice service. However, there were some flaws in certain dishes, such as a rather grey tandoori lamb chop. Other dishes like the butter chicken were very good, but overall I don’t think the cooking here is really as good as at nearby Benares or indeed at Koyal. Despite this, it is booked up for months ahead.

From Stoke Newington to Charlotte Street

Rasa is a lovely Keralan restaurant on the main high street of Stoke Newington. Its vegetarian dishes are very good indeed, such as a superbly balanced bhel dish, as well as an excellent masala dosa. The staff were friendly and the meal was very cheap indeed. This is the kind of restaurant that everyone wishes they had on their doorstep.

The Ninth is a very reliable restaurant on Charlotte Street, serving enjoyable Michelin-starred dishes at an acceptable price. The sea bass at my latest visit was very good, as was indeed the whole meal.

From Gloucester Road to Mayfair

The Bombay Brasserie was the first really up-market Indian restaurant in London, causing quite a stir when it opened in 1982. I thought it was time to return, and the food has actually held up well. The vast room is still quite impressive, and the cooking is good here. The main issue is the price, with a small glass of beer at £9 not helping to moderate the quite high food prices.

Humo has a ground-floor dining room but also a fancier basement room, where a tasting menu is served to a small group of diners. This was all very fancy and had some good dishes, but the cooking felt a little contrived at times, with the chef trying too hard to show off his technique. The best dish was a very carefully designed salad, which was really excellent.

From Pimlico to Chiswick

A couple of old favourite restaurants this week. La Trompette is a restaurant that I can easily walk to from where I live, and it has been consistently excellent since it opened in 2001. It has a very appealing menu, a kindly priced wine list and precise cooking; a very successful formula.

Cornus, now with its Michelin star, was one of the best restaurant openings in 2024. It is tucked away in an obscure corner of Victoria, but once you have found the restaurant then you will have a lovely time. The predominantly seafood menu is really well executed, based on unusually high-quality ingredients. The staff are charming and it is wine-friendly, with a very good list and modest corkage. This is a restaurant that deserves more attention than it gets.

A Trip to Rome

Ineo is home to chef Heros de Agostinis, who once cooked at the greatly missed Apsleys in London. Set in a luxury hotel, this is a superb restaurant producing gloriously flavoured, beautifully presented Italian food. The macaroni with Eritrean game stew is a delight. If you are in Rome, then be sure to pay it a visit.

Pergola is the grand dame of the Rome dining scene, its only 3-star Michelin restaurant. It is set at the top of the highest hill in Rome, looking down over St Peter's. The overall experience is luxurious, with a vast wine list and faultless service. The food seemed to me to have become more technical and cerebral than it used to be. Although it was technically superb cooking, it was less joyful than I recall from previous visits.

Roscioli, a simple bakery turned deli turned restaurant, encapsulates all that is wonderful about Italian cooking. The ingredients used here are of very high quality, and the cooking of the pasta, such as the famous cacio e pepe here, was spot on. Add in a lovely wine list and this is one of Rome’s most enjoyable dining experiences. Unsurprisingly, it is very hard to book.

From Piccadilly to Rome

The Ritz is a great favourite of mine, and I returned for another lovely meal that included an excellent new dish, scallop with a mildly spiced vadouvan sauce. Old favourites were still very much on form, such as langoustines a la nage, and pressed Anjou pigeon. A new fig dessert was excellent, as was a refreshing and pretty mandarin pre-dessert.

Santo Palato is a popular trattoria in Rome. It is a casual place but uses very good produce, as shown with the superb tomatoes spread on the bruschetta. The cooking was very good and the staff were charming, while the wine list had levels of markup that you hardly ever see in London.

More reviews from Rome next week.

From Surbiton to Hammersmith

Master Wei is a casual style noodle restaurant in Hammersmith (a sibling is in Holborn). It is very successful, its chef having been featured in the Netflix show Chef’s Table. However, this is not just some TV chef phoning it in; the best dishes here were very good indeed. Not everything was quite to the standard of the best noodle dishes, but this was generally high quality and good value.

At Koyal I pre-ordered the Arnaud Tauzin chicken, arguably the best chicken in the world. If you do this then you need to give several days’ notice, and the chef will only make it on weekdays, when it is quieter. We did a direct comparison of the regular chicken tikka with the Tauzin one, the latter made with both breast meat and thigh meat. These were all good, but unsurprisingly, the Tauzin chicken was a lot better, and the thigh meat tikka in particular was dazzling in its flavour. Also lovely was a wild boar curry, rather like a pork vindaloo, but even better. The usual dishes here were still lovely as well, such as the bhajias, the mustard potatoes and the spinach side dish. This is a terrific restaurant.

From Winnersh to West London

Club India is in Winnersh, and has a chef with a strong pedigree. It was a very enjoyable experience, the service led by an experienced manager. The cooking was excellent and the prices were fair. Methi chicken and tandoori prawns were particularly good dishes, but pretty much everything was of a high standard.

Pollini is in a smart, historic building in West London that was once a Victorian-era early car factory and salesroom and is now an arts centre. The Italian restaurant has a lovely dining room, though it had rather intrusive music and low lighting. The service was good but the food was rather mixed, with a good duck ragu but also some less successful dishes. It seems to be mainly an events function, doing weddings, etc, and it seemed quite expensive for what appeared on the plate.

From South Kensington to Mayfair

Myrtos is the new restaurant of a chef who used to run the kitchens at Pied à Terre. He has returned to his Greek heritage in a more casual format restaurant, but the meal that I had was not great. There were nice sardines and a pleasant orange cake for dessert, but there were several dud and mediocre dishes too, all at a surprisingly high price.

The food at The Cocochine seems to steadily improve with each visit that I make there. We had a particularly good meal at this latest visit, with superb seafood from the restaurant’s own private island in Scotland, and excellent sika deer and assorted produce from their own farm. This access to top-notch produce is unusual in London, and it is good to see more dishes that show touches of the chef/owner’s Sri Lankan heritage.

A Visit to Hamburg

Haerlin was recently elevated to three Michelin star status. Situated in an historic hotel in Hamburg, the savoury cooking was very good indeed, let down by some much weaker desserts. Still, the service was lovely, the room was grand and the menu appealing. The kindly priced wine list was a bonus.

Landhaus Scherrer is a very traditional German restaurant, noted for its schnitzel and its duck, which is carved tableside. I opted for the schnitzel, which was good, and finished with a pleasant apple strudel. This is quite old-fashioned cooking, and I enjoyed it.

From Fulham to Stratford

Kokin is the new home to the kaiseki restaurant that was formerly Hannah in Waterloo. The new setting in a posh hotel in Stratford is much smarter, and there is a wide choice of menus. The omakase menu that I ate was fabulous, including a dazzling and unusual dish of tuna collar.

The Harwood Arms is the only Michelin-starred pub in London, specialising in game. The fallow deer here was lovely, as was the iconic venison Scotch egg. The Harwood Arms also has friendly service and a very good wine list, so it is always a pleasure to eat here.

From Surbiton to Fitzrovia

Pied a Terre has a quite new chef, and he is a good one. The last two meals that I have eaten here were a definite step up from the previous kitchen regime, and it is great to see Pied a Terre back on form and performing at a high level.

Koyal in Surbiton is where the head chef of Dastaan now cooks. Koyal is a much larger place and has a far larger kitchen, but the food is still to the same high standard as Dastaan. The cooking here is terrific, and this week we took advantage of a pre-order of very high-grade French chicken, which the chef prepared in a couple of ways. I don’t think anywhere in London is cooking Indian food better than Koyal.

From Euston to Mayfair

I have been a regular at Diwana Bhel Poori for four decades now, even since I came to London in 1983. It still serves the same lovely vegetarian Indian snacks, such as aloo papri chaat and bhel poori, and still does good samosas and dosas. The price has crept up over the years, but it is still a genuine bargain, which is a rare thing in London these days.

Jamavar is at the other end of the smartness scale to Diwana Bhel Poori, located in Mount Street just off Berkeley Square. Although it is more expensive, the food is classy, featuring high-quality ingredients, slick service, and excellent cooking. It always seems extremely busy here, reflecting the consistent offering.

From Southall to Fitzrovia

The Ragam is a fixture of Fitzrovia, delivering good-value Keralan food for decades. The south Indian dishes, such as the uthappam and the dosas, are particularly nice here, and the place always seems packed, whether at lunch or dinner. This is unsurprising as it is inexpensive and delivers very enjoyable, affordable food.

Brilliant Gastro is the reincarnation of the venerable Brilliant restaurant in Southall. The new place is more casual, with a stripped-down menu and located near a large new development of flats in Southall. The dishes are a mix of old favourites from the Brillaint together with some more modern dishes. This was a busy service, and the dish consistency was not quite as good as at my previous visit, but the new desserts were a positive surprise.

From Mayfair to Sussex

Gravetye Manor in Sussex is in a historic 16^th-century building set in a thousand acres, with famous gardens and a dining room that is so light and airy that it almost feels as though you are eating in the garden. The new chef is a Roux Scholar and has raised the bar of the cooking here compared to my last visit. A complex garden salad using entirely ingredients grown in the gardens here was a particularly impressive dish.

Hakkasan Mayfair is a highly consistent restaurant, combining carefully cooked Chinese food with unusually slick service and a smart setting. It may not be the most authentic, cutting-edge Chinese food experience, but then that is not what it is aiming at. It does, however, produce a reliably enjoyable overall experience, which is why it always seems packed out.

From Wandsworth to Holland Park

Vori is a fairly new Greek restaurant in Holland Park that serves some good dishes and has an unusually well-priced wine list. I particularly enjoyed a stew of Portobello mushrooms with Kariki blue cheese and honey butter. It is hard to find good Greek food in London, but this is somewhere that I would happily return to.

I also went back to Chez Bruce, a venerable Wandsworth restaurant. Sister to La Trompette in Chiswick, it has a similar and very successful formula. Combine a large and appealing a la carte menu with good cooking, fairly priced wines and friendly service. This sounds obvious enough, yet few London restaurants manage to pull it off. Certainly, very few pull it off as well as Chez Bruce.

From Marylebone to Piccadilly

AngloThai in Marylebone offers a modern take on Thai cooking, using mostly British ingredients in a tasting menu format. It was very busy, helped by its recent Michelin star. I have to say that I didn’t particularly enjoy the meal. Partly it was a matter of the dishes offered, with beef tongue and octopus not being my favourite things. There was the odd error, such as a piece of very over-salted lamb, but the main problem for me was value for money. £125 plus drinks plus service is an awful lot of money if you are offering up things like beef tongue and lamb neck. I preferred a recent visit to the Salutation in Hammersmith recently, which cost just £36.

The Ritz is my favourite fine dining restaurant in London, and it was on excellent form on my most recent visit. The old favourites were still lovely, such as the langoustine a la nage and the ballotine of duck liver. The menu evolves, so there was a very good new pre-dessert, a lovely tropical fruit dessert (pictured) and some quite new canapes too. Service was lovely, and the 1906 dining room is magnificent.

From White City to Knightsbridge

Tom Brown is the latest chef to cook at The Capital Hotel in Knightsbridge, a kitchen that has had a series of gifted cooks. He wasn’t actually there at the service that I went for, but we nonetheless had a pleasant meal, including a very good mackerel dish. As is often the case with UK restaurants, the desserts were less interesting than the savoury dishes.

Endo at The Rotunda has reopened after a minor refurbishment and continues to serve some of the best sushi in the capital, albeit at a price. What is noticeable is that the non-sushi elements of the lengthy tasting menu have improved significantly. These used to be the weak link of the meal, but dishes at this visit, including a lovely Brittany pigeon dish, were of just as high a standard as the sushi.

From Hammersmith to Pimlico

The Salutation is a Hammersmith pub that serves Thai food. This is not an unusual setup in itself, but the food is a lot better than you might expect. Indeed, the times I have been there it has not only been packed, but virtually every customer appeared to be of Thai origin. At this latest visit we had another enjoyable, and very moderately priced meal. Classic dishes like tom yum goong had authentic flavours.

Cornus (terrace pictured) was arguably the best opening of 2024, and it continues to deliver, complete with the Michelin star that it now holds. At this latest meal, the classic dishes like the crab with apple were as good as ever, and new dishes such as courgette flower stuffed with lobster were also top notch. Ingredient quality is exceptionally high here for London, with for example the superb Arnaud Tauzin chicken from the Landes region. I highly recommend Cornus, which as a bonus has an unusually good wine list. There is also an outside terrace in good weather.

A Trip to Dusseldorf

Thomas Buhner previously held three stars for La Vie in Osnabruck. He has been off the restaurant scene in Germany for seven years now, doing consulting work and opening a restaurant in Asia. His new venture in Dusseldorf had high expectations, and perhaps these were too high based on my early visit. The restaurant did gain a Michelin star within weeks of opening, and based on my meal that level of assessment actually feels about right. Doubtless he will aim to get back to his former Michelin status, but I think there is quite a lot of work to do based on this meal, with some very good dishes but also too many dishes that missed the mark.

The Duchy is a fairly casual restaurant in a luxury hotel in Düsseldorf. Although it does not have especially ambitious culinary goals, the simple lunch that I had here was well-made, based on an appealing a la carte menu. The schnitzel is a speciality here, and very good it was too. When you consider that it also has charming service and a smart dining room, The Duchy succeeds in its aims.

From Ambleside to Rutland

I had a very good meal at The Old Stamp House in Ambleside. They could do with a specialist pastry chef, but the savoury dishes were very good indeed, and the staff were very welcoming.

Rogan & Co is the more casual sister restaurant of L’Enclume, and serves a simpler style of the same cooking. There is the same precision on the plate, and the serving staff were very enthusiastic and welcoming.

Hambleton Hall looks out over Rutland Water (view from its terrace is pictured) and has an attractive garden. It is a luxury hotel whose restaurant serves very well-executed, fairly classical dishes. As a bonus, the wine list is reasonable.

A Visit to The Lake District

Gilpin Lodge is a luxury hotel near Lake Windermere. It has two restaurants, one serving pan-Asian food and the other serving British cuisine. Spice is the casual pan-Asian restaurant, the cooking stretching from sushi through to Indian dishes, and even vaguely Indonesian. It was harmless enough, though was a touch expensive for the level of food that appeared.

Source is the smartest of the two hotel restaurants and has a Michelin star. This was a much more accomplished affair, the savoury dishes in particular being very well designed and executed. This was a restaurant that was worth its star.

L’Enclume is the flagship of the Simon Rogan empire, nestled in the village of Cartmel in the Lake District. I haven’t been for some time but the restaurant has stayed true to its ethos, with most vegetables used being grown nearby, and the quite technical dishes having particularly good presentation, such as the canape pictured. Service was excellent throughout the meal.

From Piccadilly to Petts Wood via Mayfair

The Ritz delivered another lovely meal at my latest, 53^rd, visit. As well as the classics like the langoustine a la nage, there was a pre-ordered highlight of Poulet Bresse served en vessie i.e. cooked in a pig bladder to seal in the flavours (pictured). Ritz continues to be the best restaurant in London, bar none, in my view.

Benares is one of the most ambitious Indian restaurants in London. It goes beyond well-known dishes and uses unusual and quite high-grade ingredients. The scallop Malabar is an example of how it uses less familiar ingredients, yet still very much with an Indian flavour.

Indian Essence is an Atul Kolchar restaurant in Petts Wood. I have been once before and had a rather better meal, so this was a slight disappointment, though it was still a decent enough lunch.

From Borough Market to Southall via Marylebone

Pied a Terre has a new head chef, and it is a step up in calibre from the previous regime. The new kitchen team has really kicked up a gear, with some excellent sauces in particular standing out during this meal. Lovely scallop and pigeon dishes led the way in a very enjoyable meal.

Oma is a popular Greek restaurant in Borough Market that recently got a Michelin star. It was very busy when we went on a midweek lunch, but I struggled to understand why, as we had a very ordinary meal indeed. I went with a friend who had lived in Greece for many years, and he disliked it even more than I did.

Brilliant Gastro by Dipna Anand (pictured) is the reincarnation of the Brilliant, a Southall institution that closed recently when Gulu Anand retired. His daughter Dipna has opened a place that is part pub and part restaurant, and the menu is shorter and more modern. Many of the staff have moved across, and the food standard is still very good.

In other news, the 2025 National Restaurant Awards (voted for by chefs and food writers) came out, with The Ritz top of the tree. Nice to see London's best restaurant get some recognition.

From York to Leeds

Kalpakavadi is a Keralan restaurant in York. It is a friendly, family-run place with some quite enjoyable dishes such as a good uttapam, but also one dud fish dish. It is inexpensive, so worth considering if in the city, even given the inconsistency that we experienced.

Roots is a starred restaurant and delivered a generally good, though lengthy (four-hour) tasting menu when we visited. Service was a little stretched this evening, and prices are pretty much in London territory, including the wine list with its surprisingly high markups.

Dastaan Leeds was the highlight of the trip for me. This is the sister of the original Dastaan in Ewell, and the recipes from there are recreated carefully and diligently. It was hard to tell some of the dishes apart from the rendition of the original. It is quite a large restaurant, so all the more impressive that this level of cooking is produced at scale. I highly recommend it.

From Mayfair to Richmond via Hammersmith

Crisp Pizza has developed an enviable social media awareness for its New York-style thin crust pizzas served in a pub near the river in Hammersmith. The one I tried was nice enough, but I couldn’t really see what the fuss was about. This is a perfectly pleasant pizza, however, just not one that I would make a detour for.

I also returned to a couple of my current favourites. The Dysart near Richmond has a Roux Scholar in the kitchen who uses superb quality ingredients, much better than those used in most multi-starred London restaurants. The menu develops steadily and changes with the seasons, with a few favourites like the charred bream, which hopefully will never disappear. The Dysart, with its relaxed atmosphere, widely spaced tables and friendly service, is a joy.

Another restaurant that uses top-notch ingredients is The Cocochine in Mayfair. One of the wealthy investors in the restaurant owns an island in Scotland (called Tanera) with a fishing port as well as a farm, and the restaurant can take its pick of the best products. This is evident in the huge scallops that appear here, but there is also plenty of technique on display. Native lobster is wrapped in leaves and grilled at the table over binchotan charcoal, and is a delight. The cooking here keeps improving, with a few touches of Sri Lanka present in the French menu to reflect the personality and background of the head chef, Larry Jayasekara.

From Museums to Towers

The Lavery in South Kensington is an Italian restaurant that has had positive media reports and delivered a decent though hardly inspiring meal when I tried it. Rabbit pappardelle was pleasant, as was a guinea fowl dish, but it was all rather harmless and unmemorable. It is hard work finding good Italian food in London these days.

That is not something that can be said of High, the latest Gordon Ramsay restaurant, perched at the top of a tall tower in The City. This may be the first restaurant to be named after the bill you get at the end, because at £250 for the menu plus an absurdly marked-up wine list, you can be sure of an expensive evening. Savoury dishes were nice enough, and mostly around one-star level, but desserts were poor and petit fours were worse. Maybe you just need to be high to enjoy it.

A Journey to Birmingham

Tattu is a large, loud, smartly decorated Chinese restaurant in a basement in central Birmingham. I guess that it is vaguely inspired by places like Zuma and Hakkasan, but the food was not at the level of those. Nonetheless, it was packed out.

Opheem is one of only two Indian restaurants in the UK to have two Michelin stars. It is not a cheap experience, but it is very good. The star dishes for me were vegetarian, a carrot dish, and a potato dish, really showing off the skills of the kitchen. Add in some lovely service and a smart dining room, and Opheem definitely delivers, albeit at a price.

The picture, incidentally, is of the gardens at Winterbourne House in Birmingham, which has a gorgeous garden. Well worth a visit if you are in the city.

From St Pancras to Birmingham

Victor Garvey at the Midland Grand is the somewhat long name for the new restaurant to take over the historic dining room in the hotel next to St Pancras station. This is much more ambitious food than the two previous restaurants on this site, and based on this visit, it should do very well indeed.

Asha’s in Birmingham is an upmarket Indian restaurant that is actually part of a small group and owned by a Bollywood singer. The décor is smart and the place itself is very large, but the food is surprisingly good here e.g. chilli prawns were top-notch. More reviews from my Birmingham trip next week.

Separately, I briefly visited Vilnius in Lithuania to speak at the Baltic Gastro Summit, an event organised by the Bocuse d’Or organisation. This was a well-attended event, with Michelin having recently published a guide to Lithuania. Sadly, I didn't get a chance to explore Vilnius, though it seemed like a nice city, with a pretty old town and friendly people.

From Hounslow to Twickenham

Shree Krishna Vada Pav is a mini-chain of vegetarian restaurants with branches as far as Leicester, but this one in Hounslow was the original. It does all manner of Indian snacks and curries, delivered at breakneck speed in a casual environment and at a modest price. It was packed when we went, and it is easy to see why.

Delhi Social is one of the best Indian restaurants in London, serving the lucky inhabitants of Twickenham. I tried a mix of trusted old favourites like the methi chicken and aloo gobi, as well as some new dishes on the menu. The paratha tonight was exceptional, but the whole meal was very enjoyable.

From Norwood Green to South Bank

Donabe is the clay pot rice restaurant that has replaced kaiseki restaurant Hannah, which is moving to Stratford. It is a much more casual affair than Hannah, but there is still considerable care and attention in the cooking, such as the better than normal tempura and the high quality ingredients being used here. This is all at a modest price point.

The Plough in Norwood Green (essentially Southall) is a historic pub that has been taken over by Dipna Anand of The Brilliant. On the Sunday lunch that we went there was no a la carte menu, just a Sunday roast which was pretty ordinary. I suspect it is better on other days when there is an a la carte menu that mixes pub staples like fish and chips with the odd Indian dish.

From South Bank to Parliament Hill

I enjoyed the last service at Hannah on the South Bank. It is moving to larger premises in Stratford, and the current premises will become a more casual clay rice pot restaurant under the same ownership. Hanna is the best kaiseki restaurant in London, and has been studiously ignored by Michelin despite the chef having earned two stars where he was previously head chef. The canapes here are pictured.

The Bull and Last is a pleasant pub near Hampstead Heath, serving the likes of fish and chips alongside slightly more ambitious dishes. It has very good service and is reasonable value, and has a capable Italian dessert chef.

Ambassador’s Clubhouse is a bustling Indian restaurant in Mayfair, large and ambitious with prices to match. The food was generally good, but the service was distinctly off-key at our meal, and the prices were high even for Mayfair. Despite this, it was packed out, even early on a Sunday night.

From Knightsbridge to Southall

The Georgian in Harrods is a dining room with some history, now serving British food with an emphasis on the pies of chef Colum Franklin, though he has designed the menu rather than being present in the kitchen. It was pleasant enough, but was expensive for what it was, though curiously the wine list was a relative bargain.

The Cocochine in Mayfair has been open for nearly a year now, serving the food of chef Larry Jayasekara. It uses exceptional ingredients, many of them from the Scottish island of Tanera and Rowler farm, both owned by Cocochine's wealthy investors. The cooking has really kicked up a gear based on this latest meal, with a barbecued lobster dish in particular being fabulous.

The Brilliant has been a Southall institution since it opened in 1975, but now it is closed, and I went one last time to enjoy it. Gulu Anand is retiring, but the restaurant will be reborn after a fashion in Southall, with Gulu’s daughter Dipna to open a new restaurant on a brand new development near Southall station. The last meal was as enjoyable as ever and the place was packed out.

From Chelsea to Goodge Street

Three Gorges is an upmarket Chinese restaurant spread sover several floors, that has recently opened in Goodge Street. It has a capable head chef and there were some enjoyable dishes at this meal.

The flagship Gordon Ramsay restaurant sails on, with a newish head chef and still producing consistently good food. The stand-out dish at this meal was the sweetbread course, but the meal was of a quite high standard throughout.

Benares is one of the top Indian restaurants in London, with a Michelin star and uses higher quality ingredients than is normal in most Indian restaurants. Dishes like the scallop Malabar here are classy, and the service is to a high standard.

From Marble Arch to Kings Cross

Chourangi is an outpost of an Indian restaurant group, specialising in the cuisine of Calcutta (Kolkata in the modern spelling). This branch is in Marble Arch, and it had some quite good dishes, such as a classy potato side dish, but also some disappointments, such as overcooked tandoori lamb chops. Overall it was decent enough, but £106 a head with beer to drink seems like an awful lot of money for the quality, especially when there are so many good Indian restaurant options these days in London.

Gouqi near Trafalgar Square continues to produce high-class Cantonese food, and at this visit we went for a full Peking duck experience, the whole duck (pictured) served in multiple forms and courses. This was excellent, and so was a scallop and prawn dish. For some reason the usually slick service was off tonight, mostly around the wine service, but hopefully this was just a glitch.

Voyage With Adam Simmonds in the trendy Megaro Hotel in Kings Cross served quite ambitious Scandinavian-influenced fine dining food in a smart setting with an open kitchen. The service at our meal was a joy but the food was a mixed experience, with a particularly dubious dessert but with several some perfectly capable savoury courses. The empty dining room on a Saturday night (just one other lone diner other than us) suggests that the formula is not quite right.

From Surbiton to Piccadilly

Koyal in Surbiton is where the former head chef of Dastaan now cooks. Now that the kitchen has settled down it is turning out some of the very best Indian food to be found in and around London. At this meal I pre-ordered dishes using high quality Arnaud Tauzin chicken, which turned out well.

The Ritz is the best fine dining restaurant in London, and at this meal, I enjoyed terrific game pithivier as well as the usual top-notch langoustines and other regular dishes, including the lovely canapes. It is great to see The Ritz finally with the second Michelin star it richly deserves.

From Soho to Dorking

Sorrel in Dorking has been operating since 2017 under the capable guidance of head chef Steve Drake, a Roux Scholar. I had a very enjoyable meal here, with a particularly fine beetroot dish and cooking that throughout the meal showed why it has retained a Michelin star for many years.

Long Chim is a Thai restaurant in Soho that is backed by David Thompson, who has a long history of Thai cuisine in London, including Nahm. Long Chim is a less fancy venture than Nahm, with closely packed tables and a quite noisy atmosphere. The food was generally reasonable, with a very good minced pork starter with rice cakes wrapped in leaves as the best dish of the meal.

From Soho to Knightsbridge

The French House (pictured) is a tiny Soho institution with a considerable history, and in recent times, it has developed a strong reputation for its daily changing menu of robust, hearty dishes. I really enjoyed my meal here, and the kitchen is clearly operating at a high level, with especially good confit duck with lentils. Michelin’s spurning of it adds to the sense of The French House as something of a hidden gem.

Vatavaran is an ambitious Indian restaurant in Knightsbridge, spread over several floors and serving generally quite impressive dishes that go beyond the curry house staples. This is a smartly decorated place with slick service, and the prices reflect this, but the cooking is of good quality, as shown by some excellent tandoori lamb chops and a particularly good biryani.

From South Kensington to Barnes

Pravaas is an Indian restaurant in South Kensington. It had very friendly staff and generally well-prepared Indian dishes in a pleasant setting. These days there are so many genuinely high-class Indian restaurants in and around London that it is hard to stand out, but Pravaas is a more than decent restaurant.

The Watermans Arms in Barnes has a river view, but at my visit that was the best aspect of the meal that we had. There was a decent scallop dish but also issues with several of the other dishes. It was also surprisingly expensive for the level of cooking. If you want to go to a pub called Watermans Arms then head to the excellent one in Brentford instead.

From Chiswick to Marylebone

Ragam has been running for decades, serving southern Indian dishes, many from Kerala, in a small dining room near the old Middlesex Hospital. It is not a fancy place by any means, but the food is consistently good, and the price is low, which is no small thing in this era of burgeoning restaurant menu prices.

La Trompette is a regular haunt of mine, having been operating for over two decades in Chiswick. It was on good form at this latest visit, with a particularly nice Mont d’Or savoury souffle dish as a new menu addition. La Trompette is a charming restaurant that Chiswick is lucky to have as its standard bearer.

From Petersham to Piccadilly

This week I return to two of my favourite restaurants in London. The Dysart in Petersham has a very relaxed feel, with widely spaced tables and a real fire in the dining room. The ingredients used are impeccable and the skill of the kitchen, led by a Roux Scholar, is high. I particularly enjoyed a quail dish that was a homage to the one prepared in the grand banquet of the movie Babette’s Feast.

The Ritz is the best restaurant in London in terms of food, as well as overall experience with its glorious 1906 dining room and charming service. The canapes have been tweaked but there are still plenty of tried and tested favourites such as the langoustines a la nage. A terrific restaurant.

In other news, the Michelin UK results were announced. Three stars for Moor Hall and (finally) two stars for The Ritz, as well as Humble Chicken and a pub near Hythe called the Fox and Hide. There was a well-deserved star for Cornus and a curious lack of one for Cocochine. The only real demotions were City Social and Kai. Some other places lost their star but they were places that were closing or had closed.

From Chiswick to Belgravia

Silver Birch in Chiswick offers ambitious food for a local restaurant, with its head chef having a strong culinary background. This time I had the tasting menu, which generally worked well, though with the odd dish that could do with tweaking. Nonetheless, this was a good meal.

Cornus is one of the best openings of 2024 and it continued to shine at my latest visit here. The crab and apple dish is a star and the ingredients used here would shame most London multi-starred restaurants. Its fine service team completes an excellent all-round offering.

From Park Royal to Twickenham

Al Enam is a well-established Iraqi restaurant in Park Royal. Open only for breakfast and lunch, this large establishment was absolutely packed with diners when we visited with some Iraqi friends. I especially enjoyed some delicious falafel, and the food was very reasonably priced. As a bonus, there is a little sweet shop next door selling nice baklava.

Delhi Social is a regular haunt of mine. Dishes such as the vegetable bhajias and the tandoori lamb chops are lovely here, as is the classy methi chicken and, well, just about everything to be honest. Delhi Social is serving some of the best Indian food in and around London. The residents of Twickenham are fortunate indeed.

From Soho to Savile Row

Row on 5 is the new home of Spencer Metzger, the former head chef of the Ritz. It is part if the Jason Atherton empire and a fortune must have been spent on the ultra smart décor and in building a huge wine list. The food did not disappoint, with some genuinely superb dishes, and even though this was early days, there were very few (relative) missteps. This is not a cheap outing but I expect it to be a roaring success.

Yauatcha is the casual sister of Hakkasan and serves all-day dim sum: it is a huge restaurant and is perpetually popular. It is hard to argue with a successful formula, and the steamed dim sum in particular is very good indeed here. Not every dish is quite in this league, but the overall experience is very good.

From Soho to Mayfair

The Dorchester Grill Room offers very classical British cooking, and on this occasion I went on a Sunday lunch where roast dishes were to the fore. Beef tartare (pictured) was lovely, and I enjoyed my roast chicken too, while of course you could have roast beef or other traditional dishes if you prefer.

Sola cooks quite innovative Californian-themed cuisine taking advantage of unusually high-quality ingredients in a small and recently refurbished dining room. A wild salmon canape is an old favourite here, and at this meal we had pre-ordered a top-notch capon, which was a joy to eat.

From Surbiton to Knightsbridge

Patara is a mini-chain of upmarket Thai restaurants that started in Bangkok. The Beauchamp Place branchhas in the past been a reliable outpost of the group, but at this last meal it felt to me as if things were sliding a little.

Koyal is probably the best new Indian restaurant in the London area in the last year. Its head chef has a fine pedigree, and over four visits now I have seen the kitchen settle down into a strong rhythm. Dish after dish here, from the tandoori lamb chops through to the bhajias and the vegetable side dishes, and a delight.

From Fleet Street to Twickenham

Cord is a restaurant associated with the Cordon Bleu cookery school. This place has a low media profile, and so I was genuinely surprised how good the food was here. A venison en croute dish was the star, but there were other excellent dishes including classy canapes and very good lobster raviolo. There were tweaks that could be made but this is well worth your time.

Delhi Social is an excellent Indian restaurant in Twickenham, where the former head chef of Black Salt now cooks. The cooking here is high class, as evidenced by lovely malai chicken tikka and kale and spinach bhajis. This is great value restaurant serving some of the best Indian food in and around London.

I hope that you all had a good New Year, and a happy and successful 2025 to everyone.

Musings on Restaurant Wine Lists and Markups

When writing restaurant reviews, I try to spend some time commenting on the wine list as well as the menu and food, and in recent years I have invested quite a lot of time analysing the lists in some detail, at least when they are available in electronic form. They are often not, and in the case of France a lot of restaurants treat their wine list as a state secret, refusing to share the list in advance or indeed at any point.

In particular, I try to look at the markup levels of the wine, comparing the price of each bottle quoted with the current retail price, which can be looked up on databases like Winesearcher. Restaurants naturally look to make a profit on wine as they do with food, but customers tend to be more sensitive to food prices, as they usually have a sense of what they think that a steak (say) should cost, at least in their eyes. Consequently, restaurants often let the wine list do a lot of the heavy lifting when it comes to profit margins.

In December 2024 I decided to have a look at the general levels of wine pricing in restaurants, using the data that I had gathered across the last few years of reviews. I looked at 278 separate restaurant wine lists, of which 224 were in London, 38 in the UK but outside London and 16 in Europe. I record the price on the list and add service (which these days can vary from 10-20%, though it is mostly 12.5% in the UK) and compare this to the retail price, including VAT. The average markup to retail price was 3.03 times, but there is a lot of variation within that. The London average was 3.07 v 3.04 times for the rest of the UK, which shows less difference than I was expecting. The average abroad was 2.47 times the retail price, even though these were all fine-dining restaurants, including several 3-star Michelin places. This confirms a general sense that London (and the UK in general) is one of the priciest places to drink wine in restaurants.

The cheapest wine list in London is Andrew Edmunds with an average markup of 1.81 times the retail price, and honourable mentions should go to Les 110 de Taillevent at 1.97 and 10 Greek Street at 1.98 times the retail. Noble Rot was exactly twice the retail price on average and Hunan was just 2.15 times retail. Well done to those places.

At the other end of the scale, the highest average markup in London was Endo (4.60), Chez Roux (4.48), Kanesaka (4.38), Kolamba (4.16), Lisboeta (4.15), Alain Ducasse at the Dorchester (4.05) and Daffodil Mulligan (4.00). These are averages but there are some striking variations in markups on specific bottles. A few wines are over 20 times their retail price. If you think these are wild outliers, 14% of all the wine lists analysed had at least one bottle that was 10 times retail price, and 34% had at least one bottle that was 7 times retail price. On the positive side, 38% of lists had at least one wine below its retail price, and 12% had a wine that was less than half its retail price.

Lists with at least one 10 times retail	39	14%
Lists with at least one below retail	104	38%
Lists with at least one 7 times retail	95	34%
Lists with at least one below 0.5 retail	34	12%
Lists with at least one 15 times retail	11	4%

In all cases, the prices were taken from the average of the WineSearcher database at the time of the analysis. Of course, restaurants do not pay full retail price: they might expect to pay 20% or so below that price. Some caveats: the analysis that I have done is largely from the last year or two, but there are some older lists, and wine lists change. In the case of really large lists (110 de Taillevent has over 1,600 bottles) I have not always worked out the retail price of every single wine, but have instead taken a good-sized sample of the list, but in all such cases I will have looked up a significant chunk of the wines on the list. Most of the figures reflect the entire list.

In summary, we get the restaurants that we deserve. If you find some of the markup levels outrageous then you should let the restaurant management know that, and instead go to places that have kindlier profit margins on their wine. As you can see, there is a vast gulf between the kindest and the greediest.

From Soho to Belgravia

Noble Rot Soho is one of three branches of this wine-friendly group. This has one of the most kindly priced wine lists in London, and the menu is appealing. We had a particularly good roast chicken dish with vin jaune and morels (a Nico Ladenis recipe).

Cornus (pictured) is arguably the best opening in London in 2024. I actually had two meals here within a week, and particularly enjoyed a crab and apple starter, and main courses of lamb and pigeon. This is another place with a fairly priced wine list and moderate corkage, a rarity in London.

A very Happy New Year to everyone.

From Twickenham to Surbiton

The Rice Mill in Twickenham is a neighbourhood Thai restaurant. The chef here deviates at times from traditional recipes, but the dishes that we tried were generally very enjoyable. The service was very welcoming and the prices were modest, so I can see why it has become popular amongst the locals.

Koyal is a sister restaurant of Dastaan and where the former head chef of Dastaan now cooks. It serves similar dishes but is a larger restaurant and has a bigger kitchen; for example here they have a charcoal grill and high-quality binchotan charcoal. As well as some stalwart dishes like the excellent bhajias and the spinach curry, I had a lovely lamb chop (pictured) and stone bass tikka. I also had an off-menu experiment of a couple of dishes made with ultra-high quality French Landes chicken. These tasted superb, though sadly they are unlikely to ever appear on a regular menu due to the very high cost of these birds compared to the chickens generally used in Indian restaurants.

It just remains to wish you all a very happy Christmas.

A trip to Liverpool

On this trip to Liverpool, I very much enjoyed Art School, which has an attractive dining room and offers a reasonably priced tasting menu. I am surprised it doesn’t have a Michelin star. Prices were a pleasant change from London.

Half an hour from the city is So-Lo, where Tim Allen has gained a Michelin star for his restaurant in a converted pub. This was a superb meal, using high-grade ingredients that were cooked with real skill. The red mullet dish that I tried was particularly good but the whole meal was classy. A terrific place.

EastZeast is a mini-chain of Indian restaurants that began in Manchester. The one in Liverpool by the docks area is huge, seating 300 people on the ground floor alone. Despite the scale, the food was mostly very good, with just one ordinary side dish but with excellent methi chicken and an unusually wide array of pickles and chutneys.

Rudy’s Neapolitan is a small chain of pizza places that started in Manchester and has three branches in Liverpool. It was good, with a proper pizza oven and a pizza crust that was just what a Neapolitan pizza is supposed to have.

Sultan’s Palace is a traditional Indian restaurant specialising in tandoori dishes. It wasn’t as good as EastZeast but it was a perfectly capable, enjoyable restaurant. It was justifiably busy on the evening that we visited it.

I should also mention Baltic Bakehouse, a bakery that also offers excellent sandwiches and good coffee. This is a nice spot for a simple lunch. The bacon butty here was excellent, as was their toasted cheese sandwich using aged Comte and Cheddar.

From Trafalgar Square to South Kensington

Bibendum has a particularly airy and pretty dining room, and these days also has two Michelin stars with executive chef Claude Bosi at the helm. The restaurant has a relatively new head chef, the previous one having moved to the excellent Brooklands, and my Bibendum meal was rather less consistent than my previous one here. It was a pity to see a combination of increased prices yet with a lowering of ingredient quality in some cases. For example, the duck jelly dish had a £45 supplement, the chicken dish a £75 supplement and even the souffle had a £15 supplement. Yet that lovely duck jelly dish now had a lower-quality caviar that it used to have, so how is such a high supplement justified? There is of course a lot of skill on display here, but high prices (£578 a head with modest wine) should be accompanied by highest quality ingredients and consistency.

Gouqi is a high-class Chinese restaurant just off Trafalgar Square. Its chef has a superb background and the Chinese food here is as good as anything that you can find in London. The technical skill on display here is high and the service is attentive. It is not cheap compared to somewhere in Chinatown, but the results in the plate seem to me to justify the price.

From Belgravia to Mayfair

Murano has been around since Angela Hartnett opened it in 2008 and I had not been for some time. The place has aged well, with some very good dishes including an excellent Amalfi lemon tart.

I also returned to Cornus, which definitely seems like the best London restaurant opening this year. I had another lovely meal, with the kitchen using unusually high-quality ingredients (better than most 3 star places in the capital). Dishes such as the crab and the spaghetti with white truffle were fabulous.

From Charing Cross to Hounslow

The Clermont is a hotel that is literally in Charing Cross station. It has a surprisingly grand dining room in the Victorian era hotel, serving very safe British dishes. Ultimately it was harmless rather than particularly good, with some acceptable dishes but some lazy service and an even lazier wine list.

Crispy Dosa is a small and growing chain of vegetarian Indian restaurants. This branch in Hounslow was bustling and I can see why, as the dosas in particular were excellent and the prices almost absurdly low if you are used to central London. I hope that this chain prospers and expands, preferably to Chiswick.

From Mayfair to Piccadilly

The Rex Deli is related to Cocochine opposite in Bruton place. It is that rarest of things, a bargain in Mayfair. The deli now does an early evening sit down service as well as just selling items, so you can eat the lovely sausage rolls (a bargain at £8, with homemade puff pastry) and other items while drinking a glass of wine. The prices are surprisingly fair, and yet the produce is made in the Cocochine kitchen, which is producing Michelin star-level food.

The Ritz is my favourite London fine dining restaurant, and I have reviewed it many times. I keep returning here for the simple reason that it is the best restaurant in the capital, with food objectively better than any of the multi-Michelin-starred places in London. Add in the glorious 1906 dining room, silky smooth service and prices that these days seem almost moderate by central London standards, and it is the complete package.

London High End Menu Prices

Just for information, here are the prices of the menus at all multi-starred London restaurants, plus a few favourites of mine. In all cases the a la carte choices are estimates by necessity, and of course all these are subject to change. If there are multiple tasting menus then I have shown the priciest one in each case. Nonetheless, it seems interesting to me. The Dysart stands out as the bargain. Amongst the 2 star places, Trivet is the cheapest.

10/11/2024	3 course	tasting	lunch
Alain Ducasse	£250	£285	£250
Ledbury	n/a	£275	£200
Core	£215	£265	n/a
Gordon Ramsay	£180	£260	n/a
Helene Darroze	n/a	£225	£125
Sketch	£225	£225	£225
average	£218	£256	£200

	3 course	tasting	lunch
Ikoyi	n/a	£350	£200
Kitchen Table	n/a	£265	n/a
Story	n.a	£250	£250
Da Terra	n/a	£245	£180
Bibendum	£185	£225	£85
the Clove Club	n/a	£225	£195
A Wong	£140	£220	£140
Alex DIlling	n/a	£215	£215
Brooklands	£165	£205	£65
Dame de Pic	£145	£195	£65
Dinner by Heston	£116	£160	£65
Gymkhana	£90	£140	£60
Trivet	£130	£130	£130
average	£124	£217	£146

	3 course	tasting	lunch
Ritz	£125	£207	£86
Cornus	£95	£155	£55
Dysart	£76	£135	£65
Sola	£80	£220	£59

From Richmond to Chiswick

Mignonette is a new restaurant in Richmond, a French bistro run by a chef with considerable culinary heritage. I happened to have two meals in quick succession there, and the one where the head chef was present was noticeably better than the one where he was not. Nonetheless even the lesser meal was very good, and the general standard of cooking was high even in these early days. As it settles down this is likely to be one of the best dining options in Richmond.

La Trompette is a west London stalwart, serving consistently good food from an appealing seasonal menu, and with an excellent and fairly priced wine list as a bonus. The service is classy here and it really has the whole package. I am lucky to live within walking distance of it.

From Knightsbridge to Marylebone

Lisboeta is the latest venture of Nuno Mendes, who has done a great deal to raise the profile of Portuguese cooking in London over the years. This Charlotte Street restaurant was relaxed and fun to eat at, with some enjoyable dishes. Only a wildly overpriced wine list detracted from an otherwise enjoyable experience.

Dinner by Heston is a major player in the London dining scene, with its two Michelin stars, large capacity and the Heston Blumenthal brand. I have not been here for nine years, and in all honesty I can see why that was the case. Essentially you have two undeniably classy dishes: the meat fruit and the tipsy cake. Nothing else that we tried came close in standard to these dishes, and that is a problem at this pricing level, exacerbated by the long but extortionately priced wine list. Service was good and the elements of tableside theatre were fun, but this is an awful lot of money for what appears on the plate, with nothing in the way of luxury ingredients either.

From Surbiton to South Kensington

Koyal is a new Indian restaurant in Surbiton, an offshoot of Dastaan. It is much larger than Dastaan and despite it being the very first days of service, the food was already superb. I tried quite a range of dishes over two meals, and the quality of the food was terrific in dish after dish. The locals in Surbiton are lucky people.

Daquise is a veteran Polish restaurant in South Kensington, operating since 1947. Although it is not expensive, the food that I tried was rather lacklustre, and the shambolic service and aggressively priced wine list did not add to its appeal. I am generally sympathetic to long-established restaurants as I like a bit of tradition, but such places also need to deliver good food, and to be honest Daquise did not.

A Jaunt to Paris

On a short trip to Paris I tried the latest three-star restaurant Gabriel. It has a lovely dining room in a very smart hotel (I passed David Beckham in the lobby) and it offers a wide variety of menus in terms of both length and pricing. We went for a middle price option and it was certainly very good, with a lovely sand carrot dish and an impressive lobster dish. Canapes were rather lacklustre and dessert was nothing special, so although I enjoyed the meal it is hard to put this in the same bracket as established 3 stars in Paris like Kei.

Two-star Maison Ruggieri is centrally located and is less grand than Gabriel, but the cooking was still of a high standard. The calf sweetbread that I had for my main course was spectacularly good, and the sauces with the dishes were superb. They were happy to bring more of the sauces, which really showed up the standards here in London at present, where most restaurants buy their sauces and then just add an artistic smear to the plate.

From Queensway to Cheltenham

The Park in Queensway is a Jeremy King venture so has the usual vaguely art deco-style room, an appealing menu, well-drilled staff and food that is not quite up to the level of the price. It was packed out, showing that the very experienced and suave Mr King has an extremely shrewd idea of his audience. A lemon tart was the pick of the dishes.

Lumiere in Cheltenham has held a Michelin star for many years, and this was my second time there. The food had actually improved from my previous visit, and we had an excellent all-round meal. A venison main course in particular was outstanding but the overall standard was consistently high. Cheltenham is lucky to have such a restaurant.

From Kensington to Mayfair

Gymkhana was one of the restaurants that really elevated the impression of Indian food in London, and it continues to prosper; indeed it is a struggle to get a reservation here, even at lunch. This was a better meal than I recall from prior visits, and the best dishes were very good indeed. For example, pani puris were as good as I have eaten anywhere, and the tandoori lamb chop was dazzling.

Kitchen W8 has also found a successful formula, serving appealing dishes and offering a wine-friendly list and policy along with charming service. This is a consistent restaurant, and the residents of Kensington have clearly taken to it.

From Crouch End to Willesden

Les 2 Garcons serves French bistro food, but the chef has a dazzling fine dining background, and his class shines through in the cooking. Duck confit with puy lentils was a particularly good dish, and warm foie gras on apple tart with caramelised onion was even better. This is top-class cooking, all in the unlikely setting of Crouch End. The locals are so lucky to have this, and the restaurant is quite hard to book. This is a real hidden gem.

Roka caused quite a stir when it opened on Charlotte Street in 2004. It offered pan-Asian dishes in a smart setting, with an open kitchen where you could watch chefs grilling dishes over charcoal. There is now a global empire of Roka branches, but the original branch is still serving the same style of dishes and is still packed to the gills two decades on. Prawn tempura and chicken skewers were well made, and it is easy to see the appeal of the place.

Kadiris has been serving biryanis and assorted north Indian dishes in Willesden since 1974. I have to say that the biryani is pleasant but unremarkable, but a side dish of aloo gobi was good and an aloo papri chaat starter was really excellent. This all comes at a modest price, and certainly this is a good local restaurant.

From Marlow to Ewell

The Oarsman in Marlow is the new home of Simon Bonwick. The format is a communal twelve-seater table (pictured) upstairs in a pub, with Simon cooking on his own in a minuscule kitchen. This was actually the opening night, and yet already the food was very enjoyable, with a pork dish being the star tonight.

Dastaan serves arguably the best Indian food in and around London, albeit in quite basic surroundings. We had another superb meal here this week, with stalwart dishes like the kale bhajia, tandoori prawns and khumb palak being absolutely top-drawer. Dastaan is a gem of a place and is unsurprisingly popular with the locals. This is very much worth an excursion.

From Canterbury to Orpington

The Fordwich Arms has a riverside setting and a wide range of appealing menus. We enjoyed an excellent meal, just as on my previous visit here. A hake dish was the star of the show, and a very well-made chicken liver parfait dish was also very good. This is a very appealing all round restaurant.

Indian Essence in Orpington is an Atul Kocchar restaurant (he has several others), and a good one it is. The menu is more ambitious than a typical curry house, and the dishes that we tried were well executed. The sea-bream dish was particularly good, as was the naan bread, whoich was lovely.

From Euston to Twickenham

Diwana Bhel Poori has been a regular haunt of mine since I came to London in 1983. Just yards from Euston station, it served south Indian vegetarian snacks at a very low price that belies the level of skill in the kitchen. You can eat chaats and dosas of various kinds, and all for a price of around £20 a head, give or take.

Delhi Social in Twickenham is set in a large former pub complete with garden seating at the back. It serves high-class north Indian food, the chef having previously run the kitchen at Black Salt. We particularly enjoyed excellent tandoori prawns (pictured), kale bhajias and methi chicken at this latest visit.

From Belgravia to Ladbroke Grove

Cornus is the best opening in London so far in 2024, a sister to Medlar and with a talented head chef. The menu is unusually appealing and the ingredient quality is exceptional, with suppliers better than most of London’s multi-starred restaurants. Add a kindly priced, thoughtful wine list and good service and you have a terrific all-round restaurant.

The Pelican in Notting Hill is a gastropub in Ladbroke Grove, with a decent-looking menu that sadly had a number of issues in terms of the dishes that we tried. A guinea fowl and pea dish was good but a dried cube of lemon cake was a dismal dessert, and greasy monkfish scampi did not help, all at a very high price.

From Mayfair to Shepherds Bush

Giulia is a local Italian restaurant that has taken over a site on the Askew Road. The husband and wife team are enthusiastic and the food is generally pretty good, certainly better than you might expect in a local neighbourhood restaurant. The chef makes the pasta (and bread) here from scratch and the focaccia in particular was excellent.

6 Hamilton Place is a restaurant inside a casino, but you can dine there whether or not you have any interesting in gambling. Its chef is Cantonese but the restaurant also serves Lebanese food, in order to accommodate the tastes of its middle Easter gamblers. The place itself is smart and the food is pretty good, with a fairly priced wine list and slick service as a bonus.

From Richmond to Smithfield

Cloth is a quite new restaurant near the old Smithfield Market. The modern British menu read well enough, and the cooking was generally reasonable, but at the end of the day it seemed like a pleasant rather than particularly dazzling experience, with particularly poor acoustics thrown in.

The Dysart is one of my favourite restaurants, with Ken Culhane’s polished cooking getting steadily more precise and refined with each visit. It outshines almost every multi-starred restaurant in the city and yet the prices here are quite moderate given the high quality of ingredients and the considerable technical skill on display.

Hakkasan Mayfair is one of the most consistent restaurants in London, which is pretty remarkable given its considerable scale. The service is slick, the menu is appealing and the execution of the dishes is very good indeed. You pay a price for this of course, but the perpetually busy dining room shows that the formula is correct.

From Hampstead to Chiswick

The Hound is a revamp of a pub site in Chiswick that at one time was the old police station. It is an attractive building with an airy courtyard, but the food in its new incarnation was rather uninspiring. It will probably do all right due to its prime location, but I was hoping for better food.

Ine is that mythical creature that was thought either extinct or never to have existed: a good restaurant in Hampstead. Ine is a Japanese sister of Taku in central London, and served some genuinely good food to me at a wine event hosted here. As well as sushi there are menus for kaiseki and also Japanese pub style dishes at lunch.

La Trompette is an old stalwart of Chiswick and its only Michelin-starred restaurant these days. It serves extremely reliable French food with bonus of a large and kindly priced wine list and friendly service. I enjoyed a very good chicken dish and a pretty strawberry dessert at this visit. Long may it continue.

From Marylebone to East Sheen

Chez Roux at The Langham is the latest restaurant of the Roux family. It offers a comfortable environment and a fairly appealing menu of classical dishes, but there were issues of one sort of another with most of the plates of food that arrived. At this price point, this kind of inconsistency simply should not be happening. A wildly overpriced, short wine list hardly adds to its appeal.

Black Salt is part of the Dastaan restaurant family, which collectively serves some of the very best Indian food in and around the capital. This is a regular haunt, and old favourites such as the kale bhajias and the red pepper chilli prawns were as good as ever. This is a very reliable restaurant with a nice dining room and friendly service. If only more restaurants could deliver value for money like this one.

A Farewell to L'Amorosa

Les 110 des Taillevent seems to fly under the radar, with no obvious effort spent on marketing. Yet it has arguably the best wine list in London, both in terms of its huge scale and its kindly markup levels. The food is not ground-breaking and that is a good thing: instead they serve the kind of French food that people actually want to eat, as was confirmed at my latest visit.

Jamavar is one of the top Indian restaurants in London, with a Michelin star and, more importantly, a seemingly endless supply of returning customers. Despite its scale, the cooking is very consistent, and dishes such as the stone bass tikka and the butter chicken are special.

I went to l’Amorosa for the last time; sadly after a decade the husband and wife team that run the kitchen and front of house respectively, are calling it a day. This is a great shame since Andy Needham is a fine chef and makes perhaps the best risotto in London, amongst other fine dishes. The capital is peculiarly short of genuinely good Italian restaurants and l’Amorosa was my favourite of all of them. Best of luck to Andy and Lynne at whatever they do next.

A Visit to San Sebastian

Ibai was an iconic local restaurant until it closed a few years ago – the toughest reservation in a city packed with highly thought of restaurants. The old basement premises has now been taken over and relaunched, with its new chef/owner trying to stay faithful in spirit to the ingredient-led, simple cooking that characterised the original. Although the cooking execution is not as good as the original, that would be a very high bar to match, and this is still a very good restaurant indeed.

Rekondo is a restaurant with a long history, perched on a hill overlooking the city and blessed with one of the largest wine cellars in the world. Although many of the real bargains have been drunk by the regulars in the wine trade that flock here, there are still some gems tucked away, with extremely old Spanish wines at modest prices. The food is simple and enjoyable, but you come here for the wine.

When in San Sebastian be sure to try some of the pintxos (Basque tapas) to be found in old old town but also in bars scattered across the city. Some of these are pretty popular these days with tourists, such as San Antonio with its unusual version of tortilla, a rival to Bar Nestor’s more traditional version.

From Euston to Notting Hill

The Ledbury in Notting Hill continues to be a popular restaurant with its tasting menu only format now awarded three Michelin stars. I was a regular here pre-Covid when Brett Graham was running the tiny kitchen, but after it reopened in 2022 I had a rather erratic meal. Things seem to have settled down now and the wine listed has reverted to being reasonable value, which it always used to be but was not the case on the reopening. To be honest I still preferred the cooking in the old days, but this was certainly a good meal.

Diwana Bhel Poori has been serving great value vegetarian Indian snacks near Euston station since 1971. The bhel poori, sev poori and other dishes here are well made and tasty, served quickly and at a price that seems like something from another age. It has long been a regular haunt of mine.

From Richmond to Mayfair

Aragawa is a Japanese steak house in Mayfair, related to a famous restaurant in Kobe. This restaurant serves the very top Kobe beef (pictured), flown over from Japan, and cooks it simply and beautifully. The other dishes on the menu are unremarkable but that is hardly the point – the beef is dazzling. So is the price, which is eye-watering, but then this is some of the best beef on the planet.

The Dysart is one of my absolute favourite restaurants in London. It has a gifted chef, it uses lovely ingredients, has charming service and a relaxed atmosphere, all at an affordable price in its context. Each meal that I have there seems to get slightly better. The Dysart serves food that is better than most of the multi-starred restaurants in London. Seek it out.

A Visit to Cordoba

Cordoba is a city with a long history including Roman remains and a very impressive historic quarter. The Grand Mosque (pictured) and the Alcazar are beautiful buildings and the city is quite walkable, though even in early June it was already 34C in the heat of the afternoon.

Noor was recently promoted to three Michelin stars. Its chef has carried out a lot of research into the history of the cuisine of the area, with extensive Arabic influences, though his dishes are very modern. The plating was pretty and the dishes were certainly original, though for me there was a tendency to underseason and to make any spicing almost invisible. It was pleasant enough food, but the very long meal, lasting over four hours, felt rather overworked. There was a fairly priced wine list at least.

Regadera was a much simpler restaurant but in some ways I enjoyed it at least as much, and it was a small fraction of the price of Noor. It offered quite simple dishes like tuna tartare, but based on very good ingredients. Tender beef cheeks were the best dish, and these were genuinely excellent.

From Ealing to Seasalter

L’Oro di Napoli is an excellent Neapolitan-style pizzeria in Ealing, where the pizza base is soft and supple and cooked quickly in a very hot oven. A wide range of toppings is available, and there are a few starters and desserts to round out the menu. The pizza here is unusually good and the restaurant is unsurprisingly packed.

The Sportsman is something of a legend on the British culinary scene, pioneering the use of ultra-local British ingredients, even curing its own ham and collecting salt from the local beach. Owner and founder Stephen Harris could still be found in the kitchen, and there were some very good dishes on this tasting menu, all at an affordable price. Perhaps the cooking does not quite shine quite as brightly as it once did, but this is still a very enjoyable place to eat, and worth the journey to the Kent coast.

All Roads Lead to Rome

On a short trip to Rome I tried Ineo, a fairly new fine dining restaurant in a luxury hotel. The head chef here used to run the kitchen at the late, lamented Apsleys in London and he has certainly not forgotten how to cook. A deceptively simple pasta dish was my favourite part of the meal, but the standard of the savoury courses was high across the entire dinner.

Roscioli is a historic bakery that also sells ham and pasta etc and packs in several tables for lunch and dinner as well. It uses very high-quality ingredients and cooks simple, traditional Roman dishes like cacio e pepe. It is a very popular place these days but the service that I encountered was still very good despite the crowds. If you are looking for authentic Italian food in Rome then this should be high on your list.

From Whitehall to Ewell

Kioku (pictured) is in the Raffles Hotel in the Old War Office in Whitehall. It serves a somewhat unusual mix of Japanese food with Italian, the dishes mostly one or the other rather than being Italian/Japanese fusion. It is very smartly decorated, and although it is hardly a cheap night out, the food was very good indeed, probably better than it really needed to be in this rooftop location. It was already packed just days after opening.

I was unable to keep away from Dastaan after such a good recent meal. I only reviewed it a couple of weeks ago so have not written a fresh review, but the food was every bit as good as on my previous visits here. This is without doubt some of the finest Indian food to be found in and around London.

From Fitzrovia to Hammersmith

The Salutation is a pub in busy King Street, but it serves Thai food. This visit was a rather pleasant surprise as the place did not seem an obvious winner: laminated menus with pictures of the food, a long menu and its pub setting did not scream out authenticity. Yet the dishes that we had were very good, and compared well to some of the other Thai places nearby. An almost entirely Thai customer base suggests that The Salutation is delivering something that meets the standards of Thai locals.

Akoko is one of the clutch of African restaurants in London that have Michelin stars, along with Chishuru and Ikoyi. In Berners Street, the restaurant delivered consistently good dishes with an interesting touch of spice. Just a solitary supplement dish was ordinary, but everything else we tried was very good. The jollof rice in particular was exceptional, literally the best I have ever eaten.

From Trafalgar Square to the South Bank

Gouqi is a smart Chinese restaurant just off Trafalgar Square, home to the gifted chef Tong Chee Hwee, who was chef at HKK and the executive chef of the Hakkasan group. The best dishes here are really classy, such as the exceptional salt and pepper squid and the scallop with prawn dish that we had as a main course. This is not a cheap outing, but you are getting some classy food.

Hannah is a high-end kaiseki restaurant, a rarity in London. It is in an unlikely South Bank location, and maybe that is why it is not better known. The skill levels and ingredient quality are superb, the presentation of dishes (example pictured) is exquisite and the staff are lovely. The standard of dishes starts high and never lets up through the meal. There is a fine sake collection as well as wine.

From Pimlico to Ewell

Grumbles in Pimlico has been running for over sixty years now, a track record that is unusual in the restaurant business. It serves very traditional British dishes, and although the food is decent enough I suspect that its appeal is mainly in the warm welcome of the staff and the cosy atmosphere.

Dastaan in Ewell serves some of the very best Indian food in the London area, with food that is higher in quality than almost all the places in central London that Michelin bestows stars upon. The setting is quite basic and simple but the depth of flavour that the kitchen extracts from its dishes is remarkable.

A Trip to Birmingham

I recently visited Birmingham, which has some quite impressive buildings in its centre (example pictured). Rajdoot is a venerable Indian restaurant in Birmingham that has been operating for decades. It is smartly decorated and the food and service were good, with the slightly high price the only quibble.

Adam’s is a Michelin-starred restaurant that delivered an excellent meal, with highlights including a fine turbot dish. The service was charming and the room was elegant, with an affordable corkage policy as a bonus.

Opheem is a modern Indian restaurant that was recently awarded a second Michelin star. The food was very good, with a particularly impressive pickled potato dish the star for me. This is certainly a restaurant that is a culinary highlight for the city.

From Brentford to Reading

Clays in Reading is a large Indian restaurant whose owners are originally from Hyderabad. We had a really good meal there, the dishes of a high standard. There was a particularly good cabbage bhajia and also an unusually good bhindi in amongst the dishes that we tried.

Bronzo is a Sardinian restaurant that opened recently in Chiswick. The menu features some fairly generic Italian dishes as well as some Sardinian recipes. This is a simple, neighbourhood restaurant but I really enjoyed their tiramisu and the place is inexpensive.

The Watermans Arms in Brentford serves Japanese izakaya food as well as pub staples like fish and chips. I really like their yakisoba noodles, and at this latest visit, a Japanese chicken curry was also nice. This is a very good value place to eat at, and the Japanese dishes are hearty and cooked by the landlord, who lived in Japan for many years.

From South Bank to The Savoy

Jeux Jeux is an okonomiyaki restaurant in the unlikely location of the South Bank. This Japanese savoury pancake is popular in Hiroshima and Osaka and is very well reproduced here, the cooking all done in front of the diners on a large steel hotplate. This was very good value and the whole experience was friendly and fun.

1890 by Gordon Ramsay is located on the first floor of the Savoy Hotel, with a view out over the main entrance. The food is quite classical and generally well made, and the service was particularly good. The issue is the price, which is very high indeed, made worse by the egregiously expensive wine list.

Around Mayfair

The Cocochine serves the rarest of things, an a la carte menu in an upmarket restaurant. It features the cooking of Larry Jayasekara, drawing on his classical culinary training and featuring much higher quality ingredients than are generally seen in London kitchens. Set in a Mayfair townhouse, the cooking is high class the wine list is unusually kindly in its markups. This looks set to be one of the best openings of the year.

Ormer Mayfair is a one-star Michelin restaurant in the basement of the Flemings Hotel. It delivered another very enjoyable meal at this most recent visit, the star dish being a cured mackerel dish with spiced nage. It is a very relaxed environment with very good service and has an appealing menu.

From East Sheen to Piccadilly

Black Salt in East Sheen is the younger sister of Dastaan and generally cooks the recipes of the mothership. There was a superb new dish tonight in the form of stone bass tikka, while classic dishes like the pepper prawns and kale bhajias were as good as ever.

The Ritz is a restaurant that I am constantly drawn back to. It really is the complete package, with its grand 1906 dining room, superb classical cooking based on high-quality ingredients, and slick service to match. A new dish of crab is pictured, and tasted as good as it looks. There is no better restaurant in London.

From Fulham to the South Bank

Hannah (pictured) is a kaiseki restaurant, a rarity in London, located on the South Bank. This is an odd spot for a serious restaurant, but the food is plenty serious. This was the best kaiseki-style food that I have eaten in London, and compares well with many such meals that I have eaten in Japan. There is a fine sake list to go with the food.

Josephine Bouchon is a London take on the bouchons of Lyon, and it does a very fine job of it. Hearty dishes like sweetbreads with morels and salad Lyonnaise are the order of the day here. The food is excellent, the only drawbacks being the tiny tables and the quite sizeable bill.

From Goodge Street to St James

64 Goodge Street is related to the Quality Chop House, and serves bistro-style food with excellent gougeres and a hearty main course of rabbit that I enjoyed. Crepes Suzette was an example of the kind of dessert on offer. Service was very switched on and the wine list had slightly lower than usual markups.

Toba is an Indonesian restaurant from a chef who used to run a food stall in Camden Market. I would highly recommend the beef rendang, which was very good indeed. Other dishes such as the chicken satay were not in that league though they were perfectly pleasant. The restaurant was very busy and had friendly, efficient service.

From Paris to Golden Square

Taillevent in Paris is one of the icons of French cuisine, running since 1946. After once having three Michelin stars, it had a relatively rough culinary patch for a time but has now been restored to two Michelin star status with a new chef. The meal we had was excellent, reflecting the quite classical style of food that characterises the restaurant. A scallop souffle was particularly impressive, as was a fine turbot dish and a whole black truffle baked in pastry.

Bebe Bob is a restaurant in the Bob Bob Ricard stable, serving only roast chicken as a main course. The starters and desserts that we tried were pretty ordinary, but the central roast chicken itself was top-notch. They use Landes chicken from Arnaud Tauzin, a genuinely classy producer, and the bird itself was lovely. It is amazing how much flavour this chicken has as compared to others that you see, even in most high-end restaurants. You are served half a chicken (a whole chicken is shared between two) so maybe just skip the rest of the options and eat this on its own.

From Hammersmith to Southall

Cho Asia is a Putney restaurant serving food with a mix of Thai, Chinese and Indian influences. The head chef is Indian and has a serious pedigree, and to be honest it seemed very odd for him to be knocking out Thai green curry and Chinese noodles when he is capable of producing superb Indian food, as he did at his previous billeting.

Jin Da Thai is a Hammersmith Thai eatery that serves authentic and good value Thai food with service that ranges from chaotic (on my last visit) to marginally grumpy (this visit). It is a simple local place and the dishes that we tried were very pleasant.

We also had a very good meal at The Brilliant, but as I had dishes that I have written about previously I have not bothered to write a repeat review. Suffice it to say that the standard here is as high as ever, and I really enjoyed my fish pakora followed by methi chicken with aloo gobi.

From Clerkenwell to Fitzrovia

Sessions Arts Club (pictured) is set in a historic former courthouse in Clerkenwell and has a striking dining room with very high ceilings, lots of natural light and a rotating art exhibition. It also has a new chef as of a few weeks ago and delivered an enjoyable meal of sharing plates at a recent lunch. A silky truffle risotto was the highlight of the food, but the room is arguably the star.

North Sea is a long-established fish restaurant between Euston and Russell Square. There is a wider menu on offer than a regular chippie, but I enjoyed the classic haddock and chips, which was a cut above what you might expect in London, which has always been oddly short of good fish and chip options.

From Bloomsbury to Bermondsey

Casse Croute is a very Gallic affair, a Bermondsey restaurant serving rustic French food with an all-French wine list. Savoury dishes were hearty and well made, though desserts were a bit of a let-down at this meal. Service was entertainingly French in a gruff kind of way.

Chishuru serves West African cuisine, and delivered a very enjoyable meal with interesting dishes and a touch of spice. The restaurant recently won a Michelin star, and along with Ikoyi and Akoko has raised the profile of this cuisine in the capital, at least to those who crave Michelin recognition.

Trip to Birmingham

Asha’s is part of a multinational chain of over a dozen restaurants owned by a Bollywood singer. The place is large and lavishly decorated and the food was quite good, with some particularly nice tandoori prawns,

Chung Ying is the oldest Chinese restaurant in Birmingham, a vast cavernous pace with a huge menu and quite capable cooking. Service was friendly and the price was very fair, a real steal when compared with London.

Simpsons (whose dining room is pictured) is a Michelin-starred restaurant in a rather grand old building, the menu being quite appealing. The food was good and there was a quite modest corkage charge policy. For me, the best dish was an unusual beetroot dish with sorrel and wasabi.

From Acton to Mayfair

The Mount Street Restaurant in Mayfair has a very appealing menu and a large dining room with two whole floors of additional private rooms, all adorned with very expensive art. The food was mostly quite capable, and although the prices were high it was noticeable that the place was completely packed on a midweek evening, at a time when many fancy restaurants seem to be struggling.

Stones in Acton was the highest-rated London chippie in a recent national fish and chip shop competition, and it is indeed pretty good. The chips were unusually crisp, the haddock was nicely cooked and there were little details like the unusually classy imported German gherkins.

A more up-market contrast to fish and chips in Acton was a tasting menu at The Ritz, and it was particularly fine this week. A new crab dish (pictured) was dazzling and old favourites like the duck liver ballotine and the langoustines a la nage were as good as ever. Prices have nudged up here as they have everywhere, but you experience top-quality food and service here in sumptuous surroundings.

From Caceres to Madrid

Atrio is a restaurant in the pretty town of Caceres (pictured) in western Spain that recently gained a third Michelin star and is noted for its vast wine cellar, with over 4,000 different wines listed on its huge list. The tasting menu featured the local ham in some form in every single dish, which I am not convinced was a great idea as some dishes felt quite contrived. It was all pleasant enough but at these prices, I was hoping for something more.

Galaxia was a place that we stopped off at for lunch on a long road trip to Atrio. My expectations were fairly low but this was much too high a bar. The meal we had was laughably bad, with some real culinary horrors.

Lhardy is a historical restaurant in Madrid that dates back to 1839. Although its cooking is relatively unambitious and traditional it was thoroughly enjoyable, with a very good beef Wellington and a wine list full of bargains.

Back in the UK, the Michelin Guide 2024 was announced. 3 stars for the Ledbury, 2 stars for Opheem (in Birmingham) and Gymkhana, and also for Terre in Ireland, where I went quite recently. Two stars for Brooklands, which seems fair to me, and also Trivet. In London, there were stars for Dorian, Humo, Akoko, Mountain, 1890, Pavyllon (about right), Sushi Kanesaka (a bit mean), Aulis (fair), Chisuru, Ormer and Humble Chicken. Both Hakkasans lost their star, which is hard to grasp since it is arguably the most consistent restaurant in London - either it should have a star or not, but nothing has changed there in the last year to warrant a demotion. Barrafina lost its star (overdue) as did Leroy (wildly overdue). As ever, Michelin's decisions were a mix of the sensible and the incomprehensible.

From Teddington to Lisbon

Red Koyla is a pleasant neighbourhood Indian restaurant in Teddington. There was one particularly good dish (a black dhal) but also others that were decent but could be improved in various ways. Still, this is a perfectly nice local restaurant.

On a short visit to Lisbon I ate at Cura, a Michelin-starred modern restaurant in the Ritz hotel. The food was skilfully executed and used good quality local ingredients, as well as having particularly good service and a friendly kitchen team (pictured). There were some clever dishes and the whole experience was very enjoyable.

Next week I will review some restaurants in Spain.

From Brentford to Mayfair

Atelier Robuchon in Mayfair is the return to London of this up-market dining group, who used to have a venue in Covent Garden. Atelier Robuchon is a sprawling global empire these days, but the standards here are high. We had exceptionally good starters (caviar imperial pictured) and a gorgeous bread basket that in itself was a thing of beauty. Other dishes were not quite in the league of the starters but still good, and service was meticulous and the menu very attractive. This is a finely honed formula and will doubtless do well.

Sam’s Waterside in Brentford is the sister to Sam’s Riverside in Hammersmith. It has the same formula of a smart room with a view over the Thames, friendly staff and an appealing menu. This isn’t a fine dining destination, but it should prosper given its excellent location, especially when the warmer weather returns.

From Ruislip to Hammersmith

Faber (pictured) in Hammersmith is a new seafood restaurant that seems to get quite decent produce, though the cooking could be improved in some areas. It is a pleasant enough neighbourhood restaurant, but not really a destination one.

The Breakspear Arms in Ruislip serves Indian food in large quantities at a modest price, and is named after the only ever English Pope, Nicholas Breakspear. In his brief time as pope, he gave Ireland to the British.

From Twickenham to Hyde Park Corner

Canton Blue (pictured) is a very swish Chinese restaurant in the luxurious Peninsula Hotel near Hyde Park Corner. No expense has been spared in the décor, and the service was lovely, while the food was very good but for me it didn’t quite dazzle as I had hoped at this quite high price point.

I returned to Delhi Social in Twickenham, the new home for the former head chef of Black Salt. This restaurant has really hit the ground running, and the standard of the cooking is very high indeed. Over two visits I have now tried much of the menu, and Delhi Social is highly recommended.

From Twickenham to Soho

Sola in Soho has recently had a significant refurbishment, greatly expanding the kitchen and wine storage and much improving the décor of the dining room. The distinguishing feature of this restaurant is its care to seek out really top-quality ingredients, and this aspect always shines through here in the cooking.

Le Salon Prive in Twickenham has a classically trained chef/owner, and serves food that is better than you might expect in such a neighbourhood setting. At this visit the star dish was pigs trotters made in the style of Pierre Koffmann, for whom the chef had worked for several years. Be aware that this dish was a special pre-order, and not on the usual menu.

I also had a very enjoyable at my local l’Amorosa, though as I have already written previously about the excellent risotto and wild boar ragu there, I have not written a fresh review.

From East Sheen to St James

Kaalika is a fairly new Indian restaurant in East Sheen that delivered some very enjoyable dishes at my meal. There was an especially good sev puri starter and a very enjoyable methi chicken dish. This part of London is really spoilt for good Indian food, with Black Salt just down the road.

Noble Palace is a smart Chinese restaurant in St James that is flexible in its menu, making just about any dish that you want provided you give them sufficient notice. At the meal today we had beggar’s chicken and dong pao pork via a pre-order, as well as regular dishes such as dim sum. The standard varied a bit throughout the meal, but the service was charming and the best dishes were quite capable.

The Ritz is my favourite high-end dining spot in London, and my latest meal here did not disappoint. As well as long-running favourites such as duck liver ballotine and langoustines a la nage, we enjoyed lovely sika deer and some excellent new desserts.

Happy New Year to everyone!

From Hammersmith to Richmond

Indian Zing is a long-established restaurant in Hammersmith. I had not been for quite some time after one rather lacklustre experience here several years ago, but it was back on form at this visit, with several very pleasant dishes.

Core is one of London’s three-star Michelin restaurants, and there is no doubting the technical skills of the kitchen. The culinary execution of the dishes here always seems pretty faultless, and I just wish that the restaurant would up its ingredients game a little. For example at this meal we had Dutch sweetbreads and a turbot fillet from a fairly small fish, as examples of dishes that could have had top of the line ingredients rather than merely good ones. A genuinely world class restaurant on the continent such as Christian Bau’s three star establishment shows what can happen when you marry top-class technical skills with really luxurious, no-compromise ingredients.

The Dysart is producing terrific food at the moment, and at this meal we particularly enjoyed a fine scallop dish, a lovely dish of sika deer with a fabulous sauce, as well as old favourites such as the sea bream in champagne sauce with ginger. It was interesting having this meal within a couple of days of Core. The ingredients at The Dysart seemed to be of higher quality and the skill of the kitchen in no way less. Dysart’s out-of-the-centre location means that it does not get the attention that its cooking deserves. For me, this is one of the very best restaurants in London.

Wishing you all a very happy Christmas!

From Twickenham to Smithfield

St Barts is a Michelin-starred restaurant next to St Bartholomew’s Hospital, and with a lovely view out onto a courtyard and the historic buildings of the area (pictured). The tasting menu format restaurant produced a good meal on this visit, the highlight being a lovely scallop dish.

Delhi Social is the new home of the former head chef of Black Salt. Along with the former manager their they have struck out on their own in a former pub in Twickenham. The menu is very familiar to those who frequented Black Salt, and the standard of cooking was high during my visit, which was just the fourth day of operation for the restaurant. Residents of Twickenham are lucky to have such a place.

From Cavendish Square to Acton

Tokri is a new Indian restaurant in Acton from a chef who runs a food company supplying many top Indian restaurants across the capital. The food at this meal was a little erratic, but the best dishes were very good indeed, such as classy stone bass tikka and a fine methi chicken dish. It is certainly worth a look if you are in the area.

Les 110 de Taillevent (pictured) is one of those restaurants that has been around for years and yet somehow seems under the radar. This is odd because the food is very good and the wine list is the best in London, both in terms of its vast coverage and also its modest markups, with many pricier bottles below their retail price.

The Old and New of Madrid

I had a brief trip to Madrid and had time for just two meals. I thought it would be interesting to sample an up-and-coming new place and contrast this with a venerable institution.

Araia is achingly hipster, with a dark dining room, eclectic menu and a mostly natural wine list. I had some trepidations about this place when I saw the somewhat oddball menu but in reality, the food was very enjoyable, and the owner, who runs the front of the house, was a real charmer.

El Pescador (pictured) has been around for nearly five decades and serves seafood, with a proud display of fish and shellfish in the window. The cooking is simple but the produce being used is very good, and prices are fair. As a bonus, there are plenty of bargains on the decidedly old-fashioned wine list.

From Hyde Park to Euston

A couple of opposites of the London dining scene this week, from the new and shiny to the old and cheap.

Brooklands is on the top floor of The Peninsula Hotel, a billion-pound extravaganza of a hotel where the phrase “no expense spared” is for once quite accurate. Brooklands has a fine, airy dining room (pictured) with a view over Hyde Park and a former head chef of Bibendum running the kitchen. The food that I tried was genuinely classy, with a superb celeriac “risotto” and a sophisticated apple dessert as two of the highlights.

Diwana Bhel Poori has been around since the 1970s, a simple vegetarian café just by Euston station, serving south Indian snacks. The pricing has always been low and seems especially so in this day and age, yet the dishes are carefully balanced and are genuinely tasty – the bhel poori itself is top notch. You can eat well here for £15 a head, and that is not something that you can say about many restaurants these days

From Marylebone to Chelsea

LAVO London is a glitzy and very large Italian restaurant in a Marylebone Hotel. The food was decent enough but the pricing was distinctly ambitious given the level of cooking, and the service was well-meaning but rather flaky at our table. This is very much a place to be seen, the kind of restaurant that the Sex in the City girls would have visited if only they were in London rather than New York, where in fact the original LAVO is based.

The flagship Gordon Ramsay restaurant in Chelsea sails serenely on, offering fairly classical food with a kitchen that has plenty of technical skill. This meal was a touch better than my previous one here, with particularly good scallop and venison dishes and a lovely tarte tatin (pictured).

From Piccadilly to Park Lane

The Dorchester Grill serves an a la carte menu of classical dishes, so bucks the trend for no-choice-tasting menus. We had a good whole roast chicken with little chicken pies on the side, and an array of canapes. Given that this is in a posh hotel in Park Lane, it is possible to eat here without breaking the bank, though if you indulge in the wine list then that may change.

The Ritz is my favourite fine-dining London restaurant. I had another lovely meal there, with a particular highlight being Bresse chicken cooked en vessie i.e. in a pig bladder. The presentation of this adds some theatre and, more importantly, the bird itself tasted great, enhanced by some shaved white truffles. The other dishes were lovely too, including some classics and a new lobster dish, along with a Mont Blanc for dessert.

From Richmond to East Sheen

The cooking at The Dysart just seems to steadily improve with each visit. We had a particularly fine meal there this week, with a gorgeous farfalle pasta dish with white truffles just one of the highlights. The Dysart outperforms many if not most of the multi-starred restaurants in central London.

There is a new head chef at Black Salt but the menu is unchanged and, based on this visit, the standard of cooking is much the same – indeed I actually preferred the aloo gobi under the new regime. Black Salt remains one of the best Indian restaurants in London.

From Mayfair to Ravenscourt Park

Humo is an a la carte grill restaurant with a somewhat separate restaurant Abajo in its basement (pictured) that offers a tasting menu, with up to ten diners sitting around an open kitchen. The dishes were a bit erratic, as often happens with tasting menus, but there were a couple of genuine high points.

L’Amorosa is the neighbourhood restaurant that everyone would like but very few have. In this case it is a chef who earned a Michelin star for many years, now cooking simpler food but with the same skill. In particular, the saffron risotto this week was genuinely top drawer, silky rich and gorgeous.

From Kensal Rise to Notting Hill

Harvest is an unassuming pub in Kensal Rise, a younger sister to nearby Parlour. As with its older sibling, the food is altogether better and more interesting than you might expect. For one thing, they are able to take advantage of the fabulous smoked salmon that is produced on the roof of Parlour. If you are in this area then Harvest is well worth a look.

I also enjoyed Empire Empire, a new Indian restaurant in Notting Hill that has produced some very good dishes including proper biryani and a particularly impressive bhindi. London really is in a golden age of Indian restaurants at the moment. When I first moved to London there was The Bombay Brasserie for fine dining and otherwise you mostly had to choose between Westbourne Grove and the basic pleasures of the places on Brick Lane. These days there is a plentiful supply of very good Indian food to be had, whether at posh places in Mayfair or in the suburbs.

From Maidenhead to Piccadilly

The Dew Drop Inn is the latest home of the Bonwick family, presided over by Simon Bonwick, with his son Charlie now doing the bulk of the cooking and his daughter India running the front of house. It offers surprisingly ambitious old-school French cooking, with proper sauces, bread made from scratch and very good ingredients. A delightful little place.

The Criterion in Piccadilly Circus has had a number of restaurant iterations in its premises over the years. The constant has been the magnificent historic dining room (ceiling pictured), one of the grandest in London. This now houses a Masala Zone, the mid-range offering of a successful London restaurant group. This particular Masala Zone was of a higher standard than I recall from the last meal I had at one of the other venues. As well as capable Indian food the service was really classy, and the prices are modest by central London standards.

In other news, there was an article in The Fence magazine about, well, me.

From Smithfield Market to Piccadilly

Bouchon Racine (pictured) was a very pleasant experience, with simple classic dishes such as chicken liver terrine and cote de boeuf very well executed and served in a pleasant room above a pub. The combination of well-made food, affordable prices and an appealing menu has contributed to the success of this restaurant.

The Ritz continues to sail serenely onwards, serving impeccable classical French food in its fine 1906 dining room. A newish dish at this meal was one of heritage potatoes and oyster, and very successful it was too. There is real theatre here in the tableside preparation of the Anjou pigeon, with a sauce made using the juices of the bird’s carcass pressed in a silver duck press, the sauce flambeed beside the table. The Ritz is serving the best food in London at present.

From East Dulwich to St James

Kokum in East Dulwich is backed by Sanjay Gour of Dastaan and cooks mostly dishes from the Dastaan stable, such as the dazzling kumbh palak dish. We tried a lot of different dishes at our visit and the standard was extremely high, with superb tandoori lamb chops and raan utthapam some star dishes. Kokum is already cooking some of the best Indian food in the capital.

House of Ming is in the Taj hotel in St James, a large restaurant split into lots of little sections so it does not immediately give an impression of its scale. It serves fairly conventional Chinese dishes in a very smart setting and with classy service. The dim sum dumplings were unusually delicate, as were the noodles that we tried, and indeed the food was of a quite high standard throughout. It was not as expensive as some of its competitors either.

From White City to St Johns Wood

The Three Falcons in St Johns Wood is a pub with rooms serving Indian food. We had one particularly excellent okra dish, though the general standard was pleasant rather than anything remarkable, and the prices seemed oddly high.

Endo at The Rotunda serves top notch sushi in a penthouse location overlooking the Westfield shopping centre in White City. The seafood, mostly from Cornwall, is impeccable, and other ingredients are classy too, like the N25 caviar used. This is not a cheap outing but the menu is generous in length and there is no denying the high level of skill in the making of the sushi, which accounts for the nightmarishly difficult reservation availability.

From Elephant and Castle to Chiswick

Kachori is a smartly decorated new restaurant in Elephant and Castle, opposite a little park and amongst sets of recently built blocks of smart flats – the area has certainly changed in recent years. The meal we ate was a little erratic, with a couple of genuinely excellent dishes but also some overcooked prawns, which was a pity. Despite some ups and downs this was still clearly a restaurant with some talent in the kitchen.

I also tried a couple of restaurants that are local to me. High Road Brasserie is a wildly successful all-day restaurant in Chiswick, part of the Soho House group. It serves crowd-pleasing dishes in pleasant surroundings at prices that are just a bit too high for what appears. This doesn’t seem to trouble the locals one bit, as the place is full day and night. Another Chiswick institution is Annapurna, open since 1970 an old-fashioned neighbourhood Indian restaurant. In truth the food is pretty ordinary, but the service is pleasant and if nothing else it serves as a reminder of just how much Indian food in London has changed in the last couple of decades.

I was sorry to hear of the death of Nico Ladenis at the age of 89. A self-taught chef who earned three Michelin stars, Nico was a larger than life character and a gifted cook. His cookbook "My gastronomy" is a classic, and one that I have cooked many dishes from. I had many superb meals at his restaurants, including Nico at 90 on Park Lane, which was maybe the first fine dining restaurant in London to introduce the idea of a tasting menu. Rest in peace Nico.

From Docklands to Mayfair

Benares serves modern Indian cuisine in a swish Mayfair setting. For a long time, I was not particularly of a fan of the place, even when it had its Michelin star. However, after the loss of the star the restaurant recruited a talented chef called Sameer Taneja, who regained the star and who serves innovative and very well executed food. This is one of the Indian restaurants contributing to quite a golden age for Indian cuisine in London at present.

Melusine is a seafood restaurant in St Katherines Dock , and was somewhere I really wanted to like more than I did. The waterside location is lovely, the atmosphere relaxed, and who doesn’t like good seafood? Sadly the culinary execution was mixed, to say the least, and the price was high for what appeared. A shame.

From Belgravia to Heathrow

Cantinetta Antinori is the first UK opening of a small group of restaurants run by the Antinori wine family from Tuscany. The Belgravia location is smartly decorated and the staff were particularly charming when we visited. The food is good and the only real caveat is the price, which is high, and with the wine list being very aggressively marked up. This is all the more a pity as only Antinori wines feature, so if a wine is, say, 3.5 times retail price than imagine what the true mark up to their cost price must be, given that there is no importer or wholesaler to deal with. Other than the price it was a very enjoyable experience.

Madhu’s Heathrow is the sister of Madhu’s in Southall. It is a smartly decorated, sprawling affair serving a broadly similar Punjabi menu to the other restaurants in the group. The robata grill here means that some dishes have a pleasing smokiness from the charcoal, such as the tandoori lamb chops. The cooking is consistently good here and there are plenty of local Asian families that eat here in addition to passing Sheraton hotel guests.

From East Sheen to Soho

I had another couple of lovely meals at Black Salt in East Sheen, sister of the wonderful Dastaan and considerably easier for me to get to. The menu here is much the same as at Dastaan and does change from time to time. For example, there was a tasty new fried spiced potato called aloo tuk, and a very good mushroom curry flavoured with black truffle. The established favourites are consistently good, such as the tandoori lamb chops, the kale bhajias and the red pepper prawns, amongst other dishes.

Speedboat Bar in Soho (pictured) is a very well marketed Thai restaurant that has plenty of positive reviews. I have to say that I was unclear as to why this was based on my lunch here, which was distinctly ordinary and far from cheap. Maybe they were having a bad day, though I could not help noticing that both the executive and head chefs were absent. This should not really matter (it was also true of my latest two Black Salt meals and there was nothing wrong with those) but it clearly can affect things at less well run places.

From Chiswick to Mayfair

Silver Birch is a neighbourhood restaurant that has acquired a chef with a very good background from The Barn, the casual sister of two star Michelin Moor Hall. The food is definitely a notch up over the previous kitchen head, and Silver Birch is becoming a very useful addition to the Chiswick dining scene.

Hakkasan Mayfair runs like a Swiss watch despite its vast scale, the service always slick and the standard of the dishes remarkably consistent. This is not cutting edge food and nor is it trying to be, but it delivers to a high standard, with even simple dishes like bak choi being very carefully cooked. Of course, most people coming here will order something pricier, and there are luxury ingredients aplenty should you wish.

From Park Lane to Burchetts Green

Pavyllon (pictured) is the London opening of Yannick Alleno, Parisian star chef and restaurant empire builder. Pavyllon is in Park Lane and was suitably smart, with excellent service and a couple of genuinely good dishes. However, it was also rather erratic, with some dishes seeming to be over-worked in an effort to show originality. The wine list was extortionate even by Mayfair standards, and the corkage policy was the kind that Satan would devise. The food was objectively quite good on average, but at this price it is hard to heartily recommend.

The Crown at Burchetts Green has been under new ownership for a while now, and this was my second meal there. The food was excellent, with consistently good dishes, an appealing menu, nice service and affordable prices. It was interesting comparing this meal with Pavyllon, where the standard was objectively similar on average, but Pavyllon was more than triple the price.

Indian Restaurants Old and New

Roots in Teddington (pictured) serves Indian dishes varying from the familiar to the more exotic e.g. goat biryani or frogs legs with curry leaves. We enjoyed a superb tandoori prawn dish, excellent kumbh palak (spinach and mushrooms) and classy chicken biryani, amongst other dishes. South west London has a stack of classy Indian restaurants now (Dastaan, Black Salt, Chatora, Saffron Summer) and Roots is a fine addition.

A stalwart of the London Indian restaurant scene is the Brilliant in Southall, which has been running since 1975. It was packed with Indian families on the night of our latest visit to a restaurant that I have been a regular diner at since 1991. Consistently cooked Punjabi dishes include excellent methi chicken, very good chaats and lovely romali roti bread amongst other things, all at a modest price.

A Visit To Milan

Enrico Bartolini is a 3 star Michelin restaurant located in the Milan museum of culture. We had a wildy erratic meal, with some genuinely good dishes including some lovely beef but also some pretty weird food interspersed with the odd technical error. This was miles off a 3 star meal as far as I was concerned.

Much better was two-star Michelin D’O in the western outskirts of Milan. Tucked away in a kind of village square, the smartly designed restaurant produced a lovely meal that was comfortably worth its two-star rating, the highlight being a dazzling rice dish.

The meal that I enjoyed most of all was at Il Luogo di Aimo e Nadia, a veteran restaurant of Milan (pictured) that is as old as me and held two Michelin stars for decades. Highlights include a superb quail dish and also a fabulous rice dish. The food here is much more traditional than the other two restaurants mentioned above, but ingredients and technique here are impeccable.

I also fitted in a good pizza at an outlet of a Naples pizzeria, Gino Sorbillo Lievito Madre.

Visiting Northern Spain

Cenador de Amos is a restaurant near Santander that gained its third Michelin star quite recently. It is set in a lovely old building, and we experienced particularly good service there. The food could be a bit tricksy, such as the “pigeon heart” which is actually no such thing, but the ingredient quality was high and the cooking was of a good standard.

Kaia Kaipe in the fishing port of Getaria is legendary for its turbot that is grilled over charcoal in the open air. It is also noted for its spectacular 40,000 bottle wine cellar, many of the bottles being priced well below their current market value. This is a lovely spot, with a fine view as a bonus.

Gandarias in San Sebastian has both a pintxos (tapas) section where people stand and eat snacks, and a sit-down restaurant. The latter has an excellent wine list, and produced some lovely prawns from Huelva, noted for the sweetness. Otherwise, the dishes were nothing special, and the pintxos are in many ways the better bet, having tried both options.

From Egham to Park Lane

The Tudor Pass is the new incarnation of The Tudor Room, with a new chef and a fresh menu. We had a lovely meal, with an exceptionally good tomato dish (pictured) as well as excellent French quail and black bream dishes, as well as good desserts. This was an impressive meal.

Sushi Kanesaka is a venture outside Japan of the restaurant of the same name in Tokyo. In the posh Dorchester Hotel 45 Park Lane, it has just 13 seats and is certainly not cheap, charging £420 for the sushi. This is more than in Tokyo and it is hard to objectively suggest that is good value, but what is true is that the sushi experience was extremely good, every bit as good as its sister in Tokyo.

The Ritz turned out another really lovely meal, with a new potato and oyster dish and a new honey and lemon tart, in amongst several regulars like the pressed Anjou pigeon and the duck liver ballotine. I have written about this many times, but the meal that I ate here was better than anything I have eaten at the current clutch of London 3 star places, so Michelin really is being peculiar in its assessment.

I also had another excellent meal at Black Salt, but I mostly tried dishes there that I have written about multiple times, so did not write a fresh review. Suffice it to say that Black Salt is serving some of the very best Indian food in London.

From St Pancras to The Strand

Ikoyi has intriguing cuisine, being influenced by African cooking but using high grade ingredients that are normally found in top French restaurants. The chef is a former banker and swapped careers, and there are some intriguing and delicious dishes. All this comes at a price though, with the dinner now weighing in at £300 for the tasting menu.

The Midland Grand Dining Room took over the space that was The Gilbert Scott in St Pancras. It is one of the grandest dining rooms in London, and now has some very good food, with Patrick Powell running the kitchen. Prices are moderate by London standards and the menu was very appealing.

This is the two thousandth restaurant that I have reviewed on my website, of which 847 are outside the UK, and 1005 are in London.

A Visit to Cork

Terre is a fine dining restaurant in a resort hotel in the countryside, the tasting menu having some very good dishes in what was quite a theatrical dining experience. The staff that we encountered were particularly good, and the restaurant easily deserves its Michelin star.

The Cliff House is a restaurant with some culinary history, with the kitchen now in the safe hands of Tony Parkin. The setting is spectacular and we enjoyed a lovely meal here, with high quality ingredients including some shellfish caught within sight of the dining room. The chef has a penchant for use of spices, which appeals to me, and he does this very well, all while respecting the flavours of the local produce.

Quinlan’s Seafood was a bustling place in the centre of Cork, producing some pleasant fish and shellfish dishes and having quite efficient service. It clearly has found its market judging by how very busy it was on a Monday night.

Gallaghers is a gastropub that we went to after another reservation fell through at short notice (not one but two places cancelled on us due to staff shortages). It was a basic enough place serving quite a good beef pie, though service left something to be desired.

Cork is a pretty city and the countryside and coastline nearby is very attractive. The photo in the blog is a little castle (now a residential property) near Cobh, a pretty coastal village about an hour from Cork. If you fancy a jaunt then you can fly to Cork direct from Heathrow on Aer Lingus.

Munich Continued

Alois is the latest restaurant based in the historic Dallmayr department store in Munich. Over a lengthy tasting menu there were some very good dishes, though the kitchen seems keen on modern shrubbery based desserts, and service was rather erratic for a two Michelin star restaurant.

Tantris is a restaurant with a great history in Germany, now under its fourth head chef. It seems in very safe hands based on the evidence of the superb meal that we ate there, with dish after lovely dish using top class ingredients and impeccable technique. The dazzling wine cellar here is a bonus.

A Trip to Munich

On a trip to Munich I tried a number of restaurants, which I review this week and next. First was Tantris DNA, a slightly more casual version of the historically important Tantris restaurant. This serves a classy a la carte menu of French dishes, including a terrific white asparagus dish and lovely langoustines.

Tohru is a Japanese restaurant in the oldest townhouse in Munich, serving omakase style food reflecting the partly Japanese origins of its head chef. The food and service were lovely, and Tohru deserves its two Michelin stars.

Even better was JAN, the new restaurant of chef Jan Hartwig, who previously earned three stars at Atelier. I had this place booked several months ago (before Michelin Germany 2023 was published), which was fortunate, as just before we headed off to Munich it was given three stars by Michelin just months after opening. For once, Michelin got this one right, as we had a fabulous meal.

From Petersham to Piccadilly

The Dysart continues to excel, its combination of appealing menu, high grade ingredients, technical skill, fairly priced wine list and charming service making it one of the most appealing overall dining experiences in the capital.

The Ritz continues to deliver arguably the best fine dining experience in London. At this latest meal stand-out dishes included Bresse pigeon and a new strawberry dessert, while the classics such as duck liver ballotine and langoustines a la nage were as lovely as ever. I went with an American chef, who at the end of the meal was incredulous that the restaurant did not have three Michelin stars.

I also have a very good meal at l’Amorosa, but as I have already covered the dishes in previous meals, I have not written a new review. Suffice it to say that this little restaurant serves some of the best Italian food in London at present.

From White City to Shoreditch

Endo at The Rotunda is the closest that you can find in London to a Tokyo sushi experience. The meal unfolds at a wooden counter with a dozen diners, the sushi being skilfully made in front of you by chef Endo. The fish used is mostly caught in Cornwall and all the ingredients used here are top notch, from the rice to the freshly grated wasabi. To be sure it is not a cheap night out, but this is one of the toughest reservations to score in the capital.

Zapote (pictured) is a Mexican restaurant in Shoreditch that had some very positive press reviews, but sadly the reality was distinctly underwhelming. A noisy room was the least of the problems, with mediocre and in some cases downright misjudged dishes at surprisingly high prices. This was a place that I will be avoiding.

From Ascot to Trafalgar Square

Goqui is a smart new upmarket Chinese restaurant just off Trafalgar Square, with the kitchen headed by the former executive chef at Hakkasan. Not surprisingly there were some similarities to the kind of dishes served at that very successful restaurant, so we enjoyed excellent Peking duck and lovely salt and pepper squid.

Woven is the rebranded flagship restaurant at Coworth Park, where Adam Smith cooks classical food using high quality ingredients. We had an excellent meal with one really exceptional turbot dish (pictured). Coworth Park has a lovely setting with food to match.

From Cavendish Square to Hampstead Heath

110 des Taillevent in Cavendish Square serves fairly classical French food, with dishes like beef tartare and pear tarte tatin. The food is a capable enough, but what is more interesting is the wine list. Not only is the selection huge, with getting on for two thousand separate labels, but the markups are unusually low by London standards. If you move up the price point then you will find many, many wines below their retail price, in some cases far below their market value. If you are a wine lover with a bit of money then it is like being a kid in a candy store.

The Bull and Last is a gastropub in Kentish Town, situated near Hampstead Heath. It serves pub classics like haddock and chips, but also slightly more ambitious dishes. It has particularly good service and a nice view out over the greenery of the heath.

From Hammersmith to Bray

Thai 101 Kitchen is one of a clutch of capable Thai restaurants in Hammersmith – others are Jin Da Thai and Sugarcane. I was impressed by a crisp sea bass dish and good pad Thai and tom yum goong, amongst other dishes. It is an enjoyable neighbourhood restaurant at a fair price, a rarity in these days of high food inflation.

The Waterside Inn is an icon of the British dining scene, located on an attractive part of the Thames with weeping willows to view from the dining room. The cooking is classical, and although it has retained its three Michelin stars for decades, my previous few visits had been somewhat lacklustre. There is a now a new (joint) head chef in the form of Adam Wright, who based on this meal has definitely had a positive impact. A red mullet dish in particular was superb, and although the bill here is always going to be high at least now the cooking shows signs of moving in a good direction.

From Baker Street to Mayfair

Taku is a high-end sushi restaurant in Mayfair, the sister of one in Paris. It made waves when it opened due to its £380 “luxury” menu option, though I went for a much cheaper £130 option that is available at lunch. I found the sushi to be very good and the ingredients suitably excellent, with the non-sushi dishes offered being very good indeed. Taku is very expensive but it does deliver a classy experience.

Royal China Club is a large venue with numerous private dining rooms. It has a vast menu with an emphasis on luxury ingredients like abalone, with lobsters awaiting their fate in a series of large tanks near the entrance. The food is reliable and enjoyable, with classic dishes like gai lan being carefully cooked.

Taku was the thousandth London restaurant that I have reviewed. There are currently 1,986 restaurants reviewed globally, some multiple times (2,616 reviews in all).

From Maidenhead to Park Lane

Alex Webb on Park Lane is a smartly decorated new restaurant with a chef who has worked in some high-end kitchens. However the meal that we were served was erratic, with a very good venison tartare contrasting with lacklustre Dover sole and outright disappointing mackerel. The best thing about the meal was the charming waitress.

Much more enjoyable, and at half the price, was The Dew Drop Inn near Maidenhead. This is the new home of Simon Bonwick, who cooks alone in the kitchen, conjuring up very flavourful classical French dishes. This was a joy, with the fish soup in particular a masterclass in delivering deeply flavoured, lovely food.

From Twickenham to Surbiton

Nay Thai is a well-established Thai restaurant in Surbiton that seems popular with the locals based on the packed dining room when we went. The food was harmless enough, but the spicing was rather simplistic, with a chilli kick but little in the way of complexity from multiple spices that characterises the best Thai cooking.

Tsaretta Spice in Twickenham is tucked away down an pedestrianised street and was actually better than I was expecting from a neighbourhood restaurant. The chef certainly knows how to make a biryani, it emerging with a sealed pastry lid, and several other dishes were very good too. I would happily return if I am in the area.

In other news, there was a new 3 star restaurant in Munich - Jan by Jan Hartwig. This was not a great surprise since he had earned three stars for the terrific Atelier before setting up his own venture at Jan.

From Bloomsbury to Castelnau

Postbox is an Indian restaurant in Castelnau (north of Barnes) and was enjoyable, though not entirely consistent. Among some good dishes there were also some duds, including a poor naan and a couple of dishes using very cheap prawns. This was a shame as otherwise the cooking was quite good.

The Ninth is a well-established Michelin starred restaurant in Charlotte Street. The menu is appealing, the technical execution good and the staff very welcoming. Prices have gone up since my last visit, but that is a general issue in London.

I also popped back to the superb Black Salt. Since I had dishes that I had already written about several times (chicken chops, kale bhajia, methi chicken) I didn’t write a fresh review, but everything was at the same high standard.

From Putney to White City

Cilantro is a fairly new Indian restaurant in Putney. I had a good meal there, with a particularly excellent aloo cholley starter, good chicken biryani and tasty gulab jaman. There are some things that could be improved, such as the joke wine list, which just has descriptions like “Chablis £58”, but in general Cilantro seemed a very good restaurant that charged fair prices.

Endo at The Rotunda has been the best sushi place in London since it opened, and it remains one of the most difficult reservations to get in the capital. A dozen diners eat at a large counter in a penthouse overlooking the Westfield shopping centre. The sushi here is impeccable, with high quality rice and excellent seafood, mostly from Cornwall. The dishes that intersperse the sushi bites are less consistent, but there is an interesting sake selection and very welcoming front of house staff.

The Michelin UK guide came out, with remarkably little change. Two stars for Alex Dilling and the reopened Ledbury, and no change whatever at the three-star level. This is all the more puzzling given the French guide’s decision to axe Guy Savoy in Paris. If Guy Savoy cannot hold three stars, where in the UK should?

From Chelsea to Soho

Wild Tavern is well located Italian themed restaurant in Chelsea that I had tried once before. I was persuaded to give it another go but someone in the business, but unfortunately our experience was even more disappointing than last time. A lowlight was a £44 dish of “fresh black truffle” which was actually a remarkable uninspiring dish of cheap summer truffle, with no true tuber melanosporum black truffle in sight, yet priced at £44 for a dish that cost probably less than £4. Add in the high noise levels and packed tables at the restaurant and this is a place that I will not be rushing back to.

Sola was an altogether more enjoyable experience. Here the kitchen go to considerable lengths to procure genuinely top notch seasonal produce. At this latest meal we had lovely superb tuna (pictured), excellent porcelet (suckling pig) and a particularly good grapefruit dessert, amongst other dishes.

From Kew to Fulham

Hawthorn (pictured) is on the site of what was Glasshouse in Kew. There is some continuity in staff and the restaurant delivered a very good and fairly priced meal. The meal included a cleverly judged dressing for sashimi trout, as well as good poussin and a well made rhubarb souffle. I hope that this place will do well.

The Harwood Arms is the only Michelin starred pub in London and continues to specialise in game, some of it shot personally by its owner Mike Robinson. The venison Scotch egg here is iconic, and at this latest meal I also enjoyed pate en croute and venison Wellington. The Harwood Arms also has an excellent wine list, and the food was on form in the capable hands of its new chef.

From Paris to Piccadilly

I visited Paris to eat at Epicure at the Bristol. This was a terrific meal, with some really classy dishes including a dazzling Ratte mash with caviar, macaroni with artichokes and truffle and a remarkable vanilla dessert. Such things do not come cheap, but this was top notch cooking.

I had my first visit this year to The Ritz and had another lovely meal there. At this meal some highlights were the langoustine a la nage, Parmesan and truffle chawanmushi and pressed Anjou pigeon.

The Michelin Guide to France 2023 came out, with a promotion to three stars for La Marine in the Bay of Biscay, and shock demotions for Christopher Coutanceau and Guy Savoy. I did a live TV interview with the news channel France24 on thsi subject, and following a 3 minute slot on the war in Ukraine the channel devoted nearly twenty minutes to the Michelin announcements, this being France.

From Aldwych to Chiswick

Dipna Anand at Somerset House is sister to The Brilliant in Southall. This restaurant offers a much shorter menu than its elder sibling, but in the far grander setting of Somerset House, complete with river views and a terrace overlooking the Thames. I enjoyed the thali offered at lunch, as well as a very good vegetarian dish of thadka greens.

La Trompette in Chiswick has been operating for 22 years now, offering a very appealing menu of French food, the best of which this week was a lovely sweetbread dish. The restaurant has an unusually good and moderately priced wine list, and this combined with an experienced team of front of house staff ensures its continued popularity.

From Richmond to Mayfair

Koyn is an upmarket Japanese restaurant in Mayfair of the Nobu/Zuma/Roka style. It has very smart décor, unthreatening dishes, slick service and a price tag to match its Mayfair location. The cooking was actually pretty good, and probably better than it needs to be in some ways, as I doubt that all the pretty young things that thronged Koyn were true Japanese food aficionados. Still, there was genuine ability in the tempura dishes, and a spice tuna rice cracker dish was excellent. This was never going to be a cheap option, and the bill is likely to be of “if you have to ask then you cannot afford it” proportions.

The Dysart is a really fine restaurant near Richmond, and we had a tasting menu that this week featured three dishes involving Japanese rice – this being a sponsored collaboration with the Japanese ministry of agriculture and food. The Dysart’s kitchen talent shone through as usual, with lovely bream with champagne sauce, oxtail risotto and a rice pudding sorbet amongst the many highlights.

From Highgate to Southall

The Bull and Last (pictured) in Highgate serves fairly traditional pub food in an attractive hillside setting. Haddock and chips were very good, and I enjoyed a hare ragu with papardelle pasta. The place was completely full even on weekday lunch in February.

The Brilliant has been a regular haunt of mine since I moved to west London in 1991. It serves very good value Punjabi food, mainly to south Asian families. The methi chicken here is very good, as were a couple of vegetable curries and starters. The pricing is a very pleasant change from central London.

I also popped into the lovely Italian restaurant l’Amorosa, another regular haunt of mine. The dishes that I ordered were ones I had eaten before, so I didn’t bother with an update review, but the standard and value for money were as high as ever.

From Richmond to Belgravia

Scott’s in Mayfair is an historic London restaurant that now has a new sibling on the riverside in Richmond (pictured). It is a large restaurant over two floors with the same seafood emphasis as its parent, and the same high prices. Objectively the food is nothing special even though the menu is appealing and the service is good, so again much like the original in Mayfair. The open-air terrace overlooking the river and the genuinely classy décor will doubtless ensure its success: I just wish the food was better.

Hunan has been running for forty years in Belgravia, a Chinese restaurant with no written menu and an unusually good wine list. The son of the original founder is responsible for the wine list, and clearly a restaurant with this longevity must have loyal customers. There were some good dishes in the long tasting menu which is the signature of the restaurant, but a few too many inconsistencies for me.

From Marlow to Chelsea

Vaasu is part of the growing Atul Kochhar empire, offering Indian fine dining in the attractive setting of Marlow in Berkshire. The cooking is quite ambitious here and presentation of dishes is attractive. We had some good dishes and other than a curious disdain for ingredient seasonality, the only quibble is the price tag.

Medlar in Chelsea has been around over a decade now, producing well-made classical dishes, such as apple tarte tatin (pictured), all at a very fair price. Combine the capable cooking, good wine list, moderate pricing and charming staff and it is easy to see why this is perennial local favourite.

From Kensington to Knightsbridge

The Holland is a neighbourhood pub in Kensington where the food is a lot better than you might expect in such a humble location. Venison and smoked bacon faggot was very enjoyable, as was a well-made treacle tart. The staff were particularly friendly and helpful, and this is certainly a place I would return to if in the area.

A considerably pricier venue is Studio Frantzen at the top of Harrods, which is the casual sister of a three-star restaurant in Stockholm. Studio Frantzen is a large and elegantly designed space, complete with roof terrace, and a menu that is broadly Scandinavian with some Asian touches. A turbot dish here was particularly well made, but I also enjoyed a veal tartare and a yuzu sorbet dessert. This is not a cheap outing but the food was consistently good.

Chinese New Year dining

It is Chinese New Year (the year of the rabbit, signifying peace and prosperity) so I tried two very different kinds of Chinese restaurant. Canton Element is firmly at the cheap and cheerful end of the spectrum, with packed tables, curt service and food that arrives at quite a lick. The Cantonese dishes were quite good, with enjoyable honey and better pork and good steamed dim sum for example.

At multiples of the price, you can eat in much greater comfort at Hakkasan Mayfair, a huge restaurant that has some of the most well drilled service in London. Consistency is impressive here, and although you pay top dollar you do get very well-cooked and appealing food using better ingredients than will be found in most Chinese restaurants. Hakkasan may not be cutting edge trendy any more but it is still absolutely rammed, despite its high price point.

From Mayfair to Ladbroke Grove

There is a new head chef at Ormer Mayfair (pictured), and the cooking style has certainly changed there. The meal was a touch erratic in standard but the best dishes were every good indeed, with excellent canapes, a lovely ham jelly dish and gorgeous cured mackerel dish in particular. Some dishes were not to this level but given the not excessive price point this was a most enjoyable meal.

I did less well at Orasay, a bustling neighbourhood restaurant in Ladbroke Grove. There was a pleasant enough pork chop and a decent fried haddock burger, but an oddly flavoured crab dish and an unsuccessful bream. The place was packed out with young people and so they are clearly appealing successfully to their target audience.

From Stratford to East Sheen

Allegra in Stratford (pictured) is at the top of a hotel quite near the Westfield Shopping Centre, surrounded by smart new blocks of flats in an area that has been regenerated in recent years. The cooking at Allegra is ambitious and genuinely good: a choux bun with liver canape was superb, while pretty much all the courses were of a high standard. I have no idea why Michelin has missed this place out, because it is better than plenty of one star restaurants in London.

I also returned to Black Salt, though the dishes we tried were all ones that I have written about previously, so I didn’t write a specific review. It was as good as ever.

Happy New Year

The week in between Christmas and New Year is a tricky one for reviewing restaurants, with most high-end places closed and giving the staff a well-deserved break. I did manage to try one place, The Cricket Lounge in Sutton, which was good value and had a few interesting dishes (such as lamb raan, pictured) that went beyond the usual Indian staples.

I hope that you had a good Christmas and would like to wish you a very happy New Year.

Happy Christmas!

The Brilliant has been running since 1975, a landmark of the Southall dining scene. It serves traditional Punjabi food, mostly to Asian families but with the occasional interloper such as me. The cooking is very consistent and the service is remarkably slick, yet the cost per person is modest, especially by the standards of central London. The dish pictured is the aloo tikki starter there.

I actually had another restaurant booked to review this week but it had to close temporarily due to Covid amongst its staff – the pandemic is still with us even if it is not in the news so much.

I would like to wish you all a very happy Christmas and New Year.

From East Sheen to Piccadilly

I had another excellent meal at The Ritz (actually two meals, but two reviews in a week seems obsessive), with highlights including a superb sweetbread dish and the usual lovely duck liver ballotine and langoustine a la nage dishes. A modern dish here is the lovely raw scallop canape (pictured). There were a couple of new desserts as well to add some variety. Meal after meal here continues to show off arguably the best high end dining in London.

Black Salt is the sister of the superb Dastaan, and most of the menu is identical to the parent restaurant. The standard of dishes is almost as high, with particularly lovely tandoori prawns, vegetable bhajias, pork vindaloo and methi chicken. I didn’t have any new dishes on the visit so didn’t write a fresh review (all dishes are already covered in prior reviews) but the level of cooking was as high as ever.

From Westminster to Soho

Yaatra is a large Indian restaurant in Westminster that has recently been relaunched after an ownership and name change. We took advantage of a half price introductory offer and so ate cheaply, and I enjoyed a tandoori prawn starter in particular. However, there was some unevenness in the dishes that we tried, and the wine list was so outrageously priced that I drank beer instead. I think it will have some work to do to fill its 170 odd seats.

Sola in Soho is a cosy fine dining restaurant serving unusually high grade produce in a tasting menu format. Highlights of this meal included superb hare royale and a lovely capon, while old favourites such as the langoustines in dashi broth and the very pretty tuna starter continue to impress.

In other news, there was a 3rd Michelin star for Addison near San Diego, which I visited well before Michelin had come across it.

From Shoreditch to White City

Cycene in Shoreditch is the latest venue for chef Theo Clench. It is an intimate venue with a dozen or so seats, a tasting menu format and a very Shoreditch wine list. The food was very good, though this is an expensive outing, and the wine list is not much fun if you like your wines unnatural as opposed to natural.

Endo at The Rotunda sets the benchmark for sushi in London, with high quality fish, skilfully made sushi and some showmanship from Endo. Again this is not a cheap outing, but you get a lot of luxury ingredients and a high level of skill for your money.

From Notting Hill to Piccadilly

Dorian (pictured) is a new up-market bistro in Notting Hill, with a chef who has a quite serious track record. Ingredient quality was pretty high and the meal was enjoyable, though there was one dish that was disappointing and the bill is anything but cheap. Still, I imagine as this settles down it will be quite an asset to the area, and Dorian was already packed at my Tuesday lunch visit.

Hide is a vast restaurant with its flagship “Above” restaurant on the first floor, a bistro at ground level and a bar in the basement. “Above” has a new head chef and it seemed to me that there were some teething issues at this meal e.g. a foie gras dish that had a tinge of bitterness.

From Soho to Piccadilly

Jugemu is a bit like the fictional restaurant in the TV series “Midnight Diner”: a solitary chef producing a wide range of food, the customers mostly gathered around the counter and chatting to the chef as he cooks. Sushi is the strong suit here and is classy, but there were several other dishes too, including a superb bonito starter. The clientele appears to be almost entirely Japanese, and the food is up there with the best of its kind in London.

The Ritz is an old favourite, and continues to operate like a Swiss watch, producing food of a strong 2 star Michelin calibre despite Michelin’s one star rating. There were old favourites such as the langoustine a la nage and new dishes such as an orange pre-dessert and lovely pear dessert at this meal.

Visiting Edinburgh

The Scran and Scallie continues to pack the punters in by offering appealing dishes that use good ingredients and are well made, such as a high-class scallop with apple and celeriac. The Fishmarket at Newhaven was a mixed affair, with good fish and chips but some dubious side dishes and starters, then a very good dessert.

The two long term high end places in Edinburgh are Kitchin and Martin Wishart. Wishart is a little more classical and uses very high grade ingredients, cooking lovely food and serving it in a peaceful dining room. Kitchin is more bustling in atmosphere but the savoury dishes are also classy, with lovely teal at this meal for example.

I was also impressed by the terrific viennoiserie at The Palmerston – if you fancy a croissant then this is the place to go.

I return to Sola

Sola offers high end Californian cuisine in the heart of Soho. It uses unusually high-quality luxury ingredients, something increasingly rare in London these days as restaurants strive to cut corners. I particularly enjoyed the hare royale (pictured) at this latest meal, but there were plenty of lovely dishes.

I also had another meal at Black Salt, introducing an old friend to the place. As we rotated through the classic dishes here that I have written about several times there seems no point in writing a review, which would just duplicate several recent ones. However the standard was as high as ever, with the chicken chop, vegetable bhajias, pork vindaloo and methi chicken being particular highlights.

From Ealing to Regent Street

Da Moreno is a pizzeria in Ealing that sticks to the basics: no pasta here, or desserts, or salads, just pizza and some garlic bread. The room is quite bare bones too but that is fine, and the pizza was from a proper oven and made with care. Ealing is blessed with several very good pizzerias for some reason.

Alex Dilling now has his own restaurant at the Café Royal in Regent Street. This had only been open a few weeks when I visited but was already operating at a high level in the elaborate tasting menu that we tried. Quail en vessie was lovely, as was a mallard pithivier and a skilful sardine starter. The wine policy here (£100 corkage and the list is treated as a state secret) is a blemish on the place, but the cooking is some of the best that you will find in London.

From Shoreditch to Ravenscourt Park

L’Amorosa in Ravenscourt Park closed throughout the pandemic but has gradually been reopening, albeit only a few nights a week. Chef Andy Needham is on his own in the kitchen at present, and is continuing to produce the same lovely Italian dishes as he did when he gained a Michelin star for Zafferano. The saffron risotto here (pictured) is one of the best in London, and the intensity of flavour of the ragus that Andy produces is impressive.

The Princess of Shoreditch now has Simon Bonwick in the kitchen, and although he no longer cooks entirely solo, his classic French cookery skills were still very much in evidence at this meal. We enjoyed some lovely dishes including some fine fish cookery, and an unusual cheese dish was a bonus.

From White Waltham to Piccadilly

The Beehive in White Waltham has a different head chef now that Dominic Chapman has moved to The Crown at Burchetts Green. Things seem fine in the kitchen, with a very nice Scotch egg kicking off the meal, which featured excellent rabbit lasagna and apple millefeuille, amongst other dishes.

The Ritz is a regular haunt of mine, and was on sparkling form at this latest visit. A lovely new scallop starter was a refreshing start to the meal, which continued with classics such as the langoustine a la nage and the ballotine of duck liver. A new dessert was especially worthy of note, a stunning modern take on Black Forest gateau (pictured). This looked and tasted great, and is the kind of thing that you might expect to appear from a top-notch pastry section in Paris. The Ritz sails serenely on, the food evolving and improving steadily.

In Search of Paradise

Paradise in Soho serves a modern take on Sri Lankan food, and is not a place to linger. You sit on bar stools and are given just 80 minutes to finish your meal and clear off on pain of a penalty charge for overstaying your “welcome”. Quite when paradise became a quickfire timed event is lost on me, but Lucifer might be amused and may well have co-authored the website with its list of penalty charges for assorted misdemeanours that a customer might commit. The meal included some very enjoyable pork croquettes (pictured) and good roti, but also a rather bland mushroom pancake, all at a quite steep price. Given this I feel the need to continue in search of true paradise.

An altogether more welcoming experience can be had at The Brilliant in Southall, which continues to deliver excellent Punjabi food at fair prices to the Asian families that frequent the restaurant. I enjoyed old favourites such as aloo tikki and methi murgh, but the menu has plenty to offer. No time limits on your pleasure here.

From Shoreditch to Marble Arch

Manteca in Shoreditch served Italian food in a cramped and remarkably noisy dining room in this trendy locale. Although there were some nice dishes, and the kitchen does make its own charcuterie, there were also several minor cooking issues, and so it was a slightly frustrating meal overall.

KOL in Marble Arch served modern Mexican food and has already gained a Michelin star. It is a slick operation with plenty of well-trained staff and a smart dining room (pictured). They actually make their own tortillas here, which is a rare thing indeed, and the dish presentation is excellent. This is not a cheap outing but it was quite impressive.

From East Sheen to Chiswick

La Trompette has been a local stalwart for me for over two decades now, the menu very appealing and the cooking to a high standard. At this latest meal there were some lovely dishes including fallow deer and peach millefeuille. The fairly priced wine list adds to the appeal, as does the friendly service.

Black Salt has become a regular haunt, with two quite recent meals showing that it is fast catching up to its parent restaurant Dastaan. The menus are very similar and the recipes the same, with only very minor execution differences now. The tandoori dishes such as the prawns, the lamb chop and the chicken chop are superb, as is the bhajia starter. The main course curries are also top notch, such as the pork vindaloo and the methi chicken. Black Salt is outperforming almost every central London Indian restaurant at the moment, and yet it is still a bargain price.

Eating around Marseille

Marseille is known for two casual dishes: bouillabaisse and pizza (due to a large influx of Italian immigrants). An institution of bouillabaisse is Michel, but although the fish soup itself was fine I found it hard to like given its steep price point and sneering service.

Both Pizza Sauveur and Pizzaria Etienne have long histories. Pizza Sauveur just seemed to be living off its past reputation and was unremarkable. By contrast, Pizza Etienne was genuinely excellent, with top notch pizza – well worth trying if you are in Marseille.

AM by Alexandra Mazzia is a modernist three Michelin star restaurant with a tasting menu made up of arrays of dishes brought out in phases, with over thirty separate dishes in total. As with any such tasting menu some dishes were better than others, but there were certainly some very enjoyable things amongst them. It is quite a lengthy experience but the adventurous diner will find plenty to like.

Marseille itself is a city that is gritty rather than pretty. It does have a fine cathedral but its most attractive features are the little coves and harbours of the calanques (pictured), a national park just a few miles from the city.

Less Than A Year in Provence

On a trip to Provence, I visited two of the recent three star Michelin promotions. Villa Madie in Cassis has a stunning view out over the Mediterranean (pictured) and produced some good savoury dishes, but things rather fell apart at the dessert stage of the meal. It did have an impressive wine list, including lots of relative bargains amongst the posher bottles, with some wines well below their retail price.

Oustau du Baumaniere nestles under some handsome cliffs in Provence. It has an attractive terrace and produced a generally good if marginally erratic meal, with a particularly good pork main course and some excellent millefeuille for desserts.

From Chiswick to Soho

Sola bucks the current trend in London fine dining by continuing to emphasise luxury, top notch ingredients at a time when multi-starred restaurants regularly serve up chalk stream trout and a main course of chicken. Here you get Dombes pigeon, Jouno tomatoes from Provence, N25 caviar, proper black truffles, hand-dived scallops (pictured) and large langoustines amongst other things. The cooking has become more polished since it opened, and Sola now serves some of the more enjoyable food to be had in London.

High Road Brasserie is part of the Soho House group, an all-day restaurant on the Chiswick High Road. It is perennially popular, serving brasserie staples like beef tartare and chicken Milanese. The food is never more than pleasant, and service can be a little harried at times, but the menu is appealing and it must be a gold mine given the occupancy every time I walk past it.

A Trip to the Countryside

Ynyshir is “not in the middle of nowhere; it is at the end of nowhere” according to its own description, near the coast of north Wales. It is a marathon journey there from London and a marathon meal too, taking nearly six hours and stretching over thirty protein-heavy courses. There were some very fine dishes, in particular a chawanmushi and a Japanese bream dish, though also a few slips. Desserts felt like an afterthought, and vegetables simply didn’t exist here: a little pressed cucumber in one dish was the only green thing on the plate throughout the meal except the Thai green curry prawn. It was all quite relaxed, though at £350 for the food the restaurant is up there in Paris three-star territory as far as pricing is concerned.

I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the cooking at The Cross at Kenilworth, which has a Michelin star but seems to be as far off the food social media beaten track as Ynyshir is actually off the beaten track. I started with a dazzling red mullet soup packed full of flavour, then an elegant and precisely cooked John Dory dish, and a refreshing mango crumble. Incidentally, other dishes that I had a taste of (via my kind dining companions) were also top drawer. This was better food than plenty of multi-starred restaurants and deserves greater recognition.

A Trio of London Restaurants

Imperial Treasure in St James serves high end Chinese food in smart surroundings, with a price tag to match. A selection of dim sum was classy, as were unusually good Singapore noodles and well-made spicy king prawns. I didn’t try the Peking duck on this visit, but they do one of the best versions in London of this classic dish.

The Harwood Arms is the only Michelin-starred pub in London, noted for its game. True to form, the venison that I tried tonight was lovely, as is their classic venison Scotch egg. Other dishes were good too, with a precisely cooked cod dish and nice desserts. This is the kind of pub that we all wish was at the end of our road.

Jin Da Thai is an inexpensive Thai restaurant in Hammersmith serving good Thai dishes at a modest price. Duck with tamarind sauce was excellent, as was a Penang curry. On this visit the service was quite sloppy, which was not the case when I was here before, so perhaps they were having an off night in that department. It is tough to find good Thai food in London these days, but Jin Da Thai serves better than most.

A Visit to Berlin

This week I went to Berlin, mainly to review Rutz, the latest three-star Michelin restaurant in Germany. Rutz is quite modernist, set in a former wine bar, and suitably it has an extensive and well-priced wine list, with a huge selection of Germany Riesling. The tasting menu was quite enjoyable, with a particularly good mangalitza pork dish and, although this modernist style of food is not really my favourite thing, other than a weird dessert the standard of food was fairly high. Staff were also charming.

One oddity about Berlin is that very few of the fine dining restaurants open at lunch, so squeezing an extra high-end meal in was tricky. I instead went with a local recommendation for a couple of ethnic restaurants. Peking Ente is a pleasant Chinese restaurant whose notional speciality, the Peking duck, was not great, but whose food was mostly quite decent. Similarly, Bahadur is an Indian restaurant popular with locals, who managed a very capable prawn starter and was modestly priced.

A Trip to Antwerp

Zilte is the latest three Michelin star restaurant in Belgium, situated on the top floor of the city maritime museum in Antwerp (pictured). The room is striking, elegantly designed and with lovely views over the city. The food is quite modern and in places too complex for its own good – there were several dishes where a good core element was let down by a less good side element that was not necessarily complementary, or indeed necessary. There was one particularly fine crab dish but the standard of dishes was erratic, with a weak veal dish and other issues including weak desserts. The at times extortionate wine list did not help either, though the staff were friendly. This is an expensive restaurant though, and at these prices any problems feel inexcusable.

By contrast the merely two-star Villa Lorraine in Brussels was a delight. Set in a leafy suburb of the city, the food here drew more on classical technique, though there were certainly modern touches. The savoury courses were very impressive from start to finish, culminating in a tableside preparation of lobster and sweetbreads. Desserts were relatively ordinary but service was charming and the prices for the food were not excessive. The wine list also contained some real bargains, though you could drink quite cheaply and adequately from the list if you so wished. I much preferred my meal at Villa Lorraine to ZIlte, and if they could improve their pastry section to the level of the savoury dishes then this could be a really world class restaurant.

From Maida Vale to Piccadilly

The Ritz delivered another fine meal this week, with the signature langoustine a la nage and a new Bresse duck dish the highlights of a high-class meal. My review also contains analysis of the extensive wine list, which is not as pricy as you might imagine. When you consider that the full-blown tasting menu at The Ritz is £170 and compare this with London’s top dining rooms these days it is actually a relative bargain. This is especially since The Ritz top menu features large langoustines, turbot (pictured), caviar and truffles, whereas recently I have noticed some multi-starred London restaurants skimping quite visibly on luxury ingredients despite their high prices.

Dhaba@49 (pictured) is an Indian restaurant in Maida Vale that specialises in roadside snacks but also has a large menu of familiar north Indian dishes. The best dishes were a vegetable samosa and some unusually good bhindi, but most of the dishes were capably executed and service was very friendly. This is just a neighbourhood restaurant but it is a good one, fairly priced and with an appealing menu.

From Hammersmith to Mayfair

Sugarcane is a Thai restaurant in Hammersmith that is very smartly decorated but otherwise is just a regular, neighbourhood restaurant. The food was pleasant, with some above average Thai fishcakes and quite good pad Thai, though some of the other dishes were rather ordinary. Service was charming and the bill quite modest, so this is a decent enough local place.

I had two visits in quick succession to Jamavar (pictured), trying both the tasting menu and the a la carte choice. The tandoori cooking here really is quite special, with the adraki lamb chops, stone bass tikka and tandoori prawns (pictured) being remarkably good. The standard across the menu is high, with excellent breads, high grade side dishes and good desserts as well as the main course dishes. This is a restaurant at the top of its game, and apparently doing terrific business at the moment, regularly doing hundreds of covers a day at multiple sittings. It is easy to see why.

The World's 50 Best Restaurants ceremony came to town this week (having been moved from Moscow!) and saw Geranium in the top slot. The only British entries were Clove Club and Ikoyi. With all respect to these places, I don't know too many people would actually reckon that these are really the objectively best two restaurants in the UK, but then the Top 50 was always more about an industry marketing event than a dispassionate assessment of culinary merit.

From Belgravia to Maidenhead

The Lanesborough Grill is the latest incarnation of the restaurant set in the light and airy conservatory in the courtyard of the luxury hotel The Lanesborough on Hyde Park Corner. Under chef Shay Cooper the Grill takes a tried and trusted approach of serving crowd pleasing dishes based mainly on British ingredients, so think beef tartare and Dover sole. The food was good, especially a crab dish (pictured) and the desserts, and the space is lovely. Only the size of the bill, bumped up by the excessively marked-up wine list, leaves a slightly sour taste.

The Crown at Burchetts Green now houses the very capable Dominic Chapman of The Beehive, and also features a short, appealing menu. We enjoyed savoury dishes including a rabbit and bacon terrine and a particularly fine fish soup. Desserts felt like an afterthought, but to be fair this visit was just days after opening, and I expect this aspect to improve as the kitchen settles down.

From Ascot to East Sheen

Coworth Park is in a luxury hotel near Ascot and has a well-deserved Michelin star. We had another excellent meal here recently, with a tasting menu that included an exceptional dish of turbot with lobster wrapped in courgette flower (pictured). This is a place with an appealing menu, skilful cooking, high quality ingredients and a nice setting, with service to match.

Black Salt has become a regular haunt of mine, sister to the superb Dastaan but closer to London and with a lot more space than its elder sister. The menu is much the same as at Dastaan and there is a high level of skill in the kitchen. Tandoori dishes are very well handled, spicing is vibrant and there are some unusual dishes as well as more familiar ones. Pork vindaloo is very well made here, but it is just one of many fine dishes. This is a quite a bargain when you compare it to flashier central London Indian restaurants, but very few Mayfair places can match the skill level here.

From Twickenham to Piccadilly

Shiuli is a fairly new Indian restaurant owned by Alfred Prasad, one of the first chefs to gain a Michelin star for an Indian restaurant (at Tamarind in 2002). Our meal was rather less impressive than I had hoped, with a scallop dish arriving cold, a bream curry with some distinctly dubious fish, and one ill-judged dessert. This was a shame as there were some decent enough dishes in between these. However, this level of inconsistency makes it hard to recommend.

The Ritz is serving the best food in London right now, as confirmed at this meal. Unlike many London restaurants these days, who are serving distinctly quotidian ingredients in order to keep costs down, the meal was packed with luxury ingredients such as large langoustines, caviar, wild turbot and more. The meal concluded with a spectacular chocolate dessert (pictured).

From Soho to Sussex

Gravetye Manor is set in an historic country house with famous gardens. Following a refurbishment, the dining room directly overlooks the garden and is quite spectacular (pictured). The food is good too, with solid one star Michelin cooking and vegetables that are grown in the huge “kitchen garden” that is bigger than some farms.

Gauthier in Soho has switched to an all-vegan menu. This represents a lot of challenges for the kitchen, but the technique here is very strong, and across a lengthy tasting menu there were no dud dishes. An asparagus dish was particularly good but so were desserts, which have always been a strength of Gauthier. Without doubt this is the best vegan restaurant in London.

I am also pleased to now be partnering with an innovative startup company called rezexe. Their idea is to allow customers to trade restaurant bookings. Now if a customer is unable to turn up to a restaurant, particularly to one where bookings are in high demand, they can sell the booking. That means they can realise some value from a reservation they made but cannot now use. Sellers find buyers via the rezexe platform. Buyers get to visit a restaurant they may struggle to reserve at, provided they are flexible on dates. Trading also very much benefits restaurants, since they no longer have to try and sell unused bookings themselves via calling up a possible waiting list at short notice. Incidentally, all trades have to be approved by the restaurant and all participants are identified via the payments system, so there is no “scalping” possibility here. It should be a win-win for people with bookings they can’t use, people wanting scarce bookings, and the restaurants themselves, so seems like a good idea to me. The company is just launching and you will see a rezexe button appearing after my review for participating restaurants. This allows you to trade your booking should you wish. Do let me have any feedback on this new feature.

A Trio of Three Stars

This week I returned to the Mosel and returned to Waldhotel Sonnora, which is going from strength to strength under head chef Clemens Rambichler. The sequence of savoury course was one of the most impressive I can recall, with faultless dish after faultless dish. The beef tartare with caviar and rosti was a delight, but so was the langoustine and the beautifully composed venison main course. Like most Germany three star places, Sonnora is practically invisible to the fashionable international Instagram food crowd, and that is a great loss to them but means that you and I can still get a table.

From one world class restaurant to another, an hour’s drive south from the Mosel not far from Luxembourg airport. Christian Bau has had three stars since 2005, and while his cooking style has evolved over that period, his skills have always been evident. He is influenced by Japan, and the presentation of dishes here must be some of the most skilful on the planet. It is not all looks though, as he uses impeccable ingredients and the kitchen demonstrates flawless technique. Both these restaurants have great wine lists too.

There is a new three-star restaurant in the area, Schanz in the wine town of Piesport (the attractive approach to the town is pictured). Sadly the meal there was a world apart from the two established three star restaurants. One fish dish was barely edible due to the intense anise flavour of the sauce, and there was not a solitary dish that was three-star level. There were some pleasant dishes, especially an unusual grapefruit dessert, but perhaps Bibendum was smoking an interesting agricultural product when he handed out three Michelin stars here.

From Hammersmith to Oxfordshire

The Hampshire is an historic tavern that has recently been converted to a gastropub serving Indian food. My meal there was a little erratic but had some genuinely good dishes along with some less successful ones. However, the kitchen certainly shows sparks of ability, and this is a much classier venture than many of the less ambitious Indian restaurants in King Street.

Maison Francois is a brasserie in St James that has a very appealing menu of French classics, ending with a dessert trolley. The place is smart and the service quite slick, but the execution of dishes was a little mixed. There were a couple of definite errors that had crept in, which is perhaps a reflection of the scale of the operation, but given the quite high prices (no luxury ingredients here) not everyone may feel very forgiving. The formula seems to me spot on though, giving people dishes that they might actually want to eat. It is already doing well and if they can improve consistency then they will prosper even more.

Le Manoir au Quat’ Saisons (pictured) is something of a landmark restaurant in the UK, having held two Michelin stars since 1984. This latest meal here had some genuinely impressive dishes, such as a terrific garden vegetable risotto and fine beetroot terrine, as well as excellent desserts. However, given the sky high price point there was nothing resembling luxurious ingredients, with pretty ordinary quality chicken as a main course and not a scallop or langoustine in sight. The wine list is also aggressively priced. This does not seem to trouble the clientele, with this weekday lunch being packed out. It is certainly a beautiful spot and the cooking is undoubtedly accomplished, but the cost is in Paris territory.

From Marble Arch to Pinner

Good yakitori restaurants are like London buses: you may for ages and then two come along at once. As well as Humble Chicken in Soho there is now Junsei (pictured) near Marble Arch. This serves skewers of all sorts of parts of a chicken that you may be less familiar with, and grills them over charcoal. The result is very tasty indeed, the meat enhanced by tare sauce and assorted extras, such as wasabi with the tenderloin.

Trinco Bay is a Sri Lankan restaurant in Pinner (or Rayners Lane to be precise) which has a sizeable Sri Lankan population and several restaurants serving the cuisine of that island nation. There were some interesting and enjoyable dishes, such as mutton rolls and “kingfish devil”, all in a bustling setting surrounded by Sri Lankan families. It is remarkably cheap to boot.

From Soho to Ewell

Evelyn’s Table is an intimate twelve-seater, bar stools arrayed around a counter as the chefs work in front of you. There are some high-grade ingredients used here and there is plenty of skill on display. As ever with a tasting menu some dishes are better than others, but the overall standard was high and well deserving of its Michelin star. A beef tartare with wasabi was particularly impressive.

Dastaan and Black Salt have related ownership, the latter cooking most of the dishes of the original restaurant. Dastaan is in Ewell and Black Salt in East Sheen, and both are fabulous. Spices are ground daily rather than at the start of the week, and this really shows as you can taste the distinct vibrant spices used in the dishes. The cooking is impressive too, with dishes like the large red pepper prawns superbly tender, and with dishes such as the khumb palak at Dastaan showing how even a humble ingredient like spinach can be made to taste like food fit for a king.

I also made the mistake of trying Saigon Saigon, a neighbourhood Vietnamese place in Hammersmith that has been going for years. On the basis of this visit it is far from clear why that would be.

From Hertfordshire to Soho

Madhu’s At The Grove (pictured) is the latest outpost of the expanding Madhu’s restaurant group that started in Southall and now has six branches, in addition to the largest Indian wedding catering business in the UK. The Grove is a luxury hotel in the Hertfordshire countryside, but other than one or two touches the menu is familiar from other Madhu’s restaurants: Punjabi food with one or two Kenyan elements (the family that set up Madhu’s left Kenya for the UK in the 1970s). The cooking was reliable and enjoyable, and this is a pretty spot if you are in the area.

Sola in Soho now has a Michelin star and continues to produce ambitious dishes based on very high-quality ingredients. Highlights at this meal included their signature langoustine with dashi broth, and there was even Matsusaka wagyu, the priciest beef in Japan. The dishes here are appealing and the price is not excessive given the unusually high ingredient quality used here.

From Egham to East Sheen

The Tudor Room at Great Fosters (pictured) is set in a rather grand country house hotel in the Surrey countryside. Its chef, Tony Parkin, uses very high-grade ingredients and has an interest in spices, so for example I enjoyed raw hand-dived Orkney scallops in a spicy Thai broth. There was a particularly fine lamb dish, and an excellent meal overall.

Black Salt is the younger sister of Dastaan, located in East Sheen and serving much the same menu as the mothership in Ewell. Black Salt is more spacious than Dastaan and the standard of cooking very nearly as high, with the calibre of the food here exceeding that of most Michelin starred Indian restaurants in London.

From Hammersmith to Shoreditch

Sam’s Riverside enjoys a fine view out over the Thames in Hammersmith, and has some outside seating in good weather. The menu is appealing and the delivery of the dishes seems pretty much unchanged despite a chef change since my last visit. Beef tartare and Dover sole were enjoyable, the meal finished by an excellent souffle.

Clove Club (pictured) has become much better known since I first visited, now having two Michelin stars. Presentation of dishes was good and the food generally very enjoyable, but the prices have gone up considerably in recent years, and this was not obviously reflected in the ingredients used. For a £145 tasting menu I would have hoped to see rather more luxurious products than the ones here, although the cooking was certainly capable.

From Richmond to Piccadilly

Madhu’s Brasserie (pictured) is the latest outpost in the expanding empire of catering mogul and restaurateur Sanjay Anand, who runs the largest Indian wedding catering business in the UK. This is the sixth Madhu’s branch, and very smart it is too, serving the usual Punjabi dishes that Madhu’s specialises in. We enjoyed an excellent chicken biryani and a good vegetarian thali amongst other things.

I made it back to The Ritz for the first time since seeing head chef Spencer Metzger’s triumph on TV show The Great British menu. The kitchen was on good form, with lovely langoustines, sea bass and an exceptionally good lamb dish being highlights from the surprise tasting menu.

From Soho to Knightsbridge

Al Mare is an Italian restaurant in the Carlton hotel in Knightsbridge, the kitchen led by an experienced chef and serving a range of Italian dishes, not just the seafood suggested by the name. I had a particularly good saffron risotto, and some enjoyable rigatoni with black truffle. Despite the hotel location, the wine list was not unreasonable either.

Humble Chicken is a proper yakitori (Japanese grilled chicken) restaurant, something that London has lacked until now, at least one of any high standard. Humble Chicken has a very capable chef, Japanese charcoal on the grill (pictured), unusually good quality chicken and a skilful touch. The non-chicken dishes were excellent, and the skewers of chicken, some using quite exotic cuts of the bird, were a revelation. This is right up there with proper yakitori in Tokyo.

From Kentish Town to St James

Anima e Cuore is a quirky neighbourhood Italian restaurant in Kentish Town. The setting is whatever is below basic, the room being tucked away being a deli counter and with battered tables and chairs. The menu appears on a blackboard and follows the usual Italian pattern, with dishes drawn from across Italy. There were some nice dishes and the pricing was moderate, though it was a very slow meal and the service was well-meaning but a little confused at times. Still, if you are in the area it is worth considering.

Ikoyi (pictured) is an unusual fine dining restaurant, serving food that is not quite west African but is heavily influenced by the cuisine of west Africa. This is my first visit since soon after it opened, since when it has gained not one but two Michelin stars. I was a little sceptical about this rapid advancement but I have to say that the food had developed significantly since my previous meal. Maybe a second star is debatable, but it is certainly in strong one star territory. What is without doubt is the high quality of ingredients, with a top caviar supplier, very large turbot and scallop and plenty of luxury touches, which is more than can be said for many of London’s high end (and high priced) restaurants these days. Cooking technique was strong and there were some excellent dishes, albeit at a high price that is not helped by a rapacious wine list featuring some rather oddly chosen wines.

The Ledbury Reopens

The Ledbury (pictured) reopened early this year to much anticipation, and I deliberately left it a couple of months to review because I had heard that the early services were a little rocky, especially with regards to service. The latter issues seem to have been fixed and we were well looked after, but I have to say that the kitchen seems yet to have settled down. We had two really good dishes (the crab and the lamb) but also a sequence of lacklustre ones. At £180 a head menu with no luxury ingredients and a stunningly expensive wine list (completely unlike the old days) it was rather an expensive disappointment. Hopefully it will improve in time, and certainly Brett Graham can cook, but the meal that I had was quite erratic.

Dastaan, tucked away in an unlikely terrace of shops in Ewell, is producing the best Indian food in and around London in my view. This is a view confirmed over many visits, including at this one, where dishes like the red pepper tiger prawns would not have felt out of place in a multi-starred Michelin restaurant. If you have not been to Dastaan then please make the journey here - you will love it.

An Outing to Kent

The Bridge Arms (pictured) is sister to The Fordwich Arms, and both have a Michelin star. It still has a pub feel but the cooking is classy, with several very well-made dishes featuring in the meal that we tried. Canterbury is fortunate to have two restaurants of this calibre.

Jin Da Thai is a local Hammersmith restaurant with a broad menu but featuring the cuisine of northern Thailand. It is a simple, family-run place but the flavours were vibrant and the prices very fair indeed. A lot of London Thai restaurants are underwhelming but this is the real thing.

Incidentally, The Bridge Arms is the 2,500th restaurant review published on my website, which has been running since the mid 1990s. Most restaurants are reviewed once (there are 1,929 different ones covered at present) but some places are reviewed multiple times.

Grand Dining in Paris

Plenitude is the flagship of the new luxury hotel Le Cheval Blanc in Paris, with fine views over the river Seine and prices to match. We enjoyed a very good meal there, the highlights being some genuinely top-notch desserts, though there was some fine technical cooking on display at the savoury stage of the meal too.

Le Grand Restaurant is the two-star Michelin home of veteran chef Jean-Francois Piege, one of the most respected chefs in France. Despite one rather lacklustre dish this overall was a lovely meal, with dazzling langoustines and a magnificent dessert, accompanied by some spectacular wines.

I also enjoyed a fine croissant at the classy patisserie shop Cyril Lignac. At a mere €1.50 this was considerably cheaper than my two main meals.

A Flying Curry

Madhu’s in Southall is an old favourite, and in recent years they have expanded a little, opening a branch in Mayfair and this branch at Heathrow in the Sheraton Skyline hotel. The kitchen has a robata grill, which adds an interesting charcoal note to the tandoori dishes. For example, the tandoori lamb chop here (pictured) is very good indeed. Otherwise the menu is familiar from Southall, and we enjoyed a very good dal makhani and nice chicken biryani, amongst other dishes. What is surprising is how cheap it is, given that it is in an airport hotel.

The Michelin guide to Germany for 2022 came out, with a demotion for Vendome but a promotion to three stars for Schanz in the Mosel.

A Day by the Thames

This week we headed out of London to Henley, a riverside market town famous for its annual rowing regatta. Overlooking the Thames is The Boathouse, a relaunched version of a former fine dining restaurant on the same spot: the same husband and wife team run it, but now it is an all-day affair, and the food is simpler. I enjoyed a good beef tartare and there was capable fish and chips and rib eye steak, all with a view out over a terrace on to the river. It is modestly priced and is a very pleasant spot if you are in the area.

Old Favourites

The Dysart has been a long term favourite of mine ever since it opened in an old pub in leafy Petersham, not far from Richmond. The chef running the kitchen had recently won the Roux Scholarship, the front of house manager/owner was charming and the dining room had a pleasing rustic feel, with stone floors and a big fireplace. It took ages for Michelin to notice it, but they finally gave it the star it had deserved since the outset. The kitchen is on fine form, and we enjoyed a particularly fine piece of fish cookery in the form of turbot with verjus (pictured). There was unusually good lamb, classy canapes and the signature charred bream with champagne sauce and Asian broth. If you haven’t been to Dysart then you are missing out.

Another old favourite is l’Amorosa in Ravenscourt Park, which has been shut since the pandemic shutdown but has just begun, tentatively, to reopen. Chef Andy Needham earned a Michelin star for his Italian cooking at Zafferano for many years but now cooks simpler yet no less enjoyable food here in this local setting. Like all London restaurants, getting kitchen staff is a struggle, so at present l'Amorosa is only opening on certain days e.g. Valentines Day and a recent weekend. This visit was for a friend's birthday party where he had hired the whole place, so it would be inappropriate to write a review. Despite the numbers being catered for, though, the food was lovely: saffron risotto was silky, pasta ragu had deep flavour and almond tart was excellent. Hopefully it will not be long before l'Amorosa fully awakens from its long pandemic slumber.

The New Michelin UK Guide Appears

There is a new chef at The Harwood Arms, the only Michelin-starred pub in London. Fortunately, he was previously head chef of The Ledbury, so the place is in safe hands. As ever, game is the food to opt for here, with excellent muntjac pate en croute and lovely sika deer main course (pictured) amongst the best dishes.

The Michelin Guide to UK and Ireland 2022 came out this week. A third star for L’Enclume, and two stars for Ynyshir and also Clove Club and Ikoyi. Very little in the way of demotions, except for Celeste in London, so the tyre company is clearly in a generous mood as the industry tries to recover from the Covid pandemic.

The Fields of Chelsea

The Five Fields in Chelsea has held a Michelin star for several years now. The format is tasting menu only and the cooking is quite ambitious, with some fairly elaborate technical cooking for a one-star restaurant. We had a good meal, aided by some very nice front of house staff and some fine wines. The wine list here is unusually good, with markups that are below the norm in London, and with a few relative bargains up the list, with some classy wines actually below their current market price.

I also returned to the Ritz for my first visit this year, and unsurprisingly it was lovely, wildly better than the measly one Michein star it gets.

Talking of Michelin, the new UK Michelin stars will be announced on Wednesday the 16^th February in an on-line ceremony.

A Trip to St Johns Wood

As I return to reviewing after the worst of the pandemic is (hopefully) over I tried Ritu, an Indian restaurant in St Johns Wood that has two chefs with a serious pedigree. Sadly the meal did not live up to expectations, with the exception of some good tandoori lamb chops. Otherwise, there was some biryani with dried out meat, a dry and dull chaat and some soggy bhindi, though at least the halwa at the end was fine. To add insult to injury Ritu is far from cheap, with a particularly sloppy wine list and poorly trained front of house staff. I never enjoy writing poor reviews, and try to pick places to visit that are good, but sometimes these things happen.

I Resume Reviewing

For the past few weeks I have been in a sort of self-imposed lockdown during the surge of omicron cases in London, as the UK government seem to have forgotten to impose one despite one in 15 Londoners having active Covid. Case numbers are dropping now, though they are still high, but I decided to resume my reviewing.

I started off at Black Salt, an impressive 2021 opening in Sheen, and a restaurant that is the sister of the wonderful Dastaan. Black Salt has hired an experienced chef to cook the Dastaan recipes, and they follow the same approach of only grinding spices when needed rather than in a large batch at the start of the week; the effect is noticeable, as individual spices can be clearly distinguished on the plate rather than merely blending into a similar amalgam in dish after dish, which happens all too often. The tandoori cooking is spot on here, shown by excellent chilli prawns and fine tandoori lamb chops (pictured), while the methi chicken here is top class. Black Salt has no PR firm and indeed no obvious PR budget at all, so it is all word of mouth at present. Get a reservation while you still can.

Final Meal of The Year

I managed to fit in one last visit to The Ritz before the end of the year, and enjoyed a lovely tasting menu. Highlights were superb langoustines (pictured), gorgeous turbot and venison Wellington, as well as a dazzling truffle and Parmesan chawanmushi. Nowhere in London is serving better food at present.

We all hope that 2022 is better than the pandemic-ridden 2021, but the omens are not good, with the omicron variant of Covid running riot in London: at least one in twenty Londoners have active Covid as I write this. It is unclear what implications this has for hospitality, since although The Netherlands and Denmark have gone back into full lockdown mode and other European countries have tightened restrictions, the UK government has not. Whether or not it transpires that we will be back to dining via takeaways and shivering outdoors, there will be a freezing effect on the restaurant trade. If there are just 30 diners and 10 staff in the London restaurant in which you are eating, statistically two of them probably have Covid, a data point that is likely to cause many to hesitate before eating out. My sympathies to all people working in restaurants at this time, as this is not the start to the year that anyone was hoping for. There is preliminary indication that Omicron is milder in its effects than Delta, and we all hope that is borne out, but it may be a while before I can head back to review a restaurant. In the meantime, thanks for reading this and have a very happy New Year.

A Return to The Dorchester Grill

I returned to The Dorchester Grill Room (pictured) which has been transformed under its young chef Tom Booton. A lovely liver parfait canape, good brill and excellent sweetbread dish were lovely, as was the signature lobster Thermidor tart and a fine coffee dessert. Only an under-seasoned beef tartare slightly lowered the level of things. The restaurant is not especially expensive and I have now tried a lot of dishes here, and the standard is generally very high.

I did have one last meal out before Christmas but I will save that until next week, as it looks as if we may well be heading for stricter Covid restrictions any day now in London, with the omicron variant of Covid really taking off. Whether or not we are back to outdoors dining and takeaways remains to be seen, but the mood music is not great.

Looking back at the year, it has of course been a very difficult one for most of us, with the pandemic looming over our lives. Hospitality has been particularly hit. Travel has been seriously disrupted, a simple trip now a long series of locator forms and Covid tests and the possibility of an unexpected couple of weeks in a quarantine hotel. Gone are the days when I could just take a carefree day trip to Paris for lunch. I did manage a four night trip to Paris and ate well there, especially at new three star Kei. I also had a lovely meal in Dublin at the revitalised Chapter One. In London The Ritz cooking continues to go from strength to strength, and there were a few brave restaurant openings, such as the ambitious and enjoyable Sollip. I think the opening I am most excited about is Black Salt in East Sheen, the little sister of Dastaan. The food is great and it is a lot more accessible for most Londoners than Dastaan, which is in Ewell.

I’d like to wish you all a very happy Christmas!

A Short Hop from Soho to Piccadilly

Sola in Soho uses some of the highest quality ingredients seen in London: N25 caviar, ikejime method fish, top venison, Norwegian king crab, freshly grated wasabi, top notch vegetables from the Paris market in Rungis. Even the coffee is from Difference Coffee, such as the Panama Gesha used in the coffee and chocolate dessert illustrated. These luxury ingredients all came together in another lovely meal this week. It has one Michelin star but there are plenty of multi-starred places less good than here.

The same is true of The Ritz, whose food is impeccable these days. A particularly fine turbot cooked on the bone and a stunning sweetbread dish were amongst the highlights. There is no better cooking in London.

Wishing all my readers a very happy Christmas.

From Belgravia to Mayfair

Zafferano has been around since 1995 and has been a regular haunt of mine since the days of Giorgio Locatelli running the kitchen. These days it no longer has a star, but still serves reliable Italian food, with good pasta and an excellent risotto probably its best dishes. Tagliolini with white truffle (pictured) was lovely.

Jamavar has a really top-notch Indian chef these days, and produced another superb meal at our latest visit. There were several fine dishes, including a fabulously spiced prawn dish, and over a lengthy tasting menu the standard of cooking was high. For me this is probably the best Indian restaurant in central London at present, along with the recently rejuvenated Benares.

An Exciting New Restaurant Opening

Royal China Club is the flagship of a small restaurant group that includes a regular Royal China a few doors down from this on Baker Street. It is a large venue with a slightly posher menu that the regular Royal China, but you can still get regular staples like hot and sour soup, steamed sea bass with ginger and my favourite gai lan with garlic. The cooking was consistent as it almost is at these restaurants, and now that Royal China Queensway appears to have closed for good, this is the nearest one to me.

There have been a lot of new Indian restaurant openings recently but their standard is quite mixed, as can be seen from my blog last week. By far the best of the new openings is Black Salt (pictured) in East Sheen, the sister of the superb Dastaan. The menu is almost the same as Dastaan and the better news is that the cooking is nearly as good as the original. I actually went twice within a few days and tried a fair proportion of the menu. Dishes such as red pepper prawns, methi chicken, chaat and mixed vegetable bhajia were absolutely superb, and all at a modest price. Black Salt outperforms all but a couple of Indian restaurants in central London right now. It is a delight.

New Indian Restaurants of Mayfair

There have been quite a lot of up-market Indian restaurant openings in the last years or so, often by well-resourced restaurant groups, but not all are especially good. Madhu’s of Mayfair is in the Dilly Hotel in the listed dining room that once saw Marco Pierre White cooking. Sadly, although I liked the original Madhus in Southall and its younger sister at The Sheraton in west London, the meal we had at the Mayfair incarnation was quite disappointing. A really poor prawn dish was particularly disheartening. Other dishes were decent enough, but I will be sticking to the west London Madhus branches.

A higher profile venture is Bibi (pictured), with an experienced chef from the successful JKS group at the helm, offering modern Indian dishes. Despite the track record of the chef and the group, we had a very erratic meal here. Some dishes were fine and one or two were quite good, but several were lacklustre, and it was odd to see a consistent lack of bold spicing, with bland dish after bland dish. This was an expensive disappointment.

From Hackney to White Waltham

The Beehive in White Waltham is the kind of local pub we would all like to have: overlooking a cricket pitch serving appealing dishes cooked by a chef who previously won a Michelin star. My latest visit here was most enjoyable, from lasagna of wild rabbit through to excellent venison with pepper sauce. There is even a quite good and fairly priced wine list.

The Sea The Sea was originally in Chelsea but now has a sister in Hackney, the latter serving a tasting menu in a smartly decorated venue (pictured), where tables are arranged in a horseshoe shape around an open kitchen. There is an emphasis on aged fish, which is a tricky thing to pull off at the best of times, and unfortunately there were as many misses as hits in the menu that we tried, along with a few technical glitches. This inconsistency does not sit well with a £150 price tag for the food, plus wine.

From Westminster to Southwark

Sollip (pictured) near London Bridge is an unusual restaurant, a Korean/French fusion place where dishes are mostly classical French but with some Korean twists, reflecting the background of the chef. The ingredient quality used here is unusually high for London, and there is plenty of technical skill on display. Not everything works, but the savoury dishes were generally excellent.

The Pem is a restaurant with a Hilton hotel in Westminster. I was hopeful of it due to the presence of Sally Abe, who previous was head chef of the lovely Harwood Arms. However although there were one or two nice dishes, there were also some issues, and all at a pretty high price point.

From Clapham to Piccadilly

Trinity (pictured) has been a Clapham fixture for some years, one of the few Michelin-starred restaurants south of the river. The menu is appealing and the staff lovely, but at this latest meal things were rather erratic, with a very good tarte tatin but some minor issues with multiple dishes. This is a little hard to excuse at the not inconsiderable price point, and a regular diner there confirmed to me that “it is consistently inconsistent”.

Consistency is not an issue at The Ritz, where I have been many times now as it is my “go-to” fine dining venue in London. At this latest meal the langoustines were even more gigantic than usual, and a stunning veal sweetbread dish was particularly impressive, along with a fine main course of fallow deer.

From Tower Hill to Belgravia

Sachi is a restaurant within the Pantechnicon building on newly pedestrianised Motcomb Street in Belgravia. It is vaguely Japanese in style, in the way that Roka or Zuma or Nobu is Japanese. We tried a variety of mainly sushi and tempura dishes. I slightly preferred the tempura, which was quite light, though nothing compares with the feather light tempura that top places in Tokyo seem to manage so effortlessly. Sushi was pleasant enough and the whole experience was enjoyable in a rather Belgravia level spending kind of a way.

La Dame de Pic delivered another technically precise meal, this time via a lengthy tasting menu. I particularly liked a dish of sea bass and caviar and also a sweetbread dish, and the service was very slick indeed. This is of course never going to be a cheap outing, but there is plenty of skill on display in the kitchen.

From Mayfair to Piccadilly

Mantham has taken the place of the lackluster Lucknow 49 on Maddox Street. Run by Rohit Ghai, who seems to be splitting his time between here and Kutir, Mantham has some quite exotic dishes that mostly work quite well. There was the odd dud, such as a bland beef in bone marrow and a peculiarly soft lamb chop, but there were some good dishes too, such as a mustard seed chicken dish and some nice breads.

The Ritz continues to sail along as London’s top fine dining restaurant, with highlights at this meal including a pressed pigeon as well as top notch langoustines a la nage (pictured) and a succession of other excellent dishes. It was intriguing comparing this (laughably just one star) restaurant to my meal recently at (three star) Gordon Ramsay. It was not even close.

Paris Fine Dining Continued

Le Cinq in the George V hotel has chef Christian Le Squer at the helm, recruited some years ago from Ledoyen to regain three Michelin stars for Le Cinq, which he duly did. This was my second visit here and although it felt a little as if the place was coasting, the classic dishes were still dazzling. The spaghetti with ham hock is an all-time great dish, as is the grapefruit millefeuille. Le Cinq has a very ornate dining room with spectacular flower displays, and is a good example of high-end French cuisine.

Le Table by Bruno Verjus has just one star, but that is Michelin’s loss, as it is certainly of a higher standard than that. Bruno Verjus sources some of the very best ingredients that can be found in Paris, presenting them in a lengthy tasting menu in a quite casual setting with an open kitchen. The staff were charming and there were some genuine bargains on the wine list. Although this is an expensive outing, when you taste the food you will see why. A salad at the start of the meal is pictured.

On this trip to Paris I also tried a trio of highly rated croissants. The croissant at Pierre Herme, which I enjoyed greatly on a previous visit, was oddly ordinary on this trip, despite being served at the same shop (in Rue Bonaparte) that I went to last time. Better was an attractive and excellent croissant from Maison Isabelle, and best of all was one from baker Cyril Lignac. There are many other highly thought-of suppliers that I didn’t get a chance to try; that will have to wait for another trip.

Paris Fine Dining

Other than a day trip to Dublin, this was my first trip abroad for eighteen months due to the pandemic. Travel to Paris on the Eurostar was smooth enough, though there were plenty of forms to fill in and Covid tests to take both abroad and at home. Still, France seems to be managing the pandemic well. Everyone wears masks and there is an almost universally used mobile phone app which you load up with your vaccination status, in order to gain entry to restaurants, cafes and hotels. These measures may help explain why the level of Covid cases in France is currently a fifth of the laissez-faire UK, despite somewhat fewer vaccinated people.

L’Ecrin is a tiny one-star restaurant in the Crillon hotel, where I stayed, and is that rarest of things: a fine dining restaurant open on a Monday in Paris. The meal was very good, a surprise menu themed around the guest’s wine selection. Service was fabulous, and this was certainly a good start to the trip. The Crillon, incidentally, is a very grand hotel that has recently been refurbished, and is a great place to stay if you can afford it.

I had a fine meal at Le Clarence in 2019 that I had scored 18.5 on the average of the dishes, so had high hopes of a similar meal. In fact the meal this week was rather erratic, with some very good dishes but also some relative duds. It turned out that the chef de cuisine had just left to become head chef at Taillevent, and it seems as if his absence is causing some issues.

Fortunately Kei, the latest three star in Paris, was dazzling. Another tasting menu experience featuring inventive and technically superb dishes, with a consistently superb food and charming service. A lot of recent Michelin 3 star elevations around the world have proved disappointing over the last five years, but Kei is the real deal.

From Chelsea to Mayfair via Marylebone

The Wigmore is a pub attached to the Langham Hotel, with a menu of pub classics elevated to a high level, overseen by Michel Roux Junior. The burger is classy and the cheese toastie is a thing of beauty. This is the standard of food that you want to find in your local pub but simply can’t.

Gordon Ramsay’s flagship restaurant sails on, and at this visit I tried the chef’s table experience. This is unsurprisingly not a cheap experience, and although there were two genuinely lovely dishes, there were also some relative disappointments over the lengthy tasting menu. A rather dud dessert and a truffle entirely free of fragrance are not what you are expecting at a restaurant that holds three Michelin stars. The evening was enjoyable enough but I was surprised at the inconsistency of the dishes.

I used to be very fond of HKK, which was cursed with a dire location down an alleyway near Liverpool Street. The chef de cuisine from there has been recruited to launch Mimi Mei Fair (pictured), a smart Chinese restaurant in Curzon Street. The meal that we tried there was classy, with an excellent langoustine dish, very well-made Dong Po pork and above all an outstanding Peking duck that was really top notch. This was a meal that really left an impression on me, and reflects some genuinely ambitious cooking. London has a few high end Chinese restaurants, such as Hakkasan, Imperial Treasure, Park Chinois and Hutong, but none are better than this.

One New Chapter In Dublin

Daffodil Mulligan in Shoreditch, despite its Irish name and Irish chef, serves not particularly Irish food, with dishes such as pearl barley risotto with squash, tuna tartare and lemon syllabub. It does, however, make these dishes very well, and in combination with fair prices and friendly staff mean that this fairly casual restaurant has become pretty popular.

Chapter One (pictured) is a Dublin restaurant with some considerable history, but recently its long time chef/patron retired from the kitchen, and Mickael Viljanen, who achieved a well-deserved two Michelin stars at The Greenhouse, has been recruited to take over. Based on this early meal the prospects for the place are very good. The restaurant now has far fewer covers, and Mickael is clearly striving to not just match but to exceed his previous high standards. His signature foie gras royale dish is now even better (with a top notch foie gras supplier), and several details of the meal were outstanding. Michelin are hard to predict, but multiple stars beckon. Incidentally, this was my first trip abroad since March 2020 and the Covid pandemic. Ireland is in a common travel area with the UK, so other than a brief Irish government locator form to fill in, flights from the UK to Ireland and back are pretty much like flying pre-Covid other than the face masks: no Covid tests needed.

Dining in Mayfair

The Dorchester Grill was ignored by Michelin this year, but it has a talented chef, an appealing menu and prices that are actually not that high given the location e.g. there is a set lunch for £30 available. We had some excellent dishes, including a much improved lobster thermidor tart and a lovely veal sweetbread dish. I have had far worse Michelin starred meals than this.

Hakassan Mayfair is a very reliable restaurant, the food being extremely consistent and the service silky smooth. It is never a cheap meal, but ingredients are pretty good e.g. the har gau uses langoustines instead of prawns, and a pork dish used Iberico pork rather than a cheaper piece of meat that you might find in most Chinese restaurants. Hakkasan is not adventurous but they add a few unusual dishes on the menu from time to time e.g. there was an excellent dim sum dumpling with purple sweet potato.

From Notting Hill to Westminster

The Blue Boar is a pub attached to a hotel, looks smart and has an interesting sounding menu. Unfortunately the execution was less good than the menu descriptions, with a recurring theme of under-seasoning. The wine list was also a joke, though this is apparently soon to be fixed. To be honest the whole place felt like it was not really ready to be open.

Sumi is the casual sister restaurant of Michelin-starred sushi restaurant Endo at The Rotunda, and shows the same attention to detail, albeit with a simpler menu at a lower price point. Miso soup had four different dashi stocks mixed in, and was unusually complex, while sushi had excellent rice at the correct temperature and featured high quality fish (some tuna is pictured). This was much better than almost any other sushi that you will find in London.

From Southall to Fitzrovia

Noize (pictured) has a new chef, but the kitchen seems in very safe hands. Gougeres are as good as ever, as is the rabbit lasagna with mustard sauce, along with other comforting classics like the pig head croquettes and mackerel rillettes. The wine list is a steal here and there is kindly corkage as an alternative. I prefer this to plenty of Michelin starred restaurants in London.

The Brilliant is an old favourite of mine. I have been a regular here since moving to west London in 1991, and have eaten countless meals here over the years. The dining room has expanded more than once over that time, and there is now a large upstairs function room, but the food is the same authentic Punjabi cuisine, aimed squarely at the Asian families who live in the area. Tandoori cooking is good, as shown in chicken tikka malai and tender tandoori lamb chops, while methi chicken is a fine dish, as are various vegetarian options. They even make the rarely found romali roti bread. For £40 a head you are served more food than a sane person would eat, all with copious beer and a warm welcome from the very professional service team.

From Mayfair to Ewell

Dastaan is a remarkable Indian restaurant on the very edge of London, in an unpromising terrace of shops in Ewell, near Kingston. It consistently produces arguably the best Indian food in and around London, despite its modest premises. At this latest meal there were old favourites such as superb red pepper prawns and khumb palak, as well as superb stone bass tikka and gorgeous methi chicken, amongst other dishes.

Benares goes from strength to strength under its new chef Sameer Taneja (who cooked here years ago before returning as executive chef). At this tasting menu we enjoyed some superb venison tikka, tawa halibut (pictured), scallop with coconut and a range of other dishes in a lengthy and fairly priced tasting menu. This is top notch Indian food, and much better than it was under the previous cooking regime.

Locanda Locatelli has been a stalwart of Italian fine dining for years, ever since Giorgio Locatelli left Zafferano to set up his own restaurant here in Portman Square. At one time it was a very difficult reservation, but seemingly less so these days, and Giorgio himself no longer cooks here. A pasta dish that I tried was good but a risotto much less so, and other dishes that we tried were pleasant but unremarkable. I haven’t been here for some years and felt that things had deteriorated noticeably from previous visits, though it was a still a pleasant evening, with smooth service and an extensive wine list to distract from the somewhat inconsistent food.

Along the Grand Trunk Road

Sola, now with a Michelin star, continues to distinguish itself by using exceptional quality ingredients. This showed through at my latest meal, from the very large live langoustines, turbot fillet from a massive 11.7kg fish, kaluga caviar from top supplier N25 and Difference Coffee, with the Panama Geisha coffee used in a very pretty dessert. Few two or even three-star restaurants in the UK use ingredients at this level.

Grand Trunk Road, named after a famous trading route linking Calcutta to Kabul, is an Indian restaurant in Woodford that cooks the cuisines along that route, at least the section within India. The cooking was of a high standard and service was excellent, with the owner much in evidence running the front of house. This is certainly a star of Indian cuisine in east London.

We had another fine meal at Jamavar in Mayfair, where Surender Mohan’s kitchen delivers some of the best Indian food to be found in the capital. Tandoori lamb chops were dazzlingly good at this visit, as were tandoori prawns and a number of other interesting dishes, such as morels with peas. Spicy octopus with corn is not something you usually see on an Indian menu, but that dish worked well too.

From Tower Hill to Chiswick

High Road Brasserie is the restaurant of High Road House in Chiswick that is open to the public (there is also a member only restaurant upstairs). Open all day and almost always busy, there are no attempts at culinary greatness here, but rather an appealing menu, friendly staff and an open-air terrace. The food is mostly pretty simple stuff, but there are odd flashes of ambition, as with a very good haddock souffle at our latest visit.

La Dame de Pic is the London outlet of the legendary Anne Sophie Pic in Valence, located in the Four Seasons hotel opposite the Tower of London. The food here is very well executed, though you can find more exciting savoury dishes in London. What you will struggle to find is a better pastry section, with the desserts here, such as a pretty chocolate and cherry dessert (pictured) being really top drawer.

From South Kensington to Ascot

Yashin Ocean House in South Kensington has an airy dining room and terrace seating, serving sushi and other Japanese dishes, including tempura and donburi. The tuna sushi was good, and prawn tempura (pictured) was cleverly presented, though an eel donburi dish was less good and soft-shell crab salad was rather disappointing. Overall, this was still a pleasant and not excessively expensive meal.

We enjoyed another excellent meal at Coworth Park, near Ascot. We had a series of excellent dishes using high grade ingredients, with an excellent pressed chicken dish, a good beef main course and a nice scallop tartare dish, amongst others. The entire meal cost was barely more than the main course supplement at Helene Darroze.

I also added two new Michelin-starred chef interviews: Endo Katsutoshi of Endo at the Rotunda, and Callum Graham of Bohemia.

From Covent Garden to Ewell

Louie (pictured) is a big-budget opening notionally showcasing the Creole food of Louisiana. Sadly Louie, despite its genuine Creole cooking credentials, is over-glitzy, overpriced and over here. Specifically it is in lavish multi-floor premises in Covent Garden. Lack of seasoning in a steak tartare was followed by an under-spiced gumbo and a woeful dessert, but the bill is high. One to avoid.

Dastaan, by contrast, represents fabulous value. The cooking team behind Gymkhana when it gained its star moved here almost en masse some years ago, and are producing for me the best Indian food in and around London right now. Spices are vibrant, cooking is skilful and the depth of flavour that is extracted from some dishes is remarkable. It is far from Mayfair but well worth the trip. Methi murgh, kumbh palak and monkfish tikka particularly impressed at our most recent meal, but it is hard to choose here: everything is lovely.

From Modern British to Modern Indian

Republic (pictured) is a modern Indian restaurant that has taken over the old Hedone site on the Chiswick High Road. The dining room is still quite recognisable but of course the food is entirely different, with some interesting dishes such as spicy vegetarian sausage rolls, as well as more traditional dishes like channa masala. The chef has a very good background and this was a very enjoyable meal. Chiswick has long lacked a good Indian restaurant so it is nice to welcome this to the area.

The Tudor Room at Great Fosters is a one-star Michelin restaurant in a very grand country house hotel that dates back to the 16^th century. The food has moved on since that time though, with chef Tony Parkin producing modern dishes such as langoustines with Thai broth, and lamb with Australian truffles. The classics are catered for too, with brioche made from scratch and a fine turbot with beurre blanc showing off genuine kitchen skills.

From Bethnal Green to Chiswick

Haandi is one of the most reliable Indian restaurants in London, tucked away in a side street almost opposite Harrods. Despite the posh location, the prices are remarkably fair, and the standard of cooking is high. Aloo gobi is a star dish here, and the chicken tikka is also much better than at most Indian restaurants. Long may it prosper.

Da Terra (pictured) in Bethnal Green was recently granted a second Michelin star for its modern European food with South American touches. The dishes are extremely well presented, with very precise plating, and the restaurant has a good atmosphere, with well trained staff. The tasting menu had some excellent dishes within it, though there was also some inconsistency at times. I was a surprised to see products like Exmoor caviar and ordinary espresso coffee on the menu; it would be hard to justify at a one-star restaurant, but two? The food is interesting but it is also quite pricy, so at the least the kitchen should be trying to use top notch ingredients.

La Trompette was the first restaurant in Chiswick to gain a Michelin star, and it has become a fixture of the neighbourhood. The menu is very appealing and the dishes nicely executed at our latest visit, with the wine list being a real bonus here. This is now quite extensive and is as well priced as ever, and a well priced wine list is a rare thing indeed in London.

From Fitzrovia to Piccadilly

Pali Hill has taken over the old Gaylord site in Fitzrovia. It is a much more modern restaurant that the traditional Gaylord, and featured some enjoyable dishes in the meal that we had there, such as an excellent chaat and a very good Alphonso mango cheesecake for dessert. The décor is much improved and the staff seemed keen, with an interesting menu. I imagine that it will prosper.

The Ritz continues to deliver one of the top fine dining experiences in London. Quite apart from the glorious dining room and silky smooth service, the kitchen uses high quality produce and has the resources to make very labour intensive dishes, such as old school French sauces. As well as some classic dishes like the langoustines in herb nage, there were a few new dishes such as a lovely pistachio tartlet and a good sea bass dish.

From Chelsea to Fitzrovia

I returned to two old favourites recently. Medlar has been running for a decade now on the Kings Road, serving reliable and enjoyable French dishes. At this latest visit I enjoyed tagliatelle with truffles and poussin, followed by passion fruit sorbet with lemon Madeleines. Add in an unusually fairly priced wine list and it is clear why Medlar has stood the test of time.

Another restaurant with an unusually good wine list is Noize in Fitzrovia. This also serves an appealing menu of classical dishes, from fine gougeres through to rabbit lasagne with mustard sauce. The wine list is lengthy, well-chosen and kindly priced, with modest corkage as an alternative. It is a thoroughly enjoyable restaurant to eat at.

From Petersham to White City

The Dysart has finally got a long overdue Michelin star, and the cooking there continues to develop. It is a lovely spot, with a big fireplace, widely spaced tables and a charming service team led by its owner. The chef is a Roux Scholar and uses good ingredients, as shown at this latest meal with a fillet of turbot from a huge 15kg fish that had lovely flavour, paired with a rich vin jaune sauce. The wine list is unusually good here, with fair prices. If you are ever looking for a meal in the Richmond area then this is the place to go.

Endo at The Rotunda is clearly the best sushi restaurant in London now. The chef has tweaked his product quality, now using top class N25 caviar rather than the mediocre product he used before. Wasabi is from the most prestigious wasabi area of Japan, and rice is from the same supplier as top of the range Sushi Saito in Tokyo. The meal is not cheap but is quite extensive, with a few dishes popping in to break up the sushi sequence, such as a pretty dish of vegetables in the middle of the meal. Endo is an engaging host and the staff are well trained. The sushi experience is as good as you will find outside of a limited number of restaurants in Japan.

From Belgravia to St Margarets

Zafferano has been a long-time favourite of mine since it opened. It has seen a number of fine chefs over the years, and recently has been back on form. It does an excellent saffron risotto, inventive salads and good pasta, and the only real drawback is the expensive wine list, reflecting the Belgravia area. Service is very slick here, and there is a large terrace with outside seating.

Le Salon Prive is a small French restaurant in St Margarets, near Twickenham. A solitary chef assisted by a kitchen porter manged to produce quite ambitious classical French food, as befits the chef’s background with Pierre Koffmann, amongst others. A twice-cooked cheese souffle is the star dish here, but there are some other nice dishes too, and corkage is modest. It is certainly of a much higher standard than you might expect from a neighbourhood restaurant.

London's newest 3 star Restaurant

Aulis London is a tiny six-seat restaurant that showcases the food of Simon Rogan. Guests sit around the single table and are served courses together, in dinner party style. Of course at a dinner party you are unlikely to be served a 14 course tasting menu as you get here. There were some excellent dishes, including a chawanmushi savoury custard and a nice dish of peas and egg yolk. I was less taken with the modern desserts featuring assorted shrubbery, and the bill is high, but it was certainly an enjoyable evening.

Helene Darroze at The Connaught was elevated to three Michelin stars in the most recent guide, so it seemed time to revisit. The food has definitely nudged up a notch from my previous meal, with a lobster dish with spices as well as all the desserts being top class. Not everything worked quite as well, but generally the standard of food was high. The wine list here is daylight robbery, so it is easy for the bill to get out of hand.

An Outing to Lancashire

Having been confined to Chiswick and its environs since October, it was nice to get out into the countryside for a few days. We stayed at Moor Hall, a five-acre property set in a listed 16^th century manor house, which has two restaurants. Moor Hall itself gained two Michelin stars in just two years of operation, and continues to show well. All the herbs and most of the vegetables are grown on the grounds, and there were some excellent dishes delivered, especially a lovely eel tartlet and a terrific beef tartare. The rooms, inicidentally, are very comfortable and the house has five acres of attractive gardens and grounds.

The Barn is the casual sister restaurant of Moor Hall, and was impressive. The quality of the ingredients and the cooking was high, even if the food was simpler than at the flagship restaurant. A pea starter was particularly good, as was line-caught sea bass, Service was charming and I can easily imagine this place getting a star of its own at some point.

Next week I will be reviewing two high end London restaurants.

Some Old Favourites

I began my return to dining out in some style this week. Sola in Soho has been awarded a Michelin star and has used the lockdown well to develop new dishes and seriously upgrade its ingredients. Through the course of a tasting menu there was a particularly superb scallop and a huge and perfectly cooked langoustine amongst many elaborate and carefully prepared dishes.

The Ritz is the best fine dining restaurant in London, and with a reduced number of tables it feels even more opulent. The classical French food is as superb as ever, with a particularly good veal sweetbread dish and flawless chocolate souffle being amongst the highlights. The large kitchen brigade has the resources to produce very time-consuming dishes that few (any?) London kitchens can match, and the effort really shows here. I also like the tableside theatre that occurs, for example with the flambeed pigeon jus at this meal. The Ritz is a real joy to eat at.

Next week I will venture off the tube network. I have barely left Chiswick since October so this will count as quite an adventure.

Restaurants Reopen!

The UK has finally emerged from its pandemic-induced restaurant hibernation. A recent survey shows that a tenth of all restaurants have disappeared, but there is certainly strong demand from the public to dine out at those left, with chefs everywhere encountering serious staff shortages when trying to rebuild their kitchen and front of house brigades.

I had many months to contemplate where to start once dining was allowed again, and couldn’t think of anywhere better than The Crown at Burchetts Green, where chef Simon Bonwick works alone in his kitchen, with an empty fridge at the start of each week. Despite this constraint, The Crown produces full-on French dishes, including classical sauces made from scratch. The Bonwick family is extensive – Simon has nine children – and the front of house is now run by his charming daughter India. I won’t repeat the detail of the review in this blog but it was if Simon had never been away from the stoves, with highlights being a refreshing crab and avocado starter and a superb rum baba with mango, lime and coconut.

It is good to be back dining at restaurants once again - more reviews will follow next week.

Michelin UK Awards

On Monday 25^th January the Michelin Guide UK for 2021 was announced. This being the middle of the Covid pandemic, it was a virtual event rather than a gala at the Hurlingham Club. Michelin is in a tricky position in these pandemic times. It attracts criticism if it releases a guide (“when did you have time to inspect?”) and criticised if it doesn’t (“the industry needs a boost”). This has resulted in a mixed approach globally. The guides to places like Japan, Seoul and Hong Kong, who have managed the pandemic better than western countries and largely avoided lengthy lockdowns, have gone ahead. On the other hand the California guide has been cancelled this year, with one of the three star restaurants (Meadowood) actually burning down in one of the California wildfires.

The UK event turned out to have quite a few surprises. Those expecting it to be a low-key affair were wrong. There was a dusting of new stars, including the Devon restaurant Thomas Carr 1873, who was somehow overlooked in the announcement but confirmed the following day. In London I was pleased to see stars for a couple of places where I had eaten well recently, namely Benares (with its new chef) Davies & Brook, Muse and Sola. There were also stars for recently opened Behind, and for Cornerstone and Casa Fofo. Outside London news stars were awarded to The Hide and Fox, Pea Porridge, Shaun Rankin at Grantley Hall, Outlaw’s New Road, Hjem, Osip, Roots, Cail Bruich and the Isle of Eriska. The Latymer has a new chef in the form of the talented Steve Smith, formerly of Bohemia, and retained a star. Callum Graham took over from Steve Smith at Bohemia and retained a star there. Dede in Baltimore, Ireland also won a star.

There was some turmoil at the two star level, with the Ledbury closing and the Marlon Abela empire collapse meaning The Square and The Greenhouse closing and Umu changing ownership and its chef leaving. In the end Umu was docked a star, but there were promotions for A. Wong, Da Terra and Story. I like A. Wong a lot and enjoyed Da Terra, though Story’s pleasures remain a mystery to me and to some other experienced diners. There were also two new 3 star entries. Clare Smyth at Core had plenty of 3 star experience at her previous venue, and now saw Core elevated to three stars. There was a more surprising elevation for Helene Darroze at The Connaught, which I should revisit. A few one star restaurants dropped out of the list, including Aquavit (unsurprising), Social Eating House, The Black Rat, The Flitch of Bacon, the Red Lion, Wilks (closed), The Pony and Trap, Ormer, The Oxford Kitchen and Dining Room. The rather underwhelming Braidwoods near Glasgow closed and lost its star, as did The Checkers and James Sommerin.

There were 23 new “green stars”, which are for sustainability rather than food, and seem to be confusingly named. These seem worthy awards, but a green star does not imply a red star, and vice versa, so why not just call them something else? Overall, the Michelin awards were as puzzling as they ever are, a mixture of deserving and baffling. The omissions continue too, with for example The Ritz at just one star outperforming most of the current UK three stars. I would have given Endo at The Rotunda two stars. No stars for arguably the best Indian restaurant in the UK, Dastaan. As happens every year, the Guide’s enigmatic decisions will delight some and infuriate others. However the emotional reactions of many of the chefs interviewed at the event show that Michelin is really the only industry award that most chefs really care about.

Into the Lockdown...

Benares is one of the capital’s major Indian restaurants and one of the first to gain a Michelin star. I have never been a big fan, but it has recently improved significantly with the advent of new head chef Sameer Taneja. We had a lovely meal this week, including a spectacular wild sea bass biryani en croute (pictured).

Zafferano used to be a regular haunt of mine back in its glory days, when it had a Michelin star and when Giorgio Locatelli and then Andy Needham were cooking there. It went into a slight decline when Andy left, but recently has been back on form with the advent of Daniel Camera, who used to be Andy’s sous chef, as its head chef. Our latest meal was very good, including lovely tagliolini with white truffles.

Silver Birch is a new opening in Chiswick, with a head chef with a track record working in serious restaurants. Desserts were particularly good, showing the head chef's background as a pastry chef, and service was unusually slick for a local restaurant.

The UK is now back in national lockdown, with all restaurants closed until at least early December. I’ll restart the blog when there are some restaurants open to review. In the meantime, stay safe.

From Ravenscourt Park to Chiswick

L’Amorosa is a regular haunt of mine, with Andy Needham cooking with the same skill that he showed for years when he headed the kitchen of Zafferano, which held a Michelin star for many years under his tenure. At this latest visit I particularly enjoyed agnolotti with deeply flavoured beef cheek ragu, as well as the signature saffron risotto.

The Duke of Sussex is a pleasant pub with a handsome Victorian dining room and a large garden. Its menu mixes pub staples with Spanish dishes, and makes a pretty decent paella. The vegetarian paella this week was pleasant if not of the standard that you would find in Barcelona or Valencia, though the fish and chips were not quite to their usual standard.

Happy Halloween everyone! I pondered listing my most horrific meals (actually there is no competition - easy choice), but instead here are some of my favourite horror films to get in the mood. These days you can find most movies via Netflix or Amazon Prime, or one of the other streaming services, albeit at a small cost. Try: Night of the Demon (1957), Get Out (2017), Let the Right One in (2008), The Babadook (2014), The Descent (2005), The Wicker Man (1973), Halloween (1978) and Cat People (1942). If you prefer a little comedy with your horror then try The Cabin in The Woods (2012) or Tucker and Dale v Evil (2010).

From South Kensington to Notting Hill

Verderame is one of the rare new openings in London, an Italian restaurant in Notting Hill. Although they have a proper pizza oven, there is a full menu with starters, pasta dishes and main courses. We had a rather uneven meal, with undercooked pasta, a peculiarly sweet pizza base yet quite good desserts. The wine list has a couple of relative bargains and overall it is an adequate local restaurant, especially if you skip straight to dessert.

Bibendum is one of London’s iconic dining rooms (pictured), made famous by Terence Conran in the 1980s, when the gifted chef Simon Hopkinson turned out lovely dishes in the gloriously light dining room. Claude Bosi moved here from Hibiscus and produced a particularly good tasting menu at this visit, filled with many luxury ingredients. I particularly enjoyed a large, sweet langoustine dish, but there were excellent dishes involving scallops, foie gras and game, finished with a classic chocolate souffle. This is not a cheap restaurant, and the lengthy wine list is no bargain either, but this was classy cooking and the service was excellent. This was the last day before London entered “Tier 2” Covid-19 restrictions, so it was a nice way to mark the transition.

In other news, the 2021 Michelin guide to Shanghai was released. Ultraviolet remains the only 3 star restaurant there.

From Belgravia to Piccadilly

Zafferano has stepped up a gear since the kitchen was taken over by Daniel Camera, who used to be sous chef here some years ago. At this meal I enjoyed duck ragu tagliatelle and we then had our first white truffles of the season. Tagliolini pasta has buttery texture and was nicely enhanced by the fragrant white truffles shaved over the pasta at the table.

Another old haunt that was on good form was The Ritz. In a tasting menu full of excellent dishes some stars were savoury custard with aged Parmesan and black truffle, and a fine ballotine of foie gras with port jelly. Pressed duck using top notch Bresse duck was the main course, and superb it was too. Desserts are always classy here, with an elaborate chocolate dessert in particular a fine way to finish the meal.

I also popped into my local Italian restaurant Amorosa, which has now reopened and where Andy Needham cooks many of the same dishes that he did when he earned a star for Zafferano for many years. I wasn’t in “review mode” here, but the agnolotti with beef ragu was particularly glorious and rich, and Andy has always been able to make a superb saffron risotto.

Michelin released their Kyoto and Osaka guides, and appear to have dropped former 3 star Iida from the guide, though it is hard to tell just from the press release. They have decided to postpone the California guide this year in deference to the wildfires, which amongst other things burned down Meadowood.

From Moorgate to Greek Street

Angler, on the top floor of a smart hotel near Moorgate, has held a Michelin star for several years now. We had a particularly good meal here this week, with an exceptional scallop dish, excellent red mullet and a high standard across a complete tasting menu. Angler is not a cheap outing, as good seafood costs money, but the service is excellent and the dining room has a nice view over the rooftops to complement the classy cooking. I have upgraded my website score based on this meal.

Noble Rot has recently lost head chef Paul Weaver, who has moved to Canada, but it has opened a new branch in what used to be the venerable Gay Hussar premises in Soho. Because Paul Weaver’s cooking at Noble Rot was so good, perhaps my expectations were too high here, though the Soho branch has a similarly superb wine list to the original. The cooking was less consistent, with a pleasant slip sole dish, decent roast chicken but with morels that were rather sorry for themselves, and an outright bad Armagnac baba. Perhaps the cooking will settle down in time, and certainly the great wine list and the charming service are assets, but there is room for improvement here.

A Tale of Two Chakras

Chakra is a little Indian restaurant group (two branches, with a third soon to open in Barnes) with its head chef based in Kingston and a further property in Kensington. Not surprisingly, the Kensington branch was the smarter of the two, though the Kingston one has a pleasant riverside setting. The menus have a few more unusual items as well as classic north Indian dishes like butter chicken. The standard of cooking was similar at both, with very good chicken malai tikka and makhani dhal at the Kensington branch being the pick of the dishes that we sampled across the two separate evenings. Although there are better places around, such as the wonderful Dastaan in Ewell, both Chakras certainly represent reasonable value.

The Crown at Burchetts Green (pictured) near Maidenhead has a chef operating entirely on his own in the kitchen, and yet even given this constraint it has deservedly won a Michelin star. The classical French cooking uses high grade ingredients, such as a perfectly cooked fillet from a huge 10kg turbot that we tried at the meal this week, along with top notch French quail made into an elaborate dish where the bird was boned, stuffed with foie gras and basted with a glaze so that it emerged glistening when served. How this kind of complexity is possible with a single chef in the kitchen is a mystery understood only by chef/owner Simon Bonwick, whose son George runs the front of house.

Two days in the Cotswolds

Whatley Manor has a different chef than when I came here last, and the style of cooking is rather different too. Niall Keating has adopted a lot of Asian flavours, presumably influenced by his time cooking at Benu, though on the second night of our stay we were able to eat a much more classical menu, with dishes such as chicken cooked in a pig bladder. Both meals were enjoyable, though I thought the classical one was more assured. For a £130 tasting menu I was a bit surprised at the lack of luxury ingredients e.g. halibut instead of a grander fish like turbot or Dover sole, no langoustines and caviar from one of the least impressive suppliers out there. The wine list is highly marked up, but you can take advantage of corkage, which is the way that we went. Whatley Manor has lovely gardens and grounds and is a pretty place to stay; they even have a private cinema that guests can book, complete with freshy made popcorn.

The Brilliant has been a regular haunt of mine since I moved to west London in 1991. The restaurant itself has been operating since 1975, and serves Punjabi food to a customer base that mostly consists of Asian families. It was great to see it reopen, and the food never missed a gear during the lockdown. The chaat is excellent here, as is the methi murgh, with a deep, dark sauce packed with fenugreek flavour, with which you can have romali roti. Service is slick, and is adapted well to pandemic times, with your temperature taken on the door, waiters wearing masks and well-spaced tables.

In other news, I was sorry to hear of the passing of the great chef Pierre Troigros.

Michelin published their 2021 guide to Guanzghou, which now has a pair of 2 star restaurants as well as 6 one stars.

Eating in Kensington, Soho and Fitzrovia

Gauthier has been serving ambitious French food in Soho for many years now. Chef/owner Alexis Gauthier is noted for his skills in vegetarian and vegan dishes, but carnivores can still enjoy dishes such as quail, while his risotto is a thing of beauty. The restaurant is split over several floors of a town house, and tables are now separated by screens in a nod to these pandemic times.

The Ninth in Fitzrovia has a couple of outside tables, which we took advantage of. There were particularly good nibbles of Beaufort gougeres with truffles, and oxtail croquette with horseradish and watercress mayonnaise (pictured). The standard of cooking throughout the meal was good, as was service. The only obvious areas for improvement would be the brand of coffee and the steep markups of the wine list.

Il Portico has been a Kensington stalwart for decades, with friendly front of house staff and capable pasta dishes such as papardelle with pork belly ragu. Risotto with porcini was good too, and although desserts were disappointing the wine list offers some very fairly priced gems. This is another restaurant with a few outside tables with a heater, ideal for the times of Covid-19.

From Victoria to Belgravia

I am still being cautious in visiting restaurants at the moment in these pandemic times, selecting places that take social distancing seriously, and favouring ones that have outside seating. This week I revisited two old favourites that both have appealing outside seating on pavement terraces. Zafferano is an old favourite and recently has benefitted from a new head chef Daniele Camera, who used to be sous chef here in its glory days when it had a Michelin star. A silky saffron risotto was particularly impressive at this meal.

A. Wong serves the most interesting dim sum in London, with Andrew Wong applying a modern twist to many classic recipes. A particular success was a scallop cheung fun with strips of char sui pork nestling between delicate filo pastry layers (pictured), which was a real triumph and an example of the innovation going on here. The technical skill in the kitchen is high here, with for example very good xiao long bau dumplings that have been injected with a little shot of vinegar. I particularly like that you can order dim sum by the individual piece, which means that you don’t have to fight over the last dumpling, and as a solo diner you can try a variety of dishes.

From Richmond to the Ritz

Chatora is a fairly new Indian restaurant in Richmond that was the scene of my last restaurant meal before the pandemic lockdown. It was good to see it reopened and completely full on this Thursday evening. As before there was unusually good chicken tikka, excellent makhani dhal and aloo papdi chaat, amongst other dishes. This is high grade Indian cooking, which there is all too little of in west London outside of Southall.

The Ritz continues to go from strength to strength, producing another fine surprise menu this week. I had the dazzling Parmesan and black truffle savoury custard dish, which had just been introduced to the menu at my last visit, and is a real triumph. Beef Wellington (pictured) was also hard to fault, a superbly executed example of a classic dish. The signature langoustines a la nage were as good as ever, all these dishes being of an exceptionally high standard. Combine that with slick service and the most ornate dining room in London, and you can see why it has become a regular haunt for me.

Michelin issued their 2021 Taipei guide, with no change at the top – the ludicrously overrated Le Palais retaining three Michelin stars, which is three more than it deserved when I went there.

From Borough Market to Soho

Mei Mei in Borough Market is a new venture from Elizabeth Haigh, who formerly earned a Michelin star at Pidgin and has worked at several high-end restaurants in her career. Born in Singapore, she returns to her roots at Mei Mei, serving street food in the style of the hawker stalls of Singapore. The highlight was a particularly good mackerel laksa, but there were several enjoyable dishes, all at a very fair price point. The outside counter seating under the covers of the market is about as Covid-safe as you can find at a restaurant.

Another place with a few outside seats is Sola, which is in the currently pedestrianised Dean Street in Soho. A tasting menu featured some genuinely top-notch ingredients, such as spiny lobster (pictured), French squab pigeon, wild sea bass prepared ikejime-style and more. The Californian dishes sometimes felt like they were more complicated than was really necessary, but there is no doubting the high class produce used here.

Top Indian Food in outer London

Dastaan (pictured) is a remarkable little restaurant in Ewell, on the outskirts of London in a terrace of shops in Surrey. The culinary founders were senior chefs (including the head chef) at Michelin-starred Gymkhana, but couldn’t afford central London rents. What intrigues me is that they are cooking better food here than they ever did at Gymkhana itself, despite the far lower budget premises and without fancy luxury ingredients – it is their cuisine now, and it shows. I have had many meals here, the latest featuring a remarkable spinach and mushroom dish, superb tandoori lamb chop and gloriously rich methi chicken. Even the vegetable bhajia was a joy, in a different league entirely from the onion bhajia that we all know from less capable Indian restaurants. The pricing is fair and demand has grown as its reputation has spread. On the Tuesday night this week, they had a waiting list of 148 for their 30-seat restaurant. Michelin give it a mere bib gourmand, yet the food here is better than any of the starred Indian restaurants in the capital.

The list of restaurant casualties of the pandemic continues to grow, Dairy in Clapham (along with its sister wine bar Counter Culture) is the latest, along with Emilia. This follows The Ledbury, Texture, Indian Accent, Lucknow 49 and even the venerable Radha Krishna Bhavan (formerly Sree Krishna). The Greenhouse also folded, though that was on the cards pre-pandemic due to the financial situation of its owner. I don’t count places that are relocating, such as Le Caprice and Darjeeling Express.

From Battersea to The Boltons

Fiume is literally nextdoor to Battersea power station and has a riverside outlook, with plenty of outside tables. It was busy on the warm summer evening that we visited, and to be honest the setting was probably most of the appeal. Although there was a competent lamb ragu pasta dish, there were minor issues with several of the other things that we tried. This is a shame given the background of the executive chef and head chef, but neither of them bothered to put in an appearance this evening, which doubtless did not help matters.

Cambio de Tercio is an old favourite of mine, serving Spanish food near Gloucester Road since 1995. Some dishes are borrowed from famous restaurants in Spain, such as the superb modern patatas bravas from Sergio Arola in Madrid. Others are more classical tapas, such as padron peppers or garlic prawns. The food is served by enthusiastic Spanish staff and the restaurant is blessed with several outside tables. The mostly Spanish wine list is extensive and features an exceptionally wide range of sherries.

Some Old Favourites Reopen

Hakkasan Mayfair is, to borrow from a Stella Artois advert, “reassuringly expensive”. The carefully lit dining rooms still look dark and brooding, yet have perfect pools of light on the tables. The staff are carefully trained and precise in their movements, and the menu is full of classic dishes, with no tricky gristly dishes like chicken's feet to frighten the squeamish . The har gau dumpling here has langoustine rather than prawn, and you don't see caviar on your dim sum in Gerrard Street, but you do here. What is impressive is the consistency of execution: even a humble dish like Singapore noodles is superbly made, with thin delicate noodles and subtle flavour. It is good to see it back.

Also back on form is The Ritz, with a superb menu unfolding before us in a dining room that has even more space between tables than before the lockdown. Classics like the langoustine in herb nage were as good as ever, with a new star dish in the form of a savoury custard with black truffles and Parmesan foam that had heavenly texture and flavour. The pastry section here is the best in London, with a caramel cage (pictured) the main attraction. The Ritz is still very much at the top of its game, and for me is the best restaurant in the capital. It is quite clearly better than, say, three star The Waterside Inn, which makes its solitary Michelin star an absurdity.

French Cooking in St Margarets

Le Salon Prive is a French restaurant in St Margarets, a suburb of Richmond next to Twickenham. Its chef has a solid track record of working in some high-end restaurants, and the menu is quite ambitious for a local restaurant: you don’t see hare and truffle pithivier or double baked gruyere souffle at your local branch of Cote. The cooking turned out to be pretty good, especially in the case of the excellent cheese souffle, which was a fine dish. As a bonus, the wine list is fairly priced and the corkage is modest. This little restaurant is rather under the radar and seem to do little or no marketing, but if you are in west London then it is well worth a try.

The Ritz has now reopened and I will cover my return there in the blog next week.

West London Restaurants Revisited

High Road Brasserie is an interesting place, somewhere that is not shooting for anything too ambitious on the food front, but which is perennially packed out. They are blessed with many outside tables, and it was noticeable that the inside tables were well spaced, with staff wearing masks and menus entirely virtual. The menu here covers bistro classics like beef tartare and fish and chips, with nothing on the menu that is going to disturb the comfortably off local clientele. The actual execution of the food is a little variable, the best dish on this visit being a lemon posset. However the overall package continues to pack in the customers, with every table taken on the Monday night that we visited.

The Dysart (pictured) was one of relatively few high-end London restaurants that reopened promptly on July 4^th, which is partly why it was the first place I dined at post lockdown. Another reason is its ample space and care and attention to social distancing precautions, which I have noticed seems quite variable in the restaurants that I have looked at. The main reason, though, is that the food is great, at a good price, all with a fairly priced wine list and nice staff. This second meal here in quick succession was as excellent as the first.

Next week sees the reopening of The Ritz, so I may just have to pay that a visit.

A Jaunt To The Countryside

104 in Notting Hill is in the tiny premises that used to be Marianne. Its chef has a good pedigree and works on his own in the kitchen, with just a solitary manager doing the front of house for the half a dozen tables. We had a long lunch there that included plenty of good ingredients including lobster, turbot, truffle and wagyu, and as at my previous visit the cooking was capable and the menu very appealing. The bill can quickly escalate as the wine list is skewed heavily towards the high end, but this was certainly a very enjoyable experience.

Given that air travel is now a somewhat fraught exercise in these days of Covid-19, related quarantines and similar, my travel will be limited for some time to come. However, given that we had not left Chiswick for three months other than a solitary excursion to the fishmonger, it seemed overdue to have a change of scenery. We had a couple of nights at the lovely Hambleton Hall, which overlooks Rutland Water. I have had a soft spot for this place for a long time. Its kitchen has been in the capable hands of Aaron Patterson since 1992. He retained the restaurant’s richly deserved Michelin star and has held it continuously since then. The menu is appealing and there is plenty of technical skill on display; many ingredients come directly from the extensive kitchen garden on the property. We stayed for two nights, with the menu completely different each night. It is an ideal place for a short break.

My First Restaurant Review Post Lockdown

This was the first restaurant visit that I have been able to make since the UK government imposed a lockdown on the industry in late March in response to the coronavirus pandemic. From 4^th July restaurants have been allowed to reopen for sit-down dining, though many are waiting a bit before they open their doors. There are over 40 pages of government guidelines for business to absorb and follow, though since these are guidelines rather than legislation, I imagine that responses by different restaurants in terms of precautions will vary quite a bit. I describe my initial experience at the beginning of my first review, and if you are interested you can read about how another restaurant, Le Gavroche, has been approaching safety in these Covid-19 times.

The Dysart is an old favourite of mine and was a natural choice for my first restaurant meal for over a hundred days. I know that the owners have been taking the precautions seriously, and The Dysart is blessed with acres of space, so tables are already widely spaced out. It was lovely to be back in the restaurant saddle, I have to say.

I will gradually start venturing out to other restaurants as they reopen, bearing in mind how they appear to be adapting their practices to a post Covid-19 world. Some people will feel more comfortable than others in dining out at present, and will proceed at a different pace, and some may decide to just wait and see, and continue eating at home for now. There is no right and wrong here: you need to reach a decision on dining out that reflects your own level of personal risk assessment. Whatever you decide, stay safe.

Restaurants Reopening Soon

This week I resume my weekly blog after a lengthy enforced break due to the coronavirus pandemic. All restaurants in the UK have been closed since 21^st March, and only reopened on 4^th July, while of course foreign travel has also ground to a halt. My diary has been one long set of ghostly entries of cancelled trips to Japan, Singapore, Beijing, Hong Kong and assorted European destinations. It is far from clear when it will be sensible to get on an airplane again, at least in the absence of a working vaccine for Covid-19. The notion of queuing up at an airport to get on a plane with a couple of hundred potentially infectious strangers, and then queue with them again at baggage reclaim, immigration and customs is not overly appealing. Consequently, my dining will be confined to the UK for the foreseeable future.

During the lockdown we did a lot of cooking, with some variety added via delivery/takeaway options from a number of restaurants. I enjoyed pizzas from my local Tarantella, fine Indian food from the excellent Jamavar, Bombay Bustle, and The Brilliant and especially from Dastaan, who produced some superb food that travelled well. The prettiest delivery food was a lovely bento box from Endo (pictured), and indeed these proved so popular that they became very difficult to obtain, so I was fortunate in having eaten more than one.

Restaurants now have many challenges to overcome, from dealing with the 43-page UK government guidelines and adapting their service practices to these, through to dealing with a potential lack of demand. A subset of people will be happy to dine in a restaurant again, but many, particularly older people who are more at risk from Covid-19, may not. One thing that has become clear is that virus infections mostly occur indoors, so outside tables are definitely going to be at a premium. In some areas, local councils are helping, such as in Soho where the local council is allowing more outside tables on the streets after a campaign by a local industry group. In general, cooking kills the virus and transmission via food has not thus far been documented, so the main risk is of sustained contact, indoors, by an infected diner breathing over you. This is why the social distancing measures that restaurants are introducing are crucial.

Already there have been a number of high-profile restaurant casualties: The Ledbury will not reopen for the foreseeable future, and Caprice is closing on its current site, while other high-profile restaurant casualties are Indian Accent, The Greenhouse and Siren at The Goring, as well as Castle Terrace. There will be many more closures to come: full-service restaurants were never a high margin business to begin with, and the challenges that the industry faces in the coming months are daunting. I wish everybody in the hospitality industry well in these difficult times.

To all of you reading this, stay safe, and enjoy your (cautious) return to restaurant dining from 4^th July, in England at least. Not all restaurants will open then, with some waiting until later in July or even until September. To pass the time, you could listen to a podcast interview that I did (40 minutes in length).

From Richmond to Worcester Park

Colombo Kitchen is a Sri Lankan restaurant in Worcester Park, which is just about in Greater London, near Sutton. We had a very enjoyable meal, with a particularly good kingfish curry as well as a lovely hopper (a kind of pancake) made fresh to order.

The Dysart is a regular haunt of mine, and I enjoyed another excellent meal there. The signature mackerel with champagne sauce and the oxtail risotto with pickled chillies were lovely as ever. There was also a gorgeous turbot and morel dish and a carefully cooked venison main course. Service was as charming as ever.

Chatora is a new Indian restaurant in Richmond, and a quite ambitious one too. Some fairly exotic dishes are on the menu, and the kitchen mostly delivered them very well. In particular a superbly tender chicken tikka was a joy, and there were several other very good dishes. This is an excellent addition to the local restaurant scene.

With the tragic situation with coronavirus unfolding, I have been torn between two desires. I have wanted to support local businesses by dining out, but at the same time I am conscious that “social distancing” is necessary for all of us at present. So far, the UK government advice has been for businesses to keep operating, and until this week I have been trying to support restaurants by eating out in them. However, this situation changed on 16^th March, when the Prime Minister advised against going to “pubs, clubs, theatres and other such social venues”. This would effectively shut down the restaurant industry in the UK, as has already happened in several other countries. There was no government instruction to close restaurants but many pre-emptively did so e.g. the Hawksmoor Group, the Corbin and King restaurants (Wolseley etc) and many more. However on 20th March the government went one step further and ordered all restaurants and pubs to shut for now.

My heart goes out to all in the hospitality industry, who will be seriously impacted for this, particularly if the advice remains in length for a long period of time, which it may well do. In the meantime, to all of you reading this, stay safe and let us hope that things improve as soon as possible. I won’t be posting any more reviews until the situation changes.

Off to the Races

I first visited Five Fields in Chelsea soon after it opened in 2013. It gained a Michelin star in 2017 and so it was interesting to see how the cooking had developed. Over a lengthy tasting menu, I tried some very good dishes, such as a sweetbread dish with Thai dressing and a chicken and truffle mousse wrapped in Savoy cabbage. Not everything worked as well as this, but inevitably there will be some unevenness over a lengthy menu. The staff were excellent and the wine list was not aggressively priced, so I can certainly see why Michelin awarded the star.

A more puzzling Michelin decision was the dropping of a second star from Le Champignon Sauvage (pictured) in Cheltenham. This restaurant, running since 1987, has a chef/owner who had literally never missed a service in all that time (on the rare occasions when he has been physically unable to be there, he has closed the restaurant). I had a very good meal, with the level of food being just as I remember it from a visit many years ago. It is hard to imagine getting much for consistent that a head chef who is at every service, so I am not sure what Michelin was thinking here. As a bonus, the restaurant is fairly inexpensive by high end standards, and the wine list is a joy: carefully chosen growers and modest mark-ups. It may not be cutting edge cuisine but that is no bad thing as far as I am concerned, and it is far from old fashioned.

A Ritzy Meal

I had another very fine meal at The Ritz, my first visit there this year. Stand out dishes were their langoustines in herb nage, as well as superb salt-baked celeriac with black truffle sauce (pictured), which is the dish that should convince anyone that vegetable dishes need not be dull. The tasting menu also featured a ballotine of duck liver, venison with beetroot and two excellent desserts, including a superb chocolate souffle. The food element of the bill was a steal, though the wine list is aggressively priced. Still, nowhere in London is currently cooking better food than this.

I also had a pleasant meal at Sam’s Riverside, but as this was a birthday celebration with friends I wasn’t really in “review” mode. Suffice it to say that beef tartare was as good as on my previous visit, and that a rhubarb souffle was excellent, being light and airy and evenly cooked. This restaurant is a definite step up from its predecessor in Chiswick, for the simple reason that it has a much better chef. Its location looking out over the river will doubtless cause it to prosper as the weather gets warmer, but it is already doing a roaring trade.

The Michelin guide to Germany came out. A new 3 star in Berlin called Rutz was added, and 7 new 2 stars. Germany now has 10 three star restaurants, 43 two stars and 255 one stars.

The Treehouses of Regent Street

Madera is a modern Mexican restaurant in the Treehouse Hotel in north Regent Street. It is a quite flashy place, on the fifteenth floor with excellent views out over the rooftops of London. Unfortunately the money has gone into the décor but not obviously into the kitchen or staff training. We had some bland salsa, adequate guacamole and one decent tortilla, but poor-quality prawns and some borderline inedible churros, all at a sky-high price to match the skyline view. It was unaccountably busy with people on dates gawping out of the windows at the lights of the capital. To add insult to injury, service was a shambles.

Hakkasan Mayfair is as reliable as a Swiss watch, serving dish after excellent dish despite the huge scale of the operation here (700 covers on a busy evening). At this latest visit we had mostly dim sum, and this was of a high standard. Star dish was the prawn cheung fun, but the har gau dumplings were lovely, as was just about everything else that we tried. It is not cheap here but service is silky smooth.

Gymkhana has been closed since last summer due to a fire, but has just reopened with a completely refurbished lower floor (pictured) and new kitchen, including a new head chef. Gymkhana has always put an emphasis on slick service, and this has continued, but despite trying it three times previously was never that taken with the food, especially given the sky-high prices. The new chef is good and I slightly preferred this meal to my previous ones. However this was still £91 a head with no alcohol, which is a chunk of money for a meal. It is fine, but I simply prefer Indian Accent and Jamavar.

From Maidenhead to Mayfair

It is an eternal mystery as to why it is so difficult to get good fish and chips in London. You can get excellent fish and chips in Whitby, for example, so why not the capital? It is hardly the availability of haddock or potatoes, or a curious regional lack of deep-frying skills in Britain’s capital city. I know it is possible, since Simon Hopkinson once produced exemplary fish and chips at Bibendum. It is as though his magic formula has been lost forever, like some ancient skill in building giant stone statues. Although there are a few reasonably worthy efforts, there is no clearly high-class chippy in London, and I have tried a lot. The Mayfair Chippy is no exception to this ironclad rule, serving up average chips and fish with rather greasy batter, for all its location on the most expensive square on the Monopoly board.

The Crown at Burchetts Green is a very special little restaurant in the countryside near Maidenhead. Chef Simon Bonwick works on his own in the kitchen, starting each week with an empty fridge and conjuring up elaborate classical French dishes, including complex sauces that take days to make. One example is pictured. The restaurant rightly has a Michelin star as testament to the quality of the food, despite the complete lack of commis chefs and sous chefs that are normally expected at this level. At this latest meal we ate a string of fine dishes, all at a price of just £43 for the tasting menu, which would barely buy you a main course in Mayfair. The genuine hospitality of his family, who manage the front of house, is another joy of the place. This gem is a short train ride from Paddington or a drive down the M4, and if you live in west London you can get there faster than a journey to Shoreditch

From Queensway to White City

Shola is a Pakistani restaurant in the redeveloped BBC site at White City. It is a quite casual restaurant set up by a former TV food show host, Aida Khan. We had a pleasant though somewhat uneven meal, with a tender lamb shoulder dish, some decent chaat but also some poor fried bhindi. However the pricing was quite low, and if you are in the area it is worth a look.

Even better value was Normah Café in the indoor Queensway Market. This little place serves home-style Malaysian food, cooked by its chef/founder Normah Abd Hamid. The standard of food here was very good, with excellent beef rendang (pictured) and a particularly good roti with dhal. What was surprising was the price: £12 a head including soft drinks for a genuinely good meal. This must be one of the very best value restaurants in London.

From Westminster to Marble Arch

The Yard is a British restaurant in a quite new luxury hotel in Westminster. It has an executive chef who was formerly head chef of the Ledbury, and has had an expensive fit out including some rather peculiar staff uniforms. The savoury dishes that we ate were generally excellent, especially a lovely fallow deer main course (pictured), but things fell apart at the dessert stage. Such inconsistency is less forgivable when the prices are as high as this, supplemented by one of the most outrageously priced wine lists that I have ever seen.

Another newish luxury hotel restaurant is Tokii within a Japanese-owned hotel in Marble Arch called the Prince Akatoki. By contrast with The Yard, the pricing at Tokii was very fair, and the kitchen delivered some very good dishes in the Japanese influenced style that you might find at Roka or Zuma. There was some excellent prawn tempura and indeed the standard of food throughout was very good, even if service was a little flaky. This is a restaurant that has had little media coverage, and given the lack of response from their PR agency for background information I can see why that might be.

Tom Aikens Finds His Muse

This week I went to Muse (pictured), the new Belgravia fine dining venture from Tom Aikens. This is a tiny restaurant and very much aimed at the fine dining end of things, serving a no-choice tasting menu with evocative names. The good thing is that Tom Aikens has always been a fine chef, even if in recent years he has been distracted by running a small group of more casual restaurants. Now he is back behind the stoves and serving up some excellent dishes. Although there was a touch of inconsistency, there were some impressive dishes on display. This is certainly one of the best new openings in London for quite some time.

The 2020 Michelin guide to France was announced. There was a high profile demotion for Paul Bocuse, but three new three star places in the form of Kei in Paris, Chistopher Coutancea in La Rochelle and l’Oustea de Baumanaire in Provence. There were no less than 11 new two star places, and here was also a major shake up at the one star level. There were 37 new one stars and, interestingly, 52 demotions at the one star level. I cannot recall a guide that had more demotions than promotions.

From Chelsea to Soho

Wild Tavern (pictured) is an Italian restaurant from the same stable as Goodman and Beast. Situated on Chelsea Green, the restaurant was popular even a few weeks after opening and quite noisy. The menu was appealing and wine list fairly priced, but the food was quite expensive for the level of quality that appeared. They also have a raw bar and offer items cooked on a Josper grill.

Sola is the new incarnation of what was Rambla. It is Californian fine dining in style, the chef/owner someone who worked in the USA for some years and who has experience in some top kitchens. This was my second meal here and was a lengthy tasting menu, giving the kitchen a chance to show off a wide range of dishes. There were some lovely ingredients on display and plenty of classical technique that didn’t falter across the many dishes. This meal was a distinct step up from my enjoyable first one here, the kitchen now clearly settling down and starting to deliver some high quality food.

From Marylebone to Fulham

1947 London, just off Charlotte Street, is a smart Indian restaurant that recently opened. It was not trivial to find, given that there is already an Indian restaurant of that name in Middlesex Street. Moreover, the restaurant insists that its address is “33 Charlotte Street”, presumably for markting reasons, despite being not even close to, say, 34 Charlotte Street. Instead it is in an entirely different street nearby. If you navigate this navigational minefield and find the entrance then you will encounter some excellent food, prepared by a former head chef of Tangawizi. The food is fairly priced but the wine list is daylight robbery – at least Dick Turpin had the decency to wear a mask. Stick to beer.

This was, by chance, my second visit to the Harwood Arms in a fortnight. This gave me the chance to try a pre-order dish of venison Wellington (pictured), which was absolutely superb. Venison has deeper flavour than beef fillet, and this Wellington had a pancake to separate the meat juices from the pastry and so avoid soggy pastry; this is as it should be but many kitchens skip this extra step. Other dishes were also very good, including the signature Scotch egg. The Harwood Arms is a fine restaurant serving high quality food at a fair price – a rare combination in London.

From Park Lane to Trafalgar Square

The Grill at The Dorchester (pictured) has been running since 1931, and has seen a number of talented chefs over the years. The latest is the youthful Tom Booton, and the room has been completely redecorated for the relaunch. The menu is still fairly classical but there are some different takes on dishes e.g. a deconstructed lobster thermidor. There is some ability in the kitchen, as shown by a superb sweetbread dish, but there were also some dishes that need a rethink, such as a pretty grim doughnut dessert. Overall though, the hits outweighed the misses, and as the kitchen settles down this will be a place to watch.

Bancone is one of a recent wave of pasta restaurants to hit the capital. This is quite a smart business move, as pasta is cheap to make and you don’t require any pesky expensive ingredients to go with it: some pork for a ragu perhaps rather than costly langoustines or turbot. The place was heaving on a Tuesday night in January, but although it was harmless enough I found it hard to get very excited about. There was a theme of under-seasoning, although the veal ragu with winter truffles that I tried was pleasant enough. Ironically the best dish of the night was a dessert. I will stick to l’Amorosa if I want some pasta, though Bancone was better than the puzzlingly popular Padella on the one occasion that I tried it.

I also revisted The Harwood Arms, the only Michelin starred pub in London. This has seen a number of talented chefs running its kitchen, the latest being Sally Abe. I enjoyed the signature venison Scotch egg, and there was also some very good cured salmon on blinis and lovely fallow deer for my main course. Desserts were strong too, both a rhubarb trifle and a pear tarte tatin. This is a classy restaurant doing hearty food that is full of flavour.

Best Meals of 2019

The week between Christmas and New Year is not a great one for restaurant reviewing, with many places taking a break and new places only opening this week if their builders really screwed up. Over the course of the year I travelled quite widely, and a few readers have asked about my best meals of 2019.

The very best of this year for me were remarkable meals at the recently relocated Troisgros, along with a dazzling dinner at Christian Bau’s restaurant Schloss Berg (pictured) in Germany, which is surely producing some of the best food in the world right now. I also had a great time at Les Pres Eugenie, where Michel Guerard is still in the kitchen every day at the tender age of 86.

Close behind this trio were terrific meals at Waldhotel Sonnora in Germany and l'Osier in Tokyo, along with the impressive Le Clarence in Paris. Honourable mentions go to Sushi Sugita in Tokyo, Takao Takano in Lyon, Single Thread in California, Luca Fantin in Tokyo and Steirereck in Vienna, as well as several fine meals at The Ritz in London.

I’d like to take the opportunity to wish you all a very happy New Year – happy eating!

From Chelsea to Mayfair

Davies and Brook (whose bar is pictured) is the latest Claridges Hotel flagship restaurant, this time from Daniel Humm, who runs the three star Eleven Madison Park in New York. Despite having only been open a few weeks, the cooking was generally consistent, with a simpler style that might perhaps have been expected given its heritage. I was particularly impressed with crab chawanmushi and an apple doughnut for dessert, but there were several very good dishes. This is one of the highest profile London openings this year, and along with Endo is probably the best of all of them.

Medlar in Chelsea produced a really good meal this week, with especially good tarte tatin but also an excellent venison dish and a good crab ravioli. Three courses are just £40, which is very fair given the location and the standard of the food and service. A few years ago Medlar lost its Michelin star but based on this visit they should reinstate it.

I hope that you all had a good Christmas break and wish you a Happy New Year.

From Richmond to Knightsbridge

The Petersham Hotel has a lovely view (pictured) from the top of Richmond Hill and used to have a very good chef to go with it. Sadly, since he left things have gone downhill, and based on my latest meal they are careering down that hill fast. Dish after dish was badly executed – a turkey of a meal. The best restaurant in Richmond now is clearly The Dysart.

Zafferano used to be my regular haunt back when Andy Needham won it a Michelin star, and indeed prior to that when Giorgio Locatelli first gained a star for it. These days it may not have a star but still has an excellent chef (Daniele Camera), whose team produced a very enjoyable meal. Saffron risotto was a highlight, as was ravioli of osso buco.

The Michelin Hong Kong 2020 guide came out. Sushi Shikon kept its three stars after a relocation and there was a new three star Chinese restaurant called Forum, promoted from two stars last year. Bo Innovation lost its third star (again). Hong Kong now has 7 three-star restaurants, 14 two stars and 48 one stars. Macau has 3 three-star restaurants, 5 two stars and 11 one stars.

The best new London openings of 2019 in my view were Endo at the Rotunda, Comptoir Robuchon, Trivet, Siren, Da Terra, The Betterment, Gezellig and 104. Honourable mentions also to Myrtle, Wild Honey, Bob Bob Cite, Kanishka, Ooty and Farzi Café.

My best meals of the year were at Christian Bau, Troisgros and Les Pres Eugenie (Michel Guerard).

A Week in Bangalore

This week I returned to Bangalore. This was a vacation rather than primarily a food visit. I enjoy India as a vacation destination, and this was my 23^rd visit to that country. Given its predictable wet and dry seasons, in the winter you can be assured of sunshine, and Bangalore has the advantage of a milder climate than most. This week it was a steady 26-27C each day, whereas at this time of year Goa, for example, is usually a much sultrier 33C. Bangalore was once called the “garden city” of India, and although much of its greenery has been lost to development, there are still some nice parks. The home of India’s IT industry, it is visibly more prosperous than much of the country, and in some areas you could easily think you are in Silicon valley, all smart offices and manicured lawns. We stayed at the excellent Leela Palace (pictured).

Karavalli is a restaurant serving only the food of the southern states of India. I had an excellent sorpotel, a rich Goan pork curry, as well as very good pomfret served in a banana leaf. The paratha that we tried was one of the best I have eaten anywhere.

Le Cirque Signature is an Italian restaurant that was recently ranked 29^th best in India on the Conde Nast Traveller list. The food is quite ambitious and an excellent truffle risotto showed the skill in the kitchen. There were some limitation e.g. the use of imported frozen scallops seems pointless to me; better to adapt to the local ingredients, as Luca Fantin has done to such good effect in Tokyo.

We dined several times at Jamavar, the flagship Indian restaurant of the Leela Hotel. There were several fine dishes, including excellent Kashmiri morels and classy chicken biryani, as well as superb romali roti. Classics such as murgh malai and makhanai dhal were very well made, and the overall standard across several meals was high.

From Chiswick to Mayfair

Atelier Robuchon in Covent Garden closed some months ago but makes way for the latest brand in the Robuchon restaurant empire, Comptoir Robuchon (pictured). This has a brasserie feel to it, located in Mayfair and will soon be accompanied by a Robuchon delicatessen a few doors away. The dishes are mostly familiar if you know the Atelier Robuchon menu: quail, lobster jelly with caviar and crab, Dover sole, the famous mash etc. The kitchen is headed up by the same chef that led the team at Atelier Robuchon, and there is the same precision in the dishes. Service is slick and the wine list expensive and mostly French, as is always the case in Robuchon restaurants. At my meal here a pasta dish was just a bit too simple, but the signature lobster jelly and caviar is as good to taste as it is to look at, and the rum baba was top notch. If you can afford it, then you will eat well here.

Rambla in Dean Street has been replaced by a more ambitious fine dining restaurant called Sola, this time serving Californian dishes rather than tapas, but with the same chef owner Victor Garvey, who was born in Barcelona but spent many years on the west coast of the USA. The menu is appealing and the quality of the ingredients unusually high, with things like Landes chicken and crab from Dungeness (from the west coast of the US rather than the nuclear power station in Kent). The cooking was generally good too, with an excellent cardoon gratin and top-notch puff pastry made from scratch in the kitchen. As a bonus, the Californian wine list was very kindly priced by London standards.

La Trompette has been going eighteen years now, and continues to produce enjoyable food at a fair price for the residents of Chiswick. An excellent wild sea bass dish and a good clementine tart illustrated the best of the cooking here, which is reliable and appealing. This is the restaurant that put Chiswick on the culinary map in London, and it is nice to see it still on good form.

The Michelin 2020 guide to Belgium and Luxembourg was published. No change at the top. Belgum now has 1 three star restaurant, 23 two stars and 106 one stars. Luxembourg has 1 two star restaurant and 8 one stars.

From White City to Petersham

Dysart has been a regular haunt of mine ever since it opened, with a Roux Scholar in the kitchen and a charming owner who leads the front of house. Not far from Richmond, it has an open fire and well-spaced tables, a fairly priced wine list and excellent food. It has long baffled me as to why it did not have a star, and Michelin finally rectified this in the 2020 guide. This reward is well deserved and long overdue.

Eating Japanese food in London requires a degree of optimism if you are used to eating Japanese food in Japan. Sushi is a particular minefield, and I have lost count of the number of times I have eaten fridge cold sushi rice, fake wasabi and grim fish in London restaurants. Endo at the Rotunda is the real thing however, and my second meal here confirmed the promise of my previous meal. Here the rice used is the same as at Sushi Saito in Tokyo, the wasabi root is freshly grated and the standard of the toppings surprisingly high. Endo would fit in happily if it was located in Tokyo.

The Ritz is my “go to” place for fine dining in London these days. At this meal a Bresse chicken was cooked whole with a pig bladder, served with fabulous celeriac and shaved with white truffles, all resting in a glorious supreme sauce. This is the kind of dish that very few restaurants in London would even attempt, but here is executed skilfully. The (one Michelin star) food here trounces that at three star Sketch and Alain Ducasse at the Dorchester.

The 2020 Michelin Guide to Tokyo came out. There was a promotion to three stars for the very enjoyable Kadowaki. There was a demotion for the fugu restaurant Usukifugu Yamadaya. Two restaurants, the wonderful Sushi Saito (rated number 2 behind Sugita for sushi on the main local restaurant website Tabelog, having been rated number 1 for years) on and the considerably less wonderful Jiro (currently rated merely 66th best in the city on Tabelog), removed themselves from the guide by becoming private restaurants. This is quite a common trajectory in Japan. If a restaurant gets so many customers that it is always full with repeat business, then there is little point in pretending to have seats available to new customers, who can virtually never obtain reservations. Now if you want to eat at Sushi Saito you need to be brought by one of the regular customers, who are given a number of recurring reservations per year. Here is a radio interview with me discussing this development. Tokyo now has 11 three star Michelin restaurants, 48 two stars and 167 one stars. No city on earth has more three star restaurants, even after these changes. The new two stars are Ginza Shinohara, Inua and Prisma, and there was quite a clear out at the two star level, including the demotion of the ludicrously overrated Hamadaya. This was given three stars in the initial Michelin and although it was swiftly demoted to two stars they have been reluctant to admit their mistake, only now reducing it to one star - just one more to go until its correct rating of "no stars whatsoever".

The2020 Michelin guide to Beijing came out, its forst for that city. There was a three star called Xin Rong Ji, a pair of two stars and 20 one stars.

From Hammersmith to Southwark

Sam’s Riverside (pictured) is a large new restaurant next to The Riverside Studios in Hammersmith. This time restaurateur Sam Harrison has recruited a higher calibre chef than we he ran Sam’s Brasserie in Chiswick, so while the formula is similar, the food is better. The restaurant is large and smart, with a genuine riverside setting, and the food is appealing and capably made. I predict that it will prosper.

Trivet is one of the most interesting London restaurant openings of the year, with former Fat Duck head chef Jonny Lake cooking in Southwark. A couple of the savoury dishes that we tried were superb, especially a sweetbread dish, but desserts were a let-down. That is a shame because the best dishes here are genuinely top notch.

I also had another lovely meal at l’Amorosa, where Andy Needham cooks the same high-class Italian food as he did at Zafferano when it had a Michelin star, but now in a neighbourhood setting. His pasta ragu and saffron risotto are things of beauty.

The Michelin Bangkok 2020 Guide (now covering Chiang Mai also) came out, with R. Haan and Sorn elevated to two stars. With Gaggan closing this leaves Thailand with no three-star places, 5 two stars (La Normandie, Mezzaluna, R. Haan, Sorn and Suhring) and 24 one stars. The Michelin Seoul 2020 Guide had no change at the three-star level, Mosu and Impression gaining two stars apiece and seven new one-star places. In all, Seoul now has a pair of three-star restaurants, 7 two stars and 22 one stars.The Michelin guide to Spain and Portugal was also released. A new three star in Santander - Cenador de Amos, as well as five new two stars. Spain now has 11 three star restaurnats, 36 two stars and 194 one stars.

London's Latest 3 Star Restaurant

Emilia is an Italian restaurant in the space that used to be occupied by Bonhams, located in the Mayfair auction house of the same name. It is now an Italian restaurant, and the meal that we ate included some enjoyable dishes such as a risotto of celery, venison ragu and a quail dish. There was a little unevenness in the kitchen but the service was excellent, and the place was doing very well.

Napoli On The Road is a pizzeria opened by a pair of Naples natives, one of whom worked as a pizza chef ever since his childhood, growing up in the family’s pizzeria. This is a promising background, but for some reason they have not installed an oven that gets to the 500C required (according to the rules of the Associazione Verace Pizza Napoletana) for an authentic Neapolitan pizza. This means that the pizza takes longer to cook than the defined ideal, and although the pizza was nice enough, with a decent base, it was indeed not as good as at somewhere like 50 Kalo di Ciro Salvo or l’Oro di Napoli, who are equipped with the full-on ovens that cook a pizza in under a minute.

Sketch in Conduit Street has two restaurants, the more formal one upstairs being under the direction of Pierre Gagnaire and serving the same style of modern French food. A trait of Gagniare’s cooking is that a single ingredient appears in several forms on separate little plates. This can be interesting but also a bit overwhelming at times, as you try and recall what your fifth plate of langoustine consisted of. The place itself is very smartly decorated and the service is silky smooth. However the food is much as I recall from my visit several years ago, since when it has been promoted by Michelin not once but twice. This elevation is baffling to me based on this meal, which had some good dishes but nothing remarkable. The only thing three star about this meal was the bill.

Mayfair Latest Openings

The Betterment (no, me neither) is the latest in the Jason Atherton empire, located in the Biltmore Hotel in Mayfair. It has well-trained staff and an experienced head chef, and we had some very good dishes over the evening, especially an excellent scallop with Parmesan foam. The issue, and it is a major issue, is the price, which is high even by the standards of Mayfair. The wine list has some eye watering mark-ups, and vegetable side dishes, side dishes mind, reach £12. At least the standard of food is quite high, but this is not for the faint hearted or those on a budget.

Charlie's has taken over from Beck at Browns Hotel in Mayfair, and is associated with Trinity. Although the waiting staff were excellent, the meal ranged from competent in the case of a neat but under-seasoned beef tartare to considerably less than competent in the case of a raspberry tart with rock-hard pastry. This would be just about OK if the bill was about a third of what it actually was, but at these prices the kitchen really needs to up its game, in my view.

The 2020 Michelin Italy guide appeared, with a new three star restaruant in the form of Mudec in Milan. This brings the total for Italy to 11 three-star places, with all the ones of the previous year retaining their three star rating. There are also 35 two stars and 326 one star restaurants in Italy, with 372 starred restaurants in all.

From Piccadilly to Westfield

Copper Chimney (pictured) is the first UK venture for a large Indian restaurant group based in Mumbai that has a considerable empire covering restaurants, bars and wedding catering. They have opened in the approach to Westfield shopping centre in Shepherds Bush, a location with plenty of food outlets, but up until now with nothing much more ambitious than Nando’s. Copper Chimney is surprisingly smartly decorated, and its large menu features some very good dishes, in particular some excellent tandoori lamb chops and genuinely classy romali roti. Prices are modest, and the place is doing a roaring trade. It is easy to sneer at restaurants located in Westfield, but given the vast amount of customers that Copper Chimney is already pulling in, and contrast this with many empty dining rooms in central London, the location choice may turn out to be quite astute.

The Ritz has become my “go to” place for fine dining in London now that Hedone has closed. I enjoyed another excellent meal there this week, with a particularly good turbot dish with a superbly rich, creamy sauce. Canapes are top notch here, and so are desserts, and the product quality is high. It helps of course that the Ritz has considerable buying power and a vast kitchen team – there are a hundred chefs in the kitchen in all, though of course this is to handle not just the dining room but also afternoon tea, private functions etc. Michelin continue to score this as a one-star restaurant, which when you think about some of the truly mediocre places in London that get stars these days, is utterly absurd. It is clearly better than, say, Alain Ducasse at the Dorchester, which gets three stars.

From Chelsea to Hounslow

The African Queen is a lively Indian restaurant and bar in Hounslow. It is inexpensive and has a vast menu, though it was exceptionally noisy on the night that we went. The crowds also impacted the service, which was very slow. The food itself was decent enough, with some good methi chicken and channa masala but naan bread that was too rigid in texture. All in all a harmless enough place with generous portions if you are in the area, but not somewhere to make a trek to.

The Sea The Sea (pictured) in Chelsea is, as you might guess, a seafood restaurant: fishmonger by day, restaurant by night. Set in a semi-pedestrianised street near Sloane Square, it serves plenty of raw and pickled fish, with a few cooked dishes. The seafood is certainly good quality, and there were some imaginative ways to show it off, such as a mackerel roll with Portuguese pesto, and aged cured kingfish with pickled Chinese artichoke. The bar stools were rather at odds with the not inconsiderable price but the overall experience was nice enough.

The New York Michelin Guide 2020 was released. No change at the three star level, and two stars for Atomix and Blue Hill at Stone Barns, though demotions for Marea, Atelier Robuchon, Ginza Onadera and Tetsu Basement. New York now has 5 three star restaurants, 14 two stars and 55 one stars.

From Holland Park to Mayfair

The Greenhouse has had chef Alex Dilling in charge for over a year now, and has retained its two Michelin star rating. My first meal there was just after Alex took over, and although it was good, the meal this week was a definite step up. We had a surprise tasting menu and there was a chance to try a lot of dishes over a quite lengthy but most enjoyable meal. Turbot was lovely, as was a grouse and mallard pithivier, and I was particularly impressed by the quality of the sauces. For me this is now cooking in sold two star territory, which I haven’t really felt on prior visits, including under the previous head chef. This is one of the few high end London restaurants where the food seems to be getting noticeably better, rather than coasting along, or worse.

Julie’s in Holland Park (pictured) has been around for fifty years and was once a celebrity hangout for the likes of the Rolling Stones and Princess Diana. It now has a new chef in the form of Shay Cooper, formerly at The Bingham and the Goring. The quite large restaurant is split into lots of small areas over two floors, and has a fairly appealing menu of British dishes. I had a very good chicken main course, though under-seasoning was a consistent theme. Service was functional rather than slick, and the short wine list had levels of mark-up that would make an oligarch wince. The food was reasonable overall, but for me it needs greater consistency

I also had another good meal at The Brilliant in Southall, which is a haunt of mine that is so regular that I don't usually update the website entry with the latest experience. Suffice it to say that it is extremely consistent.

Frome Ewell to Belgravia

Siren is the newest restaurant of Nathan Outlaw, the chef whose seafood restaurant in Cormwall has two Michelin stars. This new venture is in the Goring hotel in a purpose-built conservatory. The menu features lots of seafood brought daily from Cornwall, and indeed a display of it (pictured) is shown to you as you sit down. The menu is appealing and the product quality good. Service was particularly impressive, and although prices are high you are sitting in not just any hotel, but the hotel that is favoured by the royal family, so this was never likely t be a cheap outing.

Dastaan out in Ewell is a little gem of an Indian restaurant, with two senior chefs from a Michelin starred restaurant cooking in simple premises in a parade of shops. The food is great and prices are modest, and the little place is packed out. They do at least two sittings for dinner even on weekdays. I have tried most of the menu by now, and certainly classic dishes like butter chicken is great, but also some other dishes really shine e.g. their spinach and mushroom side dish. Breads are light and fluffy and spicing is vibrant. This is the sort of restaurant that you dream of having locally but never do, unless of course you live in Ewell.

The UK 2020 Michelin Guide was announced at a ceemony attended by 450 people at the Hurlingham Club in Fulham. As usual the results were a mixture of sensible and puzzling. Sketch got a third star, to the general bemusement of the audience. The Araki, whose eponymous founder returned to Japan, was delisted entirely by Michelin, though it is still open, being run by Mr Araki's apprentice.There was a second star for The Dining Room at Whatley Manor, and also for Dame de Pic. I was pleased to see a second star for the Greenhouse in Dublin, while Aimsir in Ireland jumped in at two stars after only being open a few months. I was very pleased with the Dysart getting a star, while the chef at Endo at the Rotunda was visibly emotional on receiving his star. There were new stars for Da Terra and Maos in East London. Outside London there were stars for Mana, Alchemilla,,Allium, Artichoke, Cottage in the Woods, Interlude, Old Stamp House, Opheem, Pensons, Stark, Royal Oak (in Whatcote) and The Tudor Room. In Scotland both Condita and Isle of Eriska gained stars, while in Wales Beach House gained a star, as did Muddlers Club in Belfast. In Ireland there were stars for Bastion, Variety Jones and The Oak Room. A number of places lost stars, including Benares, Galvin at Windows and Yauatcha in London. Outside London there were demotions for Yorke Arms, Tyddyn LLan, The West House, Driftwood, 21212, Samphire, Fischers at Baslow Hall and Gidleigh Park. Overall, the UK and Ireland guide now lists 5 three Michelin star restaurants, 23 two star restaurants and 159 one stars.

From Egham to Mayfair

The Tudor Room at the grade I listed 16^thcentury Great Fosters near Egham (pictured) has had a new chef for the past few months. We tried quite a lot of dishes in a lengthy tasting menu and the standard of the cooking was high. I particularly liked a dish of roast sea bass in a superb Thai flavoured broth, but there were several other good dishes. The building is rather grand and the standard of food matches the surroundings.

Benares is one of the longest established of London’s high end Indian restaurants, located on Berkeley Square, though I have never been a big fan of the cooking there. Although the restaurant is still expensive, things have taken an upward turn on the food front with a new head chef, Sammer Taneja, who impressed me with his food at the rather oddly located and decorated Talli Joe. We had a slightly uneven but good meal there, with a few real highlights such as a fine venison dish and a terrific paratha. It will be interesting to see what happens as the new kitchen regime continues to settle in.

The Ritz is my go-to place for fine dining in London these days now that Hedone has closed. This meal combined tried and tested dishes such as the superb langoustine in herb nage with newer dishes including hay-roasted sweetbreads and a superb beef dish with lovage oil and a gloriously rich Bordelaise sauce. When you consider the slick service and magnificent dining room, the Ritz delivers the complete package. Nowhere at present is cooking better food in London.

The Washington D.C. Michelin 2020 Guide was published, with no change at either the two star or three star level. The Inn at Little Washington is the solitary three star, and Pineapple and Pearls and minibar remain the pair of two star restaurants in the city.

Visting Belfast

Belfast is a city that is regenerating after an era of a couple of decades and more ago where it was in the headlines mostly for the wrong reasons. Now it is a bustling place with some architectural gems like the Queens University building, and an excellent modern museum dedicated to the Titanic, which was built here at the Harland and Wolf shipyards. Within a 90 minute drive you can reach the Giant’s Causeway (pictured), a striking natural formation of volcanic rocks that is a UNESCO world heritage site. The city is attracting a lot of tourism these days. In 2019 it will see over 150 cruise ships visiting, something that would have seemed unthinkable two decades ago prior to the 1998 Peace Agreement. Belfast is a quite compact city of 280,000 people, and it is consequently quite easy to explore on foot.

There are currently a pair of Michelin starred restaurants in the city. Ox is a modern restaurant offering a tasting menu with dishes like beef with smoked potato, bone marrow and girolles. It was a pleasant meal, a little uneven in places but with friendly and enthusiastic staff that ensured a pleasant evening. I preferred the more traditional Eipic, which served some particularly classy canapés and a very enjoyable series of dishes. I also visited the related Deanes at Queens, a casual brasserie next to the main university building. This was busy and served some capable dishes, especially a chicken dish with a genuinely good chicken stock reduction. This was my first visit to Belfast, and on first impressions it was a lively place where just about everyone we encountered was warm and friendly. If you plan a visit then I can recommend the centrally located Merchant Hotel as a good base for sightseeing.

The Michelin 2020 guide to Shanghai came out. Ultraviolet remains the ony three star, while two of the two star places there were deleted, one being the dismal Yi Long Curt, while two places were promoted (Jin Pin Court and Taian Table), leaving a total of eight restaurants with two stars. There are 30 places with a single star. including Tang Court, which continues a remarkable drop from three stars in the initial Shanghai guide. There was little change in the Chicago 2020 Michelin, with just Alinea at three stars and the same trio withtwo stars as last year. The city also now has 21 one star restaurants.

Further Food Adventures in Tokyo

The sushi restaurant Sugita is currently rated number 1 in all of Japan, not just for sushi, but top of all restaurant categories. This makes it a tough reservation, but is worthwhile persevering with. At this level in Japan the standard is high, with for example Sushi Saito and Sushi Arai clearly of a similar standard. Part of the appeal is that Mr Sugita himself is very personable and welcoming, which not all sushi chefs (such as Sawada, let alone the actively hostile Jiro) are. A less prestigious but also excellent sushi restaurant is Kanesaka in the Ginza, which again has a very friendly sushi chef, in this case one who speaks good English.

Kimoto is a kaiseki restaurant that has relocated from Kobe, and is notable for its remarkably high prices. Although the restaurant has a pretty garden entrance, I was not especially taken with the food, except for a particularly good eel and sansho pepper dish. Otherwise it was fine, but this is a lot of money for somewhere that serves a single turnip as a course.

Dal Matto is a casual Italian restaurant of little note. Better for Italian is K+, a friendly place that serves very good pasta. If you are in the food for something Italian then you can also enjoy excellent pizza at Pizza Studio Tamaki in Roppongi, the second and newest branch of Tamaki.

The Singapore Michelin guide came out. This promoted the excellent Les Amis to three stars, along with Odette. There are now four places with two stars, and 37 with one star.

Autumnal Tokyo

L’Osier is the latest Tokyo three star Michelin restaurant, having been promoted this year. We had a really top-notch meal here, with one absolutely outstanding dish that was world class. Kitchen technique is impeccable, ingredients are superb and the overall package, with fine service and an elegant room, is impressive.

Luca Fantin cooks Italian food here with Japanese touches, and on my third visit here we had another lovely meal. Dish after dish was prettily presented and beautifully cooked, and the kitchen here spares no expense in sourcing top quality ingredients. The room is very handsome and service is slick, and I have no idea what this does not have at least two Michelin stars.

Cote d’Or is a veteran French restaurant in Tokyo that seems to be showing its age. I am fine with old-fashioned food but this was pretty lacklustre with the exception of a very good soufflé. What was puzzling to me was just how highly this is scored locally, as to me it seemed very ordinary indeed, yet at a high price point.

Andhra Dining Ginza notionally serves south Indian food, but apart from a dosa there was not much sign of southern Indian dishes. I have long struggled to find good Indian food in Tokyo, and on each trip I seem to try another highly rated place locally but end up being disappointed. This was no exception, a quite cheap but deeply ordinary meal. You could throw a stick in Southall and hit a better restaurant.

More from Tokyo, including a meal at the highest rated restaurant in Japan, next week.

From Mayfair to Nine Elms

Wild Honey was a fixture of Mayfair for many years, but it eventually closed and has now been reborn in much smarter premises (pictured) in Pall Mall. Antony Demetre is a talented chef, and continues to produce original and well executed dishes. A caccio e pepe using exceptional quality pepper was a good example of this at my meal this week. I expect Wild Honey to prosper.

Darby’s, in the shadow of the new American embassy in Nine Elms, has a fine setting and is also very smartly fitted out. The food was less consistent here, with a couple of enjoyable dishes but also with some less successful ones, and a recurrent problem of dishes arriving not quite hot. Still, the service was excellent and the menu interesting, and on a warm summer night like this one it was a pleasant enough place.

I had another excellent meal at Indian Accent, the sister of the restaurant in Delhi that is the only one in India to appear in the global “Top 50” restaurant list (which is really a top 100) at number 60 in the 2019 list. The London branch serves a very similar set of dishes to the Delhi branch and, on multiple visits to both, I would say that the standard is much the same. This is unsurprising given that the London kitchen is in the hands of a former head chef of the Delhi Indian Accent. This is definitely not traditional Indian cooking, with such exotica as blue cheese naan, but the modern dishes work really well. The little kulcha breads stuffed with either bacon or butter chicken are examples of really inspired creative cooking, and another is the superb soy keema with pau dish. The restaurant was still on excellent form, and the service was as slick as ever.

The Ritz is now my "go to" place for fine dining in London. I had another superb meal there this week, with fabulous langoustines and excellent scallop tartare, as well as the pressed duck. This dish, made famous at Tour d'Argent in Paris, is even better here due to the absolute top of the range duck used. Just a reminder: this has one star but the inferior Alain Ducasse at the Dorchester has three - sort it out Michelin.

The next blog will appear a little later than usual.

The Garden of England

The Fordwich Arms has a riverside setting in a corner of Kent not far from Canterbury. Chef Dan Smith quickly earned a Michelin star, and based on this meal I can see why. We had a lengthy tasting menu with hardly a false note throughout. There was a particularly fine langoustine dish but the meal was of a hiigh standard throughout, from the home-made focaccia to the nice dessert. This is a place well worth visiting if you are anywhere near the area.

I happen to live in Chiswick and like to try the local restaurants at least once. Usually this is a forlorn venture, as when I went to the inexplicably popular Annies. However in Casa Dino Chiswick seems to have got lucky. It looks a simple enough Italian restaurant, but the pasta dishes that I tried were genuinely good, including a fine caccio e pepe. It helps that they have been using a high grade consultant chef that once earned a Michelin star at Semplice, but they still have to execute his menu, and generally did so very well. I will definitely be back here given that it is within walking distance. After a long period where the area lacked a decent Italian restaurant, I can now walk either to here, Villa Geggiano or l’Amorosa. Now if only a good Indian restaurant would open in the area….

I also had another very enjoyable meal at Caractere, where the skill in the kitchen is considerable, which is unsurprising given the stellar heritage of the owner and head chef. This is one of the very best recent London restaurant openings.

Two Top Notch Restaurants

This is my first visit to Waldhotel Sonnora (pictured) since the sad death of its founder and head chef Helmut Thieltges. The kitchen is now run by his long-term sous chef Clemens Rambichler, who based on this meal is emerging as a serious talent in his own right. Sonnora serves quite classical French food with just the odd German touch, such as the sourcing of the local deer. We had a superb meal here that demonstrated top notch cooking technique and top of the range produce, including a huge and beautifully sweet langoustine. Service was lovely and as a bonus the wine is very fairly priced, with the odd genuine bargain lurking in amongst its many pages. This is proper three star Michelin cooking, and every bit as good as it was under its former head chef.

It would be hard to top that meal, but Christian Bau at Schloss Berg managed it. This has long been one of my favourite restaurants in the world, Mr Bau’s cooking is rooted in classical French technique but is heavily influenced by Japan. He sources the absolutely finest produce, whether this be top notch Japanese beef or the highest quality fish available, and the lengthy menu unfolds through a sequence of beautifully presented and exquisitely balanced dishes. Everything on the plate is there for a reason. Service is charming here and the wine list is also very fairly priced indeed by the standards of high-end restaurants. This is without a doubt one of the very best restaurants in the world at present.

A Cosy New Restaurant

Jamavar in Mayfair is an outpost of the Indian Leela luxury hotel group. After a couple of regime changes in the kitchen it is now in the capable hands of Surender Mohan, who was formerly the corporate chef of the Leela group, and who opened the very first Jamavar back in 2001 in Bangalore. The level of the food here has improved from its already high standard since my last visit, and this last meal featured some really impressive dishes. Stone bass tikka has been a star dish here since it opened, but dish after dish is now at a level that you would be fortunate to find in India. Unsurprisingly, the places was jam-packed on a Tuesday night, turning tables at a time when a lot of Mayfair dining rooms might as well have tumbleweed blowing through their dining rooms.

Gezellig in Holborn cooks a European style of food in a relaxed setting. The cooking was very good, with delicious pork croquettes with mustard, an excellent vegetarian dish and an elaborate suckling pig dish to share. Even a modern take on Peach Melba was interesting and successful. Unusually, the wine list was moderately priced and well put together, a rare thing indeed in central London. This was a most enjoyable recent opening.

From Ascot to Maidenhead

The Crown at Burchetts Green is one of those rarities where a chef works alone in the kitchen. Despite this self-imposed limitation, the kitchen produces elaborate classic French cuisine, including labour-intensive reduced sauces taking multiple days to make. At this latest meal we had some particularly good duck as well as a couple of fine desserts, all at a very modest price. The Crown is a joy to dine at.

I also enjoyed another very good meal at Coworth Park (pictured) near Ascot. Here the sophisticated cooking matches the grand country house setting. A fine langoustine dish and excellent fillet of turbot were highlights of a consistently good meal. The dining room is very grand, with a view out over the extensive grounds, and slick service completes an excellent overall package.

Beck at Browns Hotel lasted just a year, the hotel deciding they wanted a change of format from high end Italian cooking. All too brief, but it gave me the chance to enjoy a few meals there under chef Heros de Agostinis, who was previously head chef at Apsleys and had been senior sous chef at 3 star Michelin Pergola in Rome. We went on the last night so I didn’t write it up, but you can read several prior reviews. It was a lovely meal, with a fine sweetbread dish and the signature fagotelli carbonara. Farewell to the restaurant that was producing the best Italian food in London.

A Sushi Gem

My Old Place is an informal Chinese restaurant in Spitalfields with several Sichuan dishes in addition to the Cantonese staples on the vast menu. It is a bustling place with an almost entirely Chinese client base, packed out on a Friday lunch. We enjoyed some good freshly make pork dumplings and nice gai lan, and the meal was only dragged down by a disappointing sliced pork dish. This meal was inexpensive and pleasant enough.

At a very different price point is the ambitious sushi restaurant Endo at the Rotunda (pictured), located in the old BBC Television centre building in White City. The extensive menu comes at a £180 price tag but really delivers, with every aspect of the meal showing great attention to detail, from the freshly grated wasabi to the excellent rice served at the correct temperature, through to the high quality seafood. This was a lovely experience, a jewel (albeit a pricy one) of a restaurant in a city where I generally eat Japanese food with considerable trepidation. With Mr Araki having returned to Japan, this is a timely addition to London’s restaurant scene. It is already very difficult to get a booking at Endo despite the high price point.

The Square produced a genuinely excellent monkfish dish but also a merely pleasant scallop starter, and although the service was very charming the bill here is always hefty, so it was another case where I had slightly higher hopes given the impeccable pedigree of chef Clement Leroy and enthusiastic reports from some people that I know. Mr Leroy wasn’t working at this service and perhaps the food can be better than this if he is, but on the basis of three meals now I have yet to experience a meal that is beyond one Michelin star level, which to be fair is exactly what Michelin give it at present.

High end Paella Comes to London

Lucknow 49 in Mayfair delivered an erratic meal, with a rather greasy biryani and a grim dried out halwa, yet with an excellent okra dish and with very good bread. It was a frustrating meal as anyone that can make this okra dish can clearly cook, but there were just too many problems elsewhere.

Arros QD is a high profile London opening from Quique Dacosta, who has a three Michelin star restaurant in Denia. The theme, as the name suggests, is around the cooking of rice, on which Mr Dacosta has written a book. Both a modern rice dish with eel and a traditional Valencia risotto (pictured) were very good, but some other dishes were less successful. Overall it was an enjoyable experience, but the bill was astronomical, and at this level everything needs to be spot on.

The Ritz is my “go to” restaurant in London now for the high end cooking following the closure of Hedone. At this visit we had a rather special dish, which you need to pre-order. It is pressed duck, a dish made famous at La Tour d’Argent in Paris. It involves a special device that allows the duck carcass to be crushed to extract the juices to enrich a sauce that also involves red wine, port and foie gras. This dish is very theatrical and not easy to get right, as a dismal experience at Otto’s once showed me. The Ritz version was fabulous, using exceptionally high grade duck – Bresse duck from a top producer – and the sauce showing superb technique. Paired with pommes soufflé and some much needed green vegetables for balance, this was a remarkable dish. The rest of the meal was lovely too, with terrific langoustines, lovely red mullet and two gorgeous summery desserts.

From Chelsea to Maidenhead

Noize has a new chef, Daniel Mertl, but is still serving the same style of classical French food. There is a lot to like about Noize, with its appealing menu, capable cooking and well thought-out wine list. Service is lovely and the dining room peaceful, free from unnecessary music. I have no idea why it didn’t get a Michelin star, as the food was, and continues to be, at one star level.

Myrtle (pictured) is a Chelsea restaurant with Anna Haugh, former head chef of Bob Bob Ricard, cooking. We had a very good meal here, with several capable dishes and a particularly nice passion fruit posset. This is a very enjoyable neighbourhood restaurant that I imagine will prosper, especially as Chelsea, despite its wealth, is not overloaded with good restaurants.

The Crown at Burchetts Green is a most unusual venture, where chef Simon Bonwick works on his own in the kitchen, with his son running the front of house. Despite the constraints of an empty fridge at the start of each week, Simon prepares elaborate and time consuming French food, with sauces made from scratch. My latest meal was superb, the highlight being wood pigeon stuffed with veal sweetbread and foie gras, then poached and glazed. Fabulous cooking, with a whole meal at a price that would barely buy you a main course in Mayfair.

Michelin normally follow an annual cycle, with for example the UK guide coming out each October. In Japan they do the same with Tokyo and the Kansai area, but also have some one off "special edition" guides to more remote areas of Japan. In this case (as always) the stars awarded last exactly one year, and sometimes Michelin refresh these guides a few years later, as they did some time back with Hokkaido. Recently they have issued two more of these one off guides, one an update to Fukuoka and a new guide.to Aichi, Gifu and Mie. In this one three restaurants were awarded 3 stars: Komada, Ueda and Hijikata. On July 9th the Fukuoka guide was updated, and Sushi Gyoten was re-awarded three stars, with three stars also for Sushi Sakai.

Visiting Vienna

Vienna has some handsome architecture and a central district that these days is mostly pedestrianised. There are some fine palaces and art galleries to visit, a fine cathedral (pictured) and the city now has a three star Michelin restaurant. This is Restaurant Amador, with a German chef who had previously earned three stars for his place in Germany before he moved here. His new venue, set in a winery, was not having a great night when I visited. There were a string of good savoury dishes, but a hideous pre-dessert and nothing that really set the pulse racing. Moreover the service was a complete mess, which you don’t expect at this level.

I preferred the pair of two star meals that I had in the city. Konstantin Filippou serves quite modern food and featured one really breath-taking dish. Of course not everything was to that level it showed that there is some genuine talent in the kitchen. I have no problem with its two star rating.

Steirereck is the best known place in the city, soon coming up to its fiftieth year, and recently having had a major makeover in its location in a central city park. This was everything Amador was not in terms of service, and I liked the fact that there were dishes on the menu that clearly had a local origin. These days a lot of multi-starred restaurants serve a kind of “international” cuisine that could be plonked down just about anywhere, with plenty of caviar and truffle but not much connection to the locale. At Steirereck you can eat schnitzel and goulash, as well as fancier dishes, and I really like that.

To the Wilds of Essex

104 is in the former premises of Marianne in Notting Hill, and is on the same tiny scale, with just a dozen seats. Chef Richard Wilkins produced a very good meal, featuring a lovely scallop and pea dish and delicious chocolate cake with passion fruit sorbet, amongst other dishes. Matt Hough is an experienced and charming front of house manager, and I imagine that it will do very well. This was proper food without gimmicks, based on high quality produce.

Flitch of Bacon (pictured) is a Michelin-starred pub run by Tim Allen, located in a sleepy village in Essex that barely has a mobile phone signal. My meal was excellent, with a particularly fine scallop dish, a lovely eel tartlet and an excellent dish of chicken and carrot in various forms. This thoroughly deserves its star.

Haandi in Knightsbridge has been open for almost two decades, with the same head chef and sous chef, and even two of the same waiters. It is off the social media radar, and does no public relations. Nonetheless it is one of the most reliable Indian restaurants in London, doing unusually good vegetarian dishes and exceptional naan bread. Despite the location it is very reasonably priced, and is a testament to how you don’t need an expensive fit-out, gimmicks and an active PR agency to make a successful restaurant: you just need good cooking, and staff that make customers feel valued.

A Brief Tour of France

Takao Takano was a former head chef of a two Michelin star restaurant in Lyon, and for a few years now has had his own restaurant, achieving two stars in his own right. His cooking is modern and has a clean, appealing style, making the most of the excellent suppliers that abound in and around Lyon, such as a top supplier of Bresse chicken. There were some excellent dishes and the restaurant definitely deserves its rating. Lyon is a great food city, packed with lovely places to eat.

Clos des Sens (pictured) is the newest three star Michelin restaurant in France, set in a pretty location in the hills overlooking lake Annecy in the distance. There is a spectacular terrace sheltered by two carefully trained trees, and the emphasis is heavily on very local ingredients. There were some nice dishes but the odd disappointment too, and I couldn’t get my mind around this having three stars, not by a long way, though there were a few relative wine bargains to be had.

This kind of experience has happened all too often with recent Michelin three star elevations. Just looking at France, recent promotions have been, in addition to Clos des Sens, as follows. The last eight years have seen Mirazur, Christophe Bacquie, Maison des Bois (since demoted), 1947, La Bouitte. Assiette de Champenoise, Residence de la Pinede and Flocons de Sel all given the ultimate third star. It is 2010 since Auberge de Vieux Puits was promoted that I scored one of these promoted places either a 19/20 or 20/20, which to me is “true” three star level. What puzzles me is that there are several terrific places in France that I would have no issues with at all if they were promoted, such as Sa Qua Na in Honfleur or Les Crayeres in Reims, but Michelin seems to have an uncanny knack of picking places that, to me at least, just don't make the grade at the very top level.

About an hour from Lyon is Troisgros, a legendary restaurant now with a fourth generation of the Troisgros family heading the kitchen. A couple of years ago they moved out of their urban location in Roanne to a site a few miles away in the countryside. No expense has been spared on the new place, the dining room an all-glass corridor between two old farmhouses. The food is quite modern in style, rooted in fine technique but with several genuinely inventive and exciting dishes. The gap in quality between Troisgros and Clos des Sens was something of a chasm in my view.

Visiting Bologna

Bologna (pictured) is the seventh largest city in Italy, an attractive place with a precarious leaning tower that makes the one at Pisa look stable, a fine cathedral and old town streets covered with a network of 40 km of arched porticos to protect you from the blazing sun or occasional rain shower. The university, founded in 1088, is the oldest in Europe, and the surrounding Emilia Romagna region is arguably the foodie heart of Italy, known for its Parmesan cheese, Parma ham, balsamic vinegar and much more. Unlike Venice and Florence, it has yet to be deluged with hordes of tourists. The city has just two Michelin starred restaurants but a host of places to eat.

Marconi is near Bologna and offers a modern take on Italian cooking, but one that was remarkably erratic. Spaghetti with fennel and aubergine was excellent, as was the home-made bread, but my starter of queen scallops was a disaster, as was the pre-dessert and the sorbet. The one compensation was some seriously mis-priced Clos Rougeard wine, with which I drowned my sorrows at a bargain price.

I Portici is the only starred restaurant in the city itself and was very smart, in a modern hotel. The meal was a mixed affair. There were some genuinely classy dishes, especially a gorgeous pasta dish with five different Italian tomatoes. To counter this there was a stone cold fish dish, while the dessert simply never appeared. There is clearly some ability in the kitchen, but they need to sort out the consistency issues, and improve the erratic front of house experience.

In many ways the most enjoyable meal in the city was at All’Osteria Bottega, a cramped little restaurant in a side street that proudly lists the various local hams and cheeses on its menu. There is no fish or seafood served here, but there is no lack of choice of meat dishes, and the pasta was excellent. It was a charming, welcoming place that was completely packed with locals, and was a lovely experience.

We also had a pleasant pizza at Verace, and an enjoyable light lunch at Trattoria da Me, but the destination dining point of the trip was the newest three star Michelin restaurant in Italy, Uliassi. This is in the seaside town of Senigallia, a two hour drive from Bologna. This has a great location directly overlooking the beach, and is primarily a seafood restaurant. There were some very enjoyable dishes here and the service most welcoming. However they also overcooked a couple of the fish dishes, which was rather disconcerting in a specialist seafood restaurant, and not what you expect in a three star restaurant anywhere. It was a very enjoyable meal, but three stars seems a bit generous based on this meal.

Bob Bob Cite Opens

Da Terra is the successor to Typing Room in the old Bethnal Green town hall. It is a tasting menu only format, the chef having some molecular gastronomy roots that show up in the cooking, which is hard to categorise other than being modern European. Although this is not usually my favourite style of cooking, I was impressed with the food here, with several very classy dishes. It is not a cheap night out, and there were worryingly few customers on a Thursday night, but the food was very good and I hope that it does well.

L’Oro di Napoli is a Naples style pizzeria in South Ealing, which in my opinion produces some of the best pizzas in the capital. The base of the pizzas is superb: soft, elastic and lovely to eat, the proper wood-fired oven gently charring the rim of the pizza, the cheese bubbling away as it is served. There are plenty of good quality pizzas in London these days, such as that of 50 Kalo de Ciro Salva and the long established Santa Maria, but this is as good as any.

Bob Bob Cite (pictured) is the much anticipated sister restaurant on Bob Bob Ricard in Soho. Complete with the signature “press for champagne” button in each booth, this is a French brasserie on steroids, serving classic dishes like steak tartare and French onion soup, but in a much flashier room than any brasserie. You can see how flashy from the review photos, but £25 million was the fit-out cost and it certainly looks the part.

Visiting Dubrovnik

This week I briefly visited Dubrovnik in Croatia. This was not a food journey, and I only had time to visit a couple of restaurants, but it was an interesting trip for me as it was my first time in Croatia. Dubrovnik has a spectacularly pretty walled old town (pictured), a UNESCO World Heritage site that has been meticulously restored after considerable damage in the Yugoslav civil war in the 1990s. The imposing walls date back as far as the 7^thcentury, though the ones now standing are probably from the 12^thcentury and later. They were effective, as despite numerous sieges through the ages the city was never taken by a hostile army. The fortifications were also a major location for the wildly successful TV series “Game of Thrones”.

I tried a pair of restaurants within the walls. Proto is a seafood restaurant appears to be quite well known, with assorted celebrity visitors, and dates back to the 19^thcentury. Nonetheless, the meal that I ate there was mediocre and expensive for what it was. It is hard to grasp how it achieved such longevity based on the food that I tried here.

Better, though also distinctly pricy, was Restaurant Dubrovnik, which also specialised in seafood. The best dish that I ate was a risotto of porcini mushrooms with foie gras and local Istrian truffles. Some other dishes were much less good so this was a rather erratic meal, but was vastly better than the food I ate at Proto.

The high prices here are presumably a function of the considerable influx of tourists in recent years, including those from many cruise ships. Like other tourist destinations such as Venice, it seems that many restaurants here have decided to cash in on tourists who are unlikely to return as customers and are not especially sensitive to price. This is a shame. Perhaps there are some hidden gem restaurants in more obscure locations in and around Dubrovnik, but on the basis of this very limited visit it would appear to be a place more suited to sightseeing than dining.

Back in London, I had another terrific meal at Dastaan, which along with Indian Accent is surely the best Indian restaurant in the UK. I also had an excellent meat at Beck at Browns, where the food seems to get better with each visit.

The new Michelin Guide to California came out, a consolidated guide that incorporates the existing San Francisco and Bay Area guide and combines it with Los Angeles and San Diego. A demotion for Saison, and half a dozen new 2 stars in Los Angeles: Verspertine, Providence, Somni, Sushi Ginza Onadera, Urusawa and n'Naka. I was pleased for Addison, which got a star.

Back to Michel Guerard

Michel Guerard (pictured) is one of the iconic chefs of France. He was on the cover of Time magazine way back in 1975 as one of the co-inventors of “nouvelle cuisine”, a lighter style of French cooking than the heavy creamy sauces of the Escoffier style that had been dominant until then. Setting up a restaurant in a tiny spa town in the south west corner of France, he quickly earned two and then three Michelin stars, and has been cooking at the property ever since. Now 86 years old and having held three stars for a remarkable 42 years, he is still to be seen at virtually every service, looking remarkably spry.

The cooking at Pres des Eugenie is classical and surprisingly simple: there are never more elements on the plate than are needed. We had two meals at the main restaurant, and sampled glories such as “morel pillows” and “truffle zephyr”. The lobster here is dazzling, as was a whole guinea fowl roast in the embers of an open fire, and a gorgeous pigeon and duck liver pie. Michelin Guerard earned the prestigious MOF accolade in pastry 1958 (!) and the desserts here are as lovely as you might hope. There are even a few bargains tucked away in the higher levels of the wine list, with some admittedly prestigious bottles well below their retail price. I think it is fruitless to argue over what is the “best restaurant in the world” but I do know that this is my favourite.

We also had two meals at the rustic Ferme au Grives, which is set in an old barn and which produces superb food using the same fine local produce, but with simpler dishes with less luxury ingredients. The roast chicken here tastes fabulous, but there are no truffles under its skin as in the three star restaurant. The cooking is still to a very high standard though, with stunning gougeres and fine suckling pig, along with superb penne pasta with wild mushrooms and Parmesan sauce. Desserts are dazzling, with fabulously light puff pastry in the apple tart. Three courses plus side dish and canapés are a mere €52, an absolute steal. I love this restaurant almost as much as the main one. In terms of value for money it is off the scale.

Washington

Washington D.C. offers rich sightseeing pickings, from grand political buildings such as The Capitol Building, Supreme Court and White House through to the extensive range of Smithsonian Museums, which all have free entry. The most impressive architecture is arguably that of the Library of Congress (pictured), and then there is The Lincoln Memorial, the quaint streets of Georgetown and even the newly relocated Spy Museum, which traces the history of espionage.

I tried a range of restaurants at all levels. 2 Amys is a pizzeria that seems to be living off some past glories, as it has a perplexingly long queue for a very ordinary product. Slightly better was Il Canale in Georgetown, though Kinship was rather disappointing given the price point. I was pleasantly surprised by sister Indian restaurants Bombay Club and Rasika, which were much better than I was expecting given my dismal history of trying Indian food in the USA.

At the posher end of things, Pineapple and Pearls was better than I expected given its no-choice modern cooking, and for me deserved its two Michelin stars. Similarly minibar exceeded my expectations, serving Spanish molecular food, which is not usually in my sweet spot. The meal started off spectacularly well, and only a string of dud dishes towards the end of the savoury sequence dragged down the score a notch.

The Inn at Little Washington is 70 miles away in a tiny village in Virginia, and is a charming place to stay. It serves enjoyable classical cooking with particularly good service, and offers a range of rooms in exquisitely restored buildings dotted around the village. The staff here were exceptionally good, and although the food was not really 3 star level I still thoroughly enjoyed my two-night stay here.

California Dreaming

San Francisco is my favourite US city, full of interesting neighbourhoods and striking vistas. You can have cocktails at sunset in The Cliff House, take a spectacular walk from the Golden Gate bridge along the coast to Crissy Field, or relax amongst the sequoia trees in nearby Muir Woods, so there is plenty to do here. It also has a vibrant restaurant scene.

Californios is unusual, a two star Michelin restaurant serving a take on Mexican food. Some of the dishes sounded pretty odd, but their flavour was good, and the meal was better than I was actually expecting. The tacos here are all made rather than bought, using assorted different types of corn, and things generally worked well. The only downside is the cost.

Don Pistos is a more traditional Mexican restaurant, and at a very different price point. It had quite nice pork tacos and very good prawns diablo, and at this price there is not much to dislike. It is also suitable if you are in a hurry, as the service was breathtakingly rapid.

Tony’s Pizza Napoletana sounds like it should feature in an episode of The Sopranos, but actually serves up pizza in a whole range of styles from a variety of ovens, with the cooking technique adjusted depending on whether you want your pizza to be of Naples style, Roman style, or even Detroit style. The pizza margherita that I tried was hard to fault.

Monsieur Benjamin is the casual sister of Benu, and delivers French bistro food. The dishes that I tried were quite well executed, such as a good quail dish, though the bill was pretty high for what actually arrived on the plate. The locals seem unbothered though, as the place was packed.

Seventy miles north of San Francisco, deep in the wine country, is Single Thread. This restaurant was awarded two stars soon after it opened and this year was elevated to the ultimate three star level. Its food is heavily influenced by Japan, the chef having trained as a sushi chef and also having worked for years at Michel Bras in Toya. I am generally pretty cynical about the US Michelin inspector’s competence, as they seem to scatter stars around as if they are going out of fashion, but in this case they aren’t far off the mark. The food at Single Thread was beautifully presented and used top notch ingredients, the dishes carefully put together. As a bonus, the staff were lovely and the wine list extensive. There is also a lovely rooftop garden (pictured).

Roe to Perdition

This week I had a particularly good meal at my regular haunt l’Amorosa in Ravenscourt Park. Bruschetta with morels was gorgeous, and a saffron risotto with the same new season morels was lovely. Chef Andy Needham makes some of the best risotto in the capital at any time, but the mushrooms really worked well with the excellent rice. The pasta ragu is also excellent here, with deep flavour and pasta with very good texture. Andy makes various ragus and this week I had lamb, though my favourite is the wild boar ragu.

I also returned to another old favourite, The Brilliant in Southall. I have been coming here regularly since I moved to west London in 1991. The place has expanded numerous times since then but the standard of the cooking remains consistently high. The methi chicken here is a dark, rich, brooding dish full of spicy flavour. The aloo tikki is a Southall speciality, a tasty starter with tamarind to enliven the potato. The Brilliant is one of the few London restaurants to serve romali roti, the paper-thin bread that is tossed in the air and briefly cooked over a steel hemisphere, then folded and folded again. The place is always packed out with Asian families, and as a bonus the prices are a bargain – that method chicken main course in under a tenner, and for about £30 a head including drinks you will have enough food for a complete extra meal to take away as well as the one that you have just eaten. This is proper Punjabi food.

I wanted to learn more about caviar, and was lucky enough to spend a couple of hours with Laura King, founder of Kings Caviar, which is the largest UK supplier. They supply restaurants including The Fat Duck and The Ritz and stores such as Harrods and Fortnum & Masons. We did a comparative tasting of quite a few different types from both Belgium and China. These days wild caviar is outlawed in order to preserve stocks, so any caviar you can legally buy is farmed. The largest suppliers are the Chinese, but there are also farms in several other countries. There is even notionally one in the UK, though apparently that appears to be more of a holding pen for Polish caviar than a true farm. There are 26 different species of sturgeon, and almost all of these have at some point been used for caviar, as well as hybrids. However beluga (the largest freshwater fish I the world), oscietra and sevruga are the most prestigious, while baerii, which matures much quicker than beluga, is used for entry-level caviar. The hybrid kaluga is similar to beluga and can be nearly as expensive. Of the caviars that I tried I particularly liked the Belgian beluga. Incidentally, if you like the comedy show “Frasier” then try to get watch the episode “Roe to Perdition” (series 10, episode 18), an episode devoted to Frasier and Niles’s brief excursion into the world of caviar smuggling – it is a hoot. It has one of my favourite lines about one minute in, where Frasier asks the delicatessen manager whether the beluga caviar is really as expensive as it is labelled. “Isn’t that rather a lot to pay?”. The frosty French store manager replies: “For you yes, for the fish who gave up her life so that you could spread her unborn children on a cracker it is not so much”.

The next blog will appear a little later than usual.

A Fishy Week

This was a rather fishy week as I try two seafood restaurants, old and new. Angler at the South Place Hotel in east London has had a Michelin star for some time, and has retained it through a chef transition. The dining room has a good view out over the rooftops of the capital, and the cooking of Gary Foulkes is consistently good. Ingredient quality is high, such as turbot from a large 7 kg fish being paired with a fine langoustine tail. Throughout a long tasting menu the standard of cooking was generally high until the dessert section of the meal. Service is classy and only the stiff wine mark-ups leave a sour taste in the mouth.

Cornerstone in Hackney (pictured) has a more hipster vibe, with no shortage of tattoos and nose-rings amongst the staff. The seafood cookery here was quite good, though interestingly the prices here are scarcely lower than the much smarter Angler, and wine mark-ups were just as high though from a small and eccentric list. This was a pleasant enough experience but felt quite expensive to me. All those small plates add up quickly on the bill.

The next blog will be later than usual.

From Belgravia to Kensington

Abd el Wahab in Belgravia is the first European outlet of an 18-strong Lebanese restaurant group. I can’t comment on the merits of the original restaurant in Beirut, but the Belgravia offshoot leaves a great deal to be desired. The two salads that we tried were ordinary, grilled chicken was dry and the bought-in baklava, itself not great, was the best thing that we tried. The service was leaden and the wine list sloppily put together. I have no idea how restaurants like this survive in central London, where costs are high. To be sure, there are worse places than this, but absolutely nothing made me want to return.

Pizzicotto in Kensington is the casual sister of the long established and more formal Il Portico nearby. As well as pizzas, Pizzicotto serves a more general Italian menu. Tagliatelle with pork belly ragu had good texture, and a risotto primavera was also very pleasant. Focaccia here is made from scratch and cooked in the wood-fired pizza oven. The wine list is inexpensive and has some real bargains at the high end of the list and the owner, who always seems to be present, runs a friendly service operation.

A Ritzy Time

Royal China in Queensway is a huge barn of a place that always seems to be packed, whether at lunch or dinner. The restaurant opened in 1994 and single handedly lifted the standard of Chinese food in London. It caters mostly to Asians and service can be curt, though it is at least usually quite efficient. The large Cantonese menu is well prepared, with dishes such as steamed sea bass with black bean sauce filleted at the table are always carefully cooked. I am particularly fond of the gai lan here, the Chinese broccoli lightly cooked with garlic and having excellent flavour. The restaurant even featured in the movie “Sexy Beast”, with some of the former staff acting as themselves as waiting staff. It is never a particularly cuddly experience here, but few Chinese restaurants in London produce better food.

The Ritz has become my “go to” destination in London when I want a serious meal. The large dining room is very ornate and service is formal but in no way stuffy. The buying power of the place allows high quality ingredients, such as live Scottish langoustines and top-notch French asparagus, and the considerable size of the kitchen means that no dish is too elaborate to make, with labour intensive sauces being expertly made. At my latest meal a star dish was tender native lobster with precisely cooked beans and a light pea and verbena puree. The dessert section is very strong here, and delivered two fine dishes at this meal (an almond dessert is pictured). The sous chef, Spencer Metzger, has worked here for most of his career and has just won The Roux Scholarship. This is very much a dining place for grown-ups, with comfortable chairs and classical cooking. It has just one Michelin star, which is an absurdity when you compare it to the two star places in London, none of which outperform the kitchen here.

From Richmond to Northfields

Patri is an Indian restaurant in Northfields (there is a separate branch in Hammersmith). The menu covers the dishes of Rajasthan, so there are some familiar things like black dhal as well as a few more exotic dishes. The starters were attractively presented and indeed pretty much everything worked well with the exception of a potato curry. The black dhal was excellent, and kulfis were very good too. The service was friendly and the wine list moderately priced.

The Bingham (pictured) at one time held a Michelin star, but the kitchen regime has changed since then. It has a lovely setting overlooking the Thames, with a recently refurbished dining room and an appealing menu. Our meal was rather erratic, however, with some good dishes but also some issues with others, and one particularly grim plate of chips. This was a pity, as the Bingham has the potential to be a lovely spot, but I have the impression that the kitchen is really stretched with its current levels of staffing, and this shows.

The Michelin 2019 guide to Taipei came out. No changes at the three star level, so the absurdly mediocre Le Palais bafflingly retains a third star. There were promotions to two star for Raw, Tairroir and Sushi Amamoto. Taipei now has one three star, five two star and eighteen one star restaurants.

From Mayfair to Bevis Marks

Alyn Williams at The Westbury is in Mayfair and is located in a windowless but smartly decorated dining room, and has held a Michelin star for a few years. This meal included some good dishes, including excellent chicken liver parfait in brik pastry cylinders, a nice gurnard and mussel dish in a mild curry sauce, and a good gariguette strawberry dessert. The pricing here is perplexing, as the food itself is quite fairly priced, but the wine list is outrageous. Several wines, even those from dusty corners of the list, are over ten times their retail price, which is simply egregious. The smart move here is to order the fairly priced food and drink tap water.

Barullo (pictured) is a new Spanish restaurant from the chef/owner of Rambla. Just near The Gherkin, the place was already packed out at lunch just five days after opening, and they haven’t even put the sign above the door yet. As with Rambla, the restaurant serves good quality tapas with unusually good ingredients, such as croquettas with wild mushrooms and real black truffle. You can share a big pan of paella, and I enjoyed a very good crème Catalana with raspberry sorbet to finish

From Brook Green to Burchetts Green

Pentolina is a neighbourhood Italian restaurant in Brook Green, which is a posh enclave between Hammersmith and Shepherds Bush. Although the service was very good and the bread was made in the kitchen, the dishes that we tried generally lacked in flavour, the meal finishing with a poor tiramisu. There is no need to come here when the vastly superior l’Amorosa is not far away, and charges much the same prices.

Kanishka is a new restaurant from Atul Kochar, on the side of a former 28-50 on Maddox Street in Mayfair. It is an ambitious venture, spread over two floors and serving over 120 diners at one time. It explores the cuisine of north-east India, as well as offering some more familiar north Indian dishes. There were some genuinely lovely things here, such as a chicken tikka pie and some of the best naan bread I have tried for a long time. Not everything was to this standard, and there was a tendency to overcomplicate things, but the kitchen can definitely deliver. It is not a cheap outing, with a particularly pricy wine list, but this is certainly a interesting new opening.

I couldn’t resist another outing to The Crown at Burchetts Green, where chef/owner Simon Bonwick works entirely on his own in the kitchen. This is tough enough, but to make labour-intensive classical French dishes in this environment is quite remarkable. At my latest visit here, a rich fish soup had superb flavour, and a generous slab of turbot from a huge fish was precisely cooked. The meal ended with gloriously rich steamed sponge pudding. The price of the entire tasting menu here will barely buy you a main course in Mayfair these days, and the food here gets steadily better with each visit. This is Michelin-starred dining at its most enjoyable.

The "Main Cities of Europe" Michekin 2019 guide came out. This guide picks up the places in Europe where Michelin does not have a country guide, such as capital cities like Athens, Prague and others. There was one major change in that Amador in Vienna was promoted from two stars to three. Juan Amador used to have three stars in his former restaurant in Germany.

Old School Dining in Barcelona

Barcelona is famous for its architecture, including the old cathedral (pictured) as well as the unfinished Gaudi one. On a brief trip I was curious to try some local, old school places, rather than one of the many modern Spanish restaurants for which the city is well-known these days. You can see reviews on my website of many of these places.

It doesn’t get much more historical than 7 Portes, which has been trading since 1836. Specialising in seafood, there are a few other traditional dishes on offer too. I enjoyed nice seafood paella there as well as good cannelloni. As a bonus, the wine list had very fair prices indeed.

I preferred another long-established restaurant called Botafumeiro, a cavernous place with seemingly endless dining rooms. Here the tuna tartare was very good, and the seafood paella was excellent. The staff here may lack the tattoos beloved of the more fashionable restaurants in the city, but they can still deliver an enjoyable evening.

I also enjoyed a very good cup of coffee at Nomad, a pioneer in the city of modern speciality coffee, tucked away down a pedestrianised alley. The staff were knowledgeable and the espresso that I tried, from a tiny single estate producer in Colombia, was excellent.

From Brentford to Burchetts Green

The Watermans Arms in Brentford, very near the river, has a landlord and chef who is married to a Japanese wife and used to live in Japan. This background is why the menu features a few Japanese izakaya dishes in addition to the usual pub staples. I am quite fond of the place, and although it is not a destination dining destination the food is good, the welcome warm and the prices low.

I had a lovely meal at The Crown at Burchetts Green, where a solo chef produces Michelin-starred French food from a tiny kitchen, starting out each week with a completely empty fridge. The food uses high quality produce and the chef shows excellent classical cooking technique, such as with a lovely fillet of beef that has been steamed over a boiling stock pot, served with root vegetables and a pair of fine sauces. Desserts are classy here too, this week including a superb rhubarb baba. Prices are ridiculously low for the quality of the food here, and the family-run place has real charm.

I had another fine meal at The Ritz in Piccadilly (pictured), which possesses perhaps the grandest dining room in London. The meal this week was superb, with exceptional Scottish langoustines and a fine turbot dish with early season white asparagus and morels. The food here is top class, as is the service operation, and was streets ahead of my recent meal at Alain Ducasse at the Dorchester, which is given three stars by Michelin to the Ritz one star – crazy.

In response to a conversation on Twitter I dug out my notes from 1997 on a long-closed restaurant, The Restaurant Marco Pierre White, in the days before he started shilling Knorr stock cubes and delivering high street horrors like “Frankie’s”. This review is just a bit of pure restaurant nostalgia for anyone that may be interested.

From Marlow to Baker Street

The Coach in Marlow (pictured) is the sister of nearby The Hand and Flowers. It is a no-reservation restaurant, and we only just got seats when we went on Monday lunch, so if you have a long journey then you may want a plan B in case the place is full. The Coach has a playful take on various pub classics, some of them much more successful than others. A whiting fritter with pea puree worked better than, for example, biltong chilli with puffed rice. Despite some unevenness I quite enjoyed the Coach, and found it no worse than The Hand and Flowers. I am puzzled about Michelin’s take though – no star for Parlour or The Wigmore, pubs that seem to me to have the edge on this.

Ooty is a smart Indian restaurant that has taken the place of Galvin’s in Baker Street. Although it had been open a few days the cooking was already good, with excellent home-made chutneys, nice venison dosa and lovely guinea fowl biryani. The service was attentive and friendly, and the bill not excessive. It will be interesting to see how it develops as it settles down, but its best dishes were already impressive. London is being treated at the moment to a slew of high end Indian openings, from Jamavar and Indian Accent through to Kutir and the recently refurbished Tamarind. Add in the fabulous Dastaan in Ewell and we are living in a golden age of Indian food in London.

I also had a very enjoyable evening at Rambla in Soho, where the spinach croquettas are excellent, the pata negra is nicely cut, the wine flows freely and the atmosphere is relaxed.

From Golders Green to Wembley

KoolCha, which happened to be the 1,800^threstaurant reviewed on this site, is the casual sister of Kutir. It is in the slightly unlikely setting of Box Park Wembley, a kind of food court near the football stadium. We had a reasonably priced and capable meal there, with the standard of food a lot better than you might expect in such a casual setting.

Café Japan (pictured) is a long established north London restaurant in Golders Green, these days inhabited by an Atari-Ya outlet. Atari-Ya is a fish wholesaler that supply a great many sushi restaurants in London, and have a small number of shops of their own. The sushi chef here is quite experienced and I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the fish used. The little details were also right: the temperature of the rice, the use of real wasabi root rather than the fake stuff from a tube that so often makes an appearance in London. It wasn’t quite up to Tokyo standards, but was a lot better than many London sushi experiences. As a bonus, it was extremely reasonable, just £35 for a full omakase sushi meal.

The final major Michelin guide of the 2019 season came out, the Germany Guide. No change at the three star level, though there were five new 2 stars. Germany now has 10 three star restaurants, 38 two star restaurants and 261 one star restaurants. Forgive me a little schadenfreude, but I was pleased to see Schlossberg in the Black Forest demoted a star, this restaurant having served me by far the worst Michelin starred meal I have ever eaten, and indeed one of the most dismal meals I have eaten in any restaurant full stop. Just one more star to go with that one Michelin, but you are taking it in the right direction.

A Trip to Paris

Akira is within the Japan cultural centre in Kensington, and is quite a large restaurant on the first floor of Japan House. It has a very broad menu serving all different kinds of Japanese food, from sushi to tempura, from rice dishes to ones from the robata grill. It is very smartly decorated and the dishes that we had were pleasant, including a very pretty bento box. However there were a couple of slips in the food, and the prices are very high, so this represents debatable value for money.

Le Clarence (its lounge is pictured) is a relatively new addition to the Paris fine dining scene, gaining two stars just months after it opened in late 2016. With the same ownership as Chateau Haut Brion, no money has been spared on making this Parisian town house into one of the top dining destinations in Paris. The cooking here showed real skill and a particularly fine sense of flavour balance, paired with high quality ingredients. The place is luxurious, the service is superb and the wine list is quite fairly priced, so there is a lot to like about Le Clarence.

The Scandinavia Michelin 2019 Guide came out. No change at the 3 star level. The new 2 stars were Noma in Copenhagen, KOKS in the Faeroes and Gastrologik in Stockholm. Norway now has one 3 star restaurant, no two stars and 7 one stars. Finland has now has no 3 star restaurant, no two stars and 6 one stars. Denmark now has one 3 star restaurant, 5 two stars and 22 one stars. Sweden now has one 3 star restaurant, 5 two stars and 16 one stars. Iceland lost its only starred restaurant, Dill, which was demoted.

From Tooley Street to Park Lane

Santo Remedio (pictured) is a Mexican restaurant in Tooley Street. It seems to be quite well regarded by many but the meal that I had was merely decent, with one good enchilada dish. It was quite inexpensive at lunch, but it did not remotely compare to the best Mexican food that I have eaten, which has been in the USA and at Punto MX in Madrid. One day there will hopefully be a really top notch Mexican restaurant in London, but I have yet to find it.

Alain Ducasse at The Dorchester is one of London’s trio of three star Michelin restaurants, though also the one that is most controversial in terms of its ranking. I have been several times now and generally the pattern is one of decent but unexceptional savoury courses followed by excellent desserts along with slick service and high prices. This particular meal largely followed that pattern, though there were more inconsistencies this time than at my last visit. The wine list in particular is excruciatingly priced.

L’Amorosa is a regular haunt of mine, with Andy Needham cooking a slightly simpler version of the Italian dishes that he used to make in the years when he was the running the Michelin-starred kitchen at Zafferano. His risotto is some of the best in London, and pasta dishes here are always excellent. It is a welcoming neighbourhood place with very good food and very fair prices.

Hamming It Up in West Hampstead

Ham in West Hampstead was a nice surprise in an area not overly blessed with good restaurants. The modern British menu avoided hipster excesses, and served a particularly good chicken liver parfit and an excellent dish of noodles in a spicy prawn broth. This is an excellent neighbourhood restaurant.

The Crown in Chiswick is one of a growing group of gastropubs overseen by Henry Harris. It was already full just four days after opening, and although the savoury dishes were rather uneven in standard, the desserts were excellent and prices were fair.

I had my 74^thmeal at Hedone. Over a long tasting menu there were some real highlights, such as stunning sweetbread with black truffles, and a superb foie gras parfait. Hedone is not a cheap outing, but the best dishes here are superb and feature the finest ingredients that you will encounter at any UK restaurant.

The 2019 Switzerland Michelin guide appeared. No change at the three star level, and one new two star in the form of Focus in Vitznau and The Pavilion in Zurich. Switzerland now has a trio of three star restaurants, 20 two stars and 103 one stars.

From Richmond to Haymarket

The Petersham Hotel has a lovely setting at the top of Richmond Hill. In daylight there is a fine view down over the countryside and the Thames from its dining room. For years it had a very capable head chef called Alex Bentley, but recently there has been regime change in the kitchen. Sadly the meal we had was very uneven, with nice Dover sole and crème brulee but a poor langoustine starter and a dismal pear soufflé. This is a shame since the Petersham has many virtues including an unusually well priced wine list with some bargains tucked away. Sadly the food is no longer the draw.

The newly opened Farzi Café (pictured) in Haymarket is an offshoot of a trendy Indian restaurant group called Massive Restaurants, founded in 2012 and now with over 30 restaurants with brands including Farzi Café, Masala Library and Made in Punjab, with outlets in India and the Middle East. The food is very much modern Indian rather than traditional, and the two storey restaurant is very smartly decorated. The menu is a little confusing in places but the cooking is good quality, with a superb black dhal one example, and a delicate vegetable biryani another. Some dishes seem a touch out of place e.g. Kashmiri morel risotto with Parmesan was good but barely connected to Indian food, but there was plenty of skill on display. A shrikand cheesecake with mango was an excellent dessert. Prices are not excessive, and Farzi Café is a classy Indian restaurant – London is really being spoilt for these in the last couple of years.

New Reviews and a Controversial Michelin Guide

BaoziInn is in the stable of Bar Shu, and serves dishes from across China rather than the Sichuan fare of its older sister. I had a somewhat mixed meal, with a couple of really good dishes but also a couple of flawed ones. Overall it was pleasant enough, though prices were a bit high given the uneven standard of the dishes.

Miryam’s Café is a new Persian place in Chiswick, established by a former journalist and cookbook author. It is a quite homely place, feeling more like someone’s living room than a commercial dining room. The menu varies daily and is a short set of specials. I had a very pleasant meal, with a nicely judged green lentil soup, a good salad and a decent chicken and saffron rice dish. It is a simple, friendly place that is a refreshing change from the chain restaurants that dominate our high streets these days.

The Michelin Guide 2019 to France came out. This was unusually radical, with a new head of the guide at the helm stamping out a definite impression. There were two new three star restaurants, Mirazur in Menton and Clos des Sens in Annecy, but there were also three demotions: Astrance, Maison de Bois (Marc Veyrat) and Auberge de l’Ill in Alsace. Maison de Bois seemed a welcome correction to me, and I have had quite a lot of negative recent feedback about Astrance. However Auberge de l’Ill is puzzling. Not only had it held three stars for a remarkable length of time, but the timing here seems wrong. A decade or so years ago it definitely had a lacklustre phase when Michelin did nothing, but I have had two quite recent meals, both of which were firmly back on three star form. It therefore seems a puzzling decision. There was further controversy in the demotion of the legendary Le Taillevent in Paris to one star. There were five new two star places and no less than 75 new one star restaurants. As one further item of controversy, Bras is once again listed, the former 3 star restaurant having requested to be omitted from the guide last year. Michelin had always stated that chefs cannot “give back” stars as they are not theirs in the first place, but rather oddly made an exception for Bras. The new French head of Michelin has, to my mind quite sensibly, quashed this decision and reinstated Bras, but at the 2 star level, which to be honest feels right based on my meals there. Hence this is an effective demotion for Bras too. Overall I think it is good that Michelin has a clear out from time to time, but I feel sorry for the Haeberlin family at Auberge de l’Ill, as there are plenty of 3 stars in France worse than there e.g. the seemingly Teflon-coated Georges Blanc, which retains 3 stars whatever food they churn out.

France now has 27 three star restaurants, 85 two stars and 520 one stars. As of this moment there are 127 three star Michelin restaurants in the world. The Michelin season for 2019 guides is nearly finished, though the Germany guide has yet to appear.

Relaxing in Goa

This week we had a beach vacation in Goa. This was my 23rd visit to India, though I hadn’t been to Goa for almost a decade. It Is a nice spot if you fancy some winter sunshine, as in January the daytime temperature is typically around 30C, dropping to 20C at night, with a virtually guaranteed ten hours of sunshine daily in January, which is the sunniest month.

The Leela Palace in Goa is a beach hotel that first opened in 1991, situated a one hour drive south of the main airport. It is an extensive, low rise property spread over 75 acres of landscaped gardens, with the 210 rooms set out in groups around artificial lagoons, all within an easy walk of the extensive private beach. The hotel has a well-equipped spa and gym, tennis courts and a pitch and putt golf course amongst its facilities. There is a large open-air pool overlooking the golf course, a little casino and a few shops. If you are feeling idle then there is a fleet of little electric golf carts cruising the property that can give you a lift to where you need. The hotel, incidentally, has 775 staff, with the consequent staff to room ratio of 3.7 being triple the current average of 1.2 for a five star hotel in India, so there is always plenty of help on hand for just about any requirement that you may have. It is a very civilised spot.

The hotel has three restaurants in addition to a beach snack bar. An all-day restaurant in the main building one serves a wide variety of different food including an extensive buffet, and there is also an Italian restaurant overlooking the water and a more formal Indian restaurant called Jamavar, The smarter restaurants are only open in the evening. Additionally there is a separate “Club” area with its own exclusive lounge, dining room and bedrooms, and with its own private pool. We ate at the Jamavar throughout our stay, having explored a few local dining alternatives on previous trips here, and having found nothing close to it in standard.

High End Restaurant Openings and Re-Openings

Imperial Treasure is the first London opening of a restaurant group with several branches in Asia. Its Shanghai branch gets two Michelin stars for reasons that elude me, and two more of the group have single stars. The London version is very swish indeed, with a beautifully decorated dining room and prices to match the setting. Service was very slick and the menu heavily loaded with luxury ingredients. Singapore noodles with lobster was superb, but so was a much humbler hot and sour soup, so the kitchen is definitely in capable hands. This is an expensive outing, but is far from style over substance.

Tamarind was one of the first two Indian restaurants to gain Michelin stars (the other was Zaika) and has been rather drifting along for some years. Finally there has been a major shake-up in the form of a complete makeover, doubling the size of the restaurant, and a brand new kitchen team. We had a very good meal there with some genuine highlights, such as excellent chicken tikka and biryani and a terrific gajar halwa soufflé with guava sorbet. Service was good and the food prices not excessive for Mayfair, but the wine list is grotesquely marked up. Of the wine lists I have analysed, only Nobu has higher mark-ups in the capital.

Published this week is one of my Elite Traveler articles, where I discuss my five favourite restaurants on earth: https://elitetraveler.com/features/five-best-restaurants-andy-hayler

The blog next week will be a couple of days later than usual.

New Year Dining

Hankies is a peculiarly named Indian restaurant at the Montcalm Hotel that serves romali roti, the very thin Indian bread that is tossed in the air and then folded over and over and cooked on a steel hemisphere. The bread itself was excellent, and most of the dishes were very nice, with just two of the things we tried pulling down the average score.

Hakkasan (pictured) in Hanway Place is the first incarnation of what is now a global restaurant empire. It still looks beautiful, with its clever lighting and slick service from its carefully trained waiters. Dim sum was very good, and today we tried a whole duck served in two stages, as well as assorted other dishes. Hakkasan sails on serenely, as smooth as ever.

Hunan is a long-established Belgravia restaurant that serves a no-choice tasting menu of small plates featuring dishes from Hunan province, along with other influences. I have never quite understood the appeal of Hunan other than its wine list, and periodically resolve to return and try and see what draws customer in. I’m afraid this was another occasion where the food left me cold, with some decent dishes but also several badly overcooked ones. The wine list, by contrast, is a joy, with superb growers, low prices and some bottles with a decent amount of age. I wouldn’t rush back, but you can at least drink well.

I hope that everyone had a good holiday break.

Best dishes of 2018

It seemed appropriate that my last restaurant meal this year would be at The Ritz, where I have enjoyed a series of really top class meals over the course of 2018. Following canapes of coronation chicken tuile, crab and caviar tartlet and Comte gougeres, this meal featured a silky terrine of partridge, mallard and pheasant, salt-baked celeriac with truffle sauce, turbot with champagne sauce, pigeon with black truffle, a cheese course with honey from hives on the roof of The Ritz, and finally a lovely dessert of chestnut, Poire Williams, rum and spun sugar. Total bill - £99 each, including coffee, mineral water. and a glass of wine. Lovely service, a grand dining room and proper cooking - the Ritz is truly grown-up dining experience.

I had some quite good meals in the past year, but was asked by a reader to pick the very best dishes, as distinct from restaurants, across the year. You can click through to the reviews to see more detail on the dishes. These are in no particular order, though certainly no dish was better than the first one, the dongpo pork.

Dongpo pork at 28 Hubin Road in Hangzhou was a remarkable dish, dazzling both for its flavour and the technical skill needed to make it.

Toasted bread with black truffle and butter sauce foam at Ultraviolet in Shanghai.

Saddle of rabbit with anchovies at Atelier in Munich.

Charcoal grilled squab pigeon with rosemary at Ryugin in Taipei.

Red mullet with basil espuma at Schwarzwaldstube in the Black Forest.

Saffron risotto at Le Calandre in Rubano, the signature dish of the restaurant.

Bresse chicken laced with black truffles and sauce Albufera at Auberge de l’Ill in Alsace. Classic perfection.

Fried langoustine tail with puffed rice at Frantzen in Stockholm.

Turbot from 9kg fish with violet artichoke fricassee at Patrick Guilbaud in Dublin.

Vegetable mosaic at Guy Savoy in Paris.

After all that, two desserts to finish things off.

First is the extraordinary Dromes apricot dessert at Pic in Valence from what may be the best pastry section in France these days.

The other is a stunning clementine dessert with shortbread biscuit at Les Amis in Singapore.

I hope that you had a great Christmas, and wishing you all a very happy New Year.

Coming up to Christmas

Beck at Browns marks the return to London of the talented Heros di Agostinis, formerly head chef of the late lamented Apsleys. Heros continues to cook his sophisticated Italian food at a high level. The star dish of my latest meal here was a remarkable winter green risotto with white truffle, the rice enriched with veal broth, Madeira sauce and Parmesan – the whole meal was excellent but this dish was extraordinary.

La Buvette in Richmond is tucked away near the tube station, serving quite traditional French food since 2004. This is quite simple and old-fashioned fare, so expect to see bistro dishes like fish soup, terrine, onglet and fries and the like. The menu is appealing and priced quite low, appealing to a mostly local audience. The wine list could have a lot more range but had the virtue that the mark-ups were modest, and the dining room is quite cosy. This is very much a local, neighbourhood restaurant, but a pleasant one.

The Brilliant in Southall has been serving Punjabi food since 1975, and I have been eating regularly there since I moved to west London in 1991. It has expanded several times in that period but the food has maintained a consistently high standard. Star dishes include the various tandoori chicken variants such as jeera chicken and chilli chicken, along with aloo tikki and methi murgh. They are one of the few restaurants in London that serve romali roti, ultra-thin bread cooked over a steel hemisphere and folded multiple times. The restaurant is usually full of Indian families and on a Saturday night will do at least three packed sittings. There are many good restaurants in Southall but this is my favourite. As a bonus the prices are very low: a large portion of papri chaat was £5 and popadoms are just 50p.

Someone posed a question to me the other day about the best and worst meals of 2018. This year I travelled to New Zealand, Australia, the USA, Singapore, Denmark, Sweden, Spain, Greece, Germany, The Netherlands, France, Scotland, Italy, Taiwan, China and Japan. Over the year I ate in seventeen 3 star Michelin restaurants. My best meal was at Schwarzwaldstube in the Black Forest, whose new chef has taken the food to an even higher level. The worst 3 star meal was at Grand Palais in Taipei, and the worst meal overall a complete shocker at two star Michelin restaurant Schlossberg in the Black Forest. It was a meal of stellar levels of incompetence in both food and service. I also reviewed 64 London restaurants this year.

I would like to wish all my readers a very happy Christmas!

Adventures in the Home Counties

Sorrel in Dorking is where Steve Drake moved to after Drakes at Ripley changed hands following his divorce (the old premises now house The Clock House). Sorrel is set in a building with wooden beams, and offers a quite modern menu, recently gaining a Michelin star. The service here was lovely and the wine list was fairly priced by London standards. The cooking was generally very good and the technical skill level was quite high, though dishes tended to have a lot of elements, and the menu was perhaps trying a bit hard to be “cutting edge” in places, with its unusual ingredient combinations and shrubbery-infested desserts. The meal mostly worked though the price point was quite ambitious.

It is now 17 years since Hakkasan opened, but the original branch in Hanway Place and Hakkasan Mayfair sail on, now part of an international restaurant empire. The formula is to provide Cantonese food without the challenging bits, to execute it consistently well, served in slick surroundings. The London branches at least succeed admirably in this. At this lunch we had classic har gau dumplings along with scallop shu mai, as well as more exotic fare such as chicken and black truffle rolls. The baked venison puffs are always a must order item, and char sui buns as light and fluffy as you could desire. Service was silky sooth as it always is here.

The Crown at Burchetts Green near Maidenhead is one of those rare restaurants where a chef works single-handed in the kitchen. Given the constraints, it is surprising that Simon Bonwick elects to cook classical French cuisine, including sauces made form scratch with all the labour-intensive reduction that involves. The cooking seems to go from strength to strength here, the latest meal being a lovely tasting menu featuring quail stuffed with foie gras and sweetbreads, nibbles involving white truffles and a spectacularly good rum baba with mango and coconut. The price for all this? £42 a head, which would barely buy you a main course at a mediocre Mayfair restaurant. It is a crowning glory.

The Hong Kong 2019 Michelin results were announced. There were promotions to the three star level to Caprice in Hong Kong and Jade Dragon in Macau. Hong Kong now has 7 three star restaurants, 12 two star and 46 one star. Macau has 3 three stars, 5 two stars and 11 one stars.

Latest London Openings

Kutir (pictured) is the first solo venture for Rohit Ghai, formerly executive chef of Jamavar, and prior to that executive chef of JSK restaurants, which include Gymkhana and Trishna. This restaurant, in a Chelsea townhouse, is similarly ambitious, with quite luxurious ingredients. The star dish across two meals was a stunning tandoori lamb chop, beautifully spiced and cooked, but in general the culinary standard was high. This will presumably get a Michelin star in due course, though I said that about Indian Accent, which was inexplicably overlooked.

Osteria Romana is a small Italian restaurant in Knightsbridge, notionally serving dishes from Rome and the Lazio region, though the menu is actually much broader than that. The pasta dishes that I tried were fairly good, though a salad was a do it yourself affair and service was perfunctory. The wine list was a shambles, wildly expensive and not bothering to list the vintages of most of the wines. The prices for the food were also high, so this was dubious value for money.

Onima is a quite high profile opening in Mayfair, spread over a five story townhouse just off New Bond Street. The menu theme is a slightly puzzling one of Mediterranean with Asian touches, but they have recruited a talented chef in the form of Carmelo Carnevale, who earned a Michelin star at the now deceased Semplice and went on to be head chef of the underrated Novikov Italian. There has been plenty of money lavished on the space, and I tried two meals here, one lunch and one dinner. Not surprisingly, the Italian dishes were very capable, with an excellent cacio e pepe pasta dish, good risotto and a particularly nice rabbit dish. A Greek spinach pie and Asian tempura prawns were also well executed. The prices are very high here, which is the main issue, but the cooking is sound.

Visiting Liverpool

It is a long time since I have been to Liverpool, a city that once accounted for 40% of the world’s slave trade, and was at one time the UK’s second city based on its trading links with the USA in particular, including the cotton trade, along with tobacco and spices. It has some handsome buildings from its industrial era, including the Royal Liver insurance building (pictured), which at one time was the tallest building in Britain. The city has redeveloped the docks area tastefully, and is looking visibly more prosperous then when I first came here in the 1980s. An example of this regeneration is the Baltic Bakehouse, tucked away in an industrial street in the docks area, where sourdough bread is made from scratch and excellent sandwiches and coffee are served. On the restaurant front we tried Roski and Mowgli in the city itself, and Fraiche over the other side of the Mersey in Birkenhead as well as Moor Hall, which is 13 miles north of the city.

Mowgli in Water Street is one of a growing little group of Indian street food restaurants set up by former barrister Nisha Katona. The menu is quite unusual, offering familiar dishes like bhel poori and butter chicken, but also an Indian take on a chip butty. It was bustling and lively, the staff friendly and the food enjoyable. It was remarkably busy, even early on a Monday night, and tables were being turned at a brisk rate.

Roski is headed by a former winner of the TV show “Masterchef: the Professionals”. It is a quite cosy place, and on the evening if our visit was playing an appealing Motown soundtrack in the dining room. The food was a touch erratic but generally good, with a nice guinea fowl main course and an interesting red cabbage Bolognese. The wine list needed some attention but this was an enjoyable place to visit.

Fraiche is one of those rarities, a restaurant with a solo chef in the kitchen. Marc Wilkinson has maintained a Michelin star here for a decade, and deservedly so based on this meal. The restaurant has just five tables and has an intimate feel with charming front of house staff. The food is surprisingly elaborate given that the chef has no help here, and we particularly enjoyed a beautifully cooked brill dish with watercress sauce. The excellent bread is made from scratch, so there are no shortcuts here, and the wine list is a joy, with many of the better bottles barely at their retail price.

Moor Hall gained a Michelin star immediately after it opened, and second star the following year. It is set in a carefully restored 16th century building, which also has a few rooms to stay. The food was sophisticated and enjoyable, with an eel and apple nibble in a crisp potato nest an especially impressive dish. Service was silky smooth, and the Coravin system allows the entire wine list to be enjoyed by the glass, which is a great since there are some lovely bottles at the high end of the list tucked away at fairly modest markups. On this occasion Michelin got it spot on with the second star accolade, and I would highly recommend Moor Hall if you are ever in this part of the world.

The Michelin guides to Kansai and Tokyo came out. L'Osier regained its third star in Tokyo, but otherwise there were no changes at the three star level. Osaka has 4 three stars, 16 two stars and 79 one star restaurants. Kyoto has 7 three stars, 22 two stars and 75 one star restaurants. Tokyo has 13 three stars, 52 two stars and 165 one star restaurants.

The Bay Area 2019 guide also came out. The Michelin US guides have typically been very generous relative to other areas, and this edition saw both Atelier Crenn and Single Thread in Healdsburg elevated to three stars. Coi was demoted as expected. This means that San Francisco now has eight 3 stars, 6 two stars and 44 one star restaurants. The ratio of three to two stars is unprecedented as far as I am aware. You would normally expect there to be four or so two stars for every three star, as indeed can be seen in the Japan guides.

Revisiting the Lovely Dysart

Rigo in Parson’s Green (or Fulham if you are an estate agent) has a former head chef of a two star Michelin restaurant in Italy. This is an unlikely spot to find ambitious modern Italian food, but nonetheless here it is. Although the meal had some inconsistency there were some really classy dishes, and it was clear that the kitchen is using high-end ingredients. A risotto of black garlic, for example, used seven year aged Acquarello rice, an expensive product. The wine list could do with some reconsidering as it has some very steep mark-ups, but there is definitely some interesting food here.

Dysart near Richmond is an old pub that converted to a restaurant a few years ago. It has the 2010 Roux Scholar as its head chef, so not surprisingly the food is excellent. A signature dish of charred mackerel with ginger and champagne sauce was as lovely as ever, and a star dish at this visit was oxtail risotto made with Acquarello rice. A partridge dish (pictured) was also very enjoyable. This was a llovely meal, and it baffles me that Michelin perpetually ignore this restaurant when they regularly dish out stars to far less capable places. As a bonus the wine list is very fairly priced, and The Dysart has a charming, relaxed atmosphere.

Le Gavroche under Albert Roux was the first UK restaurant to gain three Michelin stars, so really put the UK on the fine dining map. These days under Albert’s son Michel Jnr, Le Gavroche has two stars and is now in a Mayfair basement after moving from its original location in Sloane Street. It is known for its classic French cooking, and that seems to be the way to get the best out of it. Souffle suissesse was lovely, as was artichoke “Lucullus”, with passion fruit soufflé for dessert. These dishes were terrific, but once you stray from the path of the classic dishes here things become less of a sure thing. The nibbles have for some time been very lacklustre, and more modern dishes seem rather ordinary. This makes it hard to score, as if you carefully ordered then you could have a strong two star meal, but if you went astray your meal would be barely one star. At these prices that is troubling.

The Michelin 2019 guide to Spain and Portugal came out. A promotion for Dani Garcia in Marbella to three stars. Demotions from two stars to one for Club Allard and Dos Celios, but promotions to two stars to Coina Hemanos Torres, Molino de Urbaniz and Ricard Camarena. Spain now has 11 three star restaurants, 25 two stars and 170 one stars, 22 of them new. Portugal has 6 two stars with teh promotion of Alma, and 20 one stars, three of them new.

The Michelin 2019 guide to Belgium and Luxembourg came out. Hertog Jan has closed, and there were promotions to two stars for Le Paix and La Table de Maxine in Belgium, and also for Ma Longue Sourit in Luxembourg. This guide now lists one three star, in Belgium, 24 two stars in Belgium and 104 one stars. In Luxembourg there are now 2 two stars and 8 one stars.

New Chef at Bonhams

Rokkon is a tiny Japanese restaurant in Chiswick, run by a Japanese husband and wife team for whom this is their first restaurant. Much as I wanted to like this independent restaurant it had some issues. It served a nice eel donburi rice dish, but although they buy their fish from a good supplier, the sushi rice was the wrong temperature and the tempura was rather clunky. It was harmless enough and not very expensive, but is yet another example of why I rarely eat Japanese food in London. Once you get used to Tokyo it is too easy to notice the difference in standard.

L'Amorosa is an Italian restaurant in Ravenscourt Park that is owned by Andy Needham, former head chef of Zafferano when it held a Michelin star. Andy uses many of the same suppliers as he used to and has not forgotten how to cook, he just does slightly simpler dishes at about half the price of his old gaff in Belgravia. A particularly good wild boar ragu at this visit was an excellent example of his skills, as was osso buccco with silky saffron risotto.

Bonhams has a new head chef in the form of Theo Clench. The cooking style is similar, with clean cooking based on high grade ingredients. At this meal there were some lovely Comte gougeres followed by excellent sweetbreads and a very good venison dish with salt baked celeriac (pictured). There were one or two dishes that were not quite in this league but this was still a very good meal indeed. What has not changed is the superb value wine list, where many of the better wines are roughly their retail price, actually below that in some cases.

The Michelin guide to Bangkok came out, this year extended to Phuket. There is one new two star in the form of Suhring, and a slew of new one star places. Thailand now has 4 two star and 22 one star restaurants.

The 2019 Michelin guide to Italy also came out. There is a new three star place: Uliassi on the Adriatic Coast. No new two stars, and one demotion from two star level for Principe Cerami. Italy now has 10 three star restaurants, 39 two stars and 318 one stars.

Full Circle at Kyms

Kyms is the little sister of Michelin-starred A. Wong in Victoria. Kyms has a different menu, with no dim sum and a focus on meat dishes. It has smart décor and is located in the Bloomberg Arcade on the edge of the City. I had an enjoyable meal there, with a particularly good dumpling dish with chillies. They don’t make desserts here but the savoury cooking is good.

The Curry Room is a restaurant in the basement of the recently refurbished Rubens Hotel near Buckingham Palace. It has a chef that used to work at Tamarind, and has a cosy room with widely spaced tables. The menu format is unusual in that you get a starter of popadoms and a samosa, then choose a main course that comes with rice, bread and a side dish of the day, followed by dessert. The dishes were quite variable in quality, with a very good butter chicken but a lacklustre dhal and some very poor naan bread. Overall it was an acceptable meal, but not at the sky high prices that are being charged here.

The Watermans Arms is just a small boozer in Brentford near the river, but has an interesting landlord/chef called Gordon, who is married to a Japanese lady. Based on his experience he spent living n Japan, he cooks a few Japanese izakaya (pub) style dishes like donburi and yakisoba, as well as the standard pub fare of fish and chips and pies that you might expect. He cooks well, and although this is not a destination restaurant the dishes are good and inexpensive.

The 2019 Michelin guide to New York came out. No change at the three star level. There were four promotions to the two star level: Gabriel Kreuther, Ichimura at Ichu, Atelier Robuchon and Tetsu Basement, which folded in between the guide being printed and the announcement. New York now has 5 three stars, 15 two stars and 56 one star restaurants.

The 2019 Michelin guide to Seoul also appeared. Still the same pair of absurd three star places, Gaon and La Yeon. There were promotions to two stars for Alla Prima and Mingles, while Gotgan was demoted to one star. Seoul now has 2 three star restaurants, 5 two stars and 19 one stars.

Two High Profile London Openings

Kerridge’s Bar and Grill is a high profile opening in the Corinthia Hotel, replacing Massimo. The restaurant had a heavy PR blitz, which may partly account for the extremely high prices, with a lobster Thermidor omelette at £29.50 and fish and chips at £32.50. These two dishes were actually fine, but a similarly expensive quail dish was rather ordinary and desserts were disappointing. At this price level everything needs to spot on, and sadly things were insufficiently consistent at this meal.

Caractere is a new restaurant in Notting Hill from husband and wife team Emily Roux, who is doing the front of house, and Diego Ferrari, former head chef of Le Gavroche, who is cooking. This was a very good meal, with excellent savoury dishes including some lovely scallops and turbot, and desserts that were not quite in the same league. The wine list was extensive and the mark-ups were quite kind by London standards, so this is a place I will certainly return to.

Otherwise I popped back into my local Indian restaurant Annapurna after a gap of many years, and despite some good naan bread I was reminded why I don’t go that often. It is a pleasant enough place with friendly staff, but the spicing of dishes was indistinct and the chicken biryani suffered from rather dried out meat.

The coming weeks should see a flurry of new Michelin guide announcements, with for example the New York guide appearing on 6^thNovember and the San Francisco one on 29^thNovember, and in this period there should also be various guides to Europe and Asia popping up.

From Pizza to White Truffles

Leroy was awarded a Michelin star in the 2019 UK Guide. It is in Shoreditch so you can probably guess that it is a small plates format with plenty of natural wines and trendy staff. The food was inoffensive though hardly cheap but also lacked ambition: purple sprouting broccoli with yoghurt is hardly a dish to set the pulse racing. At least the bread (bought in) was nice. Michelin’s award of a star is utterly baffling to me.

50 Kalo di Ciro Salva (pictured) is a highly regarded Naples pizzeria, and recently opened a branch in London just off Trafalgar Square. It is smartly decorated and the diavola pizza that I tried was excellent, having a particularly good base. This seems to have been quite a low-key launch compared to the over-hyped and disappointing Da Michele London, but it is definitely worth trying.

Hedone has had a minor refurbishment over the summer. I went to a special event there: a truffle dinner. Many of the dishes featured white truffles from Tuscany, and there were some star dishes, such as langoustine with white truffle and also a superb new chocolate dessert. It was a very expensive evening but those white truffles don’t come cheap. This was my 73^rdvisit to Hedone.

The Old and the New

Kahani (pictured) is a new venture led by the former head chef of Tamarind, Peter Joseph. Tamarind, incidentally, was the first Indian restaurant to gain a Michelin star in the UK way back in 2001 when Atul Kocchar headed its kitchen. Peter Joseph worked at Tamarind for fourteen years and was head chef there since 2012. The food is a modern version of Indian cuisine, with dishes like guinea fowl tikka and golden beet cakes with mustard and poppadum crust. The dishes we tried were pretty good except for one side dish and some ordinary bread, but generally the food standard was quite high. The basement setting was well decorated but the waiter that we had was inexperienced, leading to some almost comical service moments, which is not what you expect for an £83 a head meal.

La Trompette was the restaurant that originally put Chiswick on the dining map, its first ever Michelin starred establishment, long before Hedone arrived. The formula at La Trompette is a tried and tested one: an appealing menu, friendly staff, capable cooking and a modestly priced wine list. It doesn't try for culinary fireworks but is usually reliable. I actually had two meals there in quick succession, and although there was a touch of inconsistency the food was pleasant and the welcome was warm.

Cambio de Tercio is an old favourite, a little corner of the Brompton Road that feels like a piece of Spain. The staff are Spanish, as are most of the customers, and it continues year after year to offer a charming experience. It lifts dishes from elsewhere, such as the modern patatas bravas that are perhaps its best-known dish, originally developed in Madrid by Sergio Arola but capably reproduced here. Slow-cooked tomatoes are another good dish here, and of course there is Iberico ham and a good selection of sherry, as well as a lengthy Spanish wine list. The place is always packed and it can get quite noisy, but the staff are charming.

Returning to London

The Greenhouse (pictured) has been a fixture of the London dining scene since it opened in 1977, and has hosted a number of high profile chefs over the years. The latest chef to head the kitchen is Alex Dilling, formerly the executive chef of Helene Darroze, overseeing the food at both her London and Paris restaurants. Mr Dilling has only been in place for a few weeks when I visited, and as one might expect given his length of tenure there was a touch of unevenness about the dishes that we had. However the overall standard was still high, and there were a couple of really top-notch dishes, so it is already good with potential to get significantly better.

Dastaan is serving some of the absolute best Indian food in the UK from its unassuming premises in, of all places, Ewell. The locals have figured this out, and the place operates two sittings a night, every one of them packed. The couple on the next table book to me turned out to be regulars who book their next table here each time they dine, rather as happens with top sushi restaurants in Tokyo. I tried some different dishes at this last visit and the standard was high even in the less familiar corners of the menu. It is ludicrous that Michelin only give this a bib gourmand, since it is out-performing all of the current starred Indian restaurants in London (Amaya, Quilon, Trishna, Veeraswamy, Gymkhana, Benares). Given that Michelin stars are supposed to be “only about the food” then Dastaan’s fairly basic setting should not count against it.

The Ritz continues to operate at the top of its game. I have written at considerable length about the food here, so for more detail please read my many reviews of the restaurant. My last meal had some crowd-pleasing dishes such as the terrific langoustine with an aromatic nage, and the lovely salt baked celeriac with black truffle sauce. What follows is a full and complete list of the two Michelin star restaurants in London that are currently operating at the level of the Ritz: ......

More Tokyo Dining

This week I continue my exploration of the Tokyo dining scene. Tokyo is remarkably varied in its offerings, with almost every kind of cuisine and style of cooking available. Tokyo has the great advantage of having fabulous ingredients, not just seafood at the huge Tsukiji market and the famous Japanese beef wagyu, but also terrific quality vegetables and fruit. There is also a huge audience of keen diners, enough to sustain over 140,000 restaurants in the city. Hence my selection of restaurants reflects this wide variety. Although it is a huge urban sprawl it also has plenty of green spaces, such as a park with the attractive bridge pictured.

I had excellent tempura at Tempura Hasegawa and pleasant tempura at Seiju, both of which have Michelin stars. I tried French food at two star Ryuzu and also at Ete, a tiny restaurant with a female head chef and just a solitary table. I had kaiseki at the recent relocated three star Michelin Ryugin, and sushi at Sushi Arai and also at Kurosaki. The meal at Sushi Arai was stunningly good, as good sushi as I have eaten, and the sushi at Kurosaki was also lovely and above expectations. I also tried tonkatsu at the new Ginza Katsukami, and even continued my quest of finding a decent Indian restaurant at Andhra Dhaba, though sadly my quest continues. Hopefully this and the summary last week gives you a sense of the sheer variety of high class restaurants to be found in Tokyo. Whatever your culinary desire you will find it here, seemingly unless you want a really good Indian meal.

The UK 2019 guide was published. No change at the 3 star level, with Alain Ducasse at the Dorchester and The Waterside Inn continuing to defy all reason by clinging on to their 3 star ratings. Core came in at 2 stars, and Moor Hall and Kitchen Table were promoted, but no promotion for the Ritz or Hedone. There were stars in London for Brat (yet Kaia Kaipe, on which it is based, has no star?!?), Hide (fair), Sabor (absurd), Leroy, Roganic (fair) and Ikoyi (maybe a touch kind but it is good to reward somewhere so different). Bewilderingly, there was no star for Indian Accent, nor for Noize, nor Beck at Browns (the latter may have been a timing thing as it only opened in April). However if anyone thinks that Benares, say, serves better food than Indian Accent then they have a screw loose.

Elsewhere there were stars for Rogan and Co, Gidleigh Park, Sorrel, the Flitch of Bacon, Olive Tree, Winteringham Fields, Salt, Oxford Kitchen, Fordwich Arms, White Swan, Blackbird and Bulrush. There were some controversial demotions, with Champignon Sauvage down to one star along with Gidleigh Park (but that had a chef change). Other restaurants to lose their stars were Ellory (closed), HKK (closed), Outlaws at The Capital, Jamavar (why?) Lima (finally), Ametsa (at last), and Tamarind (which has been closed for months for refurbishment). Outside the capital, the losers were The Royal Oak, The Butchers Arms, JSW and The Harrow at Little Bedwyn. Probably most shocking is The Box Tree in Ilkley, a restaurant that has held a star for 16 years and indeed had a star in the very first UK guide in 1974. In Scotland, The Boath House was stripped of its star, while Albannach lost its star (rightly) and Martin Wishart at Loch Lomond closed permanently due to a major fire. The UK now has five 3 star restaurants and 19 two stars, as well as 142 one star restaurants (of which 58 are in London, 8 are in Scotland, 7 in Wales, 2 in Northern Ireland, and 67 in England outside London). In Ireland there were new stars for Mews, Miyazaki and Chestnut. Ireland has one two star restaurant (Patrick Guilbaud) and 13 one star restaurants. All in all it was a fairly bewildering set of choices, with nods to the hipster scene but some odd omissions. As to why they would kick the hard working David Everitt-Matthias in the teeth at Champignon Sauvage yet allow the Waterside Inn to sail along producing its current ordinary, overpriced food and keep 3 stars, it is puzzling to say the least.

Exploring the Tokyo Dining Scene

Tokyo is the food capital of the world, with more Michelin starred restaurants than any other city. No one really knows how many restaurants exist in Tokyo, but the local restaurant website Tabelog lists over 140,000, and there are certainly others without Tabelog listings (I went to one on this trip). It is a vast, sprawling, cosmopolitan city with half a million foreign residents from around the world, so you can find cuisine from just about anywhere. As a tourist it can seem a bit overwhelming, but the people are remarkably welcoming to visitors, and although the street numbering is tricky, finding things is not too hard since people routinely come up and help you if you look remotely lost. Trains, buses and ATM machines have signs in Roman characters (romaji) as well as the Japanese scripts, and at least some level of English is spoken by many people these days, especially by younger people. As a bonus, crime is almost nonexistent (except organised crime), with people disconcertingly leaving valuables on open air tables at coffee shops to wander around, returning later certain that their handbags, phones and computers will remain untouched.

I first visited Japan in 1996 and it was a lot more challenging, with little English spoken and no Google maps to guide you around. If you are here to visit restaurants then stay in either the Ginza or Roppongi, or possibly Shibuya, as the majority of destination restaurants are either in these areas or nearby, and Tokyo is a big place. We had another excellent stay in the Grand Hyatt in the Roppongi Hills complex, which has the bonus of easy access to a smart shopping centre and is placed on top of a subway station. Although Tokyo doesn’t have the same variety of temples and gardens that Kyoto has, there are still some impressive parks and gardens such as Koishikawa Korakuen (pictured). If you visit the city then don’t miss out on the food halls of the great department stores, such as the flagship Mitsukoshi in Nihonbashi. Here you will find beautifully displayed, high quality food of all kinds, including the famous gift-wrapped melons at ambitious prices.

We had quite an extended stay here this time, and were able to try a lot of restaurants that were new to me, as well as returning to some old favourites. In the first week I tried Mimosa, a Michelin starred Chinese restaurant and Fire Whole 4000, a Sichuan barbecue place. We had a superb Italian meal at Il Ristorante in the Ginza, which was even better than my previous visit. We tried French food at Le Sputnik and returned to Atelier Robuchon. I also enjoyed excellent pizza at Savoy and an even better one at the Pizza Bar on the 38^th. I also had some tonkatsu at Tonta, a highly rated tonkatsu restaurant. To round off the week I tried Sushi Kimura, which is known for its aged sushi.

Next week I will continue with further highlights from Tokyo.

Visiting Kyoto

Kyoto was the capital of Japan from 794 to 1868, and is one of the few cities in Japan where you can see large numbers of historic buildings like temples and castles. It has seventeen UNESCO world heritage sites and two thousand temples and shrines, but we are lucky to be able to see it at all. It was spared bombing during the Second World War by Secretary of State Henry Stimson, who had taken his honeymoon in Kyoto in 1893 and had visited the city two further times in the 1920s. He vetoed its bombing despite repeated attempts by the Pentagon, who even put it at the top of their initial list of targets for the first atom bomb before Stimson intervened once again. Consequently Kyoto, untouched by the war, is a window into old Japan, with the lovely Gion district where geishas still train, through to the warren of streets in the old town with its little independent shops. For example, the tea shop Ippodo has been selling packets of tea since 1717 on the same street, and this is just one of many establishments with great lineage.

Kyoto is the home of kaiseki cuisine, the most formal Japanese culinary style, and the city has a host of such restaurants. The latest to earn three Michelin stars is Iida, a tiny restaurant seating just four people at a counter with one additional private room. The meal was pleasant enough, though it was a long, long way from the best kaiseki meal I have eaten. The chef is fascinated by ceramics, and serves his food on lovely plates that are often painted by well known artists, with some of the plates dating back centuries. In food terms though, it ranked for me a long way behind other nearby kaiseki restaurants such as Kitcho and Mizai.

Kyoto has so many kaiseki restaurants that eating there night after night can seem somewhat repetitive, especially as the ultra seasonal nature of the cooking means that you will likely encounter the same ingredients night after night, albeit prepared in different ways. On this trip I explored some alternative offerings. Aca is a Spanish restaurant with some Japanese influences, serving dishes like crab paella. It was excellent, and well worth trying for a much sought after reservation. Chimera is an Italian restaurant in the Gion district in a lovely traditional wooden townhouse on the edge of a park. This was also very good, and had a surprisingly extensive and kindly priced list of mostly Italian wines. I also revisited a simple Indian restaurant called Mughal, which is unremarkable but was one of the very first Indian restaurants in Kyoto.

We stayed at the Okura hotel, the grand dame of Kyoto hotels, which used to be the poshest in town with a hotel on this site since 1888, though the current Okura dates back to 1962. These days there are swisher alternatives, such as the Ritz Carlton on the river, which is worth popping into if you have a sweet tooth since it hosts a Pierre Herme pastry shop. There is also a nice pastry shop in a side street near a covered market called Maison de Frouge, which specialises in strawberry pastries.

My visit to Iida concluded my visits to the set of three star Michelin restaurants added in the 2018 guides, so for a brief time I have once again been to every three star restaurant in the world, something I first did in 2004 and which I have kept up since roughly every two years. However the 2019 season has already started with the new Washington DC 2019 Michelin Guide, in which the Inn at Little Washington was elevated to three stars. I will visit there next spring. In terms of the 2018 three star additions it has been a decidedly mixed bunch, with only Atelier in Munich, Frantzen in Stockholm and Joel Robuchon in Singapore seeming to me indisputably of “true” three star standard, though I very much enjoyed Ultraviolet and Inter Scaldes, as well as Abac. For me the rest were on average two star quality territory or worse, with some bizarre choices like Le Palais and Aponiente. Another curiosity this year has been the demise of several three star restaurants. Joel Robuchon Singapore closed, presumably due to its weird location, while La Vie in Osnabruck lost its main investor and folded. Chihana in Kyoto burned down, Grace in Chicago folded after its chef and owner fell out, and Sant Pau will close permanently in October, as apparently will Hertog Jan. Four of these at least illustrate the difficulty in making a consistent profit in fine dining, even at the very top. Hopefully Chihana will reopen at some point, though reportedly this will not be at its old location. I can remember when Pierre Gagniare's three star in the countyside closed and it caused shockwaves in the restaurant world. This year six separate three star restaurants will have disappeared for one reason or another.

Dining in The Lake District

Forest Side gained a Michelin star in 2017 for its foraging-led menu, with a head chef who was previously sous chef at l’Enclume. Forest Side is in a hotel with extensive grounds, allowing a large garden that supplies the restaurant with assorted vegetables and herbs. The lengthy tasting menu had some good dishes, though there was a tendency to have a lot of elements in each dish, as well as the modern tendency to use shrubbery as ice cream and pretend it is dessert. However the cooking was capable and the service slick.

The Samling by lake Windermere (pictured) has had not one but two chef changes since I was last there. Its new chef cooks modern food with a lot of elements in dishes, but somehow manages to pull this trick off, the mix of flavours and textures carefully chosen. The kitchen is also helped by a large garden and greenhouses on the property providing plenty of local produce. Overall this felt like a notch up from the meal that I had here before.

The Narrow is a gastropub in Limehouse, part of the Gordon Ramsay empire. It has an attractive riverside setting, but we experienced remarkably mediocre food and poor service when we visited, and the place is far from cheap. If only there was some sort of celebrity chef TV program available where a former top chef could go in and sort out under-performing kitchens by shaming the current staff, simplifying the menu and applying a coat of paint to the place, eh Gordon?

Clarke's has been a fixture in Kensington for decades, but on my return there after many years there the food was quite disappointing. Nothing that we tried was more than competent, and there were issues with one dish in particular. It wasn't a terrible meal, but the bill was very high indeed given the level of food that appeared on the plate. This felt like a restaurant coasting on its past reputation.

Aquavit is a Swedish restaurant near Piccadilly, the sister of a New York establishment of the same name. It serves pleasant enough food like gravadlax and herring and Swedish meatballs, which is all fine until you get the substantial bill. What is extremely puzzling is that it was awarded a Michelin star for its cooking, which I find perplexing to say the least.

Indian Accent in Mayfair was on top form, with its executive chef happening to be over from India and clearly keeping a close eye on things. This is, for me, the best Indian restaurant in London, with a very modern take on the cuisine. Star dishes were Kashmiri morels and soy keema, as well as the wonderful kulchas stuffed with butter chicken and bacon, which are serious addictive.

The blog next week will be a touch later than usual due to some travel.

Back in London

Titu is a curiosity, a tiny place in Shepherds Market selling mainly gyoza, the Japanese fried noodles. The chef has a proper track record and the menu stretches beyond gyoza, such as sashimi tuna with jalapeno (pictured) so this is not a one trick pony. The food was good, and the only caveat was the bill, which was firmly in Mayfair territory.

Brat is about as hipster as things get. Here you have a young chef striking out on his own from a wildly successful former restaurant, cooking in an open kitchen with an emphasis on charcoal grilling. There is even a small plates menu and plenty of people with tattoos to go with the tiny, packed in tables. Fortunately the cooking is good enough to handle all this baggage, and we had a nice evening, though it was not a cheap experience by any means. The whole turbot (1.5 kg fish for a fair £75 given that it retails at about £40) was a nod to the great charcoal-grilled turbot to be eaten in Getaria in Spain, at both Elkano and Kaia Kaipe.

I have had many excellent meals at Tangawizi, which is just over the far side of the Richmond Bridge. I am not sure if there has been a chef change or whether they were having a very bad night, but things were a couple of notches below the standard that I have been used to here. This was still a decent meal, but dish after dish had slipped in standard from the restaurant at its best, which was a real shame.

Pure Indian Cooking is a family-run restaurant in Fulham, with a menu that was more ambitious than most neighbourhood places, with exotica such as venison masala. It had some enjoyable dishes such as a chaat involving patra, though there was a bit of inconsistency. Still, it was not expensive and is well worth a look if you are in the area.

I also had another lovely meal at The Ritz, though as this was dinner catching up with some old friends from abroad, and because I have recently reviewed it several times, I haven’t written this particular one up. Suffice it to say that the team was on good form again, with classic dishes such as the coronation chicken nibbles and top quality langoustines, as well as classy grouse tonight.

The Top Restaurants of Hangzhou

Hangzhou is a city just over one hundred miles from Shanghai, though it is connected on a TGV type train that does the journey in exactly an hour. Hangzhou was briefly the capital of China, and is something of a tourist attraction, the city being built around a large lake with some quite pretty views across the water. This is no quaint town though: it has a population of over ten million, so more people live here than in London. The city is home to the prized Dragon Well tea, and around the outskirts of the city are lots of tea plantations. In the hills above the city, in the midst of the tea plantations, is a 26 acre estate called Dragon Well Manor (pictured). This contains a very highly regarded restaurant of the same name, where you dine in one of eight private rooms overlooking the pretty gardens of the estate. The owner has adopted the “farm to table” philosophy enthusiastically, having his own farm and having built close relationships with a network of local farms that supply the restaurant. Every delivery of ingredients is meticulously documented in a series of illustrated ledgers, so you can read about the ingredients that you are about to consume, at least if you can read Chinese characters. The food itself was interesting, with clean and pure flavours. My Chinese friend was more taken with the food than I was, but it was certainly very pleasant, and the visit experience is impressive.

Back in the city on the shores of West Lake is a Hyatt hotel housing “28 Hubin Road”, a restaurant that has been hailed as the best in all of China. We had an impressive banquet here, with the cooking quality very high throughout, and featuring a couple of dazzling highlights of the local Zhejiang cuisine. I have only had Chinese food of a comparable quality at Made in China in Beijing. The specialty dishes such as the dongpo pork and “beggar’s chicken” here are not to be missed, and if you come here then check in advance with the restaurant about anything that needs advance notice to prepare e.g, the beggar’s chicken takes three hours just to cook.

If you decide to take the train to Hangzhou from Shanghai then allow more time than you would normally do, as train travel in China is a much more bureaucratic process than in a western country. It is essentially like going to an airport, and indeed you will need your passport just to buy a train ticket in advance from a travel agent, as well as queueing up to show your passport at the train station, as well as a further queue for security, complete with metal detectors. There is yet a further queue near each train platform, and the access to the gates to your specific train closes five minutes before the train actually leaves. Hence you should turn up at the station at least half an hour before the departure time to be sure of catching your train.

Last week I covered the fine dining side of Shanghai, with reviews of both of the three Michelin star places there and all six two star Michelin restaurants in the city. To round things off, I also tried a few simpler places. Shanghai cuisine is noted for its xiao long bao soup dumplings, and I went to both the oldest place in the city serving the dish, and the place that is generally highly rated by the locals. Nanxiang dates back to 1900 and serves a seemingly endless stack of stacked steamer buns to an eager dining audience in a barn of a dining room. Even at the quiet mid afternoon time on a weekday that we went there was a lengthy queue, such is the magnetic pull of the place. To be honest the reality did not live up to the hype, the dumplings being decent but no more than that. Much better were those at Jia Jia Tang Bao, a much smaller, modest dumpling shop where the buns are hand made to order. This also has a perpetual queue outside, but at least here the end product is worth waiting for. As a bonus they are almost absurdly cheap to boot. Finally, I popped into a place called Xindalu, where I had some very good har gau dumplings but disappointing Peking duck, as well as hysterically bad customer service.

Fine Dining of Shanghai

The vast metropolis of Shanghai, perhaps the world’s biggest city with its population of twenty five million, has for two years now had a Michelin Guide. There is currently a pair of three Michelin star restaurants, Tang Court and Ultraviolet. Tang Court is the sister restaurant of a place of the same name in Hong Kong, another three star recipient. Given my experience at the mothership in Hong Kong I was not expecting much from Tang Court here. Although it is certainly a long way from three star in any sane assessment, Tang Court here was a bit better than its Hong Kong equivalent. It is clearly aimed at the corporate expense dinner market and most of its space is given over to private rooms. The pricing is distinctly, indeed wildly, ambitious for the quality of the food, however.

Ultraviolet is a different story. It provides a very unusual dining experience. Things are restricted to ten diners each evening, who share a complete culinary and sensory experience including music, video projection, scents and elaborate lighting. It is as much theatre as a meal, but the food was mostly very impressive, and although it is very expensive (thirty staff serve ten diners, so can see why that might be) it was great fun.

I also tried all of the half a dozen two star places in Shanghai. One is Atelier Robuchon, so is a well known quantity; it is designed to be a consistent chain, and unsurprisingly it is just that, and for me a very good albeit expensive one star restaurant rather than a two star. Otto e Mezzo Bombano is another sister of a Hong Kong three star of the same name. The version here also cooks Italian food with very luxurious ingredients, aimed firmly at the wealthy. The Shanghai version just about had the edge for me, with several very good pasta dishes in particular. The kitchen did best when sticking to Italian classics, and was less surefooted when it used exotic luxury ingredients that you would not usually see in Italian cooking, like abalone and sea urchin, that are doubtless targeted at the local high end business customers. Its pricing is very ambitious but it has been here for several years now, so clearly knows its market.

The other four two star restaurants here are all Chinese. Canton 8 is, as its name suggests, a Cantonese restaurant that was served some quite capable dishes, especially a “pineapple char sui bao”, at an almost absurdly low price. Yong Foo Elite had an interesting setting inside a historic building that reeks of faded grandeur and was once the British embassy. Sadly the food there did not live up to the surroundings, and was far, far short of what you would hope for from a one star Michelin restaurant, never mind a two star. Better was Imperial Treasure, a large restaurant turning out capable food at surprisingly modest prices. Again its Michelin assessment makes little sense, but it was an enjoyable and affordable experience. Worst of the bunch was Yi Long Court, a hotel restaurant serving mediocre Cantonese food at high prices, accompanied by comically inept service. At the one star level I was pleasantly surprised by Bo Shanghai, which I thought was better than its flagship sister restaurant in Hong Kong, though its food is highly priced.

Shanghai is yet another of the crop of Asian Michelin guides whose scoring makes very little sense, along with the guides to Seoul, Taipei, Singapore and indeed the longer established Hong Kong guide. Ultraviolet is a top class restaurant and a pioneering experience, so I have no issue with its rating. But Tang Court and the clutch of four two star Chinese restaurants offer food that ranges from one star level to downright mediocre. If you stood in, say, Queensway in London and threw a stick then you would probably hit a restaurant that would outperform most of these places, especially if you got lucky and hit Royal China. Yet no one, least of all me, is suggesting that Royal China deserves a couple of Michelin stars, much as I love the place. This view was shared by the group of extremely well travelled Chinese gourmets who accompanied me at these meals. As we shall see next week, there is some genuinely top class cooking going on in China, just not in any of places in Shanghai that Michelin has scattered multiple stars to. On this trip I also tried some more unusual and very local restaurants, of which more in the blog next week, which will also cover my first visit to Hangzhou. That is a city with some very interesting restaurants indeed. Stay tuned.

Visiting Taipei

Taipei is the capital of Taiwan, a large island off the coast of China formerly known as Formosa in colonial times. It effectively became a separate country during the Chinese civil war, when the man at that time in charge of China, Chiang Kai Shek, was overthrown by Mao Zedong. Chiang Kai Shek and his followers fled to Taiwan, which ever since has maintained an uneasy relationship with Communist China on the mainland. Taipei is a prosperous, modern city with a particularly impressive and vast National Museum that holds three quarters of a million artifacts, from exquisite jade carvings to jewels, bronzes, antique furniture, art and calligraphy. Chiang Kai Shek, whose own memorial building is pictured, brought most of these treasures from Beijing when he fled the Communist uprising in 1948.

Recently the Taiwan tourist board sponsored a 2018 Michelin guide to Taipei. In this inaugural guide there were a pair of two star restaurants, The Guest House and Ryugin, and a solitary three star called Le Palais, as well as 16 one star restaurants. Both The Guest House and Le Palais offer mostly Cantonese style food, both in a smart hotel setting. The Guest House was remarkably ordinary, with a decent simple dish of prawns and peas but clunky seafood dumplings and mediocre noodles. Barely better was Le Palais, which featured some sadly overcooked scallops in one dish as well as soggy gai lan. If you walked down, say, Queensway in London you would find better several better restaurants than these.

By far the best meal of my trip was at Ryugin, the local outpost of the three star Michelin Tokyo kaiseki restaurant. Just as in Tokyo (there is also a branch in Hong Kong), Ryugin here offers a tasting menu that takes a quite modern approach to Japanese cooking, following the structure of a kaiseki meal but happy to use the latest culinary gadgetry and to offer a modern interpretation of classic dishes. There were some real highlights in this meal, with a stunning fig tempura dish, and a fabulous dish with pigeon cooked in different ways served on a bed of rosemary. The standard of the meal was very high, strong two star Michelin level by any standards. Ryugin knocks Le Palais and The Guest House into a cocked hat, and I really struggle to understand the perverted logic that could cause a Michelin inspector, or indeed any sane individual, to rate Ryugin below Le Palais. This is not just my view: I have spoken to a number of well travelled foodies who know the Taipei food scene, and a couple of Taipei restaurateurs to boot, and they were all as baffled as me.

Taiwanese food has a shining commercial success in the form of the soup dumpling chain Din Tai Fung, which has grown into a veritable empire of locations spread across thirteen countries so far. It is famed for its xiao long bao dumplings, which have a liquid pork centre. I went to the original branch, where there is a perennial queue. They offer a quite wide menu, though of course the dumplings are the centrepiece, and very good they are too. I also particularly enjoyed wonton dumpljngs with red chilli oil. Although this is a restaurant chain, to be perfectly honest I enjoyed my meal at Din Tai Fung more than at the smart Guest House or Le Palais, although a meal here cost a tiny fraction of the price of those places. In another curiosity, although Michelin have awarded stars to Din Tai Fung branches in Hong Kong, they have not done so here, where the chain is based; this seems rather inconsistent. Finally, I had an enjoyable meal at a restaurant called Gen Creative, a fusion restaurant. I didn’t pay for this meal (I was invited via a friend) and consequently don’t feel comfortable reviewing it, but it was good, and worth considering if you are planning a trip here. I found Taipei very hospitable, with a lot more English spoken than I had expected, and I can highly recommend the Mandarin Oriental hotel, which was exceptional.

Overall, Taipei is an enjoyable city to visit, with some interesting places to see and at least one outstanding restaurant in the form of Ryugin. Moreover, with Din Tai Fung having seventeen branches here, you can have as many carefully made soup dumplings as you could dream of.

London Fine Dining

The Fish House is an above average fish and chip shop in Notting Hill, its produce carefully sourced and capably made. London has a dearth of decent fish and chip shops, for reasons that I have never really understood. Instead you have to journey to places like The Quayside in Whitby or Scran and Scallie in Edinburgh to find really good fish and chips. While not quite in that league, the Fish House does a pretty competent job, and deserves its plaice in a very short list of good fish and chip places in the capital.

I haven't been back to Gordon Ramsay’s flagship restaurant at Royal Hospital Road for some time. Now in charge of the kitchen is Matt Abe, and he seems to be maintaining the standards admirably. This meal contained some star dishes, such as a silky pressed foie gras with cherries and almonds that was really gorgeous. Service is good here, and the menu is appealing, with Matt gradually putting his own particular stamp on the menu. Gordon Ramsay’s TV antics have meant that this restaurant has become quite unfashionable these days, but the food here is still excellent.

Core is where the previous head chef at Gordon Ramsay moved to. Clare Smyth is a terrific chef technically, and we had some extremely good dishes at our meal, including a dish of sweetbread and langoustine with two different sauces, and a lovely spelt risotto with summer vegetables. Clare is keen to showcase vegetables, as with her “lamb carrot” dish, and I just wish she would source better ones rather than restricting herself to UK produce; a stuffed tomato dish at the meal had very limited flavour, especially when I compare it to the tomatoes I had a few days earlier in Italy. Still, this caveat aside, Core is a fine restaurant and deserves its evident success.

The Ritz (pictured) delivered another top class meal, highlights including some spectacularly large Scottish langoustines, alive and kicking just before service. There was also a lovely duck liver terrine and some excellent vegetarian alternatives, such as celeriac parfait and stuffed courgette flower. The room is grand and the service slick, and the only drawback to dining there is the rapacious wine list. It is daft that food of this quality gets just a single Michelin star, and that one star being handed out grudgingly after years of Michelin ignoring The Ritz.

I also revisited Jamavar, which has had a head chef change since my last meal there. All is well, the signature stone bass tikka still superb. We had two different tasting menus that featured some impressive cooking, such as stunning adraki lamb chop and excellent aloo tikki. This restaurant and Indian Accent have brought the level of Indian food in London to a higher level.

The blog next week will be a little later than usual due to some travel.

The Pinnacle of Dining

One of my favourite restaurants in Italy is Le Calandre, which I first visited when it had two stars almost two decades ago. The kitchen is just as happy making old style classic dishes as it is playing with cutting edge modern things, and it was a delight to have dishes like cannelloni with a tomato sauce, fried pizza bread with tomato and oregano, and raw Fassone beef. This and what is generally accepted to be the best risotto in Italy. Simple perhaps, but all based on fabulous ingredients and faultless technique, without a carefully tweezered edible flower in sight. A joy.

St Hubertus, prettily perched up in the Dolomite mountains (pictured) is the latest three star restaurant in Italy, and here the tweezers and edible flowers are very much in evidence. Think of prettily presented salads of mountain herbs, and bruschetta made with fermented plums rather than tomatoes because of the alpine cuisine ethos. All very worthy, and certainly a lot of work went into the dishes. There was a good eel dish and a nice dessert, but the gulf in standard between Le Calandre and this was huge. What is interesting is that if you looked at the photos of the two meals you would undoubtedly think that this meal looked better, and you would be right. What the camera cannot convey is the flavour of those tomatoes at Le Calandre, or the texture of its saffron risotto.

Back at home, Chapati Club is a pleasant and inexpensive Indian restaurant in Acton, opened a few months ago. We had a good biryani and also a nicely made black dhal, with thin okra fries also successful. The owner runs the front of house and she was very switched on, the bill being less than £30 each despite some serious over-ordering on our part.

Talking of good value restaurants, I had another meal at The Crown at Burchetts Green, whose chef operates alone in the kitchen yet still manages to produce labour-intensive old school French sauces, which is more than most London starred Michelin-starred restaurants manage these days. The ingredient quality here is very high, and we enjoyed fine salt marsh lamb and Lyonnaise tartlets amongst other excellent dishes at this meal. The price for this Michelin starred meal - £29 for three courses and nibbles, less than the price of a main course at stacks of London restaurants that are not fit to wipe The Crown’s feet with a napkin.

I have now completed visits to all the new 3 star restaurants in Europe. Of the nine (!) 2018 new 3 star additions (out of a surreal 15 new additions globally), my preference in rank order was Atelier, Frantzen, Inter Scaldes, Abac, Araki, Maison des Bois, Castellet, St Hubertus, then Aponiente. I only scored two of these 19/20, which for me is a “proper” three star level score. This year I have also been in Europe to existing three stars Schwarzwaldstube (20/20), Guy Savoy (20/20) Pic (20/20), Bareiss (19/20) and Auberge de l’Ill (19/20) as well as Le Calandre, all of which are comfortably better than all but two of the new European entries in the three star firmament. This suggests to me that Michelin is flailing around to promote new 3 star places, either to generate more guide sales or at least press headlines. It was no better last year, with the remarkably ordinary Lasarte and 1947 welcomed into the three star family. This is all the more puzzling to me when there are some really terrific places out there with two stars, such as Sa Qua Na, Les Crayeres or a trio of places in Lyon that could be granted a third star without anyone raising an eyebrow. There are currently 74 three star restaurants in Europe (128 in the world now after a couple of recent closures) and you can of course read reviews of all of them on this site. The 2019 Michelin guide season starts in October 2018, which leaves me a coulple of months to get to the remaining new 3 stars in Asia to be completely up to date.

Dining in Dublin

I had a short trip to Dublin, which I have always found to be a particularly attractive city to visit. It has some handsome buildings, such as the Trinity College Library (pictured), nice green spaces like St Stephens Green in the centre, properly kept Guinness, friendly people and some very good restaurants. The most famous of these is Patrick Guilbaud, a long-established French restaurant and the only one in Ireland to have two Michelin stars. I had a top-notch meal there, the culinary technique impeccable and the ingredients superb e.g. a fine piece of turbot from a huge 9kg fish, an excellent calf sweetbread dish, and superb wild salmon.

Another favourite is The Greenhouse, which has a Finnish chef with an Irish accent and one Michelin star. This was another superb meal, from the signature foie gras royale, through to lovely turbot and top of the range Anjou pigeon. The cooking is very precise and is now based on really top-notch produce. The Greenhouse is a superb restaurant, and I really have no idea why it only has one star.

The latest Dublin restaurant to gain a star is the very different Heron and Grey, a tiny place serving a couple of dozen people in a little room off a street market. This is much more hipster in style, with a no-choice eleven course tasting menu, tattooed staff and plenty of exotic ingredients that you will almost certainly need to Google. It is the hottest ticket in town, and I wasn't especially looking forward to it, but it turns out that the kitchen can actually cook very well, with complex dishes having implausible numbers of components that somehow work together harmoniously. The staff were infectiously enthusiastic and the lengthy meal was a lot of fun.

In other news, the Singapore Michelin guide came out. With the closure of Joel Robuchon and its attendant Atelier Robuchon next door, along with the unconnected closure of Restaurant Andre, Singapore now has no three stars and five two star places, as well as 33 one star establishments (there were four new one stars and three deletions at the one star level).

Munich Dining

The latest three star Michelin restaurant in Germany is Atelier, situated in an obscure corner of the very grand Bayerischer Hof hotel. The food here was very elaborate and impressive, dishes having lots of elements yet the components all working together harmoniously. It was a fine meal, marred only by some ultra modern “desserts”, and the third star is definitely well deserved.

Geisels Werneckhof is a two star place in the city with a half-Japanese chef. The food is European with a few Japanese touches like a chawanmushi (savoury custard) course, and there were some nice dishes such as an excellent Anjou pigeon main course. Service was rather flaky for a restaurant of this level but the experience was fine overall.

Kongishof is the grand dame of Munich dining, looking out over a handsome square in the centre of town. The food here is more classical and we enjoyed a lovely meal here, the room very smart and the service slick. As a bonus the wine list is very generously priced, with many of the posh wines well below their retail price. It is sad to hear that the restaurant will likely close at the end of the year when the hotel in which it is situated is demolished for a major renovation.

In other news, 3 Michelin star La Vie in Osnabruck closed its doors permanently after its main investor, an industrial corporation, pulled out.

A Trip to Edinburgh

The Scran and Scallie is a pub that is the sister restaurant of Kitchin. As well as serving terrific haddock and chips, it serves more ambitious dishes such as hand-dived scallops with pea sauce, a dish featuring a really top of the line scallop. The standard of food here is very high indeed, and the meal that I tried was as superb as the last one that I ate here. I have no idea why it doesn’t get a Michelin star rather a bib gourmand.

On the subject of stars, The Castle Terrace is another restaurant in the growing of Tom Kitchin, and one that had a Michelin star until 2015. On the basis of our meal on this trip the loss of a star is puzzling, as we had a very elaborate and enjoyable evening, the cooking frequently quite technical but also based on top notch products, such as some lovely langoustines.

The previous chef of The Honours has now struck on his own at a hotel called MacDonalds in the city near Holyrood House, whose ruined abbey is pictured. This restaurant, with the lengthy name "Bistro De Luxe by Paul Tabmurrini", was also a pleasant experience, the best dish being hand-dived scallop with tagliatelle and black truffle.

Edinburgh is blessed with some excellent restaurants, and certainly Kitchin and Martin Wishart seem to me to be worth two stars rather than one, especially when I compare them with some other starred places in Scotland like Braidwoods. This trip confirms that there are a number of good choices in the city in addition to these.

New and Old 3 Stars of France

In the 2018 guide there were two new three star restaurants in France. Restaurant Christophe Bacquie is in the south of France between Marseilles and Toulon, located in a large resort hotel. He specialises in seafood and we had a tasting menu that featured this, the star dish being a superb barbecued langoustine. This was a good meal, marred only by an annoying sommelier and a weird dessert.

The other newbie is also a reference to the past. Maison du Bois is the new restaurant of legendary chef Marc Veyrat, who had three stars at two separate locations over a decade ago, in Annecy and Megeve. Now recovered from a serious skiing accident, he has opened a restaurant on the site of the house where he was born up in the Alps (the view is pictured), and certainly the location is stunning. The meal was enjoyable and was full of theatrical flourishes, though to be honest the food is not of the level that I recall from his glory days in Annecy.

Two venerable three stars, however, are keeping up the standard admirably. Auberge de l’Ill has one of the prettiest settings of any restaurant, overlooking a weeping willow-lined river in Alsace. This meal was excellent, living up to the superb setting, with a particularly enjoyable Bresse chicken dish with truffle.

Pic in Valence is another restaurant with considerable history, and these days is home to the very precise cooking of Anne-Sophie Pic. This was a classy meal, with fabulous pigeon the star of the savoury courses. The pastry section here is without doubt one of the best in France, and they brought out several cracking dishes, the most remarkable being an extraordinary apricot dessert with amazing flavour and a hint of spice – it is one of the finest things I have ever eaten.

Baiersbronn

Baiersbronn is an obscure little municipality in the Black Forest, nine villages strung out along a beautiful valley lined with pine trees. It is remarkable for its density of Michelin stars, the most of anywhere on earth. It has a pair of three star Michelin restaurants in Bareiss and Schwarzwaldstube, and a two star called Schlossberg (no relation to three star restaurant Schloss Berg in Perl-Nennig). It exceeds the count in Bray in Berkshire, with eight stars compared to seven (Waterside Inn, Fat Duck, Hinds Head) yet with a population less than half that of Bray.

Bareiss is one of the three star restaurants, located in a luxury hotel at the base of the valley. It has a very traditional dining room and serves classical food, using top quality ingredients such as venison from its own hunting estate. This is entirely worthy of the three Michelin stars that it has held since 2007. It is a top-class place.

Bareiss has a casual sister restaurant called Satellei, set in a former hiking hut in the woods overlooking the hotel. This little restaurant produced two really fine dishes, a pork dish with mustard and terrific quality sauerkraut, and also a delicate tarte flambee, a flatbread dish that is a local (ish) take on pizza. The prices here were absurdly low given the quality of the food, and the woodland setting is gorgeous.

Schwarzwaldstube is the most famous restaurant in Germany, and is remarkable not only for its cuisine but its knack of training other chefs that go on to glittering careers of their own: thirty chefs who have worked there have progressed to Michelin stars of their own, including some other three star places. The restaurant is in the rustic Traube Tonbach hotel, and looks down over the valley. It has a new chef in the form of Torsten Michel, who was the long-term sous chef under former head chef Harald Wohlfhart. The food at this meal was absolutely superb, slightly bettering the fine meals that I had eaten at the restaurant under the previous kitchen regime. This is without doubt a world-class restaurant. We had just enough time to sample a couple of dishes only from its casual sister restaurant Baurenstube, which serves traditional dishes of the area, and though this was an insufficient sample for a review, what we tried was excellent and I will return another time to do a proper visit.

The only disappointment of the trip was the two star Schlossberg, which is within another hotel in the valley. There was a serious problem with over-salting of dishes, in some cases to an extent that rendered the food inedible. Additionally there was some very clumsy cooking, such as a chewy octopus and monkfish with the texture of cardboard. Service was also almost laughably bad. Although there were a couple of acceptable dishes amongst the wreckage, this was a shambolic restaurant that has absolutely no place as a Michelin starred establishment. I have literally never eaten a worse meal at a starred restaurant anywhere in the world, and I have tried hundreds.

This aside, Baiersbronn is a terrific destination for a break, with beautiful scenery and world-class cuisine as well as some classy and cheap restaurants serving the local specialities. Do yourself a favour and visit.

Hiding Above Ground

Hide is probably the highest profile opening in London this year, with gazillions being spent on the three-floor venture overlooking Green Park, with executive chef Ollie Dabbous. The formal restaurant “Above” (there is also the casual “Ground” and the bar “Below’) delivered some very prettily presented food that included a particularly good beetroot dish. The wine list here is very unusual in that you can drink anything from wine shop Hedonism, owned by the same people as Hide, and pay £30 above the retail price there. This means that the better wines are a steal compared to what you would pay elsewhere in central London. It is essentially a corkage charge but you don’t have the bother of carrying the wine to the restaurant. This is a real bonus and the food was very polished, albeit of the highly tweezered variety.

Neptune is a large seafood restaurant in a flashy new hotel called The Principal on Russell Square. We had some acceptable food, though the service operation was decidedly shaky, and there was little that really stood out on the food side. This is a quite expensive restaurant, and given its slightly unusual location I wonder how well it will do once the initial hype subsides.

Pied a Terre has had a succession of gifted chefs over the years, including Richard Neat, Tom Aikens and Shane Osborn, who all maintained two stars for the Charlotte Street restaurant for many years owned by restaurateur David Moore. These days it has one star, and the latest person to head the kitchen is former sous chef Asimakis Chaniotis. We had a very enjoyable meal, the star dish being a smoked quail salad.

I had another excellent meal at Beck at Browns, where the kitchen is already settling down and ironing out a few minor early glitches that I encountered in my first meal here. This lunch was spot on, with particularly classy pasta and risotto but also high end desserts. The head chef Heros di Agostinis here is a class act, and deserves to earn a star for his cooking, as he did at his previous stint at Apsleys.

Marianne is a tiny Notting Hill restaurant that has built up a good reputation, recently winning Harden’s "top gastronomic experience n London" award this year. I had not been since soon after it opened, and certainly the food has developed in sophistication since that early meal. It turns out that Marianne Lumb is actually moving on herself to travel in Asia, handing over the kitchen to her head chef.

Athens and Inter Scaldes

Inter Scaldes is in the far west of the Netherlands, on reclaimed land in Zeeland, and is actually closer to Antwerp in Belgium than it is to Rotterdam. It has a dozen rooms to stay, which is useful given how isolated the place is. The dining room looks out over attractive gardens, and the food was very good indeed. A cod brandade dish in particular was remarkable, but the standard was high throughout. This is quite a journey from, well, just about anywhere, but was most enjoyable.

Simul was a pleasant enough and moderately price restaurant in Athens that had a couple of minor issues with the savoury courses but produced a genuinely classy dessert: a strawberry millefeuille. This was overall a decent enough place, though it is not a destination restaurant. I’d be tempted to return for dessert though.

Tudor Hall is in a posh hotel in the very centre of Athens, and has a terrace with a fine view of the Acropolis in the distance. It is very smart, and we had a very good modern take on moussaka amongst the savoury dishes. Even better were desserts, where a French executive pastry chef has managed to conjure some very serious pastry from the kitchen. The desserts could have come straight from a two Michelin star restaurant in France.

Santorini

Santorini is a Greek island that is formed around a sunken volcanic caldera (it happens to be the largest caldera on earth). There are two towns, one called Firo near the airport, and the other, called Oia, clinging picturesquely to the cliffs on the north edge of the island. The holiday brochure pictures that you may have seen of Santorini, looking out to the sea with pretty blue domed stone buildings in the foreground, will have been taken at Oia. From top to bottom Santorini is fourteen miles long, and its dramatic setting and warm climate means that it is a tourist magnet, with an endless supply of cruise ships stopping off. Other than tourism, the island is known for its wines, the local Assyrtiko grape capable of producing high quality, acidic wines with a citrus fruity bouquet. The notoriously high winds here mean that the grapes are trained low near the ground, or protected by baskets, rather than as you would see vineyards in France or Italy. The hot climate also allows it to produce excellent cherry tomatoes, along with white aubergines and fava beans. However, other than the vineyards the economy is mostly driven by tourism, and even in May the bars and cafes were becoming busy. This is a good time of year, to visit, since the weather this week was 24C rather than baking hot, the tourist hordes have yet to arrive en masse and rain here is as rare as the English cricket team managing an innings without a batting collapse. If you come to Santorini for any length of time then consider hiring a car, as although the island is not that large, the taxi drivers appear to have modelled themselves on the highwaymen of old. Taxis have no meters and extract vast fares for short journeys, there being no competition from Uber. The three kilometre trip from the airport to our hotel here at €20 was pricier than the 33km airport taxi journey that we made in Athens, and a cab driver here won't as much as look at you for less than €10. To put this into a global context, the website The Price of Travel does a survey of 88 global cities to compare the cost of a 3km taxi fare; its last update reckoned Zurich was the costliest city at €19 for a 3km fare, still less than our €20 fare here of the same distance. Hence Santorini taxis appear to be literally the costliest on earth: such is the price of such a beautiful location, and municipal authorities that allow this daylight robbery to unfold. Incidentally, on departing the island the little airport has an attractive outdoor cafe where you can have a drink in the sunshine while you await your flight, which is a nice touch, and a lot more civilised than the woefully small un-air conditioned holding pen that you encounter once you go through security.

On the food front there are some similarities in my mind to Venice, another place whose businesses have become accustomed to milking tourists who visit briefly and are unlikely to return. There are three upmarket restaurants on Santorini. One is Lycabettus, which has a genuinely spectacular setting in Oia but where the sky high prices are matched only by the mediocrity of the food. The old stager on the scene is Koukoumavlos, which also has a lovely view but whose menu was full of barking mad flavour combinations with far too many elements on each plate. Selene, which is away from the main tourist areas, was far and away the best of the smart places, serving food of one Michelin star level in my opinion.

We fared better at the tavernas. Aktaion has been running since 1922 and serves traditional dishes like moussaka, and fried balls of local vegetables, at a modest price. It was a real pleasure to eat there compared to vastly more expensive yet inferior Lycabettus and Koukoumavlos. Even better was To Psaraki, another taverna near the island’s port, serving excellent seafood such as terrific grilled sardines. Santorini is a spectacularly beautiful island, and there is surely an opportunity for better high end restaurants than currently seem to exist, given all the tourist money that passes through here. Until that happens then there are fortunately some very enjoyable tavernas to enjoy in Santorini plus the excellent Selene. Also the views, which are really special.

Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit

This week was spent in Seville and the nearby area. I needed to go to Aponiente in order to keep up with the Michelin three star carousel, which this year has bestowed a third star on no less than sixteen restaurants around the world. Aponiente is near Cadiz, but it can also be reached by train in just over an hour from Seville, which is a very beautiful city to visit. It has sights such as the Alcazar royal palace (pictured), which is a UNESCO world heritage site with fine architecture and beautiful gardens.

Seville itself has a very well preserved Old Town, whose narrow streets are shared by throngs of tourists, impatient motorists and the odd horse and carriage doing a tour. The bustling Old Town is packed with tapas bars and restaurants, with places such as La Azotea. To explore the tapas scene properly then it is worth getting some local expertise, such as that of the knowledgable Shawn Hennessy of the excellent and long established Sevilla Tapas Tours.

We had time to try two well-known and very different seafood restaurants. Canabota is fairly new and centrally located, with a relaxed atmosphere and an element of theatre with its display of seafood and open kitchen. I had some lovely langoustine cooked over charcoal here, as well as very good croaker (a huge fish reminiscent in taste of sea bass).

Even better was Jaylu, situated out of the centre across the canal, and with a much more formal atmosphere. The seafood here was every bit as good though, with particularly excellent tuna tartare, good sea bass and superb fried anchovies, as well as having the bonus of a kindly priced wine list. This feels far from the bustle of Canabota, but the restaurants's fifty year (and counting) existence shows that it has staying power.

Aponiente itself is in a distinctly industrial location on the edge of the town of Puerto de Santa Maria, and its kitchen is on a mission to explore the boundaries of what can be done with seafood. Here you will find seafood charcuterie, seafood cheese (I am not kidding) and more ways of serving plankton that you are ever likely to have previously considered. The waiters were enthusiastic and charming and some of the dishes were very good, though there were some distinctly strange ideas mixed in on the lengthy tasting menu that we encountered.

Twist and Shout

Ikeda is a long established Japanese restaurant in Mayfair, and has been running since 1978. Not many restaurants in London last forty years, so it is clearly doing something right. I had some pleasant sushi with particularly nice tuna and eel, though it was a pity to be served fake wasabi rather than the real thing. Tonkatsu was enjoyable enough, though after trying some of the better ones in Tokyo such as that at Sugita, it is always tricky to match up to that standard. Overall, Ikeda delivered a pleasant meal, but at quite a high price point. Eating Japanese food in London continues to be a struggle if you have spent any time dining in Japan, where the ingredient quality in particular is simply of a higher level.

Twist is a curious tapas bar north of Marble Arch, near Edgware Road station. It sounds highly dubious: “tapas with a twist” from an Italian chef – just about every alarm bell should be going off when you hear a pitch like that. Much to my surprise it was very good – padron peppers were of exceptional quality, tuna tartare with yuzu and Japanese chill was genuinely excellent, and marinated Japanese scallops and red prawns were classy too. Not everything worked e.g. an over-rich gnocchi with langoustine cream and crab, but there were a lot more hits than misses. Worth a look.

I also had another very good meal at Amorosa in Ravenscourt Park, a regular haunt of mine. Here Andy Needham, former head chef of Zafferano when it had a Michelin star. His saffron risotto is a delight, creamy and gorgeous, and this week a new lamb shoulder pasta dish was particularly impressive. At £47 a head for this most recent meal Amorosa is excellent value.

Next week there will be reviews of some places well off the Tube network.

Clocking Inn

The Clock House is in Ripley in Surrey, in the premises that used to be Drakes. The restaurant regained its Michelin star in the 2018 guide, with the kitchen now run by Fred Clapperton. We had a very pleasant evening there, with some unusually good nibbles and a series of capable savoury courses, though things slid down a notch or two at the dessert stage. The staff were nice and the bill was not excessive, at least by London standards.

Dip in Brilliant is a casual sister restaurant of the long established Brilliant in Southall. The new place is almost next to the Chelsea football ground, and is run by the daughter (Dipna Anand) of the owner of the Brilliant. We had a pleasant enough meal when we visited, though not all the dishes were quite to the standard of the original Southall mother ship. Prices were also quite high, but rents in Fulham are clearly much higher than in Southall.

We had another excellent meal at Noize, which along with Core is my pick for the best London restaurant opening of 2017. The menu of fairly classical French dishes is appealing, and there are nice touches such as the kitchen making old fashioned sauce reductions. Service is charming and the wine list is unusually good, alongside a fairly modest corkage charge.

I can’t seem to stay away from The Ritz, and had another excellent meal there. There was a particularly good dish of Provence asparagus with gull egg and truffle sauce, and a lovely Ballotine of Dover sole with leek terrine. As usual, the desserts here were top notch, with an especially elaborate and pretty chocolate concoction.

Ambitious London openings

Four Degree is a very ambitious Asian fusion restaurant on the river in Vauxhall. It is very smartly decorated and the menu is reminiscent of places such as Roka and Zuma, with mostly Japanese style dishes. Black cod with miso was suitably buttery and the dish of the night, but even the desserts were surprisingly well made. It is far from cheap here, and given its cavernous dimensions, seating well over 300 customers at capacity, I am curious to see how it will get on, but it is certainly interesting.

If you ever ate at Apsleys at The Lanesborough hotel before it closed when the hotel changed hands, and wondered where the chef there went – now you have your answer. Heros de Agostinis, who has worked for many years with Heinz Beck at Pergola in Rome and other places, now heads up Beck at Browns, the hotel in Albemarle Street. The Italian menu here is rather more casual than at Apsleys but still has plenty of ambition, with dishes such as red mullet stuffed with olives and tomatoes and cooked in a thin layer of bread. The risotto here was top notch and worth visiting for this alone. Prices are high and the wine list takes no prisoners, but there is no doubting that the chef here can cook.

I had my 72^ndmeal at Hedone. As usual, I opted for the “carte blanche” tasting menu, which on this visit included highlights of a sashimi scallop so fresh it was still moving on the plate when it was served and lovely asparagus from Pertuis in Provence. I particularly liked a foie gras nibble that was served inside a very delicate millefeuille, and top-notch red mullet with artichoke and bouillabaisse. Rum baba was a lovely way to finish the lengthy meal. Given the very high grade ingredients, labour intensive dishes and inventiveness, Michelin’s award of just a single star here gets harder to understand with each visit.

Roganic Returns

Roganic is Simon Rogan’s London outpost, back in the same street in Marylebone as the previous “extended pop up” Roganic a few years ago. This is a tasting menu format and as ever with this there will be some dishes that are better than others. However although some of the modern desserts were not my thing, there was an excellent pork dish, good scallops and particularly good crab with hispi cabbage. The freshly made sourdough bread was also classy. The main issue is the substantial price.

The Empress is a gastropub in Hackney that I enjoyed very much when Elliott Lidstone was cooking there (he has since moved to his own place in Bristol). There have been two chef changes since and the place has not moved in a good direction. There was a nice herb spaetzle dish but a really poor mackerel dish and disappointing desserts, compounded by shoddy service.

The Ritz continues to impress with rock solid classical culinary technique, dishes at this meal including terrific gougeres stuffed with truffles, top-notch asparagus from Provence, langoustines that were alive moments before serving and the usual elaborate dessert master-class from the pastry section. I can’t think of a two star restaurant in London cooking as this at the moment.

The Brilliant is an old favourite of mine, a Southall stalwart serving Punjabi food in family-sized portions at modest prices. Methi chicken is a rich, glorious dish here, and tonight a chaat starter was also excellent. They have recently opened a simpler sister in Fulham that I will visit soon.

Visiting Copenhagen

Daniel Berlin is set in the Swedish countryside in the far south of the country, much closer to Copenhagen than Stockholm. The restaurant has a considerable emphasis on local produce, and produced some very good dishes over a lengthy tasting menu. The staff that I encountered were excellent, and although this is a bit of a trek to reach, it had a lot to recommend it.

Sollerod Kro is a little north of Copenhagen and is more traditional than many of the fashionable Danish restaurants in the capital, though its menu definitely had a Scandinavian feel to it. Its manager was an excellent host and knew his way around the genuinely top-notch wine list, which was particularly strong in the wines of Burgundy.

Noma 2 is the new version of the wildly successful original, now relocated to vastly larger premises with all sorts of kitchen facilities. The seafood menu that I tried had some good dishes but was also quite challenging in places – you don’t see sea cucumber gonads on too many menus. Although everything was very prettily presented and the seafood was as fresh as good be, not all the dishes seemed to me to work particularly well in terms of flavour and balance. The trouble is that at these prices everything really should work pretty much flawlessly. Given the marketing momentum of the restaurant, doubtless it will flourish regardless of the concerns of any pesky doubters.

Whilst in Copenhagen I also enjoyed a light lunch at a restaurant called Gammel Mont, which has a solo chef in the kitchen. It turned out that the restaurant is very shortly to close and move into larger premises with a team of chefs, so it is pointless to review it, but I was impressed by the chef Claus Christenson, a larger than life character who cooked a really excellent classic Dover sole dish.

Three Stars Old and New

Since my last meal there, Guy Savoy has moved premises. The restaurant is rated number one in the world on La Liste, a sort of “meta list” of restaurant ranking that is just an algorithm using weighted scores of other guides including Michelin, Top 50, local restaurant guides (depending on the country) and some other sources, including my website. The new setting for Guy Savoy looks out over The Seine and is a suitably grand location for this doyen of French dining. We had a really superb tasting menu featuring top of the range ingredients, superb technical skill and lovely, appealing flavour combinations. No one in the kitchen here is trying to experiment on customers or show off how clever they are at the expense of customer enjoyment. Service was flawless and the meal was thoroughly enjoyable, with some real highlights including a fabulous and wildly elaborate vegetable course, and a terrific rhubarb dessert.

Frantzen moved to new premises a year ago in Stockholm and was recently rewarded by being granted the third Michelin star that had up until then eluded it. I enjoyed the old Frantzen, but it was certainly a very cramped space, and the new premises are a great improvement, split over two floors. The various Scandinavian multi-starred restaurants have very different atmospheres and approaches, even though they are often lumped together into “New Nordic” cuisine. Frantzen is much less ascetic than some, showcasing Scandinavian produce such as a fabulous langoustine at this meal, but not wanting to push this philosophy to the extent that it spoils anyone’s pleasure. The menu featured some excellent produce and had particularly impressive service. It was good to be able to try their signature dish once again. This is a wonderfully comforting concoction of French toast using sourdough bread filled with caramelised onions and Parmesan custard and balsamic vinegar – glorious. It was far from a cheap experience, but then nothing is in this part of the world. As far as I am concerned they definitely deserve their third star.

I also had another very good meal at Rambla, the tapas bar in Soho. The highlight was a special dish of velveted turbot from a large 7 kg specimen, the fish having the lovely flavour that only large turbots possess. Rambla is excellent value and delivers genuinely good tapas at a much lower price than almost any of the other trendy London tapas places. If you are ever in Soho then it is well worth a try.

In other news, Michelin refreshed their one-off Hiroshima guide, which was last done in 2013, expanding to the prefecture of Ehime. Nakashima remains the solitary three star, with seven two stars and thirty one star places.

Crowning Glory

The Crown at Burchetts Green is a fascinating operation. Located near Maidenhead, it is run by chef Simon Bonwick with help from his extensive family e.g. his son Dean manages the front of house. Simon operates essentially on his own in the tiny kitchen, with a little help now from another of his offspring, who is acting as an apprentice. Despite these constraints he produces labour-intensive classical French dishes, including lovely meat reductions that appear on plates as pools of glistening sauce. This latest meal was the best I have had there, with a dish of creamed potatoes and puy lentils with béarnaise sauce and a delicate Parmesan tuile being a particular highlight. A five-course menu here costs £28, and that is not a typo. This is less than a main course in endless disappointing London restaurants, yet included crab, sweetbreads and langoustine tails in amongst its delights.

Cabotte represents value in another way - on its wine list. That is not a sentence I was expecting to write about a restaurant in The City, but there it is. The list offers over six hundred different wines, with great depth in Burgundy. As you climb the list the relative mark-ups drop, with some very expensive wines actually below their current market price. The food was enjoyable too, with capably made robust Burgundian dishes such as oeuf en mourette and boeuf bourgignon.

Lievito is a pizzeria in Chelsea in a delicatessen setting, with assorted imported Calabrian produce displayed along the walls. We had a somewhat mixed experience, with a couple of good salads, one pizza that worked a lot better than the other one we tried, and some distinctly lacklustre service. It is a popular place, and although perhaps I did not choose well for my pizza it is certainly an interesting place. It did, however, feature one of the grumpiest waitresses I have seen in a long time.

Next week's blog will feature some restaurants rather further afield.

The Blackbird is Off To the Races

Noize, along with Core, were for me the top London openings of the last year. We enjoyed another excellent meal at this visit, the cooking involving classical technique, proper sauces in pools rather than blobs, and good quality ingredients. Add in an unusually good wine list and classy service and you have a delightful all round package for a restaurant. Now why can’t more places manage this level of quality?

Club Gascon has been on the London dining scene over a decade and had a fairly recent refurbishment. It features the cuisine of the south west of France, and the dining room is definitely improved these days. I can’t say the same for the food, which although generally competent fell short of one star standard, and included a particularly disappointing turbot dish, featuring a tiny and tasteless sliver of fish at an absurd £36.50. Service was slightly aloof but mostly fine until the end of service, when the waiters all decided to huddle in the corner and have a chat rather than bothering to look after the pesky customers. This felt to me like a place coasting on its past reputation.

The Blackbird out at Newbury is where a former head chef of Tom Aikens has set up shop. It is a fairly basic pub but with food that is much more ambitious than you would expect in that setting. A beef tartare was unusually good, as was a chocolate marquise dessert, and prices are modest. This is still quite early days for The Blackbird, but is already showing considerable promise. If you are ever out near Newbury, noted for its race course, then give it a try.

A Pub Jim, But Not As We Know it

L’Amorosa has become my “go to” Italian restaurant in London. Its chef/owner, Andy Needham, was the long-time head chef of Zafferano when it held a Michelin star. Now he cooks slightly simpler dishes in this neighbourhood restaurant in Ravenscourt Park. A lamb ragu dish had great depth of flavour, while saffron risotto was also excellent. Prices are very fair here and the staff are friendly.

Berners Tavern is part of the Jason Atherton empire, possessing one of the most visually impressive dining rooms in London. The menu is appealing, with dishes such as tuna with avocado, chilli and yuzu and a crowd-pleasing venison Wellington. The bill is quite high, and that is the main issue here, but I guess someone has to pay the fee for architect Ian Schrager’s genuinely gorgeous room.

The Wigmore looks like a Victorian pub but is actually part of The Langham hotel, located in what used to be the hotel spa. The food is definitely a step up from regular pub fare, with a toasted cheese sandwich using three different cheeses and arriving with a cast iron bacon press to keep it warm. I enjoyed a curried Scotch egg and coronation chicken roll, and over two further visits had several excellent dishes. The cooking takes pub classics and elevates them to a higher level - recommended.

Finally, I had another good meal at old faithful Royal China in Queensway. We had a particularly good steamed sea bass with black bean sauce at this visit, as well a excellent bak choi with garlic. Service here is never exactly cuddly, but the hordes of Chinese diners in this cavern of a dining room are a testament to the standard of the cooking.

A Taste of West Africa in St James

Andrew Wong seems to be single-handedly raising the bar for Chinese food in London, reinventing classic dishes and developing them with new touches. His dim sum selection is particularly enjoyable, with the nice feature that you can order individual pieces, so no need to fight over who is going to have the remaining har gau. Highlights of my meal this week included superb xiao long bao with an exceptionally thin and delicate dumpling, scallop puffs and excellent sui mai. This is a restaurant that thoroughly deserves its Michelin star.

Ikoyi (pictured) is an intriguing restaurant that takes inspiration from the cuisine of West Africa, though it does not pretend to be “authentic”, whatever that really means in cuisine. It applies some West African ingredients like African nutmeg to luxury ingredients such as scallops and turbot, resulting in some intriguing and enjoyable dishes. Crab jollof rice was a delight, octopus with a Cameroonian stew called ndole was excellent and it was clear that a great deal of effort had gone into some of the dishes, often involving elaborate preparation. The staff that I spoke to were clearly enthusiastic about working here, and although this is not a cheap experience, the prices seem to me justified by the high grade ingredients and amount of work involved in the food.

Moksha is a fairly new Indian restaurant in New Malden. Its cooking is more ambitious than one might expect from the high street location, with dishes such as Parsi sea bass and green chutney in banana leaf and prawn biryani with a pastry lid. An excellent achari murgh had a particularly well judged marinade and a black dhal was very good. The service was attentive and if I lived nearby I would certainly return on a regular basis. Now all I need to do is to persuade them or another enterprising Indian restaurant to open in Chiswick, an area sadly lacking in good Indian food.

Braving the Hipsters

This week I try two of London's trendiest restaurants, with no shortage of people with beards and tattoos in attendance. Londrino is a much anticipated Portuguese restaurant from a chef who was formerly head chef of Michelin-starred Viajante, and who has worked in several other starred establishments. It ticks all the hipster boxes with the open kitchen, the casual dining room and the “small plates” format. It also featured some particularly nice front of house staff, who were very charming. The food itself was merely pleasant, and there was a recurring theme of favours being muted and seasoning being subtle to the point of invisibility. There were some nice dishes, such as prawns with mustard sauce and a good dessert, but there were also some pretty ordinary dishes, all at an unforgiving price point.

Nuala’s chef/owner was formerly a butcher, so it is not surprising that the Highland rump steak that we tried here was of excellent quality. What was impressive was how many other things were good, from the crusty sourdough bread, the sweetbreads and cauliflower and the chocolate dessert. As a bonus, there is the odd bargain on the wine list too. Old Street is groaning with disappointing restaurants, so Nuala was a very pleasant surprise.

Indian Accent is the only restaurant from India that makes it into the global “Top 50” (which is really a top 100) list. I ate in December at the original branch in Delhi and what impressed me about the London opening was just how similar it was in standard. Often when a successful restaurant opens another branch some of the magic of the original is lost, but not here. Dishes such as Kashmiri morels with Parmesan crisp, glorious soy keema and fabulous bacon kulcha bread were highlights of my latest meal here. Service is slick and the premises smart. 2016 was a great year for Indian restaurant openings, with Jamavar and Dastaan, but Indian Accent tops them all. This is, quite simply, the best Indian restaurant in London.

In other news, Michelin released a guide to taipei in Taiwan, another in the series of Asian guides funded by the local tourist authorty. There was a solitary three star restaurant (Le Palais), a pair of two stars (Ryugin and "The Guest House") and 16 one star places.

Putting On The Ritz

The standard of pizza in London has risen dramatically ever since Franco Manca in Brixton Market and Santa Maria in Ealing began to educate people regarding the joys of authentic Neapolitan pizza. Now there are many such places, and a good one is Farina in Notting Hill, which has as its chef the former pizzaiolo at Santa Maria. With a proper oven going up to 500C and carefully rested dough, the authentic chewy, elastic base of a Naples style pizza is carefully delivered.

Bistro Mirey is a restaurant in Fulham delivering French food with a Japanese twist (the chef is French, the co-owner Japanese). Sadly, although the menu was intriguing and the waiters were friendly, the actual food was inconsistent and poor in places. I am all for local independent restaurants, but they do actually need to deliver, not just write an interesting menu.

The Harwood Arms has been a favourite of mine ever since it opened, a superior gastropub with a particular emphasis on game, some of it shot in person in Berkshire by the co-owner. It has a new head chef but the transition has been smooth, and we had another excellent meal, including lovely sika deer and some of the gorgeous lemon curd doughnuts that they make particularly well here.

I have written many times about The Ritz, and over the last few years the cooking has just got better and better. The vast kitchen means that there are plenty of chefs to make time-consuming sauces, and its buying power means that it can get top ingredients, such as live langoustines. This last meal was exceptionally good, with star dishes including salt baked celeriac with veal jus and black truffles, and a particularly gorgeous pear dessert. It took an unconscionable amount of time for Michelin to give the Ritz its first star, and I hope that it will be quicker to receive the second star that it clearly deserves.

Back Home

After my travels I have been catching up a little on the London dining scene. A hugely anticipated opening is Sabor, a tapas venture from chef Nieves Barragan Mohacho, who was formerly head chef of Barrafina. I went very soon after it opened, and perhaps there were some teething issues, but basically the meal was a real let down. There were some decent croquettas, and a pleasant red mullet with rice, but there were issues with several dishes, such as wildly over-seasoned pig trotters and some overcooked langoustines. It would be one thing is this was cheap and cheerful, but I paid £123 a head here with wine, and the prices here are distinctly ambitious, which brings into focus any mistakes.

Edera is a long-established Holland Park Italian, which served me a nice wild boar ragu with papardelle, a decent risotto and a rather good lemon tart. The only real negative was the remarkably gloomy waiting staff; perhaps they were having a bad day, but the only time I saw anyone smile was when a customer left the restaurant. The meal was fine but quite expensive, and I will be sticking to L’Amorosa if I want to eat an Italian meal in west London.

Zia Lucia is a pizzeria in north London that has recently opened a new branch in Brook Green. They offer four choices of base, the style of pizza not being either Neapolitan on Roman, but something in between. It was pleasant and had generous toppings though for me the pizza wasn’t up there with the real high end pizzerias of London. To their credit, they did make a very nice tiramisu.

Another simple local place is Tarantella in Acton, sister to my local Italian Tarantella in Chiswick. This branch is larger than the original and has a proper pizza oven. It seems best to stick to pizza based on the other dishes that we had, which were pretty ordinary, but the pizzas themselves were fine. This is not a destination restaurant, but it is cheap and a pleasant local place.

Singapore - Garden City

The final leg of our world tour was stopping off in Singapore for a few days before flying back to London. Singapore is a bustling, modern city that is unusually well organised in all sorts of ways, and is a very easy place to visit. If you do go there then there are a couple of unusual places to visit. One is the Gardens by The Bay complex, a very large area near Marina Bay Sands with several themed gardens and two huge biodomes, including the world’s largest greenhouse. These house a huge array of plants and trees from around the world, from ferns to baobab trees. There are also several artificial “supertrees” (pictured) that capture rainwater and have solar panels that help run the park sustainably. Another unusual activity in Singapore is the Night Zoo, where you can walk around the zoo in the evening, when most animals are more active than during the day.

On the dining front, I tried Joel Robuchon, the sole three star restaurant in the city. Tucked away in the basement of a casino resort hotel, the meal was expensive but actually very good, utilising high quality luxury ingredients and showing considerable skill. As well as more classical dishes, I was impressed by an artichoke amuse bouche, and wild mushroom cannelloni with the beef course.

The surprise package was Les Amis, a long established restaurant whose chef Sebastien Lepinoy has been heading up the kitchen for five years. A long time associate of Joel Robuchon dating back to the early days of Jamin in Paris, he is a classical chef by training and is unashamedly following this path here. There were several impressive dishes, and then the meal went into overdrive with three of the best desserts I have eaten for years. Although Michelin rate this as just two star level, this was a most impressive meal.

While in the city I also tried the flagship restaurant of Violet Oon, a cookbook writer and local celebrity chef, serving Nyonya cuisine, a fusion of Malay and Chinese cuisine with colonial culinary influences. Song of India is one of the very few Michelin starred Indian restaurants outside India, and shouldn't have that star: not by a long, long way. Shisen Hanten is a Chinese restaurant run by a Japanese chef, notionally serving Sichuan food, though the menu seemed mostly Cantonese to me. This was very pleasant, though Michelin's two star assessment of it is puzzling.

A visit to Sydney

On the way back from New Zealand we stayed in Sydney for a few days. The culinary highlight was a meal at Sepia, one of the two restaurants in town with three hats in the Good Food Guide, the main local guide. This is a tasting menu only kind of place, with quite a bit of Japanese influence in the cooking. It was a quite a long evening but the service was excellent and the food was very good, excellent in patches. It was better than Quay, which I tried on my last visit here and is the other three hat restaurant in the city.

The other formal restaurant that we tried was Cirrus, a seafood restaurant that is one of the large clutch of 28 two hat restaurants in the city. This meal, by contrast was a major disappointment. The best dishes were merely pleasant, and we had to send a main course back; service was quite flaky too, and yet this was an expensive outing. Much better was Mr Wong, which served us some very enjoyable dim sum. We also enjoyed Golden Century, a less sophisticated Chinese seafood restaurant that is popular amongst chefs, and has a surprisngly good wine list.

Sydney is a fun city to visit, and we happened to be there on Australia Day, where they laid on a serious firework display in the harbour. Our next stop on the way back to London was Singapore, of which more next week.

Visiting New Zealand

New Zealand is slightly larger than the UK in terms of land area, yet its population of 4.7 million is smaller than Scotland. The largest city by a wide margin is Auckland, with a population of 1.4 million. This is in the North Island, which also has the capital Wellington, at the southern end of the North Island. The most spectacular scenery, made famous by the “Lord of the Rings” films and TV series like “Top of the Lake”, is mostly in the South Island, which you access by a three and a half hour ferry ride from Wellington to a little place called Picton. Near the southern tip of the south island is the city of Queenstown, from which you can reach the spectacular scenery of the little town of Glenorchy and, with a lengthier drive, the fjord area of Milford Sound, with beautiful waterfalls, peaks and wildlife including dolphins. The north island has the geothermal area of Rotorua and Taupo, as well as the Art Deco architecture of Napier, amongst other attractions. The countryside in the north island is reminiscent of England, with rolling farmland. The South Island feels more like Scotland or Norway, with its mountains and fjords, but with a milder climate and more exotic flora and fauna - you don't see too many palm trees or flightless birds in Scotland.

The South island is bisected by the Southern Alps, with the western coast boasting a series of nature reserves featuring sights such as the Fox and Franz Joseph glaciers, and assorted beautiful beaches and seal colonies, such as that at Tauranga Bay. The west coast highway can be quite slow going and petrol statins are at a premium, but it has some spectacular scenery, with gorgeous forests, hills, lakes and beaches along the way.

This trip was primarily sightseeing rather than culinary in nature. If planning a trip then bear in mind that January seems to be a bit like August in Paris, with most high end restaurants shutting down for weeks at a time. The first five restaurants I tried to book in Auckland (French Café, The Grove, Sidart, Kazuya, Meredith’s) were all closed, as was the supposedly best Indian restaurant (Cassia) and the first two Malaysian restaurants I looked into. After that I gave up on finding anywhere cooking anything ambitious. I did find an excellent pizza place called Dante’s Pizzeria, whose Neapolitan style pizzas were genuinely good and would be up there with the very best in London.

Lake Taupo had a surprisingly good Indian (strictly speaking, Nepalese) restaurant called Malabar Beyond India. Dishes were nicely presented and had lively spicing, and the restaurant would prosper in a much more competitive spot than here. Napier is a beautiful city on the east coast of the north island. It was flattened by a huge earthquake in 1931 and was rebuilt from scratch in the following couple of years. This meant that the entire city at the time was built in Art Deco style, and fortunately many of the original buildings have been carefully preserved. It is a much more complete expression of Art Deco than Miami Beach, for example, which has just a limited set of buildings on the beach front. The Napier beachfront is lovely, with well-maintained gardens. We tried a pretty ropey Indian restaurant called Indigo, which curiously had a remarkably good wine list, but only a passing acquaintance with how to cook Indian food. There was also a prettily located and very good winery restaurant in the Elephant Hill wine estate, located on the cliffs of the exotically named Kidnappers Cove. Napier has a lovely climate, with low rainfall and plenty of sunshine, and the gorgeous architecture make it a very appealing place to visit.

Wellington is the capital of the country, in the south of the North island. There we had a good meal at Whitebait, and also a pleasant evening at its casual sister Charley Noble. The ferry ride from Wellington to Picton in the South Island needs to be booked well in advance. Incidentally, although the ferry can transfer vehicles, car hire companies will not let you take cars from the north to the South Island, so you have to give back your car at the Wellington ferry and pick up a different car when you land.

Once in the South Island, you can either head down the east coast to Christchurch, which is still recovering from the traumatic 2011 earthquake, or drive down the west coast to Queenstown. From either location you can then fly off to your next destination. We followed the west coast, starting from Picton, where the ferry lands, and moved on to Nelson, which has numerous wineries nearby, and a pleasant seafood restaurant called the Cod and Lobster. We drove south to Westport, which is nothing much to look at in itself but has some gorgeous views over the sea near Tauranga Bay, and a prettily located restaurant called The Bay House, which boasts stunning views. We continued south to Franz Josef, which has a couple of glaciers nearby that you can visit by helicopter if you are lucky with the weather. Bear in mind that around half of the scheduled helicopter trips are cancelled due to the weather, so if this is something you are keen on doing then allow enough time in Franz Josef to give yourself decent odds of overcoming the vagaries of the weather. From there we drove south to Queenstown.

Not far from the city (a 45 minute drive) is the beautiful setting of Glenorchy (pictured), a little town featured in the TV series “Top of the Lake” and with scenery that appears in several scenes in the “Lord of the Rings” films. From Queenstown you can reach the rather remote but very beautiful fjord area called Milford Sound. This is not that far as the crow flies (less than sixty miles), but by road involves a quite lengthy and scenic but somewhat challenging drive of about four hours. There is just a single hotel lodge with an adjoining camp site; it is quite isolated, with internet only accessible via satellite at an entertaining price, and in addition the area is notorious for its clouds of biting sand flies. You can alternatively stay a couple of hours away at a little place called Te Anau, when there are a few more accommodation options. If you don't fancy driving then you can access Milford Sound by air if you are lucky with the weather, as there are flights by plane and helicopter to Milford Sound from Queenstown airport that connect to cruises of the lake there. The major issue is that the weather at Milford Sound is notoriously unpredictable and exceptionally rainy and misty. It rains here 182 days a year on average, with annual rainfall of 6,412mm per year, compared with 1,152mm for Cardiff, the UK’s rainiest city. Even if it is a perfectly clear day in Queenstown the flights may not be able to take off or land due to bad weather at the landing strip at Milford Sound, and indeed a lot of these flights never make it off the ground. The official line is that “at least a third” of scheduled flights are cancelled according to the tour company I spoke to, but the reality seems far worse than this. At the hotel where we stayed I was told that one set of unlucky guests recently stayed for eight days in Queenstown, tried to fly to Milford Sound every day and never got there. Just as at Franz Josef, you need to either be lucky or allow enough days in Queenstown to give yourself decent odds of getting a day clear enough to fly in. Otherwise you need to make the journey by road if you want to see the place. I actually suspect that Milford Sound may be a mythical place made up by the Queenstown tourist board to encourage tourists to stay there in the forlorn hope of flying to it: “Ah yes, it is so beautiful. Maybe stay a few more days in Queenstown and the weather may clear up” followed by an evil cackle as they rack up yet more nights of hotel fees.

Queenstown itself is a quite small city (population 28,000) in a very pretty location, on a lake overlooking some impressive mountains. In the city you can take a cable car to the heights above the city to see the spectacular view below. The city itself has limited attractions other than being a centre for adventure hikes and being near a twee gold prospecting era village called Arrowtown, but it is the ideal base to explore Glenorchy and the elusive Milford Sound. Dining wise we tried supposedly one of the best restaurants there called Botswana Butchery, which was pretty disappointing. After that I gave up on the posh places but did find a very pleasant curry place called The Bombay Palace, and another called Taj Indian Kitchen, which was a touch inconsistent but did a good biryani. I also had some decent izakaya style food at Daruma, which managed a surprisingly good prawn tempura. Another pleasant enough place was an izakaya called Tanoshi, which serves okonomiyaki, the savoury pancake that is served in Hiroshima and Osaka.

From Queenstown we flew on to Sydney, where the dining scene is rather richer. I will cover that next week.

In other news, the France 2018 Michelin Guide was announced. Three stars to Marc Veyrat at Maison des Bois near Mont Blanc, and to Christophe Bacquie of the Castellet Hotel near Marseilles. Bras was duly delisted at their own request, meaning France has 28 three stars. It now also has 85 two star restaurants and 508 one stars.

A Brief Visit to Los Angeles

In January I had a break from blogging in London, but not from travelling. The first leg of a month-long trip was a brief stopover in Los Angeles, actually briefer than intended thanks to British Airways, who cancelled our flight and so caused us to lose a day. We managed to hit some unseasonably wet and cool weather in the city of angels, but did squeeze in three meals.

The first was at Trois Mec, a highly popular place that ticks all the hipster boxes: tasting menu only, unmarked location in an old pizzeria, chef who turns up on TV, tiny tables and gloomy lighting. The meal that we had was very erratic, and the chef was trying way too hard in my view. Although there were some decent dishes, things like beeswax flan and charred sweet potato are ideas best left on the drawing board after some late night brainstorming session. This is not a cheap place by any means, though the menu itself is not particularly costly in absolutl tems, but the value for money factor was poor and its popularity was puzzling based on this meal.

I much preferred a simple lunch in Koreatown at Sun Nong Dan, featuring a vast shared dish of galbu jjim, a cauldron of short ribs, chillies and vegetables, its topping of cheese flambéed at the table. This was more fun than Trois Mec at a fraction the price.

My third meal was at Capo, an old school Italian restaurant in Santa Monica that looked like something that could easily feature in the movie Goodfellas. The menu was as vast as the wine list and there were some nice enough dishes, such a decent rigatoni and a pleasant crab torta. However at the end of the day the bill was way too high for the level of food that was appearing.

Next week I cover my travels in New Zealand.

New Year dining and an interval

Duddels (pictured) is a Hong Kong restaurant with a Michelin star (formerly two stars) that opened in London Bridge in late 2017 in a former church. It has a large, airy dining room and serves Cantonese food, featuring the use of some luxury ingredients such as Bresse chicken. The food at my meal was quite mixed, with some very good dim sum, but also some ordinary pieces too. Peking duck looked pretty but had flabby skin, and crispy salted chicken simply wasn't remotely crispy. A dessert was seriously flawed. Service was fine but at the steep prices here I would expect much greater consistency.

Antica is a pizzeria in Hampstead that is very popular. We tried two pizzas here, and certainly the Naples style pizzas had an authentically soft and supple base, in this case with a particularly fluffed up crust. However the toppings let things down, with for example some completely tasteless button mushrooms that I think were tinned. The shambolic service was also a distraction. If I lived nearby then I would return, especially given the paucity of alternatives in Hampstead, but I don’t think this is really up there with the very best pizzas in London.

Dastaan in Ewell is the surprising location of the former head chef of Michelin-starred Gymkhana. Despite its distinctly simple décor and crowded dining room this is well worth a trek, as the food is terrific. The chef and his team seem more at ease cooking here than they were at Gymkhana, and I think the food here is quite a lot better than when he was cooking at the flashy Mayfair location. At this meal the red pepper prawns and stone bass were exceptional, but so was the chicken tikka biryani, and the overall standard was high. The location is rather out of the way but I think it is well worth a journey, since as far as I am concerned there are just two other Indian restaurants (Jamavar and Indian Accent) cooking Indian food at this level.

I also had further excellent meals at The Ritz and Indian Accent, but have recently written at length about both of these restaurants so I won’t repeat things.

January is generally a very quiet time for restaurant openings, as any sane restaurateur tries to open in time for the busy run up to Christmas unless their builders conspire against them. Many restaurants close for a few weeks for minor refurbishment in what is traditionally the quietest month of the year in the trade. Given this, I am going to take a short sabbatical in reviewing for a few weeks. This blog will resume in early February, and by then there should be plenty on which to catch up. In the mean time, happy eating to you all.

Christmas Dining

The Square changed hands some time ago, but there has recently been a chef change, and a refurb (pictured). Now Clement Leroy from Paris is in the saddle, the pastry section headed up by his wife Aya Tamura-Leroy. The highlights for me were the desserts such as chocolate gran cru with pistachio and red shiso. The savoury dishes were less satisfying. For me the kitchen is trying too hard to show off exotic flavour combinations, such as marinated langoustines with hibiscus foam and cauliflower semolina, where the lovely langoustines were overpowered by the hibiscus flavour. A red mullet was nice in itself, but the dish spoiled by an accompaniment of graffiti aubergine that should have a creamy quality but was just hard and chewy. Sweetbread with marinated squid and pomelo was the best savoury dish, and showed that the kitchen could actually cook a pleasing dish when it wanted to. Overall, though objectively a good meal, this was not really what I was hoping for given the lineage of the chef, and at this steep price point any flaw is magnified.

Hedone is a great favourite of mine, its lawyer turned chef Mikael Jonsson cooking some of the most interesting food in London, and most certainly using a quality of ingredients rarely seen in the capital. This was my 71^st meal at the restaurant. A highlight of this latest lunch was a crab dish that has been on the menu for some time but has recently been an improved even further. Crab is cooked from live and served in a consommé of crustaceans; it is this last element has been tweaked, now using langoustine as well as lobster shells and velvet crabs to give additional depth of flavour, finished with hazelnut mayonnaise, apple and aromatic oil of parsley and horseradish – this dish is bordering on perfect. The lengthy tasting menu started with a cornet of vitello tonnato, beetroot and foie gras nibble, then poached rock oyster with Granny Smith apple foam, cucumber sorbet and oyster leaf. Seafood royale with impressive texture followed, including smoked eel jelly and sea plankton. Then came duck foie gras terrine with black truffle and toast, then the glorious crab dish. A bitter leaf salad with black truffles, walnuts and pumpkin puree was next, along with pickled Jerusalem artichoke. Simple but gorgeous lightly cooked scallops with ponzu jelly followed, then superb red mullet with kombu jelly, spices and a saffron flavoured fish sauce. The first meat dish was a fabulous sweetbread with pennywort sauce, apricot puree, dehydrated carrots and beef demi-glace. Scottish teal came with purple kale and cherry, and the last savoury course was hare royale. This came with chestnuts, foie gras from Chalosse, quince, mushroom and a rich sauce made from the blood of the hare. Pre dessert was white chocolate mousse with coconut biscuit, lime mousse and mango jelly. The main dessert was fabulous millefeuille with a drizzle of Balsamic vinegar, caramel and redlove apple sorbet. I should of course mention the glorious sourdough bread, made on the premises. Hopefully this gives you an insight into what a tasting menu here involves. No one is serving better food than this in London.

We usually cook at home at Christmas but for a change this year went to Darbaar, one of the best Indian restaurants in London. They produced a very enjoyable meal, with starters of assorted tikka and kebab dishes, or vegetarian alternatives, as well as spiced goose with a side of butter chicken for the main course. Breads are always a strong point here, and the vegetarian options throughout the meal were uniformly good. If you don’t know Darbaar then it is well worth your time, tucked away in a slightly tricky location near Liverpool Street station, between Snowden Street and Worship Street.

Happy New Year to everyone.

Indian Cuisine Accentuated

Indian Accent is the best restaurant that I have eaten at in India, taking a modern approach to Indian cooking. It serves dishes with dishes like blue cheese naan and Kashmiri morels with walnuts, and sits at position 78 on the “Top 50” (which is really a top 100) restaurant list, the only restaurant in India to feature. They have a branch in New York but I was particularly interested as to what the London version would be like, given how much more embedded in the culture Indian cooking is here than in New York. I am pleased to say that the Albermarle Street version is excellent, bringing with it many of the signature dishes from India but also adapting to local ingredients in places. The room is smart and the service slick, and although this is not cheap it is very much there with the absolute best in London even in the first days of operation.

The Dysart in Petersham (near Richmond) is an old favourite, its chef having won the Roux Scholarship in 2010. The Dysart has a cosy dining room with a big fire, well spaced large tables and friendly staff. At this visit we opted fro a tasting menu, though you can also go a la carte. Highlights included charred mackerel with kombu-braised daikon, ginger and champagne sauce, which is a signature dish of the restaurant. I also liked stone bass with spinach and champagne sauce. The restaurant has an unusually well thought out and kindly priced wine list, so is well worth your time if you are in west London.

Parlour is one of my favourite places to eat in London. Chef Jesse Dunford Wood takes an inventive approach to retro British dishes and reinvents them for the modern era. Things that haven’t seen the light of day for decades, such as chicken Kiev and arctic rolls, are regulars on the menu here. They also smoke their own salmon here, and very good it is too – I prefer it to pretty much any of the well known London smoked salmon merchants. Parlour may not win any awards for décor, down an alley in Kensal Rise, but the food is classy.

I also had another excellent value meal at my local haunt l'Amorosa. At my latest meal a saffron risotto had silky texture, and a wild boar ragu had real depth of flavour. This is a classy Italian cooking at a modest price point, from a chef who held a Michelin star for many years.

Happy Christmas everyone.

Mixed week in London

Xu is a Taiwanese restaurant in Soho that is from the same JKS restaurant stable as Bao, as well as several other very successful London venues. It has opened to assorted rave reviews but although the dishes that I tried were pleasant enough I struggled to see what the fuss was about at Xu. A noodle dish was fine, sea bass with chillies was pleasant but the gai lan that I tried was rather ropey. Pleasant overall, but this hype about the place seems to me to exceed the reality.

Bistro Vadouvan is a curiosity in Putney Wharf. It has an Indian born chef preparing French food with a mostly middle eastern twist. The savoury dishes we tried were pleasant enough, and one dish of brill was very good indeed, but the desserts let the side down. This is a tricky restaurant location, and the inconsistency in the cooking, not helped by a strange wine list, make it hard to unreservedly recommend.

The Ritz is a regular haunt of mine, with the grandest dining room in London and serving superb, meticulously prepared classic French food. The meal this week was lovely, with an exceptionally good langoustine dish, and an unusual and very enjoyable whole roast celeriac with black truffle sauce. The dessert section is one of the best in London, and the meal this week featured a lovely Mont Blanc.

The Michelin guide to The Netherlands 2018 came out. Inter Scaldes (in Kruiningen in the province of Zeeland) was promoted to three star level. The Netherlands now has a trio of three star restaurants, plus 16 two stars and 89 one star places.

Most of the Michelin 2018 guides are now out. The remaining ones are France, whichis due on February 5th, Scandinavia (probably February) and the Main Cities of Europe, which picks up assorted smaller cities not covered in the country guides, such as Budapest, Warsaw, Prague and Athens. Thus far the new 3 star places have been: Coi (San Francisco), Ultraviolet (Shanghai), Iida (Kyoto), Hajime (regained its third star in Osaka), Atelier (Munich), St Hubertus (Dolomites), ABAC (Barcelona) and Aponiente (Cadiz), as well as Araki in London and the latest, Inter Scaldes.

Hibiscus becomes Bombay Bustle

Bombay Bustle is the casual sister of Jamavar, and has just opened on the old Hibiscus site in Maddox Street. It is a larger premises than Jamavar, spread over two floors. The décor theme is the tiffin boxes and railways of Bombay/Mumbai that transport them every day. The menu goes beyond such snacks and is pan-Indian, with a lively chaat snack and an excellent tandoori lamb chop highlights at my first meal here. Over both my inspection meals there was some inconsistency, but this is perhaps to be expected given this was only the second week after opening. If the early kinks can be ironed out then Bombay Bustle will doubtless prosper.

Gauthier (pictured) is in the Soho townhouse that used to house Lindsay House. Alexis Gauthier had a Michelin star for years at Roussillon and indeed held one at Gauthier for a couple of years. The cooking here is rooted in classical French but has some interesting touches. For a start there is a complete vegetarian and vegan menu available, which is not something you are likely to encounter in France very often. Bread is made from scratch and the truffle risotto dish here is special. The standard of the food here is high, and for me it is strong one star level, whatever Michelin think.

The Duke of Sussex is a Chiswick pub where you can get fish and chips, but where the menu is mainly Spanish. At our latest meal here padron peppers were pleasant, and as usual the seafood paella was excellent. The rice was carefully cooked and the mixed shellfish were a good foil for it, all served in an iron wok. As a nice touch they actually make the bread here from scratch in the kitchen, and very good it is too. This isn’t somewhere aiming to set the culinary world alight, but the cooking is capable and the pricing modest.

The Michelin Guide to Bangkok came out for the first time. No three stars, with two stars for Gaggan (which is notionally closing, though it has been teasing this out for a long time now), La Normandie and Mezzaluna. Bangkok has no three stars, 3 two stars and 14 one star restaurants.

The Hong Kong Michelin guide also appeared. There was no change at the three star level. Hong Kong has now 6 three star restaurants, 11 two star places and 45 one stars. I was pleased to see Arcane deservedly getting a star. Duddels lost its second star, which is slightly unfortunate timing as it has just opened a branch in London.

Lake Living in Udaipur

Udaipur is a popular venue for Indian weddings, set as it is around a large artificial lake called lake Pichola, constructed in the 14^th century. Udaipur is in Rajasthan, south west of Delhi and north of Mumbai. It is a one-hour flight from either major city. The best time to visit, as with most of India, is from November to March in the dry season. It has an advantage over Goa and Kerala in that it is cooler, usually in the high 20Cs in the winter (average high in January is 24C) rather than the warmer climate of southern India. Udaipur has the second largest palace in India, and sunset lake cruises are a popular way to spend your time. We stayed at The Leela Palace (pictured) directly on the lake. I have had many visits to Leela properties in my twenty-one trips to India, and they are very reliable luxury hotels. The ones at resorts, such as those in Kerala and Goa, are particularly nice, and the Udaipur hotel is similarly superb, with terrific staff. The flagship restaurant of the hotel is the Sheesh Mahal, open at dinner only and with its tables entirely in the open air just by the lake. We had some excellent food here over the week, with the restaurant having the bonus of a lovely view out across the water.

This was much better than the meal we had at Chandni at the Oberoi Udaivillas. Usually Oberoi hotels are top notch, and perhaps the accommodation here is good. Sadly the main restaurant here was a major let down, with a couple of very disappointing dishes and some really poor service, which is inexcusable given the high prices.

Much nicer was the Royal Repast in the city, a small restaurant set in what was once the Udaipur prime minister’s official residence. The menu of Rajasthani dishes was interesting and the standard of cooking was high, while prices were very fair indeed. This is a spot well worth trying if you are visiting Udaipur.

The Taj Lake Palace hotel is a conversion of a summer palace of the former Udaipur royal family, and sits on a little island in the lake itself. We had a superb lunch here, a tasting menu showing considerable skill including a fabulous raan dish of tender lamb encased with pastry. The hotel itself is a short boat ride from the main city and has its own pool and gardens on the island.

I also had one night in Delhi and took advantage of this to return to Indian Accent, my favourite restaurant in the whole country. It has moved since I last visited, one of the many victims of a 2017 change in the law banning alcohol licences from premises within 500m of a highway. It is now in much smarter premises attached to the Lodhi hotel in New Delhi. The same innovative take on Indian food is taken as at the old location, with dishes such as blue cheese naan and methi chicken cornet. The great thing about the cooking here is that the innovations made always make sense in terms of flavour: they are not just showing off. For example vermicelli may seem an odd thing to have in an Indian dish, in this case chicken keema, but actually you see vermicelli in the Indian dessert kulfi, so this dish merely extends something already present in the cuisine. The key point is that the dishes taste great even if they sound odd, and some like the apple wood smoked bacon kulcha are glorious. This is the only Indian restaurant on the “Worlds Best” list, currently at number 78, which if nothing else indicates that its reputation has spread well beyond Delhi. I am looking forward to it opening a branch in London soon.

The 2018 Michelin guide to Tokyo came out. There was no change at the three star level. There were five new two star places, including the excellent Den and Florilege. In total Tokyo now has 12 three star places, 56 two stars and 166 one star restaurants, by far the most of any city at all levels, including Paris.

Chez Bruce Revisited

Chez Bruce is a south London institution and the former site of the legendary Harveys. It is a very reliable restaurant, and at this latest visit served some very enjoyable dishes. It is blessed with an unusually good wine list by London standards, and the staff were capable and friendly. This is a very solid restaurant, and one that thoroughly deserves its Michelin star.

This week I also enjoyed an excellent dinner at The Ritz featuring white truffles and some fine Italian wines from the Ceretto vineyard. I also tried the six-week pop-up at Browns Hotel in Mayfair, featuring the cooking of Heinz Beck of 3 Michelin star Pergola in Rome. Fans of the late lamented Apsleys will be pleased to know that the chef actually doing the cooking here day to day is Heros de Agostinis, who was head chef at Apsleys.

The 2018 Michelin guide to Spain and Portugal came out. There were two new three star places. One was the very capable Abac in Barcelona, the other Aponiente in Cadiz, whose chef Angel Leon specialises in obscure seafood. There were also five new 2 star places. Spain now has 11 three star restaurants and 25 two star places. There was almost no change in the Portugal guide, with the same five two star restaurants as last year.

I Ketchup With The New Killer Tomato

Killer Tomato, the superior tacos joint just off Shepherd’s Bush Green, is expanding, and has just opened a second branch in Portobello Road. Named after a 1978 cult movie, Killer Tomato makes no claims about being authentically Mexican, with its ex BBC executive owner and Australian chef. However it does manage to produce better tacos than any other place in London that I have tried. The new branch is similar to the original, with a menu that changes monthly, punchy flavours and good value tostados and tacos. Well worth your time if you are in the area.

I had another excellent meal at A. Wong, now with its well deserved Michelin star. The dim sum here is terrific, but this last visit shows that they have upped their game in the evening too. There were several interesting and successful dishes, such as Sichuan aubergines, gai lan with dried fish and pine nuts, and high class crispy pork. Service was a bit chaotic but the kitchen was on excellent form.

Royal China in Queensway is a regular haunt of mine. A barn of a place full of Chinese families, it has a vast Cantonese menu and is very consistent. Steamed gai lan with garlic is always lovely, as is sea bass with black bean sauce. At this latest visit a Sichuan prawn dish also worked well. No one ever came here for the service, which if you are lucky is merely abrupt, but the kitchen here is a class above most Chinese restaurants in London.

Another old faithful is Diwana Bhel Poori near Euston station. This is just a basic café, but the south Indian food here is lovely and is absurdly good value. The chaat snack dishes here are lovely, and at this latest visit I had a very good dosa, as well as classy samosas. It is really hard to spend £15 a head here and actually finish the food. To drink you can either bring alcohol or order lassi.

Another old favourite is l’Amorosa. Andy Needham was the head chef of Zafferano when it had a Michelin star, and now cooks much the same food in this local restaurant near Ravencourt Park, but without the fancy flourishes or posh service, and at a fraction the price. Wild boar ragu was superb at this latest visit, and even a simple beetroot salad was spot on, garnished with excellent Parmesan crisps. This is a delightful restaurant to have as a local eatery, and indeed I can think of perilously few Italian restaurants, at whatever price point, that can produce food of this quality.

The Germany 2018 Michelin guide came out. There was a new 3 star in the form of Atelier in Munich. There were also four new 2 stars. In total Germany now has 11 three star restaurants, 39 two stars and 251 one stars.

The Italy 2018 guide also appeared. There was a promotion to the three star level for St Hubertus in the ski resort of San Cassiano in the Dolomites. There were three new two star places: Magnolia, Vun and La Siriola, while Sadler and Cracco in Milan were demoted to one star. Italy now has 9 three star restaurants, 41 two stars and 306 one star places.

Next week's blog will be a day or two later than usual.

Tip Top Tapas

Rambla is the latest opening from chef/patron Victor Garvey, who also owns Encant and Sibarita in central London. All serve Spanish food, with Rambla being the largest of the three restaurants, situated in Dean Street. The tapas dishes are unusually good, but also unusually cheap – nothing on the menu is more than £9 except the high-grade pata negra ham. Some of the dishes are particularly impressive, such as sea bass with a Jerusalem artichoke sauce, while familiar dishes like croquettas are given a twist by being filled with spinach rather than ham and cheese, and succeeding admirably. The place was already buzzing just days after opening and seems sure to do well.

Darjeeling Express is the creation of constitutional lawyer turned chef and restaurateur Asma Khan. In a busy courtyard off Carnaby Street, Darjeeling Express showcases the cuisine of Kolkata, the dishes very much in the style of Indian home cooking. The latter is not just a marketing gimmick – all the people in the kitchen are Indian housewives rather than career chefs. The consequence of this is a lack of emphasis on presentation but a focus on flavours. My second meal here was just as good as the first, with many excellent and in some cases unusual dishes. The chatty Ms Khan is a lively host, and the food is very good value.

Darbaar is a more traditional Indian restaurant, set in a large, smarty decorated setting near Broadgate Circle. This is a tricky location, with little passing trade and hard to find, but the restaurant just notched up two years in operation. That it has done so well is a testament to the considerable skills of its head chef, who produces some of the best Indian food in London from this kitchen. Unusual dishes such as “nanza” (an Indian take on pizza) sit alongside traditional menu choices like butter chicken, and both new and old dishes work equally well. The naan bread here is spectacularly good, and the restaurant is well worth seeking out if you are in the Liverpool Street area.

In other news, the Michelin guide to Seoul came out, part of its paid contract with the Korean tourist authority. Unlike traditional Michelin guides, the Seoul Guide is paid for by the government, along with the guides to Hong Kong, Macau, Shanghai, Singapore and the forthcoming guides to Bangkok and Taipei. This was confirmed in a Washington Post article. Michelin is a commercial organisation, but, as the old saying goes, he who pays the piper calls the tune. There is therefore a debatable conflict of interest in such cases - will Michelin take millions of dollars for a guide and then say "haha, sorry about that, but our inspectors couldn't find any starred restaruants in your city". I don't think so. Worse still would be a situation where the head of a local tourist board sponsoring Michelin actually has ownership of restaurants that feature in the guide. Anyway, no change at the top in Seoul, with Gaon and La Yeon still with their surreal three star rating that shame the reputation of Michelin. There were promotions for Jungsik and Kojima, while the very good Pierre Gagnaire outlet seems to have been deleted. Seoul now has a pair of 3 stars, four 2 stars and 17 one stars.

The guide to Kyoto and Osaka also came out, with a new three star in the form of promoted Iida in Kyoto, a ten seat kaiseki restaurant. Hajime regained its third star. Kyoto now has eight 3 star places, 23 two stars and 64 one stars, while Osaka has four 3 stars, 17 two stars and 75 one star establishments.

This Sportsman Life

Pappa Roma is a restaurant I had not come across until I saw it had won an even called “The National Pizza Awards”, held in London recently. I was not familiar with this event but it seems to be quite a recent one, involving a number of pizza chefs in a cook off all using identical ovens. Expectations raised, I went to Pappa Roma and ordered the exact pizza that had won “best in Britain” and was more than a little confused. The base of the pizza was a long distance away from the high quality pizza base to be found in serious London pizza places, and indeed it transpired that the oven that they used was not remotely hot enough. The toppings were also ordinary. Oddly, the restaurant served a very good tiramsu, but the pizza itself was very ordinary indeed. I won’t be paying too much attention to the future winners of this particular competition. L’Oro di Napoli and the other serious pizzerias of London will not be losing any sleep over this.

Jamavar has raised the bar for Indian food in London. It is the first stand-alone restaurant of the Leela hotel group in India, who have a Jamavar restaurant at their top hotels. The standard of these varies, but at the very best, such as in Bangalore and Goa, the food is terrific. The London Jamavar cooks some memorable dishes, in particular a superb stone bass tikka, gloriously tender and suffused with spices. At my latest meal I was also impressed by a simple paneer-stuffed pepper starter; it takes talent to make something exciting out of humble ingredients, as was the case here. A morel curry was also lovely.

The Sportsman is an old favourite. The sourcing of ingredients is hyper-local, with vegetables grown in the garden and pork and lamb from the adjoining farms; even the salt is gathered from the beach nearby. We opted for the tasting menu and had some very enjoyable dishes, including a crab and carrot with Hollandaise sauce, and a mushroom and celeriac tart. There were a couple of early dishes that I was less taken with, so the meal was a touch less consistent than usual. Nonetheless this was still a lovely meal, and represents very good value to boot, with the lengthy menu at £70. The Sportsman can be reached from London by train from either St Pancras or Victoria; head to Faversham and take a cab for the final leg of the journey.

In other news, the 2018 New York Michelin guide came out. Jean Georges was demoted, leaving five three star restaurants in the city. There was a promotion for Ginza Onadera and a demotion for Soto at the two star level, leaving a total of 11 two star restaurants. There are 56 one star restaurants also.

Making Noize

Ginza Onodera is what used to be Matsuri, just south of Piccadilly. It has now been completely revamped and is a very smart room indeed, all cedar wood and glass. The cooking is no longer just teppanyaki, so there are separate sections for a robata grill and also a sushi counter. The dishes that I tried were capable, with a version of eel donburi my favourite. Prices at lunch are tolerable but the same meal in the evening would result in a much more expensive outing, especially if you indulged in wine or sake. However, Japanese food is rarely cheap and this is a very smart central London space.

Zedel Brasserie is in the vast underground space just by Piccadilly that was once The Atlantic, a hot spot of London over a decade ago. The huge main dining room, now decorated in art deco style, is impressive, with two separate bars in addition. As with other Corbin and King restaurants, the menu is highly appealing, with plenty of choice and dishes that people actually want to eat rather than things that show off how clever the chef is. Service is always well drilled at their places and so it is here, but what is unusual are the modest prices, which are presumably needed in order to fill such a huge space. Just as at my previous visit, the pastry section comes off best, with a genuinely good lemon tart at just £4.50, and an excellent coffee financier.

I was very impressed by my meal at Noize just days after it opened. This is a restaurant from Mathieu Germond, the former general manager of Pied a Terre, located a stone’s throw from his former employer. The menu of French dishes is very appealing and the dishes that we tried were excellent. A particularly impressive old-fashioned sauce with my partridge main course was a thing of beauty. A scallop with cauliflower was also of a high standard, and as a bonus the wine list was very interesting. As a former sommelier Mr Germond has constructed a list that actively encourages you to trade up and drink better wines, the classier bottles being marked up more kindly than the cheaper ones. At the very high end of the list some wines are actually below their retail price. This is definitely a place to which I will be returning.

The San Francisco 2018 Michelin guide was announced.A third star for Coi, a second for Californios and Single Thread and an overdue demotion for the absurd Campton Place. San Francisco and the bay area now has 7 three star restaurants, 7 two stars and 41 one stars. An indication of just how generously scored the city is can be gained if you compare the normal ratio of three stars to two stars. In Tokyo there are less than a quarter as many three stars as two stars, a fairly normal ratio for large cities. In San Francisco it is 1:1.

From Kingston to Tower Hill via Mayfair

Roz Ana is an Indian restaurant in, or all places, Kingston, but its chef has an interesting pedigree. He was formerly head chef at Chor Bizarre in Mayfair, a restaurant with eccentric but interesting décor and where the food was good when he was actually cooking there many years ago. Chor Bizarre later fell into decline food-wise and recently closed, to be replaced in due course by Indian Accent, whose original branch is in Delhi with a sister restaurant in New York. The food standard at Roz Ana was quite high, with a proper biryani served in its pastry case, and unusually good jeera aloo. Indeed the whole meal was very enjoyable and I suspect this would be much better known except for its somewhat obscure location.

Ella Canta is a Mexican restaurant that has just opened at the Intercontinental Hotel in Park Lane. Executive chef Martha Ortiz has a high profile restaurant in Mexico City called Dolce Patra as well as a TV career as a judge on a restaurant show, so I was hoping for something special. My hopes were raised when I discovered that they had imported a lot of ingredients from Mexico, and even made their own tortillas, a rare thing indeed in the UK. The dining room was smart and the service slick, but sadly my hopes started to fade away as the dishes started to arrive. Salmons tostadas were fine if unexceptional, but a black cod dish was disappointing and pork carnitas merely so-so. Even those home-made tortillas were merely competent. My benchmark for this cuisine in Europe is Punto MX in Madrid, and sadly Ella Canta is a long, long way short of that in every way except the size of the bill, which is considerably larger. I would rather return to the much more basic Killer Tomato, where I could eat several meals for the same price as a single dinner at Ella Canta.

Mei Ume is the second restaurant (after Dame de Pic) to open within the Four Seasons Hotel in Trinity Square, just yards from Tower Hill tube station. The hotel is quite striking, with a particularly fine lobby lounge area with a handsome skylight (pictured) – Mei Ume is accessed from there. It is an Asian restaurant, serving mostly Chinese food, but there is also a Japanese sushi chef, and a section on the menu for sashimi, sushi and maki rolls. We stayed in Chinese territory on this visit, enjoying a dim sum basket, nice quality stir-fried beef and sweet and sour pork. The bill is quite high and that is really the concern. However this is the Four Seasons and someone has to pay back that vast property investment, but with Mei Ume’s attractive room and very good service I imagine that it will do fine.

The Chicago Michelin 2018 guide came out. No change at the top, and one promotion to two stars for Smyth, while 42 Grams and Tru were deleted (both had folded). At the one star level there were new entries in the form of Elske, Entente and North Pond, and a demotion for Longman and Eagle. Chicago has a pair of three star restaurants with Alinea and Grace, four two stars (Sixteen, Acadia, Oriole and now Smyth) and nineteen one stars.

Visiting Guernsey

It is tricky to find good Malaysian food in London, and I have tried. For a time there was an excellent place in Bayswater called Kiasu, but that closed. There is Satay House, and Tukdin, and the dismal late unlamented Jom Makan. The best bet is the new, sleek Zheng, which is pricy but actually pretty good. though not entirely Malaysian. This week I tried Melur, which is a basement place on the Edgware Road that seems to be authentically Malaysian. The food was rather erratic in standard, but the service was dismal in various ways. It was inexpensive and so you could consider going there, but the service levels there are almost entertaining bad.

I also had a visit to Guernsey, a little piece of Britishness just off the coast of Brittany. It is a “crown dependency” so it technically independent of the UK, rather like The Isle of Man. It has its own parliament and is not part of the NHS, for example, though its laws are generally similar to and mostly based on UK law (entirely so in matters of defence and immigration) and there are plenty of links to the mainland in all sorts of ways. It is noted for its 20% maximum income tax and absence of VAT, with a GDP/head 25% higher than the UK. As a visitor you notice the little differences, such as the pound notes, the absence of Uber (getting a taxi is a non-trivial business) and the yellow phone boxes and blue post boxes. It felt like a prosperous place and has a few tourist attractions, including Cornet Castle (illustrated) in the main town of St Peter Port.

The island boasts 242 restaurants on an island of around 60,000 people. Sadly, none of the establishments that I tried were much good. Petit Bistro had the odd decent dish but also some lazy mistakes, such as serving an obviously burnt side dish. Its service was comically bad, and made the service at Melur look like Le Gavroche. Pier 17 was harmless enough, a seafood restaurant looking over the water. It managed a decent dish or two to begin with, but the standard dropped like a stone when desserts arrived, and one fish dish was mislabelled (it is funny how when that happens a cheaper fish appears in place of the advertised expensive one, and never the other way around). The Curry Room is a luxury hotel’s take on Indian food, and although the room is cosy it really felt as if the food had been produced by someone who had read about Indian food but never actually tasted it. Maybe there is somewhere better on the island that I missed, but I tried quite hard to research things beforehand, and did not stumble into these places at random. It is quite a culinary contrast with slightly larger Jersey, which has several Michelin starred restaurants.

In other news, the Switzerland 2018 Michelin Guide came out. No change at the three star level, but two promotions to two stars: Einstein Gourmet and Restaurant Taverne zum Schafli, balanced by two deletions at the two star level: Bumanns Chesa Pirani and Focus. There is a trio of three star restaurants in Switzerland, 19 two stars and 96 one star, 118 starred places in all.

Crowning Glory

Il Pampero has taken over a Pont Street site that has seen a few different restaurant iterations in recent years. The latest one offers classic Italian cooking, with a head chef who has a good pedigree. Pasta was good, such as tagliatelle Bolognese, as was a seafood risotto. A modern, technical take on tiramisu was also very good. Prices are high, with the wine list particularly aggressive in its markups, though there was at least a decent selection of affordable wines.

The Crown at Burchetts Green has a kitchen operated by a solitary chef, with just a little help from his extensive family (he has nine children). His fridge is empty at the start of each week, and the style of cooking that he adopts is manually intensive, with for example old school sauces, so he does not make things easy on himself. Each meal here seems to get better. A puy lentil dish with mash and a delicate Parmesan crisp was particularly impressive, as was tender veal cheek with a sauce that took three elapsed days to make. Prices here are almost embarrassingly low, so if you can get to Maidenhead then do yourself a favour and pay it a visit.

Jamavar serves the best Indian food in London at the moment, and this was confirmed at my most recent visit. Butter chicken was as indulgent as its name suggests, though the star dish remains the fabulous stone bass tikka. Tandoori lamb chops were impressive, and biryani is also classy here.

I ate at Hedone for the 70^th time since it opened. The obsession with ingredient quality is what sets this restaurant apart, along with sophisticated culinary technique. Star dishes at this meal were little beetroot and foie gras nibbles, a lovely scallop dish, and the signature crab dish with horseradish where the crab is prepared to order from live, so is flawlessly fresh. The chocolate flavoured millefeuille at the end was a technical tour de force. The lengthy carte blanche tasting menu here is now £135 so is not a cheap experience (there is a shorter tasting menu available) but the food here is as good as any you will eat in the UK.

The Michelin guide to the UK and Ireland for 2018 was announced. The Araki was elevated to three stars, and Bibendum was given two stars, with Whatley Manor downgraded to one star following its chef change. At the one star level, there were new stars for Moor Hall (Lancashire), Paco Tapas (Bristol), The Coach (Marlow), The Latymer (well deserved), Coworth Park (well deserved), The Clock House (Surrey), Lympstone Manor (Devon), Loch Bay (isle of Skye) and the Wild Honey Inn (County Clare). In London there were stars for A. Wong (well deserved), Elystan Street (generous), Dame de Pic (well deserved), Aquavit, the reopened Vineet Bhatia, The Square (fair), and Jamavar (well deserved). Places that lost their star were The Samling (chef change), Bath Priory (chef change), Turners, Lords of the Manor, Alimentum (surprising), Ocean (chef change), Sir Charles Napier (a deserved deletion based on my meal there), Wild Rabbit (chef change, Treby Arms, Isle of Eriska (chef change), Kinloch Lodge (a deserved deletion based on my meal) Pidgen (whose chef left) and Dabbous (closed).

In general the guide this year was less controversial than it can often be. Its overlooking of Hedone is a great shame, but otherwise there are no other obvious candidates for a second star that I am aware of around the UK except Martin Wishart and Tom Kitchin. There are still too many overrated places at the one star level that could do with a clean out in my view, but at least this year there were few obviously bonkers decisions.

A Visit to Eugenie Les Bains

I wanted somewhere nice to go to celebrate our 25^th wedding anniversary, and couldn’t think of anywhere better than Pres des Eugenie. This property, tucked away in the south west corner of France, houses the gourmet restaurant of Michel Guerard, who has held three stars here for forty years. Remarkably sprightly looking, he is still at every service, and still coming up with new dishes at the age of 84.

The cooking style here is deceptively simple, never putting more elements on the plate than are needed, and making maximum use of the beautiful local ingredients of the Landes region, such as the terrific guinea fowl and chicken here. Culinary technique is exemplary, with particularly impressive sauces that appear not as drops of smears but as rich, glistening pools. These are very manually intensive to make, but when they are done at the level achieved here they are truly a thing of beauty. The pastry here is the best I have eaten – Mr Guerard started out as a pastry chef, and has trained his team well.

We had two dinners here, with many highlights. A gloriously rich “morel pillow” dish had one of those rich, creamy sauces that we rarely see in the UK these days, and a cheese straw nibble that preceded it was one of the most delicate pastry I have ever eaten. Lobster served in its shell with a dazzling onion sauce was another star dish, and desserts were no slouch either. A soft cake with melted rhubarb ice cream was a joy, as was a dazzling millefeuille of chocolate with coffee cream. This is top of the range French cooking at its finest.

A real bonus when you stay here is the sister restaurant Ferme au Grives. This is in an old barn on the property, and serves much more rustic cuisine at an almost absurdly low price. It may be much simpler cooking than in the fine dining restaurant, but the chefs here are still very talented, and the same fabulous produce is available to them, but just using less luxurious ingredients. No truffles or langoustines appear here, but a simple local chicken roast over a spit is still lovely, and the cep gratin side dish that we tried had remarkable flavour. Desserts are very serious too, with a waffle with red fruit compote something that could hold its own at any three star establishment. Apparently they have deliberately discouraged Michelin from reviewing, and use cheap crockery and provide only a basic wine list. However in reality the food here would trounce plenty of multi-starred restaurants. Gougeres and saucisson, three further courses, side dishes and lovely bread now run to all of €52.

Old Haunts and New Restaurants in West london

Stecca is an Italian restaurant near the Chelsea and Westminster hospital. The chef has a serious pedigree, having been a sous-chef at Zafferano and at other serious restaurants. The best dish was ricotta and sage ravioli, which had particularly good pasta and a nicely balanced filling. Also good was tagliolini with lobster, though a couple of the other dishes were not quite to the same level. Nonetheless this was a very pleasant meal, and worth a look if you are in the area.

La Trompette was the first Michelin-starred restaurant in Chiswick and really put the area on the culinary map. It has seen a number of chefs over the years but is on good form at present with its current head chef, who previously ran the kitchen at The Square. Trompette offers an affordable package, shunning luxury ingredients but having an appealing menu, while its wine list is one of the better ones in London, with a few bargains tucked away at the high end of the list.

I also had enjoyable meals at old favourite l’Amorosa and local haunt Taranatella. At l’Amorosa there was a particularly good prawn risotto, while the duck ragu with papardelle was also excellent, as was a tiramisu to finish. Tarantella is a simple family-run place local to me that does good pizza at pasta, and although it is not a destination restaurant, it has a certain friendly charm.

The new Michelin season began, with the 2018 Shanghai guide appearling. This, the second guide to the city, elevated Ultraviolet to three stars. Shanghai now has thirty starred places in total.

Next week’s blog will cover my visit to Eugenie les Bains, where Michel Guerard has held three Michelin stars for forty consecutive years.

New York State of Mind

Cosme is the sister restaurant of Pujol in Mexico City, which is placed vertiginously high on the “Top 50” Restaurant list. It is hard to see why if the meal at Cosme is a genuine reflection of this, as the meal that we ate was very ordinary, though fully priced. A duck carnitas dish was pleasant, but otherwise this seemed to me very average food.

Much better was another import, Indian Accent, sister of the restaurant of the same name in Delhi. This is in quite a smart, central location, and prices are certainly higher than you would see in London for Indian food. However the dishes that we tried were very good, the best being genuinely excellent, and so at least the pricing felt justified. The USA has a history of forgettable Indian restaurants – such as Campton Place and the laughable Tabla (now closed), where I recall a popadom I could actually fold – but Indian Accent is the real thing.

Le Coucou is one of the toughest reservations in town, which is saying something as every restaurant that we visited was packed out on this trip. It serves French bistro food, which is a fine idea in a city overrun by highly-tweezered Scandi-influenced food. It was a pity that the food was inconsistent, as a lovely sweetbread dish was let down by some quite ropey food elsewhere in the meal.

Marea is an Italian seafood restaurant that I visited soon after it opened. The meal on this trip was slightly improved over that of my previous visit, with some terrific risotto and excellent crab pasta, amongst others. Also very enjoyable was Vaucluse, another restaurant offering French bistro food such as beef tartare and assorted classics. This was very pleasant, and modestly priced at lunch.

The Deep South

We recently visited the USA in order to see the total eclipse of the sun. Although eclipses happen every year, they are often visible in fairly inaccessible places, such as over a stretch of the Pacific or a mountain range in Kazakhkstan, and can easily be obscured by cloud. This particular one, on August 21^st, traversed the continental USA for the first time in a century. We watched it in Nashville, and it was very impressive, the sky going almost completely dark during the two minutes of totality, and the temperature dropping dramatically as the moon passed in front of the sun. Nashville has a few attractions beyond the music business, such as former president Andrew Jackson’s residence (pictured).

While there we tried Husk, a restaurant whose original branch is in Charleston, and whose chef splits his time between the two venues (he seemed to be in Nashville when we visited). This restaurant showcases the food of the southern US, so you see dishes such as grits and catfish. This is fine in principle, but the meal we had was pretty ordinary, the service experience slick but having the feel of an industrial process as tables were turned. I also tried Edleys BBQ, a very popular barbecue joint that was pleasant and at least reasonably priced. We did better at Desano, which has a very good Naples style pizza in quite basic surroundings. In case you are wondering, the well-known local restaurant Catbird Seat was closed during the time we were there, so we didn't get a chance to try it.

From there we drove to Memphis, which is noted for its barbecue. We tried an authentic, basic place called Cozy Corner. This had very pleasant pork ribs at a very low price. Less enjoyable was the much smarter but also pricier Hog and Hominey, a loud restaurant with implausibly large portions but not much else going for it. Inexplicably, the place was packed out, just as at Husk. It must be a good time to be a restaurateur in the USA.

We then flew to Chicago, where we tried Oriole, a two-Michelin star tasting menu restaurant. The meal was fine though expensive and very elongated, with long gaps between courses, which is not ideal for the jet-lagged traveller. Alinea has recently been refurbished, and now offers a more theatrical dining experience, with lots of trickery going on beyond that on the plate. It was a very enjoyable evening, though from a culinary viewpoint I preferred my two previous meals there.

The Voyage of Zheng

The Don is the sister of The Bleeding Heart, and is a long-established City restaurant noted for its wine list. The menu is appealing and the cooking quite capable. This is not a place that is going to set the world alight, but the food was very nice and the wine list was not only extensive but had some real bargains tucked away if you look carefully.

Zheng (pictured) is that rarest of thing in London, a Malaysian restaurant, though the name refers to a famous Chinese admiral, and I suspect that the restaurant has at least as much Chinese ownership as Malaysian. Still, it serves all the classic dishes, such as nasi goreng and beef rendang, and generally cooks them pretty well. A Chinese broccoli dish was actually the dish of the night, and it is nice to find a decent Malaysian restaurant over here.

Launceston Place has had many chefs over the years. The latest is Ben Murphy, who was previously at The Woodford. I had quite enjoyed his cooking over in east London, but the transition to Kensington has not gone well. For a start this modern style of food seems out of place in such a long-established place, just as Fera always felt a bit weird in the surroundings at Claridges. The meal included some good potatoes and nice bread, but there were plenty of unsuccessful dishes, far too many for this price point.

From Covent Garden to Henley

Clipstone in Fitzrovia is the younger sister of Portland and Quality Chop House. It is a casually decorated place with an open kitchen, and has a menu that felt like it was trying a bit too hard to be achingly fashionable, with dishes such as sardine and squid ink tempura with dill emulsion and fermented hispi cabbage. This dish was decent, but there were worrying technical problems elsewhere. A chicken dish was burnt so much as to be inedible, a pasta dish was heavily over-salted, and desserts were an afterthought. There was some very good bread, but that was actually the best thing that I tasted here.

Sibarita (pictured) is the second restaurant of young chef/owner Victor Garvey, who was brought up in Barcelona and has worked at some very serious restaurants over the years. This is a simple tapas bar, serving charcuterie, cheese and dishes dishes such as spinach croquettas, which were unusually good. Paella was hearty and enjoyable, and the wine list well thought out. This is a very enjoyable place to relax and eat a plate of fine pata negra and drink a glass of good Rioja wine.

Abeno is one of the very few restaurants in London serving okonomiyaki, the Japanese savoury pancake that is popular in Kansai and also Hiroshima. The pancakes are grilled in front of you on a steel hotplate, mixed in with cabbage and a choice of other toppings, and finished with a barbecue style sauce. This is fun to watch and very enjoyable, and although I have certainly eaten better versions in Japan, Abeno does an entirely competent job of cooking these simple but tasty dishes.

Out in the countryside near Henley is The Bottle and Glass. This is an old boozer recently taken over by a pair of managers that previously worked at The Harwood Arms, and is now spruced up. With a former sous chef from The nearby Royal Oak in charge of the kitchen, the menu was short but quite appealing. Venison haunch came with beetroot and pickled mustard seeds, and was typical of the kind of hearty offering here, though the menu had some touches that seemed too cheffy for this country pub setting. Millionaire shortbread was an enjoyably rich dessert, and the service operation was well drilled.

Core Competence

It is not often that the head chef of a three star Michelin restaurant decides to up sticks and strike out on their own, so it is fair to say that there was considerable anticipation when Clare Smyth (pictured) did just this. She has long been the head chef of Gordon Ramsay’s three-star Michelin restaurant in Royal Hospital Road, and has now opened her own place, called Core in Notting Hill, in the premises that once housed the famous Leiths. I went quite soon after opening and yet the food and service operation showed no signs of teething troubles whatsoever. The tasting menu delivered a series of excellent dishes, including a particularly fine Isle of Mull scallop, with just one relative misstep in the whole meal. To be sure, Core is not cheap, but neither is it excessively expensive given the quality of the cooking, and I will be very surprised if I eat at a better London restaurant opening this year.

Saponara is an altogether simpler affair, an Italian delicatessen turned restaurant in Islington. It has been there for ages, and although it is quite old fashioned in a number of ways, I actually found it rather charming. You sit in amongst the shelves of olive oil and charcuterie to eat your dinner, so it feels as if you have camped out for dinner in your local corner shop. The food is nice rather than anything remarkable, though I did like my pasta dish, and prices are moderate.

Gauthier is very much a restaurant for grown-ups in an era where every new restaurant seems to pride itself on looking like an abandoned warehouse. At Gauthier there are still tablecloths, brick walls are covered, electrical cables invisible behind plaster rather than dangling over your dinner table. More importantly, the food continues to be excellent, with very well executed classical cooking. A wild sea bass dish at this meal was particularly impressive, but all the dishes were of a high standard. It is absurd to me that Michelin removed its star some time back, when I compare the standard of cooking here to many other starred London restaurants.

The Brilliant has been a regular haunt of mine ever since I moved to west London in 1991. It has been through a number of upgrades over the years and now stretches over two floors, with a recent refurbishment delivering far smarter décor than was the case when I first went there. The cooking has evolved over time too, lighter than it once was, though it still delivers the punchy Punjabi flavours that delighted me all those years ago. At the latest meal, a starter chaat was particularly well judged, with excellent tamarind chutney and a nice kick of chilli, whilst my favourite methi chicken was as rich in fenugreek flavour as ever.

The Ups and Downs of London Dining

108 Garage (pictured) is a hipster restaurant in Golborne Road, all bare brick walls and exposed electrical cables, in premises that was once a garage. The chef has worked in some serious restaurants, so I hoped for something a lot better than the meal that I ate here, especially given the generally upbeat reviews elsewhere. Despite very good bread, I had a disappointing and surprisingly expensive meal. It would have been considerably pricier if I had tried the wine, which was marked up to an eye-watering level that would raise eyebrows in Berkeley Square, never mind in W10.

Hakkasan Mayfair is an impressively slick restaurant, still packing them in after many years of operation. The standard of food here is both high and remarkably consistent given the large scale of the operation. As well as the excellent dim sum, a dish I particularly liked at this latest meal was the plate of Sichuan style langoustines. This is one of my regular haunts, and somewhere to go if you want to eat food a notch or two up from Chinatown and don't mind paying Mayfair prices.

A Cena is a neighbourhood Italian restaurant just on the far side of Richmond bridge, so actually in Twickenham. It was doing well and the food was pleasant enough, though the wine list was unappealing and the food never really went beyond the level of being decent. You could do worse if in the area, but it is not somewhere that is worth a detour.

Patara is a mini-chain of upmarket Thai restaurants, with smooth service, smart décor and prices to match. The food is capable, though at the Knightsbridge branch our latest meal here was fine but felt expensive for what it was. Still, there are some good dishes here and the service is impeccable.

A Trip to Barcelona

The latest three star Michelin restaurant in Europe is Lasarte in Barcelona. In a smart hotel, the service was lovely but the food was a long way off three star level. The nibbles were quite good but the meal steadily declined as it went on, and averaged a one star level (the very well-travelled diner that I went with thought that I was being too kind in this assessment). This continues a trend. In the last few years Michelin have added the following three star restaurants in Europe: 1947, Lasarte, Maaemo, Geranium, Cheval Blanc, Kevin Fehling, Bouitte, Uberfahrt, De Leest, Reale, DiverXo and Assiette Chamepnoise. Out of those twelve restaurants, I have scored 19/20 or 20/20 (my “proper 3 star” level) to just two of those, a dismal hit rate. Don’t even get me started on the newer 3 stars in Hong Kong, Seoul or the USA. What is particularly odd is that it is not as if there are no candidates. Just in France consider Sa Qua Na, Guy Lassausaie and Les Crayeres, amongst others. All these are operating at 3 star level for me.

Whilst in Barcelona I also went to Espai Kru, a seafood restaurant that is one floor up from its older sister Rias de Galicia. The latter mostly serves cooked food whereas Espai Kru mostly serves raw food. The quality of the seafood at Espai Kru was impressive, with top notch lobster tartare, excellent razor clams and capable sashimi.

I also tried Tickets, the Albert Adria venue that offers modern tapas. Although some dishes are from the El Bulli era, most were not conspicuously molecular in nature. The best was a delicious kim chi crispy octopus, along with a pretty crab and avocado dish. The tapas here is technically impressive, and the best of it was very good indeed.

Revisiting London Restaurants

The River Café is an iconic London restaurant, located near the river Thames in Hammersmith (though without a river view from the dining room). On a warm summer day tables are placed outside, and you can dine al fresco in this very pleasing setting. The Italian dishes here have always been simple, bordering on stark, but utilise good quality ingredients, as well they might given the eye-watering prices. Certainly a wild sea bass dish was very pleasant, as was a taglierini pasta dish. However, pleasant though this was, the food seemed a little less good than my previous visits here, yet the prices go only in one direction. Nonetheless, it was packed out, demonstrating that the restaurant knows its audience well.

I couldn’t resist another outing to Hedone (my 69^th meal there). Even though my previous visit was just a week ago, there were still some new dishes. In particular there was a terrific eel crisp dish, the eel smoked by a gentleman in Sweden who chef Mikael has known since he was a teenager. Lobster with tiny, sweet peas was also superb, as was a dish of duckling with beetroot. The cooking here remains a level above all almost anywhere in the capital, even if the décor and service are not in the same league as the kitchen.

Madhu’s at The Sheraton is a sister of the original Madhu’s in Southall. It is a much smarter place, but the key difference is the use of a robata grill, which imparts a pleasing hint of smokiness to the food grilled on it. The lamb chops here are superb, as are the achari prawns and, despite the hotel location, almost all the diners here are Indian.

Dastaan was one of several excellent recent additions to the London, or at least London-ish (well, Ewell) dining scene. With a head chef with serious pedigree, the restaurant is nothing to look at, yet the food is up there with the absolute best Indian restaurants in the UK. I could hardly believe how good it was last time, and wanted to return to check I wasn’t hallucinating – I wasn’t. If you are ever in this part of Surrey then try and make it here, ignore the basic décor and prepare for a treat.

In other news, I was very sad to learn of the death of Helmut Thieltges, head chef of 3 Michelin star Waldhotel Sonnora, where I was fortunate enough to eat some wonderful meals, the most recent just a few months ago in March. RIP.

Next week I will cover my visit to Barcelona, including the newest 3 star restaurant in Spain – Lasarte.

Interesting New Indian Restaurants in London

Gunpowder is the epitome of hipster East London, serving a modern take on Indian food but with a pinch of irritating superiority mixed in. They didn’t serve lassi because “that is so Brick Lane”, whatever that means. If you can manage to make it through the meal without walking out due to the attitude of the staff then you will find some good Indian food, in particularly a top-notch lamb chop. I have no idea why the staff looking down their noses at their customers is regarded as hospitality, but the food is fine.

Darjeeling Express is the first restaurant venture of Asma Khan, constitutional lawyer turned chef, who previously ran very successful supper clubs and pop-ups. Her cooking highlights the food of Calcutta, where she grew up, and is very much home cooking style (in a good way), with an emphasis on flavour over presentation. She is an excellent cook, and if you enjoy authentic Indian food then make a beeline for Darjeeling Express. The staff here are charming, and Asma herself is chatty and a delightful host.

Bonhams is a very civilised place to eat. Bang in the heart of Mayfair, its food is reasonably priced and yet of a very high standard, the menu appealing and the staff nice. There is also the best value wine list in London as a bonus. Star dishes at this meal include excellent turbot and a superb apricot frangipane tart for dessert. The sourdough bread here is also high quality.

I had my 68^th meal at Hedone, whose kitchen is now purring along at a consistently high standard. Stand-out dishes at this outing were dazzling a sweetbead dish, and turbot topped with outstanding razor clams. A technically demanding chocolate millefeuille with cherries (pictured) was superb, these dishes in particular comfortably of three star Michelin standard. The single star that Michelin grudgingly allocates this restaurant is all the more perplexing given the way that they seem to be scattering stars elsewhere.

A Trio of Three Stars in Southern France

The three Michelin star restaurants outside of Paris tend to be scattered in out of the way places. This is particularly true of the south of France, where few are within reach of an international airport. Bras is a case in point, located on a bleak hillside on the Massif Central that is a long drive from, well, pretty much anywhere (206 km from Toulouse, for example). It is nonetheless one of the most difficult reservations in France to get, and has had a considerable influence on cuisine globally. Its complex gargouillou dish of (mostly) vegetables (pictured) is one of the most copied of any restaurant dish, and Michel Bras was voted most influential chef in the world in a 2016 survey of 530 chefs who themselves have held at least two Michelin stars. These days the kitchen is run by Sebastian Bras, and although it is certainly a very accomplished restaurant, over my three visits there I have never quite seen it in the world-beating light that many do. Nonetheless it has a lot to offer, with a striking modern building, silky smooth service and some very fine dishes.

Less well-known in the English speaking world is Regis et Jacques Marcon, another father and son operation. This is also located on a hilltop, this one notorious for its damp microclimate, which happens to make it a great place for mushrooms. This ingredient dominates the menu here, and although autumn is a better time to go for the funghi, even the summer menu had plenty of girolles, for example served with terrific John Dory. Quail pithivier showed that the kitchen has plenty of classical skill, and as a bonus the wine list has plenty of genuine bargains at the high end of the list.

Even less famous outside of France is Auberge de Vieux Puits, located 148 km from Toulouse in the tiny town of Fontjoncouse. The style of cooking here is much more modern in technical terms, with plenty of theatricality on display as the menu unfolds. A scallop shell alongside other shellfish actually melts when a consommé is poured over it, and few ingredients are quite what they seem. Normally I am quite sceptical of such cheffy trickery, as usually when this happens the trick is clever enough but is often at the expense of flavour. However the kitchen here is in complete command, and flavours are terrific once you get past the gimmicks. Lobster with crystallised courgette flowers was delicious as well as pretty, and an eel dish had a stunning sauce. Desserts were also spectacular.

These restaurants are not easy to get to, but are well worth the effort of the trip.

Summer Dining in England

Bellillo in Fulham serves Neapolitan style pizza. Although they make much of the Naples connection, with an imported pizza over, the same oven does not actually get up to the recommended temperature required for an authentic pizza of that style, according to the Associazione Verace Piza Napoletana. Indeed the pizza was pleasant but did not have those little air bubbles and charcoal charring that you get with the very best pizzas. Other dishes that we tried were also mixed, with a decent arancini but poor crocche. This is a harmless enough place, but not somewhere I will be making a journey back to.

Rick Stein Barnes is the first London outlet of the TV chef, located in a very pretty riverside location in Mortlake. Why it is called Barnes is anyone’s guess, but is presumably an estate-agent like desire to upsell the location: “Oh it is not Acton darling, we call it north Chiswick” . I was not particularly impressed with the flagship original Rick Stein in Padstow, especially when you consider the size of the bill there, but it is a world apart from this place. Service was shambolic, a “crisp mackerel” salad had nasty little over-salted pieces of mackerel and turbot was so bad that I sent it back. There was a decent fish soup and fish curry, but prices are high and delivery is low, so why on earth would you want to come here?

Le Manoir aux Quat’ Saisons (pictured) is an institution, and certainly of one of the prettiest settings for any UK restaurant. Over the years it has dramatically expanded in size, and this can cause issues with consistency at times, which is a problem given the stratospheric prices. However my latest meal here was very good, the star dish being a summer vegetable risotto that was genuinely top notch. Desserts were also on form, with a particularly fine apricot dish. On a nice summer day this is a lovely spot.

Royal China Queensway is another institution, and really the place that redefined the quality of Chinese food in London, lifting Cantonese cuisine above the level of the Lisle Street places that the capital had come to regard as what was possible. It is barn of a place and no one comes here for the charm of the service, but the food is consistent and excellent. My favourite dish here is the steamed gai lan, which would be a great dish to convert a carnivorous cove unconvinced that vegetables can ever be that interesting: trust me, they can.

Top Food in the North East of England

The north-east of England currently has a pair of Michelin-starred restaurants. In Newcastle itself is House of Tides. It is located just by the Tyne in an old merchant house, complete with river view from the dining room. The menu was very appealing, with an excellent sea bass dish and a particularly nice strawberry dessert, along with charming staff and an excellent wine list as a bonus.

Also in Newcastle is The Patricia, a more casual bistro style restaurant offering quite trendy food in a remarkably noisy and dimly lit dining room. Our meal was erratic, with some quite good savoury dishes, such as papardelle with peas, let down by some distinctly dubious desserts. Throw in some fairly inept service and it was hard to really be convinced by the place. As a side note, if you are in Newcastle then consider breakfast at Quay Ingredient, a simple café that managed to produce some surprisingly good food at a modest price. Another suggestion if visiting is to take a short taxi ride to a hillside in Gateshead, on which is Britain’s largest sculpture, Antony Gormley’s striking “Angel of the North” (pictured).

In a small village near Darlington is Raby Hunt, where James Close has been awarded a second Michelin star. Fresh from a refurbishment that included a new kitchen, we had a very enjoyable tasting menu meal that included things like crab and avocado tacos and some excellent vegetable dishes e.g. charred and pickled cauliflower with black truffle. The menu itself does not seem to me excessively expensive given the considerable amount of work that is clearly going into the food here. The staff here were also charming.

Venturing Off the Tube Map

The Red Lion is a Michelin-starred pub in a rural setting in Wiltshire. This is a relaxed place that grows some of its own produce in its own garden, and they even keep chickens to supply the kitchen with eggs. Dishes such as rabbit terrine and a precisely executed monkfish dish showed that the brigade can deliver even when the head chef was away. Not everything was quite to the same standard but this was certainly an enjoyable experience.

The Latymer (pictured) is the flagship restaurant of the Pennyhill Park hotel, a vast luxury hotel complex near Guildford that has a large spa, golf course and extensive grounds. For over a year now the restaurant has been run by Matt Worswick, who took over from Michael Wignall when the latter moved to Gidleigh Park. The dining room has an attractive view over the gardens, and offers a tasting menu for dinner. We had a really impressive meal here, with star dishes including octopus with Asian flavours, and a superb dish of celeriac with black truffle. The bill here seems far from excessive given the grand setting and the skills on show.

Typing Room in the old Bethnal Green Town Hall building cooked me another classy meal, with chef Les Westcott demonstrating the skills he learnt when he was head chef of Tom Aikens’ flagship restaurant in Chelsea. Dishes such as pork croquette with smoked apple puree, and cauliflower with raisins and capers were classy. For reasons that elude me Michelin has snubbed the restaurant, despite giving out stars to nearby restaurants that seem to me not even close to the quality of Typing Room.

Swagat on Richmond Hill has had a chef change since I last came here, and not in a positive way. Although some dishes such as the black dhal were still good, the general standard seems to clearly have slipped a notch. This is a shame, especially when you consider that the pricing is quite high for a neighbourhood Indian restaurant.

Greek Gifts

After last week, which covered the pair of two star Athens restaurants, I continue my exploration of the Athens high end-dining scene with the three restaurants that currently get a single Michelin star in the city, and a flaky little trio they are. Hytra has a spectacular rooftop setting on top of the Onassis Arts Centre, and serves generally quite capable if not especially ambitious, food. There is an open-air terrace with a roof that can be brought across if need be, and from here you get a decent view of the Acropolis (pictured) in the far distance. It was reasonable, but the setting is a significant part of the attraction.

Botriini's is out in the suburbs, and had some quite good cooking but distinctly ropey service. It also featured a disappearing wine list where every wine that I tried to order was absent. Reading between the lines it seemed to be struggling, and had worryingly few diners on what should be one of the two busiest nights of the week. This is a shame as the kitchen operation seemed to be functioning quite well.

Varoulko has a lovely seaside setting and delivered a very erratic meal, but with truly Fawlty Towers service levels. This was the dodgiest meal of our stay in Athens, and is all the more annoying because the produce that they have access to is good. An amberjack dish that we tried was fine, but the service was some of the worst I can recall in a restaurant of any level, anywhere. Some people that I trust like this plaice, and perhaps on another day it can be decent, but without meaning to carp, it seemed distinctly fishy to me.

On the other hand I was pleased to a restaurant shunned by Michelin but which offered a meal worthy of a star, and was certainly no worse than any of the current trio with this accolade. Aleria has an attractive setting with smart rooms and an outside courtyard, charming staff and an interesting modern take on classic Greek dishes. Unlike Botrini’s, it was packed out, and understandably so.

In summary, both two star restaurants in Athens (Spondi and Funky Gourmet) are good and worth a visit. I would hesitate to recommend any of the current one star places based on my visits but would happily return to both CTC and Aleria, which Michelin has overlooked. You should also not miss the excellent delicatessen Matsoukas, which sells lovely baklava and has a fine array of produce, such as top class pistachios from the island of Aegina.

Greece Is The Word

Athens is the cradle of western civilisation but has lived through some tough times, and during the week of my visit appeared to be having a graffiti festival. This is a pity since there is some real grandeur to be found in the city despite the graffiti-strewn, often boarded up shops, and even the stray dogs that roam the streets seemed listless. The Parthenon still looks down over the city, and there are the remains of fine ancient buildings such as the Temple of Olympian Zeus, which must have been remarkable in its day. The best preserved ancient building, incidentally, is the temple of Hephaestus, which is in excellent condition. Despite the current economic crisis, the cafes and bars seemed surprisingly vibrant, and the locals that I spoke to appeared quite resilient and phlegmatic about the economic mess (unemployment at 23%, with youth unemployment at 45%, debt at 182% of GDP - the second highest ratio of any country in the world) that their politicians have presided over. As a visitor the city has a lot to offer, with some excellent museums, a fine coastline, remarkably inexpensive taxis and the ancient monuments, amongst other things.

On the dining scene there are currently five Michelin starred establishments in the city, two of these with two stars: Funky Gourmet and Spondi. As the name suggests, Funky Gourmet is the more modern of the two. It offers a playful tasting menu with all the modernist trickery to be expected, with all sorts of dishes not being what they appear to be. This kind of thing can get quite wearing but they pull it of pretty well, helped by some top notch waiters and a good sense of theatre in the service. Many of the dishes seem borrowed from elsewhere, but this was a fun meal. The cooking at Spondi is classical French, and uses some good quality ingredients. The cooking was of a high standard, with for example a very good Challans duck dish and an excellent signature dish of langoustine tartare with caviar. The evening was only let down a little by a less than stellar set of waiting staff.

CTC is very much modernist in style but does it well, and had capable front of house staff. It is perhaps a bit too clever for its own good in places, with a lot of gimmicks used, yet the food was very good. Although this style of food is not really my thing, I can certainly see that a lot of work has gone into the dishes, and it was quite inexpensive to boot.

On the casual front we also tried the veteran souvlaki restaurant O Thanasis, still packing them in after five decades. This is located near a large flea market in the centre of town, and has copious outdoor seating, so is suitable for a casual lunch as you explore the city. It is, incidentally, not far from the temple of Hepaestus, which is worth seeing.

Next week I review the three one star restaurants in Athens, as well as a place which Michelin seems to have overlooked and yet was actually better than any of them. I also reveal the restaurant with the worst service in the city, despite its Michelin star.

Mixed fare in London

Baluchi is the flagship restaurant of a new luxury hotel near Tower Bridge called Lalit. Being run by an Indian luxury hotel group, you might hope that they would know how to run a successful luxury Indian restaurant in London, but you would be wrong. Poor service was not something you expect at this very ambitious price point, and neither were utterly dismal scallops. There were some decent dishes e.g. a black dhal, but this was priced at a mind blowing £15 for a side dish. This was a car crash of an evening, and an expensive one at that.

Radio Alice is a pizzeria in Hoxton Square that is frequently cited as one of London’s best. Well, not on the basis of this visit it isn’t. The pizza was not actively hostile but it was way below the standard of reliably good pizza restaurants like Santa Maria and l’Oro Napoli, and Franco Manca for that matter.

A. Wong continues to produce superb modern dim sum, inventive and skilfully made. Since each piece is priced separately you can try a lot of dishes, which is a real bonus, and the technical skill in the kitchen is obvious. French bean salt and pepper fritters were a particular highlight, as was clear shrimp dumpling, and the standard was high throughout. We finished with a lovely custard tart dumping (pictured).

I also had revisits to three favourite places this week – since I have written multiple times about each I have not written detailed review updates, but suffice it to say that all were on form. Jamavar currently serves the best Indian food in London, and was completely packed when I revisited. L’Amorosa is where the former head of chef of Zafferano now cooks, and it is a lovely neighbourhood restaurant with excellent Italian food at modest prices. The Watermans Arms is a little boozer in Brentford whose chef cooks Japanese izakaya dishes in addition to standard pub fare. He lived in Japan and has a Japanese wife, so knows what he is doing with regards to this cuisine, and although it is not a destination restaurant and will not win any prizes for décor, I find it very charming.

The Game Bird and other stories

The Stafford is a boutique hotel tucked away in a cul de sac off St James Street. The Game Bird is its recently re-launched restaurant, with a former serious sous chef from Gordon Ramsay’s flagship restaurant at the helm. The style here is more relaxed than fine dining, but the class of the cooking showed through in dishes such as a superb venison tartare, exemplary fish and chips and a classy pistachio soufflé. As a bonus, the wine cellar is very interesting here.

Lorne was another pleasant surprise, a simple looking place in the culinary tundra of Victoria, a few yards away from the lovely A. Wong. Lorne’s chef worked at Benu in San Francisco, but fortunately his menu here is a lot more approachable, with a choice of dishes with recognisable ingredients rather than an endless tasting menu game of “guess what this weird thing in the plate is?” that all too many US chefs delight in playing with their customers these days. I particularly liked a sweetbread dish at Lorne, and there was an excellent pea mousse with brown shrimps and lemon too.

Quartieri is a new pizzeria in Kilburn, the first London outpost of a famous Naples Pizzeria in Naples called Trianon. This is the second Naples pizzeria that has sniffed opportunity in the capital, with Pizzeria Da Michele opening a branch in Stoke Newington a few months ago with much fanfare, though little in the way of delivery n my visit there. Quartieri at least managed some nice decor and helpful staff rather than the service train wreck of Da Michele. However the pizza itself, which is obviously the key thing, was pleasant rather than anything special.

By contrast l’Oro Napoli, a home grown Naples pizzeria in South Ealing with none of the PR and hype but a lot more to show in terms of substance, has pulled off a successful second branch in the distinctly unglamorous location of Hanwell. The décor is basic and the service just about functional, but the pizza here was really good, just as it is the mother ship in south Ealing. By putting their efforts into what is on the plate rather than worrying about PR and press, l’Oro Napoli shows how it should be done.

Home Counties Gems

Oxford Blue is a lovely pub restaurant in Windsor, the chef having previously been a sous chef at the flagship Gordon Ramsay restaurant in Chelsea. The cooking here is much more rustic but the quality shines through, with a lovely scallop and a fine venison dish complemented by a classy rum baba, amongst other good things. The service is charming and the wine list fairly priced, and the meal we had was firmly in Michelin-starred territory.

Dastaan is in an unpromising parade of shops in Ewell, near Epsom. However its co-owners include the former head chef of Gymkhana, so I had some hopes that the meal would be above the usual high street standard. What I was not expecting was just how good it was, the meal turning out to be absolutely superb, and much better, ironically, than the three meals I have eaten at Gymkhana. I am not sure what has inspired the chef here but this dinner was one of the very best Indian meals I have eaten in the UK, up there with Jamavar, which I reckon currently to be the very best that you can get. The premises of Dastaan are very basic, with takeaway orders being sent out and a packed room of locals who must hardly believe the quality of food that has landed on their doorstep. If you are ever in this area then make a beeline for Dastaan – it is seriously good.

Back in London, Bibendum has long been one of the capital’s finest dinest rooms, with its stained glass windows and lovely natural light. I used to go regularly when Simon Hopkinson was cooking, but it was never quite the same after he left. Now Claude Bosi, formerly of Hibiscus, has taken over. Although there are some nods to tradition, the menu conveys Bosi’s modern, tricksy style, starting with the fake olives at the start of the meal. Our experience was mixed, with an excellent soufflé for dessert, a nice sweetbread dish but some rather lacklustre offerings too. In particular some of the dishes with spices did not work that well for me. With the starters from £18 to £39 this is a fully priced menu, and at that sort of cost level I would have hoped for greater consistency.

I also popped back for a late supper at Le Gavroche but I was not in review mode. As ever, the service was silky smooth, and as ever the desserts were top notch, as was the soufflé suissesse starter, the main course monkfish and Dover sole dishes we tried being less impressive. I will pop back at some point to do a proper review update.

Michelin released a new guide to Hokkaido, fully five years after their “special edition” one-off guide that they brought out in mid 2012. There are a trio of 3 star places, 13 two stars and 60 one star establishments. This compares with the 2012 tally of 4 three stars, 12 two stars and 49 one star places that were listed in the 2012 guide. Of the three star places, Moliere had the same rating in 2012, but Michel Bras in Toya has been dropped to two stars. Hanakojii Sawada was two stars in 2012 but is now three stars, whilst Sushi Miyakawa is given three stars this time but was not listed in 2012. Nukumi and Sushi Tanabe, which had three stars in 2012, have disappeared from the 2017 guide (Sushi Tanabe is still in business, ranked 27^th for sushi currently on Tabelog, and Nukumi is ranked 4^th overall in Sapporo at present on Tabelog). Curiously, Sushizen, which was superb when I visited and is currently rated 4^th best for sushi on Tabelog and 8th overall (ahead of three star Sushi Miyakawa) now has just one star.

The highest rated five restaurants on Tabelog, led by Sushi Ikko, have no stars, whilst 3 star Hanakoji Sawada is ranked 46th on Tabelog and 3 star Sushi Miyakawa is ranked 9th in the city there, so Michelin seems determined to go its own way rather than fall in line with popular local consensus.

Any Porto of Call

Porto is the second largest city in Portugal, situated on the coast. It is closer to Spain than Lisbon, which is 313km due south. It is known for its history with the port industry and the wine trade, being quite near the scenic Douro valley, which supplies many of Portugal’s best wines. The city itself has the Douro river running through it, with the city arrayed on the slopes of either bank. Consequently, much of Porto is set on steep slopes – like a hillier version of San Francisco. There are plenty of attractive buildings, and long sandy beaches stretching along the coastline.

It has a solitary two star Michelin restaurant, The Yeatman, set in a hotel with a commanding view of the city. I had a pleasant albeit lengthy meal there (it is a tasting menu only kind of place), which started well but also featured a couple of less successful dishes. It did have the benefit of a lengthy and kindly priced wine cellar, and excellent service.

Another place with smooth service was Casa de Cha da Boa Nova, which is a few miles north of Porto in an adjacent but technically separate city called Matosinhos. It has a spectacular setting directly over the ocean, with waves breaking on the rocks below the dining room. This has one star and was also pleasant but a touch erratic, with a very good squid dish and excellent dish, punctuated by a couple of cases of overcooked fish.

Not far away is Marisqueria Matsoinhos, a much simpler seafood restaurant that had an attractive display of fresh shellfish and bivalves, and served a particularly nice crab mayonnaise dish. In the city itself the other place I tried was at the other end of the spectrum, a café selling hotdogs. This little café, called Gazela, is in the centre of town and has a few bar seats around a central counter, and a perpetual queue of people waiting for the hot dogs. A world away from the industrial bun and frankfurter variety, this had very good bread, high quality sausage and a spicy sauce and was really superb. It was so good that I went back the next day for another before lunch. I am indebted for this discovery to Joao Oliveira, a top Portuguese blogger (www.flavorsandsenses.com) who lives in the city.

Exploring Tokyo

This week I spent in Tokyo, the city with the most Michelin stars (and three star restaurants) on earth. Having been here annually since 2008 after first visiting the city in 1996, I was curious on this trip to try some of the more obscure corners of Tokyo's rich dining scene.

There are several Naples style pizza places in the city. The man that brought this style to the city now runs Seirinkan in an obscure side street. The pizza here was fine but I preferred that of his former student, who now has his own place called Pizza Studio Tamaki. The pizzas that we tried here were hard to fault, as good as any I have tried.

The oldest Indian restaurant in the city is Moti in Roppongi, and it looks like the Indian restaurant that was in your local high street in the 1970s. It was packed out, and the food was generally pleasant enough, though the service experience was in Fawlty Towers territory.

Kitafuku is a specialist crab restaurant, where you dine in a private room and are introduced to your dinner before it is cooked in front of you by a chef. It is not an experience for the squeamish, as the chef dismembers the crab and prepares it directly with you rather than away in the privacy of the kitchen. Though there is no doubting the quality of the crab, the price tag is high and there is little in the way of accompaniment, so you are essentially just eating a mountain of crab meat, albeit ultra fresh and prepared in different ways - sashimi, shabu shabu and grilled. It was an interesting experience but a pretty hardcore one.

Sugita (not to be confused with the sushi restaurant of the same name) is a little no-reservation place that does a fine job of serving Japan's favourite breaded pork dish: tonkatsu. The pork used had excellent flavour, and a breaded prawn there was not only of impressive size but was precisely cooked. This was as good as pretty much any tonkatsu I have tried, including at the only Michelin starred place of its kind, Katsuzen, and at other better known places like Butagumi and Maisen.

Esquisse is a two Michelin star French restaurant that has the former head chef of Cuisine Michel Troisgros cooking. We had a superb meal there, the style a fusion of French technique with Japanese ingredients and influences. It was very impressive indeed, with lovely presentation and particularly slick service.

Iwai is a one star Michelin tempura restaurant in the Ginza, and we had a very enjoyable and capably prepared meal there, with an array of high grade vegetables and fish cooked in a light batter.

The surprise meal of the trip was Takiya, which is relatively new and as yet has no Michelin entry. It is a tempura restaurant, and an exceptionally good one. The batter is gossamer light and the ingredients superb, from Japanese mountain vegetables, through to terrific fish and top notch beef. As a bonus, the chef was particularly friendly, and I am certain that its already strong local reputation will grow.

I also ate in a couple of introduction-only restaurants courtesy of a friend who lives locally, but I have not reviewed these since after all you cannot get in as a regular diner. It is a sign of just how deep the Tokyo dining scene goes in Tokyo when restaurants can successfully operate with a completely closed set of diners, and no marketing whatsoever. Indeed one of the places was insistent that I was not to even mention its name in print or online. It was completely full on the night we went, apparently full of Japanese celebrities and politicians, though I was blissfully unaware of who they were. It was a very good yakitori experience, as was the sushi I had at the other introduction restaurant.

Due to a cancellation we were able to eat at Sushi Saito, my favourite sushi restaurant but one which has become nightmarishly hard to book in recent years. It has three Michelin stars and is also nailed to the top of the usually volatile Tabelog voting website for top sushi in Tokyo. Indeed at present it is ranked as number two in the city for any style of food. It was also voted top in Asia by the Opinionated About Dining voting site, whose rankings seem to me more credible than many such lists. All this adulation has meant that Saito now has far more customers than seats. Regulars book their next slot when dining there, and these reservations take effect before the booking line officially opens. When enough regulars rebook, as they do here, then a non-regular has little chance of securing a reservation. I have tried to get in here on my last ten trips to Japan, and have only managed it twice before. The restaurant has moved from its former location in a car park, and has expanded to eight seats, but still delivers a virtually flawless sushi experience - I can still taste the gorgeous bonito sashimi.

There is no doubt in my mind that Tokyo is the best city on earth for dining, with fabulous ingredients, great hospitality and a huge array of restaurants of all levels and styles. If you plan to go there then it is most convenient to stay near either the Ginza or Roppongi, where a lot of the high end restaurants are located. I can recommend the Grand Hyatt there, a particularly well run hotel whose lounge supplies unlimited Louis Roederer champagne in the early evening, and is consequently a delightful place.

Visiting Toyama and Kanazawa

The cities of Kanazawa (with 462,000 inhabitants) and Toyama (422,000 citizens) are northwest of Tokyo on the north side of Honshu, the main island of Japan. There is a quite recently launched very fast Shinkansen train service linking these cities to the capital. Tokyo to Toyama now takes two hours and 8 minutes for the 345 km (214 miles) distance, and Kanazawa is a further 23 minutes to cover the 65 km (40 miles) between these cities, though there are also slower and cheaper services. This being Japan, those times are precise, the trains rolling into each station at the exact moment that they are scheduled to be there. Kanazawa has a large restored castle and a famous garden, rated one of three finest in all of Japan. We were lucky when we visited and caught the end of the cherry blossom (pictured), which was spectacular given the huge numbers of cherry trees in and around that garden. Toyama has somewhat less to offer a visitor, though it also has a partially restored castle.

Michelin produced a one off "special edition" guide in mid 2016, whose star ratings expire a year after publication. In Kanazawa I tried a one star tempura restaurant called Koizumi, a tiny affair located in what appears to be someone's house in a residential street, seating just nine diners around a counter. This was good, with light batter and excellent ingredients used.

In Toyama we tried Ebi-tei Bekkan, a two star kaiseki restaurant where the waitresses are in traditional dress. This has a room with sunken seating and also private dining rooms, and has been operating for 150 years. The ingredient quality was high and there were some nicely presented dishes. In particular a blackthroat sea perch dish had great flavour, and there was a superb loquat jelly dessert. We also tried Takano, a pleasant one star tempura restaurant, the ingredients of a consistently good standard.

The only restaurant in the region awarded three stars was Yamazaki, another traditional kaiseki restaurant. This was a quite formal meal, with the waitress in traditional dress. The presentation was very pretty and some dishes were quite good including a nice hot egg custard, but there was also little that was particularly striking. It felt like a notch or two below the level of the kaiseki places in Kyoto.

If you are planning a visit to this area then bear in mind that foreign visitors are a relative rarity, so unless you speak Japanese then there is a language barrier. In theory Japanese learn English in school much as British children learn French, but they have little chance to practice it outside of major cities like Tokyo, which has a significant expatriate population and lots of visitors these days. Hence any complex requests can be a bit tricky, though the Google Translate feature on your phone can help here. Otherwise the language skills of the young are generally better than the elderly, and people are by nature very helpful in Japan, so things will generally work out. Certainly it is interesting to see life in Japan outside of the familiar cities of Tokyo and Kyoto that most foreigners visit. The unfailing helpfulness of people to strangers comes through just as it does elsewhere in Japan, with people going well out of their way to help visitors find things. It is a most welcoming country to foreign visitors.

Seoul Food

Seoul is the bustling capital of South Korea, with a population of ten million. Michelin recently released their inaugural guide to Seoul with 24 starred establishments, so I felt obliged to pay it a visit. The city itself is modern, efficient and spotlessly clean, with quite heavy traffic despite the extensive subway system. If visiting the city then you can take a tour of the border zone with North Korea, which is just thirty miles away. The DMZ (de militarised zone) that has since 1953 marked the border is a 4 km stretch of land with considerable military presence on either side. The DMZ itself is a wildlife haven, at least provided you are an animal not heavy enough to set off a landmine. You can visit the railway station at Panmunjom, from where a solitary railway line connects the two countries and was used to transport freight when the two Koreas had somewhat less frosty relations and maintained a series of factories on the northern side of the DMZ. These were paid for by the south, with the north providing cheap labour, the south paying for the goods in hard currency, so benefiting both sides. At that time South Koreans were allowed to visit the north as tourists. though the tourism was suspended in July 2008 after a South Korean tourist was shot. The factories were shut in February 2016 after a North Korean nuclear test, and the station that you can visit at the border is now an eerie, empty shell. You can also visit one of the infiltration tunnels dug under the DMZ by North Korea in the 1970s, though if you are tall then this this is a somewhat uncomfortable experience as the tunnel was designed to (just) fit the relatively diminutive North Korean infantry.

Back in Seoul I tried both the Korean restaurants that were awarded three stars by Michelin. Gaon serves traditional Korean food in a menu style reminiscent of kaiseki, with a set menu of a number of courses culminating in rice and pickles. This place has no dining room but rather five private rooms, and the hefty prices reflect this arrangement. The food was, to be honest, pretty disappointing. It is a step up from the Korean restaurants in New Malden in terms of presentation, but at the end of the day it is essentially a series of grilled dishes followed by a bowl of rice.

It was only a marginally better story at the other three star, La Yeon at the Shilla hotel. This has a smart dining room with a view, but although there was one nice dish of pen shell salad, again here the dishes were decent but simple, the ingredients not noteworthy. To add to the joy, wine markups in Seoul are outrageous, and the size of the bill at these places was the only thing that was three star. There are no luxury ingredients like the langoustines, turbot or marbled beef of French or Japanese cuisine, no elaborate sauces that you would find in a three star in France, none of the gorgeous presentation of a Japanese kaiseki meal or the elaborate pastries of a French dessert course. Ingredients in Korea are quite limited. I was told independently by two people (one a head chef) that there is just a solitary variety of apple in Korea, and similarly a single variety of potato available. Hence quite why Michelin felt it appropriate to award three stars, or indeed any, to these places is a matter for their conscience. I am sure it is unconnected to the guide being sponsored by the Korean tourist board.

It is possible to encounter classy food in Seoul, in the form of Pierre Gagnaire's restaurant at the top of the Lotte hotel. Many of the ingredients here are imported from France or Japan, and the technique on display in the kitchen was impressive. The dessert section in the kitchen in particular is top class, and this was thoroughly deserving of the two Michelin stars that it was granted.

Eating on the Cote d'Azur

The south of France is famed for its climate, but is also blessed with some superb produce, as a visit to the market at Cannes, or just over the border in nearby Ventimiglia will testify. On a brief trip to the area I tried a few interesting restaurants. Comme Chez Soi is in Vence, a pretty village up in the hills above Nice. It is a family affair, with Hugo Marques cooking and his wife Rita running the service operation in their little restaurant, which has just opened. It produces simple but enjoyable food, making the most of the lovely ingredients of the area – local asparagus and peas were particularly impressive with a lobster dish. It is inexpensive and well worth a look if nearby.

Another one-man kitchen operation is La Merenda in the old town of Nice. This is a cramped twenty seat place, closed at weekends, which has no reservations, no telephone, just three choices of wine and takes only cash. On the plus side, it has the former head chef of two Michelin star Negresco cooking, and so consequently is packed out at every service. The food is rustic and hearty but its class shows through, as with a melting daube of beef with red wine sauce, and also shown by a lovely lemon tart for dessert. Get there early and get in line.

You can take a train for Nice down the coast to Cannes (quicker than a taxi and less than a tenth the price of a cab), which has Palme d’Or. This has had two Michelin stars for ages under two different chefs. I last ate here in 1996 under the old regime, and the food now is at least as good. Particularly impressive was a broccoli mousse amuse bouche and supremely delicate cumin tuiles, as well as a spider crab mousse with lovely morel sauce. This was certainly a strong two star meal, and as a bonus the dining room looks out over the Mediterranean.

The “Top 50” (really a top 100) list came out, to the usual rapt attention of the press, who seem fascinated by lists of restaurants. Eleven Madison Park took over at the top, for what that is worth. This is really just a marketing exercise for the industry, and harmless enough as long as you don’t try and actually think it is a carefully considered ranking of the world’s best restaurants. It is easy to pick all sorts of holes in it but that would be like kicking a puppy. If they just renamed it “The world’s best marketed restaurants” we could all just move on. The heads of the national judging panels have been on a jolly to Australia all week at the expense of the Australian tourist board, a trip that included visits to the restaurants Royal Mail and Brae, amongst others. It would certainly be a remarkable coincidence if next year Australian restaurants such as those shot up the list.

Lyon - a Foodie Paradise

Lyon is the third largest city in France (after Paris and Marseilles) and is arguably the foodie heart of the country. Despite two major rivers (the Rhone and Saone), its Roman remains and a beautiful old town (a UNESCO world heritage site) it hardly seems to attract any tourists unless they are interested in food or wine – the Rhone valley is nearby. If you are planning a visit then consider staying at the Cour des Loges hotel in heart of the cobbled streets of the old town. It is just yards from the best bakery in town (no mean achievement in this city), the Boulangerie du Palais, with its perpetual queues. Order the “grand pain” loaf here (they will sell you half of one of these large creations), get some cheese from Mere Richard and enjoy a terrific lunch. Mere Richard is in the indoor market called Les Halles Paul Bocuse, which has aisle after aisle of producers selling everything from fish to vegetables. If your taste is to the sweet then Lyon has Bernachon, a famous chocolate shop, amongst many other delights.

There is just one three star restaurant here – Paul Bocuse, and three two star restaurants in or near the city, though Lyon is within striking distance of other iconic restaurants such as Pic, Troisgros and Regis Marcon. Paul Bocuse himself is now 91 and not in good health, though the restaurant that bears his name still serves the dishes that made him famous. In truth it is not the best restaurant in town, but is a little piece of food history. However the three two-star places are all exceptional. Mere Brazier has real history and is now restored to its former greatness. On this trip I revisited Guy Lassausaie and tried the newest two star, Neuvieme Art.

Guy Lassausaie is in the sleepy village of Chasseley, perhaps a half hour drive north of Lyon. It is a superb restaurant, with star dishes such as langoustines with angel hair pasta, and a fabulous spiced sphere of quail and foie gras with apricot compote. Desserts are top notch too, and prices less than half that of Paris. Le Neuvieme Art is in the city of Lyon, and despite some pretty strange modern décor is very much worth your attention too. The meal here included superb dishes of scallops and brill, as well as fine desserts and some lovely nibbles. Both these restaurants could easily have three stars, and are clearly superior to Paul Bocuse, whose third star seems mainly for sentimental reasons these days.

We also tried Christian Tetedoie, a one star restaurant up on a hillside overlooking the city. Despite some sloppy service this is also well worth a visit, as the food is of a high standard. The pastry section of the kitchen here in particular is seriously talented. This restaurant would wipe the floor with almost any two star place in London. Finally we tried the historic Leon de Lyon, which was established in 1904 and was once a fine dining restaurant but is now a brasserie. The food was pretty good, especially a chicken with lovely rich sauce, but the service was appalling, and rather distracted from the overall experience.

If you are interested in food then Lyon is a key destination. From the markets, the bakeries, the old bouchons doing traditional dishes, up to its trio of top-notch two star Michelin restaurants, it is a food paradise.

A Mountainous Setting with Prices to Match

Parlour in Kensal Rise is one of my regular London destinations. A simple boozer but with talented chef Jesse Dunford-Wood, the retro British dishes are vastly better than you might expect in this unpromising location. At my latest visit the old favourites such as salmon smoked on the premises with home-made soda bread were as good as ever, as was superb chicken Kyiv with rosti and cabbage coleslaw. The dish of the night was foie gras profiteroles, showing glorious richness. Not everything is quite to the same standard here: beetroot with beef tartare was decent, and desserts are never the best course here, but the prices are moderate and the staff friendly.

L’Oro di Napoli in South Ealing serves some of the best pizza in all of London, yet is hardly known outside the local area. It is not far from the excellent and much-lauded Santa Maria, yet despite its obscurity I find the pizza here to be very fine, and right up there with its much more famous neighbour. The locals have clearly figured this out, as the place was heaving on this weekday night, and there will soon be a second branch in Hanwell.

Kricket Soho started out in a shipping container in Brixton before moving here, so ticks just about every hipster box possible. Naturally enough there are no reservations, the format is “small plates”, it is fusion cooking, the seats are wildly uncomfortable, the staff are ludicrously fashionable and show no obvious knowledge of Indian food, and the dishes arrive in whatever order the kitchen damn well feels like. In my case the sequence was: all plates at once. The food was decent enough and prices are moderate, but seriously: who needs this level of aggravation when eating? The place is apparently already being lined up for an international franchise, assuming they can find enough bearded and tattooed staff.

Courchevel is a ski resort in the French Alps favoured by Russians and the seriously wealthy, preferably both. In the costliest sub-section of Courchevel, “the 1850s” is the hotel Cheval Blanc, owned by LVMH, and its restaurant 1947. This place opens only for a few months a year in the ski season, and is notionally run by Yannick Alleno of Ledoyen, though one of his sous chefs is actually in the kitchen here. The food was distinctly variable, with two very good dishes, but also some ordinary ones and some downright mediocre plates. At about €180 for a main course you might hope for sublime perfection but this is Courchevel, where the prices are a mountainous as the scenery. Quite why Michelin bestowed a third star on this restaurant is a mystery understood only by them.

The Food of Birmingham

It has been ages since I have been to Birmingham, which now boasts no less than six Michelin-starred restaurants as well as a particularly fine modern library (pictured), which was short-listed for the Stirling prize and is currently the tenth most visited tourist attraction in the UK.

Purnell’s delivered an inventive and enjoyable meal over the course of a nine course tasting menu. The best dish, a monkfish masala with spiced red lentils, was genuinely excellent, and the general standard of dishes of good. Service was slick and this certainly felt like it deserved its Michelin star.

Carters of Mosely, another starred restaurant, was rather disappointing by comparison. There were some good dishes in the meal, such as a starter of chicken liver parfait with cereals, but there were also some problems. A duck dish with soy was grotesquely salty, and sadly desserts followed the Scandinavian style of savoury dishes: kelp with black rice tasted about as appealing as it sounds as a final course. Presentation was an afterthought and although the waitresses were nice, I found the meal overly erratic.

The best meal of the week was at Adam’s, yet another of Birmingham’s burgeoning set of starred restaurants. This boasts very smart décor and exceptionally capable service. More importantly the food was also impressive, with a high standard maintained through a lengthy array of nibbles and then a tasting menu. The best dishes were really top notch, and I thought this was more two star level than one.

By repute the best Indian restaurant in town is Lasan, and it is certainly quite ambitious. The décor is smart and the menu has all sorts of exotica that you will not find on the menu of your local Indian restaurant. Generally the food was quite good, with impressive soft shell crab with chilli, and a capable rendition of chicken jalfrezi using a higher quality bird than is usually seen. Service was a lot less smooth that they probably think it is, and the prices are quite high, but this was certainly a pleasant experience.

Adil’s is very much at the other end of the smartness spectrum, a brightly lit place in Sparkbrook that claims to have been the first Birmingham restaurant to have brought “balti” cooking to the UK. It was cheap and cheerful and surprisingly spicy, though the vegetables were overcooked and the dishes were a touch oily. However it was quite a fun experience.

A High Profile London Opening

Mere is the much-awaited opening from Monica Galetti and her husband David, who both worked at Le Gavroche. The food here is far from old-fashioned French though – tortellini with Marmite being one example. My meal was rather erratic, with a distinctly underwhelming amuse bouche and so-so nibbles, though the main courses were better and just about salvaged the overall evening. The trouble is that at £38 for one of the main courses the bill inevitably adds up, and so minor slips are less easy to forgive. It was very early days and doubtless things will tighten up as the kitchen settles down, but based on this meal there is still some work to do in order to justify the prices.

Dum specialises in biryani, and as you might hope from a restaurant that mostly does one thing, it does it well. I was impressed with a starter of Andhra stir-fried prawns too, and a halwa was also capable. This is a casual place and prices are not excessive. If you enjoy biryani it is certainly worth stopping by.

Ruben’s Bakehouse in Twickenham makes pizza as well as bread, and I was tipped off that it was particularly good at the former. The pizzas themselves were pleasant but not really more than that. In particular their oven was simply not hot enough, so the pizza base did not have the characteristics of those that you find at London’s really top pizzerias. Also, the salad and bruschetta here was quite poor, so although it is a harmless enough local restaurant it is not somewhere that is worth making a detour to, at least based on my meal.

Kitchen W8 is the kind of neighbourhood restaurant that I like, serving appealing dishes that do not require the customer to navigate a culinary minefield of trendy ingredients. My most recent meal there featured a very enjoyable glazed sweetbread dish, while panna cotta was also classy. There were one or two minor slips, with a heavier hand on the salt cellar than I recall, but overall it was still a very pleasant meal, albeit not exactly cheap.

Some Serious Dining

As a birthday treat I returned to two of my favourite restaurants, both three stars and both within reach of Luxembourg airport though they are actually over the border in Germany. Waldhotel Sonnora has a lovely forest setting and does old-school classical cooking of the type that I particularly enjoy. This is a place where the sauces are rich, glorious, heavily reduced and takes hours to make, the kind that most modern chefs find too time-consuming (and difficult) to make. There were some lovely dishes, such as terrific turbot and two separate langoustine dishes of the highest quality. Perhaps the desserts were not quite to the same level as the savoury dishes, but they were still excellent, and this is a superb restaurant.

The meal at Schloss Berg had the edge even over this. I have eaten several meals here, but not recently, and Christian Bau’s cooking continues to refine and impress. Ingredient quality is impeccable and is much more modern in style than Sonnora, though this is anything but molecular gastronomy. Instead there is significant influence from Japan, and dishes that are prettily presented yet have great depth of flavour. Even plates of food with many elements manage to maintain a very high standard. Some dishes are quite classical, such as turbot with morels and peas, others more modern, such as the “Japanese garden” of pickled vegetables. The kitchen seems completely at ease with whatever it puts its mind to. Both these restaurants are barely on the radar of the English speaking foodie world yet they are both top class. Schloss Berg in particular seems to me to be producing some of the best food of any kitchen in the world at present.

I had a brief non-food related trip to California and stayed at Half Moon Bay, a sleepy, rural town on the Pacific coast south of San Francisco. There is little (indeed nothing) in the way of destination restaurants in this neck of the woods, but they do a good line in sunsets (pictured), and further south there is a place called Duarte’s Tavern, which is interesting mainly from an historical viewpoint, as it has been running since 1894. It is not the oldest restaurant in America, but clearly there are not many places around with more than a century of history. It is best known for its artichoke and green chilli soup, which was very pleasant, though the other dishes I tried were ordinary at best. In truth it is not somewhere that you should make an excursion too, but the locals seem happy and I have a soft spot for historical restaurants like this, at least to try once.

The Michelin Main Cities of Europe 2017 guide came out. This guide covers assorted cities that do not have a country guide of their own, such as Warsaw, Athens, Prague and Budapest. Somewhat confusingly, it also repeats the stars already announced in country guides e.g. it lists places like Barcelona and Madrid in Spain, whose new stars were aleady announced in October 2016. There was limited news in this guide, with Amador getting two stars in Vienna as the only change at the two star level in the cities exclusvely coevred by the Main Cities guide. The only Michelin guide left for 2017 is the Sao Paolo and Rio de Janeiro guide, which usually appears in April, unless they spring any surprise new guides.

A Pizza The Action

I thought it might be interesting to compare some of London’s top rated pizza joints. Having recently had a disappointing experience at the much-hyped Da Michele in Stoke Newington, I tried l’Oro di Napoli in South Ealing and Santa Maria in Ealing, as a contrast to my regular Franco Manca in Chiswick (the first restaurant branch they opened after the initial Brixton market stall). It is fair to say that Santa Maria is generally top of most pizza aficionados' lists in London, along with its sister restaurants Sacro Cuore and Santa Maria Chelsea. The original branch in Ealing, along with Franco Manca in Brixton market, were the pioneers of Neapolitan pizza in London. Until these opened the denizens of the capital had to put up with chains like Pizza Express, itself a significant step up from the cardboard-like Pizza Hut offerings, never mind the pizza horrors perpetuated by lesser chains like Fire and Stone. A great service was done in educating Londoners that a pizza can (and arguably should) have a soft, chewy, pliable base, with properly rested hand-made dough using OO flour, cooked for less than 90 seconds in a wood-fired oven that ideally should be around 485C. Toppings should be of high quality, such as San Marzano tomatoes and top notch Mozzarella. All these stipulations and more are laid down in the 11 page specification for authentic Naples style pizza, as set out by the Naples-based Associazione Verace di Napoletana.

Franco Manca has of course now become an empire, with 19 branches and counting in London alone, and so inevitably some inconsistency can creep in, though I find my local branch generally still delivers the goods, with some variation from time to time. Santa Maria and its sisters are still a fairly small-scale operation, and can take the time to ensure that their product is consistent. Certainly the pizza I tried there this week was very good, and a clear step up from the one I ate at Antica Pizzeria da Michele a few days before. However the surprise package was l’Oro di Napoli, a relatively unheralded place in South Ealing that has been quietly plying its trade for two years, unencumbered by PR or social media shills. The pizza here was, to my taste, the best of the lot, and I will most certainly be back. They even take reservations.

After all that pizza I needed a curry, and returned to Jamavar in Mayfair. This was my third meal there and confirmed that it is serving the best Indian food in London at present. Dish after dish was excellent, from top-notch makhani dhal through very good biryani, venison samosas with cauliflower pickle and above all superb stone bass tikka. Service is slick and the room is nicely decorated, so this seems to be to have the complete package. None of the Michelin-starred Indian places in London are in its league, as far as I am concerned.

Next week I will be firmly back in fine dining territory as I venture abroad for some three star Michelin action.

A Trip to Riga

I was invited to give a lecture at a chef’s conference in Riga, a city I have not been to for well over a decade, so took the opportunity to try out the local dining scene. If you are unfamiliar with Latvia, it is on the Baltic Sea and became independent in 1991, with a population of 2 million. It has an attractive old town that is fairly well preserved, though not as extensive as the old town in Tallinn over the border in Estonia. Riga possesses some attractive Art Deco and Art Nouveau era buildings.

The top dining destination in Riga by general consensus is Vincent’s, where the focus is on luxury ingredients. I had a very good meal here, and enjoyed some excellent langoustines as well as a lovely sweetbread dish. The next best meal that I had was at Biblioteka Number One, located in a very pretty park setting. Here the chef tries to make use of local Latvia products where possible, so I sampled dishes like sturgeon, moose and birch sap sorbet. The smoked beaver was sadly unavailable (though I guess the beaver did not see it that way).

At the mid-range of the market I enjoyed Three, where again the chef concentrates on Latvian recipes and products, and also Muusu, where I had some Latvia chicken that had good flavour and where the set lunch was an absurdly reasonable €15. Finally I tried Gastronome, where the cooking was reasonable but the ingredient quality was rather ordinary.

The local restaurant scene has certainly improved dramatically since my first visit here, and if you fancy somewhere different to visit then Riga certainly has some nice sightseeing. It also now has some quite good restaurants too.

In other news, the Michelin Scandinavia guide 2017 came out. There were two stars for Henne Kirkeby Kro in Denmark (well done Paul Cunningham) and Vollmers in Malmo. Both Frantzen and Noma were deleted since they are currently closed, as was Matthias Dahgren. There are now 22 starred places in Denmark, 4 in Finland, one new one (Dill) in Iceland, 7 in Norway and 23 in Sweden. The only three stars in the region remain Maaemo and Geranium.

This is not quite the last guide of the season, as there is still the "Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paolo" guide, and also the "Main Cities of Europe", which covers large cities in some countries without their own guides e.g. Athens, Warsaw, Budapest. These two guides normally turn up in March.

Over Hyped and Over Here

El Pastor is one of a clutch of recent tacos openings in the capital. This one has the advantage of experienced restaurant backers and also go to the trouble of making their own tortillas, so I had decent expectations. Sadly the reality was a disappointment, with frosty reception staff, minuscule portions and one dimensional salsa. Even the tortillas were nothing special. Just after I went the Evening Standard critic Grace Dent went here and had a pretty miserable time, speculating that maybe she went on a bad day. They seem to have a lot of these based on my experience.

Another restaurant that set high expectations was Antica Pizzeria Da Michele, the Stoke Newington branch of a famous pizzeria in Naples. Julia Roberts may have had a relationship with her pizza at the original flagship branch in Naples, but my experience was lacklustre. The pizza itself was fine when I was eventually served it (I was served my pizza an hour after sitting down, despite being first in the queue at the door), but I slightly prefer some of the better existing London pizza restaurants to this. What was certain was that the service operation at this restaurant is an utter shambles. It was complete chaos in the dining room.

Bonhams is one of my regular haunts, a small place serving up impeccable food based on high quality ingredients. At this latest meal the star dish was venison tartare with mustard ice cream, a glorious combination. Chicken with black truffles was also good, and an almond and pear tart was lovely. The wine list here is the most kindly priced in London, with the better wines hovering around their retail price.

Tarantella is a family-run Italian restaurant in Chiswick. They make capable pizza and pasta, but above all the welcome is genuine and friendly. It Is just a simple local place within walking distance of where I live, but is a good example of how a welcoming atmosphere and service can be just as important to a restaurant as elaborate food.

Next week I will explore the cuisine of Latvia in a visit to Riga.

Take your Pic

One of the highest profile openings in London this year is La Dame de Pic, the first venture in the capital for Anne-Sophie Pic, whose restaurant in Valence holds three Michelin stars. La Dame de Pic is in the newly opened Four Seasons hotel near the Tower of London, an impressive looking hotel that at present is going through a soft opening. The kitchen at La Dame de Pic is already firing on all cylinders, with some impressive dishes such as superb langoustine tails and flavoursome Challans chicken. Service was slick and the dining room very smart, so although this is hardly a cheap outing it seems likely to gain a Michelin star in due course.

Kashmir in Putney notionally specialises in the cooking of that northern region of India, though there are a lots of familiar dishes too on the lengthy menu. Sadly the reality did not really live up to the promise. Dubious lotus root kebabs and rather stringy chicken let things down, as did an oily dum aloo. There were some decent dishes, in particular an excellent romali roti, but overall this was really just a fairly ordinary local restaurant rather than somewhere to journey to.

I had another very good meal at Ormer Mayfair, this time trying the set lunch menu. Guinea fowl was excellent, as was salt-baked sea bass and a take on tiramisu for dessert. Just as with my first meal here the standard of cooking was high and the service was excellent. I am puzzled as to why this restaurant has seemingly been launched under the radar from a press viewpoint. There are so many poor London restaurant openings with overhyped expectations that when we actually get a good one like this it is a shame not to make more of a fuss about it.

I also enjoyed a return visit to Galvin at Windows, which is perched on the 28^th floor of the Hilton Hotel on Park Lane. There was a very good artichoke risotto and also a nice scallop dish, and desserts were on form too. Service is silky smooth here, and although you clearly pay a premium for the location, at least the food actually delivers.

The Michelin 2017 France guide was announced. A third star for 1947 (Yannick Alleno) in the ski resort Courchevel, a dozen new two stars and 57 new one stars were awarded. France now has 616 starred restaurants, up from 600 in 2016. If you are pondering a visit to the new three star 1947 then bear in mind that it is only open from mid December to early April each year, in the ski season.

This is last of the 2017 guides to be published except for Scandinavia and the Main Cities of Europe guide, which covers some other cities that do not have a full country guide e.g. Prague, Athens, Warsaw, etc. Across the globe there were three deletions from the three star ranks: De Karmeliet in Bruges, which closed when its chef retired, as well as Esaki, which is moving and Fujiya 1935 was demoted to two stars. New places that were promoted were Quince in San Francisco, The Fat Duck in the UK (which was reinstated after being closed for a year), Lasarte in Barcelona (sister of Martin Berasategui) and 1947 in Courchevel. There were also some new guides that had three star places: Joel Robuchon in Singapore, Gaon and La Yeon in Seoul and also Yamazaki in Toyama, a one-off "special edition" guide whose stars will expire a year after publication. Finally there is Tang Court in Shanghai, sister of the dismally overrated Tang Court in Hong Kong, so I am not holding my breath about the prospects of its sibling being any better. There are now 27 three star restaurants in France. By my count there are 85 two stars in France now (seven places were deleted or demoted compared to 2016, as well as 23 deletions at the one star level).

One other thing of note about the 2017 guide was that it represented 40 unbroken years of 3 stars for Michel Guerard and his restaurant Pres des Eugenie. Mr Guerard is 83 years old but seems always to be in his kitchen (certainly for my many meals there). It was 50 years of 3 stars for Auberge de l'Ill in Alsace too, but this has seen different chefs leading the kitchen over the years, in a similar way to Troisgros. This makes Michel Guerard's achievement all the more remarkable. The only chef to have held three stars for his restaurant for longer is Paul Bocuse in Lyon, with three stars since 1965. He is 91 years old today, and although he is still in charge he does not appear to be in the kitchen day to day any more, at least not when I was last there.

Fine Dining in London

The Square changed ownership in March 2016, and finally has a new head chef in the form of Yu Sugimoto, who was head chef of Le Meurice in Paris amongst his previous experiences. The style is different from Phil Howard’s, but is quite ambitious. Some dishes were very impressive, such as perfectly cooked sea bass with crisp skin and scales. Indeed most of the savoury dishes worked well, though dessert was more challenging. However prices seem to have nudged up, so value for money is a consideration, as it so often is with high end restaurants in London.

Ormer Mayfair is the London outpost of Michelin-starred Ormer on Jersey. As a basement dining room in a hotel this place lacks much in the way of buzzing atmosphere, but more than makes up for that in the standard of the food that emerges from the kitchen. A lobster ravioli was top-drawer, as was a tiramisu pre-dessert, and there were no technical issues throughout the meal. The menu was appealing and the staff friendly. I am puzzled by the virtual invisibility of this restaurant on social media. If this food was served in a trendy restaurant in a bare-brick room in Old Street by tattooed waiters then it would be the talk of the town.

The Ritz is one of my regular haunts, its vast kitchen having the resources to produce elaborate and labour-intensive dishes. The dining room is glorious, all pink and mirrored, its brigade of waiters carefully drilled, the menu appealing. At the meal this week there was a dazzling dish of agnolotti pasta with black truffles as well as excellent turbot (pictured) and fine langoustines and Anjou pigeon. As ever, the pastry section did not let the side down, with lovely poached rhubarb tart and also apple tart tatin. The technical skill in The Ritz kitchen is considerable, and although the wine list is expensive the food is pretty reasonablely priced given the quality.

StreetXO comes to London

StreetXO is the sister of a restaurant of the same name in Madrid, both being spin-offs of three star Michelin DiverXO. David Munoz’s cooking style brings together Spanish cooking and Asian flavours and spices, all with a flourish of showmanship. StreetXO in London opened to some pretty poor reviews, so I deliberately left it a few months before trying it, in order to let the kitchen settle in. I am not sure what transpired in the early days, but the meal that I had was very good, sampling quite a few of the dishes, as can easily be done given the “small plates” format. It is not particularly cheap, but you are in Mayfair, and if you sit at the counter then you interact with the chefs, which is fun.

Flora Indica is a modern Indian restaurant in Earls Court. It has some quite bold ingredient combinations, and had the potential to be a train wreck, but I found the food to be generally of a good standard. Certainly the black dhal, paneer pakora and Jerusalem artichoke chaat were genuinely good, and there were only a couple of small slips. This was early days and doubtless the menu will continue to evolve, but it will be interesting to see how this restaurant develops.

I had another enjoyable meal at The Ritz, this time a private function that involved trying several vintages of Cheval Blanc, so not the toughest of assignments. The event was in the William Kent private dining room, a particularly beautiful room with a gorgeous ceiling. If you are considering a special event for about twenty people then you might like to look into this as a possible venue. The food comes from the same kitchen as the main Ritz dining room, so is not some sub-standard catering fare.

I also had another enjoyable meal at Talli Joe, trying out some new dishes. This restaurant’s food belies its casual exterior, with its head chef producing some of the better Indian food in London at present. Given its modest price point that is even more reason to go there.

Crowning Achievement

New Malden has the largest Korean community in Europe, so is clearly the place to go if considering Korean food. Jin Go Gae is generally reckoned the best in the area (Yumi is also highly thought of) and serves Korean barbecue dishes in amongst a lengthy menu. This format is different from most other restaurant styles, with a recess in each table in which a bowl of coals are heated and a lid placed on the top – you then cook the beef, prawns etc yourself. This is quite fun although it hardly qualifies as cooking in the conventional sense. The dishes that I tried from the kitchen were pretty mediocre: pleasant gyoza, tepid noodles, poor sweet and sour chicken. Nonetheless the place appears to be popular with the local community.

Bonhams is one of my regular haunts. It offers classy cooking by Tom Kemble, who uses particularly high quality ingredients, and has an appealing menu and the best value wine list in London (the pricier wines hover around their retail price). At this visit a scallop dish with cauliflower puree was particularly good, as was loin of fallow deer with pickled celeriac, Brussels sprouts and bacon. If you haven’t tried it then you are missing out on a gem.

Talking of gems, The Crown at Burchetts Green (pictured) is a delightful place out in the countryside near Marlow. If you happen to live near the M4 then you can reach it surprisingly quickly from London – despite being 26 miles from where I live it is quicker to get there from Chiswick than for me to get to, say, Old Street. It is a one-man kitchen, with Simon Bonwick eschewing even a kitchen porter to assist him. The dishes are classical and quite labour-intensive, and prices are almost unreasonably cheap. I was delighted that it received a Michelin star, even if I now have to book there further ahead. This week a turbot dish with an intensely reduced red wine and carrot sauce was particularly lovely.

I always enjoy my meals at Cambio de Tercio, which has been the best Spanish restaurant in London for many years in my book. The dishes are inventive e.g. very slow-cooked tomatoes that are intriguingly sweet, and show technical skill e.g. the modern patatas bravas. The staff are charming and the restaurant is always packed with Spanish diners, contributing to a fun atmosphere.

Smoking Hot

The Holborn Dining Rooms is the flagship restaurant of The Rosewood Hotel in Holborn, the restaurant on the site that used to be Pearl. The room is significantly larger and less formal than in the Pearl days, with red leather banquettes and tightly packed seats. The food was rather erratic at the meal that I tried. Some pleasant starters were followed by lacklustre main courses, but redeemed by excellent desserts. Overall the experience was pleasant enough, but at the far from cheap price point I would have hoped for greater consistency than this.

Kiln (pictured) is the younger sister of a barbecue restaurant called The Smoking Goat in Denmark Street, and opened in late 2016 to considerable fanfare. The theme here is Thai barbecue, and the kitchen does not wimp about with the chillies. A lot of care is taken with the ingredient sourcing, and there is an open kitchen where you can watch the chefs grilling the meat, which might include mangalitsa pork. The dishes that I tried were very good, even the solitary vegetarian option of greens cooked with a spicy soy dressing. Bear in mind that there are no reservations except for tables for four or more, and Kiln is very popular, so choose your time of eating here with care unless you do not mind a lengthy queue.

I returned to The Ledbury, which is arguably London's most reliably good all-round restaurant experience in terms of the overall package of food, service and decor. The meal was excellent, with stand-out dishes being a muntjac dumpling with fruits de moutarde, excellent scallops and an old favourite: brown sugar tart with stem ginger ice cream.

I also had another good meal at l’Amorosa, a regular haunt. Saffron risotto with the last of the season’s white truffles was excellent, followed by a good venison ragu pappardelle and a nicely made almond tart. This is a particularly good value restaurant.

From London to Chessington

Saffron Summer is an Indian restaurant near Chessington, which came to my attention through recommendation and has a chef who worked at some of the better kitchens in London. Its menu is quite ambitious (wild boar vindaloo anyone?) and, except for one dish, the standard of cooking was high. I particularly enjoyed a chicken biryani and a jeera aloo dish, and breads were very good too. The only thing that marred the evening slightly was utterly inadequate heating, the dining room being very cold indeed. I’d be happy to go back there on a warmer night than this one, or when they fix the heating.

La Trompette was the first restaurant in Chiswick to gain a Michelin star, and has been a fixture of the local dining scene for many years. Since 2013 the chef has been Rob Weston, formerly head chef of The Square. My meal this week was more consistent than my previous one here. The star dish was one of raw gilt head bream with English wasabi, which was particularly well judged. However there were several very good dishes, and no duds through the course of the meal. Prices here are relatively modest, with the bonus of an interesting and not excessively priced wine list.

Seven Park Place is a tiny jewel box of a restaurant in a boutique hotel in St James. William Drabble earned a Michelin star soon after it opened and has retained this. He seems to be the kind of chef who is actually in his kitchen almost all the time, rather than spending his time on promoting his latest cookbook or raising his media profile. The meal was very good, with an excellent venison and cabbage dish in particular.

I also enjoyed another excellent meal at The Ritz over the Christmas period, and another at Parlour in Kensal Rise. I have written up many meals at both restaurants over recent years. Both are favourites of mine.

A visit to Hyderabad

I had a week's break in Hyderabad, returning to the Falaknuma Palace Hotel. This used to be the Nizam of Hyderabad's residence, and as befits a ruler who was in his day the richest man in the world, it is opulent. Now a boutique hotel run by the Taj group, it is perched on a hillside overlooking the city, its lofty location meaning that it is several degrees cooler than the official temperature in Hyderabad, a very useful feature given the climate of India. Hyderabad is one of the largest cities in India, with a population of over six million, and has some quite interesting sights including the famous Golconda diamond mine. However the Falaknuma Palace itself is the most impressive building in the city, all white marble and gorgeous interiors. It also has a top of the range restaurant called Adaa, which serves Hyderabad cuisine and other dishes from across India. Hyderabad is known for its biryani, and the version at Adaa is top of the range, the rice as flight, fluffy and fragrant as you could wish. I tried many dishes over the course of my stay, highlights including excellent salmon tikka, top class paneer tikka and black dal, along with fine bhindi and excellent bread.

This was a holiday rather than a food trip, but I did try one interesting meal at a restaurant called Firdaus. This meal highlighted Nellore cuisine, an area south of Hyderabad on the coast, and featuring prawn and seafood dishes making much use of tamarind, red chillies and sorrel. This was a new cuisine to me but an interesting one, and Firdaus executed some very good dishes, including an excellent cashew nut curry, and a dish of chilli peppers stuffed with tamarind. If you want to try a more local take on biryani then the locals seem to favour two places: Paradise and Bawarchi, though I confess that I did not have the patience to endure an hour of traffic across the city to try these when I was able to eat a perfect biryani on my doorstep.

Hyderabad is not the first name that trips off the tongue when you think of India tourist destinations, but although Goa and Kerala have their beaches, Hyderabad has a direct British Airways flight from London, traffic much lbeter than Mumbai and a world class destination in the form of the Falaknuma Palace. If you ever feel like treating yourself to a winter sunshine break you could do worse.

Looking back at 2016, I reviewed 44 new restaurants in London in 2016, the best of which was Jamavar. I also enjoyed Som Saa, Talli Joe, The Ninth, Pittcue in Fitzrovia, Totide, The Woodford and Killer Tomato. It was another year where there was very little in the way of ambitious, fine dining openings. This may be a function of the low level of profitability of fine dining compared to more casual formats, combined with high London rents. My best meals in 2016 were at Cheval Blanc, Hotel de Ville, Pic, Troisgros, Nanachome Kyoboshi, Schauenstein and Uchitsu. The best food that I ate in the UK this year was at Hedone.

Happy New Year to everyone!

A week in London

Jamavar is an up-market Indian restaurant brand of the Leela hotel group in India. I have eaten at several Jamavars in the sub-continent, the best of which are terrific, and I confess that I was nervous as to whether this London branch would be able to reproduce anything close to the magic of the originals. There have been some very disappointing Indian restaurant openings this year, and there is no shortage of foreign chefs who have come to London scenting easy money but not delivering. Fortunately my misgivings were misplaced. I have tried two meals at Jamavar in Mayfair now and they were both superb, with dish after lovely dish. The standard here is right up with some of the top restaurants in India, and for me Jamavar now sits firmly at the pinnacle of the Indian restaurant scene in London.

Zelmans Meats is a brand owned by the same group that run Goodman, so as you would expect the emphasis is on well-sourced meat. The original branch is in Soho and this is the second outlet, on the fifth floor of Harvey Nichols. The starter that I tried was a rather misjudged tuna tartare, and even the main course steak, although clearly a good piece of meat, was a tad chewy, presumably due to it not being rested properly. This was a shame, especially given the considerable price of the steak.

For the first time I tried the full omakase menu at Umu, sitting at the counter and watching the chefs at work. This was the best experience I have had at Umu, and although it is hardly a cheap meal it is clear that a lot of effort has gone into the dishes. Smoked wild lobster, and woodcock served with a sauce of its own liver were the stand out dishes, and the sashimi was certainly of a high standard.

I ate my 67^thmeal at Hedone, whose cooking is now very assured even across a lengthy tasting menu. Ingredient quality has never been an issue here, and highlight dishes at this meal included lovely crab, turbot and woodcock. For a pure food experience this is the best that London has to offer, in my view. Its single Michelin star is nonsensical when you compare the food quality here with other London two (and three) star places. Only The Ledbury really comes close to matching it.

The Michelin season of guides in now largely compete, with just France (usually end February) and the Main Cities of Europe guide to appear, plus Scandinavia and I presume the Sao Paolo/Rio de Janeiro guide in March. At the moment there are 118 three star restaurants globally, the new ones being Quince in San Francisco, T'Ang Court in Shanghai, Yamazaki in Toyama (this is a one-off guide so its stars will expire after 12 months), Lasarte in Barcelona, Joel Robuchon in Singapore, Gaon and La Yeon in Seoul and,while not exactly new, the Fat Duck in Bray now it has reopened. Esaki was delisted since it is moving, as was De Karmeliet, which is closing.

Wishing you all a very happy Christmas.

A Visit to Monaco

I was briefly in Monaco to speak at the World Chef Summit, a conference where over a thousand chefs and industry types gathered to discuss culinary matters. Even in late November Monaco was quite warm and bathed in sunshine, so although it is a city that is not to everyone’s taste there is no denying the setting and the climate. While there I took the opportunity to try some restaurants. A simple local place was U Cavagnetu, which had a reputation for serving local Monegasque dishes. I sampled some of these, which varied significantly in quality, but I will not be too critical of the place, which is simple and inexpensive.

The main two meals were at a distinctly different price point. Louis XV had been a long-time favourite, and I have eaten there many times from the 1990s onwards. Its glory days were when Franck Cerruti was head chef, a man who knew how to take advantage of the superb local Mediterranean produce and whose kitchen brigade demonstrated high levels of technical skill. The dining room was beautiful and the service flawless, so a top all round experience, albeit not a cheap one. Even this last point was addressed by the presence of a pretty modestly priced set lunch. Sadly the restaurant no longer opens for lunch, the room has been modernised and the chef has changed. Some of the traditional strengths of the restaurant shone through: the desserts were fabulous, and there were a few lovely dishes such as a gamberoni prawn dish with rockfish jelly and caviar. However there were also several worrying changes, some minor and some less so. There is no longer the grand bread basket, the cheese selection is diminished in scale and the mignardise are not what they were. More worryingly, there were some distinctly ordinary dishes lurking in the meal. Bearing in mind the astronomical prices here (the tasting menu is €360) and a wine list with few bottles under €200, even small slips are troubling and hard to forgive. Service is still flawless and there are still patches of brilliance in the cooking, but this meal was a shadow of the ones I have tried here before. It was perhaps telling that there were empty tables in the dining room.

By contrast, two star Michelin Joel Robuchon Monte Carlo was packed out on a Tuesday lunch time. I had moderate expectations of this place, thinking it might be a slightly tarted up Atelier Robuchon, but I was wrong. Several dishes that we tried here were top class, including a stunning John Dory main course, a terrific foie gras and Parmesan amuse-bouche and superb desserts. Service was fabulous and the overall experience highly enjoyable. It is not a cheap place, and the wine list has few even moderately inexpensive offerings, but this is Monaco and you do not expect bargains here. Overall I actually enjoyed this meal more than my experience the night before at Louis XV, which was at least a consolation prize on this trip.

The Michelin guide to the Netherlands came out, with no change atthe top and a new 2 star place in the form of Tribeca, with Chapeau closing and Boreas also delisted. The netheralnds now has a pair of three star restaurants, 19 two stars and 84 one stars.

The Alba Truffle Festival

Alba is famed for its white truffles, and in November there is a two week festival to celebrate its most famous culinary offering. There is a truffle market with a small entrance fee if you want to buy, with an inspector on hand to ensure quality (truffle hunters have been known to get up to various tampering tricks to make their truffles seem more than they really are). The town itself is pretty, with a ring road encircling the central old town centre. If you decide to visit then plan well in advance, as hotels and even guest houses get booked up months in advance these days.

I had been urged to return to three star Piazza Duomo, and had a lengthy tasting menu there. This time there were some very enjoyable dishes, such as rabbit with okonomiyaki sauce in a steamed bun. There was also a take on the famous Bras gargouillou dish, using dozens of ingredients from the two farms that the restaurant now run. Yet despite there being some good dishes like these the meal was a roller coaster, with an overly bitter and distinctly odd dish of sea urchin, turnip, Japanese condiments and cheese being just one example. Service was superb and the best dishes, including an excellent venison one, showed that there is ability in the kitchen, but it seems to be an uneven experience.

On the same trip I also ate at Combal Zero in Rivoli. This is very much a modernist restaurant, despite its setting within the historic city castle. To give you an idea of what to expect, the chef’s signature menu is served essentially in reverse order other than dessert, so you start with the heaviest dishes and work backwards to a salad at the end. It is innovative for sure, but in my view not an improvement on the way that the rest of the menus of the world unfold. The meal was a distinctly mixed affair, with a couple of nice dishes including a veal kidney with champagne and gin sauce, but there were some serious misjudgements too. One dish involved pouring dashi over a block of squid ink spaghetti, which was supposed to melt it into its constituent strands, but failed to do so. What is a bit frustrating is that I think the chef is actually quite talented. At the start of the meal I asked him if he could add a single classical dish. He did so (Fassone beef in a bread crust) and it was by a wide margin the best dish of the night. If only he could produce more pleasurable dishes like this, which he is clearly capable of doing, and focused less on innovation for its own sake.

By contrast with these two modernist restaurants, I also tried two much more traditional places in the hills above Alba. Bovio was charming, putting together a truffle menu for us that sensibly had simple dishes in order to show off the very fresh white truffles. The tagliolini showed that there is good technique in the kitchen, and the meal was overall highly enjoyable. As a bonus the wine list is terrific, extensive and with plenty of keenly priced offerings. The staff exuded real charm and I would highly recommend the place.

I also really liked La Ciau del Tornavento, whose wine cellar is reputedly the largest in Italy, and where the prices of many of the wines are roughly their retail price, so you can indulge without feeling ripped off. The room is elegant and the food was worth its Michelin star, with for example a terrific starter of baked onion stuffed with veal sausage served with fondue. There were a few inconsistencies in the dishes that we tried, but the combination of the lovely view over the vineyards, the cooking, the charming staff and the superb wine list make this a place well worth trying if you are in Alba.

As a bit of fun I carried out a small survey of a select group of food bloggers about their picks for the best 3 new London openings of the year, their top 5 London restaurants, and a single pick for good value eating. Half the bloggers were London based and half were international bloggers who visit London regularly. The top London opening of the year was Som Saa, with multiple votes also for Kiln, Padella and Barbary. Top overall position was a dead heat between Hedone and The Ledbury, these two winning by a wide margin. The individual “good value” category had the following picks: Diwana Bhel Poori, A. Wong, Black Axe Mangal, Hoppers, Padella, Zoilo, Tayyabs, The Ninth and Parlour, as well as a mention for the cheap set lunch at Gordon Ramsay. Thanks very much to all those that took part. In addition to myself the voters were bloggers Luxeat, Elizabeth on Food, Skinnybib, Foodiehub, Fine Dining Explorer and QLIweb on the international front. From London the bloggers were The Epicurean, London Eater, Cheese & Biscuits, London Tastin', The insatiable Eater and myself. Thanks to all those people for kindly participating.

London and beyond

Veeraswamy is London’s oldest Indian restaurant, opening in 1926. Now under the same ownership as Chutney Mary and Amaya, the venerable restaurant received a Michelin star in the 2016 guide. The meal that I tried was actually very good, with raj kachori particularly impressive, which along with a classy chicken biryani were the stand-out dishes. Service was slick and although prices are quite high this is certainly up there with or beyond some of the other posh Indian offerings in London.

Bonhams was my favourite London opening of last year, and continues to impress. At this meal there was a lovely scallop and Jerusalem artichoke dish, and classy fallow deer. The wine list here is a joy, with the higher end of the wine list essentially all around retail price or with minimal mark-up, as distinct from the usual three or four times retail price that is normal in Mayfair. I was delighted that it received a Michelin star so early, and it is one that is richly deserved.

Coworth Park near Ascot has seen a revolving door of chefs arriving and departing in recent years. The latest incumbent is Adam Smith, a Roux Scholar and formerly the premier sus chef at the Ritz. Pickled mushrooms with artichoke custard was a really interesting and classy dish, but save room for dessert. Adam has brought with him from the Ritz the talented pastry chef Lucy Jones, who produced a genuinely stunning hazelnut dessert (pictured) that would not be out of place in a 3 star restaurant. It is great to see Coworth Park finally have such a talented team at the helm – go there while you can still get a table.

Talli Joe has garish décor and a casual vibe and is on Shaftesbury Avenue, so on the surface does not seem a promising place for high quality Indian food. However the pedigree of the chef (head chef of Benares and worked in some very serious European restaurants before that) and the intriguing menu suggest some more than a Covent Garden tourist trap, and so it is. Dishes are deliberately half size so that you can try lots of things, and prices are moderate. This was my second meal here and the overall standard of cooking is high. At this visit red mullet, filleted and reassembled and served with a seafood curry, was genuinely top-notch. Even better was magnificent murgh malai tikka, the chicken ultra-tender and suffused with spices. I have eaten many versions of this dish in India, and the one here is right up there with the best. Talli Joe seems to have eschewed PR and has been ignored on social media, yet was absolutely packed at this meal, which is not surprising. Keep an open mind, move past the décor and enjoy the food here – you won’t regret it.

I also had a very good meal at the ever-reliable The Brilliant in Southall, an institution that I have been frequenting for 25 years now. Their aloo papri chaat was excellent, as was my old favourite the methi chicken, which has lovely fenugreek flavour. They also make very good vegetable dishes such as aloo gobi, and are one of very few restaurants in the UK to make romali roti, the thinnest of Indian breads.

The Tokyo Michelin Guide for 2017 came out. No change at the three star level except for the removal of Esaki, which is moving premises, and a new two star in the form of Amamoto. There are now 12 three star, 54 two star and 161 one star Michelin restaurants in Tokyo, by some margin the most of any city. Michelin Germany 2017 was also released, with no change at the three star level, three new 2 star places (Rutz, Opus V and Geisels Wercneckhof) and three demotions from 2 star (Residence, Il Giardino and Fahraus). In total Germany has 10 three star restaurants, 39 two stars and 253 one star establishments.

Further Scottish Dining

I finished my visit to Edinburgh by returning to Martin Wishart and also trying his more casual restaurant The Honours. I remember being very impressed with my meal here six years ago, and Mr Wishart has not lost his touch. The restaurant showcases the best Scottish ingredients, and the technical skill in the kitchen is high. Dishes such as langoustine with parsnip and Orkney scallop with walnut pesto and curry veloute were outstanding, and the whole meal was of a very high standard. Why this does not have a second star is puzzling to me.

The Honours is a brasserie that still makes use of the high-grade produce available in Scotland, such as local beef and lovely fish and shellfish. We had an excellent meal, including a terrific tagliatelle with black truffle puree and scallops, as well as a classy tart tatin. As a bonus there is an excellent wine list and impressively trained waiting staff. The food and overall experience here would put plenty of Michelin-starred restaurants in London to shame.

St Andrews is a pretty town on the east coast of Scotland, with a highly rated university, a ruined castle and cathedral and a spectacular two mile long beach that was used for the opening sequence of the film “Chariots of Fire” (pictured). It is also a convenient base to visit the Michelin starred restaurants Peat Inn, about six miles from St Andrews, and The Cellar in Anstruther, which is ten miles away.

The Peat Inn is in a 17^th century building and was the first restaurant in Scotland to gain a Michelin star back in 1980. It had a somewhat tenuous hold on the star over the years, but these days is in different ownership. Since 2006 It has been run by Geoffrey Smeddle, who had ragained and retained a Michelin star since 2010. The building is quite atmospheric, and the menu is appealing, making the most of the local produce. We had an excellent meal here, highlights including a rich venison ragu with salsify “carbonara”, and good lobster and soufflé dishes. The staff were charming, the wine list modestly priced and the overall experience excellent.

The Cellar is an interesting little restaurant with just two chefs working in the kitchen, serving up to two dozen diners. Set in an old smokehouse, the dining has a low ceiling and cosy fire, and the menu is short but appealing. The best dish of the night was a superb scallop with duck ham, and a deeply flavoured ox cheek with chess espuma nibble. Staff were welcoming and The Cellar is definitely well worth its recently acquired Michelin star. If you are in the vicinity then do yourself a favour and try it.

I have now been to all the Michelin-starred restaurants in Scotland, most of them in the past few months. There is a single multi-starred restaurant in the form of the enjoyable Andrew Fairlie at Gleneagles, though for me both Kitchin and especially Martin Wishart were of solid two star standard. There are ten further one-stars of distinctly varying standard. There is the excellent Martin Wishart at Loch Lomond, the very good Peat Inn and Cellar and Isle of Eriska, Boath House and Number One and then the decidedly less assured Albannach, 21212 and Kinloch Lodge, and the bewildering Braidwoods. The casual restaurants of Kitchin and Wishart, respectively the Scran & Scallie and The Honours, seem to me to be better than six of the current starred places.

The Michelin 2017 guide to Spain came out. There was a third star for Lasarte in Barcelona, the second restaurant of Martin Berasategui. There are now 9 three stars in Spain, as well as 23 two stars and 154 one star restaurants. There were no demotions at the three star level.

The Michelin 2017 Belgoum guide also came out. It was a quiet year, with De Karmeliet closing but otherwise no change at the three star or two star level. There are now 2 three star restaurants in Belgium, 20 two star and 110 one stars.

A Visit to Edinburgh

Timberyard brings the latest in fashionable dining habits to Edinburgh. There is a no-choice tasting menu, some of the greenery is foraged, the waiters have tattoos, the dining room is murkily lit and the desserts have shrubbery lurking in them. This is not my kind of food, though it was harmless enough, but I was genuinely impressed by the waiters, who were terrific. However as a food experience I can throw a stick in Shoreditch and hit something similar.

Ondine is a seafood restaurant that seems to make a lot of effort to connect to its suppliers and to seek the very best Scottish fish and shellfish. The dining room is modern and attractive, and we had some good dishes, such as nice tempura squid and excellent wild sea bass. Desserts were not quite to the same level, but this was a very enjoyable meal.

The bizarrely named Scran & Scallie is the casual sister of Kitchin, a wildly successful pub-style restaurant serving an average of almost 200 customers a day. Despite the scale, the meal that we had was really excellent, in particular some lovely langoustines and fabulous hand-dived scallops. Even fish and chips was of a much higher standard than it is reasonable to expect. Service was friendly and I was really taken aback by just how good the standard of the cooking here was. If you are in Edinburgh, make a beeline for this place.

Mother India is commonly reckoned the best Indian restaurant in Glasgow, and has a more casual outlet in Edinburgh called Mother India café. The meal I had there was decent enough, the best dish being a quite good fish pakora, made with haddock farther than tilapia. However a chicken curry was nondescript, and an aloo gobi had vegetables cooked a little longer than ideal. Not a bad place overall, and inexpensive; they could make a nice paratha, though the service was terrible.

Kitchin (pictured) has expanded since I last visited six years ago, but this increase of scale had no effect on the level of cooking based on the meal that I had. It still showcased the very best of Scottish produce, from fine red deer to superb cannelloni of langoustines served with a fabulous crab veloute. The latter was old-fashioned French culinary technique as its best, reflecting Tom’s training in some very serious kitchens in France. For me this was, once again, a two star level meal.

Three Michelin guides came out recently. The Hong Kong and Macau guide was fairly uneventful, with no change at the three star level. Hong Kong now has 6 three star restaurants, 15 two stars and 41 one stars, and Macau has a pair of three stars, 5 two stars and 12 one star places. There was a brand new guide to Seoul, with two three star restaurants Goan and La Yeon, along with 3 two stars and 10 one stars, including the San Pellegrino favoured Jungsik. The New York guide appeared too, with no chage at the three star level, a brand new two star in the form of Aska, and a demotion for the much loved Gramercy Tavern. In all, New York now has 6 three star restaurants, 10 two star, and 60 one stars.

From Covent Garden to Bray

Talli Joe is an all day Indian restaurant in Covent Garden. Its chef has an unusual background, having been head chef at Benares but also having cooked at serious French restaurants such as The Waterside Inn and Koffmann. The menu ranges across India and the portions/plates are deliberately small so that you can share a decent number of dishes. I thought that the food was excellent, with superb sorpotel (a Goan pork curry) and terrific paratha the highlights of the meal. We tried quite a few dishes and there was not a dud amongst those that we sampled. After a couple of quite disappointing Indian restaurant openings recently in central London it was a real pleasure to find a place that actually exceeded my expectations.

The Waterside Inn is an iconic UK restaurant, the second to gain three stars after Le Gavroche, and having retained its three stars unchanged since 1985. It has a beautiful riverside setting in Bray, an elegant dining room looking out over the water and a particularly well-trained service brigade. Its classical cooking is just the kind of food I most like, but in recent times I have been somewhat ambivalent about the food here. Desserts have traditionally been excellent, but inconsistencies have crept in to the savoury courses over my most recent visits, culminating in me sending a warm vegetable salad dish back at a prior meal, which should never happen at a serious restaurant. On this occasion the four courses that we tried were pleasant but underwhelming. There was a very small dish of raw scallop and smoked salmon, a pleasant turbot paired with a peculiarly sweet sauce, excellent venison Wellington and a trio of decent but far from dazzling desserts. I was tempted to downgrade my score for The Waterside on my last two visits, but this meal is further evidence enough for me to reduce its rating. I have noticed other less than happy reviews from others of this restaurant recently and was really hoping that I had just been unlucky, but over the four courses there was just one dish that was worth anything close to three stars, and at this price point that is not good enough.

Sindhu is a restaurant run by Atul Kochhar (of Benares) but located not in Mayfair but in Marlow in Buckinghamshire. It is in the Compleat Angler hotel, and has a fine view out over the nearby river and Marlow bridge. The menu is ambitious and the service operation slick, but more importantly the food is very good. I particularly enjoyed a stone bass dish and a terrific black dhal, and breads were excellent too. This is not a cheap evening out, but the culinary level achieved here is high. If you are ever out in this part of the world then it is well worth a look.

Villa Geggiano occupies a tricky site near Stamford Brook bus garage, a location that has seen off a series of restaurants over the years, one of them at least having been pretty good. This restaurant is owned by an Italian wine family, and they have installed a competent chef and furnished him with better produce than you would expect in a local restaurant, much of it imported from small producers in Tuscany. The large dining room is complemented by outside seating in good weather, as well as a pleasant lounge. The food here is not aiming for anything ambitious, but the dishes are mostly well made and the service is friendly. It is certainly a very pleasant addition to the area and I wish it well. The tagliolini with white truffles that I tried this week was genuinely good.

Notes From Hipster Central

In the last few years there has been a distinct regeneration of parts of east London, with formerly run-down and downright dangerous areas now sporting artisan coffee shops, trendy restaurants and fashionable young people with tattoos, vintage spectacles and an interest in music on vinyl. From Hackney to Shoreditch there has been an explosion of bars, restaurants and cafes. No longer does Hoxton Square have the “intolerable dreary aspect” noted in 1902 by historian Walter Besant. This week I review two restaurants that have exemplified this transformation of east London from the state that I remember when I lived there in the 1980s.

Ellory in Hackney was awarded a Michelin star in its first year, even though the founding chef had already left by June, a situating highlighting the lag in printed guides like Michelin. As it happens, the same thing happened with Pidgin, with its chef Elizabeth Allen already having moved on before the star was awarded. Former sous chef Sam Kamienko now runs the kitchen at Ellory, so I can only comment on what it is like now rather than how it was in its early months. Sadly the meal that we had this week was pretty disappointing. It started well enough with a spicy broccoli dish, but nothing else in the meal approached that level. A monkfish dish was fine, but a ratte potato starter lacked flavour and a pork dish had an oddly cloying sweet sauce. Desserts were just dull – a lump of quince and a biscuit does not show a lot of imagination. Perhaps the food was much better under its previous chef, but as Sergeant Apone said in the movie “Aliens” – “whatever happened here, I think we missed it”.

By contrast Som Saa was excellent. This restaurant evolved from a pop-up and has two chefs that both worked at Nahm at The Halkin. Grilled prawns in a coconut marinade were particularly good, and also enjoyable were a som tam spicy salad and a wok-fried chicken dish. However the dish that impressed me the most was gaeng tair po, a red curry of pork shoulder with whole kaffir limes and morning glory leaves. This was complex and rich, and showed real ability behind the stoves. Spicing was punchy and vibrant, and I would certainly be happy to return here and try some of the other dishes on the menu.

Parlour is a regular haunt of mine, an unlikely hidden gem tucked away in a gloomy looking side street in Kensal Rise. Jesse Dunford Wood is a chef with a classical training but a creative streak, and a penchant for reinventing unfashionable dishes. His chicken Kiev is a delight, a crisp sphere of chicken with garlic butter served on a bed of excellent coleslaw whose dressing balances the richness of the butter. His salads are always top notch, at this visit the “vegetable” ravioli with beetroot in various forms working really well. Goat pie was hearty and even the accompanying cabbage was impeccably cooked. Parlour is a fine restaurant whose cooking trounces most trendy central London restaurants. Its out of the way location is the only thing that is causing limited recognition – if this was in Shoreditch it would be the hottest ticket in town.

The Michelin Chicago 2017 guide came out. The highlight was two stars being awarded to both Oriole and Tru. Chicago now has a pair of three stars (unchanged) in the form of Grace and Alinea, 5 two star places, and 18 one stars in total.

From Calcutta to Barnes

Calcutta Street just west of Goodge Street Tube station has an unusual and appealing menu featuring local recipes from the city of that name (now Kolkata). Some dishes were very good, such as chicken reshmi kebab and tiger prawns with coconut sauce. There were also lapses over the two meals that I tried here, such as weak desserts and dry paratha, but these were the exception rather than the rule, and in general the cooking was quite good. Service was a mess at my second visit, which was a pity, but the food itself is worth a look. However it is interesting that both this and Jikoni (with a chef from Calcutta/Kolkata) were not in the same league as the Calcutta cooking at Asma Khan's Darjeeling Express supper clubs. If the latter ever finds a permanent restaurant home then she will be one to watch.

There are few restaurants in London with good wine lists, but Noble Rot is one of those rare creatures. At this lunch I was unable to indulge in its delights, but the food was well worth the trip. Slip soles are a variant of the dish at The Sportsman, where head chef Paul Weaver used to cook, and are a delight. At this meal a Comte tart was also excellent, and both gnocchi and turbot main courses were very good. Bread is partly from Hedone and partly made from scratch, the latter including top class focaccia. This meal confirmed to me that Noble Rot is one of the best openings that London has seen in the last couple of years.

Shikumen is a rather odd creature, a smart Chinese restaurant in the upmarket Dorsett Hotel, situated on the west side of Shepherds Bush Green. This area, more the habitat of pound shops and a clutch of fabric sellers, is an unlikely location for such a place. Presumably the vast Westfield shopping complex has encouraged investors to consider the area to be up and coming, though it has some way to go. Shikumen itself is a vast restaurant seating 150, but there were just a handful of customers there at a weekday lunch. The dim sum was rather variable in quality, but the best elements were good, such as a capable har gau. "Wasabi prawns" lacked real wasabi but the shellfish was cooked well, and a venison puff was pleasant. Char sui buns were quite good though vegetable puffs were rather greasy. Overall this was a decent enough experience, though the bill was distinctly high given the quality of the food. This lunch was better than my first dinner here, but it is still hard to see how the place will prosper given its price point.

The Olympic Studios is an unlikely place to find a good restaurant – it is essentially a cinema café attached to the lovely boutique movie house Olympic Studios. Due to the calibre of its head chef Andreas Engberg the food is altogether better than you could reasonably expect – even the bread was made from scratch at our last visit, and very good it was too. Guinea fowl with pink fir potatoes was capable, though iman bayildi was rather lacking in spice. If you are ever in Barnes, pop in and give this quirky place a try.

The San Francisco 2017 Michelin Guide came out. Quince was promoted to 3 stars (seriously?) and Lazy Bear to two stars. There are now six 3 stars, seven 2 stars and 41 one star restaurants in the Bay Area. The fact that restaurants like Campton Place are given two stars, or indeed one, to me seriously undermines the credibility of the Guide. Quince is a nice restaurant, but a brief tour of Italy would reveal a raft of restaurants more deserving of elevation, at least in my view. An objective inspector who compared this with, say Aimo e Nadia or Don Alfonso 1890 would surely be left scratching their head.

The Kyoto and Osaka guide also came out. No new 3 stars, and a demotion for Fujiya 1935. In this guide there are now 10 three star places (7 in Kyoto, 3 in Osaka), along with 45 two star (25 in Kyoto, 20 in Osaka, plus a ryokan) and 132 one stars (64 in Oyoto, 68 in Osaka, plus two ryokans).

London Restaurants New and Old

Jikoni is a fusion Asian/British restaurant that has opened in Fitzrovia to considerable fanfare. It is run by a very successful cookbook writer called Ravinder Bhogal, who has also appeared on television. I am especially fond of Indian food, having visited this fascinating country eighteen times so far, and so I was particularly looking forward to trying her British take on Indian dishes. Certainly the menu was very appealing, with some intriguing and unusual dish ideas, while the dining room was quirky but attractive and the staff charming. Sadly the meal that we ate left a lot to be desired. There were some decent dishes for sure, but nothing beyond pleasant, and there were also some pretty serious technical problems, such as badly overcooked lobster. Even with this dish graciously taken off the bill, the cost here is still quite high, and for me far too high for the level of food that I encountered. This restaurant had some very positive press, so I am not sure whether I went on a bad night or whether I just had overly high expectations. However if I compare this to a recent supper club (called Darjeeling Express) by Asma Khan, an Indian chef who has lived in Britain for many years, the latter’s food was in a much higher class than what appeared tonight. Jikoni is actually next-door to Trishna, and it is hard for me to see why anyone would walk past that excellent restaurant to eat here based on what I ate.

El Pirata is a tapas restaurant in Mayfair that has been running for over two decades, no mean achievement in a city where the longevity of restaurants can all too often resemble that of a mayfly (consider the nearby 8 Mount Street site, which will shortly see its third restaurant in a year). It is not a flashy place and serves conventional tapas, such as fried prawns in garlic sauce and croquettas. It cooks these quite capably, and although it is not going to set the world alight it is a pleasant enough restaurant. It is a spot to consider if looking for a moderately affordable meal in Mayfair, not a common thing to find these days.

L’Amorosa served me another excellent meal this week. After some enjoyable nibbles involving ham, figs and Parmesan I had a particularly good beetroot salad featuring both regular and golden beetroot, followed by an excellent papardelle dish with porcini mushrooms, the pasta spot on and the flavour of the mushrooms excellent. When the kitchen is on form, as it was tonight, it can produce Italian food better than almost any in London, yet the prices here are very modest.

The Switzerland Michelin Guide 2017 came out, with no change at the three star level, two new two stars and two demotions. There is now a trio of three star places, 19 two stars, and 95 one star restaurants in Switzerlland. This country, incidentally, has the largest number of Michelin stars per head of population if you ignore city states such as Monaco.

A visit to Flanders

Ghent is a university town in Flemish northwest Belgium that is much less well known than Bruges, yet for me is every bit as pretty (pictured). In this region are several interesting restaurants, one of which is Nuance in Duffel. Nuance gained a Michelin star a year after opening and a second the following year in 2010 – which is pretty rapid progress given that its chef was 26 years old at the time. The cooking is sophisticated and draws on the produce of the region, in particular the excellent vegetables grown locally. The meal that we experienced was impressive right from the nibbles, the terrific bread, through to the careful treatment of both fish and meat. Only at the dessert stage did things flounder a little, though even then there was one lovely dish. Service was charming and if you are ever in this part of the world then do yourself a favour and make a detour and head for Nuance.

Blandford Comptoir in Marylebone has an experienced chef and offers an appealing menu. There was a particularly good cep risotto, as well as good quail and enjoyable white onion and truffle ravioli. A particularly fine lemon tart rounded off a very good meal that was spoiled only by absurdly high noise levels, making conversation even to one’s dining companion quite difficult. Adding music to this cacophony was unfortunate. Prices were not excessive and the experience was very good other than the need for ear protection.

Citrus and Spice is a neighbourhood restaurant in Chiswick that recently changed hands and now serves Middle Eastern food. With the exception of one dish, the cooking was very capable – an iman bayaldi a very enjoyable rendition of this classic. The chef/owner has clearly gone to some trouble to source well, with surprisingly good Turkish bread and very good baklava. This is not trying to be more than a local restaurant but it was better than I was expecting and is a pleasing addition to the local area.

The inaugural Michelin Guide to Washington D.C. was released. There was much scratching of heads about this, since there would appear to be other areas of the US more deserving of Michelin's attention than the nation's capital. However Michelin is not a charity, and can be influenced by commercial considerations and, in some cases, tourist board money. The concentration of politicans in Washington would seem a natural explanation. There were three two stars and nine one stars, so the guide must be more a pamphlet than a book. The two stars were Minibar (the flagship of Jose Andre, who also runs the dismal and overpriced Jaleo in Las Vegas), Pineapple & Pearls and also The Inn at Little Washington, which is actually the best part of two hours outside the city, but has an excellent reputatoin.

Two High Profile London Openings

Elystan Street is where Phil Howard has gone after leaving The Square after more than two decades. It is located in the old Tom Aikens premises, though the décor is much more casual, as is the food. This is not the fine dining of The Square, but a much more casual and stripped back affair. A lemon tart was genuinely lovely, but other than that the dishes that I tried were good rather than dazzling. The problem is that the prices are a very long way from casual – three courses and coffee with no drinks at all would set you back around £80 or so with service, which puts the food in the price league of some pretty elaborate restaurants while actually delivering (lemon tart aside) merely nice, pleasant British dishes. Phil Howard deservedly commands considerable respect and affection and Elystan Street will doubtless prosper, but although I enjoyed the meal here I really wonder about its value for money factor.

Eneko Atxa is the head chef and owner of three Michelin star Azurmendi near Bilbao, so his first London restaurant was always going to be of interest. It is in the One Aldwych hotel where Axis used to be. There is a chef from Azurmendi in charge of the kitchen, though the food is of a much simpler style than at Azurmendi. On this visit it was rather a let down, with one or two nice dishes but also some distinctly average ones, with the odd technical problem thrown in. Service was charming but the food itself was distinctly ordinary. It was early days and perhaps things will improve in time, but the kitchen has a lot of work to do in my view.

Mexican food in London is generally shockingly bad, for reasons that elude me: it does not require particularly exotic ingredients or esoteric cooking techniques, yet almost every Mexican restaurant that opens seems to target the “drunken student” market. Killer Tomato in Shepherds Bush is an interesting deviation from this norm. It is run by an Englishman who has travelled in Mexico, has an Australian chef, and does not attempt to claim “authenticity”. Instead it focuses on producing really good tacos. To be sure, it is not in the league of Punto MX in Madrid, but the dishes that I tried over two visits were very good and excellent value. The crayfish tail tacos and the sticky chicken in particular were lovely dishes. This is probably the best Mexican food to be found in London at present, and a bargain to boot.

The UK Michelin guide for 2017 was published. The Fat Duck regained its 3 stars, and Raby Hunt in Darlington was promoted to two stars. Otherwise there were few real surprises at the two star level. The Square (sold) and Hibiscus (closed) lost their two stars for obvious reasons, as did Michael Wignall at the Latymer (the eponymous chef is now at Gideligh Park). At the one star level, I was very pleased to see The Ritz finally get its long overdue star, and was delighted for the Crown at Burchetts Green, a one-man operation not far from Marlow. In total there were 18 new one stars and 16 demotions (including closures). In London there were stars for Ellory, The Ninth, Pidgin, Five Fields, Trinity, Celeste and Veeraswamy. There are now 4 three star restaurants, 20 two star restaurants (plus Patrick Guilbaud in Dublin) and 136 1 one star restaurants in the UK, with a further 11 in Ireland. Other than the continued snubbing of Hedone, which to me is evidently better than most of the current two star restaurants, there was less to object to in this UK Michelin guide than for several years.

Two Great Restaurants

Hotel de Ville in Crissier opened in 1971 and first gained three Michelin stars under Fredy Girardet, and successfully retained these under Philippe Rochat and then once more under Benoit Violier. The latter tragically committed suicide recently, and the kitchen is now in the capable hands of the long-term former sous chef here, Franck Giovannini. I have been fortunate to eat meals here in all four of these chef eras, and the impressive thing is how little the standard has changed. The cooking is classical French, with proper pools of painstakingly made sauce rather than artful dots on a plate. However this no culinary museum in the style of Paul Bocuse: the dishes move with the times, and incorporate modern ideas and techniques where appropriate. This most recent meal was superb, right from a dazzling summer vegetable veloute with caviar as a nibble, through a progression of fabulous dishes: egg and porcini, perfect turbot and then duck, culminating in a fine dessert. Service is as slick as ever here, and is much warmer and friendlier than it ever was in the Girardet era. The food here is as good as at any restaurant in the world.

I next ventured back to the Amalfi Coast, whose best restaurant is perched on the top of a hillside in a little village called Sant Agata. Getting here up the steep, winding hillside roads is quite a challenge, but once you are here you can relax on the property and enjoy the hospitality of the family that run Don Alfonso 1890. The restaurant’s strength is its ingredients, with most of the vegetables served here grown on the family farm a few miles away, strung out over a hillside facing Capri (pictured). The Amalfi lemons, aubergines, peppers and above all the dazzling tomatoes here are as good as you will taste anywhere. The best dishes for me are actually the simplest ones: spaghetti puttanesca highlights the dazzling tomatoes, which are picked daily from the farm at their ripest and brought up to the kitchens. Guinea fowl with pistachios was excellent, as were many other dishes that we tried over a total of five meals here on this visit. The property itself has many charms, including a remarkable wine cellar housed in an ancient tunnel that remained undiscovered until the 1980s but has been dated back to the 6^th century BC. There is a genuine sense of welcome from the staff here, who seem to really want their guests to have a great time. Fortunately, with the fabulous produce at the disposal of the kitchen, this is easy enough to do.

Sushi in Wimbledon

Takahashi is Wimbledon has a chef that trained in Japan and later worked at Nobu over here. The menu, as often with Japanese restaurants in London, flits about much more widely than is typical in Japan, where specialisation can be remarkably niche (some restaurants in Tokyo serve just eel, for example). Here there is sushi and sashimi but also Japanese beef, tempura and grilled food. It is difficult to replicate the experience of Japanese food in London, since so much depends on the ingredients, and Japanese ingredients are arguably the best on earth. Takahashi does not help itself by cutting corners: no freshly grated wasabi root here, but powdered coloured horseradish from a tube, which is much cheaper. This aside, Takahashi served me a good meal, and I wish them well. Wimbledon is not exactly awash with fine restaurants, and it is nice to see a decent place opening up around here.

Zafferano was where Giorgio Locatelli made his reputation in London, gaining a Michelin star for the restaurant before going his own way with Locanda Locatelli. Andy Needham continued the standard, retaining the star until a coulple of years ago, when he also decided to plough his own furrow in the much more informal (and cheaper) local l’Amorosa. Daniele Camera is the chef here these days, and although the Michelin star has not returned, the restaurant still does plenty of business in the heart of Belgravia. The pasta dishes continue to be good, with miniature ravioli with sage having lovely texture. However a summer salad was pretty ordinary, which is a pity since salads used to be a strong suit of the kitchen. Dessert was better – an excellent peach millefeuille being most enjoyable. Service continues to be smooth, though the wine list, never a bargain, has become costlier and costlier. It is the inexorably increasing prices that are the main issue here as far as I am concerned.

The Duke of Sussex is a Victorian era pub in Chiswick whose food is more interesting than one might imagine. There are pub staples like fish and chips for sure, but in general the food offered here is Spanish. They make a capable tortilla, and the seafood paella here may not be a purists’s idea of a classic rendition but it is enjoyable. They make their own bread in the tiny kitchen, and a sea bass dish that I tried at this visit was accurately cooked. The Duke of Sussex is not a destination restaurant, but is reliable and good value, and the best gastropub in the local area.

In other news, the a brand new Michelin Guide to Shanghai was released. Michelin has announced several new guides (other forthcoming ones are to Washington D.C. and Seoul, as well as the recently released Singapore guide). At this stage it seems unclear whether these will become regular annual guides or "special edition" (one off) guides where the stars expire after a year and there is no update issued. Examples of this approach were the Hokkaido guide and the Hiroshima guide, for example. Even regular guides are not guaranteed long life - the Las Vegas and Los Angeles guide was dropped after two years due to poor sales, and Austria no longer has a dedicated guide for similar reasons. In this guide Tang Court was awarded three stars, and there were seven two stars (including the popular Ultraviolet) and 11 one star places. Given the standard of Tang Court in Hong Kong, I am not filled with anticipation about the quality of its spin-off in Shanghai.

From Henley to The Harwood

Sosharu is the latest in the burgeoning Jason Atherton restaurant empire. Although its head chef is Romanian, the food is izakaya style Japanese – the chef worked in Japan for over a year at some serious restaurants. The dishes are at the modern end of the Japanese spectrum – no sushi, but good tuna sashimi, an enjoyable spicy tuna roll and pleasing chicken karaage, a Japanese comfort food. Just one dish was not quite what it might have been, but overall this was an enjoyable experience, and it seems to be doing very well just a few months after opening.

Hurley House is a new boutique hotel near Henley. They have recruited Michael Chapman as head chef from the Michelin starred Royal Oak, as well as an experienced front of house manager from the Harwood Arms. The premises is a rebuild of an old pub, and the new establishment seems not to have quite made up its mind as to whether it is a pub at heart or the country house hotel that the name suggests. I went a few weeks after it opened and perhaps this was too early. Some dishes, such as a liver parfait starter and a crab salad, were good, but there were some problems too, as with a flawed grouse Wellington and an unbalanced dessert. Service was good and the wine list is great, and doubtless the kitchen will settle down, but at present the cooking seemed like a work in progress.

The Harwood Arms is the only Michelin starred pub in London, and the meal here this week showed why that is. Norfolk quail with black pudding Scotch egg was outstanding, and the Harwood’s speciality of game was showcased in a good main course of fallow deer. Technique is strong here too, shown with a superb raspberry soufflé that was beautifully cooked. Add in an unusually good wine list and friendly service and you have one of the most enjoyable places to eat in London.

Enoteca Relocated

The original Enoteca Turi was a fixture in Putney for many years, serving good Italian food and having an unusually thoughtful wine list – its owner has a WSET diploma so knows his way around a cellar. After a rent hike the restaurant shut up shop and moved to Pimlico, where I am pleased to say it seems to be flourishing. The pasta is good here, shown in a spaghettini with crab, tomato and chilli, the risotto seemed to me made from scratch and had pleasing texture, and the fish dish that we tried was accurately cooked. Prices are a touch high but the food is of a higher standard than most London Italian restaurants.

Beijing Dumpling in Lisle Street advertises itself well by having a little kitchen in the front of the restaurant facing the street in which chefs roll out dumplings. With some Chinatown places buying in their dim sum from catering suppliers, it is comforting to know that at least the ones served here are made fresh on the premises. The dining room is very basic and has service to match, though prices are moderate. I have to say that the dim sum that I tried were pleasant rather than particularly special – the texture of the xiao long bao was rather disappointing compared to the best of the breed, such as the terrific version you can eat at A. Wong. However if you are in Chinatown then you could certainly do worse.

Italian cuisine is highly regional, though you would never guess that from most Italian restaurants in London. Totide is an exception, featuring the cooking and produce of Emilia Romagna, the area of northern Italy centred in Bologna. Since this is the area that brought us balsamic vinegar, Parmesan and tortellini it is an excellent place to dive into regional cuisine, with ingredients brought over from Italy weekly. I was particularly impressed with two pasta dishes, which were as good as you are likely to find anywhere in the capital. Desserts were of a lower standard, but at a modest price point this restaurant deserves more attention than it will likely receive in this quiet street in Putney.

Old Favourites

Local to me is the casual 197 Chiswick Fire Station, a mix of bar and restaurant located in a busy spot on the Chiswick High Road. It served “Antipodean influenced” food, though quite what this really means is hard to tell. The food that we tried was decent enough, the best dish being a chicken, tarragon and leek pie. Vegetarian tacos was also fine, though limp chips were a bit disappointing. This was a decent enough neighbourhood place, and certainly there is much worse food to be eaten in the area than this, but it is not aiming to be a destination restaurant.

Darbaar is buried away in a truly obscure pedestrianised street not far from Liverpool Street. This awkward location must make it tough for the restaurant to attract custom, which is a shame as the food there is genuinely top notch. Dishes such as chicken “naanza” (a sort of Indian pizza) show originality, and the depth of flavour in a beef vindaloo at this latest visit was impressive. Service is fine and the large dining room is smart. I worry about the long-term future of the place but if you are in the City then go there – the food there is as good as at any Indian restaurant in London.

The Sportsman is an old favourite, a restaurant that more than any in the UK is directly linked to its locale. Stephen Harris grows vegetables at the back of the pub, makes the salt from seawater gathered from the nearby beach, and buys pork from the adjoining farm. Almost everything served here can be traced to within a couple of miles of Seasalter. What I particularly like is that this ultra-locality is not rammed down customer’s throats or done to be trendy: the dishes here are appealing and simple, and there is no sense of the place being “worthy”. Instead it is just a delightful place to eat, and excellent value to boot.

I notched up by 65^th visit to Hedone, which was on good form and served up some truly impressive dishes, including seasonal grouse, lovely lobster and dazzling millefeuille for dessert. As ever, it is the focus on high quality ingredients that sets Hedone apart, though there was plenty of culinary technique on display in the raspberry textures dessert. Hedone has been belatedly recognised by The Good Food Guide as one of the top restaurants in the UK, coming 8^th in Britain in the 2017 guide, which has just been published. By comparison, it is rated 4^th in the National Restaurant Awards (voted for by industry insiders) and is one of just four UK restaurants to make the global San Pellegrino Top 100 restaurants (at 60^th in the world). Michelin still laughably scores it one star – maybe this year they will finally wake up and give it the second star it richly deserves.

From Anglo to Angler

Angler in the South Place hotel (pictured) has a new chef in the form of Gary Foulkes, previously head chef at the two star Michelin The Square. Angler has a light, airy dining room and its carpet means noise levels are lower than many places, with the food emphasis being on seafood, as the name suggests. This meal was a rather erratic affair, with excellent nibbles and starters, pleasant main courses but poor vegetable side dishes. The product quality used here is good but prices are very high indeed, both for the food and wine, so any little problems are grating. Perhaps things are more consistent when the new head chef is actually in the kitchen, but then customers are paying the same whether he is or not. Overall it was still an enjoyable meal, but it felt less reliable than under its previous chef Tony Fleming.

Anglo is a new Farringdon venture from a chef who has worked in some serious kitchens. It offers a short modern British menu, with good ingredients and with excellent bread made from scratch in the kitchen. Presentation was attractive but more importantly the flavours were good, with for example some genuinely lovely broad beans that accompanied smoked pork neck. This was an assured meal and one of the best new London openings I have been to for a while. I am sure it will do well.

Madhus at The Sheraton is the Heathrow sister of the long established Madhu’s in Southall. It is much smarter than its older sister, and has a key advantage in the kitchen in the form of a robata grill, which imparts a pleasing charcoal flavour to some dishes. An example is the tandoori lamb chop, which is the best I have tried, the smoky hint from the grill creating a delightful flavour. Another consistently excellent dish is the methi gobi, cauliflower florets flavoured with fenugreek, which retain their texture and are suffused with spices. Other dishes are good here too but these are the stand-outs for me. If you are ever in the Heathrow area and looking for a meal then head here.

L’Amorosa is a neighbourhood Italian in Ravenscourt Park run by Andy Needham, previously head chef at Zafferano when it had a Michelin star. It is good value and the pasta and risotto dishes in particular are excellent. Andy uses many of the same suppliers as when he was in Belgravia, and so you are getting classy food but at a very local price. This has become a regular haunt of mine, and offers Italian food as good as many much pricier venues.

The Food of the Highlands

This week I visited the Isle of Skye to try Kinloch Lodge. To get to Skye you need to either take the road bridge or a ferry. Bear in mind that the latter may be picturesque but can get very busy in peak season and requires advance booking. As some diners have discovered, it is a long journey from the ferry port to the road bridge if things go awry and the ferry is full. The restaurant has a few nice rooms and is set in a pretty location on the south east of Skye. The dining room is elegant, the building originally a clan hunting lodge and in family ownership for centuries. With all this fine atmosphere I was hopeful of a meal to match, but to be honest the food was something of a let down. The chef was away doing a cookery demonstration, which may not have helped, but although there were some execution problems on the evening I was more concerned with the fundamental design of some of the dishes. A lovely scallop did not need a slice of Parma ham and an overpowering peanut sauce, and the delicate flavour of a sea bass and crab mousse was lost amongst the clanging sweetness of a butternut squash sauce, the latter a vegetable wildly out of season. There were one or two nice dishes such as a good cured salmon dish with seafood mousse, which made the overall experience rather frustrating.

The most northerly Michelin starred restaurant in the UK is Albannach in the pretty fishing village of Lochinver. To drive there you go through a national park with some stunning, rugged scenery (illustrated). The dining experience feels more like a dinner party than a restaurant in some ways, as guests are seated at the same time and are served each dish together, although tables are separate rather than communal. The owners are both self-taught chefs and share the duties in the kitchen. The food was actually pretty good, with an excellent crab fishcake with avocado for example, and tender lobster with leaves from the garden. The cooking style is very simple but none the worse for that, though the website’s emphasis on the growing of local ingredients in the croft behind the building was somewhat undermined by the use of Peruvian asparagus. The overall experience was somewhat diminished by absurdly amateurish service, but if you can put this to one side then you may enjoy the pleasant food.

Near Nairn in northern Scotland (not too far from Inverness) is The Boath House, a boutique hotel and restaurant in a Georgian mansion set in nine acres of grounds. The restaurant has had the same chef for fourteen years, and we enjoyed a very pleasant meal, with a highlight being an impressively deeply flavoured celeriac soup. Service was good and the dining room is elegant, and the overall standard of the cooking was consistent.

At the time of writing there are 13 one Michelin starred restaurants in Scotland (plus Andrew Fairlie with two), and following this trip there are just three that I have yet to try – all clustered near St Andrews, and one of these (Sangsters) appears to have just closed. Although as with any such collection some restaurants are better than others, there are certainly some gems amongst these as documented last week, and the scenery in Scotland is undeniably spectacular.

A Trip to Scotland

Paul Kitching gained a Michelin star at Juniper in Altrincham before moving to Edinburgh in 2009. Set in an elegant town house, the restaurant 21212 offers quite innovative dishes without ever straying into molecular madness. Some dishes worked well, such as a nibble of sweet corn puree, gazpacho and mustard, and an odd-sounding but fairly successful dish of chicken, duck and chocolate. However the kitchen had a tendency to cram ever more elements on to each plate, and inevitably some of these are better than others. There was, for example a recurring theme of “crisps” being anything but that, which was sloppy. The meal was enjoyable in part, but it is not exactly a bargain, so any slips that do occur become irritating. It was rather frustrating as I thought some dishes were quite clever, but with many dishes walking a culinary tightrope, it is perhaps not entirely surprising when some fall off.

I was very impressed by my meal some time ago at Martin Wishart in Ediburgh, and he has since opened a second location in a hotel on the banks of Loch Lomond. Some chef’s second restaurants can turn out to be disappointing, especially when tucked away in a large hotel, but any thoughts that this might be a “bistro by the numbers” were dispelled when the food started to arrive. The meal was of a very high standard, starting with superior nibbles such as beef tartare with horseradish cream on a rice cracker, through to an absolutely outstanding foie gras mousse with apricots and oloroso jelly. The service was terrific, and the meal felt more two star than one star level to me, just as the original Leith flagship restaurant does.

The Isle of Eriska has a pretty setting on a little island on the west coast of Scotland, and makes an effort to use as many local ingredients as possible. Some places rather play lip service to the “local” mantra, but here just about every garnish was grown on the island, and even the chanterelles were picked amongst the trees on the property. The restaurant has a fairly new chef and the meal was very good, with a dish of langoustines and pork cheek a real highlight. Service was good and the wine list moderately priced. You can stay at the property or at the nearby Barcaldine castle, a charming little place with a handful of rooms accessed via a stone spiral staircase, and which comes complete with secret passage and dungeon, though the rumoured ghosts never put in an appearance.

Back in London

Jia in South Kensington serves unusually good dim sum at surprisingly low prices. Green chive dumpling was particularly good and the scallop cheung fun avoiding the greasiness that can so often afflict this classic dim sum. The standard was pretty consistent and Jia certainly seems to represent excellent value for money. The level of dim sum here is up with the better places in London, and I would certainly recommend it if you are in the area. It seems completely off the media radar, whether that be social or otherwise.

Bernardi's is an Italian restaurant run by Australians with Italian heritage, in a quiet street just north of Marble Arch. I found the menu slightly less appealing than many Italian restaurants, though service was very friendly. The food itself was a rather mixed affair, with good bream (pictured) and a nice pizzette but also one or two less successful things such as a curiously disappointing peach dessert. It was doing well but it seems to me to be quite a lot of money given the somewhat erratic cooking.

The Chipping Forecast is, not surprisingly given its punning name, a chippie, and in this case one that seems to take some trouble to use sustainably caught fish from Cornwall. Salmon fishcakes were good, and although the food overall is not earth shattering it is certainly better than my local chippie, albeit at a higher price. As a bonus, there is a nice garden tucked away at the back for use in good weather.

The very successful Bao in Soho now has a sister in Fitzrovia. The format is the same – no reservations, fluffy Taiwanese steamed dumpling plus assorted dishes such as excellent fried chicken. Not everything is to the standard of the dumplings, but prices are reasonable and doubtless the queue outside the new restaurant will soon be as long as the one outside the Lexington Street branch.

Tangawizi is a regular haunt, serving excellent north Indian food from modest premises in a parade of shops at the Twickenham end of Richmond Bridge. The rich curries here have plenty of flavour, and the vegetable dishes are just as good as the meats – they serve a fine aloo gobi here, for example. The waiters are particularly friendly and welcoming, and although the décor will not be winning any awards, the cooking speaks for itself.

Revisiting Hong Kong

I was curious to revisit a pair of restaurants that I had tried several years ago but had felt over-rated, to see whether things had developed and whether they now justified their three star rating. Tang Court is a long running Cantonese restaurant in a hotel in Kowloon, and serves pleasant food in a smart setting, albeit at a high price. I was pretty unimpressed when I came here last, but this time arranged a tasting menu with a local foodie friend who knows the place well, in order to showcase some of their best dishes so as to show the restaurant in the best possible light. The meal this time was a little better than the one I ate here previously, but only a little, and it still seemed to me to be so far off three star level as to be laughable.

Bo Innovation is another restaurant that Michelin have elevated to three stars after a bumpy road in its ratings. My last meal here was pretty ordinary, but again it seemed fair to give it another chance and see whether the food had developed. This restaurant’s flamboyant chef/owner describes his food as “X-treme cuisine”, and it is essentially Cantonese food with molecular gastronomy techniques applied. To be honest this seems pretty dated now, however innovative it must have seemed a decade ago. It was decent enough food, but at an absurdly high price, and the half empty dining room suggested that I am not the only person to have this view. Again, this is absurdly far removed from the three stars that it possesses.

I had more luck off the Michelin circuit. The Chairman has no stars whatsoever yet is highly recommended by locals for its cuisine and its unusual attention to trying to use local ingredients where practical, including from their own farm on the New Territories. A vibrant Sichuan chicken dish was boldly spiced and good to eat, as was prawn fried rice and carefully steamed gai lan with ginger. Service was friendly, and the although the dining room is quite nondescript the food was very enjoyable and good value.

Arcane is the new home of Shane Osborn, who used to be head chef of Pied a Terre some years ago. I had an excellent meal here, with several classy dishes including an excellent one with asparagus and black truffles. For this not to have a single star when so many places in the city don’t deserve their stars at all seems bizarre.

I have written before about how the Michelin Hong Kong seems to be far and away the least reliable Michelin country guide, and this trip further confirmed this opinion. Some ratings seem reasonable, others utterly barking. It is unclear to me what the underlying reason for these erratic ratings is, given that is now been running for several years. To allow such obvious problems to continue, whatever the true reason, seems to me to undermine the reputation of the Michelin guides in general.

From Suffolk to Macau

A friend’s birthday party took me to Suffolk, and while there I took the opportunity to try a couple of local restaurants. The Unruly Pig is a pub in Woodbridge that has taken the place of another that burned down a couple of years ago. Run by a former high flying City lawyer, the Unruly Pig has cooking that is a bit more ambitious than a typical pub, with an enjoyable pig burger for example. It was relaxed and enjoyable, and the food was mostly of a good standard.

The Great House at Lavenham is a more formal dining room set in an attractive historic building within this picturesque village. This had some enjoyable dishes, such as an odd-sounding guinea fowl with lobster sauce, and carefully made gratin dauphinoise, as well as a good almond and apricot dessert. It is not exactly cheap, but is quite a grand setting and has service to match.

After lunch in Suffolk I flew the same day a bit further afield: to Macau. A former Portuguese colony but since 1999 a special territory of China, Macau was a former trading post but is known for gambling, which has been legal here since 1850. It is essentially the Las Vegas of Asia but bigger, with gambling revenues in 2014 seven times that of Las Vegas, and making up half of the local economy. There are remnants of the colonial days, with a few historic buildings dotted around in a notionally historic part of Macau, though in truth there are really just a few old buildings surrounded by modern ones, so this is not an “old town” of the type you see in Krakow, Tallinn or Prague. It is a one hour ferry trip from Hong Kong (and requires a passport for entry even if you start your journey in Hong Kong).

From a food perspective, the gambling money has attracted some high-end restaurants. Apart from the pair of three star restaurants, The Eight and Robuchon au Dome, the 2016 guide listed four two star restaurants and ten one star places. I had already tried Zi Yat Heen, an on this visit tried the two newest two star venues. Jade Dragon served very capable Cantonese food in a very smart setting. There were plenty of luxury ingredients on the menu, and good technique shown in excellent dim sum as well as a terrific crab hot and sour soup.

Tasting Room is a French restaurant with quite ambitious cooking and attention to detail with regards to sourcing. A star dish was live abalone sliced very thin and acting as the ”pasta” in a modern carbonara dish. High quality turbot came with Comte emulsion and was another example of the effort shown here to get hold of top notch produce, whether from France or Japan.

Additionally, Shinji is a sushi restaurant linked to a well known one star sushi restaurant in Tokyo called Kanesaka. All the fish is flown in from Tsukiji market, and even the wooden counter was made from Japanese cypress. The fish quality was unsurprisingly good, and there were small touches such as the use of freshly grated wasabi root. The head sushi chef was friendly and knew his stuff, the rice used being as high quality as the fish.

In other news, Michelin released one of its new guides, in this case to Singapore. At this stage it is unclear whether this will be a regular guide or a "special edition" one-off. There was a solitary three star in the form of Joel Robuchon, six two stars (Andre, Atelier Robuchon, Odette, Shinsen Hanten, Shoukouwa and Les Amis) and 22 one stars. I was rather surprised that Waku Ghin was awarded just one star, and the guide shunned some other generally well-thought of places such as Burnt Ends and Tippling Club.

Back to London

The Ritz is one of my regular haunts in London. It has a gloriously grand dining room, and serves food of a high standard whose quality is obvious to everyone except Michelin, who consistently snub it. At my most recent meal I had a superb John Dory dish with a terrific champagne sauce that showed superb balance. Beef Wellington (pictured) was delightful, and both desserts that I tried demonstrated the real skill of the pastry section here. Even at a midweek lunch the Ritz is always packed, showing that in this case the public has more sense than Michelin.

Poppy’s is a tiny Thai café in Hammersmith, whose eccentric décor I found rather charming. The cooking here is pretty good, with a very well-made red curry with prawns, and carefully cooked bak choi amongst other dishes. The prices are very low indeed, and you can bring booze in for a nominal £1 charge. This is not a destination restaurant, but if you are in the area then you could do a great deal worse.

Café Monico is a Soho House venture slap in the middle of Shaftesbury Avenue, in what used to be a nightclub. They have done a good job with the large dining room, spread over two floors with a relaxed, airy feel. The menu is appealing, as it always is with Soho House restaurants. The cooking was a bit more erratic than it might have been, with a very enjoyable rigatoni with lamb ragu, but also a soggy haddock and chips and a dessert that needed more flavour from its notionally main ingredient. Service was good but this felt as if it was still bedding in, even four months after opening.

The Reform Social and Grill has nothing to do with the venerable Reform Club. It is within the Mandeville Hotel in Marylebone, offering fairly traditional British fare, with a Josper grill at the heart of its kitchen. Sadly, an expensive piece of kitchen equipment does not in itself equate to having staff that can take advantage of it. We had a generally shocking meal, with a recurring theme of dried out and overcooked dishes, redeemed only by some surprisingly competent chips. Throw in a laughable wine list and this is a restaurant to avoid. The paying public had clearly reached their own conclusions, with a virtually empty dining room (other than a handful of what appeared to be hotel guests) on a Thursday night in central London.

I also sneaked in another lunch at the lovely Parlour, though on this occasion I didn’t write up a full review (there are plenty of prior ones). Suffice it to say that Jesse Dunford Wood’s playful yet precise cooking deserves a much wider audience that it currently gets. It is superb value, and in the summer it has an attractive garden at the back of the pub.

Northern Skies

Oslo now has six Michelin starred restaurants in addition to Maaemo, which in the 2016 guide was promoted from two stars to the ultimate three. The city itself is beside the water, with a mediaeval fortress (pictured) and port area, and a museum dedicated to the Viking era, including some well-preserved Viking longships from a thousand years ago. These days Norway is a petro economy, its oil reserves supporting a high level of infrastructure. Norway is one of the richest countries in the world, right up there with the likes of Kuwait and Brunei, so as a visitor expect prices that reflect this, though it seemed to me no costlier than Denmark. Incidentally, if you want to get an insight into Scandinavia society you could do worse than read the slightly controversial book “The Almost Nearly Perfect People“ by Michael Booth, an Englishman living in Denmark who has a breezy writing style and some interesting insights into the societies of this region.

Maaemo itself was quite impressive, with an airy dining room and modern cooking that emphasises the best in Norwegian produce. An example of this was a spectacularly good scallop dish, the scallops in their shell shown to us just before they were cooked. There were plenty of artfully tweezered flowers in some of the dishes, but such presentation was not at the expense of flavour. Even desserts were, whisper it, actually sweet, with strawberries rather than the weird sweet/savoury combinations that dominate New Nordic cooking. While the dishes were rarely at quite the level of those I had eaten recently at Pic and Troisgros, they were nonetheless very good indeed. I found this a very enjoyable meal indeed, as well as it being technically superb.

While in Oslo I also visited Statholdergaarden, a one star restaurant and the first in Norway ever to receive that accolade. It serves quite classical food, exactly the kind of food that I particularly like, and it had a lovely dining room. Unfortunately the cooking was not very consistent at the meal that I tried, and there were one or two dishes that seemed inappropriate to the general classical culinary theme. Worse, there were slips, such as a slightly overcooked scallop and distinctly overcooked duck, and at this price level even small technical slips are hard to forgive.

Additionally I tried a casual pizzeria called Brunello, which although recommended locally was actually pretty ordinary, and just demonstrated how good places like Santa Maria and Franco Manca in London really are. Oslo is a very pleasant city to visit, and Maaemo in particular is well worthy going to.

Following the Maaemo meal I have now been to all 113 of the restaurants in the world that currently have three Michelin stars. There are 63 in Europe, 13 in the USA, 8 in China and the rest in Japan. I first completed a tour around all the three star restaurants in the world in 2004, when there were just 49 places to try, all in Europe. Of course it is a moving target, with guides now coming out from September through to March, and occasionally outside this window (such as the one-off guide to Hokkaido that was published in 2012). Each year Michelin promote some restaurants and demote others, so the total number of three star places fluctuates. In the 2016 season there were nine promotions (Kohaku, Manresa, Tang Court, Cheval Blanc, The Table Kevin Fehling, Cinq, Plaza Athenee, Geranium, Maaemo) and five demotions: the Fat Duck was closed last year, and La Belle Epoque’s chef Kevin Fehling moved to Hamburg, Amador shut its doors while both Le Meurice and Le Relae Bernard Loiseau were straight demotions. Since 2004 there have been additions and demotions like this every year, and I have caught up with Michelin in 2008, 2012, 2014 and again now. In total I have actually visited 164 separate three star restaurants over that twelve-year period, taking into account all the restaurants that no longer have three stars but once did during that time.

As can be seen, on average roughly four places per year are either demoted from the three star level or, in cases like Las Vegas, a guide was dropped entirely. So, I now have a brief period where I am completely caught up with Michelin, just until the next guide comes out. This may be the 2017 UK guide, expected to be published at the end of September 2016. However there are seemingly some brand new guides appearing in the new 2017 season – to Singapore, Seoul, Washington DC and Shanghai. At this stage it is unclear whether these guides will become regular ones that are updated yearly, or merely one off guides, such as those to Hokkaido and Hiroshima, where the new stars flicker for a year and then expire after twelve months. The exact publication timing of these new guides is not yet public as far as I am aware.

The City of Spires

Copenhagen has become quite a dining hub in the last decade, with the prominence of Noma, which opened in late 2004, leading to other restaurants serving “New Nordic” cuisine. No less than 19 have a single Michelin star, as well as a pair of two star restaurants and now a three star place too. Some of these establishments, such as Relae, are run by ex Noma staff who have struck out on their own. In general this style of cooking focuses on ingredients found locally, and its proponents claim that it is all about “purity, simplicity and freshness”, which are labels that could be applied to many styles of cooking. In practice it has meant an emphasis on the use of foraged ingredients, a tendency to use quite a lot of dried meat, and with plenty of use of pickling of ingredients. In restaurants there has been an emphasis on presentation, with much use of artfully tweezered edible flowers, and in some cases a tendency to use unfamiliar and sometimes challenging ingredients. The ants that have been served at Noma (actually drawing on something done in South American cooking) and elsewhere are just one example.

The most successful of these restaurants in terms of awards has been Geranium, which was awarded a third Michelin star in the 2016 guide and features on the controversial “Top 50” list at number 28. Its chef has won the gold medal in the prestigious Bocuse d’Or chef competition to boot. Curiously, it is located in a football stadium, but there are no hot dogs on the menu here – indeed hardly any meat at all. The no-choice tasting menu features a lengthy sequence of Instagram-friendly dishes featuring vegetables and seafood with plentiful use of edible flowers and herbs to enhance the appearance of the dishes. This is of course no bad thing in itself – we first eat with our eyes after all. However some restaurants these days seem to worry about appearance over flavour, which is not the case at Geranium, where the culinary technique was impeccable and where the flavour combinations are generally perfectly logical. For me there was little in the way of the “wow” factor that I experienced with many dishes last week at both Pic and Troisgros. However the dishes were pleasing on the eye and were almost entirely enjoyable. The chef here is trying to please his customers rather than shock them. After this visit I have now been to 112 of the 113 restaurants in the world that, as of this moment, have three Michelin stars.

Another restaurant in the same new Nordic style is Studio, with an ex Noma chef and a menu that featured many very pretty dishes. The quality of the seafood was certainly high here, with excellent scallops and langoustines, and again the flavour combinations mostly made sense. A nibble of crisp potato with smoked turbot, a nod to fish and chips, was particularly enjoyable. As usual I struggled with the savoury/sweet combination for dessert that is all the rage in Scandinavia (and elsewhere now) but overall it was a very good meal, and service was particularly capable and friendly.

By contrast Kong Hans Kaelder champions classical cooking, as befits its location in one of the oldest buildings in the city. Dishes here that I enjoyed included monkfish with a lobster sauce, and a venison main course with a proper sauce. Service was excellent and there is a huge wine list, though food and wine prices are distinctly at the high end of the spectrum. Still, it is interesting to see somewhere bucking the trend and going back to a more established style of cuisine.

The meal I actually enjoyed the most on this trip was at Kiin Kiin, a Michelin-starred modern Thai restaurant that has a new head chef since my last visit. The cooking here is characterised by vibrant flavours, with presentation a secondary concern. This is not to say that the dishes here are just Thai curries, stir-fries and salads served in communal bowls. In actual fact the kitchen has thought a lot about how to adapt Thai cuisine to the modern world, and unashamedly draws on the latest cooking techniques where it is useful. An example of this was a red Thai curry served in two ways, one in a traditional style and the other using frozen elements and presented in a cloud of dry ice. However the key to the cooking here is not the gimmicks but a core theme of strong but balanced flavour. A tom yum soup went through no less than five repeated stages of preparation to draw out the maximum flavour from the langoustine shells and spices used. Sweetbreads with lemongrass, tamarind and rice vinegar showed great skill with balancing the sweet tamarind with the sourness of the vinegar, combining to complement the silky richness of the sweetbreads. There is a sense of fun too, as in petit fours disguised in a bowl of red chillies and another of cinnamon bark. Within the bowl is one “chilli” that is actually made of chocolate – but which one? It was the same for the cinnamon stick bowl, so was a sort of game of petit four Russian roulette. Some people may not enjoy such japes, but it was an example of a genuine sense of playfulness and enjoyment that emanated from both the head chef and the restaurant owner. The whole experience was much less solemn and serious than at most restaurants, yet the flavours on the plate were very serious indeed. Kiin Kiin wants its customers to enjoy themselves, and not surprisingly it was completely packed even on a midweek night.

Two Iconic restaurants of France

Santa Maria in Ealing, along with the original Franco Manca in Brixton Market, were the first restaurants to really bring authentic Naples style pizza to London. Long-term inhabitants of the capital had for years to put up with chains like Pizza Hut, and later Pizza Express, with their industrial version of pizza. By contrast Santa Maria had a serious pizza over that could cook a pizza in about a minute, one with a soft, supple base and good ingredients. They already opened a sister restaurant called Sacro Cuore and have now expanded to the borders of Fulham and Chelsea. As was to be expected, the pizza was excellent, the meal only let down a little by some tasteless tomatoes on the bruschetta.

Stovell’s in Chobham is a very interesting restaurant. Its executive chef is Mexican, and rather than ploughing the obvious furrow of serving conservative British cooking to the conservative denizens of Surrey, Fernando Stovell has incorporated some Mexican flavours in his cuisine. Some of the influences are subtle, and personally I would have liked to have seen slightly bolder spiceing, but dishes such as guinea fowl on a tortilla with mole verde sauce and tomatillos worked really well. There were some consistency issues, but the best dishes were excellent and the service was charming.

I also returned to two of the great icons of French cooking, Troisgros and Pic. Troisgros has held three Michelin stars since 1968, and the fourth generation of the family, Cesar Troisgros, was in charge of the kitchen when I visited. The standard of the cooking is exceptional here, right from the initial cherry tomato, ginger and sesame nibble through to the petit fours. The John Dory with black truffles was an extraordinary dish, as indeed were several others. As a bonus, the extensive wine list has some genuine bargains tucked away in the upper reaches of the Burgundy selection. This was my third visit to Troisgros and I enjoyed this meal just as much as my first.

A restaurant with an even longer history is Pic in Valence. Ann-Sophie Pic has restored the family glory and regained the third Michelin start that it first held in 1934. She is, incidentally, the first female French chef to have had three stars for five decades. The food here is elaborate and intricately put together, based on superb sourcing of ingredients. Despite the history of the restaurant, this is no Paul Bocuse, where the cooking feels as if it is in a time warp. At Pic these days there are Japanese influences tucked away within the menu, but the exotic is always there for a reason, and is never at the expense of pleasure or flavour. The meal was superb, with dishes such as langoustine with Granny Smith apple sauce, and concluding with fabulous desserts. It is also modestly priced if you are used to London prices, never mind Paris, and there is also the odd bargain on the wine list. It was interesting that I went to these two places within days of the St Pellegrino Top 50 restaurant list being announced. Neither Troisgros or Pic feature, and yet both their meals were better, in my view, than any I have eaten at any on the top 50 list (with the possible exceptions of Le Calandre, which languishes at number 39, and Vendome at 35). This was just a coincidence, but it shows how utterly out of touch that this list is with the top restaurants of France. Ah well, that makes it easier for me to get reservations at places like Pic and Troisgros and the many other dazzling places in France (think Pres des Eugenie, Guy Savoy, Pierre Gagnaire, Lameloise, Ambroisie,…) that are ignored by the hipster crowd that slavishly follow the San Pellegrino list.

The Latest German 3 Star Restaurant

Aglio e Olio is an old fashioned Italian restaurant in Fulham, with a canteen-like dining room but with some ability to cook pasta. I had excellent tagliatelle here, and my companion’s squid starter and liver main course were unfussy dishes but ones that were capably cooked. The restaurant even served very good zabaglione, something that seems to elude even some very smart Italian restaurants. As long as you can live with the décor then you could do a lot worse than eat here.

Tor is the latest Thai restaurant to occupy a site that was once the excellent Thai Bistro and became the disappointing Busdara. The food was mostly competent in an unexciting way, though the service was puzzlingly grumpy. It is surprising just how hard it is to find decent Thai food in London, despite the quite large number of places that serve it. I will just have to keep going back to the Patara group, whose restaurants are not cheap but do understand how to serve nice Thai food and have waiters that actually smile. I should also mention the very authentic Heron.

The new 6 Portland Road in Holland Park is an enjoyable neighbourhood restaurant serving modern British food. I particularly liked a turbot dish with a proper beurre blanc, as well as an accurately cooked red mullet dish. West London has far too few restaurants of this calibre, and so 6 Portland Place is a most welcome addition to the local dining scene.

The Brilliant has been a regular haunt of mine ever since I moved to the west side of London in 1991. Its Punjabi food is authentic and generous in quantity, the portions designed for Asian families. I am particularly fond of their methi murgh, the chicken in a rich, spicy sauce with plenty of fenugreek, but their vegetarian curries are good too. For about £25 a head you get an excellent meal and enough food left over for another complete meal at home, so what is not to like? Ignoring price, I think the food here is actually better than some of London’s posh Michelin-starred eateries.

Of the current crop of 113 three Michelin star restaurants in the world, there were until this week three I had not been to (the others are Geranium and Maeemo). The latest one in Germany is Kevin Fehling The Table (pictured) in Hamburg, the first solo venture of the chef who used to be at Belle Epoque near Lubeck. The atmosphere here is very different from the usual formality of German fine dining restaurants. Here is a former industrial building with an open kitchen and a solitary table that snakes through the dining room, with 20 chairs arrayed around it. There are no waiters, the chefs delivering the dishes to diners directly. In the modern fashion there is no choice of food, just a single tasting menu, though they will try and adjust for dietary preferences. Mr Fehling’s food could never be accused of simplicity, and dishes generally have a lot of components, but he does have a real grasp of flavour balance, so the various dish elements do actually contribute something useful. I liked the savoury dishes a lot, though I struggled, as I usually do, with the savoury “desserts” involving such joy as aubergine and miso sorbet with matcha and melon. The places has been highly successful, booked for many months ahead, so if you fancy going then you need plenty of advance notice.

The San Pellegrino Top 50 came out, this time switching its event from London to New York. This list, which started out as a one-off article in a fairly obscure UK magazine called Restaurant, has become a media phenomenon. Getting a coveted position can have more impact on a restaurant’s reservations than an extra Michelin star, so it is not surprising that chefs have been keen to support it. I won’t rehash the objections to the list at length. Basically the panel is split three ways between chefs, journalists and diners, 977 in all; each vote for seven restaurants, three of which must be from outside their own country. The methodology has ended up favouring fashionable, modernist restaurants at the expense of classical ones, and is controversial for many reasons, one of which is that panellists do not have to prove they have actually paid for a meal in (or even been to) the restaurants they voted for, so there is an obvious danger of chefs just voting for their mates etc. The final results are easy to criticise: is Mirazur really the restaurant in France? Is Tim Raue’s restaurant, nice as it is, really the best restaurant in Germany? Are there really more top restaurants in Mexico than Japan? Really? The omissions are glaring. Hotel de Ville, number 1 in the world on La Liste, is not even in the San Pellegrino top 100, never mind top 50. Others not in the top 100 include fabulous restaurants like Pres des Eugenie, Pic, Louis XV, Mizai, Kitcho, …… I wrote about this a couple of years ago.

This means that actually paying too much attention to the specifics of the San Pellegrino list is a recipe for frustration. For the UK, representation is with The Ledbury (14), Clove Club (26), Dinner (45), Hedone (60) Lyles (65) and St John (91). If you ponder this set and the omissions from it just imagine if you live in France and see your only top 50 entries as Mirazur (6), Arpege (19) and Septime (50). The more you look at it, the more absurd it appears. However at the end of the day the list gets people talking about high end dining, and generates interest in, and revenue for, ambitious restaurants, and that is a positive thing. Just don’t rely on it as a definitive list of the best. Most fashionable yes, the best – no.

Elegant Milan

Milan, the capital of Lombardy, is the second largest city of Italy and is famous for its elegance, exemplified during Milan fashion week. Even the shopping arcades are beautiful, as with the Galleria Vittoria Emanuele II (pictured), which dates back to 1877 and is named after the first king of Italy. I particularly wanted to return to a restaurant that I enjoyed several years before, Il Luogo di Aimo e Nadia. This is tucked away in a residential suburb and has been running for over fifty years. Now with two young chefs running the kitchen, the style of cooking is old fashioned in a good way – simple dishes based on great ingredients. No tweezered flowers or foraged weeds trouble the plates here, just great flavour. A signature dish sums the place up: spaghettini with spring onions and a slightly spicy pepper sauce. Simple yet beautifully executed, the flavours carefully balanced, the texture of the pasta flawless. At this meal a pigeon dish, served in three separate stages was spectacular, and the welcome here is genuine. It is a delightful restaurant that I highly recommend to you.

I also tried two of the newest one Michelin star restaurants in the city, which turned out to be very different indeed. Seta is in the Mandarin Oriental Hotel and has recently gained a chef who for some time held two stars at his previous venue. This experience shows, and we had a very fine meal, with a lovely mackerel royale amuse bouche, and a sea bass dish with salt cod brandade and a squid ink net tuile demonstrated the technical skills of the team. Roasted pineapple with passion fruit tapioca was a lovely way to finish the meal and showed that the pastry section of the kitchen has talent too. Service was dazzlingly good, and I would imagine that it is only a matter of time before Michelin promote Seta.

Alice was a much less successful experience. It is a restaurant that moved locations recently into the top floor of the Eataly food emporium, and has a fine view. The kitchen tries hard to be inventive, from dish composition to presentation; even the petit fours arrive on a little merry-go-round. Unfortunately the effort in dish presentation is not matched by flavour, with a stale nibble, a bizarre pre-dessert and a lukewarm fish dish letting the meal down badly. Some dishes were pleasant and service was friendly, but this meal was a long way off one star quality. A wonderland it was not.

Separately, I stumbled across a useful website that covers private dining rooms in London. There are some other similar lists but it can be tricky to find a room for a private party of a particular size in a given location, and this site seems quite comprehensive. Useful if planning a function.

The first part of the annual St Pellegrino best restaurants list was published, initially positions 51-100 (the top 50 will follow next week, announced at a ceremony in New York). The list is widely quoted in the media and has considerable impact on a restaurant's bookings, so is much awaited by chefs. The voting is carried out by 900 worthies, a three-way split of chefs, journalists and well-travelled diners. The paticipants vote for seven restaurants, at least some of which must be outside of their own country/region. The list is controversial in many ways, not least because it does not validate whether the voters actually paid for their meals, or even visited the places they voted for in the 18 month window that they are supposed to use, though at least this year voters were apparently asked to supply dates of visits, with some sort of sample audit process to check. In the lower half of the list the UK is represented by Hedone, which stayed at number 60 (unchanged), Lyles a new entry at 65, and St John one place up at 91. Clove Club's disappearance probably means that it has made it into the top 50 to join Dinner and The Ledbury, but that will not be certain until the top 50 is published. The 51-100 is a volatile creature, with 20 new entries, the highest being The Jane in Antwerp at 54.

Tales of City Dining - San Francisco

San Francisco is my favourite American city: it is less brash than New York, warmer than Chicago, prettier than Los Angeles. Its districts feel very distinctive, with the posh Victorian houses on Nob Hill, to the chaos of Chinatown, the rugged beauty of North Beach to the eccentric charms of Russian Hill, the setting for Armistead Maupin's iconic series of novels "Tales Of The City." There are a great many eating places tucked away in these various districts, and these days the restaurant scene is booming, fuelled by Silicon Valley riches. On this trip I tried two of the latest three places to be awarded a second Michelin star. Acquerello is hardly a new restaurant, serving its Italian cuisine since 1989, so why it was suddenly promoted is a mystery known only to Michelin; It is certainly a puzzle that eluded me. The dining room is peaceful and the waiters very professional, the cooking quite ambitious and pleasant. Their signature pasta dish with foie gras and black truffles was pleasingly rich and the best dish, on the menu since the restaurant opened. Other dishes ranged from fine to ordinary, and overall this seemed pretty expensive for what it was. Would this get two stars in Rome or Milan? Unlikely.

Campton Place at the Taj hotel now serves a fusion of Californian cuisine with a distinct Indian influence, which with my love of India rather intrigued me. It was very much a hotel dining room setting, complete with waiters who had barely finished the breakfast service. The cooking is playful, and I enjoyed a lobster dish with coconut curry and puffed rice, though quite what a fried egg was doing on top of my tandoori chicken rather eluded me. It was rather eccentric but quite enjoyable food, though it is laughably far away from the two Michelin stars that it currently has. Indian Accent in Delhi offers the kind of modern take in Indian food that I was hoping for, but Campton Place is a long way from that. If you ignore its rating, the high price and the surreal hotel setting then the food is actually quite enjoyable. However its two Michelin star rating is bonkers.

I also tried two ultra-trendy restaurants, both of them nightmarish to book. AL's Place showcases the mostly vegetarian cuisine of Aaron London, who impressed me when he was cooking at Ubuntu. The food at his new venue demonstrated flashes of his undoubted talent, such as a terrific campanelle pasta dish with asparagus pesto, and an excellent Thai style pea curry. Not everything was to this level though, and the meal was much less consistent than Ubuntu.

Another restaurant that could hardly be more achingly fashionable is State Bird Provisions. Reservations here are as elusive as the gold that brought prospectors to the city in the mid 19th century, but they do keep half the seats back for walk-ins. This has led to notorious queues, the line for the 5:30 dinner opening starting as early as 3 p.m. The food here was enjoyable, but I think the reason for the success is partly the approach of having a short menu supplemented by dishes that emerge from the open kitchen and are brought around the dining room on trays by the chefs, encouraging you to graze. The staff are young and energetic, and the atmosphere is lively, the cooking good in patches but also rather erratic in standard.

I also found time to try a local burger Wes's Burger, a former pop-up turned permanent restaurant whose chef won a competition for best burger in the city in 2013. The all-brisket burger was very good, though Wes no longer makes his own buns. I also sampled one of the more fashionable pizza places, Jersey, which to be honest seemed merely expensive and rather ordinary, though completely packed on a Tuesday lunch. I wonder how all these currently busy restaurants will fare when the inevitable economic downturn next hits. San Francisco certainly has a vibrant dining scene, but even in the 1990s in the days of Jeremiah Tower's "Stars", Wolfgang Puck's "Postrio" and Alice Waters' "Chez Panisse" it seemed to me overly hyped, and the inconsistent meals I had on this trip did nothing to change my impression. There is a great deal to love about the city, but I am not convinced about the feverish excitement surrounding its latest restaurant renaissance. My complete set of reviews of the city's restaurants, which now includes all the multi-starred places in the area except one (Commis in Oakland), is here.

In other news, Michelin will apparently have a 2017 guide to Washington DC, in addition to their New York, Chicago and Bay Area guides. Let us hope it does better than their Las Vegas and Los Angeles guide, which was closed down in 2010 after two years due to poor sales. I will also be curious to see if they can find enough high quality restaurants there to actually fill a book.

The Buzzing Beehive

Oldroyd in Upper Street features tiny, close-packed tables and a lively atmosphere. The dishes that we tried were generally quite good, including enjoyable malfatti of spinach and ricotta, and pleasant spring chicken Orvietto. There was the odd slip, notably with some soggy zucchini fries, but the cooking was decent overall. However the service was rather sloppy and the wine list was lazily labelled, with no vintages and some ambiguous descriptions. Although it is not wildly expensive, it does not seem to me to be good value.

The Beehive (pictured) in Berkhire is now owned by Dominic Chapman, who was previously head chef of Michelin-starred The Royal Oak. My recent lunch there was more consistent than my first meal there in its early days. A dish of wild rabbit lasagne with wood blewit mushrooms was especially good, as was a duck dish with braised peas flavoured with bacon. The room looks out over the local cricket pitch and was packed out even on a midweek lunch. It is well worth trying if you are in the Maidenhead area.

Bonhams is the best London restaurant opening in the last two years. Tom Kemble uses unusually high quality ingredients and is a talented chef. Pigeon with smoked potatoes and ras el hanout spices was particularly impressive at my most recent meal there. To add to the appeal of the overall package, its wine list is the best priced in London, with the costlier bottles mostly around their retail price rather than the outrageous mark-ups that are the norm in Mayfair.

Cambio de Tercio has long been the best Spanish restaurant in London, always packed out with Spanish diners whenever I have been there. We had a very enjoyable meal this week, with star dishes being slow-cooked confit tomatoes, morels with foie gras and excellent white asparagus. I always love the modern patatas bravas here, a replica of a dish at Madrid restaurant Sergio Arola.

L’Amorosa in Ravenscourt Park is a regular haunt of mine, with chef and owner Andy Needham producing many similar dishes to when he was head chef at Zafferano when it had a Michelin star. His tagliatelle ragu is excellent, but he is especially good at risotto. At my most recent meal there his risotto of asparagus, king prawns and San Marzano tomatoes was a terrific dish, easily of Michelin star quality.

Out of The Woods

The Woodford is a surprisingly upscale restaurant in the rather unlikely setting of South Woodford in east London. Set in an old pub, it has plenty of room and uses this aspect well, spacing its tables out in the comfortable dining room and having two separate bars. The young head chef has worked in some serious kitchens and can cook capably. The menu is appealing and the chips that he makes are exceptionally good. Along with Provender the area east of Leytonstone now has two restaurants aiming for something more ambitious than pizza or kebabs.

Pizzicotto is a few doors down from its sister restaurant Il Portico, a more traditional Italian restaurant that has been running for an impressive 49 years. Pizzicotto is lighter and brighter, and has a wood-fired oven that produces some of the best pizzas in the capital, using high quality ingredients that are mostly sourced from small producers in Emilia Romagna. The owner here is very welcoming and the place seems extremely busy whenever I have visited, so although it is hardly marketed at all the locals are clearly voting with their feet.

Madhus at The Sheraton is a regular haunt of mine, a smart dining room in a Heathrow airport hotel. Sister of Madhus in Southall, its cooking has the edge over the original in some ways due to it having a robata grill, which gives a nice smoky note to many of the dishes, such as the excellent spicy lamb chops. The cauliflower florets here are terrific and show that a dish does not need a lump of protein to be exciting.

Diwana Bhel Poori is a restaurant that I have been eating at regularly since I moved to London in 1983. Just by Euston station, the décor is very basic but the Gujerati cooking is not. The best dishes here, such as the bhel poori and the samosas, are genuinely high quality. At this meal I had a pleasant dosa with good coconut chutney, and unlike most Indian restaurants they make very good kulfi from scratch in the kitchen here. Our three-course meal with some lassi to drink came to the absurdly low price of £15 a head including service. This is surely a candidate for the best value restaurant in London.

Dining in Tokyo

The newest three star Michelin restaurant in Japan is Kohaku. It is one of no less than 13 three star restaurants in Tokyo (by comparison, Paris has 9), and the sister of Ishikawa. I had a perfectly pleasant meal here but preferred Ishikawa, and to be honest had better kaiseki meals elsewhere on this trip, such as at Nakahigashi and Tempura Matsu. It is not obvious to me why Michelin elected this particular restaurant to join the hallowed three star rank, but it was certainly nice enough.

I preferred my meal at Kodama, a one star kaiseki restaurant whose chef has a somewhat modern cooking style while still respecting the traditions of Japanese cuisine. Some dishes, such as a cabbage and prawn dish with a savoury sauce, were terrific, and the standard was very high throughout the meal. This restaurant is not one that gets much buzz in English-speaking foodie circles, but delivered one of the best meals that I have eaten in Tokyo.

Daigo is unusual in that it is a shojin restaurant, serving Buddhist vegetarian cuisine. The restaurant only has private rooms, which just as in Kyoto means that the bill is immediately elevated due to the amount of space that your room takes up relative to a seat at a counter. I was rather puzzled by my experience here, as it had been recommended by several people, has two Michelin stars and in principle should be great given the high quality of vegetables available in Japan. Yet the meal we actually encountered was distinctly ordinary, with pretty average vegetable quality compared to other places I have tried in Japan. Maybe it was once better than it is now.

Umi was a better experience, a two star sushi restaurant with a new chef after the tragic and untimely death of the previous chef late last year. Umi offers an unusually lengthy and varied omakase experience, perhaps twice the number of sushi bites than at many other places in the city. The fish quality was a little variable but the best was very good, and the young chef was lively and friendly.

Perhaps the find of the trip for me (along with Kodama) was Uchitsu, a two star Michelin tempura restaurant. I had an excellent basis for comparison as I had just eaten another meal at the superb Nanachome Kyoboshi, the only tempura restaurant ever awarded three Michelin stars. This was still very much on form, using some of the most dazzling quality ingredients that you will encounter anywhere in Tokyo. It is no longer listed in Michelin at the chef/owner’s request, but the meal we had there was every bit as good as it was before.

Uchitsu has two Michelin stars and has a very cleverly designed counter looking out over a stunning forest-like garden backdrop. You are actually in central Tokyo but it feels as if you are eating in some magical woodland. The food matches the surroundings, with exceptionally high quality tempura and a friendly chef who speaks quite good English. This was another restaurant that gets virtually no foreign foodie attention, yet the standard of cooking and ingredients was remarkable. If you are in Tokyo, do yourself a favour and try it.

As a change from all the Japanese food I tried Crescent, a two star French restaurant set in a pretty town house with a view over trees from a nearby park. The food there was particularly prettily presented, and apart from one dish the meal was generally worth its two stars. Service was quite old fashioned but this was certainly a pleasant enough, albeit not cheap, experience.

On my latest visit to Tokyo I was keen to try at least some places off the Michelin path. Tonkatsu is a much more down to earth cooking style than sophisticated kaiseki, involving coating a pork cutlet in breadcrumbs and deep-frying it. Just as with ramen noodles, tonkatsu has countless outlets in the capital, and no shortage of advocates for which is the best of all. The only Michelin starred one is Katsuzen, but another highly recommended restaurant is Butagumi (others I have yet to try include Azabujba, Katsukara, Tonki and Narikura). There are actually two branches of Butagumi, some people preferring one and some the other, so I played it safe and went to both. The original branch is much more atmospheric, and I slightly preferred the tonkatsu itself. The other branch is in an obscure corner of the labyrinthine Roppongi hills complex, which was presumably designed by whoever did the Barbican centre based on the number of lost looking people wandering around its maze of corridors trying to track places down. My tonkatsu here was a little less good but you could see the chefs at work in the open kitchen, which was quite fun.

I also enjoyed a sake lesson with sake consultant Rebekah Wilson-Lye, the only non-Japanese Master of Sake Tasting. If you have an interest in the subject then she is highly knowledgeable and entertaining; she can be found on Twitter at @IchifortheMichi and definitely knows her stuff. As ever, Tokyo was a joy to visit. We stayed at the Grand Hyatt in Roppongi Hills, surely one of the most flawless hotels in the world and a favourite of Alain Ducasse. It is built almost on top of a subway station (three stops to the Ginza) and has a wide selection of shops and restaurants within the complex itself. Perhaps the trickiest thing there is avoiding the temptations of the pastry shop attached to the Atelier Robuchon within the complex. The concierge staff at the Grand Hyatt are eternally patient and competent, and can help you plan your trip, which is ever more useful given how difficult reservations are becoming in the top places in Tokyo these days.

My complete set of Tolkyo reviews (around 70 restaurants in all so far) can be found here.

Beyond Kaiseki - the Kyoto Dining Scene

Kyoto was the capital of Japan for centuries (after Nara but before Tokyo) and epitomises old Japan. Deliberately saved from bombing during the Second World War by a far-sighted decision from Secretary of State Henry Stimson (who realised that Japan would be a useful ally against communism after the war concluded), it has 17 UNESCO world heritage sites. Kyoto has 1,600 temples and around 3,000 gardens, many of them maintained unchanged for centuries. It is also the home to kaiseki cuisine, the elaborate tasting menu format that is the most sophisticated of Japanese food styles.

An example of this is Nakahigashi, where the chef gathers herbs and vegetables from the surrounding area each day to use in his cooking. We had a very impressive meal here, and although this has two Michelin stars I preferred it to most of the three star kaiseki restaurants in the city, and at a far more moderate price (but only takes cash). This is perhaps the best value kaiseki in the city that I have encountered so far, and I highly recommend it.

Another intriguing discovery for me was Tempura Matsu, which despite its name is a kaiseki restaurant (at one time it specialised in tempura). This restaurant has no stars at all but was recommended to me by several people, and was featured at length in the excellent book “Rice, Noodle, Fish” by Matt Goulding on his culinary journeys around Japan. This is less traditional in style than many kaiseki restaurants, but featured some extremely impressive dishes, and for me was up there with the top restaurants in the city. As we discovered, it is cash only.

Away from the world of kaiseki I was intrigued to explore some sushi styles that differ from the nigiri style that has now become almost universal outside of Japan. Izuju served “box sushi”, where the rice is pressed into squares rather than being shaped by hand, as well as saba and iniri. Saba involves rolling mackerel with rice inside kelp rolls, and iniri has the rice wrapped inside a fried tofu pouch. Izuju is a casual place, so do not expect any of the elaborate rituals that you find inside a Tokyo sushu temple, but it is interesting to see how varied sushi can be.

I also tried Honke Owariya, a soba noodle shop that originally sold confectionary and has been operating uninterrupted since 1465; it is now in the sixteenth generation of family ownership. It is a simple place but is inexpensive, and in a world where restaurants that last a decade are regarded as veterans, clearly has been doing something right for a very, very long time.

Yoshikawa is a pleasant tempura restaurant within a ryoken that has a pretty garden and is used to foreign visitors, so you will encounter staff that speak quite good English. The tempura is pleasant rather than top notch, and the prices are a little high for the level of food being delivered, but it was a pleasant enough experience and would be a good place for those seeking a gentle introduction to food in Kyoto.

L’Embellir was a surprise to me, a relatively new one star French restaurant that is the offshoot of a restaurant in Tokyo. It is located in a lovely temple complex, and the food was beautifully presented and impressive. For me this was solid two star Michelin level, had excellent service and frankly would trounce most two star restaurants in London.

Takasebune is a small family-run tempura shop in old Kyoto, run by an elderly gentleman and his daughter. It is a simple and inexpensive place, and although the tempura is not as sophisticated as you will find at high-end tempura restaurants elsewhere it is inexpensive and friendly.

If you are craving variety after all the kaiseki then you could do worse than Mughal, one of just a handful of Indian restaurants in the city. It is located by a pretty canal and is objectively nothing remarkable, though the food is entirely competent and the Japanese owner, who visits India, is very welcoming. The food scene in Kyoto is a lot more uniform than Tokyo, with the vast majority of high end restaurants serving kaiseki style, so I find a decent curry to be a welcome change after a few days of tasting menus.

Just 45 minutes from Kyoto on the fastest shinkansen train is Himeji, a city with the finest castle in Japan (pictured) on its outskirts. Over the years most of the original mediaeval castles in Japan have been lost to assorted forms of destruction, and many of those that you see today are reproductions (Osaka castle even has a lift within its keep, which was unlikely to have been an original feature). Himeji castle is one of the few originals left and happens to be the finest architecturally. It has recently completed a multi-year restoration program when it was hidden under giant tarpaulins, but has now emerged into the light. The outer walls and moat are almost a kilometre in each direction, and there are fine view from the top of the keep, though you need to climb six remarkably steep flights of stairs to reach it. It is well worth a visit if you are passing through the area and is conveniently on the main shinkansen line from Tokyo to Hiroshima, the next stop after Kobe travelling west.

My complete set of Kyoto reviews can be viewed here:

In other news, the Grocer magazine's annual "Most Influential People in Food" list was published. It is scored using a proprietary system involving 2,000 separate data elements in three categories:

Online: Presence; frequency and quality of content; number of followers; and objectives of their social media channels

Offline: Ability to affect the laws, price or availability of food; appearance in offline channels such as books and TV; and the objectives of those media

Brand Strength: The number of social mentions of themselves and/or their brand; amount of mentions online returned in the last year; increase or decrease in mentions in the last year; are they known as a spokesperson for an area of the industry; creators of original material such as diets, etc.

I actually squeezed into this list, ahead of luminaries such as Fay Maschler and A.A. Gill.

A Visit to Hamburg

Hamburg is Germany’s second largest city, a port in the north of the country with lots of canals. I tried a pair of Michelin-starred restaurants there and a fairly new, up and coming place, based on local advice. Piment was a bit disappointing, a fusion of French and Moroccan cooking that sounds appealing and did feature some nice dishes, but was let down by a couple of very poor courses. It is one thing for slips to occur at a simple café, but when you are paying this sort of money then it is less easy to forgive.

Anna Sgroi was more consistent and also cheaper, serving some enjoyable Italian food in a pretty townhouse. Despite a heavy hand in the kitchen with the salt cellar I liked an asparagus risotto, and in particular an excellent cake for dessert. Service was rather inexperienced but it was a perfectly enjoyable meal, and just about justified its star rating.

Jellyfish is a (mostly) seafood restaurant with a theme of using sustainably sourced fish, an admirable code to live by. This ticked all the trendy boxes with its casual dining room, laid back (borderline slow) service and “menu of the day” approach – you just select the number of courses that you want. There were some very pleasant and at times quite adventurous dishes and no real duds amongst them, though the bill mounts up quite quickly here.

Back in London, Bellanger is the latest in the ever-expanding Corbyn and King empire. Bellanger looks to the food of Alsace for inspiration, and has the usual trademarks of this restaurant group of having a lengthy and appealing menu, attractive dining room and well-drilled service. It was, however, less consistent than other places within the group, so although there was a very nice tarte flambée there were some distinctly ropey vegetables and a disappointing dessert. Such slips are always irritating, but more so at the relatively high price point here. Somehow the establishments within this group seem to have enough charm and overall appeal to be full despite a consistent issue of debatable value for money (except for the vast Zedel, which is actually quite cheap). This was no exception, the dining room packed out, with customers clearly happy to pay the prices here. Charm can take you a long way.

The Swiss High End Dining Scene

The newest three star Michelin restaurant in Switzerland is Cheval Blanc at the Three Kings hotel in Basel. This looks out over the Rhine and features the thoroughly enjoyable and technically accomplished cooking of chef Peter Knogl. His mastery of sophisticated sauces in particular, practically a forgotten art in most kitchens these days, is a delight. Ingredients here are impeccable, the culinary technique pitch perfect and flavours are gloriously rich. This is one of the most pleasurable dining experiences I have had for ages, and it thoroughly deserves the third Michelin star. I just wish I had come across the restaurant much earlier.

Stucki is a long-established two Michelin star restaurant that used to operate under a different owner until 2008, perched on a hill overlooking Basel. It is now very modern in cooking style, and as is the fashion offers a tasting menu only. Although I enjoyed a beef tataki dish, most other dishes either had minor technical niggles or had rather peculiar taste combinations that did not really work, at least not for me. Service was lovely and it was not an unpleasant experience, but the bill was very high indeed, so even small issues are hard to forgive.

Another old restaurant under newish ownership is Rico’s in Kusnacht, not far from Zurich. It has an eccentrically decorated dining room but waiting staff so charming that the wacky surroundings are easily overlooked. However the cooking itself was erratic, with a beautifully balanced dish of tuna tataki with caramelised onion and soy the highlight of the meal. Sadly a pretty red mullet dish was completely dominated by an excessive use of vanilla, and a chocolate dessert seemed more about showing off the toys in the kitchen than about flavour. The cooking was just too erratic to be acceptable at the high price point.

The Restaurant at The Dolder Grand has technically sophisticated cooking and particularly pretty dish presentation. Here the consistency was much better than at Rico’s, with high quality ingredients and elaborate dishes that go some way to justifying the chunky bill that you will inevitably accumulate. The cooking makes quite a lot of use of Asian flavours these days, but these are carefully controlled, as with a beef dish with a subtle green curry sauce. Some dishes have so many elements that the overall effect can be a little confusing, but there is no doubt that this is high grade cooking.

I also returned to three star Michelin Schloss Schauenstein, high up in the pretty little alpine village of Furstenau. Over a lengthy but most enjoyable evening I experienced some dazzling dishes, such as fabulous local pork prepared in several ways, and a rich potato crème brulee with black truffle. Not every dish was quite to this level, but the high points of the meal were very high indeed. The waiters are terrific here and the wine list offers very kindly pricing at the top end, with some of the most serious wines at pretty much retail price, a rare treat at a top restaurant. Interesting the actual menu price here was lower than some of the other places that I tried on this trip, and the kind wine list means that the meal here offers a rare opportunity to find decent value, something not easy given the robust Swiss Franc. The downside is that you will be tempted to indulge in some serious wines, given the kind pricing, but this is hardly a criticism. The gorgeous mountain scenery (pictured) does not hurt either.

New and Old Restaurants in London

Urban Coterie (pictured) is perched on the 17^th floor of the Montcalm Hotel near Old Street roundabout. It has an attractive dining room with picture windows looking out over, well, looking out over Shoreditch, sadly. The cooking is capable enoiugh under a new head chef, with a particularly nice pork haunch with Pommes Anna the highlight of the meal. There is a £22 set lunch available, and even the evening prices did not seem excessive, despite its lofty location.

Il Portico is a family-run Italian restaurant in Kensington that next year will have been running for a remarkable fifty years. The restaurant imports good quality produce from small suppliers in Emilia Romagna, so for example there is excellent culatello ham from Parma. The menu is appealing and the cooking capable, and the wine pricing is kindly. I find it interesting that this restaurant, which appears to be invisible to social media and seems to do no marketing whatever, was completely packed on a Monday night, with tables being turned around us. They clearly have a formula that is very attractive to local diners, and I would certainly be happy to return.

Benares in Berkeley Square has been running for over a decade now. It has a smart dining room and an innovative take on Indian cusine. You will see fusion dishes like chicken tikka pasty, and a biryani dish uses venison rather than a more traditional meat such as lamb or chicken. Service is very slick indeed and the food is better than I recall, though the prices are as high as you would expect in Mayfair. Personally I would rather eat Indian food in Southall at a fraction the price, though clearly if you can afford to live in Mayfair then keen prices will not be your main dining criteria.

I have a soft spot for The Crown at Burchetts Green, a pub near Maidenhead run by an amiable, mildly eccentric and highly ommitted chef who works essentially single-handed in the kitchen. Such an arrangement is tough, and yet the standard of food that emerges is high, and he manages to source very good produce. Prices are keen and there is an eccentric and fairly priced wine list. In an era of chains and franchised spin-offs The Crown is definitely a one-off, and is all the better for it. It is well worth a visit if you are ever in the area.

I also enjoyed another meal at the low key but charming Watermans Arms, a fairly run-down looking boozer in Brentford where the landlord and chef Gordon Fry (who has a Japanese wife and lived in Japan himself) serves izakaya food alongside pub staples like fish and ships. He cooks well and is a very welcoming host. This is not a destination restaurant but I like it very much, and it represents very good value.

Reliable London restaurants

L’Amorosa is a regular haunt of mine. With ex-Michelin starred chef Andy Needham in the kitchen, l’Amorosa is much more than just a neighbourhood Italian restaurant, despite the distinctly modest prices. Andy’s previously strengths at Zafferano continue in his cooking here, with excellent freshly made pasta dishes such as a papardelle ragu at this visit. He has always been terrific at risotto, and a simple saffron risotto at this meal reminded me of one I ate at a two star Michelin in Milan some time ago.

We had two sets of dim sum this week. Min Jiang was the posher of the two venues. On the tenth floor of the Royal Garden Hotel in Kensington, the dining room has a lovely view out over Hyde Park. Service is slick though the wine list is excessively marked up, but the food is capable. Classic dumplings like har gau are well made, and there were two stand-out dishes in the form of pork char siew puffs and delicate lobster buns. Not everything was great e.g. a poor xiao long bao, but the standard was generally pretty high and if you stick to dim sum the prices are moderate.

Royal China is an old favourite that I usually frequent at dinner, so it was a nice change to queue up on a Sunday morning and join the crowds for dim sum instead. The standards here are high and the cooking is very consistent. Steamed buns are excellent, such as prawn and chive dumplings. I always enjoy the little fluffy pork buns here, and coriander and prawns fried puffs were also excellent. Service here is efficient rather than cuddly, but the prices are fair and the barn of a dining room was packed out, a testament to its popularity.

The all day venue High Road Brasserie in Chiswick is immensely popular, its outside tables always packed with locals at the merest hint of decent weather. The menu is appealing and the food simple, with dishes such as a lobster linguine with tomato sauce, or a beetroot and goat cheese salad (pictured). The standard is quite consistent here and there are rarely any dud dishes, yet when the bill arrives it always seems rather a lot for what has appeared on the plate. It is a short stroll from where I live, so every now and again I wander along and try it, and remember why it has never become a regular venue for me.

I tweeted on April 1^st about The Last Parnsip, a restaurant with an elaborate web site and even an associated YouTube channel, purporting to delight in “combinatorial cooking”. Given the number of confused responses that I had, I would just like to make it clear that site is a spoof satirising the excesses of modernist cooking, though it is an extremely elaborate spoof. Its tone is straight down the line and for a moment you wonder whether it is real. If you have not seen this then it is worth a look; the person that created it clearly put a great deal of effort to it.

A Mixed Week in London

Oliver Maki is a Japanese restaurant that has just opened in Soho. It is the first UK outlet of a group based in Kuwait and Bahrain, and is firmly in the Nobu/Zuma wannabe camp rather than serving traditional sushi. Consequently you can expect things to be pimped up with foie gras and chilli or served in shot glasses rather than the traditional, spare presentation to be found in places like Sushi Tetsu. Although some purists will revile this kind of thing of the start, I have no issue with it in principle provided that it is done well; places like Zuma and Roka are very enjoyable places to eat. Sadly Oliver Maki fails this basic test. There is some decent sourcing, so the tuna was pleasant and the wagyu beef served is both from Japan and a high-grade cut at that. However there were some real clangers, such as a rock shrimp tempura with tennis-ball texture. The enthusiastically worded menu moved into surreal territory when it described a plate of very ordinary stir-fried vegetables as “no noodle udon” i.e. “noodles without noodles” and plonked a £17 price tag on the dish as reward for such creativity. Service was fine but the pricing is bonkers for the quality being delivered in what is actually a fairly restrained Soho dining room, so you do not even have the bling factor that comes with somewhere like Zuma.

My third meal at Les 110 de Taillevent was a touch less impressive than my first two outings here, though it was certainly pleasant enough. I think this was mostly due to me ordering from some of the more obscure parts of the menu, and stumbling on a rather ordinary chicken dish that admittedly had an excellent sauce. The usual strong suit of the meal here, the dessert stage, this time offered up a less than dazzling soufflé, which is a pity since on my previous visits the pastry section has been really on song. The impressive selection of wines by the glass is still a draw here, with relatively modest mark-ups, especially at the high end of the list. There are, if you look carefully by the bottle, some quite rare wines here, a few actually below their current market price, though you should not expect such generosity at the lower end of the list.

Hakkasan Mayfair is a place that impresses me with its ability to turn out consistently good food despite its vast scale. Its service also never seems to skip a beat whichever waiter or waitress you happen to get; they always seem to be friendly, efficient and assured whether at lunch or dinner, early or late in the service. At this latest visit I enjoyed some particularly good salt and pepper squid, and an old favourite dish: langoustines with vermicelli and a touch of chilli. Hakkasan could never be accused of being a bargain, but the cooking is highly competent and I find the overall experience is always enjoyable.

Pitt Cue grows up

Pitt Cue made quite a stir when it opened in its cramped Soho premises, offering American barbecue in surroundings that could politely be called basic. Now it has grown up and moved to one of the new developments around the City. It has a much larger dining room and a custom-made American grill, and you can even make a reservation. The larger and better equipped kitchen seems to have given the food a boost too, and there was more consistency at this visit than I recall from the Soho premises. In particular, smoked mangalitsa pork neck was terrific, with gloriously rich, deep flavour. Other dishes were enjoyable too, such as well-seasoned potato cakes, but the barbecued meat is really the draw.

Pizzicotto is a relatively new Italian restaurant featuring the cuisine of Emilia Romagna. It is an off-shoot of Il Portico, a restaurant that has lasted almost fifty years in Kensington. Pizzicotto’s produce is high quality, shown with high class culatello ham and San Marzano tomatoes. The pizza dough uses stone-ground flour from the Apennines, and the attention to detail shows in the excellent Neapolitan-style crust. Desserts could be improved, but this is clearly a restaurant that is making an effort, and there are some bargains on the wine list too. The pizza itself is up there with the best in London.

Madhu’s at The Sheraton is the younger, smarter sibling of the long-established Madhu’s in Southall. Tucked away inside the Sheraton Skyline hotel near Heathrow, the restaurant very smart, with two attractive semi-private rooms as well as the sprawling main dining area. Of more interest to me than the red leather is what is in the kitchen: a robata grill. This allows charcoal-grilling, so dishes like a tandoori lamb chop or whole sea bass end up with a pleasing smoky flavour from the charcoal. Other dishes are successful too, such as the terrific cauliflower curry here, with excellent texture and carefully balanced spices. If you are ever in the Heathrow area and want to eat classy Indian food in a smart setting then this is for you.

Restaurants with Good Wine Lists in London

The Harwood Arms is the only Michelin-starred pub in London. Part-owned by Mike Robinson of The Pot Kiln, the Harwood specialises in game, much of it shot by Mike in Berkshire. To balance what might be an overly meaty menu, the restaurant offers a fully vegetarian menu too. It almost single-handedly reinvented the Scotch egg when it launched its dazzling venison version, leading to the rehabilitation of the humble Scotch egg as a gourmet item on London restaurant menus. At this meal a board of fallow deer in various forms was the star dish, though stone bass was precisely cooked too, and Homer Simpson would approve of the excellent jam doughnuts here. There is even an excellent and fairly priced wine list.

Noble Rot is another place with a fine and tolerably priced wine list, which in London is about as rare as a unicorn sighting (others are at Bonhams and 110 des Taillevent). This is not unconnected with the fact that the owners run a wine magazine called Noble Rot in addition to the wine bar itself, and so are well connected in the wine trade. An example at this visit was the offering of “Sauternes 2” by Chateau d’Yquem, a wine I have never seen before and one not usually offered commercially. It is a non-vintage wine made from Chateau Yquem from grapes that don’t make the grade for their flagship sweet wine. Nonetheless it is terrific, and currently available by the glass. The food was a touch more erratic than at my first visit, with the slip soles again lovely, but a very ordinary chocolate dessert slightly letting the side down. Nonetheless the average standard was still high, and an Anjou pigeon dish with puy lentils and peas was excellent.

Royal China is the restaurant that raised the standards for Cantonese food in London. It is a barn of a place (with sister establishments in Baker Street) but serves consistently excellent food. At this visit I enjoyed honey-roast pork, and the gai lan here is superb, a dish to disprove the notion that vegetable dishes are somehow inherently inferior to meat. As so often in Chinese restaurants, service is not what you come for, and the waiting team tonight was having a particularly off night, with our resolutely unsmiling waitress hard to track down. Still, the food sets the standard in London, the only better Chinese cooking that you can find being at the much pricier and smarter Hakkasan group.

Theo Randall Ten Years On

Theo Randall was head chef of the wildly successful River Café before he upped sticks to Mayfair a decade ago to open his own restaurant in The Intercontinental hotel. The previously rather corporate dining room (pictured) has now been refurbished and is definitely an improvement, lighter and less “hotel dining room”, though the lack of natural light means this will always struggle to appeal to all. One thing that has not changed is the cooking, or indeed the menu, and Mr Randall’s undoubted skills were shown this week with a top class papardelle ragu dish and excellent violet artichoke risotto, followed by classy Amalfi lemon tart. Service was slick and the pricing is not excessive if you avoid the rather unkind (and peculiarly organised) wine list. Michelin has always shunned this place, but it certainly seems to me every bit as good as Locatelli, with considerably friendlier service.

Cambio de Tercio has long been my favourite Spanish restaurant in London. Unlike a lot of places in London serving Spanish food, this is actually run by people from Spain, and in the evening fills up with diners from the home country. The menu is more ambitious than most, straying into modernist territory at times and borrowing ideas from assorted top restaurants in Spain e.g. the unusual and successful take on patatas bravas here is a replica of that at Sergi Arola in Madrid. At my meal this week a yellowtail carpaccio was particularly good, and a new salad dish of butternut squash, clementine, goat cheese and fried kale was interesting and unusual. There are occasional slips here, as with a quail dish at this meal, but the best things here are excellent, and the wine list has a wide selection of Spanish bottles.

Dwiana Bhel Poori is a simple café near Euston station serving southern Indian vegetarian snacks. It has been open since the 1970s, and I have been a regular here since I moved to London in 1983. Its “décor” is, um, how can I put this: basic. However its cooking is remarkably consistent and its speciality dishes are very good indeed. The bhel poori has a little tang of vinegar to balance the tamarind, and the samosas are as good as any in London. Dosas are also good here, and they make their own kulfi. The remarkable thing is just how cheap this genuinely good food is – our bill this week, with lassi to drink (there is no alcohol license, but you can bring your own booze should you wish), came to £11 a head. This would not buy you a meal at an industrial high street chain like Nandos or Pizza Hut, yet this bought us plenty of delicious food. It must be a candidate for the best value restaurant in London.

The Michelin guide to Scandinavia appeared, and it was quite a surprise. Both Geranium in Copenhagen and Maeemo in Oslo were promoted to three stars, and Faviken in the Arctic Circle got two stars. The Main Cities of Europe guide also appeared, with three new two stars in Austria. This is quite a bump given that Austria previously has just a pair of two star restaurants. The choice of Ikarus in Salzburg is intriguing, since that restaurant hosts guest chefs on a rotating basis. This is an interesting idea, but quite how a restaurant without a permament head chef (executive chef Martin Klein is there in the background, but cooking the dishes of the guest chefs) gets two stars is a mystery understood only by Michelin.

This is the last of the 2016 Michelin season except (presumably) the guide to Sao Paolo and Brazil, which was introduced last year and I assume will come out shortly. Michelin have been making a habit of printing “one off” guides recently, particularly in Japan e.g. that to Hokkaido, or the one to Hiroshima and also to Fukuoka. In such cases the stars that are awarded last exactly one year from publication and then disappear, but the Brazil guide may well be a regular one – time will tell. Michelin have already announced a 2017 guide to Singapore (it is unclear whether this is one-off or regular) and did the same this week for South Korea. Perhaps it will be called "Seoul Food".

Returning home

Paradise By Way Of Kensal Green is certainly an interesting name for a pub and restaurant, and it has a new chef since my last visit. Sadly the dinner that we tried was a very disappointing experience, with standards having fallen off a cliff in the interval between this and my previous visit, the coffee being the best element of the meal by a wide margin. To make it worse it took an age to deliver our starters, what appeared to be the acting manager was remarkably inept, and the front of house operation was saved only by a solitary competent waitress. She must surely view the service shambles that operates around her with something approaching disbelief; I hope she ends up at a better place than this. To summarise: trouble in Paradise – I will stick in future to the nearby, and entirely wonderful, Parlour.

I had a second meal at Darbaar, a large Indian restaurant tucked away between HKK and l’Anima in a pedestrianized alley not far from the Broadgate Circus development at Liverpool Street. The head chef used to be in charge of the kitchen at Cinnamon Kitchen and can really cook. As well as familiar dishes there are innovative touches like the “nanza”, an Indian take on a pizza made with naan bread and spicy toppings. This is the second really good meal that I have eaten here and I would encourage you to go. The location, invisible from the streets at either end, is dismal from the point of view of footfall, and I really hope that Darbaar can prosper despite this major inherent handicap.

Pierre Koffmann was one of the few chefs ever to get three Michelin stars in the UK. Now a youthful 68 years old, he runs the more relaxed Koffmann (pictured) n the Berkeley Hotel, serving some of his old favourites from La Tante Claire days as well as more modern dishes. One of the latter is squid Bolognese, a technically complex dish in which ribbons of squid takes the place of pasta in the familiar Italian classic. This works really well and is much more than just a cheffy gimmick, the squid having lovely texture and the overall effect enjoyable. I also tried something far more traditional in the form of beef Wellington, which was superbly executed. For dessert, pistachio soufflé is glorious here but at this visit I had an excellent lemon tart. I am not sure why this restaurant has no Michelin star; perhaps he asked the tire company not to assess it, or perhaps they are just being obtuse. Certainly the food here is better than at plenty of starred restaurants.

I also had a pleasant meal at my local pub, The Roebuck. It is by no means a destination restaurant, but it does have a very appealing menu and friendly staff. The fish and chips there are quite capable, certainly better than the local chippie, and it is inexpensive. They also do a competent charcuterie board.

A visit to Calcutta

Calcutta, which these days is spelled Kolkata, was from 1772 to 1912 the capital of India under the British. It is in the northeast corner of India in the state of west Bengal, not far from the border with Bangladesh. These days it is a sprawling city of 13 million souls, a fraction more even than Delhi (depending on which source you believe). As a tourist its main appeal is the collection of historical buildings, such as the Victoria Memorial (pictured). These are conveniently grouped together in one area, many of the old colonial buildings now being government offices or law courts. There is also a particularly pretty Jain temple called Sheetalnathji in the north of the city. Traffic is as chaotic as in other large Indian cities, but getting about is inexpensive. A taxi journey of 7 miles taking over half an hour cost me the princely sum of £2 in one of the plentiful yellow Morris Oxford cabs that operate here.

The cuisine of Bengal is rather different than the ersatz Punjabi food that those living in the UK are familiar with from most UK "Indian" restaurants, over 80% of which are in fact run by Bangladeshis. Bengali cuisine features quite a few fish dishes and uses coconut as the basis for some sauces. Its vegetarian dishes can be rather distinct too, with ingredients such as banana flowers used in one Kolkata speciality curry. It also has a different style of biryani from the Hyderabad one, which is mostly what we find reproduced in the UK. This was my 18th visit to india, and it is intriguing to witness its very visible economic development during that period. One negative aspect of that as a tourist is the choking traffic in the big cities, to which Calcutta is no exception.

The Sonargaon is the flagship Indian restaurant of the Taj hotel, where we stayed on this trip. It serves a mix of North Indian and Bengali food, such as a prawn curry with coconut-based sauce and fish steamed in banana leaf. The food here was very pleasant, the yellow dhal particularly good, though it was far from a cheap experience. Just as in Mumbai, the high prices in luxury hotels do not seem to deter the customers these days, virtually all of whom appeared to be successful locals rather than foreign tourists.

"Oh! Calcutta" has a good local reputation and has now spawned additional branches elsewhere. The original premises are in a shopping mall and offer a vast menu of Bengali dishes. The kitchen cooked a particularly good malai tikka dish, though the overly intrusive service was a real distraction, the waiters anxious to serve additional portions after what seemed like every mouthful. The standard of food was rather erratic, though the meal was certainly good value.

Kewpie is another local Bengali restaurant located in the ground floor of a residential house. It offers a variety of thali menus, mostly vegetarian but with a few fish or meat dishes available too. A fried fish dish was pleasant, and the luchi puffed flat bread was nice, but some other dishes were remarkably bland, and the set menu repeated some elements. The waiters were friendly and the room had a suitably homely atmosphere, but although it was very inexpensive to be honest it was no more than very ordinary. By comparison the Bengali dishes at the current London pop-up Darjeeling Express, run by Asma Khan from Calcutta and open at The Sun & 13 Cantons pub until 19th March, are vastly superior. Kewpie has built up a good reputation over the years, so perhaps it was better at some point in the past, but it was hard to see what the appeal was based on the meal tonight, and the almost empty dining room on a Thursday suggests that I am not alone in this view. As the character Sergeant Apone says in the movie 'Aliens': "Whatever happened here, I think we missed it."

ITC hotels have built a reputation acrss India for unusually good hotel restaurants, operating two high-end indian offerings places within their major city hotels under certain common brands. Hence the Peshawri northern Indian Restaurant is in the ITC Kolkata, but also in the ITC Mumbai etc. Peshawri serves the robust Punjabi food of the north west frontier, with an emphasis on tandoori cooking. The restaurant here was excellent, serving very good murgh malai tikka and a lovely tandoori cauliflower dish, as well as good dhal. However the star dish was fish tikka using bekhti, the local name for barramundi. This is a high quality fish reminiscent of sea bass, and the version here was superbly cooked, with its slightly sweet flavour nicely balanced by the spicy marinade and smokiness from the charcoal tandoor - it was simply the best fish tikka that I have ever eaten. The restaurant was so good that we actually cancelled a planned visit elsewhere on our last day and came back here.

Dum Pukht serves more elaborate and subtle dishes, based on the cuisine of Lucknow in northern India. This includes slow cooking in a sealed pot (a "dum"). The food here was of a high standard, the star dish being a pulao of Kashmiri morels in which the rice was particularly delicate and aromatic. The atmosphere was a little stilted, the room unnecessarily dark and with truly teeth-clenching music playing, but the cooking was certainly very good. Again, though, this was far from a cheap experience. Just as in Delhi and Mumbai, is a reflection of the ever expanding Indian economy, meaning that the growing middle class here seem willing to support pricing levels in luxury hotels that might seem high even in Mayfair.

Overall, Kolkata is a bit off the beaten path in terms of tourism compared to Rajasthan, Goa and Kerala, but has some interesting history and a distinct cuisine of its own that makes an interesting change from the Indian food that is normally served in London.

A Frenchie in London

Duck & Rice is an Alan Yau venture located in what was the old Soho bar Endurance, serving dim sum and assorted popular Chinese dishes in a casual pub setting. It is located next to the original branch of Yauatcha, which Mr Yau set up many years ago before selling it on. It is tempting therefore to compare the dim sum here to its more up-market and ambitious neighbour. On a direct comparison the venison puff was definitely better at Yauatcha, though the Duck & Rice version was pleasant enough. However the har gau prawn dumplings were nearer in standard to the classy Yauatcha ones, and the Shanghai dumplings (xiao long bao) with their soup centre were excellent. I liked the Duck and Rice and would happily go back.

Hakkasan in Mayfair is another restaurant whose first incarnation was originally devised by the creative Alan Yau. What is particularly impressive about Hakkasan is the striking consistency of the cooking despite its vast scale and huge popularity. Even with literally many hundreds of covers a night, dish after dish is impeccable. The dim sum here is top notch, and on this visit we had a particularly good fried prawn with chilli dish, as well as delicate young gai lan with garlic. I have written before about the super-slick service here, which appears effortless despite the bustle all around as tables are turned. So often when a restaurant expands its branches they struggle to maintain standards, but Hakkasan somehow pulls it off without a hitch.

Frenchie is a restaurant in Paris run by Gregory Marchand, who picked up the “Frenchie” nickname when working at Fifteen in London. He has now opened this sister restaurant in Covent Garden on the old Porters site. The room is smart, the menu quite interesting. There are no luxury ingredients, but quite clever use of garnishes to enliven what they have. I particularly liked a cauliflower dish with quinoa and spices. A whiting and button mushroom main course was less interesting, though a rhubarb cheesecake was pleasant. Prices reflect the high rents in the area, and the wine list is not priced kindly, so the key for this restaurant will be whether the punters are comfortable paying this level of price for food using mostly cheap ingredients. There is some care in the cooking here lacking in many recent London openings, and I hope it does well.

L’Amorosa is a neighbourhood Italian restaurant near Ravenscourt Park run by Andy Needham, who for many years was the head chef of Michelin-starred Zafferano. Andy cooks in much the same way here as he did in Belgravia, using many of the same suppliers, though with a simpler menu and charging much lower prices. Pasta has always been his strength, and the crab linguine with a hint of chilli, an old Zafferano classic, was genuinely top class. Service here is friendly and the prices modest. It has become one of my regular haunts.

I also had a return visit to Villa Geggiano, the other good Italian restaurant in the Chiswick area. On this visit a tagliatelle with black truffles was very good indeed, having excellent, buttery pasta. A tuna tartare was pleasant too, though passion fruit cheesecake needed a lot more fruit. The food here is less consistent than at l’Amorosa, but it is a very pleasant spot; one minor quibble is that in the evening you will need a torch to read the menu unless you happen to be a cat or bird of prey. I have no idea why so many restaurants insist on lighting their dining rooms as if they are dungeons, but there we have it.

The blog next week will be a day later than usual.

Wine and Food in London

Taillevent 110 is the younger sister of the wine bar of the same name in Paris, itself an offshoot of the iconic Paris restaurant Taillevent. It features no less than 110 wines by the glass, also available in small 70 ml tasting measures. This allows you to try a range of wines at all levels, some of them quite grand bottles. The food here is classical French and is especially good at the dessert stage; they have a pastry chef here imported from Paris who can really cook. The bill here can mount up quickly, but that is due to the highly tempting wine list. The food is not excessively priced given its standard, and the wine mark-ups are not particularly unkind, but it is easy to get carried away if you are a wine lover.

Bonhams was my favourite London opening of 2015, and Tom Kemble continues to produce top-notch food here, thoroughly deserving his Michelin star. Just as at Hedone, where he worked previously, there is an emphasis on high-grade ingredients, and his cooking style is clean and precise. Attention to detail is shown in the excellent sourdough bread, made from scratch and getting better and better. As a bonus, the wine list is the best value in London. Bottles at the pricier end of the list are typically around their retail price, something unheard of in the capital, where mark-ups of three, four times retail and more are the norm. The restaurant was originally open only on weekday lunches, but they have recently extended this to Wednesday and Thursday evenings.

The Brilliant has been a Southall stalwart since 1975. It has expanded several times but still serves excellent Punjabi food, mostly to the Asian families that live in the area. Portions are consequently family-sized, but the staff will happily pack up any food that you cannot finish. There are many consistently good dishes here, such as the butter chicken, but I am especially fond of the murgh methi, with its rich fenugreek-laced spicy sauce. They are one of the very few restaurants in London to serve romali roti, thin bread cooked briefly on a steel hemisphere folded over itself many times. The Brilliant serves some of the most reliably good Indian food in London, and at a very modest price.

From Dim Sum to the Ritz

A. Wong is a particularly interesting restaurant. Chinese food is steeped in tradition, and it is a cuisine that rarely shows much sign of innovating, certainly not in the UK. Andrew Wong, who briefly studied chemistry at Oxford, is unusual in that he has been taking traditional Chinese recipes and dishes and giving them a modern touch. It is a particularly good restaurant to try dim sum, since you can order individual pieces rather than by the portion, meaning that a single diner can still try eight or nine different dishes. Shanghai dumpling with a liquid soup centre, and prawns with freshly grated wasabi root were particularly impressive at my latest meal here, but the standard is very high throughout.

Haandi is an Indian restaurant in Knightsbridge with a media profile so low as to be subliminal, yet its kitchen produces some of the most enjoyable Asian food in the capital. It is particularly good at vegetarian dishes, with an exceptionally good take on aloo gobi, as well as serving very capable variants on classic dishes: its murgh burra tikka is a chicken tikka with a spicier marinade than usual, which works very well. Even the humble popadom is particularly good here, unusually light and crisp. This is not a restaurant that is going to win any awards for décor, and the service is merely functional, but the food is excellent and the prices low, especially for the area.

The Ritz has become a regular haunt of mine over the last few years. The large kitchen team under John Williams MBE serves classical dishes with aplomb. It is rare in London in offering some tableside theatre, as at this meal with a whole mallard carved at the table, with a rich sauce from the duck innards flambéed before serving. This meal featured a very pretty crab and caviar dish, superb langoustines (which were alive in the kitchen, a rarity in London) and a terrific Coronation chicken tuile nibble. The pastry section here is particularly talented and produce a rage of elaborate and attractive desserts. It is absurd that it has no Michelin star, especially when you consider some of the other places in London that get this accolade.

The France Michelin guide came out. The big news was the elevation of Le Cinq under Christian Le Squer to three stars, well deserved based on my meal there. Alain Ducasse also regained three stars for Plaza Athenee, which had been demoted to two following a troubled reopening there. Meurice lost its third star, presumably following the recent announcment that chef Christophe Saintagne was leaving to open his own restaurant. More surprising was the demotion of Relais Bernard Loiseau, though my last meal there felt like a good two star meal rather than a three star.

There were ten new two star places and 42 new one stars. The new two stars are: La Grande Maison Joel Robuchon (Bordeaux), JYS (Colmar), 1920 (Megeve), Paloma (Mougins), Sylvestre (Paris), Gabriel (Paris), Grand Restaurant de Jean-Francoise Piege (Paris), Stories (Paris) and Villa Rene Lalique (Wingen-sur-moder). There were six demotions from two star level to one (including Gordon Ramsay's Trainon and Atelier Robuchon Etoile in Paris) and a pair of two star closures. France now has 26 three star restaurants, 82 two stars and 492 one stars. The only remaining 2016 guides to be published are those to Brazil, Scandinavia and the Main Cities of Europe, which covers eastern Europe. With these still left to appear, there are currently 112 three star restaurants in the world. Of these, I have yet to review Kohaku in Tokyo and Cheval Blanc in Basel (and Kevin Fehling's new restaurant in Hamburg, which moved from Lubeck).

I was very sad to hear about the death of Benoit Violier, head chef of Hotel de Ville in Crissier, who committed suicide on 31^st January at the age of 44. I only met him briefly twice, but he was at the very top of his profession. The chef interview that he did for me is here. As well as earning three Michelin stars his restaurant was recently ranked the very best in the world by La Liste, a “meta” list of lists that factors in rankings by Michelin, San Pellegrino and local restaurant guides. His death is a tragedy for the industry and in particular for Brigitte, his wife, who also works in the restaurant, and his young son.

Some Unlikely London Restaurant Locations

Piquet is located just north of Oxford Street, with a chef who was once head chef at Orrery. It has a large basement dining room and ground floor bar, and the menu had plenty of dishes that you might actually want to eat. A little onion tart nibble was very good, as was a rhubarb tart for dessert, so the kitchen seems to be able to produce good pastry. Other dishes were pleasant though there were also some minor issues that could be tweaked. The sourdough bread was bought-in and particularly unimpressive, but this is a detail that can be fixed. I suspect that as the kitchen settles in and irons out a few niggles that it will become quite impressive.

Belle Epoque is a fine dining restaurant in the unlikely location of the Sofitel at Terminal 5 of Heathrow. With 3 AA rosettes to its name (roughly the equivalent of one Michelin star in AA terms) it is clearly aiming for something more than just serving burgers to tired travellers. The dishes that we tried were indeed quite intricate, possibly too much so in places, but the kitchen is certainly trying hard and showed plenty of technical skill. The main limitation is that they need to use the same suppliers as the rest of the Sofitel group, and this distinctly limits the product quality that they have access to. An example was a scallop dish with celeriac and pork belly, whose scallops were cooked correctly but were clearly frozen and lacked flavour. Similarly a turbot dish would have been very good if it had featured a high-grade chunk of turbot from a large fish (the bigger the turbot, the better the flavour), but instead used a much cheaper small whole turbot that did not taste of much.

Paradise Garage is situated not on a tropical island but under a railway arch in Bethnal Green. It is the sister to Dairy in Clapham, and serves trendy “small plates” with frequently exotic ingredient combinations targeted at the local hipsters. I really liked the sourdough bread, made from scratch in the kitchen, and the house-made salami, though the salad dishes that I tried were less impressive. It ticks all the fashionable boxes with some natural wines and desserts with ingredient combinations that only a masochist could love. Given that there is some ability here in the kitchen I just wish there were more dishes on the menu that were appealing to those without beards and vintage spectacles.

Ninth Time Lucky

The Ninth is the first restaurant owned by Jun Tanaka, who trained at some very serious restaurants in his early career and until the end of 2012 was running Pearl. After a lengthy hunt he finally found these Charlotte Street premises but is not offering the classical fine dining that has been his trademark. Instead this is a more casual “small plates” place with the exposed brickwork, uncomfortable chairs and mock Scandinavian décor that was in fashion when he started looking for premises. Luckily the food is better than the surroundings, with an excellent cured mackerel dish and hearty salted beef cheeks with charred cabbage. It seemed to be doing well at this lunch time visit.

Hakkasan Mayfair is a remarkably consistent restaurant given its considerable size and relentless turnover of customers. At this latest visit we had a couple of exceptional dishes: langoustine wrapped in glass noodles and lobster in spicy black bean sauce. We also experienced some pretty remarkable service the highlight of which is explained at the end of my review. Hakkasan is never a bargain, but the food and service are top notch.

The Ledbury served me a particularly good meal this week, confirming its status as one of London’s top high-end restaurants. The standard of food was more consistent than it has sometimes been in the past. As well as the classics like flame grilled mackerel, there was an inventive dish of candied beetroot with eel and excellent muntjac deer with red leaves. Service is always silky smooth here and although it is not a cheap experience there are very few places in the UK where you will encounter food of this standard. It shines like a beacon amongst the capital’s often disappointing starred restaurants.

I don’t review pop-ups, since they are often gone by the time you read the article and have a chance to act on it, but I did visit an interesting one this week. At a Soho pub called The Sun & 13 Cantons (the name is due to some 18^th century connection to Swiss wool traders, don’t ask) is a pop-up called Darjeeling Express. It serves the home cooking of Calcutta, and is run by an interesting lady called Asma Khan. She was a barrister before deciding to try making a go of food as a career, and hopefully the evident success of this pop-up will enable her to get investment for a permanent venture. This was my second visit here and the food is excellent, from well-made cocktail samosas to methi chicken and less familiar dishes like a spiced Bengali beetroot croquette and venison kofta. A whole meal here would scarcely buy you a single dish at Gymkhana, and the food here is arguably better. It runs until the end of March – do yourself a favour and give it a shot if you are in central London (reservations are required).

Some Interesting London Openings

Koji is a smart Japanese restaurant in Parsons Green, though an estate agent would doubtless call it Fulham. It notionally specialises in sushi, though they didn't use real wasabi and the tuna was of ordinary quality (a scallop was reasonable). Better was a tempura of wild prawns, which had good flavour and was lightly fried. The problem here is the bill. With beer to drink I ran up a bill of £83 a head with no dessert. I freely admit that Japan has ruined me for eating sushi anywhere else, but this kind of money would buy you some serious food in Tokyo.

Sartoria rather languished for some years, but has just been re-launched with head chef Francesco Mazzei, who was head chef at Anima for many years. The room is smart and has that rarest of thing in a London dining room – comfortable chairs. More to the point, the food was good too, the best dish being an excellent saffron risotto with chicken livers. The only sting in the tail is the heavily marked-up wine list.

Darbaar (pictured) is a large new Indian restaurant in The City run by the former head chef of Cinnamon Kitchen. It has an open kitchen and is smartly decorated, with an interesting menu that goes beyond the high street staples. For example there is an Indian take on pizza with naan bread baked in a wood-fired oven (“nanza”) as well as more familiar things like goat biryani. The cooking was impressive, with superb, rich butter chicken and exceptionally good bread. There were one or two minor things that could be improved but this was a very fine meal, and the best dishes were top of the range. It is in a tricky location and I hope it prospers – if you are around Liverpool Street then give it a try.

Just before New Year I also had another lovely meal at The Ritz. The food is consistently excellent, with a particularly gorgeous langoustine dish and fine venison. It is genuinely baffling to me that Michelin ignore The Ritz year after year, given that they for example gave a star recently to another London hotel The Goring, which with the best will in the world is not in the same league. Michelin can at times be a mystery wrapped in an enigma.

Park Chinois Revisited

Two Taj hotels in London have well-known restaurants. The Bombay Brasserie redefined high end Indian dining in the capital when it opened in 1982, and had a refurbishment in mid 2015. Although the dining room is improved I can never grasp why they do not use the much more appealing conservatory except for weekend buffets. The food can be very good, but some inconsistency has crept in recently based on my last two visits. Tandoori scallops at this visit were ordinary, following a sub-par fish curry a few month earlier. There has been no chef change so I am not sure what the issue is, but given the high price point I hope they iron the problem out.

Quilon delivered a more even experience, with good pepper shrimps, lamb biryani and Mangalorean chicken at this visit. It is nice to see southern Indian food get some exposure when so many London restaurants offer north Indian staple dishes. This being St James, prices are higher than the typical high street experience, but so are the quality of the ingredients. I just wish they would ramp up the spicing a little rather than toning things down for perceived western palates.

I thought I would try Park Chinois one more time after an enjoyable but expensive and slightly erratic meal soon after opening. The room is gorgeous here but the kitchen shows no sign of having settled into a rhythm. At this second visit the Peking duck was overcooked and some dumplings were a little on the chewy side, though gai lan was lovely, and Bang Bang chicken salad was good. However given the truly steepling prices here this kind of roller-coaster ride over the menu is not really on. If Hakkasan and Yauatcha can deliver consistently excellent food across their vast London venues then a more ambitious restaurant like Park Chinois should certainly be able to. The glamorous room, live jazz and huge stock of waiters here need to be complemented by better cooking in order to justify the dizzying bill.

The Waterman’s Arms is a unassuming little boozer in Brentford. Its appeal lies not in its basic décor or even its proximity to the river, but rather the cooking of its landlord Gordon Fry. Although you can have capable pub grub here, the much more interesting option are the Japanese izakaya dishes; Mr Fry has a Japanese wife and lived in the land of the rising sun some years ago. His dishes have punchy flavour and are carefully made, all at very modest prices. If you are ever in the Brentford area then do yourself a favour and give it a go.

Lunch in Paris

Chez Ami Jean is a bistro in Paris dating back to 1931. It is a crowded, noisy, bustling place with an open kitchen at one end. The lengthy tasting menu that we had was erratic, ranging from genuinely top-notch hare royale and very good Parmesan soup through to frankly poor octopus and tuna dishes. The head chef screamed at his kitchen staff in a rather disconcerting way at intervals throughout the lunch, but the food service continued smoothly enough.

Tokimeite is a Japanese restaurant in Mayfair that has taken the place of the long-established Sakura. Its press release and website trumpets the role of Yoshiro Murata the chef of Kikunoi in Kyoto, but in fact he is just consulting here. The chef actually in the kitchen of Tokimeite was previously head chef of the short-lived Chrysan. The restaurant has been expensively gussied up but the issues that plagued Chrysan seem to be repeated here. Sushi had fridge-cold rice, a cardinal sin, and the other food that I sampled was very ordinary. The wine list is an embarrassment, and the assistant manager had no idea from where in Japan the (very expensive) Japanese beef was from. This seems to me another drive-by restaurant from a big name foreign chef, designed to prey on the wallets of Mayfair residents.

Raunka Punjab Diyan is a Southall restaurant owned by an Indian sweet-shop business that supplies lots of other restaurants. Not surprisingly its desserts were the highlight, but I also enjoyed a methi chicken dish and black dhal, all at an extremely low price. There was one poor dish, but this was swapped readily, and overall this was a good value meal.

Parlour serves consistently excellent and inventive British dishes in the unlikely setting of an old boozer down an alley in Kensal Rise. Its classically trained chef specialises in retro British cooking, making inventive use of non-luxury ingredients. This being Christmas, his signature chicken Kyiv became turkey Kyiv, and the cow pie was transformed into venison and labelled as “reindeer pie”. The salmon is smoked in the kitchen, the soda bread made from scratch, the salads are inventive and the soufflé would be worthy of any starred restaurant. A little gem that deserves more attention.

I had my 63^rd meal at Hedone, whose food continues to focus on the very best of pre in its new tasting menu-only, 22-seat format. A great example of what makes Hedone so special was the salt marsh lamb from Mont-Saint-Michel in Normandy, probably the best regarded lamb in France. This had extraordinary flavour, served with date, lemon and almond puree, miso, black garlic glazed grilled aubergine and lamb jus. This was a genuinely memorable dish that could grace the table of any restaurant.

London Latest

Noble Rot has a chef who worked for five years at the wonderful Sportsman, and the latter’s chef/owner Stephen Harris is helping out here on a consulting basis too. Some dishes from the Sportsman are recognisable if a little different, such as excellent focaccia and lovely slip soles with spicy smoked butter. An excellent apple and hazelnut tart showed that the dessert section can deliver, and a particularly well-chosen and tolerably priced wine list is a major bonus. This is one of the best London openings of the year, and is the kind of place I could eat in day in, day out. A winner.

Park Chinois is the latest extravaganza from Alan Yau, intended to conjure up an image of a 1930s Shanghai jazz club. The room is suitably louche and gorgeous, and there are more waiters than you can shake a stick at, as well as live music from time to time. The menu is quite confusing though, with peculiar touches such as a carbonara with sea urchin (you read that correctly) in addition to more familiar Chinese fare. The food was mostly quite good, but not in the league of Hakkasan or Yauatcha, which Yau originally set up. Sadly the prices are astronomical, reflecting the Berkeley Square location and the massive fit-out costs of the restaurant. The charming staff and lovely room almost carry you through the meal, but reality sinks in with a thump when the gigantic bill arrives.

Tarantella is a family-run neighbourhood restaurant in Chiswick. It is not a destination restaurant but it is a definite cut above the chain restaurants that populate so much of the Chiswick High Road these days. Pasta dishes are nicely made, as are the pizzas, and the welcome is warm. The wine list is modest but affordable, starting at £15.

Madhu’s at the Sheraton is the posh sister of Madhu’s in Southall, with décor that could easily be found in Mayfair rather than a Heathrow airport hotel on the Bath Road. The other distinction between this and its older sibling is its robata grill, giving a pleasing smoky note to dishes that are grilled over charcoal. Dishes such as the superb spicy lamb chops here benefit from this, as do the excellent cauliflower florets. If you are ever in the vicinity of Heathrow then give it a try.

I had a deeper look at La Liste, launched last week as a "meta list" of 1000 global restaurants. It takes as input guides like Michelin, San Pellegrino and Gault Millault as well as many other more local ones (around 200 in total, including this very site that you are readingl). Based on a very large survey of chefs, it assigns a trust rating to each of these guides, then for each restaurant it takes a normalised score in each of these guides times their trust factor, so in other words a weighted average. This accounts for 75% of the marks, the rest being made up from popular voting sites like Tripadvisor, Yelp, Zagat etc. The methodology seems pretty sensible at first glance, and certainly throws up some interesting results.

As a general rule, France and Japan, followed by the USA and Italy, have the most entrants in the La Liste Top 100. Compared to San Pellegrino it is much kinder to France and Japan in particular (which is barely touched by San Pellegrino) and much harsher on Scandinavia and South America. This seems fair enough to me, as France and Japan surely have the deepest seam of world class restaurants.

Some favourites of San Pellegrino do not feature in the top 100 of La Liste (there are only 25 of the top 100 in common, though almost all The Pellegrino feature somewhere in the top 1,000). It does not slavishly follow Michelin even in France, where a couple of two star places ended ahead of several three stars. It differs wildly from Michelin in Japan, where only 9 of the 23 restaurants in La Liste Top 100 have three Michelin stars. The UK has Gordon Ramsay as its solitary top 100 entry, so avoids some of the (to me) unjustiifed generosity of some lists towards the UK's trendiest restaurants: Dinner is a nice restaurant, but 7th best in the world? Please. It is 453rd on La Liste.

No list like this is ever going to be definitive, and indeed as I mentioned last week it is to an extent a fruitless exercise trying to apply such precision to a subjective thing like whether you prefer one restaurant to another. Nonetheless, it seems logical and is somewhat transparent since you can see the scores on which each restaurant is based. It is also less susceptible to manipulation than most since it is based on so many other pre-existing lists. I think it is a welcome addition to the perennial debate about top restaurants.

Happy New Year to everyone!

South Africa's Best Restaurants

Rust en Vrede is a restaurant in a winery in Stellenbosch, not far from Cape Town. It has a lovely terrace looking out over the countryside, with a smart dining room that in the evening was poorly lit. To compensate it has a superb and lengthy wine list, featuring not just its own well-regarded wines but a large selection of top growers, many of the wines being listed below their current market value. The meal itself was rather ordinary until the dessert stage, when the two best dishes of the meal appeared.

The Tasting Room at Quartier Francais makes heavy use of local produce, with lots of exotic raw material fashioned into an eight course tasting menu. There were some highlights, such as a particularly lovely quail dish, and a technically clever and enjoyable dish involving beetroot jelly filled with liquid beetroot. Not everything was to the same standard, however. At times the flavour balance seemed a little off, and it was a pity to encounter woefully undercooked cabbage with one dish. However the staff were charming, the wines excellent and the bill modest.

Test Kitchen in Cape Town is set in a fairly industrial area, has an open kitchen and casual décor in the modern style. We tried the full tasting menu there, and very good it was too, with for example a most enjoyable dish of kingklip, a local fish. The standard of the meal was highly consistent throughout, with no duff dishes at all over the lengthy menu, and the service was impressive.

Interestingly, my favourite meal of the week was not at either of the above restaurants on the San Pellegrino list but at La Colombe. This moved recently to the Silvermist vineyard in Constantia Nek, very near the Botanical Gardens of Cape Town and at the far end of the Constantia wine route. The view looking out over the vineyards below is stunning, and the food was impressive. From a very well-balanced tuna starter through to an elaborate but well-judged fish dish the food was classy. Service was lovely and the wine list was another bargain, so if you are travelling to Cape Town make sure that La Colombe is high on your list to visit.

The South African wine region is a lovely part of the world, and at present offers almost embarrassingly good value if you are fortunate enough to live in a country with a reasonable strong currency. A sense of the glorious scenery in the area can be gained from Kirtsenbosch Botanical Gardens (pictured), which nestles under Table Mountain on the edge of Cape Town just by the Constantia wine route.

The 2016 Michelin Guide to Belgium and Luxembourg appeared. There was no change at the three star level, but promotions to two stars for The Jane, la Villa in the Sky and d'Eugenia d'Emilie. There are now 3 three star restaurants in Belgium, along with 20 two stars and 105 one stars (seven new one stars this year). Additionally, Luxembourg has 11 one stars (two new ones this year, with one demotion).

Since we clearly do not have enough best restaurant lists, "La Liste" appeared. This is all very meta, an algorithm driven list sponsored by the French government and based on ratings of 200 local food guides around the world. It may be seen as a French response to San Pellegrino, but in fact takes the San Pellegrino top 100 as one of its inputs. Top of the tree was the lovely Hotel de Ville, and there are certainy worse choices than that. To me any such list is inherently flawed, as no-one can be so precise as to say that so and so restaurant is 27th in the world and not 28th or 26th. However it is certainly an interesting addition to the debate about how to rank the unrankable. La Liste rather peculiarly includes some introduction-only restaurants in Japan such as Mizikawa, which is doubtless very good but at which no one can eat unless you are part of that particular private members club. Nonetheless It is good to see an alternative approach to global restaurant assessment, another worthy one being OAD, which is in fact one of the sources La Liste uses. I was quietly chuffed to discover that my very own www.andyhayler.com website is also a "trusted source" according to La Liste.

Have a very happy Christmas everyone!

The South African Wine Region

The main wine areas of South Africa are not far from Cape Town, the nearest being Constantia, Stellenbosch and Paarl, with Franschhoek about an hour’s drive from the city. This countryside contains many of the nation’s top restaurants. We stayed at Quartier Francais in Franschhoek, a small but prosperous town nestled under the nearby mountains. The town is full of art galleries, coffee shops and the like, immaculately maintained. At present the South African rand is very weak compared to sterling, so as a visitor everything seems very reasonably priced. The one thing that I did find puzzling was how slow the internet is: South Africa ranks just 81^st in the world for internet speeds, below such high tech titans as Morocco, Egypt and Romania - even Mozambique can manage a faster connection. I tried several Wi-Fi connections in assorted locations, and discovered that a download speed of 1 MBps was a distant aspiration in practice (the fastest that I encountered was well below one-hundredth the speed that I have at home). Fortunately the lengthy wait for pages to load can be spent sipping the excellent wine that the country has to offer.

At the Moreson winery we tried Bread and Wine, which has a beautiful setting and outdoor dining room overlooking the nearby vineyard. The food was rather erratic, with a truly dismal dish involving soggy fried shellfish, though there were some other quite pleasant culinary offerings. The very affordable wines compensated.

Ryan’s Kitchen is a restaurant on the outskirts of Franschhoek with exotica such as wildebeest tataki on the menu. They did a little better when cooking simpler food such as Parmesan croquettes, and certainly the prices (at least as a tourist) seem so low that it is at least good value.

Foliage in Franschhoek has a quite ambitious menu with dishes that tend to have a lot of components on each plate. This is not necessarily a good idea, though the service was excellent, and the bill was extremely cheap. I suspect that chef would do better to focus on less elaborate dishes.

Jordan was a more impressive experience, another winery restaurant with a stunning view (pictured). A duck dish and both desserts that we tried in particular were very good indeed, service was lovely and the bill again seemed almost embarrassingly low for what had appeared on the plate and in the glass. This is a place I would highly recommend, especially if you can come at lunch to take advantage of the beautiful location.

Next week I will cover my meals at Test Kitchen, The Tasting Room at Quartier Francais, Rust en Vrede and La Colombe, which completed my culinary tour of Cape Town and its nearby wine region. This set includes the three restaurants rated highest in the local Mercedes Benz Eat Out awards, which appears to be the most well-regarded of the local guides, and the only two South African restaurants to feature in the San Pellegrino List.

The 2016 Michelin Guide to Tokyo came out. There was a new three star in the form of Kiharo, the sister restaurant of Ishikawa; Kohaku had held two stars since 2012. This brings the total number of three star restaurants in Tokyo to 13, the most of any city in the world. It also has a still vast number of 51 two star restaurants despite six demotions (including the lovely Rakutei, where the owner sadly died), with promotions for Beige, Dominique Bouchet and Monomoki. There are 153 one star restaurants, and I was pleased to see a star for the excellent Florilege.

The 2016 Michelin guide to The Netherlands was published. There was no change at the three star level, and a solitary new 2 star, De Groene Lantaarn in Zuidwolde. The country has a pair of three star restaurants, 20 two stars and 85 one stars, including seven new ones. Not a single restaurant was demoted at any level.

The Michelin 2016 Guide to Italy also came out. There was no change at the three star level. Combal Zero and Il Mosaico (closed) were demoted, and Gourmetstube Einshorn was elevated to two stars. Italy now has 8 three stars, 38 two stars and 288 one star restaurants. The only remaining 2016 guides are Belgium (December 14th), France (late February), Sao Paolo and Rio de Janeiro (March), Scandinavia (late March) and the Main Cities of Europe, which picks up Eastern Europe (late March). It was also announced that in November 2016 a Michelin 2017 guide will be published for Singapore, but it was unclear whether this was to be a one-off guide (like some of the guides to Japan's regions) or a permanent addition to the Michelin stable of country guides.

In other news, I was asked by Forbes magazine.to suggest a few favourite restaurants.

Revisiting Some Old Favourites

The awkwardly named “I, Robert” is an Italian café/restaurant in the heart of Mayfair, with a head chef that worked for many years at Zafferano. The menu is appealing and the prices not excessive by the admittedly high standards of Mayfair. Trofie pasta with pesto showed that the kitchen can cook, all its pasta being made fresh and rolled by hand. The bread, made from scratch, was also good. The food was generally pretty decent, let down only by some very haphazard service.

Gaylord’s is an Indian restaurant that has been running for 49 years, so clearly has been doing something right. Its menu is large and has recently expanded even further, with some quite modern dishes tucked in amongst the high street favourites. Murgh malai tikk was good, but the best dish was the kulfi, made from scratch in the kitchen and genuinely excellent. Not everything is of the standard, and the bill feels a touch high, but service was fine.

Pierre Koffmann had a deserved three stars for the legendary Tante Claire before he retired, but has re-emerged with the more casual Koffmann’s. A few of the classic Tante Claire dishes are on the menu, and the pistachio soufflé is a genuinely top notch dish. The menu is very attractive and the standard of cooking high. It is hard to understand why Michelin have ignored it, unless Mr Koffmann asked them not to rate it, since the cooking is clearly better than plenty of starred London restaurants.

The Fat Duck has become noted for its elaborate but resolutely unchanging menu, the immovable object of the British dining scene. Finally after a lengthy closure and refurbishment, resulting in a bigger kitchen, it has reopened with a (mostly) new menu. Some old stagers are still there: Sounds of The Sea and Mock Turtle Soup, as well as the whisky wine gums. However there are several new dishes, as well as an even heftier price tag: £255 (plus service) for the food, payable in advance, making it by some margin the costliest menu in Britain other than that at The Araki. The theatrical aspect of the meal has even more emphasis, but the whole thing is beginning to feel a bit dated. I liked the new langoustine and mushroom dishes in particular, but generally speaking the food lacks the wow factor that these prices demand. Without a doubt the cooking is technically accurate and involves a great deal of work, but some of the magic seems to me to be starting to look a bit threadbare in places.

The Cabin in the Woods

The Modern has had a Michelin star since 2006, soon after opened (I tried it briefly that year) but since 2014 has had a new chef, who recently picked up a second star for the restaurant. Within the Museum of Modern Art, it has a buzzy feel to the place, with a packed bar leading to a calmer dining room. The food is French, and made with care. The star dish was a pumpkin soup with hazelnut sabayon, but the general standard was very high, and I have no issue with its two star rating. Service was particularly smooth and there was a very good wine list too.

Rather than all fine dining, I was curious to try some more casual New York fare. Sedelle’s does a very good artisan bagel, and I went on a miniature burger tour with two well-travelled diners. I confess that my experience of New York burgers up until now was limited and disappointing, having tried the highly rated version behind the “secret” curtain at the Parker Meriden, and reckoned it marginally superior to MacDonald’s, but with worse fries. This time we tried burgers at Black Iron, Genuine, Rauls and Minetta Tavern. The first two of these were pleasant but ordinary, the burger au poivre at Raul’s better and genuinely good. However by a wide margin the best version was at Minetta Tavern. Here the cheeseburger was excellent, but even better was the “black label” burger. This is made half with rib eye steak, the other half using their normal mix of chuck, brisket, short rib and skirt steak). This had lovely texture and flavour, and a good bun too.

Finally I tried for the first time the famous “cronut” from Dominique Ansel in Greenwich Village. A brilliantly marketed concept, queues for this are so long that there are companies you can pay that employ people to queue up for you. I have to say that the actual cronut tasted pretty unpleasant to me, neither a croissant nor a doughnut, which are both things that I really like.

The main focus of the trip was to visit a very interesting restaurant called Damon Baehrel, which is located in woodland around 120 miles north of Manhattan. This is a very unusual place indeed. The chef/owner runs a completely single-handed operation, acting as forager, cook and waiter to a maximum of 18 guests, who are served in a basement dining room in his house (pictured). To say that he takes a local approach to food would be an understatement. Since 1989 he has been serving a menu in which every component (barring seafood) is grown on his 12 acre property and nearby farm. He makes his own oils, his own flour, he cures his own meat, and makes dozens of his own cheeses. Local plant substitutes are used in place of lemons or sugar, in an approach he calls “ native harvest” cooking. I was quite sceptical before I went, but what is impressive is that, despite the self-imposed constraints, the food is actually highly enjoyable, and the cooking very precise. He enthusiastically describes the considerable lengths that he goes to in order to produce the food, and is an engaging host. This is a good job, since our 20+ course meal took almost seven hours, yet the time seemed to fly by. Despite not using a PR company, and without even a phone number for the property, the restaurant has built up a tremendous word-of-mouth following, and the queue for reservations has reached epic proportions. It is currently booked until 2025, so I felt very fortunate to be invited to join a small group of diners there who had managed to finally make the list. You may not be able to go yourself given the distant location and crazy waiting list, but I hope that the chef gets wider recognition for his cooking and ultra-local culinary approach, which he was taking years before foraging became fashionable in restaurants.

The Michelin 2016 guide to Spain and Portugal was published. There were no changes at the three star level. Spain gained a pair of two star restaurants in the form of Coque and Zaranda. Spain now has 8 three star restaurants, 20 two star and 150 one star. Portugal has no three stars, 3 two stars and 11 one stars.

Taillevent Comes to London

The iconic Taillevent in Paris may no longer have three Michelin stars (for reasons that entirely elude me) but it still one of the finest classical French restaurants. They also have a wine-oriented brasserie called Les 110 de Taillevents, and have now brought this to London in Cavendish Square (pictured). At an early visit the place was already functioning smoothly, the food appealing and carefully made. The highlights were the desserts, made by a pastry chef who had worked at Taillevent. You can drink 110 different wines by the glass, including some very high end ones, and mark-ups are surprisingly reasonable. Service was also silky smooth, as if it had been open years rather than days.

The same could not be said of Foxlow Chiswick, where staff were well meaning but disorganised. More to the point, the food was well below the standard of the original branch in Islington. Salty, overcooked salmon was the worst offender, but even the dishes that were serviceable, such as the fried squid, were very ordinary. I am not sure that this is just a matter of early teething troubles, since I couldn’t find a single dish that was better than merely decent. The wine list was the only redeeming feature, with some interesting bottles at tolerable prices. It is entirely possible for restaurant chains to recreate the success of the original branch (for example Hakkasan, Franco Manca) but it is rare and it was not the case here.

Bonhams is my favourite London restaurant opening of 2015. Its young chef continues to improve and develop, as shown at this meal with even better bread than he was making before. The focus on ingredients here was illustrated by a genuinely lovely scallop and excellent sika deer. The sommelier Charlotte is charming, presiding over the best priced wine list in London. The cheaper end of the list is marked up a bit, though still nowhere near usual London levels, but the more expensive wines are generally around their retail price, so if you splash out then you will be rewarded.

I don't review pop-ups on this site but I was very impressed by the cooking at the Darjeeling Express opp-up at the Sun & 13 Cantons pub in Soho. Asma Khan is from Calcutta and I can safely say is the best chef with a PhD in constitutional law cooking in London at present. This is home cooking but in a positive sense, dishes made with real care. The perfectly cooked aged basmati rice is reason enough to go, and highlights included very light onion bhajia, tiger prawns with mustard sauce and lovely carrot halwa. The pop-up runs until March, when I hope that she will find a permanent home for her classy cooking.

The Michelin 2016 guide to Belgium and Luxembourg was due out on 16th November but the announcement was postponed until 14th December due to the tragic events in Parisr. Presumably the Netherlands Michelin will still be announced on 7th December as planned.

This week I did a TV interview about Michelin for Channel NewsAsia, a satellite news channel viewed in 25 Asian countries.

Next week I will cover a brief but interesting visit to New York.

Yauatcha Comes to The City

Yauatcha City is spread over a vast site in the Broadgate Circus development. I can never quite figure out how the Hakkasan Group manage to get such consistency from their kitchens given the vast scale of Hakkasan and Yauatcha. This latest site is no exception, the winning formula of all-day dim sum faithfully recreated from the Soho original. The steamed buns are hard to fault, the baked venison puff as lovely as at its older sister restaurant, the char sui as light and fluffy as you could wish for. Even the desserts are a hit, with a chocolate delice genuinely top notch.

Hoppers is the latest restaurant from the Trishna stable, this time concentrating on the cuisine of Sri Lanka. Hoppers is a no-reservation, casual format place, but the food shows good attention to detail, with a pork curry with hopper (appam) the star dish at the meal that I tried. Just days after opening there was already a queue outside the door before the lunchtime service. This is understandable given the carefully made food and tolerable prices.

L’Amorosa is my “go to” Italian restaurant these days. Andy Needham’s restaurant has a more casual feel than his old home at Zafferano, but he can still make excellent pasta dishes. This week a saffron risotto was genuinely classy, and tagliolini with seasonal porcini was also lovely. The modest pricing and friendly staff here are icing on the panettone.

Hedone now has a new layout and serves just 22 diners at a time, allowing the kitchen to develop a more elaborate take on the already superb cuisine. At this, my 62^nd meal here, highlights were red mullet with potato crisp and a gloriiously rich hare royale. As ever, the key is the obsessive search for only the highest-grade ingredients by chef/owner Mikael Jonsson. When you work with produce of this quality then you are off to a racing start, and for me there is no better food to be found in London than here.

The Olympic Studios is an unlikely food destination, it being the café of a boutique cinema in Barnes. Yet the culinary ambition of the kitchen goes well beyond popcorn, its chef having formerly been head chef at Garnier. At my latest visit here a carefully constructed chicken and quinoa salad was very good, as was venison with kale, but the star dish was an excellent chocolate and raspberry bar. You don’t have to watch a movie to eat here, and it is a restaurant that deserves greater attention than it gets.

The Germany 2016 Michelin guide came out. Amador closed, but Kevin Fehling retained his three stars despite moving premises to Hamburg. This means that Germany now has 10 three star restaurants, 39 two stars and 241 one stars.

A Visit to Alsace

Schwarzer Adler is a Michelin starred restaurant in Baden owned by a wine producer; it is particularly famous for its wine list. The cellar has plenty of choice but that is true of many restaurants; what is different here is the price. Once you climb past the basic wines then you have to blink and check whether a trailing zero has accidentally been left off the prices. Instead of the London “four times retail price” formula, you will find wines here that are half their current market price, sometimes less. In some cases you really are drinking from a bottle that would be priced at ten times as much in Mayfair. The food is classical and enjoyable and the service friendly, and not surprisingly the place was packed.

Auberge de l’Ill (pictured) has had three Michelin stars for longer than any restaurant except for Paul Bocuse, and has one of the prettiest riverside settings of any restaurant, with a lovely garden and weeping willow next to the dining room. I have eaten there twice before, once much more successfully than the other. However at this meal it was firmly back on form, the star dish being a quail starter that was as close to classical French perfection as you could wish.

The Harwood Arms serves the best pub food in London, benefitting in particular from its co-owner Mike Robinson’s love of game. Many of the animals used in the kitchen have been shot in Berkshire by Mr Robinson, and are prepared with skill by chef Alex Harper. Wood pigeon faggots were a richly flavoured example at this meal, and the signature venison Scotch egg is a glorious creation. Vegetarian options are more than an afterthought, as shown by an excellent spiced cauliflower dish with capers and raisins, and the doughnuts here are superb.

Lurra is a sister restaurant to Donostia, and seems to be the current darling of the London food bloggers. The bread (from Hedone) and the ham were certainly good, but the kitchen has had limited intervention with these items. However the house speciality of grilled turbot was a flabby disappointment, and a red pepper dish was over oily. This was a long, long way from the magnificent charcoal-grilled turbot served at Elkano and Kaia Kaipe on the coast of the Basque country.

The Michelin guide to western Japan came out, covering Kyoto, Osaka and Nara. Curiously, Kobe was not scored as a destination in this guide as it was previously, but will instead be assessed within a guide to Hyogo prefecture, to be published in December. For Osaka, Kyoto and Nara there were no changes at the three star level, but there were a few additions and demotions at the two and one star level. Kyoto has seven 3 stars, Osaka four and Nara one, so 11 in all for western Japan (Kobe was previously listed as having two as well). At the two star level, the count is 24 for Kyoto, 20 for Osaka and three for Nara (Kobe has 11 in the previous guide). At the one star level, the press release seems to have an error in it as the total quoted does not match the full listing. By my count, Kyoto has 68, Osaka 64 and Nara 12 one stars (Kobe previously had 39).

The Michelin 2016 guide to Hong Kong & Macau also appeared. Tang Court was promoted to three stars. Given that I wrote after I ate there that it was "laughable" that it had two stars, you can guess my view of it gaining a third, though this is the same guide that acclaimed Sun Tung Lok with three stars, so nothing surprises me any more. Ming Court deservedly gained a second star, as did Forum. Hong Kong now has 6 three star restaurants, 15 two stars and 41 one stars. In Macau there is still the pair of 3 stars, now 4 two stars with the addition of Jade Dragon and The tasting Room, and 10 one stars.

Further Exploring the Tokyo Dining Scene

Tokyo has a dazzling array of restaurants, and the dozen that I visited on this latest trip (my ninth here in six years) barely scratch the surface of what is available. One of the most popular things for lunch is ramen, and the shop with perhaps the longest queues at present is Kagari, who are unusual in making chicken rather than pork ramen. Certainly the chicken had excellent flavour, and although at the end of the day we are talking about a bowl of noodle soup, this was certainly a very good bowl of noodle soup, and cheap to boot.

Another food from the less luxurious end of the spectrum is tonkatsu, pork that is breaded and deep-fried. The pinnacle of tonkatsu is to be found at Katsuzen, the only tonkatsu restaurant granted a Michelin star. A charming family-run place, a lot of attention goes in to the detail here, from the sourcing of the pork to the home-made breadcrumbs. Even a side salad here was genuinely excellent.

I tried two emerging sushi restaurants with young chefs, both of whom happen to speak quite good English (still something of a rarity in Japan). Sushiya is tucked away down an unpromising alleyway but serves excellent sashimi and sushi. The chef has some quite innovative touches and the tuna in particular was top notch. Sushi Tokami was also very good with a particularly impressive Pacific sardine and excellent sea eel sushi, as well as superb tuna.

Florilege was a most enjoyable experience, a Japanese/French fusion restaurant in Shibuya. Customers perch at a counter looking down at an open kitchen, and enjoy a tasting menu that involved a lot of technical skill. Innovation was shown in a pile of Japanese tea leaf ash concealing a baked sweet potato, but the kitchen team showed they could cook classically too with a guinea fowl main course. The staff that we encountered were delightful, and if you are in Tokyo and want to try and up and coming restaurant then this one fits the bill.

Makimura is the only three star addition that Michelin handed out last year in Japan. Nine miles south of central Tokyo in Shinigawa, it serves traditional kaiseki cuisine: a multiple course tasting menu based on the most seasonal of ingredients. Some of these can be pretty exotic, such as olive flounder and its sperm sac. Others are more familiar, and fried squid was ultra-tender, as was abalone steamed for five hours. Overall I didn’t think Makimura was really in the league of the top kaiseki restaurants of Kyoto and Tokyo, but it was certainly a pleasant experience and at a fraction of the price you would pay at a grander place in Kyoto, such as the courtly Kitcho.

As ever, I was sad to curtail my visit to Japan, where the people are extremely welcoming to visitors, the streets are spotless and the trains run on time to the second. The sheer depth, variety and quality of restaurants in Tokyo is remarkable; it is a great food destination. One non-food place to visit is the Edo museum, which as well as art exhibitions has impressive displays of Japanese life in an earlier era, including a full-size reproduction of a theatre (pictured).

The Michelin Chicago 2016 came out. No change at the top, and a new two star in the form of Acadia. Chicago has 2 three star restaurants, 3 two star places and 17 one stars.

A Visit to Tokyo

Tokyo is perhaps the greatest food city in the world. It certainly has the most Michelin stars (303) and the most three stars (12) but it also has great depth and variety. The lowest estimate I have seen of the number of restaurants in the city is 67,000. It is far from all being about sushi, though its gigantic fish market Tsukiji serves the needs some of the best sushi restaurants on the planet.

Il Ristorante is an Italian restaurant in The Ginza with just one Michelin star, though surely if it was in Italy it would have two. It is blessed with a capable Italian chef and his team working with Japanese ingredients, which are essentially peerless. This was best shown in a carpaccio of eighteen different vegetables, with dazzling flavours. New season Alba truffles with tagliolini was a classic dish, while kinki fish with scallop cream showed how the kitchen had adapted to make use of local ingredients.

The Aman Hotel is where we stayed, and they have a less ambitious Italian restaurant of their own. The best dish was a genuinely top-notch chocolate dessert, but otherwise the savoury dishes were pleasant rather than anything more. The view from the 33^rd floor over the city is certainly spectacular, and the service was very slick, but it will mostly appeal to people staying at the hotel.

Another Italian restaurant newcomer to the city is the outpost of Heinz Beck, who runs three star Michelin Pergola in Rome. His Tokyo venture overlooks the moat of the Imperial Palace, and he has installed a capable chef who worked for many years at Pergola. He proved capable of reproducing the signature fagotelli ravioli very well, and also a superb pigeon dish with foie gras and spinach.

Many restaurants in Japan specialise to a great degree, some serving just one ingredient or dish. An example is Jubako, an eel restaurant that has been operating since 1790. The setting is attractive, with no central room but rather a series of private dining rooms, ours overlooking a pretty garden. The eel was prepared in several ways and the service from traditionally costumed waitresses was lovely. Objectively it was quite expensive, but you are paying for the seclusion of the private room.

Miyako Zezankyo serves traditional tempura, the batter feather light and encasing excellent ingredients, both vegetable and fish. High end tempura restaurants in Japan are impressive if you are used to the dish of the same name elsewhere, partly due to the ultra-light batter used but mainly due to the sheer quality of ingredients. For example here the sweet prawns were alive seconds before they were cooked.

Ginza Harutaka is one of Tokyo’s battery of top class sushi restaurants, and has been rated as high as number two in the city on local voting website Tabelog. Sushi chefs take great care in the selection of rice and the vinegars to use with it, quite apart from the superb seafood that they present on the sushi. An example here was very tender squid and excellent horse mackerel, as well as lovely tuna.

In other news, the San Francisco 2016 Michelin guide came out. Manresa finally got its third star, and there were two star elevations for Commis and Compton Place. There were no less than thirteen new one star places, and just four demotions. San Francisco (and the Bay area) now has 5 three stars, 7 two stars and 38 one star restaurants.

A Mix of the New and the Familiar

I am lucky to have Amorosa within walking distance of where I live. Its chef/owner, Andy Needham, was the head chef of Zafferano for many years, and it is always interesting to se what a Michelin-starred chef can do when cooking simpler food. Just as when he was at Zafferano, the strengths of the cooking at l’Amorosa are the pasta and the skilful salads based on good ingredients. A starter of beetroot salad with walnuts and Italian cheese had attractive presentation, with discs of both regular and golden beetroot. Pasta with a rich ragu was excellent, as was tagliolini with prawns, tomato and chilli. Chocolate fondant was suitably rich to finish, its liquid centre an indulgent way to finish the meal.

The Hour Glass has recently opened, run by the owners of the successful Brompton Market, an all-in-one butcher, greengrocer, fishmonger and deli. Its wood-panelled upstairs dining room is cosy and has a short but appealing menu. The Scotch egg that emerged from the small kitchen was pretty special, using rare-breed pork and being superbly prepared. A mackerel starter was also precisely cooked, as was a fine game pie. As a bonus the wine list is kindly priced, and overall this is a place that I heartily recommend. There are so many over-hyped London openings these days but this is the real deal.

Bouillabaisse in Mayfair was set up by the founder of the first Nobu in London. With such a track record you would not expect bargain-basement pricing, and indeed the prices here are eye-watering in places. At least the fish is of good quality, with tanks downstairs filled with crabs and lobsters, and fish brought up from Cornwall each day. The kitchen seems to work best when at its simplest, with a very nicely barbecued monkfish served plain. When more intervention happens it is not always well-judged, such as an overly strong orange and fennel dressing with a shellfish tartare. At this price point any little slips become annoying, and although I like the idea of a simple seafood restaurant it is hard to reconcile ths particular one with the bill that arrives.

Cinnamon Club (pictured) recently underwent a major refurbishment, re-emphasising its background as the Westminster library with the shelves of books now extended to ground level throughout. It has always been an appealing space in which to eat, the service run by an excellent manager, Jean-Luc Giquel, who used to be maitre d’ of Chez Nico at 90 back in the day. The menu seems largely unchanged, with its range of Indian dishes frequently using ingredients that are a step up from a high street curry house: Romney marsh lamb, halibut and deer are on offer as well as butter chicken.

Riverside Dining

The Boathouse in Henley has a terrace with a river view and a chef (Shaun Dickens) who has worked at some serious restaurants. We enjoyed an excellent meal here, with a crisp leek with beef carpaccio being particularly impressive, as was stone bass with ricotta and agnolotti pasta. The skill level was high throughout the meal, with a fine dessert in the form of rich coffee and chocolate with caramel and chocolate “aero”, with a delicate cappuccino tuile. This was a genuinely good meal, and if you are ever in the Henley area I recommend the place highly.

Diwana Bhel Poori in Euston is a café that I have been visiting for thirty years now. Its Gujerati snacks are some of the best you will find in London: samosas are bursting with spicy filling, and the aloo papri chaat has tender vegetables and a careful blend of chutneys. Bhajia mix comes with a spicy tomato chutney, and the bhel poori itself is a thing of beauty, a fine balance of tamarind sweetness and spice and multiple textures. All this, with a sweet lassi to share, cost me £11 a head. That is for the whole meal, including service. This is surely the best value restaurant in London bar none.

I associate cinema food with packets of overpriced popcorn at best, but The Olympic Studios Café in Barnes is a very different affair. Attached to a private member’s club and luxury cinema, this is a proper restaurant, with a chef who had a solid track record at Racine and Garnier. The modern British food is very well prepared, such as a capable beef tartare with sourdough toast and salad. Scallops with chorizo, celeriac and peas were also very enjoyable, as have been other dishes at previous visits. There is outdoor seating in good weather, and on a sunny day (as this one was) it is a fine spot for lunch before settling down to watch a movie in a comfortable armchair.

The 2016 Michelin guide to Switzerland came out. There is a new three star in the form of Cheval Blanc at the historic Grand Hotel in Basel. This brings the total for the country to three, the same as the UK at present. There are also 18 two stars (no new ones) and 95 one stars, with thirteen new one stars and fourteen deletions, including the Rasoi by Vineet, following the deletion of his star from his flagship London restaurant in the 2016 UK guide..

Come Into My Parlour

The Goring has changed chef since I last visited, and was recently awarded a star by Michelin in the 2016 guide. A family-run hotel and the only one to hold the Royal Warrant, the Goring knows its clientele and does not try to push culinary boundaries. Here you can order Dover sole or beef Wellington with no fear of encountering unfamiliar foraged weeds or any unwelcome vegetation popping up in your dessert. I am all for this kind of old-fashioned food, and the meal that we had was certainly enjoyable, though for me it fell a little short of the level that its new rating suggests. The service was certainly excellent but why this particular hotel dining room was selected for an award ahead of The Ritz is a mystery understood only by Michelin.

Parlour has long been a favourite of mine. Its somewhat obscure location in Kensal Rise means that Jesse Dunford-Wood’s cooking does not get the sort of attention that it would in central London. This is a pity since the food here is very good indeed. The kitchen transcends the constraints of a pub and makes the very best use of its non-luxury ingredients, relying on invention, skill and culinary wit. Here you can try retro-British cliché dishes like “Chicken Kiev” (pictured) and “Arctic Roll“ but cooked with real skill and brought up to date. Salads are original and excellent, the bread is made from scratch in the kitchen, the salmon is smoked on the premises. The chef’s table tasting menu is an entertaining as well as delicious experience. I would rather eat at Parlour than at plenty of Michelin-starred places.

I tried two very different Indian restaurants this week. Gymkhana is very Mayfair, with smart dining room, smooth service and inventive and interesting dishes like duck dosa and goat keema. The cooking is capable, though the prices reflect the upmarket location. The food at Madhu’s in Southall is much more traditional Punjabi fare, aimed at local Asian families. The dining room is not as swish, but the service is good in its own way and I enjoyed the food just as much. Prawn biryani is a speciality at Madhu’s, and malai chicken tikka is as tender as you could wish. Value for money is a different matter when comparing the two, with a whole three-course meal for two at Madhu’s including drinks costing in total barely more than one of the dishes at Gymkhana (whose kid goat raan is a little matter of £55).

The Michelin New York came out. No change at the three star level, and one new two star in the form of The Modern. New York now has 6 three stars, 10 two stars and 57 one star restaurants.

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A Cotswold Weekend

Whatley Manor is a delightful place for a weekend break in the countryside. It is in the Cotswolds, perhaps a couple of hours drive from London. The building is very attractive (pictured) and has extensive gardens and grounds, so if you are lucky with the weather then it is a gorgeous spot. For me it is one of the best of the 2 star restaurants in the UK, its meticulous chef Martin Burge obsessed with precision and quality. It has recently switched to a tasting menu only format, but since there are three different menus available and you can mix and match, this is not much of a restriction. A dish of native lobster in a couple of forms showed plenty of technical skill in the accurate cooking of the shellfish, paired with a silky lobster mousse. Squab pigeon with foie gras, soufflé potato and watercress was another most enjoyable dish, making the best of the high quality ingredients.

The Dysart in Petersham is an old favourite with its talented young chef. The best dishes here are genuinely classy e.g. sea bass with lemon celeriac, spiced kaffir lime and green chilli used excellent wild bass and the sauce had a lively spicy kick. Bread is made from scratch and many vegetables used come from the garden at the back. If the kitchen could improve consistency across all its dishes then I could easily see it gaining a Michelin star in due course. As a bonus the wine list is interesting and kindly priced compared to central London, and the room is spacious.

I had a brief lunch at Amorosa, which gained a well-deserved bib gourmand in the 2016 Michelin Guide the day before my visit. Ex Zafferano chef Andy Needham seems very relaxed in this more casual setting, and as ever his pasta dishes are a particular strength. My freshly made pasta with borlotti beans and pancetta was very good, and my experienced dining companion was very happy with his osso bucco. Prices are very modest and the staff are always friendly in this charming neighbourhood restaurant.

Hakkasan Mayfair is wildly successful, serving over 500 diners on the midweek evening that we visited, yet despite this huge scale the food is remarkably consistent. Langoustines wrapped in glass noodles with chill and garlic sauce were terrific, and the Singapore noodles here are far superior to the versions that are produced in Chinatown. I am particularly intrigued as to how the service here manages to be so flawless given the size of the place: every little detail is attended to and you are made to feel as if you are the only diners, quite an achievement in such a vast and bustling restaurant.

Seeing Stars in The Alps

La Bouitte is the newest three Michelin star restaurant in France, and indeed in all of Europe. It is in the Alps in a ski resort called St Martin de Belleville, a pretty spot with fine views across the mountain scenery (pictured). The food had a particularly emphasis on using local produce, so on the plate you see crayfish and fera from nearby Lake Geneva rather than the usual luxury ingredients like langoustine and turbot from Brittany. The staff were charming and the food was very enjoyable, with a sweetbread dish the star of the meal, though it is hardly a bargain. The issue was that it seemed to me quite a long way from three star level, a problem not with the enjoyable restaurant itself but with Michelin’s scoring. Out of the last twenty three star promotions I reckon just three to be of true three star quality, all the more bizarre when there are some terrific restaurants around with two stars that are deemed unworthy of the ultimate accolade (such as Les Crayeres, Sa Qua Na or Guy Lassausaie in France).

l'Aventure is one of those restaurants invisible to the media, social or otherwise. Tucked way in a quiet street in St Johns Wood, it has been running since 1979 under the same female chef/patron, so must be doing something right, and does so little marketing that it does not even have a web site. Although not trying to be more than a neighbourhood French restaurant, I found Aventure to be excellent, delivering three high quality courses for a modest price. North London is not exactly overflowing with good restaurants, so it is all the more surprising to me that Aventure gets so little attention. I would return in a heartbeat.

Another place I am fond of is The Crown in Burchett’s Green near Maidenhead. Here the chef and owner runs the kitchen single handed, without even a kitchen porter to help him to serve up to 28 guests. We had another excellent meal here, from with dishes such as wild halibut with spiced onions and a genuinely classy rum baba with blackberries and pears grown in the pub garden. The modest pricing is another bonus, especially if you are used to the highway robbery level of gouging that is the norm these days in central London.

The UK and Ireland 2016 Michelin Guide results were announced. Two stars for The Araki (pretty much as expected) and Umu (not expected). The Fat Duck was temporarily deleted as it was closed most of the year, but there were no other changes at the two or three star level. One star was awarded to Bonhams (well deserved), Lyles, The Portland and The Goring in London, and Maze and Rasoi lost their star.. Outside the capital there were stars awarded to Carters of Mosely (Birmingham), Gravetye Manor (East Grinstead), The Man Behind the Curtain (Leeds), John's House (Loughborough), Woodspeen (Newbury), House of Tides (Newcastle) as well as The Cellar (Anstruther), Elpic (Belfast), OX (Belfast), Loam (Galway) and, at long last, to The Greenhouse in Dublin. The following one star places lost their star: Curlew, Apicius, Sienna, Tassilli, The Old Vicarage, The Stagg Inn, and also The Castle Terrace, Knockinaam Lodge, The Three Chimneys, Thorntons and Bon Appetit.

Putting On the Ritz

The Newman Arms ticks a lot of good boxes: it uses nice produce from Cornwall, the front of house staff seem charming, the room is cosy, the wine list is kindly priced and the pub even has an interesting history. It is the kind of place that I really wanted to like. Yet the meal that I tried there was very ordinary; there were no horrors, just a tendency towards under-seasoning, but the food just seemed bland to me. It seems to have plenty of fans but I cannot get excited over the food itself.

I preferred the meal I had at another place nearby doing simple food, albeit of a different cuisine. Briciole is an Italian deli and restaurant that gets a lot of things right. It has a very appealing menu and its kitchen produces robustly flavoured, enjoyable food. The waitresses can be a bit disorganised but the manager holds things together, and the wine list is unusually good as well as being affordable. Taglialini with porcini mushrooms was a typical example of the kind of food that they serve here, and very nice it was too.

Moving up the culinary ambition level, I had another superb meal at The Ritz. The level of technical skill in the kitchen was illustrated by a beef tartare topped by what looked like just like a whole black truffle but was actually a sphere of breadcrumbs coloured with squid ink, encasing a mushroom puree with a soft cooked quail egg at its centre; the dish was finished by dots of egg yolk reduction. The pastry section here is no less ambitious, with a spectacular gateau St Honore (pictured). That the food here continues to be ignored by Michelin is a source of unending bewilderment to me, but not to its customers: the vast dining room was packed out on a midweek lunch.

The round of 2016 Michelin guides will soon begin. The schedule is as follows:

September 17^th (2015) - UK and Ireland

September 30^th – New York

October 7th - Switzerland

October 20^th – Western Japan

October 21^st – San Francisco

October 28^th – Chicago

November 5^th – Hong Kong

November 12^th – Germany

November 17^th – Belgium & Luxembourg

November 25^th – Spain & Portugal

December 1^st – Tokyo

December 7^th – Netherlands

December 10^th Italy

Late February (2016) - France

February 24^th – Nordic Cities

8^th March – Main Cities of Europe (covering Greece and eastern Europe)

April 6^th – Sao Paolo & Rio de Janeiro

Beautiful Burgundy

It is some time since I have been to Burgundy, which has a pair of three star restaurants in the form of Bernard Loiseau and Lameloise, both of which have different chefs cooking now compared to a dozen years ago. Bernard Loiseau tragically committed suicide in 2003, but the restaurant has retained its trio of Michelin stars ever since, with Patrick Berton heading up the kitchen. The dining room looks out over a lovely garden, and the cooking is still classical French. The savoury dishes were, to be honest, a mixed affair. A signature dish of frog’s leg with parsley sauce was poor, though tomatoes with cheese mousse and bacon was lovely, and girolles in a bread casing were very good. The main course was similarly erratic, with an excellent turbot dish but ordinary chicken. The meal was rescued by two stunning desserts, a rhubarb and ginger sphere and a gorgeous strawberry concoction. Both were dazzling, as were the petit fours, but overall this meal was surprisingly inconsistent for a 3 star, though at least service was excellent.

No such issues at Lameloise, where Eric Pras now heads the kitchen after the retirement of Jacques Lameloise, and clearly he is a cook of considerable talent. A langoustine starter was remarkable, as was pigeon with Mirabelle plums. Dessert was similarly superb, an elaborate celebration of lemon in various forms. I had a bite of a few other dishes, and everything was to the same remarkably high standard. Service was superb and the cost of the food not that bad considering the level of quality on show. Lameloise has a somewhat gloomy dining room and the property is not particularly beautiful, but the food is reason enough to visit.

Le Montrachet in the famous wine village of Puligny Montrachet is a one star restaurant with an airy dining room and pretty garden, as well as an impressive list of wines from the region. The food was a rather up and down experience, with a lovely Bresse chicken making up for a very ordinary starter of tomatoes and langoustines. Service here was also far less good than it should be at this price point, falling apart at the end of service, though overall it was an agreeable enough spot for lunch.

If planning a trip, bear in mind that these locations are not particularly handy for the international traveller. You can fly to Lyon (or indeed Geneva), but Beaune (pictured) the main city of the region, is a lengthy drive from either (177km from Lyon, 237 km from Geneva). Both the three star restaurants mentioned above are themselves a fair distance from Beaune. However the countryside is pretty, and Beaune itself (pictured) is very well preserved. Moreover, Lyon itself is a lovely place to visit, and not just because of its fabulous food scene; its mediaeval old town is a UNESCO world heritage site.

This Sportsman Life

The Sportsman on the Kent coast (pictured) is one of my favourite UK restaurants, with Stephen Harris taking the idea of local sourcing to an obsessive level: the salt comes from the beach, the pork from the farm adjoining the pub, the vegetables from the garden at the back. Cooking is stripped down so you will not find unnecessary garnishes to distract you from the lovely produce appearing on the plate. The star dish was superb brill with vin jaune sauce, while a flawless greengage soufflé demonstrated the command of technique here.

I had another curate’s egg of a meal at Otto’s, a restaurant that I really want to like yet I find can be infuriatingly erratic. Last time I was here Challans duck was overcooked, but this time it was lovely. However soufflé potatoes, which last time were the star of the meal, were on this occasion soggy and flabby. Bresse chicken was very good, but cheese soufflé was, er, crisp, which is not the adjective that you ideally want to be able to apply to your soufflé. Given the fairly hefty price point for the luxury ingredients here I really wish that the kitchen could execute more consistently.

Tangawizi is an excellent Indian restaurant just by Richmond Bridge. As well as the familiar staples of the high street like malai chicken tikka, Tangawizi does some more unusual things like tandoori mushrooms and aloo tikki chaat, and it does them very well. The black dhal here is particularly recommended, as is the unusually good naan bread, and the staff are very friendly.

The Duke of Sussex is a pub local to me whose food is a cut above the norm. They make their own sourdough bread in the tiny kitchen, and at this meal a quail salad with puy lentils and harissa was original and successful. Prices are very low indeed, and you can bring your own wine for a modest £10 corkage. It is not destination dining, but one of the few places in Chiswick that I return to on a regular basis.

Talking of which, I had my 61^st meal at Hedone, who have now returned from their summer break and are on cracking form. Highlights from the carte blanche tasting menu included trout with caviar, langoustine with pea puree, sea bass with pickled walnuts and 100 day aged Galician beef. If there is any better food in London than at Hedone then I have missed it.

A trip to Belgium

I tried a pair of two Michelin starred restaurants in Belgium. L’Air du Temps is in a farmhouse (pictured) in the countryside, 37 miles south east of Brussels. A very large vegetable garden supplies ample fresh produce to the dining room, and the self-taught chef seems to be a pleasant and thoughtful individual. Sadly the meal that he cooked for us, though pleasant enough, had considerable inconsistency amongst the dishes. A lobster dish was lovely, but some dishes were well below this level. It was an enjoyable enough experience and a pretty place to stay, but the food had too many ups and downs given its rating.

Much better was Bon Bon, located in a very smart street in the outskirts of Brussels. The standard of dishes was high throughout the meal, with a couple of really impressive seafood dishes in particular. The cooking showed inventiveness but above all a high level of technical skill. The waiters that I encountered were excellent and it is easy to see why the restaurant recently gained its second Michelin star.

Corner Room is the more casual restaurant within the Bethnal Green Town Hall Hotel, one floor up from the excellent Typing Room. It has a brand new chef (Richard Wilkins), in place for just a few weeks, but is already serving very enjoyable and inventive food. Sweetbreads and peas were very good, as was poussin with Jersey Royals. I would happily return here.

In my local area, Tarantella is a family run Italian restaurant and pizzeria, friendly and reliable and with pizza of a higher standard than the high street chains. Blue Plate serves the food of the deep south of the US in a casual setting attached to a cake shop. It was a little off form on this latest visit, though the friendly chef and modest prices make it a likeable enough place.

In other news, it seems as if the dismal Le Chabanais has already folded. Although the sign on the restaurant door talks of a technical problem, the rumours were otherwise, and this was finally confirmed on 20th August. Given the lavish décor here the investors will want to consider how they are going to rescue things to give themselves a chance of some sort of return on their considerable investment. Apparently there will be a reopening with a "new kitchen team" in early September. I wonder whether a name change may occur, rather in the manner that Windscale nuclear power station was renamed Sellafield after its own little problems in 1957.

This website is now 21 years old. As far as I know it is the oldest restaurant review website in the world. I hope that it has been useful to you over the years.

From the sublime to the ridiculous

Le Chabanais (pictured) has been one of the highest profile London openings, the sister of the fashionable Paris bistro Chateaubriand. A stack of money has been lavished on the Mount Street premises, all polished brass and marble. If only the same effort had been made in the kitchen. Of the dishes that we tried, there were a couple of pleasant enough ones: decent ravioli with fennel, a good sweetbread dish. Yet there were some major disasters too – “quail tandoori” was no such thing, and was actively unpleasant to eat. A Paris Brest dessert was simply bizarre, and all too many dishes had some wacky element designed to show how terribly trendy the chef is. Prices were sky high and the wine list something that only a natural wine lover could admire. Service was friendly if rather bemused. This is a restaurant that has been greeted with terrible reviews, and I deliberately held off going here in order to give it a chance to settle. The trouble is that it has had time to settle down, and is still dire. The bought-in bread was the best thing about the place.

At the other end of the value scale, Bonhams produced another lovely meal. Their version of gazpacho, made using Sicilian tomatoes, had dazzling flavour and was genuinely impressive. Their commitment to high end ingredients was shown further with lovely Challans duck, the breast pink and the leg slow cooked and served with beetroot, fresh almonds, endive, blackcurrant puree and a sauce of the cooking juices. The menu here changes frequently, the service is good and the wine list one of the most fairly priced in London – what is not to like?

Kadiri’s has been serving biryani to the inhabitants of Willesden since 1974. There are not many restaurants with that kind of longevity, so they are clearly doing something right. Their biryani was indeed very good, the rice fluffy and infused with saffron, the chicken avoiding dryness. The other dishes that we tried were not in the same league, the spicing being one-dimensional, but prices are low and overall this is a pleasant neighbourhood restaurant.

Amorosa is another regular haunt of mine, featuring ex Zafferano chef Andy Needham cooking in a much simpler neighbourhood environment than his previous home in Belgravia. Risotto with prawns and courgettes was excellent, as was potato and Parmesan ravioli with Bolognese ragu. Service is friendly and the prices very modest, such a nice change from the gouging that is all too common these days in central London.

London Old and New

I was very fond of Apsleys at The Lanesborough, but the hotel is now under new ownership, and after a lengthy refurbishment has reopened with a different restaurant called Celeste (pictured). Eric Frechon of Epicure at The Bristol has installed one of his sous chefs here, and the dining room has been freshened up and is brighter than before. The food is classical French, and genuinely terrific langoustine ravioli demonstrated that the new kitchen team can cook. Other dishes didn’t reach this high level, though, and overall it felt like something of a work in progress. With a typically rapacious luxury hotel wine list and high food prices the bill skyrockets quickly. At £164 a head any small imperfections become grating, and it feels like they are running a restaurant still in soft opening but at full price.

Inaho is a simple neighbourhood Japanese restaurant in Bayswater. It has been running for ages, but like many Japanese restaurants in London its menu does not specialise as most restaurants in Japan do: there is sushi, tempura, grilled dishes, tonkatsu, you name it. This wide menu must make it difficult for such a small place to be consistently good, and although an eel roll and tuna tataki were pleasant, the tonkatsu was dried out. It was a harmless enough experience, but not worth making a special a journey to visit.

Canvas changed head chef in January, with Aguilar Bel now running the kitchen. He has worked in some serious kitchens in Spain, but the cooking style here is European rather than explicitly Spanish. Good scallops with Iberico ham and asparagus worked well as a starter, and Challans duck three ways demonstrated that he knows what to do with a good quality ingredient. His fiancé, the pastry chef, can also cook well, as shown by an enjoyable dessert of Guanaja chocolate with cherry mousse. Service was good and the only notes of caution are the fairly high price point and gloomy basement dining room.

Royal China Queensway is my “go to” Chinese restaurant in London. Sure, Hakkasan and Yauatcha are objectively better, but they are also pricier and more formal. Royal China has a noisy, cavernous room full of Chinese families, bewildered tourists and diners enjoying consistently excellent Cantonese food. The menu is vast, but dishes such as spicy hot and sour soup and steamed sea bass with black bean sauce are very reliable. I particularly like the steamed gai lan with garlic, which surely has to be one of the most delicious vegetarian dishes in London of whatever style of cuisine.

Ambrosia in Paris

Oslo Court is a London institution, delivering a vast menu of dishes that were fashionable in the 1970s (“steak Diane, anyone?”) with not even a hint of update or irony. The dining room is gloriously pink, the tables crammed together but the service utterly charming. There is, of course, still a dessert cart, and the whole experience reminds me of the Frasier episode the “Innkeepers” where the Crane Brothers buy an ageing restaurant (called Orsini) and reminisce about dining there as children. The difference here is that Oslo Court is far from struggling – it is in the pink in every way, with a completely full dining room on a midweek night. The strange thing is that the bill is actually quite high for what is, to be honest, pretty ordinary food. Yet not one diner seemed perturbed and everyone was clearly happy, carried away by the charm and the comfort; long way it continue.

Chutney Mary recently relocated from Chelsea to St James Street. The décor is very smart indeed and the posh Anglo-Indian menu formula spruced up slightly but mostly unchanged. I have had erratic experiences at Chutney Mary over the years, and this meal was also rather up and down. A quail dish was excellent but tandoori turbot was sadly overcooked. The place itself looks lovely and was busy, so hopefully the kitchen can become more consistent over time.

Ambroisie is the most traditional of the Paris three Michelin star restaurants: no tasting menu, no foraged weeds, just classical French cooking using the ultimate luxury ingredients. A langoustine dish with sesame tuile was one of the most perfect things I have ever tasted, the chocolate dessert ethereally light. This comes at a high price, as ever in Paris, and the wine list doesn’t help by refusing to list anything with just two digits in the price. However as pure indulgence it is hard to beat Ambroisie. A restaurant whose name means "food of the gods" had better be good, but in this case it pretty much lives up to its billing.

Christian Bau just celebrated ten years of having three Michelin stars at Schloss Berg, and I attended a weekend at the property to celebrate this. As this was an invitation event where I was a guest I don’t feel comfortable reviewing the dinner, but it was of a similar standard to the three meals that I have reviewed there previously. There was also an event on the Sunday involving ten chefs, including Harald Wolfhart of Schwarzwaldstube and Sven Elderfeld of Aqua, each cooking a dish at a well-attended open air event at the back of Schloss Berg. Congratulations to Mr Bau (who has three Michelin stars tattooed on his right arm) and his team on ten years at the top of the tree.

In and around London

Surrey is lucky to have Drakes at Ripley, where Steve Drake delivers enjoyable and carefully made dishes. A crab dish with parsnip and spices was the star dish of the meal that I tried, flavours carefully balanced and the crab of very high quality. Others worked well too, such as pigeon with sweetbread and cherries. There is a reason why the restaurant has had a Michelin star for a decade.

Sixty One in the Montcalm Hotel is not somewhere that pops up on social media, but I have had some good meals here. The chef has a solid classical training and they go to the trouble of making their own bread, which to me shows that they care. The star dish on this visit was very enjoyable Cumbrian chicken with miso and pickled cucumber, with a coffee desert working well too. On this occasion not all the dishes worked so well, which to be fair was also true to an extent for my prior visits. If they could improve consistency across the menu then I think they will become better known, as the best dishes are very well made.

I tried my first dinner at Bonhams, which usually opens only on weekday lunches but has recently dabbled with opening on Thursday nights. Gnocchi with vin jaune sauce showed off the technical skill of the kitchen, but all the dishes throughout the meal were consistently good, and the bread is superb too. The wine list is a delight and service is charming: do yourself a favour and get yourself to Bonhams, by some margin the best new opening in London this year.

The Brilliant has been a regular haunt of mine for over two decades. Located in a somewhat obscure part of Southall it has expanded more than once over the years but the Punjabi cooking has remained the same. It caters mostly to Asian families with portions to match, but they will wrap up any food that you cannot finish. I often have one of the chicken starters (such as jeera chicken) but this time tried a chaat, which had plenty of tamarind and a good flavour balance. The curries here have bold spicing and plenty of flavour, and they even make romali roti, which is tough to find in London. With drinks and enough leftovers for another meal the bill still only came to £25 a head.

Even cheaper is Diwana Bhel Poori, the Drummond Street institution that I have been frequenting since I moved to London n 1983. The bhel poori itself is a case study of balanced flavours, with just enough sweetness from tamarind and sourness from vinegar blended with the spices. Aloo papri chaat is excellent here, and the samosas are generously filled and served with a spicy tomato sauce. The snacks are the stars here, and if you stray too far off these into more “normal” curries then the food can be quite ordinary, but if you order carefully then you can eat genuinely well for barely a tenner a head.

A trip to Normandy

Sa Qua Na in the port of Honfleur is a restaurant run by chef/patron Alexandre Bourdas and his wife. Mr Bourdas was previously head chef of the superb Michel Bras restaurant in Toya, which has surely the most spectacular setting of any restaurant in the world (it is in a solitary building perched on the rim on a volcano, looking out over a lake in the volcano’s crater, with the Pacific ocean on the opposite side). The cooking reflects both the excellent local seafood and the precision that Mr Bourdas picked up in Japan. The food is lovely here, with for example a gorgeous dish of top quality sea bream, beautifully combining different textures from grated cauliflower and wheat with terrific chermoula with deep herb flavour. This has two Michelin stars but I would have no issue at all if it had a third.

Comptoir et la Table is a simple restaurant right on the harbour of Deauville in Normandy. As you might hope given the location, fish features heavily on the menu, and a turbot with ginger was very pleasant. A risotto with scallops was also quite nice, the good shellfish better than the rather densely textured rice. Other dishes were not quite to the same level, but it was an enjoyable enough experience, and the wines were well priced.

Thomieux in Paris is a brasserie that until recently was run by Jean-Francois Piege but has recently been taken over by ex two star Michelin chef Sylvestre Wahid. The décor features the classical mirrors and red banquettes, and the waitresses were welcoming. The food was enjoyable, with for example a salad using much higher quality tomatoes than we would see in the UK. Confit salmon was also good, a modern take on lemon tart pleasant. The bread, bought in from a top Parisien baker, was superb.

If planning a trip to Normandy from the UK, bear in mind that getting there is fiddly. There are no direct flights on regular airlines, though there is a Ryanair flight from Stanstead to Deauville (but not every day). There was also a summer-only flight from City Airport by Cityjet, and having booked this I was disappointed to find the entire route was cancelled shortly before we went. The alternative is to go to Paris and take a two-hour train ride from Gare St Lazare, or to drive and take a ferry across the channel.

To Taiwan via Soho

Bao (pictured) s a wildly successful little Soho joint serving Taiwanese steamed buns. The queue outside is legendary and there are no reservations, so you need a fair bit of spare time in order to actually eat here: the thirty seat place does about 150 covers at dinner and only a few less than that at lunch, to give you some idea of the likely wait. The buns were lovely, ultra-light and filled with confit pork (there are some other choices). My tip is to largely stick to the buns, as we tried most of the menu between a group of four, and the starters are much more variable in quality than the buns themselves.

Bonhams is still my pick as the best London restaurant opening of 2015, although it has finally made it to the attention of the national newspaper reviews, so getting a table is harder than it used to be. The cooking is based on top notch ingredients, and the star dish was courgette flower stuffed with crab and tomato, a lovely summery dish. To complement the food is a very impressive and (wait for it) kindly priced wine list, an endangered species in central London.

The Royal Oak has managed its recent head chef transition well, sensibly keeping to the successful formula of appealing British food. An asparagus dish was particularly impressive on this visit, and while their popular pie has changed from rabbit to guinea fowl it is just as enjoyable. The service here is excellent and the welcome genuine, so if you ever need a break from the frenetic food scene of London with its constant experimentation, this is a fine place to go.

Caphe Guests is a pleasant Vietnamese restaurant in Chiswick. It is a local place rather than anywhere trying to become a culinary landmark, but its best dishes are enjoyable, such as a Vietnamese prawn salad and nicely made stir-fried vegetables. Not everything is to the same level, but prices are modest and it deserves more customers than it had when we visited.

I had my 60^th meal at Hedone, which continues to deliver top-notch food of a standard at least one Michelin star higher than its current rating. Stand-out dishes included a gorgeous crab and avocado starter, the signature liquid Parmesan ravioli and dazzling sea bass.

I was sorry to hear about the premature passing of Philippe Rochat, one of the trio of chefs that held three stars at the superb Hotel de Ville.

The Ups & Downs of Chicago Dining

Of the casual restaurants that we tried, Nico Osteria was a wildly successful vaguely Italian restaurant with a lively bar, nice food and terrific service. Even better was Girl and the Goat, serving modern American food in a casual pub-like atmosphere, though again the service was remarkably slick given all the bustle. The food here was simple and excellent, with dishes like cauliflower with pickled peppers roasted in a wood oven particularly enjoyable. Fat Rice offers food vaguely inspired by the cuisine of Macau, and was harmless enough though the breathless accolades it has attracted in some food press was baffling based on what we ate. Shanghai Terrace served downright disappointing Chinese food in a smart hotel setting.

Next is the casual sister of Alinea whose menu rotates to a different theme every few months. This one was “tapas”, and although the dishes were generally well made this was just pleasant tapas at a price that would buy you a week of eating similar food in San Sebastian.

Sixteen has recently been elevated to two stars by Michelin, but based on the meal that we ate this is a baffling assessment. There was a good risotto and a pleasant crab salad, but we had to send one dish back, and I was tempted to do the some with one of the desserts. Throw in surprisingly amateurish service and all you are left with is the nice 16th floor view.

Grace is the latest three star restaurant in the city, and although it is certainly an improvement on Avenues, the meal here was pleasant rather than dazzling. The best dishes were very enjoyable, such as a crab starter and also a squab with sunflower seeds and beetroot, and the service was genuinely excellent.

Alinea produced another superb meal, in a different league entirely to any other food this week. It is the kind of modernist, complex cuisine with lots of knowing references and culinary trickery that can so easily result in an annoying mess. Yet Alinea somehow manages to pull it off, with dishes such as the “truffle explosion” simply delightful, and a very impressive octopus dish highlights of a very successful tasting menu.

The high end dining scene is Chicago seems unusually volatile. Since my last visit the excellent (now ex) three star restaurant L20 had folded completely, as did the very enjoyable Ria. Alinea remains the constant, and pretty much the only reason to make a special journey to Chicago for food. Other than that, Girl and the Goat was the most enjoyable meal of the week for me. Overall the dining scene has plenty of pitfalls for the unwary, and can leave you feeling rather like the couple (pictured) in the iconic Grant Wood painting American Gothic, hanging in the gallery of the Art Institute of Chicago..

Molecular gastronomy in Marbella

Dani Garcia is a two Michelin star restaurant in Marbella (pictured). The setting is attractive and the service superb, but the cooking was capable it felt to me a touch dated in some ways. Molecular gastronomy tricks seemed fresh and inventive a decade ago, but now? A white garlic soup with crab and truffle was excellent, along with a tropical fruit dessert, but some dishes such as the “gold ingot” of olive oil and butter were just odd.

Social Tapas is the latest outpost of the rapidly expanding Jason Atherton empire. I have previously found Mr Atherton’s restaurants able to maintain a quite high standard of cooking, despite the sheer spread of new ventures. Here, although admittedly the emphasis is supposedly as much on the wine as the food, things have gone somewhat awry. There was a nice raw scallop dish, but also a couple of disappointments, which given the chunky pricing is all the less tolerable. The wine list, though featuring good growers, is aggressively priced even by the challenging standards of central London.

I notched up my 59^th meal at Hedone, which continues to produce some of the best food in London from without doubt the highest quality ingredients used in a London kitchen. At this meal white asparagus from the Luberon was superb, as was chicken from Landes. The more technical side of the cooking here is illustrated by the stunning liquid Parmesan ravioli and the chocolate mousse with raspberry powder. As ever, the bread here is almost reason enough to visit.

At a lower price point you can eat food reminiscent of the style of Hedone at Bonhams, where the kitchen is run by a former Hedone chef. Here is the same care about sourcing, the simplicity of cooking, and even excellent sourdough bread. Bonhams also benefits from a great value wine list, with some of the costlier wines at roughly their retail price. Open only at lunch, Bonhams is a hidden gem that deserves your attention.

Hungry in Hungary

My week in Hungary was mainly in Budapest, with an excursion to the Tokaji wine region. Budapest is a handsome city, with impressive architecture and the second oldest subway system in the world. The centre is quite compact and very walkable, divided into the Buda and Pest sides by the Danube. There are now four Michelin starred restaurants in the city, though one was closed for refurbishment when I was there and another had just lost its chef. I had a pleasant meal at Borkonyha Winekitchen, a fairly simple restaurant with friendly staff, though its Michelin star seemed a little kind. The other starred restaurant, Onyx, is much smarter (and costlier) and served an erratic meal. I also tried Olimpia, an absurdly cheap place in the outskirts of the city, and Kollazs, a restaurant in the beautiful Four Seasons hotel, where I stayed. Budapest is less well-known than Prague as a tourist destination, but has gorgeous buildings and is well worth a visit. The lovely ornate interior of the New York Café, for example, must be one of the prettiest in Europe.

Tokaji is a legendary wine area in the north-east of the country, producing the oldest sweet wines in the world. The climatic conditions there are perfect for botrytis, the fungus that causes grapes to shrivel and enables the very best sweet wines to be made. Tokaji wine is mentioned as long ago as the 16^th century, though winemaking was going on here much further back, certainly in the 12^th century and possibly earlier. In 1703 Louis XV described Tokaji Aszu sweet wine as “the wine of kings and the king of wines”. The region suffered a decline in the communist era, when most producers had to join a “collective” and quality declined, but after 1989 there has been a renaissance. I visited Istvan Szepsy, the doyen of Hungarian winemaking, and spent a fascinating day with him and his family; his sons run a separate vineyard. Tokaji is a pretty area and can be reached from Budapest in barely two hours due to the recently opened highway. You can even stay in the wonderfully named Botrytis hotel. As a bonus the area has a delightful Italian restaurant called Anyukam Montda, run by brothers who used to work in Italy, and import most ingredients from their weekly. The pizza was excellent and used superb Paolo Pitrelli tomatoes, a well-known producer from Puglia. The local chicken was also lovely, and this unassuming place was for me the most enjoyable meal of the trip. If you are planning a trip to the region and need expert advice then consider using the well-connected local food writer Andras Jokuti.

The Simple Pleasures of Eugenie Les Bains

I have had some dazzling meals at Michel Guerard’s restaurant Pres des Eugenie over the years. With three stars since 1977 the sprightly Mr Guerard can still be found in the kitchen, overseeing things at the tender age of eighty-two. There is great confidence in the cooking here, with terrific technique but no modern culinary trickery. Chefs here are judged on more than setting a water-bath to the right temperature and their skill in placing a few edible flowers on to a plate with tweezers. Dishes here have few elements and are designed to showcase the finest produce that France can offer. The quality of the sauces is terrific, and they make simply the best pastry I have ever tasted in a restaurant. We had four separate meals here in our stay, and so were able to try most of the items on the menu this week. Some dishes seemed almost magical, such as a luxurious take on vichyssoise with truffles. Attention to detail was impressive, with one of the best things of the week being a little nibble of boudin blanc sausages lifted out of the ordinary by the quality of the meat and a little black truffle. Dish after dish was delightful, from stunning chicken Rothschild to perfect lobster cooked in the hearth, through to an exquisite apricot millefeuile dessert. As a bonus, the wine list has some excellent bottles listed below their retail price.

The hidden gem of the property is the rustic Ferme aux Grives, a casual restaurant in an old barn. The room is dominated by a vast hearth with a rotating spit over which assorted animals slowly roast, and there is a short seasonal menu that changes based on what produce is particularly good. Mr Guerard apparently wishes to mark out a clear line between his main restaurant and this, so there are just a few basic wines, simple cheap plates and a casual atmosphere. What cannot be hidden is the quality of the produce used, from the superb Landes chicken to the excellent vegetables, nor the skill of the chefs working here. Salmon smoked in the kitchen was superb, as was suckling pig, and the desserts were dazzling, such as with a magnificent éclair with perfect choux pastry. At just £35 for three courses and nibbles this is one of the world’s great dining bargains.

If you have never been here then I urge you to try this little haven of tranquillity in the French countryside. The property has pretty gardens, spacious rooms and a spa, and they even offer a low calorie menu if you are feeling guilty after all that foie gras. The only drawback is actually getting to this slightly remote location. If planning a trip to Pres des Eugenie then the nearest international airports are Bordeaux (177 km = 109 miles), Toulouse (166km = 103 miles) and Biarritz (133km = 83 miles).If you are already in Paris, there are flights from there to a little airport called Pau, 52km away from the property. Michel Guerard is one of the iconic chefs of France, and both restaurants here are superb in their very different ways. Go on: you are worth it.

A collection of London openings

Sukho is a pleasant Thai restaurant in Fulham that has a couple of sister places elsewhere in London. It is a simple local place with an appealing menu, but the cooking was inconsistent. Stir-fried vegetables with garlic were enjoyable, as was the classic Pad Thai noodle dish. Unfortunately a monkfish was seriously overcooked to the point of mushiness, and the scallops were also overcooked. There were more hits than misses, and overall it was a decent enough neighbourhood place, but not more.

Taberna do Mercado (pictured) is a Portuguese tapas-style restaurant from Nuno Mendes, going back to his roots after the more international style of Chiltern Firehouse. The bustling Spitalfields Market location is idea for the all-day format, and the place was buzzing. The best dishes, such as fried shrimp dumplings and a plate of cuttlefish and pigs trotters, were excellent. Not everything was to the same level, and the bill quickly mounts up as it always seems to in London with this format of ordering. Still, it is good to see a place doing Portuguese food well, and it is clearly prospering.

Melody is the restaurant of a boutique hotel that has been opened in the old St Pauls School building in Hammersmith. The red-brick building is gorgeous (featured in the first movie that Alan Parker scripted) but sadly the cooking did not live up to the surroundings. The quite formal restaurant is far from cheap, yet seems to have opted to use ingredients that are remarkably devoid of flavour, from sad scallops to manky mango. This is a shame as if they ever get a decent kitchen operation here it would be a lovely summer spot.

I had another excellent meal at Bonhams, the best new discovery I have made in London this year. The ingredient quality is evident here, from Luberon asparagus to a sweet scallop sashimi. The short menu is appealing and focuses on flavour rather than chef gimmicks, and the bread here is terrific. The best dish of all was a strawberry dessert using top-notch gariguette strawberries from the Rungis market in Paris, which had glorious flavour of the kind it is all too easy to forget if you are used to British supermarket strawberries.

I won't add to the virtual ink spilled over the latest St Pellegrino list, other than to refer you to my post about it last year: https://www.andyhayler.com/blog?type=search&keyword=pellegrino

Leaving Las Vegas

Given that it is a city essentailly aimed at tourists, Las Vegas makes it maddeningly difficult for a visitor to find somewhere decent to eat. There is no shortage of places serving food, but other than the high street chain restaurants there is little beyond a seemingly endless supply of “celebrity” chef bistros dedicated to milking the wallets of the convention attendees, gamblers and unwary. An excellent example is Jaleo, a tapas offering from Jose Andre, who has a well-regarded restaurant called Minibar in Washington DC (sufficiently popular that I couldn't get a table when I was last in DC). Jaleo’s menu reads well enough, and there was actually an entirely pleasant tortilla served, but otherwise the whole place reeks of being a tourist rip-off, from the chefs trained to shout out “paella” to the dining room when they finish a batch of rice, to the pushy service, ever anxious to process customers as fast as possible. They did manage a moment of light relief by serving up croquettas not on a plate but in an actual black shoe, a serving idea of such dazzling stupidity that I dread to think what other ideas that the management is working on. My tweet of the photo of this abomination at least caused amusement to many, and was picked up by the BBC’s One Show that week as an example of restaurant crassness. In terms of serving food in items of footwear, I hope that this is an idea where what happens in Vegas actually stays in Vegas.

To eat decently in Vegas you need to leave the glitzy hotels and head out to further afield. Just yards from the enjoyable izakaya Aburiya Raku is a sushi bar called Kabuto. Although its head chef has changed fairly recently, Kabuto continues to offer a surprisingly high standard of sushi based on fish mostly flown in directly from Tsukiji market in Tokyo. There were one or two areas where the experience did not quite work, such as a poor tomago, but the fish itself was generally of a high standard and the staff were welcoming. As an aside, the other curiosity of Las Vegas is also well off “the strip”, a Thai restaurant called Lotus of Siam, where the food is nothing special but the wine list most certainly is, having one of the best selections of German Riesling anywhere. Only in Vegas.

From A Smokehouse to an ex Hospital

The oddly named Percy & Founders is on the site of what used to be The Middlesex Hospital, and indeed has a view from the dining room into the old hospital chapel, which was the only part of the site that has survived. This is a large, all-day restaurant, and has had some quite hostile recent reviews in the London food press (though the food did not seem the main focus of their criticism). My meal I ate here was just fine, with several perfectly pleasant dishes and no technical errors in the cooking which, with a chef who used to head the kitchens at Murano, was not surprising. The place seemed relaxed and welcoming to me. It is not going to set the world alight from a culinary perspective, but then that is not the idea. The only real issue for me was that food prices were a bit high, though as compensation for this the wine mark-ups were well below the London norm.

The Smokehouse in Islington now has a sibling in Chiswick (pictured), with the same emphasis on barbecued meat. I tried quite a number of dishes over two separate meals here, and the food is consistently good. I particularly liked the dishes, such as goat tacos with green salsa, that involved spices; the kitchen here seems to have a good grasp of the right level of spicing to lift a dish without overwhelming it. It would be a tricky place to bring a vegetarian, as most dishes are meat-based, but for carnivores it is just fine. I am sure it will do well.

Lyles in Shoreditch was very enjoyable, with tartare of Dexter beef a good start to the meal, and in particular a pair of excellent desserts. The restaurant seems to care more than most about the ingredients that it uses, and the airy dining room has a pleasant laid-back feel to it. This was a restaurant that it would be easy to return to. As a bonus, the wine list had quite modest mark-up levels, a fairly rare situation in London these days.

Modest mark-ups are not something that Scott’s could ever be accused of. I had an acceptable meal, with good Dover Sole and a pleasant tuna tartare, but although the room is smart and the service smooth, the prices here are very high indeed even by the elevated standards of Mayfair, the most expensive square on the Monopoly board. The place was packed out on a Tuesday lunch so the restaurant owners (Caprice Holdings, who also run The Ivy, Rivington Grill, Caprice and Cote, amongst others) obviously know their market, but the value for money factor here was poor as far as I was concerned.

A Visit to Florence

Ora d’Aria has a Michelin star and delivered a capable, though expensive, meal. The best dish, a lasagne involving rabbit ragu, was very good indeed, though not everything was to that level, as with some tempura that would have been frowned upon in Tokyo. The unevenness was a little surprising, especially given the sizeable bill, though overall I can see how it gets a star.

A flashier yet less successful meal was served at the riverside Borga San Jacopo just yards from the Ponte Vecchio. This was all white linen tablecloths and impeccably dressed waiters, but the cooking did not live up to the surroundings. There was some clever presentation but inconsistent cooking, although the desserts rescued things somewhat. At the price this is hard to recommend, riverside view notwithstanding.

Pizzeria O’Vesuvio offers Neapolitan style pizzas, with a huge 700F oven and an unusual amount of care taken in the making of the pizzas. The dining room itself is very basic indeed, with close packed tables and someone’s washing hanging up over the oven, but the pizza was very good, and some care is taken with the sourcing of the ingredients for the toppings. It was very fairly priced too.

It is a long time since I visited Enoteca Pinchiorri, the only multi-starred restaurant in Florence. There were clearly problems at that time, as not only did I have a disappointing meal but Michelin demoted it to two stars, which is not something that they do lightly. This coincided with the restaurant owners opening a restaurant in Japan, and perhaps their attention had drifted. Anyway, nine years later the restaurant regained the third star, a rare feat. The meal that we had this week was certainly of a good standard, with high quality seafood in particular and pretty presentation. The wine list here is vast, and very unusual in that it offers virtually no modestly priced wines at all. The mark-ups are not excessive, and there are even some bargains, but they simply do not offer any remotely cheap wines. Given this, you can either drink water (itself no bargain here) or just go with the flow, order some nice wine and accept that you are going to have a hefty bill.

If you are thinking of a visit to Florence then some planning is required. The nearest proper airport is Pisa, which is quite a distance from the city (there is a tiny airport in Florence, but good luck finding a flight that lands there). If you do not have €225 burning a hole in your pocket for a taxi from the airport to the city (about 50 minutes) then you have two choices. You can take a shuttle bus to Pisa train station, but bear in mind that there are lengthy gaps in the train schedule. There are also coaches from the airport that go directly to Florence. Though inexpensive, the tickets are on a first-come, first-served basis, so you may not be able to get on the first coach that arrives and have to wait half an hour for another one, followed by a one hour drive and then having to get from Florence station to your hotel. Sometimes the Heathrow Express does not seem so bad. Also be aware that if you want to see the Uffizi then you must book tickets in advance, and for other attractions like the Pitti Palace and the cathedral there are really long queues. Florence is a beautiful city but is very, very popular, with hordes of visitors even in early May. A glass of coca cola at a café in the centre will set you back a cool €8, so set your expectations accordingly.

Behind the Bike Shed

Just finding the Rochelle Canteen seems like an achievement. It is only open at weekday lunchtimes, behind a gate with a buzzer that leads onto a path taking you to the converted school bike shed (pictured) that is the dining room. With ownership links to St John the food is robustly and simply British in style, with dishes like smoked mackerel with seasonal Jersey Royal potatoes and watercress a good example of the unfussy cooking style here. This is not a place for a smart lunch with fawning service, but I enjoyed the dishes, and on a sunny day the outside tables in the secluded courtyard are an attractive lunch spot.

The Royal Oak in Paley Street (near Maidenhead) has recently switched chefs, with Dominic Chapman striking out on his own at The Beehive. However the formula at the Royal Oak is sensibly unchanged, with the new chef Michael Chapman (no relation) having been sous-chef here previously. The menu is especially appealing, and care and attention to ingredients could be seen in unusually good heritage tomatoes, and superb salt-baked celeriac with my chicken main course.

HKK is in a rather out of the way location, but the tasting menu contains some genuinely top notch dishes, and the service is superb. The dim sum plate is always special, up there with the very best that Hong Kong can deliver, and the Peking duck is the best in London. Even the desserts, often a joke in Chinese restaurants, get proper attention here. At this meal a passion fruit jelly with lychee tapioca, sesame, lime and chocolate was refreshing and lovely.

I had my 58^th meal at Hedone, which continues to produce arguably the best dishes in London. Certainly the top dishes here tonight - the crab and avocado nibble, the liquid Parmesan ravioli, the asparagus – were at 3 star Michelin level, as were the strawberry textures dessert and the equally lovely chocolate ganache with raspberry powder. It will be interesting to see whether Michelin gets its act together this year and gives the second star that the restaurant richly deserves.

The 2015 Opinionated About Dining Top 100 restaurants in Europe list came out this week. No list is perfect, but this one is based on over 4,500 regular diners (rather than chefs or industry figures), and features some excellent restaurants without marketing budgets that the San Pellegrino awards ignore, such as Ibai. It is a refreshing perspective on the high end restaurant scene.

Going Dutch in Amsterdam

Ciel Bleu is on the top floor of the Okura hotel in Amsterdam, and has had two Michelin stars since 2008. It has a panoramic view over the city and has a particularly good sommelier amongst its well-drilled front of house staff. I particularly enjoyed a langoustine dish and a little cornet of king crab in amongst the tasting menu that I tried. Not everything worked to the same level, and at times it seemed as if the kitchen was too keen to show off its grasp of culinary technique, but the overall experience was very enjoyable.

Librije’s Zusje is a much more recent recipient of two stars, getting them within its first year of operation. This is another hotel restaurant, this one within the Waldorf Astoria in one of the smartest addresses in Amsterdam. The presentation of dishes was particularly attractive, with a very enjoyable sequence of nibbles at the start of the meal, but it was rather erratic. There was one ill-judged savoury course, and the kitchen has fallen prey to the trend for serving desserts that are anything but sweet – avocado and cucumber are surely not things that any normal person wants to see in their dessert. Service was excellent and the dishes that didn’t work were all the more frustrating given the many courses that showed real skill.

Yamazato was the first Japanese restaurant in the Netherlands to gain a Michelin star (its sister teppanyaki place got one this year too). There is a pretty view over an attractive garden, and the food was very good throughout the meal. Ingredient quality was high e.g. some excellent sea bream imported from Japan, and the staff were charming. It was all the more impressive given the considerable scale of the place, and I could see why it was packed even on a Sunday evening.

The surprise of the trip for me was Chapeau, a restaurant some way west of Amsterdam near the coast that gained a second Michelin star in 2012 under its new chef. This is a restaurant that has hardly any reviews in English on the internet, and its chef keeps a very low media profile, so I did not have particularly high expectations of it. In fact it was the best meal of the trip by some margin, the dishes not only looking beautiful (a spring vegetable dish is pictured) but featuring very high-grade ingredients and considerable technical skill. Dish after dish was of three star standard, and although many of Michelin’s decision are double Dutch to me these days it seems to me that this place deserves a third star considerably more than some other places that have been promoted in recent years.

From London to Paris

The Cross Keys is the oldest pub in Chelsea, and almost closed but was saved after an active campaign by local residents. It is now operating as a pub once more, and has a capable female head chef. The menu is particularly appealing and although the room is noisy, the simple but carefully prepared food speaks for itself. There is even a decent wine list, so it is worth trying if in the area.

Heirloom in Crouch End has a chef that doesn’t do things the easy way. Even many Michelin-starred restaurants in London buy ready-prepared packs of meat, but Chris Slaughter still butchers all his own meat himself. The kitchen also makes excellent bread from scratch, and has its own dedicated bit of farmland in Berkshire for growing vegetables. Add in friendly service and a relaxed atmosphere and you have a winning formula. North London is far from awash with good restaurants, and so Heirloom is all the more welcome here.

Locanda Locatelli had to close for several months due to a gas explosion, but recently reopened. The dining room looks pretty much unchanged, as is the formula: a long, appealing menu of Italian dishes, formal service and high prices. The food was generally very good, though a touch less so than I recall from prior visits. I have always found the service operation here has lacked warmth, but on this visit it fell apart completely with an almost comical experience trying to pay the bill. Given the steep prices such mishaps are unfortunate.

Of all the three star restaurants in Paris Ledoyen with Christian LeSquer cooking was my personal favourite. He has now moved to Le Cinq, with Yannick Alleno taking over at Ledoyen. The ornate Le Cinq dining room was undergoing refurbishment when I visited so we were located in a temporary room, but the kitchen was operating normally. I was pleased to see that he is still making his signature dishes from Ledoyen, such as the stunning spaghetti timbale with morels. A strikingly presented dish of wild turbot with fingerling potatoes and black truffles was also dazzling. Another familiar dish was the grapefruit millefeuille, a beautiful and gorgeous dessert. Not every dish was quite to the same standard, with a starter of spider crab and seafood emulsion merely very good indeed, but this is being picky of me, to put it mildly. Although Cinq feels as if it has still a gear to move up it is early days yet, and doubtless the little wrinkles will be ironed out in time, just as smoothly as the perfect white linen tablecloths. The price is, well, Paris level, but with flawless service it is certainly not worse than its high-end competitors in the city. Even with a few little improvements to make the meal today here was still better than at any multi-starred UK restaurant.

A Crowning Achievment

Engawa serves Kobe beef, which until late 2014 was not possible to get in the UK. The dining room is smart and the service friendly, but this place will be measured by its beef, and to be honest it was nothing to write home about. It did not help that they ran out of the cut that I had ordered and served chuck steak instead, but this was not the only issue. Beef from Japan that we find here has been vacuum packed and sometimes frozen, and this affects its texture. Hence although the meat itself started off as very high quality, eating it here is not the same experience as devouring it in Tokyo or Kobe.

The Crown at Burchetts Green (near Maidenhead, pictured) has until recently been a one-man operation, with chef Simon Bonwick producing high quality British food from his tiny kitchen. It is a family affair, with at least one of his children working as a waiter, and the place is simple and friendly. A monkfish dish was particularly impressive, and the chips were some of the best I can recall. The food was actually better at this visit than my first time here, and I have nudged up the score by a point to reflect this. It is just the kind of place you would like to have at the end of your road.

It is good to see The Quality Chop House revived and prospering under its new owners. The short seasonal menu is fairly priced, and the wine list in particular is a delight, with some extremely good value bottles at the high end of the list, and how often does this happen in London? A pork terrine was good as indeed was pork loin, though the dessert at this visit was flawed. Still this is a good spot to eat if you are seeing a show at nearby Sadlers Wells, and in particular if you are a wine lover.

Patara is a mini-chain of smart Thai restaurants in London and abroad. The Thai food is about as good as London has to offer (though for authenticity it is hard to beat The Heron). The service at the visit was unusually off key but the classic dishes such as tom yum goong and pad Thai were as reliable as ever. Ever since The wonderful Thailand in New Cross closed I have been in search of genuinely top quality Thai food in London but I have yet to find any. The nearest I am aware of is the terrific Kiin Kiin in Copenhagen, which is of course a little off the tube map.

Parlour is a regular haunt of mine, with its talented chef Jesse Dunford Wood cooking excellent value retro British dishes such as chicken Kiev and Arctic roll. He also runs a “kitchen table” experience, a table next to the kitchen where he delivers a surprise menu along with plenty of wit and a little theatre. I wrote about this experience at a previous visit. It is great fun and well worth it if you can get a small group together.

A Visit to the Algarve

The Algarve in the south of Portugal is blessed with a splendid climate and pretty coastline (pictured), and is popular with golfers and those in search of sunshine. It also has Villa Joya, the first restaurant in Portugal to gain two Michelin stars. An area popular with German and Austrian tourists, it is interesting that both Villa Joya and Ocean, the other two star restaurant in the area (sadly closed when I visited) both have Austrian chefs.

Sao Gabriel is a one Michelin star place further along the coast, and was pleasant enough. The food was fine when the chef could resist tinkering with his kitchen toys, such as with a very good red mullet dish. However too many dishes involved the kitchen showing off its grasp of modernist technique, with ingredients coerced into unnatural textures, and a general tendency to have too many components on each plate. The wine list was interesting and the staff friendly, but I feel that the restaurant would be more successful if it just let the local products speak for themselves.

Villa Joya does just that, the cooking heavily oriented to using the seafood of the region. The cooking style is quite classical in style, and one thing that I really liked was its approach to sauces. In London these days you are hard pressed to encounter a sauce unless it is in the form of a few artistic blobs or smears to decorate the plate. At Villa Joya sauces appear as they should do, in glistening pools. More to the point they are carefully made, something that requires a lot of work in the kitchen. The format here at dinner is a no-choice tasting menu that changes each day, which encourages hotel residents to eat multiple meals here rather than dining elsewhere. There is more choice at lunch, but even here the menu changes to some extent every day. The food was consistent and well made, and although it perhaps lacked much “wow” factor it was an entirely enjoyable experience. Service was a little casual for the price point, but the setting of the dining room is spectacular (pictured), perched on the edge of a cliff overlooking the Atlantic. There are worse places to spend a few days.

Virgin Territory

Terra Vergine (pictured) is trying to carve out a regional Italian niche, bringing London the cuisine of Abruzzo (the region east of Rome). The chef is from that area and produced some good dishes, such as the specialty of lamb skewers, as well as very good freshly made chitarra pasta with hearty wild boar ragu. Even the wine list is mostly stocked with wines from Abruzzo. Our waiter was excellent, and this little place deserves more than the handful of diners that it had on the night of our visit.

This is more than I can say for Shumiken, a Chinese restaurant in the surprisingly smart new Dorsett Hotel on Shepherds Bush Green. This flashy place sits uneasily with the pound shops and bookmakers premises nearby, but is presumably a sign that even this distinctly raffish area of London is being gentrified. The dim sum in the restaurant was quite good, but their speciality duck was very ordinary, and the noodles served with it were dismal, watery and utterly lacking in flavour or seasoning. Throw in some well-meaning but amateurish service and this place is scarcely better than its more casual and disappointing sibling Pictures.

Galvin at Windows has a 28^th floor view over London. Usually restaurants in such locations do not try too hard, knowing that they will be full anyway due to their steady supply of tourists coming to gawk. However Galvins never takes things for granted, as its Michelin star testifies, serving well-executed classical French food and particularly silky smooth service. Desserts in particular are very good, such as a moist rum baba and a velvety chocolate mousse. The wine list is not one to splash out on, but other than that it is a very enjoyable dining experience.

Diwana Bhel Poori has been a regular haunt of mine since I moved to London in 1983. It served excellent Gujerati snacks and dosas (and less good curries) at a very low price indeed. The bhel poori, with its well-judged tamarind sauce, is as good a version as I have eaten anywhere. This along with generous and delicate samosas and very good aloo papri chat, are enough collectively for a light supper for two. With a sweet lassi apiece this came to £7 a head before tip. Yes, £7 a head for genuinely tasty food. If you have more time then there are other good snacks, dosas and home-made kulfi for dessert. A great little place.

The Elite Traveler Top 100 Restaurant list came out this week. Unlike others, this is based on the votes of paying diners. so looks rather different to other lists compiled by industry insiders. The magazine has a lot of US readers so New York restaurants in particular do well, but the list also has some intriguing entries that are excellent but elude other lists of this kind. Here is the list.

Incidentally, due to a diary gaffe I needed to get the Galvin at Windows reservation at very short notice, and for this used the new Uncover mobile app. This (currently London only) app teams up with restaurants and displays reservations on that day only, which allows restaurants to shift tables that appeared via cancellations. Worth a look if you ever need a table that same day.

Auctioning Off Lunch

The Grill at The Dorchester was previously noted as much for its bonkers décor (vast murals of Highlanders tossing cabers) as for its food. It has now had a much needed redecoration and is now run by Alain Ducasse. The best dish was a risotto, and in general the food was fine, though there were a couple of relative let-downs. The decor no longer inspires nightmares and the service was excellent, but the bill is out of all proportion to the quality of the cooking, not helped by one of the most rapacious wine lists in London.

John Doe cooks charcoal-grilled food in simple premises at one end of the Portobello market. Roast octopus was capably made, as was a rich chocolate terrine, though my main course was merely pleasant. Everything is made to order and the staff are friendly, and judging by the considerable trade at a weekday lunch the restaurant seems to have established itself very well.

Kitty Fisher has managed, despite lacking the PR agency that so many London restaurateurs lavish money on, to achieve cult status since its opening based on word of mouth and social media. Getting a reservation there is already a forlorn hope for all but the most determined or well-connected. I enjoyed my beef tartare and dessert in particular, though I suspect the scale of its success is as much down to the charm of the staff as the skill in the kitchen. It is certainly good to see a competent restaurant in Shepherds Market, an area with a fascinating history that has lacked, until now, anywhere decent to eat.

My best meal of the week was a bit of a surprise package. Bonhams (pictured) is an auction house in New Bond Street, and they have opened a little restaurant that operates at breakfast and lunch. What makes it interesting is the considerable talent of the chef, who was sous chef at Hedone, and the impressive wine list, which has lurking within it some genuine bargains. Most central London lists mark their wines up more than three times their shop price, but here you can find, if you look carefully, bottles at or slightly below their current retail price. The cooking is genuinely excellent here, and despite one of the lowest profile restaurant launches I have seen for a long time this is a place that deserves your attention.

A Mixed Week of Dining

Honey & Co has a chef that previous worked at Nopi, and not surprisingly the cuisine is also Middle Eastern. It is a simply, tiny place that was very busy, but although most of the dishes that I tried were fine they did not seem to be as polished as those that I had eaten at Nopi. The menu has some quite imaginative dishes, but at my meal the execution did not always live up to the promise, such as with some rather flavourless chicken and, worse, a wildly over-sour lemon cheesecake. This restaurant clearly has plenty of fans, but given the hardly low prices its appeal was not immediately obvious based on this meal.

Caxtons is the restaurant of the St Ermins hotel in St James, a building with an interesting history – amongst other things it was the original HQ of MI6. The head chef was away at a cookery competition rather than on a secret mission (as far as I know) but the net effect was the same – yet another UK meal where the head chef was absent. I really don’t care about this if there is a well-oiled kitchen brigade able to operate just fine without supervision, but tonight we experienced a very erratic meal with dishes ranging from good to barely edible. I presume that things are more consistent when the head chef turns up, but as a paying diner such experiences are frustrating.

I had better fortunes at two of my regular haunts. L’Amorosa is the local Italian restaurant that Andy Needham, ex Michelin starred head chef of Zafferano, has bought in west London. His pasta dishes have always been excellent, as was the case this week with a dish of papardelle with ragu of guanciale. The staff are friendly here and the prices very fair indeed, so it is easy to see why this place has been packed even through the usually challenging months of January and February.

The Dysart (pictured) has a very talented young chef, and I hope that at some point Michelin recognise just how goo he is. Some of the signature dishes here, such as the charred mackerel with kombu braised daikon, ginger and champagne, are genuinely classy. Many of the vegetables used are grown in the garden at the back, the excellent bread is made from scratch, and the wine list is a bargain. Throw in the welcoming room with blazing logs in the fireplace in the corner and the fair prices and you have a superb overall experience. If you have not tried it then I highly recommend the journey out to Petersham (not too far from Richmond tube).

The new Michelin guide to Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paolo appeared in a less than co-ordinated manner online, with the Michelin website showing the stars well ahead of the official 8th April launch date. It seems that D.O.M. in Sao Paolo got two stars, with ten restaurants in Sao Paolo and six in Rio getting one star. Hopefully Michelin's tyres have a better grip on things than their PR deaprtment.

Nothing Left to Chance at The Chancery

The Chancery has been going for over a decade now, but it recently changed its head chef, and that turns out to have worked well. Graham Long (pictured) was senior sous chef at Pied a Terre before working for a time in Hong Kong, and his experience shone through in an impressive meal. As well as genuinely classy homemade bread, raw scallops with shiso dressing were lovely, as was a venison main course and a rhubarb dessert. Presentation was elegant throughout the meal, service was good and prices fair. No wonder the place was packed out even on a Tuesday.

Madhus at the Sheraton is much smarter than its much older sister in Southall. The cooking also has the edge, partly due to the robata grill that imparts a smoky charcoal note to the grilled dishes. An example is the genuinely classy lamb chop dish here, and indeed pretty much anything from the grill is worth ordering. Romali roti is very good here, the service smooth and prices moderate. A Heathrow hotel may seem an odd setting for an Indian restaurant, but the cooking is excellent.

I had another superb meal at The Ritz, which for me is the most underrated high-end restaurant in London. It is incomprehensibly shunned by Michelin and is invisible to social media, yet the ingredient quality and kitchen technique is impeccable, the service a well-oiled machine and the dining room is glorious. At this meal a dish of native lobster was excellent, as was a whole pigeon deboned and stuffed with chicken mousse and truffles. The pastry section here is terrific, with a flawless Grand Marnier soufflé a fine way to finish the meal.

Tarantella is a local family-run restaurant near where I live. The staff have a lot of charm, and although this is not a destination restaurant, the dishes here are capably made and the welcome is as warm as their Neapolitan style pizza. The pasta dishes are good here and the prices very fair. It is a charming local restaurant just off a high street thronged with soulless chain dining outlets.

The Michelin Guide to the Main Cities of Europe came out. This year was a lower-key event than usual, as the Scandinavian cities were already announced in the new guide dedicated to that region. So in terms of news, this guide now covers eastern European capitals, including Athens. In Budapest there was a new star in the form of Tanti but otherwise the guide was not exactly a thrill-a-minute joy ride. The only two star restaurants in the region are Spondi and Funky Gourmet in Athens, and Steirrereck and Gourmet Restaurant Silvio Nickol in Vienna.

Lunch at Dinner

The Good Earth in Knightsbridge is one of a small group of Chinese restaurants that have been running for over three decades. They appear invisible to social media, yet are clearly doing something right in order to have stayed in business for such an extended period. Certainly the meal that we tried was very good, with nicely made Sichuan prawns and gai lan, and even cliché dishes like sesame prawn toast much better than the versions that most of us are familiar with from our local Chinese restaurant. Prices are higher than a local place but service was genuinely slick, and there is certainly pricier yet less good Cantonese food to be had in Knightsbridge.

I had three meals in quick succession at Dinner by Heston Blumenthal when it opened, but had not been for some time. Ashley Palmer-Watts was back from Australia where he helped launch the temporary Fat Duck relocation to Melbourne. The menu here is quite stable, though tweaks have been made to several dishes. Stand-out plates of food were the signature meat fruit (chicken liver parfait disguised as an orange) and tipsy cake with pineapple. However I tried numerous dishes at this meal and the general standard was high, with British wagyu beef the centrepiece of a pretty beef royale dish (pictured) for example. Service was excellent and the bill not excessive if you avoid the expensive and highly marked-up wine list.

I can’t seem to keep away from Hedone at the moment, and had my 57^th meal there. One of the things that is appealing is that the menu changes quite a lot based on the best produce available, so even within the three very recent meals I have eaten, there has been some variation in the dishes served. Rolled black truffle omelette was particularly good at this meal, as was perfectly cooked turbot. The chocolate ganache with passion fruit jelly topped with raspberry powder, a nod to a dish at Lameloise, was a superb way to finish the meal.

Another of my regular haunts is The Brilliant in Southall, which will clock up its 40th anniversary this year and is still thriving. The service is good and the Punjabi dishes are consistently excellent e.g. the malai tikka at my last meal. They are one of the few London restaurants that serve romali roti, and the spicing of their curries is as vibrant as their prices are moderate.

New and Old

Ristorante Frescobaldi is a smart Italian restaurant in a quiet location just off Regent Street, owned by a Tuscan wine family with centuries of history. The chef had worked at Zafferano and the menu reflected that background, with appealing dishes and capable cooking. Excellent crab cakes with ripe avocado featured good ingredients, and a rabbit ragu showed good technique. There was some unevenness in standard, as one might expect in a quite new kitchen, but service was slick and the overall experience very enjoyable, albeit not cheap.

Shimogano is a Japanese restaurant in Camden, serving a wide variety of dishes from styles ranging from sushi through tempura, soba noodles, grilled dishes and beyond. This approach to Japanese food seems common in London, yet in Tokyo you tend to see places with high degrees of specialisation. A restaurant will serve tempura or sushi, but not both. Some restaurants serve dishes based on just a single ingredient. It seems to me that having a very broad menu (in any cuisine) makes it difficult to really excel in any particular dish, and sadly this was the case at Shimagano. We tried quite a few things, ranging from decent to disappointing, but there was nothing that really stood out.

Gordon Ramsay’s flagship restaurant has been in the capable hands of Clare Smith (pictured) for several years now. Clare’s cooking is technically very accomplished, and although the signature shellfish ravioli is still on the menu, the dishes mostly now reflect her own style. The food has more modern touches than it used to have when Gordon was in the kitchen, though it is still broadly classical. The best dishes at this meal were suckling pig made several ways, and above all simple but superb linguine with aged Parmesan emulsion and black truffles. This restaurant is no longer fashionable amongst the Instagram set of diners, but the cooking is hard to fault and is of a very high standard.

I paid my 56^th visit to Hedone. As I have written about this restaurant at length previously I will not repeat myself. The ingredients here are of a level pretty much unknown in London, and the cooking continues to develop, with even the well-established dishes having little tweaks and improvements. Star dishes at this meal included noir de Bigorre pork with carrots and the signature liquid Parmesan ravioli with horseradish foam. It was interesting to compare Godon Ramsay and Hedone on successive days; the styles are quite different, but both are restaurants at the top of their game. There is nothing better in London at present.

The new Michelin guie to Scandinavia came out, and was something of a damp squib. Most had assumed that the countryside would be covered (so places like Faviken) but actually all they did was to add Aarhus and Malmo to the list of cities already covered by the Main Cities of Europe Guide. A second star was awarded to the weirdly named a | o | c (yes that is a name, I did not just fall asleep on the keyboard there) and to Oaxen Krog.

Some Regular Haunts

The Anglesea Arms was one of London’s first gastropubs, and served good food if you could put up with its eccentric ordering system. Under new ownership for several months now, the food that we tried was very pleasant. Wood pigeon with cabbage and celeriac puree had a very good reduction of the cooking juices, and an apple and rhubarb crumble was most enjoyable. It is good to see the old place open once again.

The Watermans Arms is a simple pub near the river in Brentford, where its landlord/chef operates single-handed in the kitchen. He will make you fish and chips if you like, but far more interesting are the Japanese izakaya dishes that appear on the specials menu, reflecting the time that he lived in Japan. At this visit both katsu-don and yakisoba noodles were hearty, capable made dishes, all at a very fair price indeed. Well worth a try if you are in the area.

Diwana Bhel Poori has been a regular haunt of mine since I came to London three decades ago. It is a simple Gujerati café with uncomfortable seating, but its snacks, such as bhel poori and aloo papri chat, are genuinely good. It also serves some of the best samosas in London. These three dishes, a sweet lassi each and a shrikand for dessert cost just under £10 a head. For me this is some of the best value food to be had in the capital, less than you would pay at some awful high street chain.

I ate my 55^th meal at Hedone. There were several new dishes, including an interesting nibble of “fish and chips” with a potato crisp containing monkfish and Japanese vinegar, and an omelette roll with black truffle and truffle sauce. Established dishes such as Dorset crab wrapped in avocado with pistachio mayonnaise and mild curry foam, and hare with a sauce made from its own blood were excellent as ever. Scallop sashimi with top-notch black truffles from Provence (pictured) reflect the quality of the ingredients used here. Hopefully common sense will prevail this year and it will get its second star.

A Variety of Cuisines

Caphe Guests is a new Vietnamese restaurant in Chiswick. It has simple but quite smart décor and a very lengthy menu. A spicy salad with prawns was very enjoyable, and choy sum was stir-fried with garlic and had good texture. Not everything was to the same standard, and the ingredients tasted pretty low-budget, but service was friendly and prices moderate. This area has quite a few Asian restaurants, but none that can really be recommended now that Chisou has folded, so Caphe Guests is a welcome addition to the neighbourhood. One day someone will really make an effort with Vietnamese cuisine in London and aim for something ambitious, in the way that Hakkasan did with Chinese. For now we have to make do with decent but hardly thrilling places like this.

Medlar (pictured) seemed busy when we went, and has clearly built up a loyal clientele. The wine list has dramatically expanded since I first came here, and although it could not be described as a bargain there are certainly plenty of interesting labels here now. The menu here has always been appealing, aiming for customer pleasure rather than showing off cheffy gimmickry. The dishes that I tried were good, such as a coquelet with gnocchi and particularly rich and enjoyable jus flavoured with tarragon. The other dishes that I ate were not quite so well made, very pleasant but seeming to me less well balanced. It was a perfectly good meal, but at £99 a head the prices have nudged up but the standard was a little less even than I recall at my previous meals here.

Roti Chai near Oxford Street was heaving with customers, even at a very early evening sitting. It is easy to see why, as dish after excellent dish arrived. Goan chilli prawns were particularly good, as were potatoes with curry leaves, but there was not a duff dish in the meal. Service was great and the meal cost just £38 a head including plenty of beer, which seemed very good value indeed to me. The upstairs has communal seating, the downstairs a more conventional dining room layout – both were packed with diners having a good time.

For those interested in eating in Japan, the choice can be overwhelming. As well as Michelin, there is the local kanji website Tabelog, which is a popular voting site. For non-Japanese speakers this can be awkward to figure out, but blogger Luxeat has helpfully translated the top 50 restaurants in Tokyo:

http://www.luxeat.com/blog/50-tokyo-restaurants-tabelog-users-3/

and also the top 50 sushi places, as ranked by Tabelog:

http://www.luxeat.com/blog/50-tokyo-sushi-restaurants-tabelog-com-users-2/

It is interesting to compare these with Michelin, where there is some overlap (the superb Sushi Saito has three Michelin stars and is also the top rated sushi place on Tabelog), but many differences too. There is no such thing as a perfect restaurant list, but it is quite intriguing to compare the ratings of places voted for by diners with the assessments of the professional inspections of Michelin.

Some New Reviews, and Michelin France appears

The Truscott Arms is a Maida Vale pub that has recruited a chef with a serious background, and is aiming for something higher than typical pub fare. Its owners have also put together a really exceptional wine list, one full of unusual and interesting wines, and priced very fairly indeed especially at the higher end of the list. The food that we tried was good, the dishes from a short but appealing menu well executed. This is somewhere that is well worth a look.

Monkey Temple is a Nepalese restaurant in Shepherds Bush. It is modestly priced and has friendly staff, though based on the meal that I had the food was pleasant rather than anything remarkable. It is certainly a cut above many of the local Indian restaurants in the area, but that is not setting the bar very high. It would be worth trying if you were in the area but is not somewhere to journey to.

The Portland (pictured) in Marylebone has casual décor but offers up fairly ambitious dishes, some of which worked a lot better than others. Game pithivier was enjoyable and the dish of the meal, whilst a sugar tart was also very successful. On the other hand, the other dessert I tried and a couple of the vegetable side dishes had some issues. It is a measure of the confidence of the place that they feel no need to offer a concessionary menu at lunch, but that means the prices at lunchtime feel quite high, and mistakes are less easy to forgive. If the restaurant could achieve greater consistency then I think it would be even more successful than it already seems to be.

In other news, the successful Shake Shack burger chain set up by Danny Meyer (of Gramercy Tavern, Union Square Cafe et al) in 2004, held an initial public offering (IPO) of its shares. The valuation achieved will have every celebrity chef pondering how to set up a fast food chain. The average restaurant group in the USA trades at 3.5 times sales and 21 times its annual earnings (profits). Shake Shack, on its first day of trading, reached 14 times sales and a price to earnings ratio of 325 (MacDonalds is 17), with a valuation of $1.6 billion on annual sales of around $117 million. This kind of valuation would make a high-flying Silicon Valley technology company envious. Mr Meyer, with a 21% stake, has made more than $300 million from the IPO.

The France Michelin Guide was published. There was a new three star in the form of the alpine restaurant la Bouitte in St Martin de Belleville, 200km east of Lyon. Ledoyen, now under Yannick Alleno, retained its third star, but the recently reopened Plaza Athenee only managed two stars, a blow to Alain Ducasse. L’Arnsbourg in Alsace was delisted since its head chef left at the end of December, and Cote St Jacques (Michel Lorain) was also demoted. This leaves France with 26 three star restaurants. There were six new two stars: L’Atelier d’Edmond in Val d’Isère, La Table du Lancaster in Paris, Le Casadelmar in Porto-Vecchio on Corsica, Le Neuvième Art in Lyon, La Grand’Vigne in Bordeaux and finally L’Auberge du Cheval Blanc in Lembach. There are 80 two stars in all in France now, and 503 one stars. At this moment there are 111 three star restaurants in the world, one more than there was in June 2014. Incidentally, Paul Bocuse (88 years young) notched up fifty years at three stars, a record. Based on my recent visit there the third star seems distinctly kind in objective terms, but given his status in France it would be a brave Michelin editor that took his third star away.

Resumption

Rex and Mariano (pictured) is a casual seafood restaurant in Soho. It is backed by the investors behind Burger & Lobster, and uses Rex Goldsmith of the Chelsea Fishmonger to supply the seafood, some of which comes direct from Sicily. The produce was generally good, as seen in a tasty tuna tartare, though I have eaten better red prawns than the ones here. The use of iPads for ordering will not be to everyone’s taste and there were things that could be improved, but the fairly low prices for decent quality seafood are welcome.

Kiraku is a simple Japanese café near the Japanese language school in Ealing, and is usually frequented by an almost entirely Japanese clientele. It offers very good value lunches and I particularly like the grilled mackerel here, which is carefully cooked and has plenty of flavour. The décor is basic in the extreme and the food is good value rather than dazzling, but if you are in the area it is well worth a look.

Hakkasan Mayfair is the sister of the original Hanway Place branch, though the menu is to all intents and purposes the same. We went for dim sum, which is of a high standard here e.g. delicate har gau (prawn dumplings) that are streets ahead of Chinatown versions, and superb baked venison puffs. Service is always very slick and although Hakkasan could never be accused of being cheap, you do get a consistently high level of quality despite the large scale of the operation. This 230-seat restaurant regularly does 600 covers on a busy night, to give an idea of just how successful it has become.

In other news, Henry Harris has sold Racine, bringing to an end a twelve-year stint in Knightsbridge. Simpsons in The Strand is closing, with its owners Savoy Group looking for a new restaurant operator for the site (the same group recently put prestige hotel Claridges up for sale).

An interesting list of global top chefs was published, this one voted for by 512 Michelin-starred chefs. I found this to be a pretty good list, better than some others that are around. In case you are wondering, I have been to 49 of the top 50 places, missing Ultraviolet in Shanghai (which was not open when I visited the city).

Interlude

I have now been running this website for just over twenty years (since August 1994), with weekly restaurant updates since 2006. In that time I have posted reviews of over 1,300 restaurants, in some cases with multiple reviews/visits. As far as I know it is the longest running restaurant review website. I have covered every three star Michelin restaurant in a ten-year period, completing a visit to all that existed in 2004, and keeping up with all promotions by Michelin in 2008, 2010, 2012 and 2014. As of June 2014 there were 110 three star places, and I have reviewed them all. Indeed over that period I have visited 150 three star establishments (counting all the ones that have since been demoted) and a similar number of two star restaurants.

It is now time for a little break, and the website reviews will take a short sabbatical for several weeks. I will resume in due course, but in the mean time happy eating and a great New Year.

Old and New

Kouzu (pictured) is a smart new Japanese restaurant near Eaton Square. With an experienced head chef, the food was generally good, with very clean batter for the prawn tempura for example. A spicy tuna tartare was interesting and successful. There is a sushi counter upstairs and the kitchen has clearly made some effort to source good ingredients, importing fresh wasabi from Japan for example, as well as beef from Kyushu. Service was slick but the wine list pricing is ambitious, even given the location.

The recently re-launched and rebranded Marcus is in the same room at the Berkeley hotel, though with a marginally less formal feel. What I did like was that the dishes seemed less complex than they have typically been in the past, where the kitchen seemed to make life hard for itself by composing so many elements on the plate. The nibbles and starters in particular at this meal were excellent, the service superb. A risotto of widgeon topped with black truffles was a lovely dish.

I enjoyed another excellent meal at Dysart in Richmond, which combines a talented young chef with a comfortable setting and excellent value wine list. The mackerel with kombu-braised daikon and a sauce of champagne and ginger is an old favourite here. I also really enjoyed sika deer with celeriac croustillant and an excellent Cumberland jus. This is a charming restaurant, and I commend it to you.

I had not one but two further meals at Hedone, taking my tally there to 54 meals since it opened. The kitchen here continues to produce some of the very best food in London, such as a superb hare royale dish alongside old favourites like the liquid Parmesan ravioli with horseradish foam. The quality of the ingredients here always shines through, such as with a simple but superb scallop served on its shell.

I hope you all had a good Christmas; wishing you a happy New Year.

Due to so many restaurants being closed over the holiday period, the blog will take a short break.

The Queen of the Adriatic

Venice is hard to beat for architectural splendour, and it is rather fun to get off your airplane and be taken to your hotel by boat. At this time of year there can be mist and even some flooding to cope with, but this means that the city is blissfully empty of tourists. The city is a marvel of engineering, and for the artistically inclined it is impressive to wander into a building like the Scuole di Grande San Rocco, its walls and ceilings covered in works by Tintoretto. Just wandering around the labyrinth of tiny streets is fascinating, and as a tourist there is an overwhelming choice of beautiful buildings to admire.

Da Ivo is a small, simple restaurant with a celebrity following and a price list to match, whose charms somewhat eluded me. A stuffed courgette flower and spaghetti with langoustines were decent enough, but the bill was absurdly high even by the challenging standards of Venice, where a coffee in St Mark’s Square costs €8. If you are the sort of diner that wants to eat in a restaurant where George Clooney ate on the night before he got married then this is the place for you, but otherwise you can do better elsewhere.

Following further in the recent footsteps of Mr Clooney, you could stay at the quite new Aman Hotel on the Grand Canal. This boutique hotel is set in a stunning 16^th century building, and has a small restaurant all of its own. The consultant chef that works here part time has a Michelin star for his restaurant in the countryside, but the food here is quite simple, despite the very grand setting of the dining room. The dinner that we tried was pleasant enough, and was actually not as expensive as I had expected given the posh hotel setting.

Osteria Alla Testiere was the best of the non-Michelin starred meals that we ate. This is a well-established seafood restaurant, its menu based on the catch of the day at the local market. A tiny place, the dishes that we tried here were straightforward but enjoyable, and they managed a particularly good tiramisu. This place felt authentic, and was popular enough to be turning walk-in diners away for lunch.

Il Ridotto has a Michelin star, currently one of four in the city with this accolade. It has recently expanded from its previously tiny dining room, but was rather hit and miss in terms of the food that we tried. Service was friendly but one dish arrived lukewarm and had to be sent back to be reheated, which really should not happen in a restaurant at this level. Even ignoring this issue, the food was pleasant but not obviously star-worthy.

Quadri provided by a wide margin the best meal of the trip. Overlooking St Mark’s Square, this is the sister restaurant of three star Le Calandre. The setting overlooking the famous piazza is hard to beat, and the meal that we had included some genuinely impressive dishes, such as stunning fried langoustines and superb seafood risotto. The panettone (made at Le Calandre) served here is by a wide margin the best I have ever tasted, so good that we brought several back with us in our suitcase. Just as with our last meal here, thie food seemed more two star level than one, and although it is certainly not a cheap experience at least at this place you feel you are getting something pretty special for your money.

A Tale of Two Curries

The Dorsett hotel is an anachronistically smart luxury hotel in, of all places, Shepherds Bush Green, a stretch of grass otherwise lined with pound shops and bookmakers. Its restaurant is Pictures, which has a somewhat confused menu that mixes in Malaysian food with the likes of fish and chips. It is not necessary to be a chef from that country to cook Malaysian food, but it probably helps. Here the chefs were from various places but none of them terribly close to the country in question, and served dishes that left the impression that the kitchen had vaguely heard of the cuisine but had actually never tasted it. An utterly spice-free beef rendang was one example, soggy bak choi another. Given all the money that has been lavished on the hotel it seems a shame that they could not manage to use a decent recipe book.

In case you think my reviews are all fine dining, I give you the The Lahori Mehak, an Indian restaurant in Hounslow with admittedly basic décor where you would be hard pressed to spend £15 a head. More takeaway than restaurant at the moment (though a larger dining area is planned), the food is actually pretty good, cooked by a chef that some years ago worked at The Brilliant. Chicken biryani had excellent fragrant rice, and tawa fish had plenty of spicy kick to it. At this establishment a very good naan bread will set you back 50p, and that is not a typo. This place is a bargain by any standards.

At the other end of the smartness scale, Zaika was one of the two first Indian restaurants in London to gain a Michelin star, but was eventually bought out and converted to a vaguely British/Italian eatery. Now it has been sensibly re-launched as an Indian restaurant. The room is barely changed, with its high ceiling, wood panelling and murky lighting. The service operation was quite slick but the food was merely decent, with one dish failing even this standard. The bill was more than four times what you would spend at The Lahori Mehak; naan bread was more than seven times as expensive, but the food was in no way better. Of course rents in Kensington are much higher than Hounslow, but the size of the bill rankles when you have just eaten a slightly better meal for a quarter the price a few days before.

It is great to see the Quality Chop House (pictured) prospering again under its new owners. The old place still has the uncomfortable benches but offers appealing, simple dishes. A white truffle risotto was particularly good at this visit, as were excellent confit potatoes. The restaurant is notable for its superb wine list, which is such a change from the cynically expensive lists that infest most central London restaurants. Here the growers are carefully chosen, many vintages are rare, and above all the wines are affordable. Mark-ups are some of the kindest in London, especially at the high end, encouraging diners to trade up. When wine list awards are handed out they seem always to go to places with vast runs of unaffordable Burgundies, when they should be recognising places like this.

Springing to Life

Spring (pictured) opened recently in Somerset House, the newest project of chef Skye Gyngell, who has often been in the headlines for assorted reasons. The room is gorgeous, light and airy, and the waiting staff’s bizarre uniforms provide entertainment all of their own. The food was simple but pleasant, with particularly good bread, made from scratch in the kitchen. Prices are set at a fairly demanding level, but so far there seem to be plenty of customers willing to spring for a meal.

At my latest meal at Hibiscus I tried the special offer lunch, featuring three courses, coffee and wine for £49.50. I am generally in two minds about such deals – it fills up restaurants on quiet lunches, and gives diners a chance to sample the food and perhaps return in the evening. On the other hand such deals barely break even for the restaurants, which can be tempted to skimp, serving very cheap ingredients or not trying very hard. The food I tried here was actually very good, with a unusual pork pie ravioli starter and carefully cooked partridge. Consequently this seems like one of London's better lunch deals.

Villa Geggiano is a new Italian restaurant in Stamford Brook, on a site that has seen off plenty of restaurant operators over the years. This one may have more longevity, because unlike many of their predecessors on the same premises, the food served is actually pretty good, and is very keenly priced. The wine list is a real bargain too, with mark-up levels at unusually low levels for the UK. It is not a destination restaurant but is worth a try if you are in the area.

The Brilliant has long been one of my favourite Indian restaurants in London, serving Punjabi fare since 1975. Over the years it has expanded and smartened up, but the food has been consistently good since I started coming here in 1991. The rich methi chicken, made with the restaurant's own masala spice blend, is a particular favourite of mine, and this is one of the very few restaurants in the UK to make romali roti, the ultra-thin bread. My last meal here was as good as ever with, for example, excellent jeera chicken.

The Michelin guide to Tokyo came out, the last country guide due this year except for France (due in February) and Main Cities of Europe/Scandinavia (due in March). There was a new 3 star in the form of kaiseki restaurant Makimura in Shinigawa. Sushi Mizutani and Koju were demoted from their three star status, leaving a dozen three star restaurants in Tokyo - still the most of any city on the planet. There were 5 new two star restaurants, bringing the total to 53, and 19 new one star restaurants, bringing the total to 161.

Into the Lyon's Den

Lyon is often regarded as the culinary heartland of France, and is certainly blessed not just with plenty of Michelin starred restaurants but also with many fine food shops, including several particularly excellent bakeries and the lovely chocolate shop Bernachon. As a city to visit, Lyon is underrated, known more for its chemical and pharmaceutical industry than as a tourism destination. Yet it has a superbly preserved mediaeval old town (a UNESCO world heritage site), extensive Roman remains, two rivers and attractive architecture. For traditional, simple Lyon cuisine you can try Café Comptoir Abel, full of locals eating saucisson and hearty traditional dishes.

At the posher end of the things I tried Les Loges, the 1 star restaurant at the Cours des Loges hotel in the oldest part of Lyon. The food was very capable and the medieval era, candle-lit atrium is an attractive place to eat, though the service was surprisingly sloppy for a restaurant at this level. The hotel, incidentally, is a lovely place to stay, right in the heart of the old town.

Of the 2 star Michelin places, Mere Brazier is an old-school delight, a restaurant with fascinating history that fell into decline some years ago but is now back in safe hands and producing lovely classical food. The Grand Marnier soufflé produced there is a case study in understated perfection.

La Rotonde is tucked away in a casino in the countryside, and has a talented chef. The pate en croute served was stunning, not surprising as this was the dish that won the chef the title of world champion for pie-crust pastry in 2013. The rest of the meal was also very enjoyable, but it was worth going just to try the pate en croute.

Guy Lassausaie was the surprise of the trip, a restaurant that I knew very little about but which produced a genuinely top class meal, from the langoustines in angel hair pasta to the sole with black truffles. The whole meal was impressive: top class ingredients, high technical skill, an appealing menu, good service. There are plenty of worse three star restaurants than this, so its current two stars seems mean to me. This delivered the best meal of the week.

Paul Bocuse is the iconic 3 star restaurant of Lyon, unchanging across the decades. This is not the cutting edge of modern cuisine, but it serves very capable classically cooked food. I had one or two minor quibbles, and objectively it would be pretty hard to justify the third star, but it was a very enjoyable experience.

There are plenty of interesting restaurants in the area that I did not get a chance to visit, such as the previously 2 Michelin star Leon de Lyon that is now serving brasserie food, the 1 star cooking of Takao Takano (previously head chef at the now defunct 2 star Nicolas Le Bec), or to return to other serious restaurants in the area such as La Pyramide. The excellent three stars Pic, Regis et Jacques Marcon and Troisgros are all within reach of Lyon (as is the much less appealing Georges Blanc). I will just have to head back there another time.

The Belgium and Luxembourg 2015 Michelin Guide came out. It was a quiet year at the top, with no change at either the three or two star level. There were 10 new one star places in Belgium, and one in Luxembourg. In total, Belgium now has 3 three star restaurants, 17 two star and 117 one star. Luxembourg has 10 one star establishments.

The 2015 Michelin guide to Switzerland also came out. All quiet at the top, with no change at the two or three star level. There were 18 new one stars and 11 demotions. In total Switzerland now has a pair of 3 star restaurants, 19 two star restaurants and 96 one star restaurants.

At this point the only country guides remaining for 2015 are for Tokyo (early December) and France (late February), plus the Main Cities of Europe guide (covering eastern Europe) and Scandinavia which are due in March. It seems there will also be a guide to Sao Paolo and Rio de Janeiro releasd in 2015. Thus far Michelin has had a very quiet year in Europe, with no new three stars so far at all (their US team has shown characteristic generosity with 3 new three stars there). I have no issue with this - Michelin should promote restaurants when they think they are ready, not because they have a new guide coming out. In the previous two years there have been a high proportion of questionable promotions to three stars, as discussed here, so I am actually pleased to see a period of consoiidation.

Farewell to Berlin

Magazine is located in a striking building in Hyde Park designed by world-famous architect Zaha Hadid. It serves modern Japanese food prepared by a German chef, and the dishes I tried were generally pretty good. Donburi of pork belly and an exotic fruit cocktail were particularly enjoyable, sushi using cold rice less so. However the overall experience was a pleasant one, and the dining room is a really lovely space to eat in, enhanced by the view over the park.

Talking of sushi, someone who knows how to make it properly is Matsuhiro Araki, formerly 3 star Michelin chef of Araki in Tokyo. He has moved to the UK (this is no “branch’ or franchise) and opened up a restaurant in Mayfair with nine seats along a cypress wood counter, very much like the original restaurant in Tokyo. He has taken some bold steps: choosing to source the fish locally, and pricing his no-choice menu at £300 before service or drinks. This is by a wide margin the most expensive menu in London, yet so far seems not to have been a deterrent, with the place pretty much full at both dinner sittings up to Christmas. The best sushi that I tried was genuinely superb: silky tuna from Spain, excellent snapper from France. The latter was given a luxury twist by the use of Beluga caviar, as was tuna tartare garnished with white truffles. However there were some relative missteps too: a distinctly ordinary grilled prawn, and a merely decent piece of squid. Given the astronomical bill, such inconsistency is troubling.

There are currently 5 two Michelin star restaurants in Berlin. I had previously been to Fischers Fritz and Reinstoff, and on this trip tried the other three. Facil offers modern but not wacky cooking in a pretty all-glass cube dining room. Service was particularly impressive and the food generally very good, though there were some inconsistencies. The best dish was saddle of venison with sesame biscuit, but some dishes felt a bit overworked to me.

Lorenz Adlon Esszimmer is in the historic Adlon Hotel, overlooking the Brandenburg Gate (pictured). The cooking is more modern than the wood-panelled room would suggest. Fennel with bacon and vinegar was unusual and interesting, but for me nothing that I tried was really in two star territory except for the bill. Service was surprisingly poor for a restaurant of this level, at times brusque and with a rapacious desire to upsell wine and water.

By some margin the best meal of the trip was at Tim Raue. The Asian influences of his fusion cooking are done with considerable skill, so although there are plenty of dishes with spices, flavour balance is always carefully considered. A smoked pork chin had extraordinary flavour, and bream with spices and Alba truffles was also superb. The cooking here is inventive and thoroughly enjoyable.

The 2015 Michelin guides to Spain & Portugal and The Netherlands came out. There was no change in either at the 3 star level. In the Netherlands, there were 2 stars for Librije's De Zusje in Amsterdam, 't Nonnetje in Harderwijk and De Lindehof in Nuenen, but demotions for De Zwethheul and Librije's Zusje. The Netherlands now has a pair of three star restaurants, 19 two star restaurants and 79 one star restaurants.

In Spain there were two stars for Aponiente in Cadiz. I was also pleased to see that Elkano and Punto MX gained stars. Spain how has 8 three star restaurants, 18 two stars and 143 one stars. In Portugal there was a new two star in the form of Belcanto in Lisbon, bring the total for the country to 3 two stars in all, along wth 11 one star places.

Colonising Mayfair

The Colony Grill Room is the restaurant of the Beaumont Hotel, the latest venture from prolific restaurateurs Corbin and King. As ever with their establishments, the dining room design is lovely and the service very attentive. The menu is lengthy and appealing and the cooking capable; even the wine list is priced at a level that is much lower than is normal in London, let alone in Mayfair. However, also as ever with this restaurant group, the bill feels quite high for the level of food that is delivered.

The Andover Arms is a pub in a quiet street in what these days is optimistically termed Brackenbury Village (between Hammersmith and Shepherds Bush) that has a particularly loyal following. The cooking is not ambitious but the dishes that I tried were well made, and the prices reasonable. The particularly engaging manageress, who seemed to know every customer by name, is doubtless a key to the evident popularity of the place.

HKK is the flagship restaurant of the Hakkasan group. At dinner a tasting menu only format is followed, but at lunch there is a wide selection of menu options, including à la carte. The dim sum here features particularly delicate dumplings, and in general the ingredients used are of a much higher standard than is normal to encounter in Chinese restaurants in London. Even staple dishes like Singapore noodles are taken to a higher level here, in this case having superbly light texture. The silky smooth service is the product of the intensive staff training that the Hakkasan group invest in.

L’Amorosa is the new venture of Andy Needham, former long-time head chef of Zafferano. In this neighbourhood setting his food is a little less fancy then when he was cooking at Belgravia, but he has lost none of his sure touch with pasta. A risotto of girolles was particularly excellent at this visit. The flavours here are robust and the overall experience represents extremely good value.

The Chicago Michelin guide for 2015 appeared. Grace was promoted to three stars after its entry last year at two stars, giving Chicago its second restaurant at the ultimate Michelin level after Alinea. Grace's chef is Curtis Duffy, and I can only hope his cooking has improved since the meal he prepared for me at the now defunct Avenues. L20 is sadly closing so is delisted, but 42 Grams was promoted, leaving three two star restaurants. There are 19 one star places in Chicago now, with two deletions this year.

Busy at The Beehive

Dominic Chapman gained a well-deserved Michelin star for the Royal Oak but has now struck out on his own by taking over the nearby pub The Beehive. An early visit showed promise, with a good Scotch egg, properly made fishcakes and an excellent trifle to finish. The Beehive has a pleasant atmosphere, looking out over the village green, and has welcoming staff. If you are ever in the Maidenhead area then it is well worth a visit.

Asakusa is a long-established Japanese restaurant in Camden, serving izakaya style pub food. It was busy even on a Monday night, but to be honest I could not really understand why. The food ranged from merely competent (prawn tempura, pork belly) to downright poor (tasteless prawns, soggy soft shell crab). I have read blog reviews of this place citing the good value here, but with beer (not wine) to drink we still ran up a bill of £70 a head, which is hardly a bargain in my book.

The Duke of Sussex is a Chiswick gastropub that serves mostly Spanish dishes. It makes its own (and very good) sourdough bread, and at this meal vegetable paella was very enjoyable, as was guinea fowl on a bed of puy lentils. The cooking is consistent and represents excellent value, and allows you to bring your own wine for modest corkage (only by prior arrangement). Of the pubs serving food in the area, this is the one that I return to again and again.

For my 52^nd meal at Hedone I sampled some new dishes, including a superb silky foie gras with figs and a terrific grey partridge dish (the grey has more flavour than the much more common red partridge). Some old favourites were there too such as the superb liquid Parmesan ravioli and raspberry textures dessert (pictured). Ingredients used here are second to none, the technical side of the cooking is strong and the best dishes are dazzling. It is absurd that this restaurant only has one Michelin star.

The 2015 Michelin Guide to Italy was published. There were no changes at the three star level. There were a pair of new two star places, Piccolo Principe in Tuscany and Taverna Estia in Campania, and 27 new one star establishments. Il Rigoletto lost both its stars, and Il Desco and Il Pellicano were demoted to one star. In total Italy now has 8 three stars, 39 two stars and 285 one star restaurants.

The Germany 2015 Michelin guide also apeared. No change at the three star level, and 3 new two star restaurants: Brenners Park in Baden-Baden, Ammolite in Rust and EssZimmer in Munich. 31 restaurants were awarded one star for the first time, and 22 had their stars removed. There were two demotions from two stars: Buddenbrooks and Villa Merton. In total Germany has 11 three star restaurants, 39 two stars and 235 one star restaurants by my count.

The Greenhouse Effect

Salmontini specialises in, you guessed it, salmon. Its Lebanese owners run a salmon smokery in the Middle East, and this is their first venture in Europe. The Belgravia restaurant is smartly decorated, but although clearly aimed at an affluent clientele its food prices were not excessive, which is more than can be said for its wine list. Cooking was somewhat variable in standard but generally quite competent over the two meals that I tried.

Sakura is a long-established Japanese eatery that has a broad menu of dishes of many styles of Japanese cooking. Unfortunately, although I tried a reasonable sample of dishes, the quality ranged from decent to dismal. I am a little bemused as to why they appear to be so successful, as although prices are moderate, so is the standard of cooking. You can do much better elsewhere in London.

Zafferano is an old favourite of mine, but it lost its way somewhat after long-term head chef Andy Needham departed (he has now struck out on his own at L’Amorosa). After an extended period without a recognised head chef in the kitchen the restaurant has now appointed Daniele Camera, formerly head chef of Alloro. Although early days, the cooking felt on slightly more solid ground that at my previous visit. The stand-out dish was fabulous tagliolini with white truffles, although inevitably this was not a cheap dish. Desserts still need some attention based on our experience this week, but hopefully things are now headed n the right direction.

The Greenhouse (pictured) produced a very capable meal, although at the prices they charge one would certainly hope so too. Silky foie gras dish corn coulis was the star dish for me, though there were several very enjoyable courses. The overall standard was perhaps a fraction higher than my previous meal here, but although very good it is hard to forget the hefty price tag that looms at the end. This extends to the wine list, which is one of the most extensive in London and has some fine labels, but unfortunately has mark-up levels steep even by the exacting standards of Mayfair.

The Michelin Hong Kong 2015 Guide was released. It was a pretty quiet year, especially given the previously unpredictable nature of the guide. There was no change at the 3 star level, and promotions to two stars for Duddels, The Principal and Yah Toh Heen. The overrated Ah Hat Harbour View and Spoon by Alain Ducasse were demoted to one star level. Hong Kong now has 5 three star restaurants, 14 two star places and 45 one stars. In Macau there was no change at all, with 2 three stars, 2 two stars and 7 one stars.

A Mixed Week of Dining in and out of London

The Palomar in Soho has created quite a social media buzz since it opened in the summer. Although based on a restaurant in Jerusalem the cooking is Mediterranean rather than kosher, pulling in influences from around the region. The place is casual and has a buzzy atmosphere, and the dishes I tried were decent enough, but it was hard for me to see what all the fuss has been about based on this meal. If you do try it then I recommend the kubaneh, a pot-baked Yemeni loaf.

The Sir Charles Napier is a country pub in Oxfordshire that has a Michelin star. The place is cosy but the meal that we had was pleasant but quite ordinary in standard, nowhere near one star level at any point. Moreover the dinner was quite expensive despite the sensibly priced wine list, and service was, not to put too fine a point on it, a shambles.

The Watermans Arms in Brentford is a simple boozer but one that serves Japanese food alongside the fish and chips that the locals expect. Its chef and landlord has a Japanese wife and lived in Japan for some time, so the cooking has an authentic feel to it rather than being some marketing gimmick dreamt up by a pub chain head office. Appropriately, they serve the hearty food of the izakaya (Japanese bar) rather than refined kaiseki dining. We had a little tasting menu this week (which needs prior notice to be arranged) and enjoyed a four course meal of carefully cooked dishes, which was great value at just £24.95 a head.

The Bull and Last is one of London’s best gastropubs, and I have had some very enjoyable meals there. The upstairs dining room, with its murky lighting and stuffed animal heads on the walls, may not be one of the capital’s more attractive dining rooms, but the food is very good indeed. On this visit the loin of venison was carefully cooked, and the finger-shaped doughnuts I tried for dessert would have delighted Homer Simpson.

In other news, the Michelin 2015 guide to Kansai came out. There was no change at the three star level. In Kyoto, two stars were awarded to Iida and Mistsuyasu, and in Osaka two stars were granted to Aoki. Kyoto has 7 three star places, 22 two stars and 67 one stars. Osaka now has 4 three stars, 17 two stars and 66 one star places. Kobe has a pair of three star places, 11 two stars and 39 one stars, while Nara has a single three star, three two star places and a dozen one star establishments.

The 2015 Michelin guide to San Francisco also appeared. There were promotions to three star level for both Benu and Saison. Acquarello gained a second star. In total the Bay Area now has 4 three star places, 6 two stars, and 30 one star establishments.

Saturday Night at The Movies

Tredwell’s is a new casual format restaurant from Marcus Wareing, a three floor extravaganza in Upper St Martins Lane. The menu is, inevitably, “small plates sharing” (translation – bigger bills than you expect) and is a touch confusing with its many different sections and categories. Dishes are quite eclectic, but I enjoyed glazed chicken thighs with Asian spices, and a muscavado sponge dessert was very good, but some other dishes were less successful. Overall it was a pleasant experience, though for me the cooking needs to gain greater consistency.

L’Escargot is one of those Soho restaurants with plenty of history, a hot ticket in the 1980s when Nick Lander owned it, but having declined in recent years. Under its new owners (and new chef) the old place still has the art-deco style dining room and the menu full of brasserie classics. Sadly the dishes that I tried were a mixed bag, with under-seasoning a common theme. It was harmless enough, but this venerable restaurant deserves something better than what was on show tonight.

The surprise package was the dining room at The Olympic Studios, a relatively new luxury cinema in Barnes. I went there to see a movie and had a bite to eat with no expectations whatsoever, but it was so good that I came back and had another meal here. The head chef turns out to have a solid culinary background, and the food is vastly better than you might expect from a cinema cafe, the desserts particularly impressive. This is up there with the very best restaurants in the area.

The Royal China in Queensway has for decades been my regular Chinese restaurant, a place that almost single-handed raised the standard of Cantonese cooking in London. Sure, you can eat better at Hakkasan and Yauatcha (albeit at twice the price), and there are a few other good choices such as A. Wong, but I have a soft spot for the Royal China. It is cavernous and service is brisk, but the food is consistently good. Their gai lan with garlic is superb, and this week Peking duck was fine, as was a tofu dish.

Back to London

The Butcher's Hook is a Fulham gastropub that recently opened a branch in Ravenscourt Park. Although the modest wine list was priced quite kindly and the bread supplier was well chosen, the cooking was erratic, particularly at the dessert stage of the meal. Hopefully as its young chef settles in the consistency will improve, but at the moment there are superior, and better value, gastropubs in the vicinity.

l'Amorosa (pictured) has now completed its minor makeover and new owner Andy Needham is settling in, producing excellent value Italian food. The former head chef of Zafferano has not lost his touch, and the pasta dishes especially are of a much higher standard than you would expect from a neighbourhood Italian restaurant. This is a great addition to the area, and I for one intend to become a regular.

Pied à Terre is an old favourite of mine across the years, from the days of its chefs Richard Neat and Tom Aikens through to Shane Osborn and now Marcus Eaves. The cosy dining room has recently had a makeover, and the food continues to be excellent. Service under the suave Mathieu Germond is silky smooth, completing the package.

My 51^st meal at Hedone confirmed that Michelin missed a trick by not promoting it two stars in the 2015 guide. There may be smarter venues and slicker service operations elsewhere in London but nowhere else in the capital serves ingredients of this quality, cooked in such a deceptively simple and appealing fashion. Attention to detail is shown in the magnificent bread here, which now also graces the tables of Hibiscus, Arbutus and Wild Honey as well as the Soho wine bar Antidote. The menu continues to evolve, with for example an impressive dish of foie gras and cherries at this meal.

The coffee table book "1001 Restaurants You Must Experience Before You Die" was published on October 6th (full disclaimer: this has many authors but I was the largest single contributor to this book) http://amzn.to/1tnCPPh

There are not many theatrical plays about the restaurant business, but there is a great one in London at the moment called Fully Committed, showing at the Menier Chocolate Factory in Southwark. I first saw this a decade ago, a one-man comedy about a head receptionist at a fashionable Manhattan restaurant, fending off celebrities and eccentrics trying to secure a table. It has some brilliant lines, and I highly recommend it. Fully Committed is scheduled to run until 15th November, so book now.

I am pleased to add to the site a chef interview with Peter Goossens of 3 star Michelin Hof van Cleve.

A Foodies visit to San Sebastian

San Sebastian is a delightful place, and not just because of its elegant architecture and attractive beaches. It is the food heart of Spain, with terrific quality available throughout the spectrum; from the ingredients at the local market, through the pintxos bars up to Michelin starred restaurants. There is a strong culture of local dining clubs that supports good local restaurants and encourages quality. As a bonus, restaurants in the area seem only distantly aware of the idea of marking up wine from what they bought it for. These days in London you count yourself lucky if you find a decent wine in a restaurant for three times its retail price – in San Sebastian the wines are frequently below their current market price, having been bought years ago and only modestly marked up by the owners. I recently saw the superb Vega Sicilia Alion on a London restaurant list for £145 bottle, but was drinking it in San Sebastian restaurants for as little as €45 (£35) which is not bad considering its retail price in London is at least £51. I was in town partly for the San Sebastian Film Festival premier screening of the film documentary Foodies, and partly to enjoy the local food.

When I was last there I enjoyed Elkano, so was keen to try its older sister restaurant Kaia Kaipe, located in the same little port of Getaria. Both restaurants specialise in whole turbot grilled in the open air over charcoal. Kaia Kaipe has a bonus a sea view, and a wine cellar with 40,000 bottles. It has extensive holding tanks in the basement to keep shellfish and fish as fresh as possible before preparation. Whilst Elkano’s cooking felt a tad more consistent, the turbot was magnificent at both and the prices very fair indeed.

Etxebarri is up in the hills not far from Bilbao, and has a global reputation for its grilled food. Its obsessive chef grills just about everything served over different types of wood using adjustable grills that he designed. He uses impeccable ingredients, many from the local area, and serves them simply, with little in the way of garnishes or sauces. Such a pure approach leaves the kitchen with nowhere to hide, but when it comes off it is dazzling, such as with terrific seared tuna and lovely red prawns.

Ibai is in the same vein, an eccentric place open only for weekday lunches, and with a notoriously tricky approach to booking reservations (no English is spoken, and the booking policy appears to be a mystery wrapped in an enigma). Getting a table here is much trickier than at the thee star restaurants in the city. Star dishes were stunning Dover sole, superb mushrooms and gorgeous lobster. Given the bargain wines, the bill here seems almost absurdly low, once you can actually get in.

At the other end of the culinary complexity spectrum I returned to Azurmendi, near Bilbao. Perched on a hillside in a modern glass building, Eneto Atxa also uses very local ingredients, but his cooking style is as modern as it gets, with every kitchen gadget and technique brought to bear. As regular readers are aware, I rarely like such modernist food as much as classical cooking, partly because so many chefs get carried away and construct dishes that seem to be as much for shock value as diner pleasure. At Azurmendi they remember that the food needs to actually taste good too, so their dishes have balance and logical flavour combinations, even if some of them are unfamiliar. For me it is one of the top modernist restaurants anywhere in the world, and thoroughly deserves its third Michelin star.

The 2015 New York Micheln Guide came out. Daniel was demoted to two stars, reducing the total in the city to six. There were two star promotions for Acquavit, Blanca and Ichimura, taking the total of two stars in the city to nine. There are also 58 one-star restaurants, including 17 new entries. There were no demotions at the two star level. Emma Bengtsson of Acquavit is the second female chef to hold two stars in the USA, the other being Dominique Crenn of Atelier Crenn.

In Ghent

Hof van Cleve is located in an isolated farmhouse in Flanders near the Dutch border; it is not too far from Ghent (pictured), a very pretty town reminiscent of Bruges. This was the final restaurant of the trio of Belgian three star Michelin places that I have revisited in recent weeks and it is clearly the best of the lot. The menu is a pleasing mix of old and new, not wacky modern but not old-fashioned either, based around top quality ingredients and impeccable technique. Dishes are appealing rather than feeling like challenges thrown down from the chef to the diner, as happens all too often these days. There were many fine dishes, but beef with ras el hanout, and a superb spiced soft-shell crab nibble were particularly impressive. This is very serious three star cooking.

Back in London I revisited Chisou, a Japanese restaurant in Chiswick that is the sister of a longer-established one of the same name in central London. The premises of the west London version are tucked away down an obscure side street, opposite Sam’s Brasserie and near the Post Office. The room is very smart and the menu offers a wide range of styles of cooking, from sushi through to tempura and beyond. The best dish was a pretty salad topped with fried pieces of prawn, though a separate tempura scallop dish was less successful. This is a decent if slightly erratic place in my experience, but if you order carefully then you will have a good meal.

An old favourite is the Bombay Brasserie, the first really ambitious Indian restaurant in London, and one that I used to frequent in the 1980s. Standards eventually slipped, but it was relaunched in 2008, and has been restored to its former high standard. The cooking here features unusually high quality ingredients for an Indian restaurant, and the cooking is excellent. A biryani had particularly impressive rice, and the kulfi malai for dessert was made in the kitchen and was lovely. This is a restaurant that seems oddly untouched by media, social or otherwise, yet it did 135 covers on the weekday evening that I visited, so its customers have clearly figured things out without the help of the press.

Pavilion is a smart bistro in Kensington High Street, part of a business-oriented private club but where the restaurant is open to the public. In the kitchen is Adam Simmonds, previously Michelin-starred head chef of Danesfield House. The ambition level of the food here is dialled down for the larger premises and all-day format, but we had a very pleasant meal, with a venison dish the highlight and desserts the relative weakest link. The value for money factor here, though, is debatable.

The first offering of the 2015 Michelin season was released this week, the UK and Ireland guide. There was no change at all at the two or three star level. There were stars for The Star Inn in Helmsley, The Cross at Kenilworth, Outlaw's Fish Kitchen in Port Isaac, The Treby Arms in Sparkwell, The Three Chimneys on the Isle of Skye, Ynyshir Hall and the reopened Crown at Whitebrook. In London there were stars for Kitchen Table at Bubbledogs, City Social, Clove Club, Fera, Gymkhana and Barrafina. As well as closures like Viajante and Tom Aikens, there were deletions of stars for 36 on the Quay, Danesfield House (the chef left), Holbeck Ghyll (puzzling to me), Glenapp Castle, Inverlochy Castle, Chapter One in Locks Bottom (a shame), Medlar (a tad harsh), Nobu and Nobu Berkeley.

With one exception, I actually have little issue with the inertia at the very top end, though Alain Ducasse at The Dorchester seems to lead a charmed life. I am disappointed that Michelin have yet to recognise the quality of the cooking at Hedone, whose cooking is now streets ahead of many UK two stars, never mind the one star places. There continue to be high quality places omitted entirely, such as Sushi Tetsu, The Greenhouse in Dublin, Typing Room, the Ritz and Dysart. I mean really - would you rather go to Dysart or to, say, Ametsa? However in general those complaining about the lack of new two and three star places in the UK should eat abroad more to understand why: if you dine at a good 3 star place in Germany or France (or Japan) you will see a significant gulf between the best places there and the UK's culinary glitterati. Congratulations to all those kitchens that gained a star.

One pleasing side note was a bib gourmand for the charming Crown at Burchett's Green, whose kitchen has precisely one member of staff. It is good to see recognition for such a place, which must be a real labour of love.

From a Shoe-in Local Restaurant to The Ledbury

Giaconda Dining Rooms built up an enviable reputation as a good value restaurant serving robust, hearty dishes at a fair price, and I was very sorry to see it close in June. Its head chef has now struck out on his own in Tufnell Park, serving a similar style of food. His new restaurant (called Shoe Shop) is decidedly a local sort of place, so very local that it has dispensed with pesky modern encumbrances like reservation software, email and even a telephone. If you want a reservation then you need to wander by and make one in person. If you do then you will be rewarded with enjoyable, simple dishes at a very modest price indeed. Any London locality would be lucky have a restaurant of this standard, so I hope the denizens of Tufnell Park appreciate how fortunate they are.

North China in Acton is notionally a restaurant serving food from Peking/Beijing, though in reality most dishes turned out to be Cantonese. What matters is that they were pretty well cooked, from grilled pork dumplings to classics like gai lan with ginger. There were no duff dishes at our meal, and the restaurant was completely full, turning away some walk-ins even on a Tuesday night. It is certainly a couple of notches above most local Chinese restaurants in London, even if not quite to the same standard as my favourite Royal China.

The Ledbury has spruced up its menu since my last visit, with lots of new dishes on the tasting menu that we sampled. As ever, the standard here was high, with a particularly good array of nibbles, and an lovely langoustine tail wrapped in shiitake mushrooms. Desserts are for me the element of the meal that does not quite live up to the standards set by the early savoury dishes, but service is always excellent here and it was a very enjoyable experience.

Kiraku is a simple Japanese restaurant in Ealing, an area with a significant Japanese population due to the local language school. It has very basic décor but turns out consistently enjoyable grilled dishes, such as excellent mackerel. At this visit I tried grilled eel on a bed of rice, and a pork katsu curry. This is a long way from the sophisticated heights of kaiseki dining, but the food here is enjoyable and very good value.

A Safari to Woburn

The Paris House is set in a rather grand deer park (pictured) near Woburn, an estate owned by the Duke of Bedford. It is the only Michelin-starred restaurant in Bedfordshire, but despite the aristocratic setting the cooking is far from traditional. The kitchen team are keen to experiment, with plenty of use made of Asian spices and influences, but all based on the local produce available to them on the estate. The unusual combinations actually work, unlike so many restaurants these days, and it seemed to me to deserve its Michelin star. The only real negative was the very heavily marked-up wine list.

Brasserie Gustave is a recent opening in Chelsea, not far from South Kensington tube. It sends plenty of signals about its format, from the red leather banquettes to the art deco prints on the walls, and the menu is full of Gallic classics. The dishes that I tried were quite capable, with a particularly good quail and noodles dish. You could certainly do a lot worse if you were in the area and were looking for generally traditional brasserie food.

Blue Plate is an odd little place, a dining room attached to a cake shop called Outsider Tart, serving dishes from the deep south of the US. It feels more like going to a dinner party than a restaurant in some ways, with its communal tables and limited menu, but the welcome is warm and the prices moderate. This place is so low profile it does not even have a sign outside, but if you are in Chiswick and fancy some chilli or corn bread then it is worth a look.

Hedone has had a lick of paint over its summer break, but is still serving the same tasting menu of superb seasonal produce. Highlights at this, my 50^th meal here, included gorgeous turbot with fennel and a stunning raspberry dessert, but the standard was extremely high throughout. For me this is very strong 2 Michelin star level cooking, with several dishes at 3 star level, and there are certainty worse 3 star places than this around the world; hopefully Michelin will acknowledge the quality of the cooking here in due course.

In Bruges

Hertog Jan used to be in a quiet suburb of Bruges, but in July relocated to brand new premises next to their small farm a few miles away. The building is a mix of old and very new, and looks out over an extensive vegetable garden that supplies the restaurant with much of its raw material. As previously, the presentation of dishes was superb, with plenty of artful use of edible flowers. This time the cooking was less consistent, however, with several dishes slightly off key in some way. The new building, which reportedly cost over €4 million, needs to be paid for, and the price of the longest set menu has nearly doubled since my previous visit. The now considerable price being charged makes little slips less easy to forgive.

De Karmeliet is at the other end of the culinary trends spectrum, an old-fashioned restaurant using luxury ingredients and with scarcely an edible flower in sight. However the technique was hard to fault, and the food was not rooted entirely in the classics - a particularly successful dish involved a langoustine tail with goose liver, aubergine and a dashi stock. The wine list was very expensive but otherwise the meal was thoroughly enjoyable, with lovely ingredients and classy cooking. You would not come here looking for the latest in molecular techniques and foraged weeds on your plate, but you will get a carefully made, very enjoyable meal.

Back in London I went back to Mint Leaf, which used to be a regular haunt of mine when I worked nearby. This deceptively large basement restaurant is still very smart and seemed as popular as ever, serving Indian food that is more ambitious than the high street norm. Tandoori monkfish and venison with crisp okra give an indication of the kind of thing to expect. The food was very good, albeit this is far from cheap, though service was distinctly ropey this evening, and only the courageous would tackle the wine list, which has some really daft prices in places.

Coasting

Wormwood in Notting Hill has a chef who previously worked at Sketch, serving Mediterranean dishes. It served modern “tapas” style courses, some quite technically challenging and with unusual ingredient combinations. These mostly work well, though there was one dish that was flawed at our dinner. However, service was unusually good and it is a relaxed, welcoming place. As ever with this format of food, the bill ends up just a bit higher than you expect, not helped by an interesting but pricey wine list.

Umu is the only Japanese restaurant in London with a Michelin star other than the absurdly overpriced Nobu and its sibling, Michelin having overlooked the superb Sushi Tetsu (maybe, like the rest of us, they just cannot get a booking). Umu’s most recent chef has made much more of an effort to source ingredients locally, building up relationships with fishermen in Cornwall who can supply fish of the quality necessary for sushi and sashimi, including teaching them to kill the fish using a Japanese technique called "ikejime", which is more humane and keeps the flesh fresher than the usual method used over here. I had a fairly simple lunch there this week, but the chef is actually a kaiseki chef from Kitcho, so can deliver much more elaborate food than a bento box. Prices are high but then this kind of food is costly to produce, and the service is silky smooth.

Briciole is a little café/restaurant in Marylebone serving simple Italian dishes. The atmosphere is casual, and this is not somewhere to come for elaborate service, but the dishes are well-made, the prices low and the wine list interesting. At this meal a tagliolini pasta was particularly well made, and the restaurant is excellent value.

The Sportsman (pictured) is one of my favourite restaurants in the UK. Located on a desolate stretch of the Kent coast, its deceptively simple cooking takes local ingredients to a new level, with pork from the farm next door, vegetables from the garden and salt from the nearby beach. The place has recently had a lick of paint and no longer looks as if it is about to fall down, but the cooking is as enjoyable as ever. From the excellent red onion focaccia to the red fruit dessert and pretty much everything in between, The Sportsman is a delightful place at which to eat, its cooking based on top notch ingredients rather than cheffy trickery. It is well worth the excursion from London.

Reverting To Type

Typing Room has taken over from Viajante in the old Bethnal Green town hall (pictured). Chef Lee Westcott was head chef at Tom Aikens, and this pedigree showed through in a really fine meal. The dishes are modern and quite complex, with a lot of elements, but the chef is talented enough to make it all hang together. Even the pure vegetarian dishes, which are often an afterthought on menus, here are genuinely interesting and beautifully made. This is classy cooking, and I highly recommend it to you.

Lola and Simon is a curious local restaurant near Stamford Brook in a parade of shops. I have wandered past it many times, but was never tempted by the curious prospect of “Argentinian/New Zealand” cuisine, which sounded like something out of a comedy spoof. Now I will never know what this cuisine actually consisted of (bungee-jumped steaks raised on the pampas?) because it has now been taken over, and has become dramatically more appealing to me. The reason for this is the new owner, Andy Needham, formerly long-time head chef of Zafferano when it had its Michelin star. It is early days, but it seems that he will be sticking to what he knows best, serving classy Italian food, albeit in this more modest setting, and with far more modest prices than in Belgravia. We had an excellent first meal here and will certainly be back. It seems that the restaurant will briefly be closed for a refurbishment, and it is not yet clear whether the original name will be retained. However you will not often encounter food cooked by a chef of this quality at this low price point.

Royal China Club is sister to the highly successful Royal China restaurants in Baker Street and Queensway, this one aimed slightly up-market. As with my one previous visit here, although the service is definitely slicker and the ingredients more luxurious, I am not convinced that the cooking is one iota better than its cheaper brethren. The lobster tanks as you enter set the tone, and the food is certainly good, but I am not sure what really justifies the higher price here other than the more numerous waitresses.

High Road Brasserie is busy from breakfast until closing time, located in a prime spot on the Chiswick High road. The menu is appealing, the simple dishes consistently well executed, the service friendly, yet each time I come here I always seem to leave with a bill that seems disproportionately high for a pleasant but never dazzling meal. I am clearly in a minority judging by the endless crowds of diners queuing up to get in.

Amico Bio is something of a rarity, a entirely vegetarian Italian restaurant, reflecting the conversion to vegetarianism of its chef/owner. It has a friendly atmosphere, buried away in an obscure Smithfield side street. This was my second visit here, and much as I like the service and ambience of this little place, it was objectively a less good meal than my previous one. For pure vegetarian dishes to really work, the quality of ingredients needs to be high. In principle this should be the case here due to some of the products coming from the family farm in Italy once a week, but too many dishes at this visit lacked flavour.

Beyond the Northern Line

I sometimes get teased for not visiting places in the UK outside the tube network, but this week I ventured some way beyond High Barnet to Cumbria via Lancashire. I think the English countryside is as pretty as anywhere if you are lucky with the weather, and the temperatures can be much less oppressive than the Mediterranean at the height of summer. If you enjoy peace and quiet then there is another bonus, as I had several days blissfully unaware of the rest of the world, given the almost complete absence of a mobile phone signal.

Northcote (formerly Northcote Manor) is a well-established Michelin-starred restaurant and hotel in the Lancashire countryside, holding a star for the last 18 years. The meal that I tried had as its highlights a monkfish with curry flavours and guinea fowl with brioche crumbs. The cooking was clean and fairly modern in style, but used good quality ingredients and was not trying to over-complicate or put in weird ingredient combinations to show off how clever the chef is.

Gilpin Lodge is near Lake Windermere, a luxury boutique hotel with a restaurant attached.They currently have a consultant chef, and the kitchen is clearly in a transition stage as they aim to raise the standard of cooking. The best dishes were very good, and there was an evident emphasis on product quality, though there was also some inconsistency in the execution.

Holbeck Ghyll is unashamedly old-fashioned, set on a hillside overlooking lake Windermere. The menu is classical and proud of it, shunning modern culinary techniques in favour of proper sauces (in pools, not smears) and appealing combinations of luxury ingredients. The wood-panelled dining room sets the tone of the place. This is not the place to go for cutting edge modernist cooking, but if you like proper traditional food then you will leave happy.

The Samling (pictured) gained a Michelin star in the 2014 guide,, and has recently had quite a lot of investment in the property, with a development kitchen and vegetable garden supplying produce for the dining room. Since I last went the cooking seemed on more solid ground, especially in the dessert department, which was much improved. The cooking can come across as over-complex, but the dishes generally work well, and service was particularly good on this occasion. If they could sort out their aggressively priced wine list then the overall experience would improve further.

While I was in the area I did this video interview about global dining standards.

As of this week the www.andyhayler.com website is now 20 years old. As far as I know it is the longest running restaurant website. Thanks to all of you who have submitted comments, suggestions or queries; I hope the site has been helpful to you in choosing where to dine - happy eating!

Revisiting some west London haunts

My second visit to Rivea confirmed my initial impressions. It is the latest addition to the Alain Ducasse empire, in the basement dining room of the Bulgari hotel. The room is cleverly designed, with the sweeping staircase creating a striking use of what could have easily been a dull space. More importantly, the food continues to be good, with excellent pasta dishes and desserts in particular. The gnocchi are as good as you are likely to taste, and a lemon dessert was classy on this, my second visit. Service is silky smooth.

I am very fond of Parlour in Kensal Rise, an unlikely spot for some innovative and skilful coking. At a meal this week we were able to sit in the pleasant garden (pictured) rather than the somewhat gloomy dining room. Salads are a specialty here, always interesting and prettily presented, and here a broad bean salad with summer truffles was most enjoyable. Old favourite chicken Kyiv with coleslaw and rosti was excellent as ever, and a soufflé could have come from a good Michelin-starred kitchen. The cooking here does not use luxury ingredients but makes great use of what there is, delivering high quality food at a low price point.

Charlotte’s Bistro has a quite new chef, and he continues to settle in and bring in some new dishes. At a meal this week a cured salmon dish was interesting, but the pickled cucumber puree with it lacked enough bite. Chicken was nicely cooked, and the peas with it were fine. At my last meal here the sweet dish was poor, and this time a strawberry dessert was better, though I was surprised to see the stalks left in the fruit. Overall, this is still finding its feet under the new regime, but shows some promise.

La Mancha’s chef recently retired, and in his place is a young chef from Spain. The menu is still tapas, but there was a noticeably broader menu, and less reliance on the deep fat fryer. The most successful dish of the night was a paella variation that was made using pasta rather than rice, but still cooked in a cast-iron pan. This was an interesting idea that I thought worked well. Less good was Iberico ham that was not cut very well. Still, the staff are friendly and it is a pleasant neighbourhood place.

It is not often that restaurants get featured much in theatre, but a decade ago I watched a wonderful one-man comedy called "Fully Committed" about a receptionist in an ultra-trendy New York restaurant. It is returning to the same theatre ten years on, and if you are in London between September 3rd and November 15th I highly recommend it - there are some memorable lines.

The Corbin & King Empire Expands Further

Fischers (pictured) is the latest Corbin and King restaurant, and like The Delaunay it echoes an early 20^th century Viennese café with its art deco décor. The menu and wine list both have a lot of Austrian choices, so you can eat schnitzel and strudel after your herrings, for example. As ever in this group, service is very carefully drilled, and although the food is not going to set the world alight with its innovation, that is not the idea. It is a useful addition to the already busy Marylebone dining scene.

The New Angel marks the return of the controversial John Burton-Race to the London restaurant scene, this time in a Notting Hill bistro rather than the grander surroundings of The Landmark, where a decade or so ago he earned two Michelin stars. The food here is less ambitious but at this meal was old-fashioned but enjoyable, a menu of appealing classical dishes. Service was a touch fussy but very good, and the meal featured just one dish that didn't work so well, balanced by one superb dessert. Pricing is high, both for the food and the wine list, and that will be the main challenge to its long-term prospects, but the food itself was fine.

Madhu’s at the Sheraton continues to produce very good Punjabi food, the cooking highlight being its robata grill, which gives a pleasing charcoal smokiness to dishes that would usually be cooked in a tandoor. For example the tandoori lamb chop here is really special. The dining room is very smart, especially given its Heathrow hotel location, and if you are in the area is well worth a try. It is the best of the trio of smart Indian restaurants that have recently opened in Heathrow hotels.

Antidote is a restaurant above a wine bar near Carnaby Street where Mikael Jonsson of Hedone has been hired to improve the cooking. He has hired the chefs and supplies the bread and ingredients. Given the quality of these, it is not a surprise that the food at Antidote can be impressive. This week quail, pollock and short-rib of beef were all impressive. Even in the desserts the fruit shone with flavour in a way that it is rarely does in the UK. This is stripped-back cooking based on high-quality ingredients, and at a very modest price point (three courses at lunch is £33, four courses at dinner £40). There is worse food to be had in plenty of Michelin-starred restaurants in London.

I am pleased to add to the chef interviews that of Philippe Mille, head chef of the superb Les Crayeres in Reims.

In Rutland and London

On the way back to London from Yorkshire we broke our journey at old favourite Hambleton Hall (pictured) which served the best food of the entire trip. A guinea fowl dish was particularly impressive, but the whole meal was excellent, in many cases more two star level than the one that it has. The wine list here is also terrific, with mark-ups very kindly and with a few wines actually below their current retail price. If you are ever travelling through or near Rutland, this is well worth a detour.

There has been a flurry of up-market Indian restaurants opening in Heathrow hotels in the last few months, with Mr Todiwala’s Kitchen and Madhu’s at the Sheraton. The latest is Annayu at the Radisson Blu hotel, the chef having trained at the Taj group in India. The dishes that we tried were generally good, but the pricing was very ambitious given the location.

The group behind the wildly successful Burger and Lobster mini-chain (whose central London venues each regularly do over 1,000 covers each on busy days) have recently launched a curious Beast of a restaurant. In the evenings it offers a no-choice menu featuring Norwegian king crab (the “Beast” that gives the place its name) and steak for a chunky £75. This is served on communal tables with bench seating in a large Marylebone basement, and has all the potential to be a bit of a disaster. That it is not is due to the exemplary quality of the ingredients, not just the crab itself (shipped live from Norway) but also top-notch red prawns from the Mediterranean and Japanese beef. Until just a few weeks ago there was no such thing as “real” wagyu beef to be had outside Japan, as exporting it was illegal, but this rule has very recently been relaxed. The wagyu I sampled at Beast was from an obscure Japanese prefecture, but even this was better than any of the wagyu I have eaten from the USA, Australia etc. It will be really interesting when the really top quality wagyu, such as that from Kobe and Matsusaka, arrives over here, though the price will be daunting. Beast is something of a curiosity as a restaurant, but there is no denying the quality of produce they are serving.

Talking of top quality produce, I notched up my 49^th meal at Hedone, which continues to produce arguably the best food in London at the moment. As well as old favourite dishes like the liquid Parmesan ravioli and the umami flan, a highlight was a simple but stunning dish of wild sea bass with fennel, the quality of the ingredients really singing out. The chef also served some very tender 100 day aged Basque beef and a superb strawberry dessert. Then there is the bread, which as Fay Maschler recently wrote is the best in Britain. If you have yet to visit then I would encourage you to do so.

The Michelin guide released another "special edition" i.e. one off guide, to an area of Japan, in this case Fukuoka and nearby Saga. These special edition guides are not updated (presumably it is not reckoned economic to do so), and their stars expire after a year, as happened with the guides to Hokkaido and Hiroshima. Fukuoka is the main city of the island of Kyushu, and Japan's 6th largest overall, situated at the western end of Japan. it is on the northern coast of Kyushu, with Nagasaki on the same island to the west. Both these cities have historically been trading ports, and Fukuoka was where the Mongols landed in the 13th century when they invaded Japan. It is actually much closer to Seoul in Korea than it is to Tokyo (335 miles compared to 678 miles) Two three star restaurants were named, a kaiseki restaurant called Sagano and a sushi restaurant called Gyoten. Additionally there were 11 two star and 41 one star places listed. The guide is at present only in kanji, with an English edition planned for the autumn.

Over Hill and Down Dale - A Yorkshire Road Trip

Whitby is the port where, according to the original Bram Stoker novel, Dracula landed in Britain. It is also noted for its ruined abbey (pictured) and also its fish and chips, and I was intrigued to try both the famous Magpie Cafe and also Quayside, last year’s UK best fish and chip shop winner. Of these I preferred Quayside, which was very good. Magpie was fine, but it didn’t feel like anything special to be honest. Just to prove that you can get mediocre fish and chips even in north Yorkshire, I also visited another supposedly well-thought-of place called Inghams in Filey. The best fish and chips I can recall eating are still those of Simon Hopkinson when he was cooking at Bibendum, but the food at Quayside in particular was very enjoyable.

Moving up a culinary gear, I tried four of the five Michelin-starred restaurants in Yorkshire. The Old Vicarage near Sheffield is in a pretty location and was quite old-fashioned but served some perfectly enjoyable food. Its service, however, was almost comically inept. Not far from the attractive town of Beverley is The Pipe and Glass Inn, which served the best food of the trip. This was very good indeed, with almost every dish solidly in good one star Michelin territory, and with relaxed and competent service.

The Box Tree at Ilkley has a great culinary heritage, having had a Michelin star in the very first UK Guide, back in 1974. The meal here was good, with a particularly nice rhubarb soufflé. The service was quite formal but very capable, the pricing rather ambitious. The Yorke Arms near Pately Bridge was more erratic, having several perfectly nice savoury dishes and then some frankly dodgy desserts.

Yorkshire has some beautiful countryside, both along the coast and also its rugged moors, and it is well worth a visit. However it is important that you research your dining options. When we stopped for simple lunches during the trip at pubs we encountered some pretty grim food. I suppose this is no different from anywhere else, and certainly is true in London - the vast majority of restaurants out there range from mediocre to gruesome, and only a very small percentage produce food that is genuinely good. This is as true of pretty country pubs as it is of city restaurants.

From Henley to Hounslow

Orwells is a roadside pub near Henley, with a pair of chef-owners who made headlines by walking out of The Goose in Britwell Salome just after gaining a Michelin star. Given this background I had quite high hopes of Orwells, but although it was a pleasant enough meal it was rather inconsistent in standard, and for an out of London pub the pricing was distinctly ambitious.

When I went to Hiroshima I enjoyed some excellent okonomiyaki, a savoury pancake that is very popular there, and I was curious to see whether I could find this dish in London. After some Twitter research I was pointed at Abeno, which indeed specialises in it (albeit a slightly different style of okonomiyaki). This was enjoyable and inexpensive, and well worth trying if you are ever near The British Museum.

Blanchette is a recently opened bistro in Soho, with a chef who had worked at Bibendum. The food was very good, with hearty French dishes in a “small plates” format that ensures the bill is always a bit more than you expect. However the cooking was capable and the menu appealing, and the place is clearly doing very well. A quail dish was particularly enjoyable.

City Barge is a Chiswick riverside pub that has recently had a makeover. Although it is now touting gastropub credentials, the meal that we had was distinctly erratic, and in places just poor, which was a pity as the meal started quite well. At least there is the riverside setting to console diners.

Charlotte’s Bistro recently installed a new chef, and within weeks had to do so once more. It is to be hoped that the current head chef has more staying power, as the bistro is a pleasant neighbourhood place with an airy room and nice bar. The savoury dishes that I tried were quite good, the desserts less so, but overall it was perfectly enjoyable and not very expensive.

Fera is the much-awaited new restaurant at Claridges (pictured), with Simon Rogan taking over from Gordon Ramsay in this iconic London hotel dining room. The formula is similar to l'Enclume, with an emphasis on foraged herbs and elegant presentation of dishes. Many dishes were very good at my meal, and service was excellent, but there were also some missteps, such as with a disappointing piece of turbot. Given the quite ambitious pricing here, this doesn't feel as if it is quite running on all cylinders yet, though there is much to enjoy about the place.

City Social is the latest outpost of the burgeoning Jason Atherton empire, taking over from Gary Rhodes in the Tower 42 dining room. The view is spectacular and the food ver enjoyable: the menu is appealing and well executed, the service slick, our sommelier particularly helpful.

Next week I will describe my culinary travels in Yorkshire, from fish and chips to Michelin stars.

From Bavaria to the Black Forest

In Munich, Dallmayr is a two-star Michelin restaurant located in a department store. I have to say that I struggled to understand its rating, as did a local foodie who I accompanied there. The meal was decent enough, but it was quite expensive for what it was. I felt similarly about the one star Italian restaurant Acquarello, which had some pretty dishes but a very high bill to match.

I fared much better at Heinz Winkler, where I had two meals on successive nights. This was a restaurant that had three stars when I visited it last, and there were plenty of dishes still at a very strong three star level. Indeed, other than the bread, and perhaps the desserts if I am harsh, essentially everything that we ate was of three star standard, including several dishes that were simply magnificent. It is hard to understand why its third star has not been re-granted (this has happened before on a few occasions in other cases). Whatever its rating, I highly recommend that you go there to try some superb cooking in a glorious alpine setting (its terrace is pictured). It is barely an hour from Munich.

Moving on to the Black Forest, Schwarzwaldstube and Bareiss, both three star establishments, were on excellent form. We stayed at Bareiss this time, which is a lovely hotel at the bottom of a picturesque pine tree-clad valley. The food there is unashamedly classical, based on top quality ingredients and impeccable cooking technique. My meal at Schwarzwaldstube was even better than I remember my prior meals there, and was another fine example of top class culinary technique, in this case backed up by world-class service as well.

Uberfahrt is the newest three star Michelin restaurant in Germany, located in a hotel in the very pretty lake Tegernsee, south of Munich. I enjoyed my meal here, but for me it seemed well short of “true” three star standard, more of a mid-ranking two star restaurant. I had a similar impression of the last restaurant in Germany that was promoted to three stars, La Belle Epqoue.

Indeed the last couple of years have seen a series of three star promotions, only a few of which I really understand. In 2014 the three star places added were Uberfahrt (which I scored 17/20) Kichisen (17/20), Assiette Champenoise (17/20), De Leest (17/20), Sushi Shikon (18/20), Eight (17/20), Bo Innovation (13/20), DiverXO (19/20) and Reale (16/20). In 2013 the new three stars were Vague d’Or (17/20), Quique Dacosta (16/20), Nakashima (17/20), Azurmendi (20/20), Piazza Duomo (14/20) and La Belle Epoque (17/20). So, out of fifteen new three star restaurants added in the last two years, there are only two that I would regard as “true” three stars, Azurmendi and DiverXO, plus Sushi Shikon, which is certainly as good as most other 3 star sushi places (I have some difficulty scoring sushi places higher than 18/20 given their somewhat limited intervention with the ingredients). Indeed on several recent visits to new three stars I have enjoyed two-star restaurants nearby more: Crayeres was clearly superior to Assiette Champenoise, Bord’eau was better than De Leest, Heinz Winkler better than Uberfahrt, Chevre d’Or better than Vague d’Or, Jacobs better than Belle Epoque.

I am not sure why this should be. Maybe Michelin feels under pressure to announce new three-star places in order to sell more guides, or at least generate headlines, or perhaps their standards are slipping. Certainly the example of Crayeres v Assiette Champenoise illustrates that even when they decide to anoint a new three star in a given city, they cannot even pick the right one (I am hardly alone in this view). There have always been controversial Michelin decisions, but for me the last two years clutch of picks at the three star level have, in general, been worryingly dubious.

Anyway, with the visit to Uberfahrt I have been to all 110 three star Michelin restaurants in the world. I first completed this tour in 2004, when there were just 49 such establishments, all in Europe. I caught up again in 2008, by which time Michelin had begun its international expansion to the USA, Japan and China, and again in 2010 and 2012. Now the Michelin three star balance has clearly shifted, with ten USA three stars (9% of the total), seven in China (6%), twenty-eight in Japan (25%) and sixty-five in Europe (60%). The next Michelin guide is not now due until the end of September, so I can have a little rest over the summer.

Watching the Swiss Restaurant Scene

Lake Geneva is a very pretty spot, and has some serious restaurants too. It is home to the École Hôtelière de Lausanne, the oldest hospitality school in the world and generally reckoned still to be the most prestigious in the world. Within this school is a test restaurant Berceau des Sens that the students use to practice their cooking and service skills, and this is open to members of the public. The students are supervised by some prestigious faculty members: on the evening of my visit, the restaurant manager was previously maitre d’ of The Fat Duck, and the head chef was a MOF (Meilleur Ouvrier de France) and had earned a Michelin star in his own right in the past. Of course as a student venue not everything is perfect, but the food was actually pretty good, and the service charming. If you are ever in Lausanne then do give it a try.

In the luxurious Beau Rivage Palace (pictured) is the second restaurant of Anne-Sophie Pic, whose flagship Pic in Valence is one of the most prestigious restaurants in France, and has considerable history. Ms Pic was in attendance when I came to lunch at the Lausanne version, and it was good to see that she obviously takes an active interest in the venue. The meal I had was good, but although the desserts and the bread were lovely it was noticeably a notch down from its three star sibling.

A short distance along the lake from Lausanne in Crissier is Hotel de Ville, another restaurant with some great history. This was where Fredy Girardet made his reputation, with Philippe Rochat retaining the three Michelin stars for the establishment. Finally he in turn has made way for his protégé Benoit Violier, and the restaurant still has three Michelin stars. I have actually eaten in all three chef eras, and this was my second meal with Mr Violier at the helm. He has large boots to fill, and he does so admirably. The classical cooking here is as beautiful as ever, the service silky smooth. Indeed I would say that, although it is difficult to make such comparisons, I have enjoyed my two meals here under Benoit Violier at least as much as when his illustrious predecessors were cooking. Another joy of Hotel de Ville is that it does not feel the need to keep up with every restaurant fashion. For example, here is a place where old school French sauces are made, and made well. They are served, as sauces should be served, in generous pools on the plate, not as the artistic dots or smears so beloved of many modern chefs. It is hard for me to recommend Hotel de Ville too highly – it is simply one of the best restaurants in the world.

The blog next week will be published one day later than usual due to travel.

From Berkshire to Brentford

Ting is the latest restaurant to open in the Shard, which towers above London Bridge station. The menu reflects its hotel setting and is oddly diverse, with both European and Asian food served (with some north African dishes thrown in should you wish). The European dishes that we tried were pretty good, the solitary Asian dish less so. Service was friendly but of course you are paying a premium for the stunning view from the 35^th floor. With this setting they could get away serving any old slop and people would still come in to gawp, so it is to their credit that they are making some effort.

Cliveden (its grounds are pictured) is a vast country estate in Berkshire with fascinating history, most notably it being the location where Christine Keeler met John Profumo in 1961, resulting in a seismic political scandal. Cliveden’s new owners have finally moved the flagship restaurant out of the basement to the lovely terrace room, which has a handsome view over the grounds. It also recruited a chef (Andre Garrett) who previously had a Michelin star, so the scene was set for a fine meal. In reality the experience was merely pleasant, as although the technical side of the cooking was good, I found a number of dishes had very muted flavour, presumably due to less than stellar ingredients. Service was excellent and the overall experience fine, but at this price I think the chef can improve on the current standard, given his track record.

The value for money factor was impressive at 8 Hoxton Square, where enjoyable, simple rustic food is produced in a casual, friendly setting. The wine list here (not the regular printed list but the handwritten one that changes monthly) is very impressive not just for the clever choice of growers but the genuinely low prices. Many of the wines here are only a little more than their retail price, and how often does that happen in London. An entire meal here with wine will cost you about the same as a main course at plenty of London venues.

The Watermans Arms in Brentford is a very basic boozer where you can have fish and chips and a pint of you like. The more adventurous are rewarded by the hearty Japanese dishes prepared by its owner, who lived in Japan for several years and has a Japanese wife. It is not sophisticated cooking, but I enjoyed my kakiage (tempura of prawn and shredded vegetables) and slightly spicy soba noodles at my visit this week. Prices are a steal.

Sushi Tetsu is the nearest thing to a proper Tokyo sushi bar in London. It has just seven seats, its chef is obsessive about sushi and he sources his fish with greater care than any other Japanese restaurant that I have seen in London. He even uses proper wasabi root from Japan, which is very expensive but is a world apart from the green coloured horseradish and mustard from a tube that virtually every other Japanese restaurant in London uses. The chef works on his own, his wife running the service, and the impeccable sushi experience that results is so good that getting a reservation is now nightmarishly difficult. In this way it is also authentically Japanese, as those who have tried to get a reservation at Sushi Saito, the number one rated sushi restaurant in Tokyo, can testify.

Feeling Ritzy

I was pleasantly surprised by Rivea, the new restaurant in the cavernous basement room of the Bulgari hotel. Despite the somewhat forced attempt at a casual Mediterranean feel (wooden display table with vegetables, staff in trainers) the place delivers. We enjoyed excellent food, including seriously impressive gnocchi, and the waiters were superbly trained, delivering silky smooth service.

Kurobuta near Marble Arch is a restaurant from an ex-Nobu chef that mixes and matches Japanese cooking styles. Dishes are quite pretty, and I was impressed with the delicacy of the tempura, but the sushi rice was cold, a schoolboy error unthinkable in even the most humble sushi bar in Japan. With no concessionary lunch menu the bill quickly adds up too.

Toto’s was an old-style Knightsbridge Italian restaurant that prospered in the 1980s but didn’t move with the times and finally expired in 2012. It has now been revived and re-launched with completely different staff, and the result was very good indeed on an early visit. Service was as slick as the Italian waiters' hair and the food was genuinely good, with high quality ingredients such as huge gamberoni prawns that were precisely cooked. I will definitely come back here.

500, named after the Italian car, is a decent Italian neighbourhood restaurant in Holloway. It is not somewhere worth making a journey to, but the food was pleasant and the service and pricing friendly, so worth a try if you are in that area. The tiramisu was probably the star dish.

The Ritz (pictured) in London is an enigma to me. It seems invisible to social media, is shunned by Michelin, and yet over the last couple of years I have had some of the best and most consistent food that I have eaten in London. John William’s team use top quality ingredients in their vast kitchen, where you can see for example the live langoustines that few London restaurants seem to be able to source. Technique is hard to fault, and the appealing menu of classical dishes includes attractive features like proper pools of old-fashioned, manually intensive sauces, rather than the odd artistic smear of gloop much beloved by modern chefs. At this meal, as well as glorious langoustines, there was excellent lamb, lovely morels and intricate pastry work. The only gripe is the costly wine list, but service is great and the room lovely. There is also a gorgeous private dining room (illustrated). This last meal was my best there yet, and I have increased my web site score to reflect this. To not have a star for the Ritz is crackers - sort it out Michelin.

Viva Las Vegas

Las Vegas does not go in much for subtlety (the lake at The Bellagio is pictured), and like other cities that are primarily aimed at tourists can be a challenging dining destination. I tried three of the more prominent places on this short visit. Picasso was at the Bellagio hotel, and despite the distraction of the lake and fountains was rather disappointing. The food was pleasant enough but distinctly old-fashioned in places, and at a high price considering the quality level of what arrived on the plate.

Sage was better, a modern American restaurant from a Chicago chef., in the Aria hotel and casino. Although the service left the distinct impression of diners being processed, the dishes that I tried were quite capable and were at a tolerable price level. I liked a beef tartare dish in particular, and indeed each dish that I sampled was enjoyable and quite well made. This was not earth-shattering food, but seemed to me to deliver decent value.

The best meal was at Guy Savoy, the outpost of the iconic French chef with a three Michelin star restaurant in Paris. This was yet another casino outpost, this time based at the vast Caesar’s Palace, and had much slicker service. More importantly, the food was good too, with strong culinary technique on show. The ingredients were inevitably a limiting factor here compared to what is available in Paris, and it was hardly cheap, but at least the cooking was in solid Michelin star level territory (Michelin themselves no longer cover Las Vegas after an aborted guide launched there in 2008/2009, which apparently sold few copies).

Parlour continues to be a favourite of mine, a fairly modest pub in a distinctly unprepossessing street in Kensal Rise that is home to the gifted Jesse Dunford Wood. The chef likes to play with retro British dishes, and on the visit I tried a lovely chicken Kyiv (as Kiev is now spelt) and had a fine strawberry soufflé. He also has a knack of producing clever and original salads, as in the form of a green salad with celery leaves, fennel, Jerusalem artichokes, radishes, courgettes and black grapes, a combination that was unusual but effective.

My 48^th meal at Hedone was very impressive indeed, with the cooking moving to new levels of refinement. The top quality ingredient emphasis continues unchanged, shown with the superb Luberon asparagus and dazzling “black lady” chicken from Touraine, which is held in similar regard to Poulet Bresse but to me had even better flavour. Dishes that were already superb such as the liquid Parmesan ravioli, have been improved even further, in this case with a more concentrated onion flavour in the broth. New dishes such as a superb strawberry dessert had fruit with the kind of flavour that I had forgotten was possible from a strawberry (at least from one outside of Japan, where the fruit in general is of a remarkably high standard). The food at Hedone is now clearly between two and three star level territory.

The blog next week will appear a day later than usual due to some travel.

Going Solo in the Kitchen

Chiltern Firehouse is a wildly successful restaurant within the Marylebone boutique hotel of the same name, with Nuno Mendes (previously of Viajante) at the helm of the kitchen. It seems to have become the “in restaurant” with the media and fashionable of the capital. Service was certainly very slick and the food that we tried was pleasant, but the prices seem very high indeed for the level of food that is being sent out. I appear to be about the only person in London with that opinion, since the place was completely rammed, and booked out for months. It seems to have become a younger version of the Ivy, a place where celebrities and those who like to gawp at celebroties hang out.

Bibo in Putney is a restaurant related to Sonnys, with a chef who previously worked at Theo Randall at The Intercontinental. It is a much more casual affair than his prior venue, but I was pleasantly surprised by the standard of the food here, especially given the reasonably moderate price point. The star dish was the dessert of bombolone - lemon doughnuts.

Assunta Madre is the newly opened London sister restaurant of a well-established seafood restaurant in Rome of the same name. Its owner, who started life as a fisherman, has taken the extremely expensive step of having fish flown over daily from the market in Rome to the UK. Certainly the fish is of good quality, and the cooking is simple and respects the ingredients. Desserts are an area for improvement, but otherwise the dishes I tried were good. However prices are high, not surprisingly given the Mayfair location and import costs.

The Crown at Burchett’s Green (pictured) has for six months had a new head chef, and now owner, in the form of Simon Bonwick, whose cooking I enjoyed at his previous restaurant stint at The Three Tuns. This is truly stripped back cooking, with Simon working entirely on his own in the pub kitchen, with not even a kitchen porter to help him. Although the lack of hands in the kitchen imposes some limitations on what can be done, the food is hearty and enjoyable. It is also very fairly priced. If you are in the Maidenhead area I recommend that you give it a try.

The Duke of Sussex is a pub local to me that produces food that is a lot more interesting than one might expect for somewhere that does not set itself up as a destination dining spot. The food is a mix of pub grub such as fish and chips with many Spanish dishes, such as good seafood paella; they even go to the trouble of making their own bread. It is excellent value and a reliable west London haunt of mine.

Champagne Lifestyle

There are three Michelin starred restaurants in and around Reims, which along with Epernay is the heart of the Champagne wine region. Reims itself has a fine cathedral that used to be where French kings were crowned. It is south east of Paris, and can be reached either by road or via a quite fast but somewhat infrequent train that runs from Gare de l’Est. International visitors can either make their way to Gare de l’est from the airport or Eurostar terminal, and then complete the 45 minute TGV journey, but should check the train schedule as there may be a lengthy wait. Alternatively the drive from the airport takes around one hour and 25 minutes (93 miles). Many champagne houses in and around Reims are open to the public and do tours, though most require advance notice and reservations for visitors.

Le Foch is a long established one star restaurant in the town centre. It serves quite traditional food, and does so very well. A langoustine dish in particular was lovely, and the quality of ingredients and cooking throughout the meal was very high indeed. The waiters that we encountered were excellent, and overall this was a strong one star level meal.

There are two higher rated restaurants in the area, which until the 2014 Michelin guide both had two stars. One had clearly developed in its cooking, and amongst French food journalists there were rumours in advance of the guide’s publication that the next three star restaurant in France would come from Reims. The rumours were right but, to general surprise, Assiette Champenoise was duly anointed instead of Les Crayeres, which had been widely tipped. Assiette Champenoise was certainly a very pleasant restaurant, and we had a sequence of nice dishes, with one really excellent main course. However there were flaws too, and overall this seemed to me like a decent two star meal.

Les Crayeres (pictured) was of a higher standard altogether. Ingredients were impeccable, such as superb new season peas and beans used in a wild sea bass dish that was exceptionally good. The pastry chef here recently won a competition for the best dessert in France, and his prize winning “lemon waves” dish was on the menu and was terrific. As a bonus, the wine list here is remarkable. There are plenty of multi-starred restaurants with lengthy wine lists, but the trouble is that most of them discourage all but the wealthiest from really indulging due to their high mark-ups. Certainly in central London it is normal to mark up wines by three to four times their retail price, and in some cases more. At Les Crayeres many wines, and not just the odd one, were not priced in this way. Mark-ups were not merely modest, but in many cases negative, with some classy wines being priced at just one third their retail price, a tenth of what they might appear at in Paris or London. The cooking at Les Crayeres seemed to me to be in solid three star territory, with one of the most attractively priced wine lists anywhere. Both Assiette Champenoise and Les Crayeres were excellent restaurants, but I share the general bemusement as to why Michelin promoted the former rather than the latter.

California Dreaming

San Francisco is my favourite US city, its steep hills concealing striking views over the ocean (the Oakland Bay bridge is pictured) and the interesting architecture of the place itself. There is much to enjoy here by just walking around the very different neighbourhoods, from the Victorian grandeur of Nob Hill through to the bohemian Castro district with its lovely old cinema. Moreover, the sequoia forest glory of the peaceful Muir Woods is just a short drive over the Golden Gate bridge.

Tadich Grill is a venerable institution in San Francisco, claiming to date back to 1849 (though that date requires a certain flexibility of definition). It did the “no reservations” format over a century before that became fashionable, serving seafood either at closely packed tables or along the lengthy bar counter. To be honest the food is pretty basic and the price rather high for the quality of food, but this doesn’t seem to put people off. It is packed out, turning tables and bar seats at a ferocious clip.

At a more serious level I tried a trio of two Michelin star restaurants, completing of my coverage of all two and three star restaurants on the west coast of the US. Baume is in Palo Alto and has an unusual format. The no-choice tasting menu is de rigeur these days in so many places, but what it is very rare indeed is that the restaurant has no wine list, offering a couple of wine pairings by the glass as the only available drinking options other than water. I guess this avoids having the expense of building up a cellar, but seems also to miss an opportunity given the wealth of the area. The food itself was pleasant enough but far from exciting, the modern cooking seeming to be showing off culinary technique rather than aimed at providing pleasure to diners. It was interesting, if presumably unrepresentative, that there were just five diners, including me, on the Friday lunch when I went.

Much better was Benu in San Francisco, another modern tasting menu only joint, but one with high quality cooking and charming staff. The menu was too long to easily summarise, but star dishes included anchovy with peanut puree on celery, and a “beggar’s purse” of Iberico pork and truffle in an acorn flour pastry case. Only desserts felt like an afterthought, as they so often do in modern restaurants, which for some reason seem to eschew traditional pastry pleasures for oddball concoctions.

I also returned to Saison, which has now relocated to new and much smarter premises, as well as having built up an impressive wine list. I had a rather mixed experience last time, but the cooking this time felt much more assured. In the lengthy tasting menu some highlights were a prettily presented warm salad with celeriac, and also a lovely dish of wood pigeon with morels.

I am delighted to add to the website a chef interview with Harald Wohlfahrt, the iconic chef of 3 star Michelin Schwarzwaldstube.

Going Dutch

De Leest gained a third Michelin star this year. It is situated in the quiet town of Vaassen between Apeldoorn and Zwolle in Gelderland, about 60 miles east of Amsterdam. The meal was entirely pleasant, and there was one genuinely impressive turbot dish, but other than this it did not seem to me to be a three star meal. This is not to criticise the restaurant, which was very good and not excessively priced, with some wine bargains as well; I simply struggle to understand its Michelin rating.

I preferred Bord’eau in Amsterdam, a restaurant that has rapidly gained first one and then a second star. The food here was exceptionally well presented, based on good ingredients and was creative without being weird. A clever apple dessert (pictured), with the “apple” made from spun sugar, the “core” made of apple sorbet and the “pips” being chocolate was an example of the kind of effort that is going on here. There were one or two areas for improvement, in particular the bread, but this was a very strong performance, nudging firmly into three star territory at times.

Bird of Smithfield is a multi-level premises in an old Georgian townhouse on one side of Smithfield Market (opposite Club Gascon). It is a casual place and is at its best when producing simple dishes like fish and chips. Spring chicken did not need an edible flower as a garnish, and a mackerel dish that I tried was remarkably lacking in flavour. This has some way to match the consistency of The Ivy, where Alan Bird was head chef for years, both in food and service.

One Kensington is in the premises of what used to be Zaika. The room has been substantially refurbished and the cuisine is now European with an Italian emphasis. The consultant chef is Massimiliano Blasone, who gained a Michelin star for Apsleys before moving to the USA for a spell. The dishes at my meal here were good, though I have the feeling that the chef is much more at home with high end Italian cooking rather than the rather more casual format that is intended here. Still, gnocchi in particular was excellent, as was lemon tart, but a couple of dishes lacked flavour. I suspect that this is a reflection of the lower quality of ingredients that the kitchen is expected to work here compared to the more ambitious setting of Apsleys. However, the peripatetic Mr Blasone is a gifted chef, so this is worth a try while he remains here.

I notched up my 47^th meal at Hedone, which continues to be on superb form ever since it switched to a tasting menu only format. As ever, the ingredients here are impeccable, such as lovely Scottish langoustine, suckling pig from the Pyrenees and superb Luberon asparagus. The level of cooking here now is very high indeed, with several dishes firmly nudging three star territory, including the dazzling bread, which is near perfect and is now also being used at Hibiscus.

I also popped back to Madhu’s at The Sheraton, whose robata grill means that certain dishes have an enjoyably smoky note from the charcoal. This is particularly apparent with terrific lamb chops, which arrive ultra tender and with just a hint of smokiness. Other dishes that work particularly well here are chicken biryani and indeed pretty much anything from the grill, such as large and tender achari prawns.

I am delighted to add to the site a chef interview with Yoshiharu Kakinuma, the head chef of 3 star Michelin Sushi Shikon in Hong Kong.

With De Leest, I have now visited 108 of the 110 current three star Michelin restaurants in the world. Just Assiette Champenoise in Reims and Uberfahrt near Munich remain.

The Restaurants That San Pellegrino Forgot

As I reflected on the recent San Pellegrino awards, I wondered what sort of list could be constructed of places entirely neglected by the top 50 and even the full top 100. Just from my own dining experiences, quite a list can be constructed. For a start there are 63 three star Michelin restaurants left out of the San Pellegrino list, which seems to me to be more about current fashion that necessarily just about quality – modernist restaurants feature heavily, classical places are conspicuous by their absence.

Some restaurants that are not heavily marketed yet produce great food just don’t make it to that list, amongst them some of the world’s top restaurants. Consider the set of 50 below, which is just a personal selection of places, none of which feature in the San Pellegrino top 100 at all. These are not in any sequence of perceived quality (they are roughly in order of when I last ate at each). It includes places that surely most objective people would regard as world-class restaurants (such as Ledoyen, Ambroisie, Guy Savoy, Troisgros, Schloss Berg, Sonnora, Pres de l’Eugenie, Hotel de Ville, Mizai, Osier, Sushi Saito,…). Believe me, there are plenty of superb restaurants that I didn't have room for. In the list below the stars in brackets indicate the number of Michelin stars where appropriate (Michelin do not cover all geographies).

Crayeres, Reims (**)
Bord'eau, Amsterdam (**)
Sushi Shikon, Hong Kong (***)
Robuchon au Dome, Macau (***)
Pergola, Rome (***)
Abac, Barcelona (**)
Chevre d'Or, Eze (**)
Villa Crespi, Orta (**)
Sushi Saito, Tokyo (***)
Sawada, Tokyo (**)
Guy Savoy, Paris (***)
Taillevent, Paris (**)
Al Sorriso, Soriso (**)
Ibai, San Sebastian
Hotel de Ville, Crissier (***)
Sushizen, Sapporo (**)
Michel Bras Toya, Toya (***)
Ryugin, Hong Kong (**)
La Vie, Osnabruck (***)
Patrick Guilbaud, Dublin (**)
Nanachome Kyoboshi, Tokyo (**)
Yoshitake, Tokyo (***)
Koryu, Osaka (***)
Don Alfonso 1890, Sant Agata (**)
Arnsbourg, Baerenthal (***)
Marque, Sydney
Vue de Monde, Melbourne
Made in China, Beijing
L20, Chicago (**)
Meadowood, St Helena (***)
Sa Qua Na, Honfleur (**)
Ledoyen, Paris (***)
Kitcho, Kyoto (***)
Chihana, Kyoto (***)
Hajime, Osaka (***)
Mizai, Kyoto (***)
Schloss Berg, Perl-Nenning (***)
Sonnora, Wittlich (***)
Auberge de Vieux Puits, Conteville (***)
Da Vittorio, Brusaporto (***)
Les Pres Eugenie, Eugenie Les Bains (***)
Troisgros, Roanne (***)
Il Luogo di Aime e Nadia, Milan (**)
Bareiss, Baiersbronn (***)
Pic, Valence (***)
Regis et Jacques Marcon, St Bonnet Le Froid (***)
Osier, Tokyo (***)
Sushi Mizutani, Tokyo (***)
Sant Pau, Sant Pol de Mar (***)
Ambroisie, Paris (***)

I believe this illustrates that the San Pellegrino list is more about fashion than quality – it would seem accurate to describe it as the “Most Fashionable 50 Restaurants.“ Restaurants that spend heavily on marketing, have active PR agencies and attend industry events feature heavily on that list. Chefs that stay in their kitchens cooking for their customers and shunning PR generally do not.

Such lists are difficult, and you are never going to please everyone. When the list first came out in Restaurant Magazine in 2002 It was just a wheeze to sell a few more magazines, made up by the magazine people chatting with a few people that they knew: the result was laughably UK-centric. To be fair, the methodology has improved since, with regions of the world set up and panellists (whose names used to be listed on the website but now are not) having to place some of their votes outside their “home” region. This has led to a broadening of geographic outlook but also caused unexpected issues. Panellists in areas of the world with few well-known restaurants concertedly vote for one or two places, meaning that some pleasant but scarcely world-class places appear higher than you would expect.

There is no perfect system, but there do seem to me more problems than one might hope for in the list even twelve years on, if it is to be valued as an arbiter of quality rather than merely of fashion. For those of you interested in top class dining experiences around the world even if they are not fashionable, I would encourage you to consider the above restaurants.

Bohemian Rhapsody

I have visited Prague twice before, once shortly after the Berlin Wall fell, and once again around a decade ago. It is a stunningly beautiful city, filled with glorious architecture. There are other lovely cities in the world: Venice, Krakow, Tallinn, Florence and Rome all have superb buildings, but for me Prague may be the prettiest of them all. It is a very walkable city, the gorgeous old town a stroll over the famous 14th century Charles Bridge up the hill to the castle, the largest standing ancient castle in the world, dating back to 870 AD. The city has an excellent metro and tram system and, more importantly, superb beer. Yet on my previous visits here it was tough to find even half-decent food, which seemed to consist mainly of meatballs and potato dumplings.

I was pleased to discover that things have moved on. The old style food can still be found, such as at Kastrol, and this was hearty enough and cheap, but there are only so many potato dumplings that a man can eat. A sign of the changing culinary times could be seen at Sansho, an Asian fusion restaurant run by an Englishman, where trendy dishes like soft shell crab sliders appear, the meat here supplied by the owner's own butcher shop. Finestra was a real surprise to me, an Italian restaurant with genuinely classy imported ingredients, such as superb tomatoes from Campania. They even have Fassone beef and three deliveries per week of fish from the Adriatic, plus a terrific wine list. The food here was lovely, and I would go back in a heartbeat.

At the smart end of dining there are two Michelin starred restaurants, Alcron and Degustation. Alcron has a very pretty little dining room illustrated by murals reproducing an art deco artist, and the slightly jewel box feel of the room extends to the food, which is very elaborate in style. For me it was a little too much so, never using three dish elements when six would do, even the amuse-bouche having a dizzying number of components. It was all pleasant enough, but seemed to me overworked. I preferred Degustation, a very modern restaurant in a more casual setting with an open kitchen, its innovative food based on good quality ingredients, the staff clearly enthusiastic. Overall things have definitely moved on, and with some very good restaurants it is now possible to live a truly Bohemian lifestyle in this lovely city.

In other news, the San Pellegrino Top restaurant list was published. As ever, I am pleased to see anything that encourages people to talk about top restaurants, and in particular there are some places covered that would otherwise not get much attention due to their location. Any list like this is problematic: no one can objectively say with certainty that a place that is at number 27 should really be at number 28; nothing in food is that precise.

Even given the constraints though, there are many flaws in the list. Japan has two entries in the top 50 (the smae as Singapore), and only three in the top 100, which is absurd. They didn’t even get the right ones, as although I love Ryugin and also rate Ishikawa, I thought Narisawa was merely pleasant; there are better restaurants in Minato-ku, never mind Japan as a whole. Where is Mizai, or Kitcho, or Sushi Saito, to name just a few?

To bring it back closer to home, according to the list the best restaurant in England is Dinner (5), followed by The Ledbury (10), then Fat Duck (47) then St John (55), then Hedone (63), then Clove Club (87). Does a single person reading that sequence think: ”oh yes, that makes perfect sense”? The Ledbury is a fine restaurant, as is Hedone, but Dinner is not the fifth best restaurant in London, never mind in the world, and how can it be ranked above the Fat Duck? It is similarly surreal when you move to France, which has just four top 50 entries: Mirazur (11), Arpege (25), Chateaubriand (27), Astrance (38). Hmm. So outside the top 100 entirely are Ledoyen, Guy Savoy, Ambroisie, … and that is just Paris. No top 100 listing either for Troisgros, Pic, Pres de l’Eugenie, the list goes on. So the list in the UK makes no sense, the list in France makes no sense, the list in Japan is laughable,... Hopefully it is clear by now that if each of the country sequences is palpably riddled with omissions and errors, then plastering these flawed country lists together results in an even more absurd overall list. To compound things, those who vote seem to much prefer modernist food to classical, so there is no room for Hotel de Ville, Sonnora, Taillevent,....

Anyway, enough of this train of thought. For those deserving restaurants that appear, well done, but as a useful list of the world’s best restaurants it just doesn't come close to working. Anyone who reckons Michelin has issues (which it does) should take a long hard look at what happens when you have a list that is not compiled by anonymous inspectors that pay their own bills, as Michelin, to their eternal credit, do.

A week in Hong Kong

The latest three star Michelin restaurant in Hong Kong is Sushi Shikon, the sister of the superb Sushi Yoshitake in Tokyo. All the fish is imported from Japan, and every aspect of a Tokyo restaurant, from the impressive wooden counter (carved from a single block of wood) to the collection of sake to drink. The meal was great, in every way up there with the original Tokyo restaurant. With all the costs of flying the fish in, the price here is very high, but it delivers a top class sushi experience. I have no issue with this restaurant having three stars.

Another excellent Japanese restaurant is the quite new Wagyu Takumi, which despite its name is not a steak house but served modern kaiseki cooking with a distinct French influence. Another tiny restaurant in the Japanese style, the cooking here was genuinely classy, with white asparagus with beef tongue, and barley risotto with abalone two highlights of a fine meal. This is a proper two star restaurant.

I wish I could say the same of Pierre, the Gagnaire outpost, where only desserts flickered close to two star territory, and where the rest of the meal mostly hovered on the borders of one star level, and in some cases was less good than that. After such a fine meal at Pierre Gagnaire in Paris recently this was particularly disappointing.

Another Michelin mystery was Ah Yat Harbor View, a popular and perfectly pleasant Cantonese restaurant roughly of the culinary level of Royal China in London. The view is great, the prices acceptable, yet this has two stars; I have absolutely no idea why. By contrast, Tin Lung Heen is another restaurant with a view that has the same rating yet was vastly better. In particular there was a lovely fried rice dish and particularly good barbecued pork dumplings. With its perch on the 102^nd floor of the ICC tower, this has a panoramic vista over the harbour, as well as a pretty glass corridor (pictured).

Yah Toh Heen also looks out over the water, but in this case at ground level. It had particularly good dim sum, amongst the best I have eaten, with delicate dumplings and good quality ingredients. Service was also unusually good here, and I would happily return. Finally, I popped in for some tapas to 22 Ships, a Jason Atherton venture that has a new chef, Nate Green. This is a much more casual affair catering to the trendy young things of Hong Kong, and is wildly popular, with a lengthy queue of diners when we visited. Apparently demand is such on weekends that customers can wait for up to two hours for a table.

In my Michelin quest I now have just three restaurants remaining before I have caught up entirely with every current 3 star restaurant in the world (there are 110 at present). Still to go are De Leest in the Netherlands, Assiette Champenoise in France and Uberfahrt in Germany.

From Madrid to Macua

In my hamster wheel-like quest to keep up with Michelin I visited Madrid to try DiverXO, the latest three star restaurant in Spain. Its young chef produces very modern and complex dishes, just the kind of thing I normally dislike. However, just to prove that even I can enjoy modernist food when it is actually good, I loved DiverXO. Over eighteen courses the meal hardly skipped a beat, with intriguing and unusual flavour combinations, a wide range of technical skills on show, but above all based on high quality ingredients and with an emphasis on bold flavours. It thoroughly deserves its three stars, and I now understand why I had such great difficulty in getting a table here over the last couple of years.

I also went back to Punto MX, surely the best Mexican restaurant in Europe. Tortillas here are made to order at a little station in the dining room, and are unrecognisable from the pre-bought ones that litter the kitchens of Mexican restaurants in the UK and the USA. High quality ingredients are deployed here too, from Iberico pork through to wagyu beef, and the sauces are vibrant. I even ventured into new culinary territory (at least for me) with ant larvae tortilla.

In Macau the Gran Lisboa hotel now hosts not one but two three Michelin star restaurants. Robuchon au Dome is the renamed Robuchon Galera, now relocated to the very top of the hotel in a spectacular domed room, kitted out with a spectacular crystal chandelier and lavish decor (illustrated). More importantly, the food matches the setting, the meal this time even better than my last one here. Francky Semblat cooked with Joel Robuchon in Paris in the old days, and is a master of his craft. Dish after spectacular dish displayed top quality ingredients, flawless kitchen technique and harmonious flavours. Even in a three star level meal it is normal to get the odd striking highlight mixed in with a few lesser dishes, but here plate after plate was amazing, one of the best meals I have eaten in a long time. World class cooking,

Eight is a quite large Cantonese restaurant in the same hotel, the latest three star restaurant in the city. The meal here was very good indeed, the highlights being excellent baked crab claw and a high quality rolled beef dish using imported Japanese wagyu meat. Not everything was to this standard, but it was all very capable and our waitress was superb. Certainly this is up there with the very best Cantonese restaurants in the region.

Don Alfonso 1890 is a wonderful two star Michelin restaurant on the Amalfi coast, and has opened an outpost in Macau with a chef who used to work at the mother ship restaurant in Italy. Many ingredients are imported from Amalfi, including lovely San Marzano tomatoes. For reasons that elude me, Michelin shuns this restaurant, yet it seemed to me comfortably in one star territory.

I also tried Zi Yah Heen, a two star Michelin restaurant in another Macau hotel. Although the service was genuinely excellent and the Cantonese food perfectly pleasant, I was very surprised at its rating. This just seemed to me nice, simple cooking in a smart setting, another example of the puzzling inconsistency of the Michelin Hong Kong and Macau guide.

Next week I will cover a week of dining in Hong Kong.

City Dining

I had another good meal at Sixty One, a restaurant at the boutique Mercer hotel that appears to be flying well under the media radar. Excellent dishes of quail and sea bream, combined with two high quality desserts, confirmed that this is a restaurant well worth trying. Service, as before, was also charming. I find it curious when half of London seems to be queuing up to get into a few high profile restaurant openings, there are high quality places like this that appear invisible to social media.

1212 is another hotel restaurant, its name based on the old phone number of Scotland Yard (“Whitehall 1212”), which used to be based in this historic building. Sadly the food was less than historic, with several dishes that sounded appealing but had remarkably flavour-free ingredients, technical problems, or both. There was a nice rabbit dish, but there were far too many issues to be able to really recommend this place, which is a pity given the lack of decent restaurants in the area.

Lutyens continues to prosper in the culinary tundra of Blackfriars, with its appealing menu, capable cooking and particularly well-drilled service. Tender short-rib of beef and seasonal rhubarb dessert were the highlights of a very pleasant lunch. This is a particularly welcome retreat in an area so lacking in decent places to eat.

Bonds has a very grand dining room in the City, all cavernous space and spectacular flower displays. There is a moderately priced lunch menu, and the dishes from this were very capable, especially an excellent mango brulee for dessert. This part of London is not exactly awash with high quality dining destinations, but Bonds pays off.

Next week's reviews will reflect my continuing journeys to catch up with the new Michelin three star restaurants. I have already visited Kichisen and also Reale but as well as two new three stars I have not reviewed in Hong Kong and Macau (Eight and Sushi Shikon) there are several in Europe to get to: DiverXO in Madrid, De Leest in the Netherlands, Assiette Champenoise in France and Uberfahrt near Munich. Stay tuned in the coming weeks as I try to complete this little quest.

I did an interview for the magazine Hotel Insider, which can be seen here.

Some new and generally disappointing London restaurant openings

Assado is the latest venture from Cyrus Todiwala, this time mixing Portuguese dishes in with his trademark Goan cooking. Custard tarts were very nice, but the savoury dishes were not of the same standard, and although a pork vindaloo was decent a starter soup was really poor. After a mediocre meal at his Hilton venture Mr Todiwala's Kicthen recently I wonder whether he is stretching his brand a bit too far.

Manuka Kitchen (pictured) is a Fulham eatery that has had some positive reviews, and I was curious to try it out. Whether the absence of the head chef at my visit was significant I cannot be sure, but a lunch that I had there was harmless but entirely without any excitement, with pretty basic ingredients and minor cooking errors. It is a decent enough local restaurant, but no more than that based on this visit.

Pho is a successful little chain of restaurants serving Vietnamese food at modest prices. The soup that gives the restaurant is name was indeed very enjoyable, though a “tiger prawn” salad featured tiny prawns that were not some much tiger as kitten. Still, at the modest prices charged the meal I had was good value and enjoyable, and this new Chiswick branch was pretty much full on a Monday lunch just days after opening.

My 46^th meal at Hedone was as good as ever, a highlight at this meal being stunning new season Luberon asparagus. The quality of this was remarkable, and is an indication of the degree of obsession that Mikael Jonsson has in terms of using top class ingredients; this asparagus had a wholesale price of almost £40 a kilo, many times that of top English asparagus. Other fine dishes in this meal included lovely turbot, liquid Parmesan ravioli and a superb scallop dish. My very well-travelled dining companion thought this meal was firmly in three Michelin star territory.

The Elite Traveler Top 100 Restaurant list came out this week - my thoughts on it are here.

The Antidote to mediocre Soho dining

Antico in Bermondsey (pictured) has a connection to Theo Randall, though this casual dining room is a long way from The Intercontinental in Park Lane. The food was very good, with a simple but excellent salad, hearty ragu and delicate lemon tart all of a high standard. Bermondsey has certainly come up in the culinary world in the last few years, and Antico is a fine addition to the area.

Antidote is a Soho wine bar that has been around for a few years, but now has a major change in direction in the kitchen. Mikael Jonsson of Hedone has been appointed to oversee the cooking: he has brought in some new chefs and supplies the produce from Hedone, including the superb bread. The dishes are simpler than those at Hedone, and you will not see the same luxurious ingredients that adorn the Chiswick restaurant’s carte blanche menu. However Mikael Jonsson’s idea of “second class” ingredients would still put the vast majority of top London restaurants to shame. At two meals early on there were some teething issues, but the second meal was noticeably better than the first, and doubtless this progress will continue. Chocolate molleux with passion fruit sorbet was a star dish, as was excellent suckling pig. This is already shaping up to be better than virtually anywhere else in the area.

I had some “old faithful” dishes at The Square at this visit, such as the signature langoustine tails with parmesan cheesecake and the Brillat Savarin cheesecake. These were as good as ever but a wildly over-seasoned morel dish and a soufflé with the texture of fondant were oddly discordant notes in the otherwise smooth progression of excellent dishes. Such inconsistencies, also found in my previous meal here, are a little troubling given the not inconsiderable price point of the restaurant. In general, however, The Square delivered a most enjoyable meal.

A dinner at Quattro Passi confirmed my impressions of an earlier lunch there. The food is genuinely good, the service silky smooth, but the prices are extremely challenging by London standards. Suckling pig was the star dish and was lovely, and indeed the entire meal was in solid Michelin star territory, However with starters just under £30, main courses around £45, desserts £28 and side dishes £9 or so, I suspect that it will be a major challenge for the restaurant to fill its large dining room.

Dining in Delhi

This was my 18^th visit to India, but I had not been to Delhi for many years. The airport is much improved, and this city of around ten million is as lively as ever. We stayed at the Leela Palace in New Delhi, a city within a city that was designed by Edwin Lutyens and is tranquil and orderly, with long straight roads and lots of greenery. Old Delhi is none of these things. As a visitor there is plenty to see, such as the tomb of Humayan (pictured) and the Lodi Gardens, amongst others.

We ate at a few restaurants. The Qube is the basic restaurant at the Leela, and was harmless enough but not somewhere you would visit unless staying at the hotel. Le Cirque is a sister of the New York original, this one serving Italian food. It was decent enough though hardly cheap, though at least the service was less overbearing than the New York original. Jamavar is the fine dining restaurant of the Leela, and I was a little disappointed by it. The food was pleasant enough, but the other Jamavars at which I have eaten, in Mumbai and especially in Bangalore and Goa, were really special, and this was merely capable.

The two highest rated restaurants in India in the San Pellegrino list are Bukhara and Dum Pukht. Both are in the ITC hotel, and both are quite old fashioned. Bukhara tries to conjure up the image of the rustic northwest frontier of India, so you sit on stools, order from a board and eat with your hands. The food was actually better than I remember it from a visit many moons ago, with very tender malai tikka, though it is far from being dazzling food. Dum Pukht is a little more sophisticated, again focusing on north Indian food. The service feels very old fashioned, and presentation of dishes an afterthought, but the cooking was good, the star dish being a superb biryani.

The best meal of the week by far was at Indian Accent. This restaurant, open nearly five years, has gained an enviable reputation and is very interesting in its cooking. Indian food is varied but in restaurants in India is very traditional, and I have long wondered what would happen if someone took a more modern approach to it. The chef here is not afraid to mix in western ideas and ingredients, as with a duck cornetto topped with foie gras. Dishes are attractively presented and often have unusual ingredient combinations, but in all cases the flavours were harmonious and the combinations successful. Dish after lovely dish came in a tasting menu that was priced at, wait for it, £26 (less for a vegetarian version). This was some of the very best Indian food that I have eaten, up there with the quite different Falaknuma Palace. It is great to see a chef taking Indian food beyond its traditional roots but in a respectful and skilful way. I would return in a hearbeat.

in Paris and London

Having recently reviewed Madhus at The Sheraton, it seemed sensible to compare this with the other upmarket Indian restaurant in the Heathrow area. Mr Todiwala’s Kitchen is at the Hilton at Terminal 5, and is decorated with some interesting artefacts, managing to avoid the “hotel dining room” feel. The cooking was erratic however, and although beef tikka was very good there were some mediocre dishes too, and in some cases downright poor ones. This was all the less excusable given the distinctly ambitious pricing.

Restaurants doing Deep South US cooking are quite rare in London, and over the years there have been some clunkers. Lockhart is not new but its chef is, and he clearly has some talent: anyone that can make grits palatable has my undying respect. Cornbread was my favourite dish, and although the food here is less life changing than some breathless reviews seem to indicate, it is certainly enjoyable and good value cooking.

Trishna has recently reopened after a refurbishment, although other than a change of lighting the dining room is not greatly different, though there is apparently a much larger kitchen now. The restaurant continues to produce very enjoyable seafood dishes, such an excellent dish of bream marinated with chilli and coriander, but I was particularly taken by a skilfully cooked bhindi. Not all dishes are to this standard, but it is certainly carefully made, though prices seem to have nudged up. Its sister Gymkhana has the full PR machine effect behind it, but I marginally prefer Trishna; the same chef oversees both kitchens.

I continue to be impressed by the inventive cooking at A. Wong, whose chef is really making an effort to reinvent many familiar Chinese dishes and take them to a new level. So many Chinese restaurants are formulaic, but here there are always pleasant surprises when you explore the menu. The lunch menu prices dim sum pieces individually, so you can try lots of different dishes at one sitting.

Hedone continues to produce superb food, with the switch to tasting menu only allowing the kitchen to put all its efforts into the carte blanche menu now that the choice is more limited. The result is a series of dishes even more precise and elegant than before, all based on the same top quality ingredients that the restaurant built its reputation on. From the near-perfect bread through to the stunning suckling pig and new citrus variations dessert, this is a restaurant that is, as the Americans say, in the zone.

Pierre Gagnaire (pictured) has a deserved global reputation for his inventive French cooking, and it was some years since I had visited his Paris flagship restaurant. The meal this time was even better than I recall, with several truly stunning dishes. The cooking here is complex and often involves unusual flavour combinations, but the difference between Gagnaire and so many less gifted young chefs is that his combinations actually work: the flavours are intriguing but are never anything but enjoyable. Service here was superb but the bill was scary, even by Paris standards.

In other news, The Michelin Main Cities of Europe guide came out. This covers Scandinavia and eastern Europe, though it was announced that from 2015 there will be a Scandinavia guide that will move beyond the current major cities coverage. This year there were two stars for Funky Gourmet in Athens, and stars in Copenhagen for Clou, Studio at The Standard and Marchal. In Helsinki Chef and Sommelier gained a star, as did Botrini in Athens, Borkonyha Winekitchen in Budapest, Ylajali and Fauna in Oslo, Bhoga in Gothenburg, and Oaxen Krog and Operakallaren in Stockholm.

When in Rome

Pergola was on excellent form. Heinz Beck has a deep interest in nutrition, lecturing on it at a local university, and the result is that his dishes are unusually light by the standards of Italian food. The cooking here is modern Italian, with the chef’s toys in the kitchen put to good use with a superb take on osso bucco: a centrifuge is used to produce a meat jelly, served with beef tartare with a deconstructed gremolata to provide some balance. The intensity of the meat jelly was really remarkable, an example of using modern cooking technique in a way that actually enhances flavour. The rest of the meal was lovely too, with the signature fagotelli carbonara just one highlight, another being a superb foie gras and mushroom dish. Service is very slick here, and the wine cellar is vast, with 65,000 bottles available.

The newest three star Michelin restaurant in Italy is Reale in a mountainous area in Abruzzo, about 85 miles east of Rome. This is a two and a half hour drive, or two hours with an Italian driver. Reale is in a remote spot in an old monastery, and the décor is a touch stark, though the dining room has a nice view over the nearby hillsides. One positive was the very generously priced wine list, meaning that you can indulge with very low mark-ups. The food is quite classical, and I was really looking forward to it, but was rather disappointed. There were some very good dishes such as the suckling pig, but the general standard was around one star rather than three, and there was actually one quite poor pasta dish. It is partly an issue of expectation: if this has been a one star restaurant I would have been perfectly happy, although it was a touch expensive for that level. However the three star rating seemed to me completely incorrect based on this meal. There are other two star restaurants in Italy that I much preferred to this.

Roscioli is a wonderful bakery and delicatessen that also has a few tables. It was just as good as I remember it, though its reputation has grown since my last visit as it was packed out at a Monday lunch. Ingredients are of a high standard here, and the cooking is rustic but excellent: a lovely spaghetti carbonara, superb rigatoni with two different Parmesan cheeses and the excellent bread were delightful. As a bonus the wine list is extensive and very kindly priced, with many wines only a little more than their UK retail price. It is not fine dining, and the service can be a little chaotic, but this is a little gem of a restaurant.

Back in London I tried the chef’s table experience at Parlour. This is a secluded table next to the kitchen, from which the chef produces an extensive surprise menu of many of the dishes on the menu, and more besides. Old favourites like the home-cured smoked salmon and inventive salads featured, as did a clever take on chicken nuggets and a superb parsnip puree accompanying the sea bass. There was even, in a nod to Alinea, a dessert “painted” on the table by the chef. The cooking at Parlour shows both skill and wit, with some truly original dishes, a high degree of skill and a genuine sense of fun.

Fine Dining in London

Quattro Passi has just opened in London, the sister of a well established two Michelin star restaurant on the Amalfi Coast. It specialises in seafood, and the cooking was of a high standard. Dishes such as linguine with crab and apple, salad of cuttlefish and a particularly fine tiramisu were consistently excellent. Antonio Mellino is not just here for the opening months; he has moved to London with his family, so will be here most of the time rather than just making flying visits, and can clearly cook very well indeed based on my meal. What will be interesting is whether the standard will be maintained when he returns to Italy during the summer months, as is the plan. This question is particularly relevant because my visit to the original Quattro Passi, when he was absent, was quite disappointing. At the London branch the meal was of a high standard, though prices seem ambitious, even for Mayfair.

Cambio de Tercio has long been my favourite Spanish restaurant in London. With its red walls, paintings of bullfighters, and Spanish guitar music playing in the background it is a little corner of Spain on the Old Brompton Road. Tables are packed in and there are always lots of Spanish guests, so there is a lively atmosphere. The kitchen has a wide repertoire of dishes, such as the excellent modern take on patatas bravas (originally done by Sergio Arola). The wine list is extensive and there is a fine list of sherries as well as plenty of classy Spanish wine.

On this visit to Alain Ducasse at The Dorchester (pictured) I had the full tasting menu. I have had rather mixed experiences at this restaurant. On its opening night it was a mess, but over time it gradually settled down and improved, with the sauces and desserts particularly good. This most recent meal was less impressive than some I have eaten here. I enjoyed the barbajuan and the lobster with truffled chicken quenneles, but a sea urchin dish was uninspiring and a starter of raw and cooked vegetables lacked the quality of produce needed to carry off such a dish: this works at Louis XV, where the local markets have stunning vegetables, but not here. This was still a good meal, with a very nice exotic fruit dessert, but it was too inconsistent, especially given its already ambitious three star rating and price point. I have reduced my website score by one to reflect this.

By contrast, Hedone goes from strength to strength. It was interesting that a tasting menu here within days of the Alain Ducasse experience was actually a significant step up in standard. A one star Michelin restaurant should not be outperforming a three star, and yet this is exactly what happened. Since January Hedone has really upped its game, with the few relatively weak dishes weeded out, nibbles upgraded, the trademark obsession with ingredients taken to an even higher level than before. Highlights of this meal were many, but included liquid Parmesan ravioli with horseradish foam, stunning suckling pig and a lovely citrus variations dessert. This cooking is clearly at a very strong two star level now, and in places is even higher than that.

The Michelin France 2014 Guide was published. There was a new three star in the form of l'Assiette Champenoise in Reims, though the number of three stars in France remained unchanged at 27 because Plaza Athenee was delisted while the hotel is closed for a major refurbishment. There were two star promotions for Villa Madie, la Table de Connetable, Kintessence, Le Chambard, Il Cortile and Akrame. The following fell from the two star level: Auberge de l'Ile, Apicius, Senderens, Hostellerie le Castellas, Casadelmar, Hostellerie de Plaisance, Hostellerie Jerome and Chateau St Martin. There are 79 two star restaurants in France now, and 504 one stars. All Michelin guides for 2014 are now published except for Scandinavia and Eastern Euriope. There are now 113 three star restaurants in the world, as can be seen here. The new ones are Kichisen, Eight, Bo Innovation, Sushi Shikon, Reale, Uberfahrt, Diver XO, De Leest and l'Assiette Champenoise.

The San Pellegrino awards these days have at least as much commercial impact for restaurants as Michelin, but the list itself is almost comically flawed. The Asia section was announced this week, with David Thompson's Nahm supposedly the best restaurant in Asia, followed by Narisawa in Tokyo and then Gaggan in Bangkok, Amber in Hong Kong and Ryugin in Tokyo. Just ten of these are from Japan; overall I suppose that the list this year is slightly less daft than last year. The set of Japanese entries has little correlation with Michelin, my own experience nor with the main Japanese langauge guide Tabelog. There are so many absurdities in this list that it is hard to know where to start, but if you look purely at the restaurants in Japan, there is no mention of the sublime Mizai or Kitcho, for example. The idea that Atelier Robuchon is much better than the superb Robuchon Dome is also surreal, so they cannot even get the correct sequence within the same restaurant group. I could go on, but it seems a waste of time to point out all the issues. I guess it gets people talking about restaurants, and that must be, on balance, a good thing whatever the flaws in the list itself.

The Angela Hartnett empire expands

Café Murano (pictured) is the latest venture from Angela Hartnett, and very successful it is too. I enjoyed good arancini and spaghetti carbonara from the menu of mostly Italian dishes, and service was excellent. The room has been attractively laid out and the mix of appealing dishes, capable cooking and friendly staff mean that this will be sure to prosper once the initial launch hype has died down.

Madhu’s is one of my long term haunts in Southall, a restaurant that is partly a showcase for a highly successful Indian wedding catering business. Its owner has now decided to open a smarter venue, this new Madhu’s being in the Sheraton hotel out towards Heathrow. The décor is genuinely up-market, and the cooking is more ambitious too: a higher quality butcher and a new robata grill mean that the tandoori meat dishes such as the tandoori lamb chops are lovely. This is a large and quite ambitious opening for an airport hotel, but if you are in that area then it is worth a look.

Parlour is the home of the talented Jesse Dunford Woods, who revels in cooking retro British dishes like Chicken Kiev and Arctic roll. In this basic boozer in Kensal Rise he is producing some of the more inventive food in London, with very unusual salads, excellent bread, superb smoked salmon and a beef pie of stunning quality. An example of the innovation is the “haddock chip”, with the fish rolled out and coated in potato strands before being fried, a clever take on fish and chips. Beef Wellington showed the chef’s classical training paying off: this is a restaurant that you should seek out.

Sushi Tetsu is the nearest thing that you will find in London to a proper Tokyo sushi restaurant. With just seven seats arrayed around the wooden counter, it is of the scale that is often found in Japan. The chef has gone to considerable lengths to source his fish, not relying on the large company that supply most of London’s top sushi restaurants, and it shows. The quality of the fish may not be able to match that at Tsukiji market in Tokyo, but it is a step up from anything that I have encountered in the UK. This is perhaps the most difficult reservation to get in London.

The Gate reopens

The Gate is that rarity, a purely vegetarian restaurant, originally opened in 1989 and now reopened after a major refurbishment. The new dining room is an improvement, more casual but with the room still having plenty of natural light due to its location in what was once an artist’s studio. The head chef has not changed, and some of the dishes have been on the menu for years. I enjoyed a nicely presented wasabi potato cake, though having strawberries and raspberries as garnish on a dessert in January does not suggest a great deal of attention to seasonality. This is certainly a pleasant enough restaurant (a touch better than its sibling in Islington), and if you want to try a purely vegetarian menu in a nice setting then you could do much worse.

Le Café Anglais in Queensway is still serving up a wide range of appealing dishes, with the rotisserie of its open kitchen a feature. I like the faux art-deco room (the space was in fact formerly a MacDonalds) though the meal that I had was less consistently good than at my previous visit. For example a Thai curry had overcooked fish, and the sliced bread served was stale. Better were turbot and salsify and a blood orange tart.

The Royal Oak is a regular haunt of mine, tucked away in an obscure country lane not far from Windsor. Chef Dominic Chapman was the original chef at The Hinds Head, and has earned a Michelin star at The Royal Oak. The menu here is very appealing, with classic English food including old-fashioned dishes such as trifle. Rabbit and bacon pie here is a most enjoyable dish, and the staff are excellent.

Tarantella is a family-run Italian restaurant near where I live that I return to regularly. Objectively the food is merely good rather anything special, but the welcome is genuinely warm and the cooking capable enough. They have recently adjusted their pizza dough mix, so the base of the pizza is now rather softer, as you find in the pizzas of Naples. This is a good value, enjoyable neighbourhood restaurant.

Canvassing opinion in Marylebone

Canvas (pictured) is the first London venture by Michael Riemenschneider, a chef who gained a Michelin star at the Abbey in Cornwall in 2007 and has since moved around quite a bit. The Marylebone 20 seater has a “make your own tasting menu” format where you choose how many dishes you want from an array of options. The cooking is quite complex, with many elements on the plate, but in general the flavour combinations worked and the cooking was technically fine. The quite high price point, with an unusually structured wine list that starts at £44 and moves quickly upwards, will be the main challenge that the restaurant will face, though it was already full on a mid-week lunch when I visited.

Sixty One was an unexpected surprise, a hotel dining experience (at the Montcalm Hotel) at a quite modest price and with surprisingly capable cooking in such a setting. A vegetarian main course and a precisely cooked lemon and meringue pie were highlights of an enjoyable meal. So many hotel dining rooms seem to be afterthoughts, cooking for a captive audience, but my meal here was very good indeed.

The Brackenbury, between Hammersmith and Shepherds Bush, was a regular haunt of mine before it closed a few years ago and became a Filipino restaurant. Now it has been re-launched as a neighbourhood restaurant cooking a mix of Italian and British dishes. It has a brighter room but over two meals here the cooking was erratic, with some rather unusual flavour combinations in some dishes that didn’t work for me. The owner is very charming but I feel that this has quite a lot of work to do before it achieves the level of cooking of the old Brackenbury.

The Royal China in Queensway is a favourite of mine, and despite its considerable size is very consistent in its cooking. This week I tried a dish of scallops stuffed with minced prawns and then fried, which was very enjoyable. Gai lan with garlic was as delicately cooked as ever, and the old stalwart dish of prawns with cashew nuts was very good. People do not come here for cuddly service, but the food here is excellent value.

On the subject of canvasses, for London foodies who are also interested in art, there is a show called "Food 4 Art" on the 28th Feb to 2nd March at Olympia. it will include cooking from, on successive days, Florence Knight (Polpetto), Rainer Becker (Zuma), Jason Atherton (Pollen St Social) and Richard Corrigan (Corrigan's). To book see the site.

In other news, chef Nuno Mendes finally confirmed a rumour that has been flying around for months, that he is to leave Viajante, which seemingly may close. Mr Mendes is to head up the kitchen at Chiltern Firehouse, a new venture in Marylebone opening shortly.

From surreal Italian food to modern dim sum

Al Boccon di’vino is a rather eccentric family-run Italian restaurant where there is no menu. The diners all eat their courses essentially at the same time, so it feels rather like a dinner party. Sadly, the notion of seasonality that could have been brought in was not apparent, with asparagus and strawberries served in January. Although this place seems popular with the locals, the cooking was very basic indeed, using uninspiring ingredients. There is no wine list either, although wines are displayed around the walls of the dining room, and I had a most odd conversation with the female owner/manager trying to coax something other than the grim house red onto our table. The pace of the meal was distinctly laboured, taking four hours to produce our meal, with long gaps in between the courses. This kind of format could actually work if the cooking was much better, they chose ingredients that were seasonal and actually made some effort to sell the very good wines that they actually have. As it was, the reality was just a lengthy, ponderous and not very skilful meal.

Cut in Park Lane is very smart and caters to the affluent, serving steak including several types of imported US beef. Tuna tartare was good as a starter, and of the steaks it was interesting to compare sirloin of grass-fed Scotch beef with sirloin of corn fed USDA steak, in this case the American import being clearly superior. Service at Cut is slick and the dessert I had was nice, but the prices are very high indeed for what arrives on the plate. The wine list is particularly aggressively priced, with some very expensive wines at over four times their retail price.

A. Wong (pictured) was one of my favourite discoveries of 2013, Andrew Wong taking a rather tired Chinese restaurant in Victoria and transforming it with his innovative approach to Chinese cooking. At my last meal I tried a variety of dim sum dishes, which ranged from the traditional through to modern: har gau is served alongside scallop dumpling with tapioca powder. One very nice touch is that each piece of dim sum is priced individually, so you can try a wide range of dishes even if you are dining by yourself. Shanghai dumpling with a liquid pork centre infused with ginger was particularly enjoyable, but the standard throughout was high. A. Wong is very much a step up from the identikit Chinese food that we are used to in London.

I enjoyed yet another very good meal at The Dysart, the Petersham ex-pub with a talented young chef who won the Roux scholarship. A tasting menu showed off the range of skills in the kitchen nicely, with a particularly impressive foie gras dish as well as some excellent fish dishes that I have tried before. The cooking of duck, beef and woodcock was skilful, and the bread, made from scratch, was good as ever. Add in a modestly priced wine list, a spacious room and excellent service and you have a really impressive package. This is a restaurant that is completely off the radar in terms of press coverage, but it is well worth trying if you can get to the Richmond area.

A variety of feasts

Al Waha has been serving Lebanese cuisine in Westbourne Grove for fifteen years. I have long been puzzled at the difficulty of finding good Lebanese food in London restaurants, especially given the considerable population of Lebanese people in west London. Yet although over the years I have tried many places, I have struggled to find one that I would return to. My latest attempt at Al Waha was pretty successful compared to other well-known places like Al Hamra. I tried a good value set lunch, and certainly the falafel, the bread, the hummus and spicy lamb that I tried were a notch higher than at other places that I have sampled. However the food here was still not a patch on a meal that I ate at a Lebanese friend’s house a few years ago.

I happened to have one more Middle Eastern meal this week, but at a supper club rather than a restaurant. Sabrina Ghayour is a food writer and private chef who hosts regular supper clubs in London devoted to the Persian cuisine of her heritage. Dishes such as sour cherry and dill meatballs and spice-perfumed lamb shoulder were better than at the Persian restaurants I have tried over the years. Her cookbook, Persiana, comes out in June.

I had an excellent meal at The Ledbury, which seems to me consistently the best of London’s two star Michelin restaurants, along with Le Gavroche. At a tasting menu I enjoyed the signature flame grilled mackerel with shiso and Celtic mustard, and a crispy quail egg with cep marmalade and truffle. Dishes of sea bass and of pork jowl were also excellent. The service here is always charming , and their female German sommelier is terrific.

I returned not once but twice to Hedone (pictured), with a demonstration of the range of cooking here shown via two lengthy tasting menus with no overlap of dishes whatever other than the nibbles. The latter are worth commenting on, as in relative terms these had been probably the weakest element of the Hedone food experience. Now they have been substantially upgraded: beetroot mousse with eel in a delicate beetroot cone was classy, as was potato crisp with Provencal truffle and a superb amuse-bouche of bone marrow and caviar blini. Over the two meals there were many memorable dishes, including the superb liquid Parmesan ravioli, a new dish of hare with salsify “spaghetti” and hare ragu, excellent brill and a fabulous piece of Scottish wagyu beef with lovely carrots. The two meals, on successive days, were a real tour de force. Last year Hedone seemed to me to be in solid two star Michelin territory, but many dishes there now, including the magnificent bread, are actually moving higher than that in standard. The top food experience is with the “carte blanche” tasting menu at £85 at lunch and £10 more at dinner, and I highly recommend that you try this. There is a much cheaper lunch menu too, but the best dishes and finest ingredients are to be found in the “carte blanche”. If you have only eaten at Hedone in its early days you will see a significant development in the cooking, and if you have never been then you are in for a treat.

In other news, Alan Yau’s Naamyaa unexpectedly shut its doors this week, and reportedly will become a Busaba Eathai outlet.

From Petersham to Wanstead

Rextail serves steak and assorted British dishes, the latest Mayfair opening of Arkady Novikov. It is quite smart, with its red banquettes and open kitchen, but the food and service were distinctly erratic when I visited. The best dish was a simple but well-made classical pasta starter, in a portion size sufficient for a family. Unfortunately a rather flawed wagyu burger and a leathery soufflé let the side down. The staff were well-meaning but somewhat disorganised, and at these prices everything should be working smoothly, especially given that it is into its third month of operation.

Source is the restaurant that has taken over from long-time Battersea local Ransomes Dock. The décor is fine and the staff friendly as our meal rushed by at a startling pace, but our dinner was tarnished by too many errors, from overcooked venison through to a rather tasteless ragu. This was a pity because a crab starter and a blood orange sorbet were quite good, but all rather ambitiously priced for what appeared on the plate.

The Dysart was one of my favourite discoveries of 2013, an old pub near Richmond with a Roux scholar behind the stoves and an emphasis on high quality produce, including many vegetables grown in their own garden. I have eaten several genuinely good meals there now, and its excellent food is matched by a generously priced wine list and friendly staff. The chef has a real knack with fish dishes, as shown by a lovely dish of precisely cooked salmon resting in a Japanese style stock that I ate at this latest visit.

In the 1990s I had many happy meals at the restaurants of the Renzland twins in west London, but their places sadly closed for different reasons. Max Renzland has now resurfaced as a restaurateur at the opposite end of London, in Wanstead. This is an unlikely location for a restaurant, and certainly when I lived in nearby Leytonstone in the 1980s that part of London was not exactly bursting with dining opportunities beyond fish and chips and kebabs. Fortunately Mr Renzland has not lost his touch, and Provender has the same intensely Gallic feel as his previous restaurants. The food is simple but hearty, the ingredients well-sourced, the welcome friendly. As a bonus for wine lovers, the small fine wine list has some genuine bargains tucked away at the high end. This would be a lovely restaurant to have in any neighbourhood – in Wanstead it is a culinary miracle.

In other news, Tom Aikens is to close his flagship Chelsea restaurant at the end of January after a decade. He has several Tom’s Kitchen venues to focus on, and it seems as if the fine dining restaurant may be relocated at some point to central London, possibly under a new name. Aikens is one of the capital’s most talented chefs; he has often been shrouded in controversy of one sort or another, but no one ever doubts that he can cook. I hope he does not give up entirely on ambitious dining – London needs chefs with this level of ability to be cooking top-notch food, not just making money with mid-range brasseries.

Putting on The Ritz

Bob Bob Ricard is a wine-lover’s restaurant, with an unusual approach to its wine mark-ups. At the cheap end of the list it is little different to many London restaurants, but it has something approaching a flat mark-up at the high end. This means that if you want to splurge on a serious wine then the price you will pay here is much lower than any other central London restaurant. Indeed the list gleefully points out the comparative price of its high-end wines at several of the capital’s top restaurants, frequently being many hundreds of pounds lower than at the capital’s top dining rooms. The food is pleasant enough, but the wine list is reason enough to come here when you are in the mood to celebrate.

Pont Street is the new restaurant in the Thompson Hotel that has taken over from the short-lived Hix Belgravia. The new chef is Sophie Mitchell, previously private chef to Claudia Schiffer, amongst other things. The menu here is heavily oriented to seafood, and I had a lunch and a dinner here to try a decent range of dishes. The cooking is capable, the menu appealing and the service particularly friendly, the drawback being the high prices. Sure, this is Belgravia, but it really shows in the prices of starters, small plates, side dishes and wine, though there is a fairly modest £20 corkage option available.

The Ritz has perhaps the grandest dining room in London (pictured), vast and opulent. Over numerous meals here in the last two years I have been deeply impressed with the standard of cooking that now emanates from its vast kitchens, a world away from the level that was served here a decade ago. Ingredient quality is high, with langoustines alive and moving in the kitchen, particularly large specimens of turbot and excellent game, amongst other things. Service is like a Swiss watch, with each waiter knowing their precise duties in this huge operation, so topping up of water, wine and bread is flawless. It is an absurdity that this restaurant does not have a Michelin star, but the customers don’t mind, and the dining room gets very booked up, despite its scale. The only downside is the greedy wine list.

The Brilliant has been a regular haunt of mine for over two decades. It cooks authentic Punjabi food, catering mainly for Asian families, so portions are designed with that in mind and are vast. As you watch a Bollywood movie showing on the plasma screens you can tuck into excellent fish pakora or butter chicken. The methi chicken is excellent here, packed with fenugreek flavour, and they even make romali roti here, possibly the only London restaurant to do so. Service is surprisingly slick considering that you are in Southall. The food here seems to me in no way worse than London’s flashy Mayfair Indian restaurants, albeit in a more casual setting, but the bill is a fraction the size. £30 a head with drinks gets you enough food for a complete takeaway meal in addition to your dinner here.

A few London favourites

I recently returned to some old favourites in London, including saying goodbye to Apsleys (pictured), which will now close for at least nine months as The Lanesborough hotel undergoes a major refurbishment. I have had some really fine meals there over the last year, and its chef Heros de Agostinis is genuinely talented. A farewell tasting menu included superb tortellini, silky foie gras terrine and lovely pigeon. I very much hope that the management have the foresight to retain the key staff so that the high standard that has been reached can be replicated when the restaurant reopens.

Cambio de Tercio is a little taste of Spain on the old Brompton Road. Everything, from the décor, the Spanish guitar music through to the warm welcome remind me of the home country of its owner. A tasting menu this week included some new dishes, and the kitchen is very inventive in varying its food rather than just sticking with tried and trusted dishes, such as the excellent patatas bravas in the style of Sergio Arola. The excellent wine list just adds to the enjoyment of the restaurant, with its lovely sherry bar Capote y Toros next door.

The Watermans Arms is about the least likely spot to served proper tonkatsu, being a somewhat run-down old boozer in Brentford. Yet its chef/manager lived in Japan for years, and as well as fish and chips he offers a rotating menu of Japanese izakaya dishes. The pub will not win any awards for décor, but the welcome is genuine and the prices extremely fair.

Parlour is where the talented Jesse Dunford Wood now cooks; Kensal Rise certainly has a different feel to his previous place in Kensington, but his quirky take on retro British food is the same. At this meal scallops and sea bass were well-sourced and accurately cooked. Normally a trademark dish is his chicken Kiev (or Kyiv as it is spelt these days) but just before Christmas I tried turkey Kiev, which is a smart way to treat this driest of birds; even turkey meat struggles to dry out when stuffed with garlic butter. The smoked salmon here, made in their own smoke house, is dazzlingly good, and prices are extremely reasonable. The Parlour is in an out of the way spot, but it is well worth the journey to try the food here.

I have long been a fan of the Rasa mini-chain of Keralan restaurants, and realised that it was ages since I had been to their branch on Dering Street, the most central of their places. The menu here goes beyond the vegetarian offerings of the east London original, and as well as excellent Mysore Bonda you can enjoy dishes such as nicely made kingfish curry and tuck into the excellent paratha.

I wish you all happy dining in 2014.

Winter in Venice

In 2012 I ate at thirty six three star Michelin restaurants, of which my favourite meal of all was at Le Calandre; it was therefore lovely to return there just before Christmas. Last time I tried the tasting menu of classical dishes, so for a change this time I went for a menu of modern dishes. The same focus on top quality ingredients comes through, with superb Sicilian tomatoes, lovely sweet langoustines and excellent Fassone beef featuring. The wine list here is modestly marked-up and service is superb. Although I slightly preferred the classical dishes, this is very much a matter of personal taste, and the kitchen has an impressive grasp of both modern and classical cooking. Massimiliano Alajmo was the youngest 3 star Michelin chef ever, which he gained in 2002 at the tender age of 28.

It is not too far to travel from Rubano to Venice, and the Alajmo family in 2011 took over an historic café in St Marks Square (pictured) called Quadri. The dining room here overlooks the famous square, the food focusing on the local produce from the Venice lagoon. Wild duck risotto was a particularly good dish, but the desserts were even better, with superb zabaglione and remarkably light panettone. Quadri itself gained a well-deserved Michelin star in 2012. Venice in the winter is a magical place, wreathed in mist and refreshingly devoid of tourists.

Back in London, Foxlow in Clerkenwell is the latest venture from the founders of Hawksmoor, in this case a more neighbourhood restaurant format than pure steakhouse, but one which will doubtless be rolled out to multiple sites. It was very pleasant, with some nice savoury dishes and a good steak, though desserts were of a lower standard.

I also went back to two Michelin-starred London restaurants. Launceston Place is a particularly charming little restaurant, with its dining room stretched out across what were originally a string of Kensington townhouses. I had a very enjoyable meal there, the classical cooking very capable and the dishes nicely balanced. Leveret (young hare) with pickled cabbage, bacon and potato cream was an unusual and interesting dish. Service was also excellent.

I notched up my 41^st visit to Hedone, and had my best meal yet there. The decision to move to an entirely tasting menu format (except for a cheap lunch option) has allowed them to refine and improve the tasting menu dishes. Old favourites such as the umami flan have been tweaked a little, and there were new dishes such as crab that is cooked to order and served warm, with avocado. Ravioli of liquid Parmesan was as superb as it has always been. The best dish of all was an extraordinarily good suckling pig dish, the pig from the French side of the Pyrenees, the flavour remarkable. Further tweaks to the menu will apparently take place in January. The cooking at Hedone just gets better and better. If you have not been, or tried it soon after it opened, then give it a go. The very experienced diner that I ate with, who had eaten here before but not for nearly a year, pronounced himself “speechless” at the level of improvement of the dishes.

A very happy new year to everyone.

From the sublime to the ridiculous

One Leicester Street is the reincarnation of the restaurant at the St John’s Hotel off Leicester Square which went into administration after a quite short time. The hotel has now been bought out and the kitchen team remains the same. I had a very enjoyable lunch there, with excellent home-made bread. Duck with puy lentils and shredded celeriac was particularly good.

Saporitalia is a pizzeria and Italian restaurant in Notting Hill. I enjoyed the bread here, which is made from scratch, and the pizza was quite good, though a pasta dish that I sampled suffered from tasteless tomatoes and a lack of seasoning. Overall it was a pleasant enouigh local place, but even the pizza did not compare well to the best that London has to offer.

Story is a very well-financed Southwark restaurant with a young and ambitious head chef, whose food seems influenced by his stint at Noma. It is a tasting menu only place, which can be a very enjoyable experience if the cooking is good and the dishes have coherent flavours. Sadly this was far from the case here, with dish after dish having bizarrely combined ingredients and at time actively unpleasant flavours, such as a chicken mousse and pigskin dish ruined by ludicrously sour pickled cherries. Amongst this train-wreck of a meal were two very good dishes, albeit one at a £20 supplement, but surrounding these were a series of dishes that could have been a case study in how not to deliver enjoyable modernist food. The bill for this culinary shambles came to £155 a head, with far from ambitious wine to drink. More tragedy than Story.

Lal Qila is a London restaurants that has been around for three decades, and I was curious to see what is was like these days. To be honest, although it is still popular, the food feels very dated, and although there were one or two competent dishes, the general standard was low. It felt like a place living off a past reputation, and was not somewhere that I can recommend unless you are nostalgic about soggy cauliflower bhajee.

Madhus has long been a regular haunt of mine, a Southall staple serving very good Punjabi cuisine in a smart setting at a low price point for London. The tandoori cooking here is particularly good, as is their biryani, though the breads could be improved.

I also returned to Whatley Manor (pictured), filming a sequence from the upcoming documentary film Foodies, which will be released in the spring of 2014. Although this was not a regular visit and review, the dishes that I ate there were excellent and well up to the usual high standard at the deservedly two Michelin star restaurant. A venison loin with chestnuts and game sausage was particularly impressive. The contrast between this carefully prepared food, with its well-designed dishes based on top quality ingredients, and my saga at Story could hardly have been greater.

Happy Christmas to everyone. Eat well.

From Kew to Islington

Smokehouse in Islington has Neil Rankin at the stoves; he is a man who knows how to cook a piece of meat, as demonstrated when he was head chef of Pitt Cue. Not surprisingly, the meat dishes were the best ones here, including a fried brisket garnished with a spicy condiment, and Korean pulled pork. This is not a place to take your vegetarian friends, but for carnivores it works well, provided they have sharp eyesight – the lighting redefines the term murky.

Dalcha in Parsons Green intrigued me because its chef is from Hyderabad, and I was curious to see whether its food could conjure up at least a hint of that Indian city, where earlier this year I had eaten some superb food at Adaa. There were some pretty ordinary dishes, though the key test, the biryani, was reasonable. However it was really just a decent neighbourhood restaurant, rather than anything special.

Yashin Ocean House is the latest restaurant to occupy a distinctive property on the Old Brompton Road, which a few years ago housed the ill-fated Ambassade de l’Ile. They have done a much better job with the décor now, and the menu features some dry-aged fish dishes, and authentic touches like proper wasabi root. I tried a few dishes here and was impressed by not just the fish dishes such as smoked sea bass (pictured), but by a remarkably accomplished chocolate dessert. This is well worth trying if you want to sample Japanese food that is a lot better than the London norm.

Linnea is a new restaurant in Kew Green with a Swedish chef cooking mostly familiar British dishes, but with odd Scandinavian touch such as beef gravadlax. The restaurant felt quite cosy and although the service needs a lot of work based on our early visit, the food was very competent.

Also in Islington, Naamyaa is the prototype restaurant in what will undoubtedly be a chain of moderately priced Thai restaurants, founded as it is by the wildly successful Alan Yau (who established Wagamama, Hakkasan and Busaba Eathai, amongst others). This was my second visit there, and like the first it was a rather hit and miss affair. There were some genuinely good dishes, but also some clunkers. The dining room is very nicely done, and given the low price point and extensive menu it will doubtless do, but they need to work on consistency.

I returned to The Square, Phil Howard’s two Michelin star Mayfair establishment. Old favourites like the langoustine tail with Parmesan gnocchi were excellent, as was the cheesecake, though a beetroot salad was less impressive. Service was very good indeed, though the bill matched the Mayfair setting. This was the first time I have eaten here since the move of long-term head chef Rob Weston to La Trompette, and the meal felt a fraction less consistently assured than I recall from some previous meals here. Nonetheless, this is a very well-run operation, serving enjoyable and quite classical food, with much-improved service in recent times.

In other news, my restaurant reviews have been licensed by Google as part of their Field trip mobile app, which pops up suggestions and information as you travel around a city. The app is free and available on all both iOS and Android, and was designed specifically for Google Glass.

Time in Tokyo

Den is currently the number one rated restaurant on the Japanese kanji restaurant site Tabelog, and had two Michelin stars until this week. It is very different from the formal kaiseki restaurants of Japan, the young chef having an obvious sense of humour, the dishes often witty as well as delicious. The staff are great here, and it is well worth trying to get a table.

Sushi Taku has had two stars since Michelin came to japan in 2008, and seemed to me to deserve this rating, with consistently excellent sushi. Narisawa (formerly Creations de Narisawa) is a very modern fusion restaurant, the chef there having being likened to the Heston Blumenthal of Japan. The dishes there certainly have a lot of effort put into them, though I found the standard rather variable. It had a very hushed atmosphere and the staff took themselves quite seriously, very different to the light-hearted atmosphere of Den. One oddity is that Narisawa is currently 20th best restaurant in the world according to the San Pellegrino list, yet on my site I have 20 restaurants scoring higher in Tokyo alone. This is not a reflection on Narisawa, which is a very good restaurant, but on the oddities of that particular list, which includes a laughable total of two restaurants in Japan (the other being the superb Ryugin).

Atelier Robuchon was actually the first of its breed, the initial Paris branch following soon after. What sets the Tokyo branch apart is the high quality Japanese ingredients, with considerable seasonality reflected in the menu. The staff were also very good indeed, and this felt like a clear step up from the London Atelier.

I also had very good tempura at Hatanaka, in particular featuring some stunningly good aubergine. This was a lot better than the tempura at Yotaro, though the staff at the latter were much friendlier. Asagi was another very good tempura restaurant, the chef having no less than 48 years of experience cooking this style of food.

November is a good time to visit Tokyo, as it is much drier than in the summer, and we had clear skies and sunshine for the whole of our stay there. The Hama Rikyu gardens (pictured) are one of the several attractive gardens of Tokyo, very near Tsukiji fish market and accessible by waterbus. Ingredients in Japan are of an exceptionally high quality, and restaurants are ultra-seasonal in their use of them, so if you go at a slightly different time of year you will encounter a whole series of different ingredients in the cooking. For any food-lover, Japan is a must-visit destination.

The 2014 Michelin Guide for Tokyo, Yokohama and Kamakura has now appeared, with no new three stars and a demotion for Nanachome Kyoboshi on "consistency" grounds. This is a pity as I had a terrific meal there. At the two star level there were three new two star places in the form of Dominique Bouchet, Goryukubo and Yunke, and five demotions. This means that Tokyo has 14 three star restaurants, still comfortably the highest of any city in the world, and also 60 two star restaurants (59 according to their press release, which seems to have an error in Shonan, contradicting itself), along with 208 one star restaurants, of which 15 are new, with 21 demotions. It was interesting that Gordon Ramsay lost its star, along with the dismal China Blue at long last It also introduced the bib gourmand rating to Tokyo for the ifrst time.

The Hong Kong guide also appeared, with as ever some controversy attached. Caprice was demoted to two stars, Sushi Shikon (previously named Sushi Yoshitake, sister of the original in Tokyo) was promoted from two stars to three, and the bizarre Bo Innovation was given three stars, which is a truly surreal decision based on my meal there. Wagyu Takumi and Pierre were promoted to two stars, while Ming Court and Ye Shanghai lost their second stars. In Macau, the Chinese restaurant "8" was promoted to three stars. I was pleased to see Man Yah get a star in the 2014 guide.

My list of 3 star history and the map of all three star restaurants has been updated. Hong Kong now has 6 three star restaurants and Macau 2. At the two star level, Hong Kong has 13 and Macau 2, whilst at the one star level Hong Kong has 44 places and Macau 7. The only remaining Michelin guides to appear are the France guide, which traditionally appears at the end of February, and the Main Cities of Europe guide, covering Scandinavia, which usually comes out in March. My thoughts on the Hong Kong are captured in this interview with The South China Morning post, the leading English language newspaper in Hong Kong. This article definitely got some attention, as it was mentoined by the BBC and also by the US food publication The Eater.

The blog next week will resume its London coverage.

A visit to Hiroshima

Hiroshima is over 500 miles west of Tokyo, yet the fastest shinkansen train whisks you there in just four hours. The city, for obvious reasons, is generally pretty modern in terms of its architecture, though they have restored the castle nicely and there is a pretty garden called Shukkeien, which contains a solitary tree that survived the nuclear blast. 17 miles west of Hiroshima (half an hour on a local train plus a ferry) is the lovely island of Miyajima, which has one of the most famous sights in Japan, the torii gate (pictured) of the Itsukushima shrine, which due to the tide usually appears to be floating in the water (except at low tide, when it is fully on dry land).

Nakashima was granted three Michelin stars in the 2013 special edition of Michelin to Hiroshima. It is a kaiseki restaurant and was very good. It would not compete with the very top places in Kyoto, but was a fraction of the price. A two star kaiseki restaurant called Kodama was significantly less good, but the two star tempura restaurant Tenko Honten was excellent. I was also very impressed with a tempura restaurant called Tsukunejima that eluded Michelin , but for me was comfortably one star level, and almost absurdly cheap. For casual food, Hiroshima is noted for its okonomoyaki savoury pancakes, which are filling and delicious. There are hundreds of restaurants that serve this, but I had a good version at Ganso Henkutsuya, which was recommended to me by a chef.

On the way to Tokyo (next week’s blog) I stopped in Kyoto to visit Kichisen, the latest three star Michelin restaurant in Japan. Kyoto being the home of kaiseki dining, that is the style at Kichisen. It seemed to me to be up there with several of the six other three star places in the city, though not right at the top of the tree.

As ever when visiting Japan, several things strike me: the remarkable courtesy of the people and their kindness to visitors, the dazzling efficient railway system and the toilets, many of whom have a control panel worthy of a jet airplane. If staying in Hiroshima you could do a lot worse than The Sheraton, which is conveniently next door to the railway station: the staff there were great.

The Michelin 2014 guide for The Netherlands came out. There was a new three star restaurant, de Leest in the little town of Vaassen. De Librije retained its three stars but Oud Sluis sadly closes at the end of December, so disappears from the guide. At the two star level, there were promotions for Bordeau in Amsterdam, FG and Fred in Rotterdam, and the loss of two stars for Ron Blaauw. The Netherlands now has 2 three star restaurants, 19 two stars, and 84 one stars.

The openings keep on coming in London

The Royal Academy in Piccadilly has opened up a members bar and restaurant to the public, at least in the evening. The Keeper’s House is a basement dining room run by Oliver Peyton, with an Italian chef who has worked at some of his other restaurants cooking British food. The room was refreshingly free of noisy music, and obviously they didn’t have to look far for artwork to decorate the room, so my initial impression was positive. Unfortunately the food did not deliver, with several dishes remarkably absent of flavour, though at least they made their own bread. Not a keeper, unfortunately.

Vinoteca has opened a branch in a busy part of Chiswick, and certainly brings to the area a very good wine list. Sadly the food was very much a second string to the wine, and although the place seemed to be doing well it was surely not due to the very ordinary cooking.

Some old favourites delivered much better food. Haandi (pictured) is one of those restaurants that never gets any media attention, but just ploughs away producing very good Punjabi dishes. Remarkably, given its Knightsbridge location, it is excellent value, with a meal there including drinks likely to come to little more than £30 a head. For this you get lovely cooking, with particularly good vegetable dishes, excellent chicken tikka and some of the best paratha you are likely to encounter.

The Terrace on Holland Street delivered another very enjoyable meal this week. The cooking is genuinely good here, with mackerel on tarte fine a particularly impressive dish. The little dining room seats just 20 guests at full capacity, and service is as charming as the food. This is a restaurant that deserves wider recognition.

The Duke of Sussex is an excellent value gastropub in Chisiwick specialising in Spanish food, so you can have seafood paella as well as pub staples like fish and chips. They make their own sourdough bread from scratch in the tiny kitchen, and the food is consistently reliable. Our bill for two generous and enjoyable courses came to just £23 a head, which puts the pricing of many London restaurants into perspective.

The Michelin guide to Belgium and Luxembourg was published. There were no changes at the three star level. At the two star level there were promotions for Bon-bon and Bartholomeus, and demotions to one star for Danny Horseele in Belgium and Mosconi in Luxembourg. Belgium now has 3 three star, 17 two star and 101 one star restaurants. Luxembourg has 11 one star establishments.

The 2014 Switzerland Michelin has no change at the three star level, but one new two star in the form of a restaurant called focus. There were 15 new one stars and six demotions. Switzerland has a pair of three star restaurants, 19 two stars and 89 one stars.

The 2014 Spain Michelin brought with it a new 3 star in the form of Diver XO, a restaurant that was sufficently popular that I was unable to get a table there on my last visit tio Madrid, despite some advance planning. There were also two star promotions for El Portal in Rioja and M.B. in Tenerife, while Can Fabes closed. In total Spain has 8 three star restaurants, 17 two star restaurants and 134 one star restaurants. Portugal has 2 two star restaurants and 10 one stars.

The Micheln guide season is well under way now. The remaining 2014 guides to appear are the Netherlands (next week), Hong Kong, Tokyo and France (usually end February), plus the Main Cities of Europe Guide (March), which covers Scandinavia.

Steve Plotnicki is a New York food lover who publishes the Opinionated About Dining restaurant list, a voting list analagous to the better marketed, though in my opinion less reliable, San Pellegrino one. The list is also more democratic, so have a look at the site and register if you want to influence the 2014 list.

There will be a movie called "Foodies" coming to a screen near you in the spring of 2014, a documentary which follows five people who eat out a lot around the world. The film has been made by Swedish TV (the equivalent of the BBC) and is being distributed by the same company that marketed the food-related documentaries "Supersize Me" and "Jiro Dreams of Sushi". The trailer is here - if you click through you will see someone you recognise.

From Berners Tavern to Brentford

Berners Tavern is the latest addition to the Jason Atherton empire, and features a spectacular dining room designed by Ian Schrager. Though a large scale restaurant, the food was consistently enjoyable and the service terrific. It is already packed out, and doubtless will be for the forseeable future.

HKK served a shorter menu at lunch, but still managed to fit in high-class dim sum and excellent Peking duck. A spicy lamb dish also worked well, as did a refreshing mandarin jelly dessert. Service is exceptionally slick here, and it was good to see it packed at a weekday lunch.

Hedone is moving to a tasting-menu format only, at least in the evenings. Avoiding the need to prepare a la carte dishes enables them to focus on fine-tuning the tasting menu, and on the evidence of my most recent meal the formula is working well. This, my 40^th meal at the restaurant, included some old favourites like the umami flan, but also a dazzlingly fresh scallop, magnificent suckling pig and excellent red deer, amongst the many dishes tried. For a pure food experience it is hard to think of anywhere better in London.

The Watermans Arms is an old boozer in Brentford that i have a soft spot for due to the charm of its landlord, who in between the usual fish and chips rustles up good value Japanese pub food (his wife is Japanese and he lived in Japan). The place will not win any prizes for decor, but if you are in the area and fancy some hearty izakaya fare at a low price, I recommend it.

Micheel Nadra is presumably pre-occupied with his new, and much larger, venture in Primrose Hill than his Chiswick original. A lunch here was decent enough, but seemed to be a notch lower in quality than previous meals that I have eaten here.

The Michelin Guide to Chicago came out, with Alinea staying the solitary three star, and with two new two star restaurants announced:Grace (which has only been open a year) and Sixteen, which was promoted. Graham Elliot and L20 kept their two stars. There were five new one star restaurants, and in total Chicago now has 25 starred restaurants. There were no demotions at all from 2013.

A varied week of dining in London

Casse Croute is a simple French bistro in Bermondsey, with a head chef who previously led the kitchen at Morgan M. The short menu is printed on a blackboard and has no concessions to modernism: you might try a cheese soufflé, duck parmentier and apple tart, for example. The prices are fair and the staff charming, and although the cooking itself is not going to set the world alight it is very enjoyable. A charming little place.

Pied a Terre felt on surer ground at this meal than my last one here. The cooking has definitely made the transition to Marcus Eaves’ own style, which generally is marked by appealing classical cooking. A quail dish in particular was terrific, and a mango millefeuille and top class petit fours showed that the pastry section is on song as well. It is good to see the old place back on form.

There is a new chef at Cotidie, the Marylebone Italian restaurant. Although the restaurant had a lukewarm reception in the media, I always liked Bruno Barbieri’s food, but he has now returned to Italy. Although the new chef himself headed up a Michelin starred kitchen there, the cooking that I tried was less assured than it was previously. The best dishes, such as a light Gorgonzla flan, were excellent, but not everything was of this standard. Unevenness is harder to overlook when the pricing is as high as it is at Cotidie.

I enjoyed another excellent meal at Dysart in Petersham. The menu changes regularly here, though a few excellent dishes I tried on previous visits were still available. The chef is not afraid to mix in Asian spices to his otherwise classically based French cooking, as for example with stone bass and a quite spicy sauce. However the flavours never seem unbalanced. The very kindly priced wine list and the charming service add up to a fine overall experience.

Bo Lang is a flashy Chinese restaurant in Chelsea, and I didn’t like it. The cooking was mostly competent but the pricing was absurdly aggressive. A small bowl of egg fried rice was £9, which is one of the most outrageous pieces of gouging I have seen in a long time, even in London.

The 2014 Michelin guide to Italy was published. There was a promotion for Reale (with chef Niko Romito) in Castel di Sangro to 3 stars, bringing the total for Italy to eight. There were two star promotions for Villa Feltrinelli, Devero and Locanda Don Serafino, with a demotion for Rosselinis. This brings the total for two stars in Italy to 40. There were also 29 promotions at the one star level and ten demotions, with the new total of one star restaurants in taly now standing at 281. By comparison, the UK has 4 three stars, 20 two stars and 134 one star restaurants.

The 2014 Michelin guide to Germany was also released. There is a new 3 star restaurant in the form of the unfortunately named (to a British ear) Uberfahrt south of Munich; the name actually means "crossing" and it is set on a very pretty lake. There were also three new two star restaurants: Schlossberg in the culinary haven of Baiersbronn, FACIL in Berlin and Tiger-Gourmetsrestaurant in Frankfurt. La Vision lost its two stars. There were 39 new one star places and 19 demotions of places that used to have a star. In all Germany has 11 three star restaurants, 37 two stars and 227 with one star.

From Barcelona to London

This week I visited Barcelona, and tried a pair of two star restaurants as well as a tapas bar. Enoteca was recently promoted to two stars, and this promotion felt to me like a mistake. One dish in partciular was excellent, and the desserts were good, but there were too many examples of flashy technique triumphing over flavour. At these prices, with an expensive wine list by the standards of Spain, such slips are all the more irritating.

By contrast, Abac was a delight, also modernist in style but where culinary trickery is not at the expense of flavour and enjoyment. Through a lengthy tasting menu i enjoyed excellent dish after excellent dish, and would return in a heartbeat. Service was also terrific, the bill actually less for the food than Enoteca.

Bar Mut was a surprisingly expensive tapas bar that appears to be well regarded, but its virtues eluded me based on my meal there. The dishes I had varied from ordinary to flawed, with a distinctly large bill given I had no alcohol to drink at a lunch there. Cal Pep it is not.

Parlour is the new venture of Jesse Dunford Wood, who made a name for himself by reinvigorating retro English dishes at The Mall Tavern. Parlour is a long way from Kensington, but we had an excellent meal. Above all the cow pie was a superb example of a proper beef pie, absolutely lovely. Jesse is a gifted chef, and I will definitely be making the hike to Kensal Rise again.

Le Gavroche is a London institution, and I enjoyed my dinner there. Classic dishes like soufflé suissesse are hard to fault, though there was the odd dish that seemed rather unambitious at this meal. However the best of the courses, such as excellent turbot and lovely desserts, were very fine indeed, and the service was as smooth as ever.

High profile London openings

Boulestin was a famous restaurant in Covent Garden that closed many years ago after decades of popularity. The name at least has been restored in a new Boulestin in St James, by the former restaurant manager of Terence Conran. As you might expect from such heritage, the room design is elegant, the service spot on. The French food is good here, with a poussin dish I tried being very enjoyable. The menu is appealing and the overall formula seemed very successful based on the full house when we visited. However, the bill was very high given the level of cooking.

Fish and Chip Shop in Islington is the somewhat unlikely first solo restaurant venture of Des McDonald, previous the CEO of Caprice Holdings. Although the plaice place is crowded and noisy, the haddock and chips were a cut above most London attempts at this seemingly simple staple. It is hardly a destination restaurant, but you could do much worse if you want to have something fishy and deep-fried.

Gymkhana is the second venture from the owners of Trishna, the excellent Indian seafood restaurant in Marylebone. Here in Mayfair there has been a lot more investment in the décor, though the prices reflect that. The menu draws widely from across India, with some unusual dishes on offer that will appeal to those wanting something more adventurous than chicken tikka masala. A muntjac biryani I tried was excellent, for example, but at £25 well it might be. Our visit was rather spoiled by some pushy upselling, so we ended up with more food than we needed, the waiter even taking away an (unfinished) bottle of water and then inquiring as to whether we wanted another bottle. Service inconsistencies were confirmed in two later visits. This was a shame as the food is good and the attractive room and appealing menu will ensure it does very well.

For some reason Wimbledon has always lacked much in the way of good restaurants, despite its many wealthy residents. Cannizaro House is one of those off-the-radar places that seem never to be talked about in the media, but we had a very enjoyable meal there. The room is spacious, the menu options attractive, the cooking very good, for example with a courgette flower stuffed with scallop and crab mousse. Even the wine list was surprisingly fairly priced. Well worth a try if you are in the area.

Union Street Café is at the opposite end of the hype spectrum from Cannizaro House, the latest Gordon Ramsay venture, accompanied by a whirlwind of publicity. The Italian food I ate there was actually pretty basic, and although the service was good I wonder how well it will do once all the media coverage recedes.

The western Japan 2014 Michelin guide came out. Mizai was restored to its well-deserved 3 star status after dropping out last year due to moving premises. There was a promotion to three stars for kaiseki restaurant Kichisen. There were promotions in Kyoto to two stars for Akai, and in Osaka for Miyamoto and Point.

The San Francisco guide also came out. No change at the three star level, but a promotion for Quince to two stars. There were five demotions at the one star level, and a new one star for State Bird Provisions.

The global three star picture, including history back to 2000, can be seen on this site here.

Five days, five cuisines

Mari Vanna is a Russian restaurant in Knightsbridge, part of an international chain clearly aimed at the wealthy Russians of London. The kitsch décor results in a fairly cosy feel, but this was let down by the entirely unsmiling waiter that I had, whose warmth and charm were worthy of the Soviet era. I had a simple beetroot salad, and a distinctly ordinary dish of cabbage stuffed with rice and mince. It was edible, but at the sort of price point here I would hope for something a bit more than edible food and scowling service.

Marianne is an altogether more welcoming place, a little restaurant in Notting Hill that is sufficiently small that it feels as if you are at a dinner party. The chef was a private cook for the wealthy before setting up this operation, and with a manager who used to be at La Trompette the service is charming. Our meal was pleasant but there was some inconsistency in the cooking, albeit this was early days for the restaurant. Hopefully it will settle down in time, as at a fairly ambitious price point it will need to attract returning locals from this affluent area.

Tukdin was recommended by a Malaysian acquaintance as that rarest of things, an authentic Malaysian restaurant in London. It certainly had plenty of Asian diners, and it is cheap. Beef rendang was tender, but a dried-out sea bass dish was downright poor, with other dishes in between these two in terms of standard. Certainly London could do with more Malaysian restaurants, and this one compares well enough with other that I have tried here (such as Awana and Satay House). However I have yet to experience in London anything remotely as good as the food I have eaten in Malaysia.

I had another good meal at Gaylord, an Indian restaurant that has been around for decades and is popular with Indian diners. The food here is very capable, though it is quite a lot more expensive than most Indian restaurants in London, yet despite this seems to attract plenty of regulars in its slightly off beat location.

I had another meal at Hedone, my 39^th visit since it opened about two years ago. The carte blanche menu offers a lengthy tasting menu of the very best the kitchen has to offer, and if you visit Hedone I recommend that you try this. The menu varies according to what produce the chef has obtained. Our meal went through duck egg with cepes, umami flan, tomato salad, langoustine with shellfish broth, superbly fresh scallop, Parmesan ravioli, Dorset lobster, poulet jaune de Landes and loin of red deer. The meal concluded with millefeuille, the delicate pastry made from scratch here. The Parmesan ravioli with Roscoff onion consommé and horseradish in particular is a truly stunning dish. The ingredients are impeccable, the kitchen technique top class. Add in the best bread in London and you have a really special experience. Anyone who loves to eat top quality food needs to visit Hedone.

I also added a new chef interview to the site; this one is with Tong Chee Hwee, head chef of HKK.

Classy Chinese food in London

Janetira is a little Soho Thai restaurant that was open for almost a year serving the Thai staples that we see in every London high street. Recently it became more interesting, serving authentic Bangkok dishes such as searingly hot mackerel curry, and pork offal in five spice broth. You can still get a pad Thai if you wish, but those craving something different when it comes to their Thai meal could choose this, if only as a change from the Heron, the other restaurant in London doing uncompromisingly authentic Thai dishes.

Peking Duck is a very elaborate dish when made properly, and fine examples of it can be found at restaurants like Made in China, Da Dong and Duck de Chine in Beijing. Sadly the London attempts at this dish are rarely a patch on the real thing, with the honourable exception of HKK. I was therefore intrigued to try the duck at A. Wong, here served in no less than eight courses. It was genuinely good, especially the delicate skin and the flavour of the meat itself. A. Wong is a very interesting restaurant, and this is another good reason to try it. Note that the duck must be pre-ordered.

Hakkasan has started to offer a dim sum set menu on a Sunday lunch, and it is superb. The quality of the steamed dumplings there is up there with the very best in Hong Kong, and even the dessert I tried was superb. I can never get over how consistently good the food here really is, given the huge scale of the place. Still, I am not complaining.

Apsleys is a regular haunt, its kitchen producing the most sophisticated Italian cooking in London. A tasting menu this week included some superb pasta dishes which are a trademark, but also a dazzling foie gras dish and terrific “beef a pomodoro”, amongst others. Service was excellent, and the only drawback is the costly wine list. Chef Heros de Agostinis was sous chef at 3 star Michelin Pergola in Rome, and his experience shows. It has one Michelin star, but my recent meals there have been at a solid two star level in comparison to restaurants in Italy.

In other news, long time two Michelin star chef Diego Guerrero left Club Allard in Madrid, reportedly having wanted a break and to pursue new opportunities. At present he has no specific plans for a new restaurant.

I did an interview with Business Insider which seems to have generated some interest, even making it to the LA Times.

Navigating the London restaurant maze

Atithi is the younger sister of Swagat in Richmond. The head chef and part owner of both divides his time between the two places, and is a talented cook. I first tried his food at a rather odd Indian restaurant turned nightclub called Yatra, before he moved to Tangawizi and now to his own ventures. Of the two places, I slightly preferred Swagat, but Atithi is smarter and certainly very pleasant.

The oddly named Perkin Reveller (a Chaucer reference; see the review for why) is on the river by the Tower of London, but its chef has a pedigree that suggests something more ambitious than serving basic food to the throngs of tourists. The modern British food was decent enough but it was far from exciting, and although it is not a tourist trap it did seem to me too expensive for what appeared on the plate.

Gillray’s is a steakhouse also on the river, in this case in the old County Hall building overlooking Parliament. Service was terrific and it is certainly a very smart place, but although I quite enjoyed the food the bill was very high indeed, with a crushingly expensive wine list to boot. This was a pity because at a lower price point it could attract a lot more diners, which at present seem to be heavily made up of the hotel guests at the Marriott in which it resides. The kitchen sources its meat well, and the desserts were very good, but for this money you could eat in some very serious London kitchens.

Claude's Kitchen was a pleasant enough neighbourhood restaurant in Parson's Green. It has a fairly priced wine list, and I enjoyed a quail dish. though other dishes I tried were pretty ordinary in standard. It was doing well on the evening we visited, and certainly the menu was inexpensive by London standards.

The best meal of the week was at Maze (pictured), which continues to pack them into Grosvenor Square. What impresses me about Maze is the level of consistency from such a large kitchen: dishes are prettily presented, precisely cooked and appealing. A pork belly dish with peas and wasabi was particularly good at this meal, but there was hardly a misstep. Service is very slick, and I just wish they would make their own bread.

The New York Michelin 2014 guide came out. There was no change at the three star level (with a count of seven) but significant change at the two star level. Gordon Ramsay had its stars removed, as did Corton (closed) and Gilt (closed). Jungsik was promoted from one star to two, leaving just five two star restaurants. At the one star level, there were stars for Aska, Babbo, Carbone, Caviar Russe, Ichimura, Le Restaurant, Lincoln, Musket Room and Telepan. There are 55 one star restaurants in all in 2014. There were deletions for Adour, Cafe China, Dressler, Marc Forgione, Picholine, River Cafe and Saul.

That Riviera Touch

The only restaurant to be promoted to three stars in France in 2013 was Vague d'Or in St Tropez. The restaurant is in a lovely spot overlooking the water and the entrance to St Tropez harbour. We had an elaborate tasting menu, but although there were some excellent dishes and a generally high standard, this felt to me more two star standard than three.

Louis XV is a legendary restaurant, and one at which I have been lucky enough to eat at many times over the years. Since I last visited there is a new chef de cuisine in the form of Dominique Lory, and I am pleased to say that the high standard here has not changed under him. Even by opting for the cheaper set menu, which obviously shuns luxury ingredients, the standard of cooking was enormously high. From a superb risotto through to dazzlingly good guinea fowl the kitchen was firing on all cylinders. This is without doubt one of the great restaurants of the world.

Chevre d'Or is in a scenic spot in the medieval walled town of Eze, perched high above the Riviera. We had a lovely meal here, from a fine courgette tempura through to an absolutely superb, clever lemon dessert. This was strong two star cooking, with the desserts in three star territory.

Back in London, Notting Hill Kitchen is the latest incarnation of the site that was once Leiths and more recently has been Notting Hill Brasserie. It has now switched to Portuguese food, but sadly the meal that I was served was far from an experience of love, actually. Desserts were actually quite good, but the savoury courses ranged from mediocre to downright unpleasant. The price point here is high, and on the evening I went the restaurant was virtually empty. I fear that this is the way it will stay unless they can radically overhaul the kitchen operation.

The UK and Ireland Michelin guide 2014 came out, the first of the new season. There was no change at the 3 star level. In the 2 star bracket Atelier Robuchon was demoted to one star (sensible) and both Dinner (kind) and Greenhouse (very kind) were promoted. For me it was a pity that Apsleys and Hedone, which are clearly operating at two star level now, were not recognised as such this year. At the one star level there were new stars outside London for The Samling (fair), adam’s in Birmingham, wilks in Bristol, Ormer in Jersey, and both Campagne and Lady Helen in Kilkenny. In London there were stars for HKK (well deserved), Angler (fair), Outlaws at the Capital (kind), Story, Brasserie Chavot (a touch kind), Social Eating (kind) Lima (bizarre), Bo London (barking), Ametsa (utterly barking). There were demotions for Burlington in Bolton Abbey, Mallory Court in Warwickshire, Hamborough in the Isle of Wight, The Crown at Whitebrook (closed), Locks Brasserie in Dublin, Rhodes 24 (closed), North Road (closed and good riddance), Petersham Nurseries (finally), Rhodes W1 (closed) and Semplice (closed). Where were the stars for Sushi Tetsu and Clove Club, The Ritz or Dysart, or The Greenhouse in Dublin? Who in their right mind would rather eat a meal at Ametsa or Bo London than at Clove Club or Dysart? There has long been a theme of Michelin granting stars to chefs who already had them, but surely there has to be a basic standard maintained? This year I find the Michelin UK very disappointing in its choices, and in some cases indefensible. On a positive note, I was pleased that A. Wong got a bib gourmand.

Dining in Denia

In 2013 two restaurants in Spain were promoted to three star level, Azurmendi and Quique Dacosta. The latter is very much in the El Bulli tradition of molecular gastronomy, with its use of chemicals to coerce ingredients into unexpected textures and colours. Nothing is quite what it seems: a rose turnes out to be slices of apple, a black pebble really contains liquid Parmesan. Whether these games really work seem to me to be based on whether the trickery adds rather than subtracts from the flavour of the ingredients. It is fun to bite into a rose that turns out to be apple, less so when it tastes less good than it would have done without the process to morph it into this colour and shape. The best dishes at Quique Dacosta, such as a fine foie gras dish, good risotto and some lovely tuna, were very good indeed, but too many dishes fell short of this for me to feel it is really up there with the best restaurants globally.

The Fox and Grapes is a Wimbledon pub owned by Claude Bosi of Hibiscus, who also opened The Malt House in Fulham. One would hope that a Michelin-starred chef would be able to do something pretty special at a pub: after all, Heston Blumenthal’s The Hinds Head in Bray has a Michelin star in its own right, as does The Harwood Arms, an offshoot of The Square and The Ledbury. Yet, just as at the Malt House, things did not seem to me to really gel at The Fox and Grapes. Fish and chips was the best of the dishes tried, but other dishes were very ordinary through to downright odd. The virtually empty dining room said it all.

Suzu is a sushi restaurant near Hammersmith whose chef teaches sushi classes. Unfortunately she was not in the kitchen the day that I visited, and the chef managed to produce the sushi on cold rice, which is an elementary mistake that would be almost unthinkable in Japan. Tempura was fine, and it was a friendly enough local place, but was nothing more than that.

The Ritz has become a regular haunt of mine, the food of an extremely high standard in recent years. It is not the sort of place to get attention from the social media, and Michelin has bafflingly spurned it, yet the cooking is of the level of a strong one Michelin star level, from the excellent bread through to the classy desserts. The grouse that I had at this meal was the best I have eaten anywhere, and the service is superb. This vast, very grand, dining room is pretty much always full, even on weekdays, which is a testament to the quality of the operation.

Madhu’s was back on service form this week with the return of its manager Ajay, who had been in India on my last visit. The restaurant is always packed out but the food is very consistent. This is hardly surprising given that Madhu’s is the largest Indian wedding caterer in the UK, so knocking out dinner for barely a hundred diners in an evening must seem a breeze compared to several simultaneous weddings of as many as a thousand guests apiece. Biriani is always good here, as is the achari prawn starter.

New London reviews

La Mancha is a tapas bar that was running for ages in Putney, but has recently upped sticks and moved to Chiswick. The dishes that we tried over two visits were quite consistent, and although this is a neighbourhood place rather than destination dining, it was very pleasant. The owner is friendly, the menu appealing and the bill modest. Chiswick has lacked any Spanish food other than one grim chain, so it is a welcome addition to the area.

Dairy was my venture south of the river this week, situated just on the edge of Clapham Common. This is another place with the fashionable “small plates” format, but the chef’s classical culinary training shone through in particular with an impressive chicken liver parfait. This was a genuinely classy dish, but the overall standard was very good throughout the meal. Prices here are quite low at present and I am sure Dairy will prosper.

Social Eating House is another in the string of Jason Atherton restaurants that have opened recently, from London to Shanghai and beyond. This one had very enjoyable food and slick service, and I preferred the meal here to my rather erratic meal at Little Social. This was a clearly very professionally run restaurant, and was very busy even on a weekday lunch.

Coworth Park (pictured) has had a number of chefs since it opened, but the kitchen has been in the hands of Brian Hughson for over a year now. It is in a pretty spot near Wentworth golf course, with a winelist whose prices match the prosperous area. We had a generally good though slightly uneven meal, with successful dishes like salt-baked beetroot with glazed goat cheese and panna cotta, mixed in with a flawed dish of confit onion tart with lord of the hundreds sheep cheese, charred violet artichoke and herb vinaigrette. which suffered from soggy pastry. Service was top class, and the best dishes suggets that the restaurant has potential to go further when greater consistency can be achieved.

I wrote a series on established but underrated restaurants for Elite Traveler magazine. The articles cover UK and Ireland, Europe and Asia.

Obscure restaurant surprises

Pizza Pilgrims is the restaurant version of a food cart that used to trundle around London, its founders having made a pilgrimage to Italy to learn about what makes a really good pizza. Now in Dean Street, the simple premises have an impressive pizza oven that cooks a Napolitan style pizza in less than a minute. This is another sign that the best of London pizza has moved beyond the high street chain level to something that an Italian would actually recognise. The base of the pizza was authentically soft and the topping of good quality.

Gaylord has been running since 1966, sister to a Mumbai restaurant of that name. The London version has a large, smart dining room and food that was surprisingly good. I say surprising because the Mumbai version was pretty mediocre when I went there, so I had fairly low expectations. In fact, other than one dish, the quality here was fine and the service excellent. For a place that is the antithesis of London restaurant fashion, it was interesting that the large dining room was completely full on a Sunday night in August, with a large contingent of Asian diners.

Tarantella is a neighbourhood restaurant near where I live, and so I rather take it for granted. They do a pretty good pizza, but on this visit I had a genuinely good spaghetti with spicy Calabrian sausage. Following a previous visit with good rigatoni I am nudging up the score by a point to reflect what seems to me to have been a steady improvement in quality over recent months.

The best food of the week was at The Dysart Arms (pictured). This is another restaurant that appears invisible to Twitter; its Petersham location might as well be on Mars for all the reviews it has had. Yet its chef is a Roux Scholar and can really cook. We had dish after excellent dish here, with a keen focus on ingredients, the vegetables grown in the restaurant garden and some skilful and original dishes. Combined with slick service and a modest price point, this was a genuine find. I tried two meals here in quick succession and will certainly be coming back here; there are worse Michelin-starred restaurants out there than this. I highly recommend it to you.

Assorted London dining

Picture (pictured, if you will excuse the pun) is a Marylebone restaurant from a trio of staff from the Arbutus/Wild Honey stable. The emphasis here, as at their training ground, is on good value food rather than luxury, here in the form of “small plate” eating. The cooking was good, with no real slips and an appealing menu of dishes; there is a mix of European cooking styles, from ravioli to beef with pea salsa. The only real drawback is the deafening noise level. Price levels are fair, though as ever with this format, the bill adds up to more than it may appear when you first look at it.

Red Pocket is a strange place, a smart Chinese restaurant with an ex Hakkasan chef, but in Battersea. To be precise, it is at the hotel next to the Battersea heliport, and the dining room is a cricket pitch or so away from where the helicopters land. It is a tough place to find if you are looking for the hotel (which seems invisible to sat nav, or at least the one we were using), but if you follow the signs to the heliport then all will be well. This formula (weird location, hotel restaurant) has all the potential to be a basket case, yet in fact the food was very nice indeed. We tried a variety of dishes, from dim sum through to pi pa roast duck, and the standard was consistently good. The atmosphere is undeniably odd, but if you don’t mind that then you will eat well.

I have long wondered why no-one seems to even try to open a proper Mexican restaurant in London. There is decent Mexican food to be had in the USA, but in the capital we have to put up with bad burritos. I tried two of the more authentic specimens this week. Mestizo is actually run by Mexican people, but that does not seem to help the cooking, which was pretty bad when I visited. Much better was Taqueria in Notting Hill, where ironically the chef is not Mexican but the food is much better, including tacos made from scratch in the kitchen. I actually tried this place twice, and the standard was consistent and good. However it is still some way from the very best that Mexican food has to offer, the finest of which I have encountered being at Punto MX in Madrid.

Recently my iPhone app WineSearch clocked up the number of times it has been used to over 110,000. I designed the app for my own use in restaurants, where I wanted to understand the levels of mark-up on wine lists, and clearly a number of people are also finding this handy. The app can also help you find where to buy your favourite wine. If you have an iPhone then you can find it here.

Various Italian Restaurants of London

Acciuga has taken over from what was previously Timo. Bizarrely, the chef was actually doing the front-of-house management on the evening that I visited, and not doing it at all well. The meal was patchy, the price far from a bargain, and the service was comically bad, some of the worst I can remember in some time. There was one quite good pasta dish in amongst things and indeed the food was reasonably competent, but as an overall experience it was pretty shambolic. This is also a reminder to chefs and owners that there is little point in putting effort into the cooking if the service operation is ineffective.

Fabrizio was an altogether more enjoyable experience than Acciuga; this is a simple neighbourhood restaurant in Highgate, with friendly staff and decent cooking, all at a quite low price point. Although this was not objectively dazzling food, it was at least good value, and the overall experience was very pleasant. It was full of local regulars, all appearing to have a good time.

Sapori Sardi was a rather mixed affair, with a good risotto but a disappointing fish stew and a tiramisu that had essentially no coffee flavour. This restaurant was ranked, at the time I visited, the 12^th best restaurant in London on Tripadvisor out of over 12,000 restaurants listed, which probably says all that needs to be said about the usefulness of Tripadvisor when selecting restaurants.

The best experience of the week was at Maxela, a cross between a butcher shop (pictured) and a restaurant in South Kensington. This is an outpost of a mini-chain from Italy, and showcases in particular Fassone beef. This Piedmontese beef is top quality, and as a bonus is unusually healthy, with low cholesterol and calories compared to normal beef due to a genetic aberration for which these beef are deliberately bred. The rib eye steak here was terrific, and I also tried a nice pasta dish and reasonable dessert. Ironically this restaurant, despite its South Kensington location, was the cheapest of the four places. Its beef is a real bargain, especially when you compare it with some of the excessively priced steaks that can be found in central London venues. I hope that Maxela prospers.

I was interviewed in a short video for Elite Traveler magazine about The Ledbury.

On the new web site there is a contact form and also a feedback box. I have had a few bits of feedback with no email address provided but which are posing a question to me. Clearly without an email address I cannot reply, so if you want a reply then please remember to leave me an email address.

From Apero to Apsleys

Apero is tucked away in the basement a boutique hotel (pictured) near South Kensington tube, which on the face of it is a rather unpromising location. However its team in the kitchen have some pedigree, with Chris Golding having been head chef of the short-lived but enjoyable Galoupet, his pastry chef having previously worked at Nobu. The food is described as “Mediterranean”, which leaves plenty of scope, and I enjoyed a pretty salad of kohlrabi and apple and a good beetroot risotto, while the desserts were genuinely good.

I had a tasting menu at Apsleys, which showed off the skills of its new (ish) chef Heros de Agostinis. Highlights included Sicilian prawns served with maccheroncini, baby broccoli and saffron, and also a lovely dish of venison cooked in yoghurt with crispy purple potatoes and salsify. Desserts are a strong suit here, and a plum tartelette and Armagnac ice cream was lovely. This is a restaurant that I have eaten at many times now, and for me it is easily the best Italian restaurant in London. I like the airy dining room, especially at lunch, and the only drawback is the costly winelist, though the sommelier is adept at guiding diners to obscure corners of the list with more acceptable markups.

I returned to Swagat, which had impressed me a few weeks earlier with its high quality Indian food in an unpromising location on Richmond Hill. Tandoori cooking here is skilful, and the black dhal at this meal was as good a version as I have ever eaten, including in India. The décor is basic and the tables cramped, but this is a place whose food is up there with the better Indian restaurants in London, based on my two visits.

Diwana Bhel Poori is an old favourite, producing very good Gujerati snacks for a ridiculously low price. It is a very basic place in terms of decor and service, but you eat your fill of excellent bhel poori. samosas and aloo papri chat, have some lassi to drink and a kulfi for dessert, and still end up with a bill of £12 a head.

I did a short video interview for Elite Traveler magazine, and also an article on the ultimate meal.

A variety of London eating

It is hard to keep up with Jason Atherton’s restaurant openings these days, Little Social being directly opposite his flagship Pollen Street Social. The format here is rather different, being firmly in French brassiere territory in terms of décor, though the menu is more modern British than traditional French. I had a good pasta dish and a nice crab salad, though a rather odd take on apple crumble that didn’t entirely work. Overall it was a pleasant enough experience, and certainly the place was packed out even at lunch.

Eating at Blue Plate feels more like dining at a friend’s house than a restaurant. It is the new offshoot of Outsider Tart, a bakery set up a few years ago by an American couple who moved here from New York. The chef is from Mississippi, and prepares dishes from the deep south, so expect to see chilli with cornbread and the like. For dessert you can choose one of the brownies or cupcakes from the adjoining shop. It is not a destination restaurant, but is a pleasant and reasonably priced place with a genuine welcome.

Da Nang Kitchen serves pleasant Vietnamese food in a simple dining room in King Street. It is not an ambitious place, but stir-fried pork with noodles were an example of a very decent, properly cooked dish. Staff are friendly and the bill here is modest. King Street is better known for its Indian restaurants (hardly any of which are actually much good) but Da Nang Kitchen is a place that is worth checking out if you are in the area.

The food at A. Wong is quite different from the London Chinatown norms, its thoughtful chef having travelled widely in China before taking over the business. Dim sum is available by the individual piece, which is great if you are dining alone or in a pair, as you can get to try more dishes. Smoked egg in a nest of fried shreds of filo pastry is not the sort of thing you are likely to encounter in Gerard Street, whilst the sui mai open dumplings had much better quality fillings than you will normally encounter in Chinese restaurants in London. This restaurant is a really welcome addition to the otherwise sparse dining scene around Victoria station.

I am pleased to add another chef interview to the web site, my first Japanese chef. The interview is with Seiji Yamamoto, head chef and owner of the wonderful 3 star michelin Ryugin in Tokyo.

Persian restaurants in London

I have tried a few Persian restaurants over the years, admittedly with little success, whether these have been in London or the US (I have never been to Iran). I sampled two that are supposedly well thought of. Mohsen has a bread oven in the window so the bread was nothing if not fresh, but the main course dish that I tried there was quite disappointing. Better was Hafez, which had quite good bread and was generally of a higher standard. However neither could be said to have delivered anything more than decent food, and it is hard to recommend a special journey even to the better of these two places. I am not sure why the standard of Middle Eastern food in London is so poor. It is a similar story with Lebanese restaurants here: a Lebanese friend of mine cooked me a dinner at home far better than any I had eaten at a Lebanese restaurant in London. I would have thought that there was a market for a better level of restaurant offering, but if there is such a place in London then I have missed it.

I actually ate two meals at Hedone (pictured) within a few days – well, they are closing for their summer holidays shortly. The food just gets better and better here, with the more experienced team in the kitchen now delivering a highly consistent experience, still based around the top-notch ingredients that are the trademark of Hedone. An example was a sweetbread dish that was probably the best I have ever eaten; it came from the same Paris butcher that supply the 3 star places in Paris. The sweetbread had amazing, almost silky texture, a far cry from what usually passes for this ingredient in London. Turbot had superb flavour, as did a langoustine starter. The restaurant now does tasting menus only on weekend evenings, either £65 or £95 for the “carte blanche”, which serves the very choicest ingredients. The latter is actually a bargain given the quality of ingredients on display here. The price of the carte blanche menu here would scarcely buy you a starter at somewhere like Arpege in Paris.

Koya makes authentic udon noodles, which can be eaten either hot or cold, as well as daily changing specials. The best dish that I tried this week was cold udon noodles with venison, whilst I also liked a small plate of roasted duck served with mustard, and delicate prawn tempura, all for around £20 a head. There are no reservations at Koya and it is a popular place, with service distinctly at the basic end of the spectrum. When I turned up earlier than the person I was meeting, I was not allowed to join the queue for tables, with other tables of two that turned up later being seated ahead of me. Given that all I was going to do was sit down a few minutes early and purchase a drink while I waited that seemed rather churlish, but they turn over tables at quite a rate here, and I guess they want to completely maximise the time spent at their tables. This service niggle aside, Koya is well worth trying.

My list of 15 most influential chefs of the next decade was published by Elite Traveler magazine. Obviously such a list is essentially an impossible selection to make, but here goes.

I also recorded a short video, the first in a series for Elite Traveler in which various restaurants will feature. This one is on Hedone.

A new chef lifts Roux at Parliament Square

The two Indian restaurants I tried this week are quite different in style. Chakra is smart and modern, serving some exotic dishes in Notting Hill. Its chef/owner used to run the now-defunct Vama in Chelsea, and Chakra shows a similar ambition to stand out from the crowd, with dishes such as black cod and tandoori duck. The cooking was generally good, with one less successful dish in amongst some otherwise capable cooking. However the price was also quite high, and with places like Haandi in Knightsbridge able to cook well at a much lower price point, the value for money factor was questionable.

Swagat is a much simpler affair, in modest premises up on Richmond Hill. Although the tables were tiny and dining room quite cramped, the actual cooking was very good indeed, with excellent tandoori prawns and aloo tikki chat amongst other nice dishes. Here there was no attempt to veer off piste in menu terms, but the cooking was consistently good and the bill quite reasonable. Service was also particularly friendly. I preferred Swagat of the two places.

Roux at Parliament Square (pictured) has had three head chefs since it opened, the latest being Steve Groves, winner of “Masterchef: The Professionals” in 2009, and previously sous chef here. I was very impressed with the meal I ate here with Steve in charge, which seemed to me a definite step up from the cooking of the previous two head chefs here. A main course chicken dish with girolles, sweetcorn and granola was particularly good. I have nudged the website score of the restaurant up a point based on this meal.

La Trompette had some well-publicised problems some months ago resulting in a change of chef. Rob Weston was drafted in from The Square to turn things around, and the cooking certainly seems to be on a more stable footing now. I have had three meals here now under the new regime, and there have been some good dishes such as scallop with curried parsnip puree, and an excellent mango dessert. La Trompette has a relatively low price-point and kindly priced wines, and its new chef looks well on the way to getting it back on track.

Zuma continues to be wildly successful, packed out even at lunch. It has done for Japanese pub food what Hakkasan did for Cantonese cuisine, taking the accessible parts of the cuisine and serving them in a smart setting, with well-trained waiting staff. The result has been customers queuing up to get in, and the formula does not appear stale. Tuna tataki still has a refreshing dressing, but the best dish was a new one: tempura langoustines, the batter light and the shellfish excellent. At lunch the bill seems pretty steep, as there are no lunchtime concessions, but in the evening it would seem more reasonable. It is hard not to admire such a consistent restaurant.

Michelin stars at the seaside

I recently visited Jersey (pictured) for the first time, trying two of its Michelin-starred restaurants. Jersey is geographically much closer to France than the UK, and has plenty of local agricultural produce that its restaurants can draw upon. The chef at Ocean reckoned that 90% of the vegetables that he used were local, in addition to the dairy cattle and seafood of the island. The chef at Bohemia told me that there was so much lobster around than he gets two deliveries a day.

Ocean is set in a hotel on the coast, and serves classical food. I particularly enjoyed a Black Forest gateau dessert, whilst a starter of tuna with wasabi mayonnaise was also very good. Bohemia has a more modern feel to it, in the financial district of St Helier, the largest town of Jersey. The standard of cooking throughout a long tasting menu was high, and I particularly liked a turbot dish with cauliflower cream and pickled cauliflower. I also sampled the cooking at Mark Jordan at The Beach, the casual sister of Ocean, itself with a Michelin bib gourmand. The restaurant lived up to its name, situated directly on the beach, and served a very good luxurious take on a burger, as well as an excellent lobster bisque.

I then travelled north for a different seaside Michelin experience on the Baltic coast. Travemunde is north of Hamburg, a busy ferry port and home to Germany’s latest three Michelin starred restaurant, La Belle Epoque. Set in a casino with a dining room overlooking the beach, the cooking here was very intricate, with the dishes often having elaborate back-stories. Although presentation was beautiful and the cooking technique exemplary, I didn’t feel that the food really came together in a coherent way, though there were certainly some fine dishes in the menu.

I preferred the cooking at Jacobs, a two Michelin star restaurant in Hamburg overlooking the river Elbe. The food here used top-notch ingredients and had a more classical style, with less emphasis on elaborate presentation and modern cooking techniques. The standard was consistently high, but a turbot dish, served simply with a beurre blanc, was of stunning quality. Also excellent was venison with root vegetables and an intense-flavoured sauce. Both these restaurants had excellent ranges of German Riesling, which I love, mark-ups that seem a bargain by London standards.

I am pleased to add Steve Smith and Mark Jordan to the gallery of chef interviews. Steve is head chef of Bohemia in Jersey, and Mark is head chef of Ocean.

In other news, it was announced that Can Fabes, which until 2012 held three Michelin stars, would close permanently at the end of August. A pity, though I must say that although my first meal there was superb, subsequent meals showed a steady decline from that high standard.

Ups and downs of London dining

Northall is one of the two restaurants at the very smart Corinthia Hotel, just off the Embankment. Given that Gary Hollihead (ex Sutherlands) is the head chef I had reasonable expectations, but these were entirely dashed when the food actually arrived. We tried mediocre dish after mediocre dish, with food presentation that would look below-par at a suburban dinner party. Seasoning seemed an alien notion here, and other than a decent bream main course the food was of a remarkably low standard, especially given the sky-high prices. A summer pudding was far below the quality that you find in pre-bought packets in supermarkets. I have not had such an overpriced, disappointing meal for years.

Hispania (pictured) is an under-the-radar London opening near Bank, with a tapas bar and deli operating at present. However in the coming months it will become home to an ambitious fine dining restaurant, with an executive chef from Spain who has a Michelin star. The recent track record of such ventures in London is not great, given the train-wreck that is Ametsa, but we shall see. What is without doubt is that the tapas here is excellent, prepared with a level of care and attention much higher than is normal in London. Hispania seems firmly aimed at the Spanish community in London, and I was very impressed by the food that I ate here at lunch. It will be intriguing to see what the main restaurant is like when it finally opens.

I have a soft spot for The Watermans Arms, a basic Brentford boozer that is the unlikely setting for some excellent value Japanese food. Its owner has a Japanese wife and lived in Japan, so as well as knocking out pub grub like fish and chips also cooks tonkatsu and specials such as excellent short ribs with a chilli glaze, which I particularly enjoyed on my last visit. The décor will not win any prizes, but the food is hearty and good, as you might find in a Tokyo izakaya.

Tangawizi is a very good Indian restaurant on the south side of Richmond Bridge, which despite its basic premises produces some very classy dishes. The starters there are consistently top class, but naan bread is also unusually good, and main course dishes like methi chicken are reliable. A starter of chicken with ginger was particularly good at this visit.

In other news, Gordon Ramsays at Claridges is no more. Its replacement is one of the better-kept secrets on the London dining scene. On the subject of iconic restaurants, it is rumoured that Gordon Ramsay is looking to buy back the 11 Park Walk premises that housed Aubergine, the restaurant where he gained much of his initial culinary reputation.

Next week I try will review four Michelin starred restaurants in two very different seaside locations.

New London openings

Grain Store is in the new Granary Square development in Kings Cross (pictured). The restaurant, owned by Bruno Loubet, is unusual in focusing on vegetables in the menu, though it is not strictly vegetarian. Most London vegetarian restaurants, other than the Indian ones, tend to be worthy yet often serve grim food, so this is a welcome initiative. I had a good salad and excellent falafel, and the place was already busy on a weekday lunch busy just weeks after opening.

Tartufo is a new opening in Chelsea serving European food (Italian with French influences). A basement dining room has access to a pretty terrace, and the overall meal was quite good if a little up and down. The tortelli with marscapone and summer truffles dish was genuinely good, a pork dish nicely made though a seafood ravioli less so. It was quite modestly priced and if they can become more consistent in the execution of the dishes then I am sure they will do well.

Taiwan Village in Fulham serves Taiwanese, Sichuan and Hunanese dishes rather than the Cantonese food that is more familiar in London. This means plenty of use of chillies, though in the dishes that we tried I didn’t notice any use of the distinctive Sichuan peppercorns, even in a Sichuan prawn dish. Whilst I enjoyed the General Tso’s chicken, the meal overall was erratic, with a particularly bland and gloopy sauce with prawns, and a Taiwanese radish omelette where the radish appeared to be missing in action. It wasn’t a bad meal, but was worryingly inconsistent.

Far better on the Chinese food front was Hutong, the newest opening at The Shard. The sister of a well-established restaurant in Hong Kong, Hutong also serves northern Chinese food, but in this case generally gets it right. The standard of cuisine here was very similar to that of the Hong Kong original, and many of the same dishes have been brought across. The service operation is very slick, and of course there is the fine view. Prices are in line with the towering vista, but this seemed to me a much more successful restaurant than Oblix, the other restaurant in The Shard to open so far.

Cambio de Tercio is my favourite Spanish restaurant in London. From the pictures of bull-fighting through to the friendly staff and the excellent winelist it is a little corner of Spain on the Old Brompton Road. Dishes that I tried at this visit include the consistently excellent gazpacho, here with lobster and cherry ice cream, as well as smoked sardines with foie gras and apple. A very interesting dish was what essentially a deconstructed burger, but made from veal cheeks, served with chips and pickles, and beautifully tender. The Rioja Alta 904 that we had with the meal was lovely, and Cambio also has a fine selection of sherries (it owns the sherry bar Capoto y Toros next door).

Franco Manca, originally started in 2008 in Brixton Market but now with locations in Chiswick, Westfield Stratford and (shortly) Balham, pretty much redefined the standard of pizza in London, where previously there was little better than Pizza Express. It, along with the excellent Santa Maria and its sister Sacro Cuore, serves pizza made in the Naples style in an ultra-hot oven, with a high degree of attention to detail shown in the ingredients used. The Chiswick branch is local to me, and although the service can be forgetful it continues to turn out very fine pizza.

The restaurants of Zwolle

The Dutch city of Zwolle is home to the three star Michelin restaurant De Librije and its two star sibling Zusje. It is ages since I visited De Librije, and the meal I ate here was an improvement on my experience of 2004. The very modern cooking style managed to also use high quality ingredients, and delivered logical taste combinations even where these were unfamiliar. Much modern cooking, in the hands of the less skilled, can be jarring, but the dishes at this tasting menu generally worked very well. Service was also superb, and the dining room itself, set in an old monastery, is unusual and interesting.

Zusje serves the same style of cutting-edge food but in a much more casual setting. It is based in the boutique hotel of De Librije, which was originally a women’s prison and has retained many of the original features; you can still see the cell doors and the bars on the windows, though you will be glad to hear that the rooms have been substantially upgraded. Zusje’s food was less precise than that of de Librije, but still a good example of modern cooking.

Bai Yok is a Thai restaurant that appears very popular in Zwolle. In reality it was a very ordinary place, with spicing levels toned down to suit the locals and cooking that varied in quality but was never more than ordinary. This probably is the best (only?) Thai restaurant in Zwolle, but I doubt that it would last long in London. If you are visiting this area, Zwolle is not far from the former royal palace in Apeldoorn, which has very fine French-style formal gardens (pictured).

Back in London I had a good meal at old favourite Royal China, and encountered a rare thing in a Chinese restaurant: pleasant service. The waitress smiled and everything. I have been going there regularly for two decades but even so this turn of events came as a bit of a surprise. Fortunately the food provided no such disturbing deviation from the norm, with excellent Sichuan prawns and my favourite gai lan with garlic amongst the dishes tried.

I also returned to Angler, which has one of the more appealing menus in London. Despite its ultra-cool location the dishes are resolutely classical and pleasing, with no sea-buckthorn to disturb the palate and little danger of shrubbery popping up in your dessert. The shellfish bisque served as an amuse-bouche here is a good example of old-fashioned kitchen technique, packing stacks of flavour into this seemingly simple soup. One dish had a slight technical flaw, so this was a less consistent meal than my previous one here, but it was nonetheless a most enjoyable experience.

The Italian Lakes

The Italian lakes area north of Milan is a particularly beautiful part of the world, with several fine lakes lined with magnificent villas. It is also home to some excellent restaurants. As well as Al Sorriso, it has Villa Crespi and Piccolo Lago. Villa Crespi is set in a lovely Moorish-style villa, adorned with intricate stonework, near the shores of Lake Maggiore. Its cooking is fairly classical and based on the top quality ingredients that can be found in that area, such as superb shellfish. I had a lengthy tasting menu that maintained a very high standard of cooking throughout, with service to match. This was a lovely setting for a top class restaurant, and I highly recommend it.

In an even more beautiful spot is Piccolo Lago, on the shores of a much smaller lake called Mergozzo. The setting, with the dining room overlooking the lake and opposite an imposing hillside, is truly spectacular. If there is a lovelier view from a restaurant table anywhere in the world then I would like to know where that is. The cooking was also top notch, slightly more modern in style but also making the best of the fine local produce, such as lake fish and Fassone beef. If you have never been to this part of the world then you have a treat in store, and if you are able to then try these two restaurants as well as Al Sorriso. I stayed in Stresa, opposite the gorgeous Isola Bella, an island with a small palace and lovely gardens that are open to the public when not in use by the family that own the property.

Back in London I tried Clove Club, the epitome of fashion in London dining at present. It ticks all the boxes: it is in Shoreditch, uses fashionable ingredients and has ultra-cool staff, all things calculated to deter me. However, in contrast to the over-hyped Dabbous, there is care and attention to ingredients, with charcuterie made on the premises and excellent sourdough bread made from scratch. The cooking was generally very skilful, so the dishes actually tasted good rather than just looking pretty. Some fashionable London chefs seem to be more interested in presentation and wacky ingredients than flavour and whether the dishes actually work as a whole, but The Clove Club does not make this mistake.

At the opposite end of the fashion stakes to Clove Club is Otto’s, a traditional French restaurant where you can get dishes like crepes Suzette and crème brulee. What drew me to it was the promise of pressed duck with a proper duck press, a dish invented by Tour d’Argent in Paris, who number the ducks individually and even give you a little postcard of the duck when you leave. Otto’s has a proper silver duck press and had gone to the trouble of importing duck from the same Challsn supplier that Tour d’Argent use. All this showed much promise, but although the German owner is a very engaging front-of-house manager there were problems with the cooking. The duck was slightly overcooked, and the crepes were heavy and thick. This was a shame as this is the kind of place that I was really hoping would deliver.

Five Fields is a new French restaurant in Chelsea that has clearly been the subject of considerable investment. The team there are quite experienced and are aiming at quite a high level of culinary ambition, the elegant dining room a pleasant change from the bare walls and distressed furniture that seems de rigeur in Shoreditch and elsewhere these days. However, although there were one or two very good dishes, and some nice bread that they make from scratch, there was some inconsistency too. Certainly if this places settles down and finds its rhythm it will be very interesting.

New website

The www.andyhayler.com site has remained essentially unchanged in style since 2006; those who may recall the old site, dating back to 1994, will appreciate that it has been a big improvement on the original one, but is now rather long in the tooth. Consequently the site has now been completely rebuilt. The new www.andyhayler.com website has many new and improved features, including:

1) There is a new rating system. The old out of 10 system was familiar to those who knew the UK Good food Guide, but was counter-intuitive to everyone else: 4/10 is a good score in the system, but at school 4/10 sounds like a fail. In the new system I have simply added 10, so 4/10 becomes 14/20, 7/10 becomes 17/20 etc. This will be easier to follow for newcomers, and allows me some flexibility below 10/20, useful for certain restaurants. For existing users, just deduct 10 to get the old score e.g. 16/20 is the old 6/10.

2) The site is quicker and more reliable in terms of response time.

3) There is greatly enhanced ability to search for restaurants on location e.g. “show me all restaurants reviewed within 10 miles of Barcelona”

4) Searching is now vastly more flexible. You can combine any criteria e.g. “London Michelin starred restaurants scoring at least 15/20” or “show me all reviews of Mexican restaurants in Madrid” or indeed any level of multiple search criteria. The search on the home page searches all review text, something not possible earlier, while the search on the restaurant guide page searches on restaurant name only (both search types are useful at different times).

5) Maps are dramatically quicker to load, and you can see all restaurants result searches via a map view, as well as the exact location of individual restaurants, not just the three fixed maps on the old site.

6) There are many previously unseen photos, due to a technical restriction in the previous site design being removed.

7) Restaurants that have had multiple visits now have separate tabs for each review, except in cases where they are just minor comments, making it easier to read lengthy reviews where multiple visits were involved.

8) The whole site has been rebuilt using the latest web technology and a completely fresh design approach.

9) Minor typos have been eliminated, though doubtless some remain. Please let me know if you spot any.

10) My tweets are linked to the site automatically.

11) The site is better for phone and tablet use, and significant further work will be done to improve this aspect further in the following weeks.

12) The 3starrestaurants.com site will be wrapped into the new site i.e. will no longer be separate. The content of the current microsite is covered on the Michelin section of the new site. You can now create your own lists using the filters on the restaurant guide, and view the results in "historical" form, which will will show the Michelin history dating back to 2000.

I hope you like the new site; there is a feedback form in the footer of the home page. My sincere thanks to the dozens of regular readers who participated in the beta test of the site and gave invaluable feedback, and to the team at Webigence who have done a very professional job in building the new site.

Looking up

Oblix is the first restaurant to open in The Shard (pictured), the tallest building in Europe. On the 32^nd floor, the views through floor to ceiling glass are certainly spectacular. Although the owners are those of Zuma and Roka, there is nothing Asian about the dining here, Oblix being a “New York grill”. Given the location they could serve up pretty much any old slop here and still fill the place, so it was good to see that the kitchen made at least a token effort. Starters were fine, though an overcooked duck rather let the side down. Prices reflect the premium location. It is harmless enough, but fans of Zuma will be rather disappointed that something a little more ambitious was not attempted.

The Savoy River Room was the home of legendary chef Escoffier, but since the 2010 hotel refurbishment the River Room has already had one makeover and now has another. The new incarnation is Kaspar’s, named after the Savoy’s wooden black cat. Whether he will bring better luck is unclear. Our meal was rather mixed, with genuinely good desserts and one excellent monkfish dish, though at the high price point you would expect decent cooking. The service seemed torn between formal and casual, and not quite getting the format right.

Madhu’s in Southall has a very consistent kitchen, as one might expect for a place that dominates the UK’s Indian wedding catering market (on the day we visited they had catered six different large scale weddings, serving thousands). Service was uncharacteristically lax tonight, but the food was as good as ever: achari prawns were carefully cooked, cauliflower curry was good and a romali roti was excellent. For about £30 a head including drinks you will get enough food for at least another complete meal, and they will pack up leftovers for you.

Eight Over Eight is the younger sister of E&O, offering the same pan-Asian dining experience but in Chelsea rather than Notting Hill. The dining room is less cramped than E&O, and the place is wildly successful, with the pretty young things of Chelsea packed into the premises, both dining room and bar. Food was acceptable but not inspired, for example some sub-standard dim sum mixed in with quite good pad Thai. The price point here is very high for the quality of food delivered, but that doesn’t seem to trouble the locals.

I had an exceptionally good meal at Hedone, going the “carte blanche” full blown tasting menu route. Late season Luberon asparagus was the best I have ever had, including three-Michelin star places in Paris, and the elegant langoustine dish was a good demonstration of the more elaborate cooking style in place since they attained their first Michelin star. Desserts such as the sophisticated lemon variations dish and the millefeuille using made-from-scratch puff pastry show the technical skills of the kitchen, whose savoury dishes focus on showcasing the very best ingredients that its obsessive chef can find. It is only a matter of time before the second star appears. In the meantime just go and enjoy this superb food before the prices go up.

In other news, Sergio Hermann announced that he will close 3 star Michelin restaurant Oud Sluis in late December 2013. His announcement is here. He will continue to own Pure C, a one-star beachside restaurant in Cadzand, and will open La Chapelle in Antwerp in January 2014. Those who miss Bjorn van der Horst’s cooking (ex Eastside) will be pleased to know that he is returning to London running the kitchens of the Rosewood Hotel, which opens in October.

The new and the old of high-end Basque cuisine

Akelarre is one of a trio of three Michelin star establishments in San Sebastian and the least molecular in style. I had only been once, many years ago, so it was interesting to try it and compare to my recent meals at Arzak and Martin Bersategui. This Akelarre meal was a little better than my previous experience and there were a couple of really lovely dishes. However there were one or two relative duds in the meal as well, which at this sort of price point is a problem, though the magnificent view over the bay compensates.

Just along the coast near Bilbao is the latest Spanish three star restaurant, Azurmendi (pictured), and one that I knew little about other than noting its meteoric rise in the Michelin rankings. It was quite a revelation to me, set in a striking ultra-modern hillside building. Most vegetable and herbs are grown on the extensive property, and the quality of these in the dishes was superb. The cooking itself, though it certainly used some modern techniques, was impressive because the cooking wizardry was there in support of top class ingredients, rather than seeming to be the focus of the meal, as can often be the case these days. As well as the superb vegetables in various forms, the squid would have passed muster in a top restaurant in Japan. The service was superb, and the price point very fair indeed. The meal here was priced lower than at, say, Gordon Ramsay, with the wines pretty much UK retail price as a bonus. This was the best meal I have eaten in Spain.

The Petersham had an off-day on my most recent visit, probably not helped by the absence of its head chef. The view from Richmond Hill is still one of the finest in London, and my main course was very good, as were desserts. However one of the starters and a simple grilled Dover sole main course were distinctly sub-par, which was disappointing. Given my previous good meals here I hope this was an unrepresentative experience. I have nudged the website score down a point as a result of this evening.

The Terrace on Holland Street was a nice surprise, cooking a meal definitely above what one might reasonably expect from a neighbourhood restaurant, yet at a moderate price point. The restaurant is in a quiet side street off the Kensington High Street, has a few tables outside on its terrace, as the name suggests, and as a bonus has a fairly modest corkage charge if you bring your own wine. I will happily return.

I am pleased to add two new chef interviews to the website: Dominque Crenn of Atelier Crenn and Eneko Atxa of Azurmendi.

Zipping about

Relae (pictured) is a modernist restaurant in Copenhagen, the food served in a casual setting with counter seats and a few tables. They also have a bakery opposite the restaurant, and the bread from this was genuinely good. The food, though ultra-modern, managed to taste good as well as being clever, a combination that much modernist cooking fails to pull off. Staff were friendly and the food prices reasonably modest.

Braidwoods is a long-established Michelin starred restaurant in the countryside not too far from Glasgow. It is in a farmhouse and serves just the sort of food that I enjoy: simple, classically cooked without much messing about. It was all the more disappointing then that the meal did not really live up to expectations, despite the nice setting and the modest prices. Several dishes were overcooked, in some cases quite badly, and although there were also some pleasant things to eat there were to many slips for it to be worthy of a star.

The family team behind Sushi of Shiori have moved to Bayswater and created Shiori, unusual for London in that it is a kaiseki restaurant. Kaiseki is the most elaborate cuisine style of Japan and is a tasting menu intended to showcase the finest seasonal ingredients. It combines a variety of cooking styles, so in a kaiseki banquet you may see sashimi, a grilled dish, perhaps some tempura, sushi all deployed over the course of the meal. Shiori’s chef originally trained in a kaiseki restaurant in Kyoto, which is the home of this dining style. The meal I had was very enjoyable and attractively presented, but after my recent trips to Japan it was hard to really compare this meal to similar ones there, given the remarkable quality of ingredients that can be found in Japan compared to London. The bill at Shiori is, understandably, very high, but when you are charging more than the tasting menu at Hedone then diner expectations will be high, and the reality for me didn’t quite match the price point.

Goodman produces probably the best steak in London; for me it has the edge on Hawksmoor, before and after the considerable expansion of both restaurant groups. There is some attention to detail shown at Goodman, as in the very good chips and the good quality service, though non-meat dishes are merely ordinary. However, for the truly carnivorous this is the place to come, with high quality meat cooked consistently well, in this case on a Josper grill.

Next week I try the new and the old of high end food in the Basque country.

Ups and downs in London

Amico Bio (pictured) is a second branch of the Italian vegetarian restaurant, the original of which is in the City. I enjoyed the meal at the original branch despite some inconsistency in the cooking, so was rather disappointed a lunch at the Bloomsbury version. There was a very peculiar dessert, and charmless and inattentive service, in contrast to the genuine welcome I recall at the original branch. At least it is cheap.

HKK produced another superb tasting menu this week. This restaurant really has raised the bar for Chinese food in London. Ingredient quality is very high, such as the use of Bresse Chicken in a soup, and the Peking Duck is up there with the better places in Beijing. The dim sum is particularly superb, and by the time you count the slick service this all adds up to a very fine experience indeed.

Zafferano is an old favourite, but this is the first time I have been since chef Andy Needham left. Whilst the service was as good as ever, the cooking seemed to have slipped down a notch. The owners seem uninterested in regaining their star, and have packed more tables in and compressed the dining slots. They seem to be treating Zafferano as a cash cow, trading on its considerable past reputation, having managed to close down l’Oranger and Aubergine, which is not a track record that they should be proud of. This is still very good Italian food, but I have dropped the score a point to reflect the slip in food standard.

Café Spice Namaste is a frustrating restaurant. I loved Cyrus Todiwala’s cooking when he had his original small premises, but in the much larger current building I always seem to end up with inconsistent meals. The menu is very appealing, with all kinds of interesting dishes, yet the cooking never quite fires on all cylinders. This meal was another erratic experience, with excellent pork vindaloo yet duff tandoori salmon and sub-standard naan bread.

The mini-chain Patara is consistently the best bet in London for Thai food. Presentation is attractive and the cooking very reliable, with dishes such as marinated sea bass in banana leaf, and stir-fried snow-peas always enjoyable. Service at the Beauchamp Place branch was rather distracted at this visit, but the cooking was as good as ever.

Some old favourites

Back in London I returned to a few old favourites. The Ritz is a restaurant that is ignored by the foodie press, yet the cooking here over the last few years has become some of the most assured in London. Some new dishes that are prepared tableside add some restaurant theatre, such as a whole sea bass baked in pastry, and crepe Suzette. Ingredient quality is immaculate, as shown in a lovely langoustine dish. With its polished service and beautiful dining room (pictured) this is a restaurant that really delivers in all aspects.

Alyn Williams at The Westbury delivered another very good meal, starting with good cheese gougeres and continuing through carpaccio of scallops with langoustines, and an inventive curried cauliflower panna cotta with onion bhajia. 50 day aged pork with salt-baked kohlbari and wild leeks with oak moss was also excellent. The staff here are lovely and the dishes appealing and well executed.

Hedone is really in the groove at the moment. Its appearance on the San Pellegrino Top 100 list, one of only seven UK restaurants to do so, is an indication of its growing international reputation. The £35 lunch is a bargain here, as unlike some top London restaurants it does not just use cheap ingredients like pork belly or rabbit for its lower-priced lunch offer. Queen scallops were remarkably fresh (still alive just before serving), and the morels with the slow-cooked egg were terrific. An extra dish of langoustines with a clear but intensely flavoured seafood consommé was very impressive, as was really fresh red mullet. The raspberry millefeuille, using the delicate puff pastry that they make from scratch here, was lovely.

It was perhaps inevitable that my sole venture into Japanese food in London, Wabi, was disappointing after Tokyo. It is a smart place and the food was tolerable, but the difference in ingredient quality between here and Japan is so great that it is tough for any Japanese restaurant in London to really compete.

The blog next week will be a day or so later than usual due to travel.

Further Tokyo Dining

My exploration of the Tokyo dining scene continued with a range of different styles of restaurants. Kaiseki was represented by Kadowaki, which was interesting since although it broadly followed the kaiseki structure there were some non-traditional dishes too, such as shrimps with rice and chilli. This was very skilful cooking.

The quality of ingredients in Japan is unparalleled, and this could be seen at two very different price points. Nodaiwa is a famous eel restaurant, serving eel both simply steamed, and then in the more familiar form grilled with a sauce made using the liver of the eel. The restaurant uses wild rather than farmed eels when in season. Dons de La Nature showcases Japanese beef, in this case Matsusaka beef. In western countries we hear about Kobe beef but rarely about the other beef prefectures of Japan, yet locally there are several other areas that are held in as high regard as Kobe. Matsusaka is probably the most prestigious of all, and the beef I tried here was absolutely stunning, even better than the Matsusaka beef I had eaten previously. It was interesting that the lobster they served was also terrific, with lovely flavour. The chef had a sense of humour too, waving the lobster claw to us as a goodbye gesture just before it went into the saucepan.

Ryuan was a rather ordinary Chinese restaurant that unaccountably has a Michelin star. Better was XEX Omae, a teppanyaki restaurant that served some good beef and very nice lobster. Tokyo has plenty of European style restaurants but with the advantage of being able to use top Japanese ingredients. Aroma Fresca produced some excellent Italian food but with a Japanese twist, with classic dishes such as pasta ragu but also excellent half beak fish. The tomatoes used in one dish were superb, and would compete with the best on the Amalfi coast. Equateur was an interesting restaurant, serving French food with a Japanese influence. This place was, at the time of writing, the top-rated restaurant in Tokyo on Tabelog, the kanji only restaurant website that is rather like a constantly updated Zagat.

This drew an end to my visit to Japan, and as ever it was fascinating and enjoyable. Tokyo has tremendous depth in high quality restaurants, and is a place I would highly recommend to anyone interested in serious food. The blog next week will be a few days later than usual due to some travel.

Exploring the food scene of Tokyo

Tokyo is without doubt one of the great food cities of the world. It has at least 67,000 restaurants (the official figure, other estimates are higher), world class ingredients, a population interested in food and a perfectionist tradition applied to cooking. This is my eighth trip to Japan, and yet each time I come I feel I have barely scratched the surface of its restaurants. On this occasion there were no new 3 star restaurants in Tokyo or western Japan in 2013, so I was curious to try more “local” places, as well as other top places that came highly recommended but I had not had time to try on previous trips.

I tried two tempura restaurants, Rakutei and Mikawa. Rakutei is the more famous of the pair, and produced some really terrific tempura. If you are used to what passes for tempura in the UK then it may seem hard to see what the fuss is about: it is just deep-fried food, right? The difference in Japan is that top-class ingredients are used, and the tempura batter at the top-places is ultra light, so you are mainly tasting the ingredient and not the batter or the oil. For example, at both places the prawns were alive on the counter prepared literally seconds before cooking: seafood does not get fresher. I enjoyed both restaurants very much, Mikawa being exceptionally good value.

For kaiseki I tried Ginza Okamoto, the new venture from the ex head-chef of 3 star Yukimura. This was very impressive. The modenr side of kaiseki was shown at Aronia de Takazawa, which combines cutting edge tevhnqieu with high grade ingredients. I was also able to try the tonkatsu at Tokyo institution Maisen, serving good value pork cutlets for almost 50 years.

For teppanyaki I had a pleasant though somewhat expensive meal at Keyakizaka, which has very smart premises and English speaking chefs. This was fine but not really exciting. The only duff meal in the first few days was at Xao Xiong Fan Dian, the only two star Chinese place in Tokyo. This turned out to be deeply mediocre and yet wildly expensive; no wonder there were just two other diners. Michelin really lost the plot on this one.

For sushi I compared Sushi Sawada with Sushi Saito. Sawada was super, the quality of fish magnificent, and enjoyable bold use of fresh wasabi. I still fractionally preferred Sushi Saito, which is without doubt the best three Michelin starred restaurant in a car park. However Sawada was definitely top class, and for me was up there with other top sushi places like Yoshitake and Mizutani. Sushi Saito is the number 1 rated sushi place on the local guide Tabelog, and is pretty much perfect as a sushi restaurant; it is also a fraction the price of the other high end Tokyo sushi temples.

Tokyo also has some pretty parks, as illustrated. The transport system is magnificent in Japan, and everything just works: trains and even coaches turn up exactly on time, and people are remarkably helpful. This is useful when you get lost trying to find a restaurant, which is something even the locals struggle with given the remarkably discreet, not to say, stealth entrances of many places. The recently weakened yen is just one more reason to visit.

Indian restaurants in London v India

After a week in India I felt it a good week to benchmark a couple of Indian restaurants in London. Machaan is the second branch of a place in Hampton Wick, this new one opening a few weeks ago near Stamford Brook. The area around there, extending up to King Street in Hammersmith, is packed with utterly forgettable Indian restaurants, and sadly Machaan just adds to this set rather than bring anything better to the area. Dull, generic spicing, overcooked fish and a poor aloo tikki combined with bizarrely lengthy delays in delivering dishes. One day someone will hopefully open a good Indian restaurant in the Chiswick area, but this is not that day.

Better was Delhi Grill in Islington, which has attracted quite a local following and is unusual in having an active PR company, resulting in several print reviews. I found it pleasant and certainly above average, but not more than that, and the dishes that we tried were somewhat erratic in standard. It is at least quite moderately priced. Boosters for London often claim that Indian restaurants in London are better than those in India. I would suggest that those people need to travel more in India. To be sure, there are some good Indian restaurants in the capital (Haandi, Brilliant, Amaya etc) but still none to touch the very best places that I have eaten at in India.

Easily the best meal of the week was at Zoilo (pictured), an Argentinian tapas restaurant that opened a few months ago in Mayfair. The Argentinian places in London tend to be generic and uninspiring steak places like Gaucho Grill, but Zoilo has more ambition. Instead a small plate format showcases versions of street food and other snacks, with quite a few vegetarian choices. The dishes I tried were generally very good, the service excellent, the bill moderate. I would happily return.

If you want to get a taste of the Simon Rogan (of l’Enclume) culinary empire without leaving the capital then you will need to do so before 20^th June, which is when Roganic finishes its short-term lease. There are no announced plans for a replacement, but perhaps Mr Rogan will return to London at some future point.

The next blog will be a few days later than its usual Saturday slot, but there will be a lot of restaurants to make up for that.

Bombay mix

Mumbai is the commercial heart of India, a sprawling city of 12.5 million people, with traffic to match. It is quite cosmopolitan from a food perspective, and offers everything from bhel poori snacks on the beach to smart European and Asian restaurants. On this short trip I mixed it up a little, eating some street food on Chowpatty beach and at Bade Miya, vegetarian food at Shree Thaker Bhojonalay and also up-market fare at Ziya and Koh.

The street food was a mixed bunch. I tried some pretty dull, bland dishes on Chowpatty beach, but there was one really good place, a well-known stall called Bade Miya, which has been trading since the 1940s in a side street in southern Mumbai. This serves a number of dishes, but I enjoyed the chicken-tikka wrapped in a soft roti, which would have passed muster in a smart restaurant, and cost less than £2. This is a very well-known stall, and I saw taxis and limousines drawing up to pick up takeaway versions to transport to wealthy parts of the city.

Shree Thaker Bhojanalay is a tiny vegetarian restaurant that I had tried on a previous trip, so I was pleased to get the chance to pop back and try its thali once more. Just as before, the dishes were excellent, served in endless quantity and all for less than £4 a head. No wonder they do up to 300 covers a day in their little dining room.

One paradox of the emergence of Mumbai as a prosperous global city is that many of the new middle class want to eat exotic foreign food rather than Indian. Hence there are flashy European and Chinese restaurants, Japanese places and Thai; there is even a branch of Hakkasan. An example of this new breed is Koh, a Thai restaurant opened by a chef who has prospered in New York and own has restaurants in Barcelona and Bangkok too. It was certainly very smart, but the food seemed ordinary and overpriced to me. Judging by the almost total absence of other diners on the night of my visit, I am not the only one with this opinion.

The smart Indian restaurant that I tried was Ziya at the recently rebuilt Oberoi hotel. I had two meals here and they were both good, a pomfret dish in particular being excellent. This is subtler food than to be found on the streets, with nice presentation, clearly aiming at the affluent of Mumbai. With a lovely view and good food I felt that it succeeded quite well.

Balthazar comes to London

Balthazar (pictured) was an almost absurdly high profile opening, the sister of uber-fashionable Balthazar in New York. This much-delayed restaurant opened to a cunning and effective media campaign, deliberately keeping peak-time tables off limits even from day one in order to give the impression of instant success. The media frenzy seems to have induced some peculiar reviews from the print critics, who either have been praising Balthazar as the second coming or, alternatively, dismissing it in apocalyptic terms. It deserves neither extreme based on my meal there. It is just a nice brasserie with unusually well-trained staff and good bread, the dishes generally pleasant but no more than that, its pricing quite fair.

Il Ristorante is in the basement of the Bulgari hotel, opening last year with little media attention. Many restaurants in such a setting have “hotel dining room” syndrome, lazy affairs aimed at a captive audience, but it would be unfair to tar Il Ristorante with this brush. The chef has a serious background, the room is really pretty despite its basement location, and the waiting staff were excellent. This was my second meal here, and although it was a fraction less consistent than my first experience, it was still very good. A salad was beautifully presented, grilled focaccia ultra-thin, risotto of morels excellent. Someone wittily pointed out that, according to Twitter, there are only ten restaurants in London, though the ten do change, but Il Ristorante is unlikely ever to feature amongst these. The media, social and otherwise, seem obsessed with the latest foraged dishes, brick-licking culinary "innovations" and cocktail bar openings of east London, but that at least means that the grown-ups can easily get a table at restaurants like this one.

Apsleys remains the best Italian restaurant in London, in my view. The meal this week featured dazzling prawn tempura that would not be out of place in Tokyo, lovely tuna tartare, tender Sicilian prawns with buckwheat pasta, turbot with pesto and beef with superb peas and broad beans. Desserts kept up the high standard, with faultless service to match. I have been tempted for a while to bump up the score here a point, and this meal tipped me over the edge. Regular readers will know that I do not lightly dish out 18/20 scores, but I have now had several meals in a row here at this level.

In other news, Chrysan closed after just six months. Sad for the staff involved, though owners Hakkasan group have said that they will try to redeploy as many as possible throughout its extensive network of properties. I had just one, rather disappointing lunch there, and can see why it would struggle, especially given its slightly out of the way location. It seemed to me another example of owners spending a fortune on restaurant design but not investing enough in choosing the right head chef, who despite having worked in a couple of serious restaurants managed a very basic error in my solitary meal there.

Next week I will mostly be eating Indian food.

A visit to Paris

I had three very enjoyable, old-school style meals in Paris this week. Taillevent served impeccable classical food in a slightly old-fashioned but cosy dining room. It is exactly as I remember it from previous visits, the food based on top quality ingredients, the cooking of a high standard. The very reasonably priced wine list was a bonus, and the service was faultless. This may no longer be graced with three Michelin stars, but the food tasted sublime to me.

Even better was Guy Savoy, where a lengthy tasting menu showcased high-grade technique with top-notch ingredients, from stunning peas, excellent truffles through to terrific sea bass. The service was perfect, and the only drawback is the very sizeable bill. However this is top of the range 3 star cooking, with some memorable dishes.

Tour d’Argent has a wonderful setting, looking out over the Seine and Notre Dame Cathedral. Its demotion some time ago to one Michelin star made me nervous about the food, but I needn’t have worried: the meal was of a high standard, with some particularly good morels and langoustines. There can be few prettier settings for a meal.

By contrast with the high quality ingredients on display in Paris, the meal at the bizarrely named “Ametsa with Arzak Instruction” back in London featured some dismal ingredients. I have eaten better scallops in cheap pubs, and both sea bass and hake were watery and tasteless. I find it bizarre that chefs who have worked at Arzak could produce such a lacklustre meal. The name of the restaurant sounds like something produced by Google Translate when it was hungover, and the food was no more coherent. With a tasting menu weighing in at £105 per person for dinner, this is somewhere that I will not be troubling with my custom again.

A top 100 restaurant list came out this week: not the San Pellegrino, which appears in late April, but that of Elite Traveler Magazine (full disclosure: I write articles for this magazine). Whilst all such lists are controversial, I like the approach here of basing it on paying reader feedback rather than votes of people in the trade or journalists on expense accounts. Personally I find the Elite list pretty credible relative to the much more actively marketed San Pellegrino list. The Elite list was well-publicised, and my comments on it appeared in The Metro, Daily Mail and the Sun.

A tale of two meals

In the 2013 Italy Michelin guide there was one promotion and one demotion at the three star level: Piazza Duomo in Alba was elevated, Al Sorriso was demoted after fifteen years holding three stars. I was surprised at the latter, since I had eaten two superb meals at Al Sorriso, most recently in June 2010, so I was curious to see what had gone wrong. The answer is – nothing that I could discern. Al Sorriso delivered a lovely meal based on impeccable ingredients: top quality prawns, Fassone beef, spring truffles. Strong three star territory, lovely service, just as before. The very well-travelled gourmet that I went with had eaten half a dozen meals here in the last two years, and found no change whatever in the cooking standard over this time. I would encourage you to go to Al Sorriso if you are near Milan: it is near the lovely Italian lakes, and the family that run it are charming.

Piazza Duomo is at the other end of the culinary spectrum in terms of modernity, with a chef who worked at El Bulli. Culinary trickery using chemicals to create unusual textures, olives that were not olives, tomatoes that were not tomatoes. I lost count of the number of amuse-bouches. All this would be fine if it actually worked. Osteria Francescana is an excellent example of modern cooking which still respects the local ingredients, and has a sense of the traditional cooking of the local area, even though the cooking technique is as modern as could be. Sadly Piazza Duomo delivered nothing like that: there were some nice dishes, but time after time there were plates for food where one flavour dominated all the others, or where the chosen combinations of ingredients clashed. Even the most recognisably Italian dish, a pasta with “tomato sauce”, turned out instead to be using a bitter, metallic red pepper sauce instead. Given that Italy has some of the best tomatoes in the world, this seems to me a travesty. I am clearly not in tune with what Michelin are thinking when it comes to these two restaurants. The worst dish at Al Sorriso seemed to me better than the best one at Piazza Duomo.

The Waterman Arms is an unusual place, an old boozer by the river in Brentford where pub food is mixed in with authentic Japanese dishes. Sounds odd? The chef/landlord’s wife is Japanese, and lived in Japan for many years, so in between the fish and chips and steak and kidney pie you will tonkotsu. It is not the most sophisticated Japanese food you will find in London, but it is very much in the spirit of the izakaya bars you find in Japan, and the chef has an obvious passion for all things Japanese. As a bonus, it is extremely good value. If you are ever in Brentford be sure to give it a try.

Yauatcha continues to produce high quality dim sum, some of the best in London, albeit at a price. The food was excellent as ever on my visit this week, though service was unusually stretched: the place was rammed at lunch and I think they had some staff off sick, though the remaining ones did their best and remained quite calm. I am impressed by just how consistent the food here is despite the considerable size of the operation: nothing ever turns up cold or overcooked. Yauatcha is a well-oiled kitchen machine.

Eric Chavot returns to London

Brasserie Chavot (pictured) marks the return to London of Eric Chavot, who for a decade was the two Michelin star head chef of The Capital. I was far from impressed with the bistro offerings of Bruno Loubet and Joel Antunes, both fine chefs that returned to London in recent years, so I was rather nervous about Brasserie Chavot. Would this be a cynical, money-making operation serving mediocre food at high prices? Fortunately I need not have worried. Eric Chavot delivered a really excellent meal, even though the restaurant had barely opened. Moreover the dining room looks lovely, and I am sure this will prosper. Welcome back Eric.

La Trompette had been closed for refurbishment but also a chef change after a serious downgrade of its hygiene rating to one star and a notice from the local council to improve its standards in October 2012. Owner Nigel Platts Martin didn’t take any chances and installed Rob Weston, the head chef at The Square under Phil Howard for many years. The restaurant has an extended dining room, fresher décor and, most importantly, a better chef. Not only is Mr Weston familiar with the “location and content of the food safety manual”, which apparently was more than his predecessor, he can cook a lot better too. I had previously downgraded La Trompette a point in my scoring system and, based on the last meal I had there, was on the verge of reducing the score even further, but things are definitely turning around based on my meal there this week. It is good to see a local restaurant back on form.

Speaking of local restaurants on form, Hedone delivered a particularly fine meal this week. Photos of the dishes can be seen in the gallery, highlights being asparagus from Luberon with black truffles, excellent langoustine, stunning sea bass and pigeon with superb peas from Italy. A new dessert, a chocolate ganache with passion fruit topped with a chocolate disc coated with raspberry powder and served with vanilla ice cream was superbly balanced. Since they gained their first Michelin star head chef Mikael Jonsson has been able to recruit more experienced chefs, and now all but one person in the kitchen have worked at a two or three star Michelin restaurant; this shows in the greater polish and consistency of the dishes. This was the best overall meal I have eaten at Hedone, the kitchen team settling into a high performance groove now.

Locanda Locatelli is one of London’s best Italian restaurants. Giorgio Locatelli was the initial head chef at Zafferano before setting up on his own in Portman Square. The place is still very popular, and little seems to have changed since my last visit: the prices have nudged up even higher, the dining is still murkily lit, the bread is still excellent, the salads and pasta very good. I have always preferred Zafferano, mainly on the grounds of better service and the fact that I can actually read the menu there without bringing a torch. This view remains unchanged, though the food at Locanda Locatelli is certainly very good.

The final Europe Michelin guide for 2013 came out, the Main Cities of Europe, which covers places without their own country guide i.e. Scandinavia and eastern Europe. Two stars for Geranium in Copenhagen, and a first ever star for a restaurant in Poland called Atelier Amaro in Warsaw, but otherwise there was little change of note. In the 2013 season the only existing Michelin guide still due out is the Hokkaido guide, but it seems that there will also be a new Hiroshima guide too.

My series on private dining for Elite Traveler magazine continues with Per Se and also Hotel de Ville. As noted previously, the blog will be off its usual Saturday slot next week due to some travel.

A trio of top meals at HKK

Bincho Yakitori (pictured) is a simple Japanese grill restaurant, offering skewers of chicken and assorted other items grilled over charcoal. Ironically for a place specialising in chicken, I actually found the grilled chicken the least impressive item. However, grilled pork belly, an excellent grilled mackerel and even a well-constructed salad were very nice indeed. At under £20 a head this was good value for central London.

This was my third meal at HKK, without doubt the best Chinese restaurant in London. The tasting menu format has stayed the same though one or two different dishes were offered from our first visit. Ingredients are of an unusually high standard for Chinese food in London e.g. excellent monkfish, Bresse chicken, wagyu beef. Above all though the precision of the cooking is impressive, with very tender lobster, supremely delicate gai lan and fabulous dim sum showing a high level of skill. I have not had any better Chinese food in Hong Kong, let alone London.

The Duke of Sussex is an above average local gastropub serving a mix of pub grub and Spanish dishes. Fish and chips had reasonable batter, the chips could have been crisper, but overall this was pleasant enough. Seafood paella was better, the rice nicely cooked, while a tortilla had good texture. The other nice thing about this place is the moderate prices: £27 a head for plenty of food and wine.

The Brilliant was on its usual good form, cooking some excellent aloo tikki as well as rich methi chicken. Even on a Sunday evening the place was packed out, a testament to just how consistently good it has been since the 1970s when it opened. If you ever wanted to know how to cook Indian food properly, they also now offer cookery classes.

In other news, it was a shame to see The Crown at Whitebrook close this week. It is not as if Wales had a surfeit of Michelin starred restaurants. Another restaurant to fold is the River Room at The Savoy. The revamped River restaurant lasted only just over a year. It will reopen in 2013 in a different form, reportedly a seafood restaurant called Kaspar's Seafood and Grill. Kaspar is the Savoy cat, sadly a three-foot high wooden black cat statue rather than the real thing, used as a lucky charm from the 1920s onwards to act as the “fourteenth guest” to any private function unlucky enough to have thirteen diners.

This blog will deviate from its usual Saturday slot over the next couple of weeks due to some travel.

A week in California

In the heart of Silicon Valley’s venture capital industry is the Sand Hill Road. The relatively new Rosewood Hotel has a Michelin starred restaurant called Madera. I am not sure why the US Michelin inspectors seem so often to apply a different standard to restaurants to those in Europe, but this is a further good example. The food in this large hotel dining room was pleasant enough, with a simple if unremarkable salad, duck and doughnuts. Perfectly acceptable cooking, if expensive for what it was, and at least there is a pretty view. But a Michelin star? Please.

In San Francisco (pictured) I had time to try four restaurants. Atelier Crenn served sophisticated modern food, but firmly based on French culinary technique. Dominique Crenn is the first female US to gain two Michelin stars, and the tasting menu that I tried this week was very good. The dishes are complex but the modern techniques were not at the expense of flavour. I felt that the desserts rather lost the plot, but all the way through the many savoury courses the food was interesting and enjoyable. Service was also particularly slick.

Quince is the elder sister of Cotogna, and an altogether more formal affair. The Italian cooking demonstrated strong culinary technique, with very light gnocchi for example, and the food was consistently good throughout the meal. The dishes were presented attractively, and this was certainly not rustic food. Again the service was top notch.

The Slanted Door was the first San Francisco restaurant to take Vietnamese food up-market, and it is as popular as ever. Now with a lovely view over the bay from the Ferry Building, the dishes that I tried were generally good, even a little better than I recall from a decade ago. The vast premises were packed even at lunch, so the formula is clearly highly successful.

Another large, busy restaurant in the same area was Ozumo, serving simple but appealing modern Japanese food. I only sampled a bento box here, but the food was competent and very fairly priced, and I would happily pop back if in the area.

San Francisco is my favourite US city, with a stunning natural setting, interesting architecture and neighbourhoods and a tremendous variety of restaurants. It also managed to offer glorious warm weather this week, which made a nice change from the cold of London. It is easy to see why so many people move to California.

From Sketch to Gallery

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The Whitechapel Gallery Dining Rooms is on the ground floor of the Whitechapel Art Gallery, and has Angela Hartnett as consultant chef. The food is modern British, the tiny kitchen producing simple but well-executed dishes. A razor clam salad stood out, as did a prune and Armagnac tart. The dining room is light and airy, and the prices moderate. The cooking is pleasantly down to earth, unlike some of the art that hangs in the gallery around it.

Sketch Lecture Room and Library (pictured) now has Romain Chapel (son of legendary French chef Alain Chapel) in charge of the stoves, having moved to London after the closure of his family restaurant last year. The cooking style remains that of Pierre Gagnaire however, who is consultant chef at Sketch. The Lecture Room and Library is one of the most lavishly decorated dining rooms in London, and the service is remarkably good. The food is complex, with dishes having many elements, each brought on separate little dishes around a central component. This can work well when eating at Gagnaire in Paris, but my meal here this week seemed to be straying in places from the formula. For example a langoustine dish at Pierre Gagnaire in Paris has langoustine prepared five ways, which makes sense, but a langoustine dish at Sketch had some quite disparate elements (crab, avocado) to accompany the core langoustine foundation, which seemed less coherent to me. There was certainly some excellent cooking, such as a superb vanilla soufflé, but there were also some minor flaws, such as a stray bit of crab shell. The problem is that price level is set so high that you expect perfection rather than something merely very good: £172 a head with some glasses of wine is a lot of money, especially when that already had a £50 discount voucher taken into account. I would eat here more often if the pricing was kinder, but given that the place was full on a Tuesday lunch they obviously have no need to dial the prices down.

Langans is an old stager of the London dining scene, a sprawling brasserie seating 190 with a lengthy menu of appealing dishes. Tables were being turned on the night of my visit, so the place is clearly still highly successful. I enjoyed my veal Holstein and scallops with chorizo, though some other dishes tried were rather less successful. Still, there were no howlers, service was remarkably slick for such a busy operation, and the bill was not unreasonable. This is not a place aiming for Michelin stars, but it delivers what it intends to pretty well.

Kitchen W8 has a clever wheeze of offering no corkage on Sunday evenings, so you can bring your own wine at no cost instead of paying the chunky premium that London restaurants charge (on average, around three times retail price in London, though of course this varies wildly from place to place and wine to wine). The cooking at Kitchen W8 continues to be consistently good, with an enjoyable scallop starter and very good sea bream, though a pigeon main course was not flawless. Service, however, was very good indeed, and the bill fair given the standard of what appeared. Incidentally, you can bring your own wine to Kitchen W8 on any other night for a £20 corkage, which is quite reasonable if you like to drink good wine (a wine that retails at £10 will typically cost at least £30 on a restaurant list, possibly much more).

Diwana Bhel Poori has been one of my regular haunts ever since I moved to London in 1983. It is a very simple café near Euston station, serving south Indian snacks and dishes such as dosa, which are traditionally a breakfast dish in India. What I like about the place is the consistency and the rock-bottom prices: it is hard to spend £12 a head, even with some lassi to drink on top of the snacks. This week the bhel poori and aloo papri chat were as good as ever, as were the excellent samosas here. Although some of the other dishes here are less good, if you stick to the south Indian snacks then you encounter great value cooking.

The final 2013 Michelin country guide came out, the Michelin France Red Guide. There was a new three star, with chef Arnaud Donckele of the Résidence de la Pinède in St Tropez bringing France’s total of three stars to 27. Two Michelin stars were awarded to Yoanne Conte, La Table di Kilimandjaro, William Frachot, La Marine and Auberge du Pont d'Acigne. Alain Chapel sadly closed and so lost its two stars, and l’Espadon also lost its two stars. There were demotions from two star to one star for Le St James, Bigarade and Restaurant de Rois. There were 39 new one star places, and 35 deletions. In total, there are now 82 two star Michelin restaurants in France, and 487 one star establishments. It was nice to see ex-Greenhouse chef Antonin Bonnet gain a Michelin star for his new Paris venture Le Sergent Recruteur.

In case you are curious (and contrary to the inaccurate information published in The Daily Telegraph this week), at present Japan has 31 three star restaurants, 123 two stars and 516 one stars. These figures are subject to the Hokkaido guide emerging in April, which may adjust these current figures a little, and the heralded new Hiroshima guide in May, which will bump the Japan totals up further. At this moment there are 849 Michelin stars across Japan versus 732 in France. The only 2013 Michelin guides remaining are the Main Cities of Europe (covering Scandinavia and Eastern Europe), Hokkaido and Hiroshima.

Next week I head west of London in search of some interesting food.

Good food in, er, Watford

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The area around Rickmansworth and Watford is not the first that one associates with high quality food, but a couple of knowledgeable people had recommended Colettes at The Grove to me. The 40-seat restaurant is in a very large luxury hotel complex, with chef Russell Bateman having worked at some of the top restaurants in the UK and abroad. The food is modern British, and there were some really fine dishes, such as well-judged beef tartare and an excellent scallop dish. Service was silky smooth and the wine list was unusually good and fairly priced. I hope the locals appreciate it.

Da Nang Kitchen is a simple Vietnamese restaurant in Hammersmith. King Street has a large number of restaurants sitting cheek by jowl, but perilously few that you would actually return to. Although the cooking standard at Da Nang is rather erratic, the best dishes, such as a simple but very capable egg noodle dish, are genuinely good, and the friendly service and moderate pricing allow the diner to forgive some inconsistency. Worth a look if you are in the area.

Sauterelle (pictured) has a lovely view, another of the ex-financial centre locations that have served as the home to many London restaurants. The Wolseley used to be a Barclays Bank branch for example. Sauterelle is in the D&D restaurant group, and offers pleasant if unambitious modern British cooking at an acceptable price point. The food was a little uneven at my visit, though a quail starter in particular was very nice. This is not a restaurant aiming for Michelin stars, but it is certainly a more than acceptable place for a meal if you are in the City of London. The setting of the atrium of the Royal Exchange building is a very fine one indeed.

I enjoyed another fine meal at Apsleys, the Michelin-starred Italian restaurant in the Lanesborough hotel. Chef Heros de Agostinis has now been in place for over six months, and he is is hitting his stride. There were several really top notch dishes this week, such as superb tempura of langoustines, and in particular really stunning, airily light, gnocchi. The food here has for some time seemed to me more two Michelin star level than one, and continues to improve.

The final Michelin country guide in 2013 (France) comes out in a couple of weeks, though there may or may not have been a leak this week. As some of these leaks turn out to be false I will wait until the proper guide arrives to discuss the results. So far there have been just four new 3 star Michelin restaurants globally this year, so the question is whether France will add to that tally (rumours suggest that it will; we shall see).

A visit to Hyderabad

Hyderabad ("city of pearls") is India's fourth largest city (after Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore), the capital of Andhar Pradesh. The city (pictured) is located a little to the south of the centre India, with a population of around 7 million. It was historically a rich trading centre based around pearls and diamonds, its Golconda diamond mine being one of the world's earliest and most prolific diamond mines, the source of the 186 carat Kohinoor diamond now in the British crown jewels. Hyderabad was conquered by the Moghuls in 1687, and was ruled by a series of Nizams (local viceroys with a high degree of independence from the capital in Delhi) from 1724 to the present day, continuing from 1798 as one of the "princely states" of India under British rule. It actually briefly remained an independent state after the British withdrawal from India in 1947, and had to be invaded by the Indian army before becoming formally part of India in 1948.

The last Nizam of Hyderabad, Osman Ali Khan, was fabulously wealthy, the richest man in world in the 1930s with a personal wealth estimated at $210 billion in inflation-adjusted 2012 dollars. He used the Jacob diamond (one of the largest in the world at 184 carats) as a paperweight, supposedly having found it hidden in his father's shoe after his death. He bought the Falaknuma Palace from his prime minister, who was bankrupted by the cost of the building work. Perched on a hill overlooking Hyderabad, after the fall of Nizam rule in 1948 the palace was abandoned for many years but has now been restored as a 60 room luxury hotel owned by the Taj Hotel group.

The main restaurant of Falaknuma Palace is Adaa, serving Hyderabad cuisine. I was able to try much of the menu over several meals, and it was consistently excellent. The biriani was, as expected, superb (Hyderabad is regarded as the home of biriani in India, though the dish has Persian origins). However other dishes such as tandoori prawns and chicken, and assorted vegetable dishes including bhindi and cauliflower florets, were also top notch. This is right up there for me with the best Indian food that I have eaten anywhere on my fourteen visits to India.

Bo London is the first venture outside Hong Kong of Alvin Leung, who runs Bo Innovation in Hong Kong. Mr Leung is a relentless publicist, and styles himself “demon chef”, his food “X-Treme cuisine”. It is certainly X-Pensive, with the tasting menu in the evening priced above that of Gordon Ramsay at Royal h Hospital Road. The cooking applies modern cooking techniques to Cantonese cooking, so there are various unusual textures created through the use of chemicals, much as was pioneered at El Bulli when it was still open. However I found the ingredients ordinary, the flavours subdued and the technique far from cutting edge, albeit unusual in this cuisine. Some dim sum I tried was not particularly well-made, and other dishes merely decent. At these crushingly high prices there is no room for the merely ordinary: things need to be X-Ceptional, and the dishes that I tasted were a long way from that. It is particularly striking to compare this with the other recent high profile Chinese restaurant opening HKK, where the ingredients are top of the range and the technique flawless, all at a price way below that of Bo London.

Next week should see the release of the final Michelin 2013 country guide, the guide to France (there is also the Main Cities of Europe Guide, covering Scandinavia, and presumably also an updated Hokkaido guide, to come). So far there have been just four new 3 star restaurants globally in this season’s guides, so it will be interesting to see whether the recent restraint in dishing out stars continues.

A Blueprint for success

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The Blueprint Café (pictured) is on the bank of the Thames above the Design Museum, with a great view over Tower Bridge. Plenty of restaurants with a view are lazy affairs, knowing the view itself will pull in the punters, but The Blueprint Café never fell into this trap. For years it had the talented Jeremy Lee at the helm, who is now at Quo Vadis, and the restaurant is now run by Mark Jarvis. He produced an excellent lunch on my visit, even making his own bread from scratch. The dishes that I tried were interesting, attractive and well executed, and all at a modest price. You can definitely do much, much worse if you fancy a meal with a nice view in London.

Hawksmoor carved out a reputation as a superior steak house in its first incarnation, serving excellent quality meat and offering a kindly priced wine list. Its success allowed expansion, and we now have the fourth site in London, this the biggest of the lot at 235 seats overlooking Regent Street. At this branch they have made the welcome move of focusing on fish just as much as meat, teaming up with Mitch Tonks to supply high quality fish from Cornwall. Both the fish and the steak that we sampled was of good quality and carefully cooked, and indeed it was hard to fault the cooking at all, with accurate seasoning and precisely cooked vegetables. However the price is really high by the time you have added side dishes, and at this price level you could easily eat some much more elaborate food, even in central London. Certainly the formula seemed successful, with even a Sunday night very busy, so they have clearly come up with a successful formula, but it seemed to me a lot of money for what appeared.

The Malt House has just opened, a pub run by Claude Bosi of Hibiscus, his second such venture – the other is the Fox and Grapes in Wimbledon. This seemed promising, with an ex head chef of Hibiscus in charge of the kitchens at a pub. There is no doubt that, in the right hands, pub food can be special. The Hardwick with Steve Terry cooking is special, and The Empress in Hackney also features an ex-head chef of a Michelin starred place, to say nothing of The Harwood Arms nearby, which has earned a star of its own by serving gutsy, hearty pub food with a level of care and attention most restaurants can only dream of. Yet although there were some good dishes, notably a warm chicken terrine and also a superior burger, not everything worked. Carrots were overcooked and cabbage rather too salty even to my taste. The price point is distinctly higher than The Empress, with extras quite aggressively priced – if you want bread this is £4, for example, and bought in at that. I also felt that the menu was not quite that of a pub, not quite that of a restaurant, with rather challenging desserts and several dishes with unusual elements. It was early on, and perhaps the place will settle in, but for me it didn’t quite work.

Elite Traveler is a luxury travel magazine, whose website was re-launched this week. It has a new resident fine dining expert who seems to know his stuff:

Next week I go in search of a decent biryani.

Nobu revisited

Cinnamon Soho is a more casual variant on the successful Cinnamon Club and Cinnamon Kitchen. The same style of modern Indian cooking is to be found, and generally the food worked quite well, though there was some variation in quality between the dishes. A black dhal was particularly good and tandoori prawns were carefully cooked, though breads were less impressive. What I was a bit surprised at was the lacklustre service, which is out of character given the slick service to be encountered at its sister restaurants. Doubtless this can be addressed, and certainly the food was very pleasant.

Andrew Wong has opened an eponymous restaurant in Victoria after travelling and studying in China, in Sichuan province in particular. What I liked about the restaurant was that the dishes do not follow the usual formula seen in London. Most Chinese restaurants in the capital are Cantonese, and offer vast menus where obviously many of the ingredients cannot be fresh. The pure Sichuan places that exist tend to blast the palate with chillies and Sichuan peppercorns, often conveniently disguising very cheap cuts of meat. The A. Wong restaurant has an unusually short menu based on fresh ingredients, and mixes and matches Chinese regional approaches. A chicken dish made with subtle use of Sichuan peppercorns was a particularly good example of this approach, and indeed there were several very good dishes. As a bonus, portions were large and prices low, while service was unusually good by the admittedly low standards set by most Chinese restaurants in London. It is really good to see someone following a different path, and I hope it prospers.

Odin’s is one of those restaurants that Twitter forgot. Related to the better-known Langans, it was as famous for its art collection as its traditional food (a mix of French and British dishes). The original art collection has mostly been sold now, but there are still some David Hockney originals on the walls. The dining room is attractive and the service pleasant, the food itself decent rather than thrilling. However it is nice to see that not everywhere has to follow the latest fashion, and you won’t find any sea buckthorn or live ants to disturb your equilibrium on the menu here.

Nobu (pictured) was the first European branch of the now very extensive global chain of Japanese restaurants set up by Nobu Matsuhita. It is still smart and successful, attracting a moneyed set with its western-friendly take on Japanese food (no awkward animal parts, but more familiar dishes like black cod with miso and prawn tempura). The cooking is objectively quite good, though at my lunch this week the sushi seemed less than top notch, but to be fair the other dishes I tried were very capable. However the bill quickly mounts up, and it would be possible to spend a great deal of money with remarkable ease here. With mineral water at £6, service at 15% and the most expensive wine list that I have seen in London, it is hard to feel warm towards it.

I review a Soho institution

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Vasco and Piero Pavilion is a Soho institution, serving its Umbrian dishes for 32 years. The cooking is simple but careful, shown in the accurately balanced dressing of a starter of tuna and avocado salad. Pasta is mostly made from scratch, and ragu with tagliatelle was the sort of dish that you would be pleased to find emerging from a kitchen in Italy. Desserts were a little less good than the savoury courses, though pleasant enough. The restaurant was packed even on a bitterly cold January weekday, with the dining room squeezing in 65 diners in its main room with more diners in the basement. Don’t expect to stretch out here, as the tables are tiny and the tables as close together as feasible, but service was friendly and the atmosphere relaxed. I can certainly see why it is so successful.

I was so impressed with my first meal at HKK in December that I quickly scheduled a return visit. This time I tried dishes from the vegetarian menu as well as some of the dishes from the set meal (there is no a la carte here, just a tasting menu format). The standard of cooking is remarkably high, and a couple of the dishes seemed to me even a little better than on my previous visit, which may reflect tweaking in the early days. The Peking duck was remarkably good, but so was the extremely delicate selection of dim sum. From the vegetarian dishes, a vegetarian “chicken” dish (made from tofu) with black pepper sauce and baked in a red onion was extremely impressive, as was an unlikely sounding pairing of warm melon and aubergine. The ingredient quality here is high e.g. a chicken soup dish is made using poulet Bresse, and the lobster dish was as delicately prepared as at any fine French restaurant. Service was also very slick, it transpiring that the waiters are sent on a two-week induction course before being allowed out on the dining room floor. This is an unusually high level of staff investment, and it shows. HKK has really raised the bar for Chinese cooking in London.

The Harwood Arms is one of my favourite gastropubs. When I went there in the early days you could just breeze on in and get a table, which now requires considerable planning and advanced notice. Its great strength is game, with its co-owner Mike Robinson (of the charming Berkshire pub The Pot Kiln) a keen hunter, and providing some of the game that turns up on the Harwood’s table. True to form, the roe deer this week was excellent, but the rest of the cooking was up to scratch too: cured salmon, very well judged sea bass enjoyable lemon beignets at the end. These days there is an excellent wine list too. The Harwood is actually in between head chefs at the present, but with all the resources of the Ledbury at their disposal (Brett Graham is one of the three co-owners) this didn’t seem an issue or to have any effect on the standard of the cooking.

Regular readers of this blog will find it no surprise that I returned to Hedone, the west London venture of ex-blogger Mikael Jonsson, awarded its first Michelin star in its first year of opening. The kitchen was on excellent form as it reopened for the new year. The umami flan (a sort of savoury custard made using chicken stock, kombu and bonito) is back on the menu. Also excellent this week were a tender cuttlefish with artichoke and baby sika deer with root vegetables (pictured). Apple millefeuille was excellent, the puff pastry lovely.

Alan Yau opens Naamyaa

Naamyaa is the latest venture from the prolific Alan Yau, who brought you Wagamama and Hakkasan, as well as Busaba Eathai, all now successful chains that Mr Yau has sold on. Naamyaa is a casual, all-day Thai diner, the first branch of what undoubtedly will be a chain being situated in Islington. The décor is attractive, the cooking a little up and down but generally good, the staff friendly and the price levels modest. Despite a few oddities (I am hazy as to why a Thai café should offer burgers) the place was buzzing even late on a quiet January weekday evening, and doubtless will present Mr Yau with yet another commercial success.

Atelier Robuchon (pictured) is perhaps the most ambitious chain restaurant from a culinary viewpoint. With branches now from Tokyo to Taipei as well as the original branch in Paris, the carefully packaged Atelier offers classical French food, but in a deceptively casual setting. You set at bar stools, and are encouraged to ordered tapas style from the starter selection. The cooking is technically accomplished, as shown with excellent tarts for dessert, and the dishes are prettily plated. Yet as with all the Ateliers I have tried, the sky-high pricing leaves no room for error, and the service in this case was distinctly off key. It is certainly a capable restaurant, but two Michelin stars seems one too many to me.

Portes des Indes is a vast Indian restaurant owned by the same company that run the Blue Elephant chain of smart Thai restaurants. The formula of lavish décor (Portes des indes has full sized palm trees and a waterfall) and equally lavish prices is similar to the Blue Elephant. It had been perhaps a decade since I last visited, so it seemed time to catch up, but another decade or more will go by before you catch me here again. The surroundings are smart, the staff smooth-talking, but the prices are simply absurd for the level of food delivered. There are flashes of competence: a decent naan bread, and a really quite good crab starter, but these were only flashes. The most egregious dish was a parsee fish in banana leaf, which used tasteless lemon sole and hardly any marinade, resulting in an utterly bland plate of food. With a distinctly sub-par tandoori mixed grill weighing in at £25, the bill was already heading skywards before you factor in the £6 mineral water that the staff push on you in preference to the slightly cheaper Hildon water that is available. I am just surprised that it keeps going at all, based on this meal.

Brick Oven is a Milan mini-chain of casual eateries, that has now expanded into west London. They have chosen an awkward commercial site that has seen off a series of restaurants, good and bad, over the years. The speciality is Milanese style pizza, which has a very thin base, though a range of dishes are offered, from pasta, through grilled meats and even burgers. A £24 tuna steak seems like ambitious pricing for a local restaurant, though the pizzas are not excessive by the standards of the day. The meal was harmless enough, with a decent salad, a rather tasteless soup and an adequate pizza, and the staff were friendly. However the area is full of pizzerias, and in particular is just a few minutes walk along the road from the excellent Franco Manca, so it is not clear to me that the new kid on the block will prosper, adequate though it is as a local eaterie.

The Cafe Royal reopens

Happy New Year to everyone. This week I visited the Café Royal, or at least the first of its new restaurants. Later in 2013 (March, subject to builders) its flagship restaurant Domino will open (the beautifully restored Grill Room will be a champagne bar). At present the old restaurant open is the oddly named Ten Room, serving more casual European brasserie fare. The food was decent but the restaurant felt like a work in progress: the decoration was not finished, the staff seemed partly trained, with no full-time restaurant manager yet, and there was as yet only a token wine list. I don’t mind such things in a soft opening, but this was fully priced, with main courses in the £25 - £35 range, and teething troubles should really either be worked out properly prior to opening, or softened via a steep discount e.g. Le Café Anglais did a three-month half price offer when it opened while the kinks were ironed out. Having said all that, the food was quite good albeit heavily priced for this style of cooking, though the room itself was bizarrely decorated. Those coming to the Café Royal looking for pretty art deco original features will be confronted at Ten Room by a modern all-red décor (pictured) which I found quite jarring. Fortunately the Grill Room and the room where Domino will be based have been sympathetically restored rather than “improved” in the way that the Ten Room has been. I certainly look forward to seeing the new rooms when they are open, hopefully in the spring.

I revisited The Empress, which is unusual for an east-end pub in having a former head chef of a Michelin-starred restaurant at the helm. I had another good meal here, although they seem to be overly worried about being perceived as “casual” by serving a pigeon whole rather than cutting it up a little. I felt a bit like Fred Flintstone as I hacked my way through it, though the meat itself was good when I made it that far. Service was friendly and the coffee has greatly improved since my last visit. Definitely worth a look if you are in the area.

I also went back to The Four Seasons in Queensway, a perpetually bustling restaurant where even a reservation only really gets you a bump up the queue (you may still wait fifteen minutes or more beyond the booked time before being seated). The food is good here e.g. the roast duck, which is cunningly displayed in the window to draw diners in, was very nice. Other dishes like gai lan were also good, though overall I still think that Royal China has the edge. The service at Four Seasons is not for those wishing to linger, from being seated we were out of the restaurant in 45 minutes flat.

Tosa is not a destination restaurant, but a pleasant Japanese grill restaurant in Hammersmith. I actually like their tempura best of all, as skewers of duck were a fraction on the chewy side, and grilled chicken was pleasant but nothing special. Their soft-shell crab rolls were quite nice though grilled mackerel was ordinary, and the place is at least very cheap: £27 a head including drinks at dinner. However if you are looking for this style of food in west London then I suggest you head further out to Kiraku in Ealing, which is also cheap and is much better.

Happy New Year!

The Belgian Arms is a 200-year-old pub in a Berkshire village, taken over a few months ago by Nick Parkinson and Dominic Chapman, who run the Michelin-starred Royal Oak. The Belgian Arms aims at a less ambitious level, producing British food more familiar in a pub environment, but with a chef that worked at Pied a Terre. The meal was enjoyable and good value, with a partridge and red cabbage dish in particular very good indeed. There were still a few rough edges in the cooking compared to the sleek fare of The Royal Oak, but these were relatively minor issues that will doubtless be ironed out in time. Service, led by a manager who used to manage The Canteen in Chelsea Harbour many years ago, was friendly, and the bill will be modest if you keep away from the better end of the wine list, which I failed to do.

Cambio de Tercio (pictured) has for some time been the best Spanish restaurant in London, favoured by Rafael Nadal when he is in London; celebrities are rarely the epitome of restaurant taste, but Mr Nadal is a foodie, and I bumped into him recently when eating at the excellent Elkano in Getaria. Cambio’s cooking is more ambitious than the usual tapas food found in most of London’s Spanish restaurants. A lengthy tasting menu this week featured a tomato slow-cooked for eight hours with very intense flavour, and lovely Iberico pluma (pork shoulder) amongst a range of high quality dishes. They do an excellent rendition of the modern patatas bravas popularised by Sergio Arola in Madrid (originally developed in a restaurant in Seville). As a bonus, the wine list is excellent, with a deep coverage of Spanish produces, and the widest selection of sherry in London.

I have been visiting The Brilliant regularly since I came to London (it opened in 1980). The Brilliant is a Southall institution, owned by Gulu Anand, who along with his nephew Sanjay (who owns Madhus’s) lifted the level of Punjabi cooking beyond the basic cheap and cheerful curry houses that the area was known for. They are well-known for their butter chicken, and in my experience are good at pretty much anything that comes out of the tandoor, as well as cooking rich, hearty curries in traditional style. They are one of the very few restaurants in London to make romali roti, and the bhatura bread was also good this week. Portions are family sized, so it is easy to over-order, but they will pack up what you can’t eat: £50 will buy you a meal for two and enough food for a further meal at home.

As this is the last blog of 2012 I would like to wish you all happy New Year, and happy eating in 2013.

I visit the Lake District

L’Enclume is in a remote spot in the Lake District (pictured) and now has a second Michelin star. Simon Rogan’s cooking is noted for his extensive use of local ingredients, frequently unusual herbs, and also his innovative modern kitchen technique. Having tried Roganic I was intrigued to try the original version, and over a 17 course tasting menu I had some very good dishes. The best courses were very fine indeed and I can see why it has its second star.

Sushi Tetsu delivered an even better meal this week than when I first visited it in the summer. It is impressive that the chef manages to find fish of this quality in London (he does not use the “usual suspect” suppliers) and I was pleased that he now has real wasabi, which is still a rarity in restaurants but tastes vastly better than the coloured paste that is passed off under the name in most places. Sushi Tetsu, like many restaurants in Japan, is tiny with just seven seats. This allows customers to chat with the chef in an intimate setting, and is the closest thing you will get to a truly authentic sushi experience without getting on a plane to Tokyo. I have nudged my web site score up a point to reflect this improvement.

I tried my two local starred restaurants this week. La Trompette sticks to the successful formula of an appealing menu, great wine list and friendly service. Most dishes tried were fine, though a scallop dish with tasteless scallops and a rather odd seafood sauce was disappointing this week. Hopefully this was a temporary lapse rather than a sign of a more general problem.

Hedone continues to go from strength to strength in the culinary department. A more experienced team of chefs working in the open kitchen since its star was awarded now ensures a very high level of consistency. This week I enjoyed a fine Bresse capon in addition to some lovely turbot. I would encourage anyone that enjoys top quality ingredients to visit Hedone.

In other news, it was reported in Le Figaro that Yannick Alleno has decided to leave Le Meurice after almost ten years, a restaurant which he took from one to three well-deserved Michelin stars. He is apparently off to the restaurant Cheval Blanc in Courcheval.

I would like to take this opportunity to wish all of you a very happy Christmas.

Colbert comes to Sloane Square

Colbert (pictured) is the latest Corbin and King opening, and as with their other ventures it is a considerable commercial success. Sited on Sloane Square, the old Oriel site has been redeveloped as a traditional French bistro, all red banquettes and classic bistro dishes: think fish soup, snails, cassoulet etc. I tried one dinner and one lunch here, and the service, initially distinctly ragged, had improved significantly by the time of my second visit. The food was generally quite good, and although as ever at such places the bill can quickly mount up, the wine list here was not excessively marked up, especially given the prime location.

Seven Park Place is now home to chef William Drabble. Here he produces his carefully crafted classical dishes, a change of scene after his long stint at the now defunct Aubergine. The tiny dining room in this boutique hotel may not be to everyone’s taste though I quite like the cosy nature of the room. The cooking was, as on my previous visit, very capable, and the restaurant deserves its Michelin star in my view. Service was particularly good, with some very experienced and capable front of house staff.

It has been some years since I last went to Timo, now under independent ownership but still serving Italian food. For a neighbourhood restaurant the service was exceedingly slick, the staff friendly and capable. The cooking was good, the best dishes such as a pasta with wild boar ragout having excellent flavour, and desserts were excellent.

A couple of regular haunts of mine continue to reliably produce the goods. Royal China in Queensway is a bit of a barn, and service could rarely be described as cuddly, but the cooking is extremely consistent. Dishes such as steamed sea bass are never over-cooked and never under-cooked, and I wish that could be said of all professional kitchens in London.

I am also lucky to have some of the best pizza in London within a short walk of my house. Franco Manca, along with Santa Maria and its sister Sacro Cuore, have raised the standard of the commonplace pizza to a higher level. For years Londoners have been accustomed to the pre-bought bases and cheap ingredients of the high street chains, or have seen ill-considered attempts to create bizarre topping combinations in the hope that this will distract diners from a mediocre product (Union Jacks is just the latest in a long line). Franco Manca, which started in Brixton Market and has now added a Northcote Road branch as well as its Chiswick outlet, produces proper Naples-style pizza with high quality toppings, something that may not seem too much to hope for but yet is streets ahead of what passes for pizza in most high streets.

The Quality Chop House is reborn

The Quality Chop House (pictured) has a long history, so it was sad to see it close a couple of years ago and change hands. Now it has been re-launched under the original name and with a particularly interesting and kindly priced wine list. The food was good even a few days after the re-launch, and I imagine that the wine list will attract a new set of customers who would like to drink well with their meal and don’t want to pay the conventional high London mark-ups.

Bradleys is a neighbourhood restaurant whose cooking is rather better than you might reasonably expect from such a place. Its chef and owner had good classical training, and the cooking was as good this time as I remember it from a visit many years ago. The only thing that let the place down a little was some rather shoddy service on this visit, but the cooking was fine.

Zafferano has long been a favourite of mine, and I have been coming here regularly since it opened in 1995. Its loss of a Michelin star this year is puzzling to me, as I have not noticed any change in the cooking standards, the chef is unchanged and indeed it has been an unusually consistent restaurant in my experience. Sadly the chef Andy Needham has been prompted by the loss of star to move on, and at this point the no new head chef has been appointed. I went there for one last time with Andy cooking, and had an excellent meal: bruschetta of porcini were lovely, as was a pumpkin risotto and lamb encrusted with breadcrumbs and hazelnuts.

Gordon Ramsay is one of London’s pair of three Michelin star restaurants, under the watchful eye of head chef Clare Smyth. I very much enjoyed the tasting menu that I ate there this week, which throughout showed very high quality cooking technique and some very attractive presentation (see the review for photos). Of course with any long menu there will always be relative some highs and lows, but the best dishes were very good indeed, such as a warm foie gras dish with particularlyhigh quality foie gras, and some unusually good sweetbreads in another course.

Hedone continues on fine form at present, also delivering a lovely tasting menu. Highlights included hare Royale with remarkably delicate foie gras mousse, and some superb red mullet with artichoke. As ever, ingredient quality here was of the highest standard. The weekend (Friday and Saturday) lunch menu at £25 for three courses is exceptional value, but the tasting menu is the way to go here to really experience the best of the cooking.

The Hong Kong and Macau 2013 Michelin guide came out. Continuing in the restrained fashion of this year’s guides, there were no new three star restaurants, though there were five new two stars in Hong Kong and one in Macau. In all, there are a dozen two star restaurants in Hong Kong and four in Macau. There are 44 one star restaurants in Hong Kong and two in Macau. The fully updated list of 3 star restaurants is here. It was interesting that two high profile Japanese restaurants have opened here: the superb Ryugin has opened a branch on Hong Kong and was dazzling when I went a little while back; it received two stars immediately, and in my view should be three. Sushi Yoshitake also opened, and received two stars; I have only been to the Tokyo version, but this is superb. Other new two stars were Ah Yat Harbour View, Summer Palace, Tin Lung Heen and Golden Flower in Macau.

The only remaining European 2013 Michelin guides are those to France (due end February 2013) and the Main Cities of Europe guide, which covers Scandinavia and other European cities with no country guide. This usually comes out at the end of March. In 2012 there was also a Hokkaido guide in April, so presumably this will follow similar timing in 2013, and there is supposedly going to be a new guide to Hiroshima, due in May. If so, then the window of publication of new Michelin guides stretches ever longer, stretching from early October to May. Thus far there have been just four new 3 star restaurants globally, though clearly there is further potential here from the remaining guides.

I try some old stagers this week

Ziani is one of those restaurants that is essentially off the radar as far as the food press goes, but the little Italian local in Chelsea has been going 18 years, and was still turning tables on the night of my visit. It is consciously old-fashioned, and a classic spaghetti Bolognese was the best dish I tried. However a dish of fettuccine with scallops contained overcooked shellfish, and a salad looked like something from the 1980s. This inconsistency and the tiny tables would be more forgivable if this was cheap, but it was far from that, so it feels like a simple local place yet with similar pricing to more serious Italian places in central London.

Zayna is another restaurant that has been around a while yet is virtually unknown to the Twitterati. This Pakistani restaurant is quite smartly decorated, and used better quality prawns and chicken than most Asian places in London. Vegetable side dishes were a little weaker, but naan bread was excellent, and you could certainly do much worse for a curry in the vicinity of Oxford Street than this.

In London one tends to think of areas like Shoreditch as the home to authentic Vietnamese cooking, but Da Nang Kitchen and Bar in Hammersmith was a lot better than I was expecting: char-grilled prawns and a warm spicy salad featured quite good seafood, for example. I would still like to see someone in London really make an effort and produce an ambitious Vietnamese restaurant that reflects the best that Vietnamese food can offer. Hopefully this will happen at some point.

Barrica is one of a clutch of tapas bars in the vicinity of Charlotte Street, a path trodden first by Fino. It was certainly very busy on the night of my visit, but I was actually more impressed by the wine list here than the food. The wines were carefully chosen but also very fairly marked up, especially at the higher end of the list: this encourages wine lovers to spend a bit more, and is a win-win for customer and restaurant. For the tapas itself, a patatas bravas had an unusually good aioli, but some other dishes were less successful, such as somewhat soggy croquettes and over-salty padron peppers.

The Bombay Brassserie continues to deliver very good food since its relaunch, with excellent fluffy naans and accurate spicing for its curries. It is a very large dining room, and although the main room still retains a hotel dining room feel, the conservatory (pictured) is airy and appealing. A set lunch is offered for £22, and although prices in the evening are much higher, the cooking is of a high standard.

Two further Michelin 2013 guides appeared this week: The Netherlands and Tokyo. There was no change at the three star level in the Netherlands but two stars for the bizarrely named “&samhoud places” and Aan de Poel in Amsterdam, and De Treeswijkhoeve and in Waare. The Netherlands now has 18 two star restaurants in addition to its pair of three star ones. The Tokyo Guide was also rather subdued compared to recent years. At the three star level Araki closes in January (its chef planning to move to London in 2013, subject to his getting a visa), and the wildly underperforming Hamadaya was once again demoted. However Tokyo still has 14 three star restaurants. At the two star level there were promotions for Esquisse, Ginza Okamoto, Seizan, Shinbashi Sasada, Sushi Kimura and a Chinese restaurant called Xiao Xiong Fan Dian. Tokyo still has more than three times as many two star restaurants as the Netherlands in total, and a huge 214 one star places. Despite its relative pause for breath this year Tokyo still has the largest number of starred restaurants, and stars in total, of any city in the world by some distance. With 362 total stars it easily eclipses Paris with its 114 stars, New York with its 86 stars, and London with its 68.

The list of all three star restaurants has been updated and is here.

Reviews and Michelin news

The Dragon Palace is an unassuming Chinese restaurant on the Earls Court Road that has built up a reputation for its dim sum. This seemed fully justified to me when I visited this week. The standard steamed dumplings such as har gau were delicate, the char sui was fluffy and the cheung fun (pictured) unusually good; only a somewhat dry paper prawn dish was less good. Most of the dim sum dishes are around £3.50, which is very fair indeed, so Dragon Palace is well worth considering if you need somewhere to eat around Earls Court, an area not exactly blessed with good restaurants.

Khans has been on Westbourne Grove since 1977, and when I first came to London it was just one of a string of Indian places in that street (most of which have since become assorted Middle eastern restaurants). It is a huge place with considerable turnover, so is not somewhere you go for a romantic meal or loving, attentive service, but the food is pretty good and fairly priced. Naans are better here than most places, and a chicken biryani had good quality rice, though there was one poor prawn dish. There are certainly better Indian restaurants in London, but I have a nostalgic attachment to Khans.

The Hand and Flowers in Marlow gained a Michelin star in 2006 and a second star in 2011. I went a couple of years ago and, although the meal I had was fine, it seemed a little less than one star level to me. Given its elevation to two stars it seemed that I should revisit in case it had raised its game. Indeed one foodie that I trust told me that it was now cooking much better than in 2010. Well perhaps it is, but not in the dishes that I ordered on my revisit this week. There was one very good duck dish with excellent chips made from duck fat, and that was clearly in Michelin territory. However an apple tart without much apple and some over-salted broccoli were clearly not, and when I complain about over salting you know things have gone seriously awry, as if Gregg Wallace had said he didn’t like a dessert. Other dishes were merely pleasant, and certainly I didn’t dislike my Hand and Flower meal, I just don’t understand Michelin’s assessment. At the very least, there is a level of inconsistency, which it is hard to reconcile with a two star restaurant, and would not happen in genuine two star places like The Ledbury or Le Gavroche.

Diwana Bhel Poori is a vegetarian café in Euston that I am particularly fond of, having been going there regularly since I came to London in 1983. Not everything there is good, and if you order one of the curries then you will be disappointed, but if you stick to the South Indian dishes you will have a good time: bhel poor and aloo papri chat are as good here as at restaurants many times the price, and the dosas are fine too. Diwana has uncomfortable seating and the most basic of service, but it is nearly impossible to spend more than £12 a head, and how many places in London can you say that of?

The 2013 Michelin guides for Belgium, Luxembourg and Switzerland came out this week. There was no change at the three star level, whilst in Belgium there was a new two star called La Duree. In Switzerland there were two new star places Stucki and Ecco on Snow. The updates list of 3 stars is here and the map of them all is here.

There was more excitement with the 2013 Spain guide. Two new three-star places: Quique Dacosta in Denia (near Alicante) and Azurmendi near Bilbao, which has had a meteoric rise since it opened five years ago. There were also two new two star restaurants, Moments and Enotyeca. There are now 7 three-star, 17 two-star (unchanged) and 123 one star (up 6) restaurants in Spain. In Portugal there are still a pair of two-star restaurants and now nine one star restaurants (down one). The Netherlands 2013 guide comes out next week, and to follow will be the guides to Hong Kong, Tokyo, France and Hokkaido.

I spend a week eating in Madrid

Madrid, as befitting its considerable imperial history, has some fine buildings and monuments (one in Retiro Park is pictured) and a royal palace of such grandeur and proportions that it probably singlehandedly explains where all the spoils of empire actually went. There is also a small but interesting covered food market called San Miguel (pictured), where you can stand around nibbling on tapas and drinking wine whilst you shop. Madrid also boats the oldest restaurant in the world (according to the Guiness Book of Records), Botin, which has been operating since 1725. As it now seems to cater to primarily to tourists I didn't try the food there, but it was interesting to see the place (pictured right), which specialises in suckling pig.

During the week I was able to try a few different restaurants from my prior visits. Sacha was a good quality neighbourhood restaurant that had simple but enjoyable food, with one pasta dish in particular very good indeed. Somewhat more ambitious, and at a higher price point, was Viridiana, where a lengthy tasting menu had a few highs but was unrelentingly rich (even the desserts were cloying).

I was pleasantly surprised by Punto MX, which was that riskiest of restaurant excursions: a Mexican place. However unlike all the “gourmet’ Mexican restaurants that I have tried over the years in the USA and London, this was the real thing. The chef is from Mexico City and is clearly on a mission to educate European diners that Mexican food can be something beyond the Tex Mex slop that we have become accustomed to. Ingredient quality here was high e.g. wagyu beef tacos, and a chorizo that was made from scratch from Iberico pork. The tortillas and tacos were all made from scratch to order, and were a world apart from the hard pre-prepared industrial crisps that we are used to in London. I was quite taken aback by Punto MX and would be delighted to try it again some time. I would be even more delighted if they opened a branch near me.

The classiest meal of the week was at Club Allard, a meal that I was not particularly looking forward to since it was very much in the molecular gastronomy vein: edible menus, chemical trickery with food textures, ingredients disguised as other things, the works. Yet the skill level was so high that, although there was the odd dish I was not taken with, I found myself enjoying the meal very much. A main course pigeon in particular was dazzling, the high quality Bresse pigeon showing that the chef cared about ingredients and not just about the settings on his kitchen gadgets.

Two Michelin guides came out this week, the Chicago guide and the Italy guide. The Chicago guide had no surprises at the 3 star level, though L20 regained a star and there was another two star debutant in the form of Graham Elliot. The 16 one star restaurants constitutes a slight drop on previous years, however. The 2013 Italy guide contained more drama: Piazza Duomo in Alba was promoted to three stars, but Al Sorisso was sadly demoted. There are now 39 two star restaurants in Italy, with the additions of: Agli Amici in Udine, Antica Osteria Cera in Campagna Lupia and La Trota in Rivodutri. There are no less than 261 one star places.

A week including new reviews of Moreno and The Angler

I was looking forward to Moreno, a new restaurant in a Kensington with some serious culinary credentials: a two star chef (Moreno Cedroni) from Italy as consultant, some of his team brought over to do the cooking and service. I also heard good things from two knowledgeable people who went in the early weeks, when the chef was over from Italy for the launch. By the time I went the kitchen was in the hands of the official head chef, and unfortunately the meal was disappointing. I won’t repeat the detail of the review here, but one very good pasta dish showed there was some talent behind the stoves, but other mediocre dishes and poor ancillary items (low quality salad, stale bread) let the side down. Given the very high price point, exacerbated by one of the most highly marked-up wine lists I have seen in London, and it was a let down.

By contrast I thoroughly enjoyed my meal at Tony Fleming’s new kitchen, The Angler at the South Place Hotel. Solid classical cooking skills showed in an excellent shellfish soup and a gorgeous venison main course in particular. Service was also spot on, and the price acceptable despite the rooftop hotel location.

Two reliable restaurants also featured in my eating this week. Racine is the quintessential London take on the French bistro, and a rabbit with mustard sauce dish in particular was excellent; Henry Harris is a very capable chef. I remain unconvinced by the service here, which has on more than one occasion come across as aloof, but the food is very good.

The Ledbury (pictured) is now probably the toughest reservation to get in London in the fine dining scene (along with Gavroche), and it did not disappoint this week. A tasting menu featured some excellent dishes, in particular some stunning roe deer and very fine woodcock. Service here has always come across as friendly and highly competent, and so it was once more.

The Germany 2013 Michelin guide came out. Until this moment Michelin had not announced any new three star places in the four guides unveiled so far (New York, San Francisco, UK, western Japan), but the duck was broken with the elevation of La Belle Epoque on the Baltic Coast to the select three star club. There were no demotions at that level, and new two star status for Tim Raue, Villa Merton, Il Giardino, Sullberg-Seven Seas, Ophelia, Le Noir and Hirschen. Brenners Park and Schwingshack (I don’t make the names up) were demoted to one star. There are 209 one star places in Germany (up just one from 2012) and 36 two star restaurants. The list of three star restaurants announced so far around the world is here.

Three new reviews including Bubbledogs

Banca is a large and evidently expensive Italian restaurant aimed at the prosperous Mayfair set. The cooking was better than I was expecting, with for example some excellent focaccia made in the wood-fired oven, and very good whole baby roast chicken. The restaurant design, for all the money lavished on it, felt a little odd, with tables awkwardly placed and the layout causing staff to run around more than should be necessary e.g. the hats and coats are kept at the opposite end of the restaurant to the door, meaning plenty of exercise for the meet and greet staff. However the food itself was really quite good, though the prices reflect Mayfair’s position on the monopoly board.

Donostia is a pleasant tapas bar near Marble Arch, which delivered somewhat variable but generally good dishes when I visited. Pluma (pork shoulder) was nicely cooked, and the tortilla would have passed muster in San Sebastian, though some other dishes were not quite as good. However, overall this was a more than decent standard of tapas.

Bubbledogs (pictured) is effectively two restaurants: a bar area (with no reservations) serving just hot dogs and champagne, and a kitchen table at the back with a modernist-style tasting menu. The bar area has been dazzling successful, skilfully marketed and heaving when I visited, with queues out of the door when I arrived and when I left. The kitchen table is a more serious culinary affair, with its chef having worked at top restaurants around the world. It serves a no-choice tasting menu with all the latest culinary boxes ticked: foraged ingredients, duck hearts on the menu, raw fish with unusual garnishes. This aching sense of fashion consciousness would normally be a red flag for me, and certainly there was some inconsistency, but the chef is skilful enough to carry things off. A venison main course and a scallop dish in particular showed fine culinary skill. This was still early days, and the kitchen is still evolving, but already it is delivering to a high standard.

The Watermans Arms is a riverside boozer in Brentford without a river view, serving Japanese food cooked by an Englishman: not, on the face of it, a winning proposition. Yet in fact the Waterman Arms is a rather charming little place, with the chef/owner working on his own in the kitchen to knock out a mix of pub food and Japanese dishes. The oriental connection comes from the years he spent living in Japan (he has a Japanese wife) and although this is not the most sophisticated Japanese cooking in London it is hearty and enjoyable. Noodles with chicken were good on this visit, as was a pleasant if under-spiced Japanese beef curry. As a bonus the bill is almost absurdly low - £18 a head including drinks for more food than we could finish. If you are in the area then you could do a great deal worse.

Royal China was the restaurant that really raised the game for Cantonese restaurants in London, producing food of a higher standard than the Chinatown clichés that Londoners had assumed was all that Cantonese food consisted of. In its barn-like new layout the kitchen continues to crank out remarkably consistent dishes. Old favourites like steamed sea bass with black bean sauce always arrive immaculately cooked, as it did on this revisit. The cooking of vegetables is a strength here, as shown in delicate bak choi steamed with garlic. Even the service seems a bit more cuddly these days.

A week dining in Washington D.C.

The capital of the USA is an interesting city to visit, with plenty of famous sights (pictured) as well as some top class museums in the form of the various Smithsonians e.g. the Air and Space Museum is pretty special. Foreigners like myself can no longer just wander around the White House as we could in more innocent times (US citizens can still go on tours by prior arrangement), and these days the Capitol building is similarly not open to tourists unless a tour is arranged well in advance. During the 1990s you could just stroll in, but security is understandably much tighter now. Presumably Brits are treated with particular suspicion since they actually burnt down the Capitol building in 1814 during the “War of 1812”.

Washington D.C. no longer holds the dubious title of having the highest murder rate in the USA – in the 1990s it used to fight it out with Detroit as the wearer of that unfortunate crown. These days not just Detroit but places like Baltimore and New Orleans are scarier. The DC murder rate is down by a factor of nearly five since 1991, to a mere ten times that of London, so you can feel more at ease walking about. Unusually for the USA, Washington D.C. is quite low-rise. No building is higher than the Capitol building that houses Congress (bar one apartment block that preceded the relevant legislation, which limits building height, originally due to practical concerns about firefighting) so the place feels rather more accessible than many US cities. Handily, most of the main tourist attractions are located within walking distance of one another; and there is even a metro.

Curiously for a city where there are clearly a lot of people with wealth, many of them eating on expense accounts, it has always been a struggle to find really good food. On this trip I tried half a dozen places. The joint highest rated in Zagat was Marcel’s, which I actually found to be quite ordinary and in some ways the least satisfying meal of the entire week, though it was objectively competent in an old-fashioned kind of way. Corduroy was more casual and enjoyable, with a much more modern feel to the cooking. Cityzen was the smartest venue, with the bonus of a very fine wine list, though one rather duff dish slightly spoilt the overall experience, which was generally very good. Sushi Taro was pleasant though didn’t seem much more than that, but I enjoyed Makoto in leafy Georgetown. The best meal was at Komi, a place that I was not sure I was going to enjoy: there is a no-choice menu, no food photos allowed and a slightly reverent atmosphere, but I was won over by the interesting food and the excellent staff.

The Michelin guide to San Francisco and the surrounding area came out, with no changes at the three star level, but a second star for Atelier Crenn. Further Michelin guides will come out in a flurry in the coming weeks, with Tokyo due soon, and Germany usually the first of the European guides to appear. So far the star quotient has seemed more restrained than of late, though the Michelin Hong Kong guide, also due soon, can usually be relied upon to deliver something that is truly barking. We shall see.

This week includes an outing to Winchester

The Black Rat in Winchester (pictured) produced some pleasant British food in its rather peculiarly decorated rooms – not everyone wants to see anatomical pictures of human body parts when they go to the toilet. The cooking was competent if a little uneven, particularly at the dessert stage, but the service was simply poor. The manager described it as “relaxed”, but this was relaxed to the point of being horizontal. The disconnect between the professionalism evident in the kitchen and the utter lack of it shown to us by the front of house staff was striking.

Nathan Outlaw’s Seafood & Grill outlet at The Capital was one of the most anticipated openings in London this year. It labours under probably unrealistic expectations, since the Capital has had such distinguished chefs at the helm of its kitchen over the years, and Nathan’s Cornwall location means that many Londoners have not tried his food. However the Seafood and Grill is much simpler than the mothership Nathan Outlaw restaurant in Rock, and I suspect that many were hoping for a more ambitious venture for Nathan’s first capital restaurant. The food we had this week was generally quite good, though there were a couple of small problems, which is perhaps to be expected so early on (though there was no soft opening discount to lesson the impact of these). Grilled Dover sole was an example of the sort of thing to expect, which is fine, but at the prices charged there is no room for any slight imperfections.

The Goring is over a century old, and its dining room and menu reflect the tradition that this history brings. The dishes are very traditional, such as beef Wellington, and the seemingly mostly elderly clientele (at least on my visit) need not fear any hissop or sea buckthorn appearing in their desserts at The Goring. The food, with one small slip, was good and the service really top drawer. The wine list was also mark-up at quite fair levels by London standards. The Twiteratti seem to ignore places like The Goring and The Ritz, but there is a lot of pleasure to be had from eating well-made classical food.

At the other end of the smartness scale is Hot Stuff, an Indian takeaway and restaurant in Vauxhall. This is the sort of area where the Dobermans walk around in pairs, but the food at Hot Stuff was nicely cooked and well spiced, and very good value indeed. My 30th visit to Hedone was the first one since they were awarded their first Michelin star, and the dishes that I tried were very good, in particular sika deer with figs and some superb red mullet. Their three course £25 lunch on Fridays and Saturdays is one of the best bargains in London. There are some new photos in the picture gallery associated with the review.

One common theme in the new places that I visited this week was the remarkable low levels of lighting in the evening that the restaurants chose to adopt. Ignoring the effect on food photos (which these days should be at least a consideration for restaurants given how important social media can be), I do not understand why restaurant managers reduce lighting levels to such an extent that all but the most eagle-eyed are peering into the gloom at their menus. Perhaps I am just getting middle aged, but at one other table this week I noticed a diner resorting to a small torch to read his menu, and surely the chefs would like their customers to actually see the food that they have carefully prepared?

The 2013 Michelin guide to western Japan came out, and it saw an interesting reversal in the largesse of stars that until now has characterised the Michelin Japan Guides. Between them, Kyotoa, Osaka, Kobe and Nara boasted 15 three star Michelin restaurants in 2012, and 59 two star restaurants. In the 2013 guide these totals have reduced to 12 three stars and 52 two stars. At the one star there was also consolidation, with 213 compared to 223 in 2012. Tsuruyu and Hajime were demoted to two stars, and Mizai is currently delisted as it is in the process of moving premises to the other side of Maruyama Park in Kyoto. I think that the pruning is welcome; in my experience many of the three star places in western Japan are good, but it is highly debatable whether some of them were really worthy of three stars.; certainly Tsuruya was the weakest of the 3 star kaiseki places in Kyoto that I tried. I think further soul searching and pruning would be useful, as it is important that Michelin retain its credibility, especially at the three star level, and not be felt to be in some sense bowing to commercial pressures by doling out stars in Japan (where their print guide sales are of great significance to Michelin).

London restaurants old and new

The Table Café is by no means a new restaurant but has been getting some recent buzz with a new chef that used to work at Zucca (I am unsure for how long or in what capacity). I am unsure because she wasn’t there at the lunch service that I ate at, choosing instead to be at a marketing event. I understand that chefs are hard-working people and need time off, but if I had a penny for every time I went to a UK restaurant and discovered that the head chef was off I would have well, about £6.45. Interestingly, this hardly ever happens in continental Europe, even in places that could clearly fill the restaurant all the time e.g. at Hotel de Ville in Switzerland, when the chef is off on holiday, the restaurant closes. My rather ordinary meal may have been due to the chef absence but I cannot be certain, and for less than the price I paid for a lunch at a simple café with communal seating in Southwark I could have eaten lunch at a number Michelin starred restaurants in London, so I won’t be going back to find out.

The Wolseley has become so successful that now it is tough to get a reservation even for breakfast a couple of weeks ahead. In some ways this is hard to understand based on a lunch there this week. A lemon tart was good, but a salad Nicoise featured tinned tuna and distinctly ordinary artichokes, for example. However I think its appeal lies in its very easy on the eye menu (no sea buckthorn is going to rear its ugly head in any dish at The Wolseley) and above all its beautiful dining room (pictured), surely one of the prettiest in London. I have not found the service to be especially good on my visits here, but perhaps I have been unlucky. Whatever the reasons, the commercial success of the place is hard to argue with: some years ago it was reportedly the first UK restaurant to top £10 million annual revenue (it now does around £11.5 million in turnover).

I had another very good tasting menu at Apsleys, which had a chef change in mid-year and whose kitchen is now in the capable hands of Heros de Agostinis, who was sous chef at 3 star Michelin Pergola in Rome. The modern Italian style of Heinz Beck continues to be faithfully executed, with the strongest dishes for me the pasta dishes, which are stunning, along with top notch desserts. The wine list here is aggressively priced and for reasons that elude me the manager turns the lighting in the dining room down in the evening to such a low level that an owl would struggle to see its food in front of it, but these are the only niggles. At lunch the natural light in the room is lovely, though the wine doesn’t get any cheaper.

Shilpa is a simple local South Indian restaurant in King Street that serves more interesting food that most of the curry houses that line this road. The menu is extensive and the South Indian dishes such as aloo bonda are better than the generic Indian dishes such as the malai tikka. Service was better than on my previous visit, though admittedly that is not setting the bar very high. This is no somewhere to which to make an excursion, but if in Hammersmith you can do a lot worse – trust me, I have.

Coverage of my Michelin 3 star tour continued with an interview on Radio 4, which was actually carried out over Skype on an iPad from San Sebastian last week rather than from a studio; the wonders of technology.

San Sebastian, the food capital of Spain

San Sebastian (Donostia to the locals) is a charming coastal city in the heart of the Basque country. It is 102km (63 miles) from Bilbao airport if you want to fly in, an hour or so by car using the motorway linking Bilbao and San Sebastian. From the UK you can fly directly to Bilbao from Heathrow via Iberian Airlines (there is no direct British Airways flight), or from Stansted using Easyjet. San Sebastian is blessed with a glorious natural setting, with a crescent shaped harbour, a pier separating two extensive sandy beaches, framed by spectacular cliffs at either end. The architecture is elegant, reflecting the heritage of San Sebastian as the favoured holiday destination of the Spanish monarchy.

San Sebastian is a treasure trove for food lovers at all levels, from simple bars to elaborate cuisine. In the heart of the pedestrianised old town are literally dozens of pintxos (tapas) bars alongside the shops. People stroll between these, having a glass of wine and a small plate of food at each. Most bars have a speciality dish, and it would take weeks to fully sample the dishes on offer just within these few city streets. I tried a few of these, such as the tortilla at Nestor and the suckling pig at Cuchera, but on this trip I only had a chance to dabble in the pintxos. I did enjoy a lesser known bar called Casa Urola, where I tried a wider range of dishes over two visits, but I barely scratched the surface of the pintxos scene here. You can safely skip Branka, a place with stunning views but mediocre cooking ability.

There is a deep local food culture in San Sebastian, with excellent produce available in the local markets. We stayed, as we did on previous trips, at the recently refurbished and excellent Maria Christina hotel, which is just on the edge of the old town, a short stroll from the beach. I was particularly impressed by the seafood restaurant Elkano in a little fishing village called Geteria, Here we ate whole turbot grilled over charcoal in the open air, and the quality of the fish was breathtaking, simply served but with superb flavour. This is a restaurant that seems to have eluded Michelin entirely, yet the turbot here was better than at most three star Michelin restaurants. As a bonus, some of the prestigious Spanish wines in their cellar are well below the UK retail price. It reminded me of Extebarri, the excellent grill restaurant in the nearby Pyrenees.

At the fine dining end of things, San Sebastian has no less than three restaurants with three Michelin stars, as well as arguably the current spiritual home of modern cooking in the form of two star Mugaritz. Akelarre was closed this week, but I revisited Arzak and Martin Bersatagui, with unexpected results. On my last visit here I very much enjoyed Arzak but was unimpressed by Martin Bersatagui, but on this trip Martin Bersatagui delivered a much-improved meal, whereas Arzak had a distinctly off night compared to my two prior experiences here.

Mugaritz is the kind of restaurant that is likely to leave you with a strong impression, one way or the other, with its highly technical modernist cooking using just about every culinary gadget and trickery known to man. I did not enjoy it very much, as ingredient quality was mediocre and many of the taste combinations seemed just to clash or be experimental for the sake of it, rather than being nice to eat.

The find of the trip was a very basic but authentic local restaurant called Ibai, a place well-known to locals but again seemingly off the tourist map, and one of the toughest reservations to get in the city. This had utterly dazzling seafood and vegetable produce, cooked simply to show off the pure flavour of the ingredients. I had some of the best sole and squid I have ever eaten in my life here. Overall, San Sebastian is a delightful place to visit for a vacation, with its lovely setting, glorious beaches and terrific food at all levels.

The 2013 New York Michelin guide came out, with no change at the three star level, and a second star for Atera. My recent Michelin 3 star journey was covered in the weekend Financial Times, and also apparently in Waitrose Magazine. I was also quoted in this BBC piece.

This week I try two ambitious London openings

I had high hopes of Chrysan (pictured), which is the latest venture from Hakkasan Group, offering Japanese food rather than the Chinese cooking of their main outlets. In particular I was intrigued that the chef there had worked at Kikunoi in Kyoto, a serious kaiseki restaurant. However, although the room is smart and the service was top notch, my lunch visit was a rather mixed affair. Some effort had gone into sourcing, as shown by high grade beef, but the sushi was disappointing. It is always tricky going to restaurants soon after they open, but there was no kindly soft opening pricing, so the place needs to justify its hardly bargain-basement bill, and in my view it did not.

Il Ristorante is one of those places that would be easy to dismiss, residing as it does in the Bulgari Hotel in Mayfair, and clearly aimed at wealthy clientele. That would be a pity, since the chef here actually has a strong pedigree with Alain Ducasse, and can cook very well indeed. The food was surprisingly rustic, with artisan pasta with tomatoes very well made indeed, as was a classic risotto Milanese. The room is really beautiful, with a sweeping staircase, and the attention to detail was considerable, from the home-made bread to the excellent coffee. Service was also top notch. Sure, this was hardly a bargain meal, but it was no more than you would spend at plenty of restaurants in the area.

Zafferano is highly consistent in my experience, always doing a fine job with their salads and pasta in particular. Cuttlefish salad with green beans was excellent this week, as was ravioli with grouse and pheasant with a rich meat sauce. Gnocchi, so often disappointing in restaurants, here is light and delicious. Service has always been excellent here. The loss of its Michelin star is puzzling to me, as this is a regular haunt of mine and I have not noticed any change in the cooking here.

It was my first visit to l’Autre Pied since Andy McFadden took over the kitchen from Marcus Eaves. Garganelli pasta with crab was good, as was sika deer with pears, amongst other dishes tried. The new chef does seem very keen on adding a crunchy textural element to his dishes, as nibble after dish after dessert all had some form of flaky/crunchy component, which was fine for some of the dishes but seemed superfluous in others. Still, this was a good meal, and I have nudged my web site score up a notch from my previous visit.

In farcical scenes on Thursday morning, the Michelin web site inadvertently started to show the new UK stars, which were officially under wraps for a formal press launch on October 4th. Michelin eventually woke up to this after being asked for confirmation that the new stars were correct, then took the site back to its previous state, but not before screenshots of the new awards were all over Twitter. After an ostrich-like phase when they initially said that the press release would go ahead as planned a week later, they finally bowed to reality and late on Thursday announced that the leaked results were correct.

There is no change at the three star level, but two stars for Sketch, l’Enclume and Michael Wignall at The Latymer. There were first stars for Hedone, Alyn Williams at The Westbury, Medlar, Trishna, Launceston Place, St John Hotel and Dabbous, and a regained star for Tom Aikens. In the rest of the UK there were stars for Alimentum in Cambridge, The Hinds Head in Bray, Paul Ainsworth at Number 6 in Padstow, Tristan in Horsham, Thackeray’s in Royal Tunbridge Wells, The Red Lion in Pewsey, Raby Hunt in Darlington and The Bath Priory. In Ireland there were stars for Aniar in Galway and Locks Brasserie in Dublin. Gauthier and Zafferano lost their one star, as did Coworth Park, Reads, Sharrow Bay, Auberge du Lac and The Olive Branch and Beech House. Congratulations to all the new starred restaurants/chefs.

This blog will appear a day later than usual next week due to some travel.

A visit to Geneva

Chemin de Chateauvieux (pictured) is a two star Michelin restaurant in the countryside a few miles from Geneva. The setting is lovely but the food was very old-fashioned and, more worryingly, was rather erratic. What I found strange was that the tasting menu price was the same as at the superb 3 star Michelin restaurant Hotel de Ville, which was vastly superior in every aspect. The value for money factor here was not good at all.

Tonkotsu brings authentic ramen noodles to Soho, the stock for the noodles cooked for 18 hours in a huge pot in the open kitchen. This is a simple place, but the dishes I tried were nice, the best not surprisingly being the ramen itself. There is a smattering of other dishes, such as deep fried chicken, but the ramen is the star of the show.

I had another enjoyable lunch at the Italian deli Briciole in Marylebone, which offers a particularly kindly priced wine list in addition to a menu of fairly simple but hearty Italian food. Vitello tonnato was nicely made, while a rigatoni with ragu was a dish of pleasant comfort food, though arancini was less good than the last time I tried this dish here. Service was rather scatty on this occasion, but perfectly friendly; this is an enjoyable place for unpretentious Italian cooking.

I notched up my 29th meal at Hedone this week, which may seem a lot but is a lightweight performance compared to regular customer Robin Majumdar, who has eaten there so many times that he now has his name inscribed on one of the chairs at the restaurant. This week’s meal included some old favourites, such as the intense gazpacho with dill sorbet, and newer dishes such as their take on hare royale, and an unusual lobster dish that is cooked for a long time at very low temperature. As ever here, ingredients were to the highest standard and the cooking technique faultless. The bread, already the best in London, is now even better since they installed specialist bread ovens in the basement.

I am pleased to add a chef interview to the site, this one from Benoit Violier, who cooked a magnificent meal for me a week ago at Hotel de Ville in Switzerland. The new Michelin season starts in a few weeks but for now there are 109 three star Michelin restaurants in the world, and my reviews of all of them can be found here.

The old and new chefs of Cassis

Regular readers of this site will know that I have been impressed for some time with the cooking of Massimiliano Blasone, who launched Apsleys. Recently (as noted in an earlier blog) there was a change of chef there, and Massimiliano has moved to take over the reins at Cassis, in the process switching the cooking style from French to Italian. A few of the staff have moved with him, so it was no surprise that the cooking resembles that of Apsleys. What did surprise me was just how assured things were after just a few weeks. Over the course of a full tasting menu we had some terrific dishes, a pigeon main course in particular was a top drawer dish. The desserts were also of a very high standard.

The chef at Cassis had been David Escobar, who has now opened his own restaurant, a neighbourhood bistro called Chez l’Ami David in an obscure part of Ealing. This is a much simpler and less ambitious place than Cassis, serving French bistro classics to a local audience. A rabbit dish with tagliatelle was good, and the cooking in general was of a decent standard, but the ingredients used were very basic and there were some sloppy touches, which was disappointing given the experience that the chef has. It was certainly cheap, and if you lived nearby would be a nice enough place to frequent, but I just had the impression that the chef was going through the motions.

I am usually sceptical about restaurants with a view, as Hayler's law states that food gets worse as it gets higher - think airline food, for example, whereas places in basements have to try harder. However The Duck and Waffle in the Heron Tower seems to pull things off pretty well. This is mostly simple, casual fare, but was better than I was expecting, and given the stunning views from the 40th floor, frankly a lot better than the owners could probably get away with. There is a premium being paid for the view, but what a view.

I have now eaten three meals at the premises called Hotel de Ville in Crissier. The first was at the end of the career of Fredy Girardet, a highly regarded three Michelin star chef who Joel Robuchon regarded as world class, and who set the restaurant up in 1971. After Mr Girardet retired in 1996 his protégé Philippe Rochat took over, retaining its three Michelin stars. In April 2012 Mr Rochat himself has handed over the reins to Benoit Violier, who had worked in these same kitchens for 16 years after training with Joel Robuchon at Jamin. The meal this week was an absolutely superb display of classical French cooking. The seafood dishes in particular were stunning, such as a langoustine with lemon sauce (pictured), and the quality of all the sauces throughout the meal was remarkable. It is rare for a restaurant to deliver dish after dish of impeccable food, but this is what Hotel de Ville did. Of course this was hardly a bargain-basement meal, but the experience was magnificent, every bit as good as I recall it when the kitchen was headed by Philippe Rochat. This is one of the top 3 star restaurants around as far as I am concerned.

A week in London including the fashionable opening Lima

Soif, sister to Terroirs, is an enjoyable place. The cooking is simple and hearty, with steak tartare nicely seasoned, and a duck pastilla with couscous carefully cooked. This restaurant is just as much about the wine list as about the food, as one might expect from somewhere owned by a wine importer, and there are some genuine bargains on the list. Throw in friendly, efficient service and you have the recipe for a full restaurant, which this most certainly was on the evening that I visited.

NOPI delivered a very capable meal, Yotam Ottolenghi’s series of cafes and delis and his high media profile allowing him a certain latitude in serving small portions with quite high prices. However the dishes were well made and this is clearly a very successful formula. A nectarine galette for dessert (pictured) was a particularly well made dish.

Lima London is one of the current clutch of London openings that produces food that seems tailor-made for the photos of food blogs: pretty food with bright colours and precise presentation. There is nothing wrong with that, but you also have to get the flavours right, and the meal that I ate had much inconsistency in that department e.g. chocolate with potatoes is a combination I will not be seeking out again anytime soon. Service was also a friendly shambles, which was all the more disappointing given that they had hired as a restaurant manager someone that should know better.

The Brilliant is one of the most reliable Punjabi restaurants in London, and has been a regular haunt of mine for two decades. Fish pakora was delicate this week, whilst an old favourite dish of methi chicken had strong, vibrant spicing. This is one of the very few restaurants in London that make romali roti, the ultra-thin bread that is tossed by the chef in the air and then cooked on a hot steel hempishere for a few seconds before being folded.

A number of interesting restaurant openings are due to hit London in the autumn. Hakkasan is opening not one but two new outlets, one a Japanese restaurant in partnership with the chef from top kaiseki restaurant Kikunoi in Kyoto. The other will be a Chinese restaurant, but one offering a wider variety of regional Chinese dishes than the normal Hakkasan formula. This chain of restaurants has an unusually sure touch, so it will be intriguing to see what is delivered. Other high profile openings on the horizon include the much-delayed Balthazar bistro, and a London opening from Bo Innovation, a high profile restaurant in Hong Kong, as well as Nathan Outlaw taking over the restaurant at the Capital Hotel in Basil Street. London appears to have two economies operating in parallel at present. In outer London things are tough for restaurants, illustrated for example by the recent closing by Malcolm John of Le Cassoulet and Fish and Grill and general rumblings in the trade from many sources; even Brick Lane, the home of the sub £10 all you can eat Bangladeshi buffet, seems to be struggling. By contrast central London continues to boom, with seemingly an endless appetite for high profile restaurants in Mayfair and the City.

This week Which Travel published an article rating the top food destinations of the world. The process was quite elaborate and involved scoring twenty candidate cities on a wide range of criteria, the scores from a panel of three judges (of which I was one) then debated for a full day and finally amalgamated. San Sebastian emerged at the top, followed by Tokyo and Sydney.

Since I will be travelling next weekend, the blog will be published one day later than usual.

I complete my 3 star Michelin journey, at least for now.

Suda is a casual Thai café in Covent Garden, the sister of the excellent Patara mini-chain. It doesn’t offer the linen tablecloths or the pretty presentation of Patara, but produced some perfectly competent food, such as good pad Thai noodles and a nice sea bass with red curry. Covent Garden is not exactly heaving with good, affordable restaurants, so Suda is a useful addition.

I usually frequent the Royal China in Queensway, my benchmark Cantonese restaurant, but this week sampled its slightly larger sibling in Baker Street. The menu is the same at both and the service at the Baker Street branch considerably slicker, but I found the cooking less consistent than at the Queensway branch. It was certainly very good, and even a slightly off Royal China still beats most Chinese restaurants in London, but I will retain my allegiance to Queensway.

Hedone has become a bit like a canteen for me, and this was my 28th visit there in the year or so since it opened. Its ingredients-obsessed chef serves deceptively simple dishes, always aiming to highlight the top quality ingredients that he ruthlessly selects from a series of top quality suppliers. Tomatoes flown in from Italy were used in the lovely gazpacho, slip soles were stunningly fresh, cooked simply with a citrus butter. The 55 day aged beef was served with a beautifully sweet shallot, then the meal concluded with five different textures of lemon, from lemon meringue to lemon sorbet.

A nice Italian restaurant local to me is Tarantella, family-run and with a great deal of charm to go with the capable pizzas and pleasant pasta dishes. The pizzas have a good base and pleasant toppings, and the staff always seem to have a smile. This is a simple but very enjoyable restaurant.

A far more ambitious Italian restaurant is Cotidie, with its chef having two Michelin stars in Italy before moving to London. This was my second meal here, and it continues to impress me with the sheer authenticity of its cooking. Many Italian restaurants in London have a similar feel to one another, but the dishes at Cotidie are uncompromising and generally very successful.

Flocons de Sels is in a glorious location in the Alps, near the ski resort of Megeve and looking over the mountains (pictured), woodlands and valleys of this pretty area. The restaurant was promoted to three Michelin stars in the 2012 Guide, and its head chef and owner has a serious track record, training at some of the best restaurants in France (such as Les Ambassadeurs and Marc Veyrat) before opening here. Flocons de Sel certainly benefits from its stunning location, and uses plenty of local ingredients, such as foraged mushrooms and edible flowers, as is the trends these days. The meal that I had veered between styles, with nibbles that featured edible flowers on toast, through to some modern concotions, interspersed with classical dishes such as cep pithivier. I found the classical dishes to be the best executed, and not merely because I have a preference for that style; I just found a couple of the other dishes unsuccessful. Although as a consequence it was a somewhat variable meal, the smooth service, acceptable pricing and glorious view certainly count in its favour.

The complete list of three star Michelin restaurants is here, along with my reviews of them all. The Michelin Guides start their 2013 publication cycle around the beginning of October.

This week includes a new high class pizzeria

It was not that long ago that the standard of pizzas in London was actually raised by the entry of the Pizza Express chain (before that you mainly had Pizza Hut and the grim cardboard-like concoctions of the Deep Pan Pizza Company). Fortunately times have moved on, and there are now some authentic and high quality Italian pizzas available in London, with Franco Manca in Brixton market starting the trend, to their eternal credit. They now have stiff competition in the form of another Naples pizzeria Santa Maria in Ealing, and its baby sister, Sacro Cuore, which opened just over a week ago. Just as at Santa Maria, the pizzas here follow all the precepts of the Neapolitan Pizza Association, who produce a detailed set of rules as to how an authentic Naples style pizza should be prepared. The pizzas we tried were excellent, and what is more the price that they charge here (also true of Franco Manca) is actually less than you pay in most of the high street chains whose product are not even a fraction as good. Sure, this is not fine dining, but we can’t eat that sort of food every night, so it is great to see another high quality pizzeria come to London.

Garnier is the new venture of the former head chef at Racine, tucked away on the busy Earls Court Road rather than in smarter (but costlier) Knightsbridge. However the same perennially popular French bistro formula is being used, with a quite large menu of classic dishes on offer. The cooking was a little inconsistent, the main weakness being in the pastry and bread, but otherwise the dishes were nicely cooked and quite enjoyable. Service was charming, which will help customers over the relatively high food prices, though to be fair the wine list has many real bargains. Just weeks after opening, the restaurant was already turning away walk-ins, and so doubtless as it settles down this will continue to prosper.

Gauthier is in the Soho town house that was once The Lindsay House; these days Alexis Gauthier, formerly head chef of the now sadly defunct Roussillon, applies his classical French training in the kitchen. At this meal we were seated at a table in the wine cellar and tried the full tasting menu. As usual, the meal was very capable, with an excellent warm foie gras dish particularly enjoyable. I like the fact that they make the bread here, and the wide selection of rolls features some very good bread indeed. The menu had appealing dishes with none of the showiness that afflicts some younger London chefs: no one here is putting edible flowers on the plate with tweezers to make it look good on food blog photos, and there are no taste shocks to show how modern the chef is – no sea buckthorn foam will assault the palate at Gauthier. Instead they just cook nice things well.

I am also pleased to add a new chef interview to the web site, this time three Michelin star chef Thomas Buhner (pictured) of La Vie, where I had a high class meal some weeks ago.

In search of good value eating in London

The Bombay Palace has re-opened after a major refurbishment, but with the same head chef, and the cooking seemed to me to be of a similar level to how I recall it on a visit many years ago. The problem is that the food is merely pleasant, but prices are set very high indeed. The poor value for money was exacerbated on our visit by some truly dreadful service. Avoid.

Briciole (pictured) is a casual Italian deli and restaurant in Marylebone, with bread and pasta made from scratch and a kindly priced wine list. It seemed to me good value, pleasant food, and well worth a look if you are in the area. It is not high end food, but none the worse for that, and the modest wine markups, especially at the high end of the list, will be attractive to those who like to drink good wine but resent paying excessive restaurant wine prices.

The Ship and The Thatched House are sister pubs, The Ship the more ambitious of the two in culinary terms. The Thatched House is a simple neighbourhood pub, delivering decent food. The Ship managed a particularly good Scotch egg, and otherwise enjoyable and fairly priced pub food, with the bonus of a riverside setting.

Roganic, sister to l’Enclume in Cumbria, made quite a mark on the London restaurant scene under its opening chef Ben Spalding, but with Ben having moved on to a new venture I was curious to see whether the cooking had changed much. Over the course of a ten course tasting menu the new kitchen, under Andy Tomlinson, seemed to be keeping up the high standard. Roganic delivers interesting modern food, and benefits from enthusiastic and knowledgeable waiting staff.

Since my return from Hokkaido I also ventured back to some old favourites. The Royal Oak delivers terrific British food in a pub setting, and thoroughly deserved its Michelin star. We had a lovely meal, including a particularly fine rabbit and bacon pie.

Roka continues to pack in the punters for its take on Japanese food, though at £37 for a three small courses with water for lunch, no-one could accuse it of being cheap. The open kitchen is fun to watch, and the dishes that I ate were very competent, but it is an expensive place for the quality of food that appears on the plate. Perhaps it is all the time I have spent in Japan recently, but the food seemed slightly less good than I remember it.

Finally, Tangawizi continues to deliver authentic North Indian food in its simple setting just on the far side of Richmond Bridge. Tandoori cooking is skilful, breads are very good, and the curries well spiced and have great flavour. The meal here was less than half the price of The Bombay Palace, yet was vastly better, and the service here is very friendly.

A visit to Hokkaido, in northern Japan

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Hokkaido is the largest and most northerly of the 47 prefectures of Japan, an island connected to the main island of Honshu by an underwater railway. Sapporo is Hokkaido's main city, 830 km north of Tokyo. You can fly into Sapporo or take a lengthy 11 hour train ride from Tokyo. If flying in to Chitose international airport then take the airport express train into the city rather than a taxi, as the airport is a long way out; the train journey is 35 minutes and costs less than £10 but a taxi will take at least an hour and will be expensive (around £100).

Sapporo is a large city with a population of around 2 million, surrounded by hills. Modern Sapporo was developed in the 19th century with American assistance, and is consequently set out on a grid system, like Manhattan. It has some nice parks and an extensive and prettily landscaped university campus (pictured). I tried several restaurants within Sapporo, including its trio of three Michelin star restaurants, and also visited Lake Toya, where Michel Bras' outpost in Japan is based. Hokkaido is noted for its seafood and its agricultural produce, with some of the best ingredients in Japan.

Moliere is a French restaurant with Japanese chefs who have trained in France, and delivered a very enjoyable tasting menu. Most ingredients were local to Hokkaido, and given the high quality of these the meal had a good basis; the culinary technique was also of a high standard, with some excellent dishes such as a superb crab dish with radish discs. I was less taken by the desserts, but the savoury dishes were of a high standard, though three stars seems generous.

Nukumi is a tiny kaiseki restaurant with just six seats. This served up a classical kaiseki menu with its usual sequence of dishes highlighting various cooking styles, and included some very good sashimi, as well as some exotic ingredients such as squid intestine. It was very pleasant, though I would not say that it was really in the same league as the top Kyoto kaiseki restaurants, though to be fair it was also much cheaper than these.

Sapporo is not all about traditional food. I also tried La Musee, a fusion restaurant which mixes Italian and Japanese influences with a pinch of molecular gastronomy. This was very capable, with a particularly pretty salad and intensely flavoured courgette mousse for example.

I went to two sushi restaurants, one with three Michelin stars called Tanabe and one with two stars (Sushi Zen) but had been highly recommended to me by two separate people that know their sushi. Sushi Tanabe was very good, the staff friendly and (a rarity in Japan) speaking quite good English. I enjoyed the local Hokkaido crab best of all, and although the other sushi was good it didn't seem to me that the other sushi, such as the tuna, was quite in the same quality category as the top places in Tokyo. Sushizen seemed to me significantly better, with dazzling sushi. This was right up there with the very best sushi I haev eaten.

Michel Bras is in a luxury hotel in a striking setting, on the rim of a famous volcanic crater called lake Toya, with a view down over the Pacific on one side and the large lake with its islands on the other. The restaurant itself is a reproduction of the original Michel Bras, down to the exact decor and even the identical cep tart amuse-bouche. Local ingredients feature heavily, such as Hokkaido salmon and beef, but the cooking has very much the same style as Bras in Laguiole, and is in no way worse. The view out of the picture windows is breath taking, as is the size of the bill.

At the end of this trip I had visited 108 of the 109 three star Michelin restaurants in the world.

As regular readers will have noticed, the site has been had problems for a few days; this was due to an attack by hackers, compounded by a failure of the backup and a server hardware problem. The site is being worked on and is gradually recovering, but the damage was extensive and will take some time to fully fix. Apologies for this, and if you spot any issues please let me know.

A short visit to Hong Kong

Hong Kong is a bustling, vibrant city with an active food scene. In 2012 the erratic Michelin Hong Kong guide awarded three stars to two further restaurants, Otto e Mezzo and Atelier Robuchon. Atelier Robuchon here is, unsurprisingly, like other Atelier Robuchons around the world, with the same signature decor and the same technically highly competent, somewhat formulaic French cooking. The highlight of the meal was the pastry section of the meal (and the bread), and certainly the lunch we had here was very pleasant, but a long way from three star level.

It was a similar story with Otto e Mezzo, a very nice Italian restaurant that served up a very enjoyable fettuccine dish and was consistently good throughout the meal. The issue is that it was consistently one star cooking, not three star, but that is the fault of Michelin Hong Kong, not of Otto e Mezzo, who are producing good food. The Michelin Hong Kong guide really has been something of a lottery since its inception. To give the same star rating to the Atelier Robuchon here as to the genuinely world class Robuchon Galera seems to me baffling. However if you go to Otto e Mezze with appropriately set expectations then you will enjoy yourself.

It was nice to catch up briefly with Shane Osborn, formerly head chef of Pied a Terre. He has been brought in to turn around Alan Yau venture St Betty, which unlike Mr Yau's earlier ventures (Wagamama, Hakkasan, Busaba Eathai) served European food. I was rather confused by what St Betty was aiming for, as it was based in a shopping mall and had a large, casual dining feel, yet with fairly ambitious dishes. Shane had only been there a few weeks and clearly has some work to do, as in amongst some nice dishes were one overcooked fish dish, and some really poor bread. Still, given his track record he will doubtless have an impact.

A restaurant not even listed in Michelin but which delivered an excellent meal was Liberty Private Works. This was a French restaurant but serving food in a Japanese style, with diners sitting around a counter and all eating the same no-choice menu (rather like Brooklyn Fare without the attitude). The meal was very enjoyable, with some genuinely classy dishes and friendly service. It was fun watching the chefs work directly in front of you, and it has become one of the toughest reservations to get in the city.

A disappointment for me was Celebrity Cuisine, a traditional Cantonese restaurant. Given that it has a good reputation I suspect that I just didn't see the best of this place, but the food that I tried was very ordinary, and the service was absolutely abysmal, even by the hardly demanding standards of Hong Kong.

New to the city is Ryugin, sister to the wonderful restaurant of the same name in Tokyo. Five chefs have been brought over from the original Ryugin, and pretty much all the ingredients are flown in from Japan. The restaurant is in a striking location, on the 101st floor of the ICC tower (pictured), at the time of writing the fourth tallest building in the world. As one might imagine, the views over the Hong Kong skyline are impressive. The cooking matches the view, and Ryugin delivered easily the best meal of the visit, with dish after superb dish of the highest quality. The level of the cooking seemed to me to match that of the Roppongi original, and that is quite a complement. This was all the more remarkable given that it had only been open just over three months.

At the end of this trip I had been to 104 of the 109 three star Michelin restaurants in the world.

A week in San Sebastian

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San Sebastian (Donostia to the locals) is a charming coastal city in the heart of the Basque country. It is 102km (63 miles) from Bilbao airport if you want to fly in, an hour or so by car using the motorway linking Bilbao and San Sebastian. From the UK you can fly directly to Bilbao from Heathrow via Iberian Airlines (there is no direct British Airways flight), or from Stansted using Easyjet. San Sebastian is blessed with a glorious natural setting, with a crescent shaped harbour, a pier separating two extensive sandy beaches, framed by spectacular cliffs at either end. The architecture is elegant, reflecting the heritage of San Sebastian as the favoured holiday destination of the Spanish monarchy.

San Sebastian is a treasure trove for food lovers at all levels, from simple bars to elaborate cuisine. In the heart of the pedestrianised old town are literally dozens of pintxos (tapas) bars alongside the shops. People stroll between these, having a glass of wine and a small plate of food at each. Most bars have a speciality dish, and it would take weeks to fully sample the dishes on offer just within these few city streets. I tried a few of these, such as the tortilla at Nestor and the suckling pig at Cuchera, but on this trip I only had a chance to dabble in the pintxos. I did enjoy a lesser known bar called Casa Urola, where I tried a wider range of dishes over two visits, but I barely scratched the surface of the pintxos scene here. A place to avoid is Branka, which boasts very ordinary food though a stunning view over the harbour.

There is a deep local food culture in the area, with excellent produce available in the local markets. We stayed, as we did on previous trips, at the recently refurbished and excellent Maria Christina hotel, which is just on the edge of the old town, a short stroll from the beach. I was particularly impressed by the seafood restaurant Elkarno in a little fishing village called Geteria, Here we ate whole turbot grilled over charcoal in the open air, and the quality of the fish was breathtaking, simply served but with superb flavour. This is a restaurant that seems to have eluded Michelin entirely, yet the turbot here was better than at most three star Michelin restaurants. As a bonus, some of the prestigious Spanish wines in their cellar are well below the UK retail price. It reminded me of Extebarri, the excellent grill restaurant in the nearby Pyrenees.

At the fine dining end of things, San Sebastian has no less than three restaurants with three Michelin stars, as well as arguably the current spiritual home of modern cooking in the form of two star Mugaritz. Akelarre was closed this week, but I revisited Arzak and Martin Bersatagui, with unexpected results. On my last visit here I very much enjoyed Arzak but was unimpressed by Martin Bersatagui, but on this trip Martin Bersatagui delivered a much-improved meal, whereas Arzak had a distinctly off night compared to my two prior experiences here.

Mugaritz is the kind of restaurant that is likely to leave you with a strong impression, or way or the other, with its highly technical modernist cooking using just about every culinary gadget and trickery known to man. I did not enjoy it very much, as ingredient quality was mediocre and many of the taste combinations seemed just to clash or be experimental for the sake of it, rather than being nice to eat.

The find of the trip was a very simple but very authentic local restaurant called Ibai, a place well known to locals but again seemingly off the tourist map, and one of the toughest reservations to get in the city. This had simply dazzling seafood and vegetable produce, cooked simply to show off the pure flavour of the ingredients. I had some of the best sole and squid I have ever eaten in my life here. Overall, San Sebastian is a delightful place to visit for a vacation, with its lovely setting, glorious beaches and terrific food at all levels.

I visit the latest 3 star Michelin restaurant in Germany

At present there are 109 three Michelin star restaurants in the world, and I have now been to 102 of these with my visit this week to La Vie (pictured) in Osnabruck. La Vie cooks elaborate modern food, though the various techniques and tools chefs use these days are very much in the background, so there is no sense of molecular gastronomy in the dining room. Unlike some modern chefs Thomas Bühner is obsessive about ingredients, and has established a kitchen garden near the restaurant that can supply most of the vegetables and flowers used in the kitchen. Another nice bonus in a three star restaurant is the modest pricing of the wine list, with some genuine bargains higher up the list. The cooking at La Vie is very complex, with dishes often having a dozen or more garnishes. This creates a lot of stress for the kitchen, but although normally I am not a fan of this approach, in this case the execution was very skilful, and the extra elements generally worked in terms of flavour combination. The cooking was technically flawless and the service was exceptionally good, so if you enjoy modern cooking then consider a visit to Osnabruck.

Sushi Tetsu was a genuine find (hat tip to my mate Perm), a tiny sushi bar that has just opened in a narrow passageway in Clerkenwell. Sushi in London is a tricky thing: Billingsgate market is a long way from Tsukiji, not just geographically but in quality too, so there is a limit to how good the fish is likely to be, unless the chef goes to great lengths (few do). The chef at Tetsu is making more effort than most, and in particular found some very good sea bream during the course of my meal there. Not everything was to that level for sure (ordinary salmon and squid) but the quality here is a notch higher than just about any sushi bar currently operating in London. As nice touch, it is set out in the traditional Japanese style, with just seven seats arrayed around a counter. Now if they could only get some real wasabi…

Sonny’s Kitchen is the rebranded name of the venerable Sonnys in Barnes. Fortunately the rebranding has extended to the kitchen, with Alex Marks now in charge. Sonny’s has had a surprisingly high turnover of chefs over the years, and I hope that Alex hangs around, because he cooks skilfully. A very precisely cooked sea bream was the highlight of the meal, and a pata negra pork chop also went down well. The pricing is presumably suited to affluent Barnes, but still seems to me quite high for cooking at this level, and that is the main caveat.

The Gate in Hammersmith has branched out and has now opened up in Clerkenwell. It has a more casual fee than the original, but the same vegetarian food, the dishes borrowing liberally from assorted cuisines. As with the original gate, the menu reads better than the actual delivery. For example a take on som tam Thai salad lacked sufficient spicy punch, and summer pudding was well short on fruit flavour. It is reasonably cheap, and the lively atmosphere and its location near Sadlers Wells will doubtless cause it to do well, but I couldn’t get very excited over the cooking.

Next week the blog will resume its usual schedule, returning on Saturday 28th July. Before then I aim to make a further dent in those 3 star Michelin restaurants that I have yet to visit. I will be updating on Twitter for those interested.

A week in Ireland

Over the last few days I travelled from the west of Ireland to the east, keen to see some of the pretty Irish countryside. There are certainly some lovely spots, through the weather during the trip gave ample evidence as to why the countryside is so lush and verdant. We began at Ballynahinch, which nestles near the west coast in a lovely riverside setting (pictured). The natural setting is gorgeous, and quite a way from the nearest town. The hotel itself was pleasant if a little in need of renovation in places, but the restaurant did not match the setting. There were some good local ingredients, but in most cases these did not really get used as well as they might. Some dishes were fine, such as a nice Dover sole, but there were two dishes that were badly overcooked, which was a shame. Some of the waiting staff also badly need better training.

Ballyfin Demense is to the west of Dublin, a stately home that was falling down until it was rescued by a wealthy American family a decade ago. After a nine year refurbishment it looks great, every detail of the hotel sympathetically restored. The rooms are exquisitely appointed, and the house looks out over a lake and woodland, the estate over 600 acres in total, with features such as a folly with a waterfall leading down to the house (pictured). They have recruited some talented kitchen staff too, led by Fred Cordonnier, who was previous head chef of Ireland’s sole two star Michelin restaurant, Patrick Guilbaud. Here the excellent local ingredients, many grown on the estate, got the treatment they deserved, with a series of consistently good meals there during our stay. The hotel and waiting staff (led by Frederick Poivre) here were top drawer too. If you are ever looking to treat yourselves to a country escape then it would be hard to think of a nicer spot.

In Dublin I enjoyed Chapter One, whose experienced chef combines good classical technique with modern touches. A rabbit dish in particular was memorably good, and the service was excellent. It is easy to see why it was packed out, even on a mid-week lunch. It is no mean feat to fill a smart restaurant in Dublin in the current economy.

Finally, I was pleased to have a chance to revisit The Greenhouse, which I had briefly eaten at in April and been impressed. This visit confirmed the serious talent in the kitchen, with modern takes on classical dishes, such as a deconstructed beef tartare, and a stunning turbot dish. The attention to detail could be seen in the very delicate Parmesan tuiles and the moist rum baba as one of the petit fours. The restaurant’s Finnish chef, Mickael Viljanen, has real ability and is a name to watch for the future.

It may seem a cliché, but I found real warmth of welcome throughout Ireland, not just from the staff of smart hotels and restaurants, but with pretty much everyone we met. Even the immigration and customs officials at Shannon were charming, and this is not a description that usually springs to mind when going through an airport.

The blog will continue to have an erratic schedule in July due to further travel.

A busy week of eating, including the ambitious new opening Zedel

There is a new chef at Apsleys, but after just a few weeks the transition seems to have been very smooth. The tasting menu which we tried involved some genuinely classy dishes, from the simple (a perfectly executed Roman pasta dish with black pepper) through to more exotic (tempura of langoustines), but dish after dish was of a very high standard. This is, quite simply, the best Italian food in London. New chef Heros de Agostinis was previously sous chef at three star Michelin Pergola in Rome, and his experience shows.

The Petersham Nurseries has a new Australian chef, its previous Australian chef Skye Gyngell having departed recently, in interviews blaming the pressure of having a Michelin star thrust upon her (poor petal). I was always baffled by this particular star, as when I had eaten there the food seemed very ordinary in every way except the prices, which were very high indeed. I slightly preferred new chef Greg Malouf’s cooking, but although there are now some Middle Eastern touches (he is of Lebanese heritage) most dishes are still the kinds of things you might see in a good pub e.g. halibut on a bed of beans was one main course. My problem is not the distinctly casual service, but the price – that rustic halibut dish cost £28 as a main course. Three courses at lunch will set you back around £50 here just for food. Given the moderate quality of what is on offer, and the bargains that you can have in London for that price at lunch, I am surprised that they get away with this level of pricing. Yet the 120 seat greenhouse seemed pretty full on a Wednesday lunch.

Le Gavroche was on excellent form this week, with beautifully executed, classical French cooking and silky smooth service. As usual, desserts were the highlight, with a perfect passion fruit soufflé one example. It was interesting to compare this experience with lunch, where Gavoche do a good value lunch menu, with wine included coffee and water all, for £52. The last couple of times I opted for this lunch, and while it is certainly fairly priced, the dishes were of a lower standard than at my evening meal this week (still good you understand, just not as good as at dinner). I guess you get what you pay for.

Zedel Brasserie is the latest restaurant from the owners of The Wolseley, in the basement premises of what used to be Oliver Peyton’s The Atlantic. The vast space has been attractively redecorated, and the brasserie food was very competent. What was more surprising was just how cheap it was (see review for details), and a lemon tart in particular that I tried was a genuinely good dish at a distinctly kindly £3.

Cambio de Tercio produces the best Spanish food in London, and is now a little less cramped due to the recent expansion into the next door premises, allowing a larger dining room and much expanded kitchen. Sardines with grapes and Campari jelly were lovely, as was fillet of beef with bone marrow and a rich oloroso sauce, its richness cut through with a little apple and potato millefeuille. Cambio is a bargain, with a full tasting menu just £39, and wines frequently just twice their retail price. No wonder that it was packed out on a Monday night.

Hedone continues to produce dazzling food based on selecting top quality ingredients. A meal this week including really superb scallops that were alive just before serving and so had wonderful natural sweetness. A new razor clam dish bore no resemblance to the rubbery things that pass for razor clams at most UK restaurants, and 55 day aged beef was also superb. Cherries with pistachio macaroons is a new dessert (pictured) that is well worth trying too. Anyone who has an interest in ingredients should visit Hedone, and they now have a three course lunch menu available for just £25, which is a real bargain. Alternatively for the same price you could just about afford a main course at The Petersham Nurseries, at least if you order carefully there – decisions, decisions.

The blog will continue its slightly erratic schedule (rather than its usual Saturday slot) during July as I fit the writing in around a lot of travel. Follow me on Twitter for more real-time updates on my eating in the coming weeks.

A week in New York

I arrived in New York at the end of a June heatwave, with the temperature over 100F (38C), sweltering even late at night. Fortunately some thunderstorms cleared the air, and I was luck to experience some lovely sunny days with the temperatre in the mid 80s (around 30C). This allowed me to explore Central Park (pictured), surely one of the most attractive urban parks anywhere in the world (designed by Englishman Calvert Vaux, and completed in 1873). I was also able to walk along a rather more recent addition to New York’s limited park portfolio, The High Line (also pictured). This was an abandoned railway line, now over a mile of wild flowers and park benches thanks to a grass roots community effort in the teeth of opposition form the City Hall. It is rather wonderful as you walk along one storey above all the bustle of the streets.

On the food front, I was able to try a couple of New York’s most fashionable tables. Nomad is the sister to Eleven Madison Park, and is already bursting at the seams with trendy New Yorkers. It is an attractive space, and has a menu to match, the chicken with truffles the highlight of the meal. It did feel a bit frantic and noisy, but then this is New York.

Brooklyn Fare offers a no-choice tasting menu (no choice means what it says “no allergies will be accommodated”), the diners sitting on stools around a central area, rather like a Japanese “kappo kaiseki” counter experience. The meal had a lot of Japanese touches, with plenty of sashimi courses before moving into some very skilful cooked dishes. The lengthy list of things that you are allowed to do (pretty much eat and pay) and not allowed to do (plenty else) here is rather grating, but the quality of the ingredients is very high and the cooking was genuinely top drawer. It was a place I was not expecting to like, but the food is about as good as anywhere in New York.

Corton, by contrast, was a triumph of presentation over flavour, with a long sequence of artfully constructed dishes that had numerous clashing flavours, and some downright bad ideas (roast chicken ice cream and asparagus milk, for example). I will not be rushing back here. The lunch I had the next day at a simple yakitori bar called Tori Shin was about a tenth the price of Corton, but by no means less enjoyable.

Blue Hill at Stone Barns is the country cousin of the Greenwich Village original. Set on a working farm north of the city, the menu highlights the vegetables grown in the region, perhaps a little too much. There was a seemingly endless set of raw vegetables at the start of the meal: fennel, a turnip, some carrots, etc which seemed a little fetishist to me. When the cooking finally began, however, there were some excellent dishes, and the lengthy wine list contains some high end bargains.

Finally, Al Fiori was a pleasant if hardly dazzling experience, with good pasta the highlight of a meal that I remember as much for the tiny portions as for the food, which is probably not the idea. The dining room is attractive and the service slick, but I couldn’t get excited about it.

The blog will again be slightly off its usual schedule next week, due to some more travel coming up after a brief spell back in London. I will be updating Twitter regularly, for those interested.

This week includes Japanese food in a Brentford boozer

I tried two long-established restaurants this week: Signor Sassi and Le Caprice, both with loyal followings. Signor Sassi serves traditional Italian food in Knightsbridge, Le Caprice traditional British food a few doors down from the Ritz. There the comparison ends. Signor Sassi delivered some distinctly variable food, ranging from acceptable to downright bad, in a cramped setting with some of the most inept service I can recall in a long time. Given that its prices are comparable to nearby Zafferano, it is hard for me to grasp how it stays in business. The waiter/manager dealing with us seemed far too busy flirting with the female couple on the next table (“the special tonight ladies: it is me of course, ha ha” was one cringe-inducing example) to actually, you know, take our order or remember who had ordered what.

Le Caprice, on the other hand, is a very smooth operation, with a smart dining room, courteous and efficient service, and consistent cooking. To be sure, this is not the kind of place that is going to push any culinary boundaries, and for that we can be grateful. The London fashion these days appears to be to eat your food in what looks like an abandoned warehouse, preferably featuring either foraged food or burgers (possibly both), with deafening music whilst sitting on chairs that could have been designed by Torquemada. Le Caprice offers a pleasant haven for those wanting to eat recognisable dishes, capably cooked, in a pretty dining room (pictured) with efficient waiters. Long may it continue.

The Waterman’s Arms is a pub in Brentford with a chef who lived in Japan for several years (he has a Japanese wife). The intriguing consequence is that the menu is a mix of pub staples and Japanese food, with fish and chips on the menu alongside tonkatsu. All the dishes that we tried, of both styles, were competent, though the Japanese ones were more interesting and, I suspect, where the chef’s heart really lies. Of course trying to make a living knocking out Japanese comfort food in an old boozer next to a Premier Inn in Brentford is nothing if not challenging. Still, the regulars seemed happy enough, and I hope he finds a wider audience for the Japanese dishes that he clearly enjoys making. Maybe a pub in Ealing (where the Japanese school is) would be more fruitful territory? The nice thing is that the entire meal per person, including beer, was less than the price of the langoustine mush dish (they didn't actually call it that) at Signor Sassi. I wish the Waterman’s Arms well.

Alain Ducasse at the Dorchester is one of just four restaurants in Britain with three Michelin stars. Its desserts are the best in London, and its sauces are carefully made. Ducasse kitchens are noted for precision and careful weighing out of every ingredient, and this kind of accuracy is ideal for pastry in particular. The kitchen is on less certain ground in the savoury section of the meal, bringing some ingredients in from France and sourcing others from the UK. Asparagus from Provence tasted great at the meal I ate, but a lobster dish was less precisely cooked. The head chef was away when I visited, which perhaps did not help, but at three star level, and at these prices, everything should be faultless. The aggressive wine pricing means that the bill here quickly becomes very high indeed unless one avoids alcohol, and such high prices inevitably mean that customers are ultra-sensitive, though in fact the food prices here are not excessive by three star standards. Three courses here, even a la carte, would scarcely buy a starter at some Paris three star restaurants. The best strategy seem to be to either not drink or drink something very basic indeed, and just enjoy the high quality food, especially at the dessert stage of the meal.

Next week the blog will be a few days later than usual due to some travel; its normal Saturday slot will vary somewhat in the next few weeks as I will be in assorted foreign locations; food may be involved.

All change at Launceston Place

The new chef at Launceston Place is Tim Allen, who was previously the number two to Martin Burge at Whatley Manor. It is still early days but the cooking seemed significantly improved to me, with very good nibbles, nicely cooked turbot and a generally high standard of cooking during the meal. It is encouraging to see this venerable restaurant revitalised with a talented chef. I have nudged the score up a point on my web site based on this dinner.

Quantus is a neigbourhood restaurant with a South American chef and a remarkably high rating on Tripadvisor; as it was on my doorstep I was curious to try it. The meal started off well enough with a decent scallop dish, but a poor main course let things down. Service was quite good, and I suspect that this is much of its appeal to its regular local customers.

Zafferano is the Italian restaurant that I find most reliable in all of London. It uses high-grade ingredients, many flown over from Italy, and its precise cooking. It is extremely rare to encounter a dish at Zafferano that is off-key, and the service there is a well-oiled machine, with friendly waiters and flawless topping up. This week tagliatelle with porcini was particularly good, as was seasonal asparagus risotto, which had excellent texture. A passion fruit ice cream dessert finished off the meal in style. I have visited Zafferano so many times that I have stopped counting, and it continues to provide a lovely environment for dining out. My only niggle is the wine list, which these days is priced quite aggressively.

The Harwood Arms continues to serve terrific game. On this visit a slow-cooked neck of roebuck was particularly good, very tender and nicely paired with creamed celeriac, wild mushrooms and horseradish: an excellent combination. They still make the terrific venison Scotch egg which has become a trademark of The Harwood, and a chicken liver parfait starter also had lovely flavour. As well as the high quality cooking, the service here is always genuinely welcoming. Given the reasonable prices and the fairly priced wine list, The Harwood Arms is simply one of the most enjoyable places to eat in London.

A list of London food blogger’s favourite ten dishes appeared in Time Out, which included some choices of mine:

I am also delighted to add to the web site an interview with Massimiliano Alajmo (pictured), the youngest ever chef to be awarded three Michelin stars. I ate a stunning meal at his restaurant Calandre a few weeks ago.

A new regime at The Greenhouse

The Greenhouse has, for some weeks now, had a new head chef. Antonin Bonnet is opening his own place in Paris, and his replacement is Arnaud Bignon, previously head chef at Spondi in Athens, which was Greece’s only two Michelin star restaurant. I wish I could say that the cooking had gone up a notch, but it hadn’t based on what we tried. Challans duck was very good, as was a nice lemon dessert, but our starters were not of this level, and the bread was ordinary. The one thing that has gone up since my last visit is the price, which to be sure reflects good quality ingredients such as the duck and the nice langoustines I tried, but is still an awful lot of money for the level of cooking. My langoustine starter at £49 cost more than a whole dinner at La Trompette, while a heavily marked up wine list and expensive incidentals (£5.50) for a bottle of mineral water) bumps the price up further. The Greenhouse is certainly producing some good food, but its pricing strategy is going to put many customers off.

The Two Brothers in Finchley has the reputation of being one of the best fish and chips shops (strictly, it is a fish restaurant, with a chippie on the side) in London. Haddock and chips were good, but the Dover sole we tried was disappointing, and the service was dismal. I have tried just about all the main London fish and chip shops over the years, and I am constantly surprised at what a low standard is set. I can recall better fish and chips on a visit to Skegness many years ago than I have encountered at a chippie in London. After all, we are not talking here about producing subtle sauces: the cooking instrument is a deep fat fryer. Yet fish and chips can be a lovely thing, as shown by Simon Hopkinson when he was cooking at Bibendum many years ago, My conclusion is that you are better off going to a good restaurant that happens to have fish and chips on the menu: Bull and Last is one example of this, with its triple cooked chips.

I tried two Keralan restaurants this week. Rasa Maricham has the most unlikely of culinary settings, nestled in a Holiday Inn in Kings Cross. Yet the Keralan food that it produces is good, sister as it is to the best Keralan restaurants in London. Mysore bonda is a particular favourite dish of mine that they make very well there. Ragam has been trading for 27 years, producing very good uttapam in particular, and continuing to pack the punters in after all these years.

Hedone have now started a cheap lunch option: £19 for two courses, £25 for three courses, which gives people a way to try out their cooking while not forking out much. Of course you are not going to see turbot or 60 day aged beef in such a menu (though such things can be sampled at a supplement) but the dishes still show the same level of skill and ingredient commitment as the dinner menu. I had a lovely slow-cooked duck egg dish with peas, broad beans, carrots and lardo di colonatta, followed by line-caught pollock with watercress and baby gem lettuce. The pollock was a world away from the tasteless creature that we have become used to on London menus. The lemon variations dessert was refreshing and had particularly well-made lemon mousse. They even throw in an amuse-bouche, and of course there is the wonderful bread, which is by a wide margin the best bread in any London restaurant now.

In other news, there is a change in the kitchens at Apsleys. The new head chef is Heros de Agostinis, previously head sous chef at Pergola in Rome. I wish him well in his new role in London.

Some old favourites, including The Ledbury

Quaglino was the grande dame of the 1990s London dining scene. A spectacular cavernous dining room was the setting for Terence Conran’s flagship restaurant, which had a considerable impact in 1993. Today it is a little battered around the edges, but the room is still impressive. The food was never more than pleasant, and its new chef is doing a pretty good job of keeping up a reasonable standard of cooking despite the huge scale of this operation; service was also very slick this week, though when the bill arrives it is evident that you are paying a significant premium for the room. Nineteen years on though, the 400 seat room was full. By coincidence, this week the part owner, D&D restaurants, put Quaglino up for sale alongside all its 30 restaurants, presumably with the backing of Conran, who still owns 51% of the company; the sale is expected to raise at least £70 million.

Tangawizi is one of my favourite Indian restaurants. The tandoori cooking in particular is very skilful indeed, with superbly tender tandoori prawns this week just one example of this. The tandoor chef actually worked at the well-known Bhukara in India, and out in the kitchen they have a charcoal tandoor, which gives an authentic smoky note to the dishes produced in it (most Indian restaurants in the UK use gas-fired tandoors). The naan bread here is spectacularly good, wonderfully soft and supple; I have rarely eaten naan bread of this quality in India, let alone London.

Medlar was packed out on a Tuesday night, reflecting its carefully crafted appeal: attractive menu, good cooking, fair prices, top quality service. Duck egg tart is a very enjoyable dish, and seasonal asparagus was excellent, while even the simple passion fruit ice cream for dessert was of unusually high quality. You would be hard pressed to find better service anywhere in London, with our ex-Harwood Arms waitress outstanding.

The Ledbury is on top form at present. A lengthy tasting menu showed off its cooking virtuosity, with for example a lovely slow-cooked pork jowl dish and excellent pigeon. Mango millefeuille (pictured) was also delicious. Brett Graham’s cooking continues to develop, and he has a particularly good feel for meat cookery. It was interesting to see real wasabi (with the blade of beef dish) in a UK dining room too, apparently grown in England. I hope that other chefs start to pick up on this new development – real wasabi root, freshly grated, bears no resemblance to the coloured horseradish in tubes that passes itself off as wasabi in restaurants across the UK. The Ledbury is cooking as well as pretty much anywhere in London right now.

The Roebuck is my local, and the food there is quite capable, though this is very much a local pub and not a destination restaurant. Little touches, like flavouring the coleslaw with a little cumin (which I thought worked well) suggest a kitchen that cares. They make a nice burger,and there is an attractive pub garden at the back, ideal for the summer that has finally arrived in London.

The old and the new of London

The Guinea Grill is one of those under-the-radar places with a loyal following, with a reputation for its high quality steak and pies. I enjoyed the steak that I tried very much but was not that taken with the pie, and the other dishes were just so-so. Given the impressive size of the bill this makes it hard to recommend, though with sixty years in business they clearly have found a formula that has an audience.

Olivomare is a Sardinian seafood restaurant in Belgravia. The cooking was fine, but I found the service poor and the room cramped. Worse, the wine-list they published on-line turned out to bear no resemblance to the one presented at the restaurant, with some wines dramatically more expensive than the on-line version (oddly, I didn’t spot any wines where the price difference was the other way around). Poor show.

L’Ortolan near Reading has a Michelin star and has executive chef Alan Murchison, who recently featured on TV series The Great British Menu. As so often in British kitchens there was no sign of him tonight (a head chef being absent hardly ever seems to occur in Japan or France) but we enjoyed a pleasant enough meal, with a rabbit and foie gras terrine being the highlight for me. In general the kitchen seemed to tend towards complexity, adding more garnishes than actually enhanced the dishes. The prices seemed quite high too, with an expensive wine list and food prices that were higher than plenty of starred restaurants in London.

Mishkin is the latest of Russell Norman’s growing empire of casual yet wildly popular small-plate eateries. This one cooks Jewish food, or at least something that would pass for Jewish food if you didn’t look too closely (it is not kosher). It was a slightly uneven experience, with some gloopy macaroni cheese the least good dish, but the Reuben sandwich was nicely made. Service was good and the bill fairly low, and it is a place to which I would happily return.

I am delighted to add an excellent chef interview to the site this week, from 3 star Michelin chef Massimo Bottura of Osteria Francescana (pictured).

In other news, Tokyo is set to relax its restrictions on fugu preparation – what could possibly go wrong?

A day out to the coast

Pitt Cue serves barbecue in a pit that you queue for. There are no reservations, but when I went for an early lunch there was no trouble getting in. It served genuinely good pulled pork, and enjoyable rib eye, though there was some unevenness in other elements, such as dessert. However, if you stick to the core competence of the restaurant, whose passion is clearly around meat, then you will enjoy some very fine barbecued food indeed.

Tom’s Kitchen underwent a recent refurbishment. It is a commercially successful restaurant, part of the reason for this being its very appealing menu of British dishes. Although the menu emphasises its suppliers, the quality of ingredients was not exceptional on my visit, but there were some very enjoyable dishes, and the cooking was generally good. The bill quickly mounts up though, and I find it absurd that our waiter had no idea who had ordered what, as well as forgetting one of the dishes that had been ordered. At this price point service should be of a higher standard than we encountered.

The Sportsman in Kent (pictured) is one of my favourite places, with Stephen Harris’s ingredients-driven, deceptively simple cooking a delight. A highlight this week was a gorgeous new crab dish (see the review for details and photos of the meal). Even though prices have nudged up over the years, this is still a real bargain, and worth the almost inevitably lengthy journey there (unless of course you live in Seasalter).

A week back in London would hardly be complete for me without a visit to Hedone. The umami flan delighted my guests from Japan, and the bread, which has always been excellent here, has now climbed to a real pinnacle of quality: it is hard to imagine eating better bread in a restaurant anywhere. Several new dishes featured in the tasting menu, including tender oxtail that had been slow-cooked for no less than 100 hours. Some old favourites were still there, such as the dazzling slip soles, this time with ginger butter. Also excellent was the strawberry millefeuille, made with puff pastry that has been made from scratch in the kitchen, and served with a stunning strawberry sorbet. As ever, the ingredient quality was impeccable.

As an aside, I came across an interesting and useful graphic that shows the set lunch prices of all the starred Michelin restaurants in the UK: This is here http://tinyurl.com/cjvlqj6 (produced by www.thetrainline.com)

A gentleman in Verona, and two 3 star meals

Verona is a very attractive city in the north of Italy, between Milan and Venice. You can fly directly there from London, and it is a handy base to visit a couple of Italy’s top restaurants, as well as having some good places of its own. We stayed in the heart of the old town, at a charming boutique hotel called Sogna e Giuletta. Verona has a fine Roman arena, home to open air opera at the height of summer, as well as several fine churches and other monuments (pictured). It is a fairly compact city, and easy to explore on foot.

In Verona itself I tried two restaurants. Osteria la Fontanina is a charming little family restaurant that has a Michelin star, but is a long way from popular perceptions of a Michelin-starred restaurant. The place is tiny, with the chef cooking the dishes and bringing them to the table himself, his wife dealing with the wine and taking the orders. The food is very much of the region, with simple dishes based around seasonal ingredients. The best dish was a genuinely top class guinea fowl main course, and in general the food was of a good standard, the service friendly and the wine cheap.

The most celebrated restaurant in Verona is Il Desco, which has two Michelin stars. It is a little grander, but still very much a family restaurant, with father and son in the kitchen and the chef’s wife leading the service. The pea risotto in particular was superb here, and in general the dishes were very good. The food again focused on the key ingredients of the region, and was quite traditional. Wine markups were wildly generous if you are used to the UK.

An hour or so by car from Verona in Modena is Osteria Francescana, a very much more modern Italian restaurant. Massimo Bottura made his name by his modern interpretations of Italian dishes, but the menu offers both very modern dishes and more classical ones. When we spoke to him at the end of the meal he indicated that he was now interested in going back to the classics and championing the cooking and ingredients of the region, saying that the days of chefs using chemicals in cooking are “over”, in his view. We sampled a mix of his styles, and I was impressed with both his more technical modern dishes, but also his ability to perfect traditional regional ones. This was clearly a top class restaurant, with some really fine elements in the meal.

It seemed unlikely that we would have a better meal on the trip, yet we did. It is many years since I had been to Le Calandre, which is also about an hour from Verona by car. Its young head chef produced a really dazzling meal, with dish after dish of superb quality, based on stunning ingredients and flawless technical skill. It was noticeable how simple many of the dishes were e.g. a risotto was just that, with no modern “twist”, but what an utterly perfect risotto it was. It is very rare, in my experience, for even a 3 star meal to maintain an essentially perfect standard for dish after dish after dish, yet this one did. Le Calandre is one of the best restaurants in the world, and this was one of the best meals I can remember in a long time. If you have not been then I would urge you to try Le Calandre.

A trip to Dublin

On a brief visit to Dublin I was able to try three of its four Michelin-starred restaurants, and to try a place that seems likely to join this select crowd. It was my first time to Dublin for over two decades, and it has certainly changed over the years. I would suggest staying somewhere more central than where I ended up, at a good hotel called the Gibson that was out in the former Docklands area. Like the London Docklands, this area has been rejuvenated, but only in parts, and although the hotel itself was excellent it was the sort of area where the Dobermans went around in pairs. The heart of the city is around a little park called St Stephens Green (pictured), which is a nice spot to stroll around and is near most of the attractions.

Ecrivain was doing good business on a Monday night, and was enjoyable but for me fell into the trap of trying to put too many garnishes on the plate. If you eat in Eugenie Les Bains you can enjoy three-star cooking with just two or three elements to a dish, yet Michel Guerard has held three Michelin stars for well over three decades withuot seeing the need to crowd his plates with extra elements. Dishes with numerous components stress a kitchen and make it difficult to execute all the components well, and this happened once or twice at Ecrivain. With that caveat, it was a good meal and an enjoyable place to visit.

Thorntons is a more formal restaurant overlooking St Stephens’ Green in the heart of Dublin. The a la carte menu is classical, but the chef also produced a couple of much more modern style amuse-bouches. The cooking felt on sounder ground when it stuck to the classics, and I enjoyed a lovely langoustine dish with summer truffles. Its modern dishes worked less well for me, and it seems to me a little risky to mix styles so much within the same meal: certainly the restaurant was quiet, with just five diners, admittedly on a Tuesday night. However I felt that the meal overall was in solid one star territory.

I was very impressed with a new restaurant called The Greenhouse, with a Finnish chef who had created a good reputation in the culinary community when at his previous venue in the Irish countryside. I just tried the cheap lunch option, which in many London restaurants is a cynical affair, but here featured three good amuse bouches and petit fours, as well as three excellent dishes. The foie gras dish in particular was strikingly good, and I am sure this restaurant will prosper.

The best meal of the trip, albeit at a much higher price, was at two star Patrick Guilbaud. This restaurant has an airy dining room with a sense of space. I went for the full tasting menu and encountered some excellent dishes during my meal. Ingredients were of high quality and the technique in the kitchen was hard to fault. For me this was a strong two star restaurant.

This week saw the publication of the St Pellegrino Top 50 restaurant awards, a supremely well marketed event. This gets people talking about restaurants, which is a good thing, and chefs love it since it boosts revenues, but it is important to remember that it is just a clever piece of PR, not an objective listing of the world’s best restaurants, in exact order. Such precision seems to me entirely impossible even with a perfect system, which is why the broader Michelin star categories seem a better idea. Of course we all have our individual favourite places, but that is the point: no one can objectively say that Arpege is better than Alinea, say, or indeed vice versa – they are both fine restaurants with differing styles. You may prefer one to the other, and so might I, but there is no objective measure – restaurant criticism is not a science. Beyond this it is tempting to point out the obvious daftness: Japan has just two entries in the list, the same as those well-known centres of culinary excellence, Austria and Dubai. Nice place though it is, does anyone really think Dinner is objectively the best restaurant in the UK, or that the bistro Le Chateaubriand is better than, say, Louis XV or Ledoyen, which are not even listed? Just 35 of the top 100 have three Michelin stars, meaning that many world class restaurants are not even listed. It is good that the list brings attention to areas not covered by Michelin, but even there the list seems flawed to me. Bhukara is far from being the best restaurant in India, nor is Iggys the best in Singapore, while the superb Robuchon Galera in Macau languishes well beneath Caprice, and even Bo Innovation in China, while Made in China in Beijing does not even appear. It is best not to dwell on such absurdities, and just recognise that the list is what it is: a good piece of PR for the restaurant industry.

The blog will resume on Sunday rather than its usual Saturday, as I have some more travelling to do. For the next few days I will mostly be eating Italian food.

Catching up in London

After my fortnight in Japan it was back to London meals, at least for a little while, and these have ranged from the sublime to the ridiculous. At one end of that scale is Union Jacks, the new chain from a certain Mr Oliver, serving that great British dish, the flat. No? Me too. I thought flats were things that you lived in or were something to avoid in tyres, but according to the Union Jacks marketing machine they are what I would call a pizza, though a pizza with some distinctly weird topping combinations. The “flat” I tried was actually OK in itself, but the other dishes that I sampled ranged from very ordinary downwards. Doubtless the chain will be successful nonetheless, such is the power of celebrity.

I was very impressed with The Empress in Hackney, which was an illustration of what can happen when you let a high quality, classically trained chef loose in an old Victorian boozer. There are so many “gastropubs” not worthy of the name in London, churning out mediocre food at prices that are often surprisingly high. The Empress delivered an excellent meal with lovely flavours in its simple but appealing dishes, and the prices were very fair. This is right up there with the best pub cooking in London.

Dabbous is probably the toughest reservation to get in town right now, serving very modern, prettily presented food in one of those industrial-look dining rooms that seem to be all the rage in London at present. I am not sure why restaurant designers have deemed that we really want to eat in rooms that are a cross between a dungeon and an abandoned warehouse, but that seems to be the way of things now (see MEATLiquor, for another example). Ollie Dabbous’ food seems somehow at odds with such a stark room, as his plating is very attractive indeed. However I had a rather uneven meal, with one dish that I really liked, one or two I was not keen on at all, with some in between. I reckon that not too many people, when asked what they would like for their last dessert on earth, would ponder for a moment and then say: “ooh, iced lovage please”, but perhaps that is just me. Still, no one can deny the effectiveness of their PR campaign. I gather that the place is booked up until, oh, pretty much the end of time.

I am fond of the Mall Tavern, with its retro British dishes like chicken Kiev, and its excellent take on the traditional pork pie. Witty, carefully cooked and appealing dishes are the order of the day here, the staff are friendly and the prices very fair. One day I will make it back here in daylight and take some decent photos of the food; at night the lighting is distinctly murky, which causes matching photos.

In more classical territory is Petrus, the Gordon Ramsay restaurant. This was my second meal here, and while it was not quite as good an experience as my previous meal, this was still a very enjoyable evening. The best dishes were beef with excellent gratin dauphinoise, and a lovely pistachio soufflé. In the hunt for the latest in food fashion it is easy to overlook the virtues of high quality, classical cooking, but the menu here is very attractive, the cooking skilful and the service slick.

Hedone continues to cook with the highest quality ingredients to be found in London, its chef an obsessive ingredients expert who must drive his suppliers insensible, so high are his standards for produce. I have eaten many meals here now: this week’s highlights were very high grade duck, a dish of morels, peas and slow-cooked egg (pictured), and dazzling slip soles in citrus butter. A lot more work goes into the dishes here than may be apparent to some: the sauces are the product of considerable effort, often involving multiple stages over a period of days, the puff pastry is made from scratch and the bread is the best you will find in the capital.

After a spell abroad I always tend to crave a curry on my return, and since I have been back both my old favourites Haandi and The Brilliant proved as reliable as ever. Both are excellent value, around £25 a head for more good quality Punjabi food than is sensible to eat.

The next blog will cover my trip to Dublin.

A week in Tokyo

I always get a thrill arriving in the Ginza at night, with its dazzling array of neon lights and bustling streets. As a visitor to Tokyo the most convenient areas to stay in terms of tourist attractions and restaurants are Ginza and Roppongi, the latter being the nightlife centre of Tokyo, the former its shopping hub. We stayed in Roppongi once again, mainly because I love the Grand Hyatt hotel, which is the smoothest running hotel I have encountered anywhere. It is in the modern Roppongi Hills complex, within which is a subway station just four stops from Ginza. It was peak cherry blossom time in Tokyo (pictured), which is an impressive sight in Japan since the cherry tree is particularly highly regarded, so there are a great many such trees. The locals have picnics under the trees for the few days of the year when the blossom falls, and “hanami”, or cherry blossom viewing, is an important Japanese ritual. The fascination of the Japanese with cherry blossom is associated with its fleeting beauty, symbolising the transient nature of life, and the cherry blossom appears extensively in Japanese art.

On the food front, Tokyo is the beating heart of restaurant Japan, with a staggering range and variety of restaurants. Officially there are 67,000 restaurants in Tokyo, with unofficial estimates much higher than this, so there is vast choice. Many Japanese restaurants specialise in one particular style of cooking, such as sushi, noodles or tempura, while some go as far as specialising in a particular ingredient, such as eel. I visited three sushi establishments this week, two of them with three stars in the Michelin guide, and one that is not in Michelin but in 2011 was rated higher than any of those for value for money in the main local kanji food web site (tabelog): Daisan Harumi. This was certainly a very good sushi restaurant, though was less consistent than I had hoped for. Of the three star places, both Sushi Yoshitake and Araki were exceptionally good, right up there with the best I have tried (my favourite by a whisker is still Sushi Saito). I also had another go at eating fugu, this time at three star Usukifugu Yamadaya, and frankly I remain unconvinced by the merits of fugu as a foodstuff. It is wasn’t for the fact that it can kill you if not properly prepared, would anyone really care much about a bland, bony white fish?

I had some pleasant udon noodles at casual noodle bar Azabu Kyutoku, and sampled two star Korean food at Moranbong, which was pleasant but should not have two stars. I also enjoyed a meal at a very good Chinese restaurant, Chugoku Hanten Fureika. I have found the Michelin Tokyo to be wildly generous with its stars, particularly for non-Japanese food, but in this case I can see why Fureika received at least one of its two stars. On the tempura front I tried the two star Kondo, and three star Nanachome Kyoboshi. Kondo was excellent, and given the vertiginous prices charged by Nanochome Kyoboshi I was very sceptical as to whether I would be able to tell the difference, but in fact Nanochome was stunningly good, mainly due to its truly dazzling ingredient quality. It was a very expensive restaurant, but I could see why this was so. I also returned to my favourite Ryugin, which delivered another magnificent meal, perhaps the most enjoyable of the whole trip.

We also had a day out to the coast to Fujisawa in the Shonan resort region, a little under an hour from Tokyo by train; Fujisawa is not far from the elegant town of Kamakura, which it has to be said is a much prettier place to visit. Fujisawa on other hand has Koan, a three Michelin star kaiseki restaurant. We encountered delightful service there, although in truth the food was not really in the same league as top kaiseki restaurants in Kyoto. I visited restaurants with a total of 23 Michelin stars this week, following the 28 last week.

All in all, it was a thoroughly enjoyable fortnight in Japan, a country blessed with some of the best ingredients in the world, fascinating culture and a warm and welcoming people. The blog next week will catch up on my London dining since my return from Japan.

At the end of my visit I had reviewed every three star restaurant in Japan, all 32 of them (almost a third of the world total). However just as I returned to London Michelin announced a brand new guide, to Hokkaido in northern Japan, with four new three star restaurants, a dozen two stars, and 50 one star places. The complete list of 3 star places can be found here.

A week in Kobe, Osaka, Nara and Kyoto

It was a delight to be back in Japan, my fifth visit to this fascinating country. Japan has a reputation for being a “difficult” place to visit due to the language barrier, but in fact this could not be further from the truth. To be sure, there is limited English spoken, but signs on the railway, subway and buses are in English, and more English is gradually being spoken, especially by the younger Japanese. The language issue is less of a problem than it may appear because people are almost unfailingly helpful. If you look even slightly lost then people will come up to try and help you, and not just vaguely point you in the right direction but often actually walk you to the place you are trying to find, sometimes going well out of their way to do so. The train system in Japan is magnificent, running like clockwork, and taxis are plentiful, though it always pays to have the address you are looking for written down in kanji characters (your hotel can do this for you). Street crime is almost unheard of, and people regularly leave their bicycles unlocked in the street, and their bags unattended when in cafes, something that you wouldn’t try in Walthamstow, at least not twice.

Kobe is a busy port strung out on a narrow band of land between mountains and the sea. It is more an industrial city than a tourist destination, but has culinary compensations. It has two restaurants with three Michelin stars, and of course it would not have been right to visit Kobe and not try some of its famous beef. Ca Sento is a Spanish restaurant whose Japanese chef has worked extensively in Spain, and delivered an enjoyable modern Spanish meal. Komago serves kaiseki food in a classical setting, with hostesses in traditional Japanese dress. Although the service was utterly charming, the food here did not seem to me in the same league as the top kaiseki places in Kyoto. For the beef there was only one place to go, Aragawa, the most famous beef restaurant in Japan (there is a branch in Tokyo also in the same family ownership). I have written in some detail about Kobe beef in the review, so will not repeat myself here, but Aragawa is essentially a simple steak house that happens to serve some of the best beef on the planet. Yamanaka also delivered some excellent tempura, a world away from the tempura we are used to in London. Both Aragawa and Tempura Yamanaka were awarded two stars in the 2012 Michelin guide.

Osaka is the no-nonsense working heartland of Japan, its citizens known locally for their frugality and friendliness. It has accumulated four new three star restaurants since my previous visit here. Koryu was the pick of these, with some really impressive dishes. Kashiwaya was another classical kaiseki restaurant with a warm welcome but food that was not of the very top rung. Fujiya 1935 serves modern Spanish food, and did so well, while Taian was very enjoyable, the highlight being some stunning Matsusaka beef, which is every bit the equal of the better known Kobe beef. As a tourist destination, Osaka has limited places of interest other than theme parks, but it does have the fascinating Osaka castle (pictured). Japan has some magnificent castles and this is one of the largest.

In Kyoto I tried Nakamura, which was deservedly in the same league as the other top kaiseki restaurants in Kyoto, but was only recently elevated to three stars by Michelin. Wa Yamamura is out in the pretty city of Nara, once the capital of Japan, and served pleasant kaiseki food at a very low price compared to the places in Kyoto. At this point in the trip we also popped into Mughal, one of the few authentic Indian restaurants in Japan, and one of just two in the whole of Kyoto. Kyoto is the best city to visit as a tourist to Japan, with its vast array of temples, gardens and lovely old shops, and I have written about it previously here. Suffice it to say that it is a beautiful and fascinating city.

So, just the 28 Michelin stars this week. Next week the blog will cover a week in Tokyo.

This week includes some off-the-radar Asian restaurants

When a restaurant opens in London these days then, if its launch is managed well, a media frenzy can develop. Early reviews are good, tables get booked up for weeks ahead as people rush to be seen at the latest hot venue. It is easy to forget that there are also restaurants that tick along for decades without any media buzz, and this week I tried a couple of these.

One of these is Shezan, an up-market Indian restaurant in Knightsbridge that has been trading for 43 years, despite its location in a quiet street and having its dining room in a basement. Based on my visit, it seems pitched at wealthy local clientele, presumably a pretty large demographic in Knightsbridge. The food we tried was mostly decent, with pleasant tandoori cooking and some good breads, though with one or two slips also, such as a poor channa. However the prices were very high indeed, much too high for what was delivered, and I will return to my regular haunt Haandi when next looking for Indian food in that area.

The Princess Garden has been trading for three decades, delivering good quality dim sum. In this case I was surprised just how cheap the dishes were, with dim sum classics at prices that would seem more at home in Chinatown than Mayfair. I had four high quality dishes for £16 including unlimited jasmine tea. Unlike Shezan, it is certainly a place that I would be very happy to return to.

At the other end of the media spectrum is Tom Aikens, never far from the media spotlight, often for the wrong reasons. Tom is a gifted chef, but he never gained the two Michelin stars at his own venue that he had earned at Pied a Terre. Tom has decided to refocus the restaurant now on more casual lines in terms of décor, but still following the latest in food fashion. The cooking is impressive here, such as in a superb langoustine dish (pictured). Although the dishes often feature a lot of modern techniques (such as some ingredients worked into powders and gels), the end result is generally excellent. For me the cooking has improved a notch in its new format.

It seems as if Kitchen W8 is still on good form based on my visit this week. This is an excellent all-round restaurant: the menu is interesting yet appealing, the cooking good, service friendly and prices tolerable. I particularly enjoyed a pata negra pork chop dish this week, and a good passion fruit posset. The wine list is also well-chosen, generally marked up at fair levels, and has a few bargains tucked away at the more exalted end of the list.

This blog will now have a short vacation for a couple of weeks, but should have some interesting stories to tell on its return. For those who don’t want to wait that long, please follow me on Twitter.

This week features new Italian restaurants in London

This week I tried three fashionable Italian restaurants in central London. The vast Novikov has two restaurants, one Asian and the other Italian. Novikov will tend to inspire strong views due to its Russian owner and its vast scale, but I found the food itself good. I particularly enjoyed a simple pasta dish that was skilfully made, and the room itself is attractive, giving the appearance of being a courtyard with a large skylight (pictured), despite actually being in a basement. No one can deny its commercial success, the restaurant already doing a high turnover of customers despite its high prices.

Tempo has the unusual twist of having a Japanese chef, albeit one who had trained in Italy. This was the least satisfactory meal of the trio of Mayfair Italians this week, as there was a lack in consistency in the cooking, which was a little odd given that this restaurant has been open over a year. For example, the gnocchi was genuinely good, yet my risotto was soggy and a side dish of spinach also watery. Although the cooking standard was mostly reasonable, at the Mayfair prices that are charged here this unevenness in the cooking was disappointing.

The best of the trio was Cotidie, which opened just a fortnight ago. Its chef, Bruno Barbieri, has held two Michelin stars in Italy, but has now moved to London. There is an emphasis on ingredient quality: 85% of the ingredients come from Italy, and all the pasta used is made from scratch by a 70 year old lady from Bologna who is a noted pasta specialist. There were a few slight rough edges on our visit so early on, but the general high quality here was evident, and I will happily return and watch the cooking develop as the place settles down.

The Lawn Bistro in Wimbledon is the latest kitchen for Ollie Couillaud, who was the chef in the early days of La Trompette, amongst others. The cooking here is rather less ambitious, though skill could be seen in an excellent foie gras terrine. The delivery here was a little uneven (Ollie was not in the kitchen, which probably did not help), with a tuna dish cooked for a little too long, though there was certainly nothing that was a real problem. Service was also less than flawless, though friendly. Despite these quibbles, this is surely still the best restaurant in Wimbledon, an area (like Hampstead) that has for some reason lacked good restaurants despite its evident wealth.

The final Michelin Guide to 2012 came out, the Main Cities of Europe, which covers countries without their own Michelin country guide, such as Greece and Denmark. Michelin continued its consistent stance on Noma with two stars, despite the inevitable media pressure. Two stars were awarded to Gourmet Restaurant Silvio Nickol in Vienna, and to Maaema in Oslo.

New reviews of 10 Greek Street and Axis

Axis, in the basement of the One Aldwych Hotel, manages to avoid hotel dining room clichés, delivering classical Modern British cooking in its cavernous setting. For the last few years the head chef has been Tony Fleming, who has a pedigree of working with some serious chefs in the past, but the restaurant has dropped off the media radar. It was therefore all the more enjoyable to discover that the cooking there now is top notch, from a remarkably good langoustine velouté at the start of the meal to a fine lemon tart at the end. I was also pleasantly surprised by the size of the bill, which was very fair for cooking at this level. It is odd how the London media works itself into a frenzy over the latest fashionable opening, yet overlooks restaurants like Axis, that just get on with delivering the goods. A hidden gem.

10 Greek Street is a new Soho restaurant with an Australian chef, though the food is firmly British. The key to its evident early success (some walk-ins were turned away at 12:15 on a weekday lunch) is the reasonable pricing, which extends to a short but modestly marked-up wine list. The cooking was of a good standard in the dishes I tried, though you won’t encounter any luxury ingredients here. I was impressed with a carefully made shallot tatin (pictured) for example. 10 Greek Street offers a refreshing change from the rapacious pricing of some recent London restaurant openings.

Rasa Maricham is a Keralan restaurant bizarrely situated in a Holiday Inn at Kings Cross. I haven’t studied the subject in depth, but this may be the best food available at a Holiday Inn anywhere in the world. Rasa Maricham is part of a mini-chain that started in Stoke Newington, with a branch in W1 and, until recently, Charlotte Street. The cooking of the Keralan dishes is skilful, as shown here with an excellent Mysore bonda, q good kingfish curry and enjoyable paratha. It is a pity that the location will put off a lot of diners, as you are firmly in anonymous hotel dining room territory, but the cooking deserved a wider audience.

The Bombay Brasserie is back on my list of regular haunts after its refurbishment and associated upgrade to the cooking. This time I tried the Sunday lunch buffet, which featured some excellent snacks such as a potato chat and assorted puri dishes. The main dishes can suffer somewhat from the buffet format e.g. chicken tikka was tender but lukewarm, but the dishes delivered to the table hot were excellent, such as a side dish of aloo gobi; breads are also top class here, and cooked to order. I prefer the food here in the evening, but the buffet is fun. If you haven’t been to the Bombay Brasserie since its refurbishment then you should give it a try.

This week features a return to Arpege in Paris

C London is what Cipriani is now called (due to a legal naming dispute) but its format is the same: Italian food, stratospheric prices. The room is appealing and there are plenty of attentive waiters, but while the dishes I tried were ordinary the prices were anything but. This restaurant is costlier than the Michelin-starred Italian places in London, presumably designed to repel any customers for whom value for money is remotely an issue. I’ll stick to Apsleys and Zafferano.

Delaunay, the sister to the Wolseley, has a slightly different food slant from its elder sibling. As well as bistro food there are numerous central European dishes, such as schnitzel and strudel. The room is attractive and the menu lengthy and appealing. One interesting aspect was that wine prices were not especially egregious by central London standards, and so although this is not earth-shattering cooking it felt a lot less rapaciously priced than some recent Mayfair openings.

On my second visit to the newly re-opened Royal China the cooking was as reliable as ever. This week I was impressed by a simple dish of pea shoots with garlic: the cooking was spot on, the texture and flavour of the pea shoots lovely, the seasoning accurate. Royal China does a very good job with vegetarian dishes (I love their gai lan), and I think it is somehow more impressive to make a simple vegetable dish really exciting than to produce a similar dish using a luxurious ingredient. Service was unusually attentive and friendly on the evening of my visit.

I also fitted in a revisit to Arpege in Paris this week. I won’t repeat the review here, but it was just as good as I remember. I can imagine some people finding Arpege not quite as they expect for a Paris three star: the room and tables are small and the dishes are simple to a surprising extent. The point is that cooking is stripped back to its bare essentials, without any extraneous garnishes, and based on superb ingredients throughout. Alain Passard still has an emphasis on vegetables, sourcing them from several dedicated farms and gardens, and the flavour he manages to produce from his produce is striking. An example of the simple approach taken was a dish of scallop carpaccio (pictured) with utterly superb scallops, just served with discs of truffles, olive oil and a few leaves. The quality of the scallops and truffles was so high that the dish didn’t need further embellishment. Arpege is certainly not a cheap place, but the gulf in standard between it and what passes for three star cooking in lots of places (such as London) is considerable.

The final Michelin country guide for 2012 came out this week, that of France (the only remaining guide this year is the Main Cities of Europe, which picks up countries not covered by the country guides, such as Scandinavia and Eastern Europe). There is one new three star, Flocons de Sel in the Alps, and no deletions at the three star level. There were a couple of deletions at the two star level, and ten new two star places. The biggest change was at the one star level, which saw a large increase. In France there are now 630 one star places, including no less than 124 new starred establishments. The full list of 3 star places is here and the map of their locations is here.

This week includes new 3 star Hertog Jan

Hertog Jan in Bruges gained a third Michelin star in the 2012 Guide, delivering modern cooking that emphasises bold flavours in some deceptively simple dishes. Some of these, such as a lovely langoustine dish, worked very well indeed, others seemed to be trying for shock-effect value, such as an absurdly sour pigs head terrine. Presentation was a strong point, such as a dish of avocado with tomato powder and olive oil (pictured). Most dishes worked well, and the price of the food was not excessive, though their policy of a (large) surcharge to adjust the tasting menu for dietary allergies seems a dreadful idea to me. The wine list has some unusual growers, though they really need to update their English version of the web site, which is (at the time of writing) worth your reading for its inherent entertainment value alone. For example, of the chef: “His mother spoon-fed him the word ‘delicious’ from an early age. Questioning this wonderful word has become his mission in life. He dissects it, examines it, tastes every single letter and recomposes it into something truly delicious – for the eye, the nose, the tongue, the skin..”. Really, I couldn’t make this up, and there is more, so read it quickly before they cotton on and employ a marketing person with a sense of irony. As for the food, I have eaten worse 3 star meals, but overall I found it more a strong 2 star than genuinely operating at 3 star level throughout the meal.

Mele e Pere is a basement trattoria in Soho with an Italian chef who has worked in several classy London kitchens. The menu had a few interesting departures (you do not often see tripe on a menu these days), though the best dish that I tried was a classic spaghetti carbonara. Other dishes that we tried were not quite to this level, and overall it seemed pleasant but a little ambitiously priced for the level of food that appeared.

The chef at The Admiral Codrington, Fred Smith, has a fascination with burgers, and on a visit this week I tried two miniature burgers, one a take on a Big Mac, the other a classic bacon cheeseburger. The latter was the better of the two, and was really top notch, the high quality of the beef used really showing through. Other nibbles and side dishes (such as a good macaroni cheese) were pleasant, but the stars of the show here are the burgers, which are up there amongst the best in London.

The Bombay Brasserie, the original up-market Indian restaurant in London, had a major (and much needed) makeover just over year ago. The main dining room still seems a bit soulless to me, though the conservatory is attractive. This revamp extended to a major overhaul of the cooking team, and I had another excellent meal here this week. Not every dish worked equally well, but the best dishes were genuinely top-drawer: chicken tikka was of a standard I have rarely encountered, even in India and naan bread was superb: as light and fluffy as could be. A vegetable side dish of peas and cauliflower was also really classy. It is not a cheap place, but if you have not been since the revamp then I suggest you give it another try.

Another good Indian restaurant in London is Trishna in Marylebone, which specialises in seafood. The fish tikka made from stone bass with a peppery coating was an excellent dish, as was an unusually good okra dish. There is still a little inconsistency in the level of the dishes here e.g. the breads could be improved, but this is certainly one of London’s more interesting Indian restaurants.

This week includes two new reviews of Thai restaurants

I tried two very different Thai restaurants this week. The Blue Elephant has been plying its trade in Fulham for over two decades in its vast premises, but has now moved to Imperial Wharf. The new décor is elegant, with less of a riot of foliage than the old place, but the food was disappointing. Over the years I had been to The Blue Elephant a few times, and found the food overpriced but decent, but now it seems just overpriced. If only a fraction of the effort devoted to the décor could be directed at the cooking then it would have been a much happier experience.

The Heron (pictured) is at the other end of the scale, a tiny basement in a pub, with a clientele so Thai-oriented that they have only just bothered to translate the menu into English at all. Spicing was vibrant, with sea bass in a chilli broth spicy enough to have been at home in Bangkok or Chiang Mai. There were lots of unusual dishes on the menu, and although the setting is very basic indeed there is no doubting the authenticity of the cooking. The price of the entire meal at The Heron would scarcely buy a main course at The Blue Elephant.

Hedone delivered some fine dishes, in particular a dazzling Sika deer royale with chestnut raviolo. The sauce for this dish involved four separate stages and took three elapsed days to make, to give you a sense of how much work goes into the apparently simple dishes. Also lovely was delicate woodcock and superbly fresh slip soles with citrus butter, while the bread is even better than it was before. If you have the slightest interest in high quality ingredients then you badly need to eat the food at Hedone: It has ingredients like no other restaurant on London, including the multi-starred places.

My other local high-end restaurant, La Trompette, has a very different formula: appealing, carefully cooked dishes, nicely presented; combined with smooth service and a fabulous wine list, it is easy to see why La Trompette is so popular. The gulf in the actual standard of food between here and Hedone was striking though, coming down largely to the much higher quality ingredients that Hedone seeks out. Three courses at La Trompette cost £42.50, four courses at Hedone cost £40; it is great to have such places on my doorstep.

The Princess Victoria has a new chef doing the day to day cooking, but continues the theme of simple British pub food combined with a remarkably good wine list. I enjoyed chorizo Scotch quail egg and meltingly tender pork with spinach and a high quality jus, while warm Eccles cakes were very good.

The Brilliant is an old favourite, and it cooked some particularly good fish pakora this week. Murgh tikka malai was tender, and it is nice to see romali roti on the menu of an Indian restaurant in the UK.

A new release (version 1.4) of my iPhone app Wine Search came out this week. This has several new features, such as a search history, the ability to enter wine prices via the numeric keypad as an alternative to the sliders (useful for currencies with lots of zeros) and other improvements.

This week I try the wildly popular MEATliquor and the revamped Quo Vadis

Quo Vadis has re-opened after a refurbishment, looking brighter and roomier than previously. More importantly it has a new head chef in the form of Jeremy Lee. Jeremy trained in some of London’s top dining rooms before a long stint running the kitchen at The Blueprint Café. The new menu is simpler and cheaper, very much in bistro territory. The eel toasted sandwich was simple but very enjoyable, and a duck and pheasant pie a hearty treat. Previously the food at Quo Vaids was good, but it seemed to be stuck in the no-man’s land between bistro and fine dining: now it feels much more coherent.

Apsleys delivered another really fine meal this week. The pasta dishes here are top drawer, as with a lobster tagliolini, but a new dish of suckling pig (pictured) had superb flavour, and desserts were as classy as ever. This is a great spot for lunch on a sunny day, with the airy dining room and the natural light from the large skylight. Apsleys has now firmly moved ahead of the other starred Italian places in London, and for me it is now operating is solid two Michelin star territory.

Le Cercle is sister to Club Gascon. I recall a very good meal here several years ago, but this week we had a very disappointing experience. Only one dish was anywhere near the standard that I recall, with a couple of very ordinary dishes appearing. The staff were very nice about it but it is always sad when a restaurant that you used to like serves up a much less good meal. I am not sure whether this was an off-night or a sign of a more general slipping of standards; I hope it was the former.

Chisou in Chiswick, little sister of the ones in Mayfair and, more recently, Knightsbridge, continues to settle in. Good grilled mackerel and beef tataki this week were let down a little by mediocre rock-shrimp tempura, though the kitchen is showing signs of settling down. The owners have done a fine job of decorating the space, which actually looks smarter than the other branches, and hopefully the food will in time be on a par with the more established branches.

MEATliquor, much beloved of the twitterati, serves US style burgers oozing with pickles, and very nice they are too, as were the fries. Other dishes I sampled there were less impressive, so I would stick to the burgers if you decide to visit. However the place seems consciously designed to put off customers, or at least pesky middle-aged customers like me. There are no reservations taken, so people queue outside in the cold, then are shown to bar stools and chairs that exhibit a degree of discomfort that would have gained a nod of approval from the Spanish Inquisition. This theme continues, since the gloomy room is decorated in a way that reminds me of one of those warehouse settings in torture porn horror films where the victim is taken. Loud music and stony-faced waitresses who glide past without paying attention to their customers complete the atmosphere. Personally I will be sticking to the pricier but better burgers at the likes of Goodman or the Admiral Codrington, and where they have old-fashioned things like utensils and an awareness that they are in the hospitality business, rather than the inhospitality business.

Some restaurants off the tube map

It was interesting to compare two Michelin starred restaurants both slightly out of London, but within fairly easy reach of it. Auberge du Lac is near Welwyn Garden City, set in a vast estate called Brocket Hall that is now mainly a golf resort and boutique hotel. The setting is very formal, seeming to aim at people looking for a posh night out, yet on my visit it didn’t really live up to those expectations. The food was generally capable though over-complex, but despite quite good ingredients the dishes never really lifted above the merely pleasant. Service was a let-down, with lots of staff in formal attire who couldn’t manage to top wine up or pay attention to the customers. If all this had come at a modest price tag then I would have felt merely a bit let down, but in fact pricing was high both for food and especially wine, which was at a level (4.5 times retail price on average) that many restaurants in Mayfair would be embarrassed to charge.

By contrast, Chapter One in Kent was much less formal but far more successful. Dishes were consistently bursting with flavour, with scarcely a technical flaw throughout the meal. Unlike Auberge, the chef was happy to send out a dish with just a few components, such as an Iberico pork chop on Savoy cabbage, but this dish was terrific, a fine ingredient showcased well without distraction. The star dish was jugged hare with a truffled mash (pictured). Service was top class, despite a much fuller dining room and less staff in proportion to the number of diners. Three courses at Auberge du Lac were priced at £60 compared with just £32.50 at Chapter One, whilst the latter’s wine list was full of good value wines at fair mark-up levels. Choosing which of these two restaurants to return to would not be one of life's trickier decisions.

On the subject of good value, it was some time since I had been to Giaconda Dining Rooms. This is a very simple operation, with a tiny kitchen with a chef and an assistant serving a dining room that can seat around 30 customers. It serves simple, rustic food with bold flavours, but the cooking is precise and the dishes enjoyable. The wine list is very cheap by London standards too. My spaghettini with crab would have shamed many an Italian kitchen, while brill was accurately cooked and seasoned. With so many restaurants in the capital being over-priced, Giaconda is a reminder that it is possible to serve capable, honest food at a fair price in central London.

I am pleased to add a further chef interview, this time with Andrew McCleish of Chapter One.

Bangalore and Mysore

This was a winter-sun kind of a holiday rather than a foodie ”must chase down every restaurant in sight" kind of holiday, but there was some good food involved. We went to Bangalore and Mysore on this trip. Bangalore is less of an obvious tourist destination than Goa or Kerala, but it has the significant advantage of having perhaps the best climate in India. Due to its location, in January the temperature highs in Bangalore are around 26C to 29C, whereas in Goa most days are very hot at around 33C, with even the night time temperature there barely falling below 20C. Although Bangalore was known as the garden city of India, this is a rather optimistic epithet now: there are still some tree-lined streets, but sadly a lot of greenery has been lost to development. I wrote a little about Bangalore in a previous blog, so won't repeat this here; if you interested then just follow this link.

We stayed at the superb Leela Palace hotel, which like its sisters in Goa and Kerala is of the highest class. All the little details are right: the beds are wonderfully comfortable, there is good bedside lighting, the shower was excellent, and the service hard to fault. Moreover it has the Jamavar restaurant, which I ate at briefly on a previous trip and which was just as impressive over a lengthier stay. This, along with its sister restaurant in the Leela Goa, is the best Indian restaurant I have visited on my many trips to India. The setting is attractive but the main thing is the extremely high standard of cooking. Dish after dish was lovely, with very accurate cooking of seafood dishes, a near perfect biriani and superb bread. Even little details like the mango chutney has fabulous flavour, a world apart from what we are used to in the UK. The desserts were also excellent, with home-made kulfi in particular having amazing flavour.

Mysore (pictured) has the vast Mysore Palace as its main tourist destination, as well as a range of temples. The Mysore Palace is impressive but also showed off some of the petty bureaucracy that afflicts India. There is a chaotic single window at which to buy tickets, with a scrum of pushing and shoving. After you get through this there is a security screening at which you answer questions about where you are from and staying. At this point only you are told that cameras are banned and must be deposited at a special room in a far corner of the complex, which involves further queuing and issuing of receipts. What is surreal is that the rule about cameras was clearly established at a time before every decent phone had a camera, so as you go through the palace everyone happily snaps away on their phones, with no intervention from the uniformed staff other than to ask Western tourists whether they may wish to donate to their "coin collection". They could just put a sign up saying "no flash photography" but go through this pointless and time-consuming ritual instead. An audio guide is available, which involves more queuing, form filling and handing over of a deposit. Your shoes also have to be left at yet another location, so by this time your main concern is to whether you can successfully retrieve your shoes, deposit and camera from the designated places, all scattered at entirely different locations in the complex. The palace is indeed a magnificent building, but visiting could not be described as a user-friendly experience.

It does not appear that Mysore is particularly noted for its food, given the difficulty I had in researching in advance to find any restaurant recommendations at all. We did try one place there called The Castle, but this was not somewhere that could be seriously suggested as a place to visit.

Bangalore, a visibly more prosperous city than Mysore, by contrast has plenty of restaurants, though to be honest I found it hard to be tempted away from the magnificent food of the Jamavar, especially given the heavy Bangalore traffic, which makes getting around rather tedious. I was impressed by the biryani at Samarkand, which is tucked away in a shopping mall and serves North Indian food to a mainly local clientele (it was packed out, and I did not see a single westerner there). This served very good food and was also very fair value, at a fraction the price of Jamavar.

This was my thirteenth visit to India, and bureaucracy aside, it is a place I would highly recommend to you to visit. It is a lively, vibrant, occasionally infuriating but fascinating country.

I also did an interview for Mise En Place, a restaurant and catering trade web site.

I brave the hordes at two of London's trendiest new restaurants

Novikov is the first restaurant venture outside Russia for serial restaurateur Arkady Novikov, who has dozens of restaurant of assorted styles in Moscow and St Petersburg. We ate at the pan-Asian restaurant (there is also an Italian restaurant in these large premises), smartly decorated and clearly aiming at the same clientele as Nobu, Zuma and the like. The food that we tried was actually quite capable (the chef was previously at Roka) but it was not as consistently good as at restaurants like Hakkasan or Zuma. Still, the har gau steamed dumplings were excellent, as were the Singapore noodles, and prawn tempura was fine. The place, open just a few weeks, was already completely full, turning tables despite the considerable size of the restaurant. The capacity of Mayfair to absorb a seemingly endless number of expensive restaurants at a time of economic doom and gloom is pretty remarkable, suggesting that the local economy bears little resemblance to the mainstream one.

Burger and Lobster is the little sister of steak house Goodman, but has a simple concept: it serves burger, lobster (illustrated) and that is it, for a flat price of £20 (including chips and salad). This simple menu means that the kitchen can spend some effort in getting its dishes right, and certainly sourcing of the products shows the same care as the main Goodman, especially in the choice of beef. The burger eaters must be subsidising the lobster eaters, but as they are already getting through a ton of lobster a week I am guessing that must get be able to get a good deal on it. Over two visits my experience was reasonably consistent, and the place is already doing a roaring trade, just three weeks after it opened.

The Millbank restaurant Atrium has now recruited chef Johnny Mountain (of The English Pig) to head up its kitchens, though he didn’t put in appearance the night that I ate there. Atrium is an odd place, tucked away inside an office building, with an attractive, light space but suffering from a poor reputation in its previous incarnation and a stealth marketing campaign for the new regime. The food was all over the place on the night of my visit, with some lacklustre savoury courses but very good desserts, and to be fair the food was at quite a moderate price for the skill level shown. The restaurant apparently does most of its business at lunch, but I had the impression this was very much early days, and given the obscure location this needs more consistent cooking and a much higher profile marketing campaign.

Blah Blah Blah has been serving vegetarian food in an unglamorous Shepherd Bush since 1990, quite an achievement in an era when few restaurants last anything like that long. What is also unusual is that the chef does not stick to a particular cuisine, but serves dishes that may be Indian, Mexican, Persian or Italian in origin. The meal I had this week was a fraction less good than my previous one, but was still very pleasant: a capable Kashmiri vegetable curry being the best dish. Although they do now serve alcohol you can still bring your own wine, as we did, for a nominal corkage charge. Our waiter was friendly, and the bill very modest: a nice neighbourhood restaurant.

I am honoured to add the site a chef interview with Christophe Saintagne, head chef of the flagship of Alain Ducasse’s restaurant group, Plaza Athenee in Paris.

Next week I will mostly be eating Indian food.

A jaunt to Paris

Having recently reviewed restaurants called 35 and 36, it seemed only right to try 34, the latest Caprice Holdings (Scotts, The Ivy, J. Sheekey etc) venture. 34 majors on beef, but there is plenty of less meaty fare on the appealing menu. The room is attractively set out, and as with its sister restaurants, 34 has a menu full of things that you might actually want to eat, and has very professional service. It was already doing a roaring trade, just weeks after opening. Our food was competently cooked and pleasant to eat, but at £120 a head the bill seemed to me just too high for what was being delivered. If you want a smart steak place then you would do better at Goodman or Cut (Hawksmoor is also good at a lower price point), and if you are really into beef then you will do better trying one of the highly aged beef dishes at Hedone. There is clearly a market for a restaurant like this, serving affluent diners who want a pleasant experience with familiar food. Just bring your biggest credit card.

The Royal China raised the game for Chinese food in London, offering a standard of cooking a distinct notch above that of Chinatown. Service was always pretty perfunctory, but this bustling place served up genuinely good food, whether in the evening or its dim sum at lunch. Its décor never changed, even after a much-needed expansion, so I was intrigued as to what it would look like after its multi-month refurbishment. The answer was like one of those “spot the difference” competitions. The bar area is a bit smarter, and the partitions between table sections have been removed, presumably to squeeze a few more tables in. However the trademark black lacquer with gold decoration has been replaced with more black lacquer with gold decoration. Anyway, after this anti-climax the food was fortunately similarly untouched. The gai lan with garlic here is pretty hard to fault, while scallops are cooking more accurately than in plenty of French restaurants. Long may it continue.

The Duke of Sussex is a simple gastropub local to me, serving a mix of Spanish food and pub fare. The cooking is hearty, the prices low, and I have a soft spot for the place. Paella, served in a cast iron pan, is always good here. I also enjoyed an excellent game pie, made from scratch and with a rich filling based on venison and wild boar. Chips were pretty ordinary, but this is clearly the best pub food in the area.

It is ages since I have been to Alain Ducasse’s flagship restaurant at the Plaza Athenee hotel in Paris (pictured), now with chef Christophe Saintagne in charge of the kitchen brigade, and with a refurbished dining room. The room is much improved and the cooking style has also changed. While still very much classical cooking, dishes have been stripped back to the minimum number of components, with less garnishes than there used to be. A simpler cooking style relies on high quality ingredients and consistent execution, but fortunately there is no problem in either regard. Ingredients are impeccable, as shown by the dazzling scallops and fine lobster from Brittany. The cooking technique was flawless throughout, culiminating in some dazzling desserts. Such a posh meal in Paris comes with a matching price tag, but although this was very expensive indeed, it was also a superb experience.

Dining in Cambridge

Having been to a restaurant called 35 this week, I tried 36 this week (I did actually try to get in to the new 34 on Grosvenor Square too, but couldn’t get a table at a sane time). I guess that coming up with inventive restaurant names is getting more difficult. 36 is at The Dukes Hotel in St James, and now has chef Nigel Mendham (previously of Michelin-starred The Samling) at the helm. The ambition of the level of the cooking is quite high, and only partially succeeded. The best dishes, such as a quail starter, were good, but there were a number of issues and a general tendency to over-complicate dishes. I have noticed a lot of ambitious UK chefs tend to want to add just one more garnish to illustrate how sophisticated their food is. By contrast, cooks such as Michel Guerard in France (3 Michelin stars for over 35 years) sometimes produce dishes with just two or three elements on a plate, but you can be sure that these elements will be impeccably sourced, flawlessly cooked and exquisitely balanced. It was quite early days for 36 and things will doubtless evolve, but it didn’t quite hang together for me, and all at a price point that means that it should do.

Apsleys was on excellent form this week, delivering superb tasting menu for a friend’s birthday. Course after course of high class food appeared, with highlights including a superb pigeon dish with mustard seed sauce and a slow-cooked egg with Alba truffles. The meal was between 7/10 and 8/10 level i.e. firmly in two Michelin star territory, and this is a restaurant that gets much less attention than it deserves in the food media. The food has improved steadily since its opening, and is now operating at a very high level indeed.

Cambridge (pictured) has two restaurants of note, and I was able to try them both on this visit. Alimentum served up an excellent meal, with very prettily presented, technically well-made food. I particularly enjoyed my ballotine of quail, and the cooking of Stella’s halibut main course was extremely accurate. I enjoyed the fun desserts, such as a modern take on Black Forest Gateau. I was surprised at how moderate the prices are here, given the high quality of the cooking, and there is an excellent and fairly priced wine list to boot. I have no idea why this does not have a Michelin star.

Midsummer House was also on fine form: it has a pretty riverside setting, and very precise cooking from Daniel Clifford’s team. An example of this was a superbly cooked salmon starter, but all the way through the tasting menu it was hard to pinpoint a technical error. To be sure, there was the odd touch that was not to my personal taste, but there is no doubt that this is high class cooking. The maître d’, who I remember well from the glory days of The Capital Hotel, is a star in his own right.

My meal at E&O this week was pleasant but a little below par compared to previous visits. A ginger cheesecake for dessert was the best dish, and a fried sea bass dish was fine, but a couple of other dishes, while they did not have real errors, were just not that interesting e.g. a somewhat unbalanced som tam salad with soft shell crab whose batter was a little on the greasy side. This was still a perfectly pleasant meal, and not overly expensive, but seemed to be slipping below the level of prior meals here. I have nudged the web site score down a point to reflect this experience.

A Japanese Mayfair eatery opens in Chiswick

Chiswick is gradually attracting a higher class of restaurants, for which we can thank Nigel Platts Martin, whose La Trompette blazed the trail here. Now Chiswick also has Hedone and Franco Manca, as well as a number of other very serviceable places to eat, such as Michael Nadra and the admirable pub The Duke of Sussex. For some reason, though, ethnic food has been a weakness. There are no decent Indian or Chinese places whatever, and just a couple of distinctly ordinary Japanese restaurants. I was particularly interested when Chisou announced that it was opening a branch. Chisou is one of the better Japanese restaurants in London, and they have certainly done an excellent job of refurbishing premises (pictured) opposite Sam’s Brasserie. However, although the food I sampled over two visits at Chisou in Chiswick was quite good, it did not have the accuracy and eye for detail of the original Chisou in Mayfair. To be fair, this was early days, and the food was certainly pleasant, just not firing on all cylinders yet. Nonetheless, this is still the best Japanese food in Chiswick, though I will still be tempted to hop on the tube to Kiraku in Ealing, which has the bonus of being exceptionally good value. Now, if only Chiswick could attract some decent Indian and Chinese restaurants (he says, hoping some restaurateurs may be reading this)….

Number 35 is the restaurant of the boutique Hempel hotel, and has a chef with pedigree at Arbutus and The Capital. The food was pleasant enough, and the menu prices are fair give that there are clearly some good ingredients used, although the wine list had truly excessive mark-ups. The cooking was technically quite skilful, but more than one dish was affected by the food not arriving hot; the kitchen would appear to be a fair hike from the dining room, but this was a problem that marred the meal and needs to be addressed.

The Ritz is one of London’s grand dining rooms. A decade ago its food did not match the surroundings, but that has changed as its chef John Williams has radically improved standards since he took over in 2004. In the constant search for the latest fashionable opening, the rise of the Ritz has been unjustly neglected by the food press, and I enjoyed another excellent meal here this week. Langoustines with a morels and a shellfish velouté were lovely, as was a superb game terrine and well-judged venison with one of those lovely old-fashioned red wine reduction sauces that takes hours to make, so few restaurants bother. It is incomprehensible to me that The Ritz does not have a Michelin star; I have had worse two star meals than this one.

The Brilliant continues to produce its authentic Punjabi cooking in Southall, and this week cooked up some excellent aloo tikki, amongst other dishes. Tandoori cooking is always capable here, as were an aloo chollay, while I am very fond of their romali roti.

As this is the last post of 2011, I’d like to wish you all a very happy 2012. This blog will appear a day later than usual next week.

A week of fine dining in London

Alyn Williams was head chef at Marcus Wareing, and the good technique always on show there shows through in his first stand-alone venture, at the Westbury Hotel in Mayfair. The food features luxurious ingredients such as langoustines, yet at this stage you can still eat a three course dinner there for £45, which is a fair price for food of this quality. This is not trying to be at the cutting edge of cooking, and we can all be thankful for that. No wacky ingredient combinations: just enjoyable, high quality French food. There were still some minor things to iron out on our visit, but it is already operating at a high level.

I actually had two meals at Hedone in quick succession, taking advantage of the first black truffles of the season. These were used to good effect in a particularly impressive dish, capon from Bresse. Capons are what the French eat for Christmas while we in the UK are still wondering what bright spark though it was a good idea to choose turkey, a bird with fairly tasteless meat that dries out easily, for our annual celebration meal. The very finest of all capons are those from Bresse, and the best of these are competition-winning birds. Hedone served the competition capon (pictured) with black truffles and an intense sauce made from the capon cooking juices that requires a multi-stage process taking five elapsed days. Also brilliant was a venison variant on the classic dish Hare Royale, the sika deer here cooked in two different ways, the dish very carefully balanced. Since Hedone opened in June I have eaten eighteen meals there; if you haven’t been then I suggest you give it a try. It has been a breath of fresh air at the high end of the London food scene.

The cooking at the Ledbury just gets better and better. I had a lovely meal there a year ago, and this this week I tried a range of excellent dishes. Highlights were a delicate foie gras parfait with chestnuts, a superb dish of mackerel and eel with shiso and mustard dressing, a spectacular display of pigeon and woodcock as the main course, and an airy passion fruit soufflé. Every dish during the lengthy tasting menu was of a high standard, and I have nudged the score on my web site up a point to reflect this consistent improvement in execution.

Zafferano is an old favourite of mine; I stopped counting my visits here when I got to 100 some years ago. Strictly, it no long produces the best Italian food in London (Apsleys does that now) but the staff are great here and I always enjoy Zafferano’s food. This week, white truffle risotto was lovely, as was a dish of porcini mushrooms with freshly made pasta.

Another old favourite is the Diwana Bhel Poori café in Euston. I have been coming here regularly since I moved to London in 1983. Over that period it has been remarkably consistent, serving terrific value Indian snacks. This week we had a larger meal than usual, with drinks, and it was still only £15 a head – for me this is some of the best value food in London.

Have a terrific Christmas everyone!

Three new reviews in London

Granger and Co is the first UK restaurant from Bill Granger, Australian restaurateur and TV personality. At the quiet end of Westbourne grove, it is a casual all-day cafe aimed at local diners (no reservations are taken). Just a fortnight after opening it is packed even on a weekday lunch; I am uncertain as to whether this due to the power of television or the remarkable robustness of the London restaurant scene at present. The dishes I tried were a mixed bag, but overall were pleasant enough, though the service was distinctly stressed. I am hazy as to why one would choose to eat here for a full price lunch rather than take advantage of one of the deals available for lunch at most of London’s top restaurants, but the diners here were clearly untroubled by value for money considerations.

This did raise a general point about eating in London, where there can be a vast difference in price between dining at lunch compared to at night. Of course for people with busy full-time jobs there is usually little choice, but for those with flexibility there are real bargains to be had. Two-star Ledbury and The Square both offer a three course lunch for £35, one-star Gauthier for £25. Even three star Gordon Ramsay does a three course lunch for £45. Le Gavroche offers a lunch including wine for £52.50, and Alain Ducasse at the Dorchester offers something similar for £60 (including mineral water and coffee). My point is that if you go to one of the latest trendy casual London openings then you will run up a bill at lthis level. Three small dishes at Polpo cost me £25, and my two courses at Granger and Co came to £28 with service. Of course not everyone wants to eat in a formal setting, but the quality of cooking at somewhere like The Square is on a different plane entirely from that of even a good casual dining place. It makes me wonder how many decisions about dining venue are based on value for money and how much on the wanting to be seen at the latest fashionable opening.

It doesn’t get much more formal than the Savoy Hotel’s River Restaurant, where Escoffier once cooked. When I went soon after the opening my meal was a bit of an expensive shambles, with some downright poor dishes rubbing shoulders with capable ones. Enough people obviously agreed with me, since the Savoy fired the chef and pastry chef and have now rebuilt the kitchen team. The result is a vastly improved classical dining experience. My meal this week was never less than good, with flashes of real ability showing in some of the dishes, such as a classy tarte tatin (pictured). It is great to see this iconic restaurant now firing on all cylinders.

Roti Chai is another in a string of recent Indian diners to open in London (other examples are Dishoom and Potli), this one in Marylebone. This was the best of the bunch, with a simple dining room and capable Indian snacks, such as a good bhel poori. A chicken curry was ordinary, but the other dishes we tried were of a good standard, and prices were fair. There is a more formal dining room with a different menu downstairs from the “street kitchen” where I ate, and I will certainly try this at some point.

Nipa is a smartly decorated Thai restaurant in the Lancaster hotel. Despite a carefully written menu promising authentic cooking and spices flown is from Thailand, what actually arrived on the plate was generic Thai food of a fairly low standard. One dish, a red curry, was well made, but several other dishes were flawed in assorted ways. All this was all the more irritating given the substantial price tag, at over £50 a head.

I’d like to wish you all a very merry Christmas. This blog will appear as normal over the festive season, and I have some promising meals to look forward to in the coming week. Have a great holiday season.

From Balcon to burgers

Balcon used to be Brasserie Roux in the Sofitel St James, but has now gone its own way. The room certainly looks much better, an attractive space where a lot of attention has been lavished. This was less true of the food, though there were some pleasant dishes, especially a hearty cassoulet (pictured). Yet tasteless and overcooked brill, and a soufflé that had neither risen nor was cooked through were the kind of mistakes that I don’t expect when laying down over £90 a head (and that was with one of the cheapest wines on the list). The menu is certainly appealing and the space is attractive, but it didn’t really work for me. The £6 charge for a bottle of mineral water did not help its appeal (if you think wine mark-ups are steep in London, check out the mineral water prices). Atmosphere is important in a restaurant, but there is only so much that fancy room design can do: you do need to be able to cook consistently well too.

Aurelia is the younger sister to La Petite Maison and Il Baretto, offering Mediterranean food in Mayfair. It has lots of appealing dishes, set out seemingly in conventional Italian style, with sections of starters, pasta and main courses. But no, the “concept” was sharing, and the dishes arrived in whatever order the kitchen cooked them in. This makes no sense to me with this style of cuisine, and simply causes confusion. It is a distraction that the place could do without, as the cooking was rather erratic, with some very good dishes but some false notes too. At full-on Mayfair prices you expect consistency and not having to guess when your companion’s pasta dish will arrive, and so whether you should start yours or wait.

The Admiral Codrington delivered a much better value experience, though also with some food ups and downs. A highlight was a very good burger (the chef is extremely interested in burgers, and it shows) and a genuinely good, short wine list with well-chosen producers and distinctly fair mark-ups. This is Chelsea, and yet the wine mark-ups are very reasonable (especially on the better wines), encouraging diners to drink well: please watch and learn, recently opened Mayfair restaurants.

Yauatcha delivers remarkably consistent, high quality dim sum given the sheer scale of the place. Over numerous visits I cannot recall a technical problem with a dish, which is an achievement when you consider just how many dishes are leaving the kitchen here every day. The char sui buns are genuinely light, with a rich, slightly sweet pork filling with none of the gristle that appears all too often in lesser versions of this dish. Har gau steamed dumplings are excellent, and the baked venison puffs are a long-time favourite. A soft shell crab this week arrived without a hint of the greasiness that so often afflicts this dish. A class act.

I also attended the launch of the Mince Pie Project, a charity event supported by a number of leading chefs. You can bid for mince pies designed by a varietry of famous chefs; their web site shows the current bidding. It is in a good cause and you might end up with some mince pies, so have a look and place a bid if you wish.

We are now well into December, which as a regular diner I find the worst time of year to eat out in London. The restaurants are full of loud office parties and are even more packed than usual, which makes the restaurant staff stressed and cranky. Restaurant owners cash in by squeezing in more tables than normal and offering “special” menus that are essentially restricted choice menus at inflated prices. Ah, for those blissful days of January, where I can turn up just about anywhere and have a table at whatever time I want, rather than the “we can fit you in at 5:45 but we’ll need the table back by 7, or we have a cancellation at 10:30” conversations that abound in December.

Joel Antunes opens a new restaurant

Joel Antunes’ second London venue is a big improvement over his bistro at the Westminster Plaza Hotel. The format is still firmly in bistro territory but the food is much better, with several good dishes on our visit, such as excellent beef tartare and good tarte tatin. The main problem is the pricing, which is firmly of Mayfair proportions; the wine list was particularly aggressively priced (the average mark-up was 3.7 times retail price), so much so that we just had some cheap glasses of wine.

The Harwood Arms was on excellent form, and indeed an interesting contrast in terms of its value for money. Hare faggots were terrific, and the usual old favourites like venison Scotch egg and lemon beignets were lovely. I also enjoyed a duck egg salad (pictured). Service was charming, and the bill reasonable. The wine list at the Harwood has been revamped, with an average markup to the retail price of 2.7, far lower than that at Kitchen Joel Antunes. Of course The Harwood is a pub in Fulham and not a bistro in Mayfair, but last time I looked there was no price difference in bottles of wine being transported to Fulham compared to Mayfair (nor in staff costs, utility bills, etc - rent is only around 5% of the cost of a typical restaurant, so there is no excuse for gouging diners that enjoy wine based on the restaurant postcode).

Hedone continues to deliver high quality food. This week its 60 day aged beef was exquisitely tender, as was particularly good Shetland lamb. One bonus about going regularly here is that the menu changes weekly, and sometimes daily, so few dishes remain on the menu for long, and those that do evolve in terms of their garnishes and sauces. The chocolate bar dessert is now absolutely superb, and has significantly improved from its first version, for example.

Patara is a mini-chain of four London venues that deliver the best Thai food in London. I like the Beauchamp Place branch at the moment, and this week had a very enjoyable meal, with a lot of attention to detail in the dishes. Not only was presentation very attractive, but the large prawns in the pad Thai were very accurately cooked, and the sea bass in banana leaf had lovely taste from its marinade. For me this is the best Thai cooking in London by some margin; of course there are other places around that are much cheaper and which do good food, but Patara is a level higher.

I attended an event at Pissaro, the new restaurant from Jose Pissaro that complements his extremely popular but tiny tapas bar Jose. Pissaro is down the road from Jose, almost next to Zucca, and strictly speaking was not yet open when I visited, but it is in soft opening now and will doubtless prosper.

The Michelin Guide to the Netherlands emerged this week, with no change at the three star level and three elevations to two star. These were Chapeau! in Bloemendaal, De Kromme Watergang in Brekens, and Librije's little sister Zusje in Zwolle. One amusing note is that there are now more 2 star restaurants in the Netherlands than Belgium, something I would have given long odds against when I was travelling regularly to the Netherlands in the 1990s.

The Tokyo guide also came out, adding three new restaurants at the three star level. I was very pleased to see Ryugin elevated to three stars, a long overdue correction in my view. Also awarded three stars were Sushi Yoshitake and Koan in Shonan, which is actually a beach resort south-west of Tokyo. There are now 32 three star restaurants in Japan, well in advance of the 25 in France (and Monaco) in 2011. We shall see what happens with France in 2012 in due course, but it is most unlikely that France will catch Japan in terms of number of three star places. In the Tokyo area there are now 17 three star places, 57 two stars and 219 one star establishments. In passing, I see that Michelin is starting to sift through some of the over-promoted places e.g. Ristorante Aso is now down to one star (correct) and Reikasi is down from two stars to one (just one more to remove for that place for any Tokyo Michelin inspectors reading this).

The Hong Kong and Macau guide also emerged. On the positive side, the ludicrously overrated Sun Tung Lok was demoted from three stars (just two more to go), but there were promotions for Atelier de Joel Robuchon and an Italian restaurant catchily titled “8.5 Otto e Mezzo Mombana” (good luck with explaining that one to the ever-patient Hong Kong taxi drivers). There was some shuffling around at the one at two star level as well, and there are now 10 two star places in Hong Kong and three in Macau. At the one star level, there are 48 in Hong Kong and three in Macau. At least Yung Kee lost its entirely undeserved star.

The 2012 Guides are now towards the end of the new season, with the remaining ones being France (end February to March) and the Main Cities of Europe Guide, which usually comes out last, covering Scandinavia and Eastern Europe and emerging around the end of March.

The full list of 3 star places is here and the map of their locations is here.

A varied week, including a return to Hibiscus

Alloro is in the same restaurant group as Zafferano, but is mostly below the press radar. It also serves Italian food, and dishes are presented well. The cooking throughout the evening was excellent, with lovely pasta and a very good suckling pig salad (pictured). The only thing that marred the evening a little was the erratic service, with the waiters (with a single honourable exception) possessing a remarkable ability to glide past our table without catching my eye. They were all very stylish and serene, but serene doesn’t get my wine glass topped up. However the food itself was only a smidgeon below my regular Zafferano, and this is certainly a place I would recommend.

I returned to Hibiscus, a restaurant that I can never quite make up my mind about. Over four meals here I have had some very good individual dishes, but in general there seems to me a tendency towards complicated food, not always with successful results. It was interesting that the dishes I enjoyed the most this week were the simplest, the lovely cheese gougeres and the venison with a rich red wine sauce, which were both fine dishes. The cooking is undeniably capable, but I don’t find it very engaging.

Sand’s End in Fulham has a new chef: Chris Slaughter, formerly of The Crown in Maidenhead. The food is already showing signs of improvement, with an excellent fallow deer chop with red cabbage the star dish of the night. This is a pub with a short but well-chosen and fairly priced wine list, with an average mark-up level of 2.5 times retail price. I pay a lot more attention to mark-up levels in restaurants now that I have the Wine Search iPhone app, and it tonight I went for a wine at the high end of the list, simply because the mark-up was very fair. A lovely wine that retails at £58 here was on at £72, so gave a profit to the pub of £14. At the bottom of the list was a £15.50 wine that retails at £9. So for effectively an extra fiver I could drink a wine over six times the price of the cheapest wine on the list, and very nice it was too. The point I am making is that fair mark-ups encourage diners to splash out a bit, and everyone wins: the restaurant makes more (absolute) profit and the diner has a happier night. At Hibiscus (which has far from the priciest list in London) £72 would have bought me a £20 wine, by comparison.

Potli is the latest place to follow the fashion for Indian street food (driven by the success of Dishoom). Nothing wrong with that, but you have to be actually able to cook it, and there was scant evidence of that at my visit to Potli. Bone-dry bhel poori and overcooked chicken were just poor, and although a couple of decent vegetarian dishes saved the meal from complete oblivion, it was hard to get excited about the food here.

The Modern Pantry has an unusual menu and delivered an enjoyable late supper for me this week. A variant of Scotch egg made with little quail eggs and chorizo worked well, as did a pancake with crab, sweet corn and coriander with a mild chilli dressing.
The Michelin 2012 Guide to Belgium appeared this week, the big news being a promotion to 3 star level for Hertog Jan in Bruges, where Gert de Mangeleer serves up his modern dishes. There were also promotions to two stars awarded to De Jonkman and Le Chalet de la Foret (and oddly, according to the press release, to the restaurant t’Zilte, which had two stars last year yet was noted as a “new” two star).

This week the 2012 Michelin Guide to Spain also came out. At the top level El Bulli of course has now closed, and Can Fabes in Sant Celoni was demoted to two stars following the sadly premature death of its head chef Santi Santamaria. Newly anointed to the two star level were El Club Allard and Diverxo, both in Madrid, while Abac in Barcelona regained its second star. Portugal gained a second star with Ocean in Faro.

I venture off the tube map

Coworth Park (pictured) is a very smart country house hotel near Ascot, re-opened in late 2010 after a lengthy and expensive refurbishment. The initial chef was John Campbell, formerly of The Vineyard, and the flagship restaurant features his name heavily, even down to the initials JC in the foam on the cappuccino. Such things make it tricky when, as happened, here, the chef leaves: expect a major rebranding at the end of November. Previous sous chef Olly Pierrepont is now running the kitchen, and his team produced a good meal for us this week, with quite technical cooking but using good ingredients and capably executed. The grasping wine prices are at odds with the relatively reasonable food prices here.

Roussillon has served Pimlico well over the years, but lost its Michelin star when Alexis Gauthier went solo in Soho. The kitchen now has a new chef in the form of Shane Hughes, whose cooking I ate this summer at Ynyshir Hall. The best dish was a foie gras terrine with beetroot, and overall it was a very enjoyable and acceptably priced meal, though I have the impression that the cooking has not quite settled down yet. At present the menu is still very classical (and indeed Shane has plenty of classical training) but I wonder if he will be tempted to modernise things now that he is behind the stoves; a press release hinted at this, and if this indeed transpires I wonder how this will play to the Roussillon regulars. For now I have left the score at 5/10.

The Duke of Sussex is a pub local to me whose food always manages to exceed my expectations. The standard pub dishes like fish and chips are well made, but the main theme of the kitchen is Spanish cooking, and paella served in a cast iron skillet was one good example of the food this week. It is not a destination restaurant by any means, but it produces consistent, good value food.

The Swiss Michelin 2012 Guide came out this week, with no change at the top. There were two new two star restaurants: Mesa in Zurich and Les Floris in Anieres. The list of 3 star places is here and a location map of all of them here.

The Italy Michelin 2012 Guide emerged, with a promotion to modernist Osteria Francescana in Modena to three stars, and promotions to two stars for Principe Cerami in Taormina, L’Olivo on Capri, Quattro Passi in Massalubrense (baffling based on my recent visit) and Oliver Glowig in Rome. There were also no less than 33 new one star places.

The Chicago 2012 Michelin Guide also came out, and a slightly controversial edition it was at that. Until now the non-European Michelin guides have shown a steady increase of stars year on year, but not this one. L20, who had a chef change, was not just demoted by a star but reduced to just one star status, an unusual but not unknown ignominy (it happened in 2007 to Park Heuvel in The Netherlands, for example), while Chicago also lost one of its two star places, Avenues, which closed. Grant Achatz’s wildly successful restaurant Next was not awarded any stars, at least this year – perhaps the inspectors couldn’t get a reservation. Overall Chicago now has 25 Michelin stars compared to 30 last year.

As in previous series of BBC2’s “Masterchef: The Professionals” I popped up this week as a guest critic. As always, it was a lot of fun to film, if not in all cases to eat the food. If you missed this then you can, if you live in the UK, catch up on the BBC iPlayere here.

The top restaurants of Madrid

There are four two star Michelin restaurants in Madrid (one of which was not open this week) so in the limited time I had there this week I was able to try three of these. Santceloni (pictured) was the priciest of the three, and in fact the least impressive. My memories of it from a visit five years previously were better. We tried a full tasting menu and certainly had a pleasant evening, but the bill was of a level where you expect something better.

I preferred Sergi Arola Gastro. Interestingly for a chef who worked for years with Ferran Adria, the cooking was not all modern gimmicky, though it was not long before the first foam appeared at the table. At least here there was at least one really classy dish, though in general the cooking it did not feel like a two star restaurant.

My favourite of the three was Ramon Freixa, who is also no stranger to modern cooking equipment but actually offered a choice between modern and traditional dishes. Technique was good here, and there was also attention to detail: the bread here was the best of the three restaurants by a wide margin, for example. It was interesting that this was also the cheapest of the three two star restaurants.

In addition to the Madrid dining, I also returned to Haandi, a genuinely good Punjabi restaurant tucked away in a quiet Knightsbridge street. This has been a regular haunt for me for years, the kitchen never seeming to have an off night. This time, fish tikka was succulent, while as ever the vegetable curries were terrific. Even the delicate popadoms are a class above the norm.

I had an enjoyable lunch at old favourite Le Gavroche, which offers a very fairly priced lunch, and which is so popular that its Friday lunch can be booked up months ahead. You get less luxurious ingredients than at dinner, but at a fraction of the price at dinner, and of course you still receive the same excellent service that Le Gavroche has been delivering for years. The highlight was an airily light pear soufflé with chocolate sauce.

The 2012 Michelin guide to Germany came out this week. La Vie in Osnabruck saw the cooking of Thomas Bühner was promoted to 3 stars, balanced by the loss of a third star for Schlosshotel Lerbach. However there were no less than ten places that gained a second star. I have long believed that at the high-end, the restaurants in Germany compare very favourably with those of other countries, so it is good to see Michelin promoting more places there; 249 restaurants in Germany hold at least one star. The updated list of 3 star places is here, and the map is here.

The fifth series of BBC’s “Masterchef: The Professionals” started this week, with Monica Galetti and Michel Roux Junior from le Gavroche judging the cooking alongside Greg Wallace. I should, as in previous series, pop up in a quarter final as a guest critic.

The Royal Oak delivers

After a bonus of dry, mild weather in October, autumn has come to London, with the leaves turning colour in Hyde Park and the menus of London restaurants starting to move towards heartier fare after the summer; it will soon be time for truffles. As the season changes there seems to be no shortage of smart new London restaurant openings, despite the economic headlines in the newspapers.

Wolfgang Puck is perhaps the most famous chef in America, running a vast empire of US restaurant outlets and appearing as the private caterer to the Crane brothers in an episode of Frasier. Cut is his first UK venture, essentially an up-market steak house. It is in the smart new 45 Park Lane Hotel, and the food is actually very good, not just the steaks but all but one of the other dishes I tried too. Unfortunately the bill is in line with Park Lane’s upmarket status,, so although I enjoyed the meal the bill seemed high, and the wine list harboured some truly excessive mark-up levels. This did not seem to deter the other diners, with tables being turned on this weekday evening, and the place booked weeks ahead.

The Royal Oak (pictured) is a terrific gastropub near Maidenhead, worth the drive from London due to the sheer class of its cooking. This week crab ravioli was excellent, but even better was a superb hare and trotter pie, with suet pastry covering rich pie contents of tender hare, trotter and meat juices. Desserts are always good here, with both trifle and crumble gorgeous on this visit – The Royal Oak restaurant richly deserves its Michelin star.

The Brilliant continues to produce classy Punjabi food at a knock-down price in Southall. Methi chicken is a long-time favourite of mine, with a thick sauce suffused with fenugreek and other spices covering tender pieces of chicken. This is just about the only place in London now to find romali roti, my favourite Indian bread. Vegetable dishes are a strong suit here, in this case excellent chickpeas in the form of aloo chollay, and also a well-made saag paneer.

The Prince of Wales, sister to the Bull and Last, is a high class gastropub, and delivered an excellent meal to us recently. Wood pigeon Kiev was paired with figs and a salad with a peppery dressing, while a burger and chips was genuinely classy, with good meat, crisp lettuce and excellent chips; they even make their own bread, which is always a sure way to impress me. This is a very fine gastropub.

The San Francisco 2012 Michelin Guide came out, with no change at the 3 star level this year. Two stars were awarded to Saison and Benu in the city itself and Baume in Palo Alto. There were no demotions at the two or three star level.

The Wine Search app received some prominent coverage this week in the This is Money section of the Daily Mail website.

Next week I will mostly be eating Spanish food.

The Amalfi Coast

The Amalfi coast has spectacular scenery, and has been a favourite haunt of the rich and famous ever since the Roman Emperor Tiberius lived out his retirement on the island of Capri (first picture). The island has spectacular views, an attractive town centre and some impressive sights such as the Blue Grotto, although it is extremely popular with tourists. You can get to Capri in under half an hour by ferry from Sorrento (also a pretty town) or via a slightly longer ferry ride from Naples.

Also in this area is the justly famous site of Pompei (second picture),a whole town frozen in time, buried under lava from a sudden Mount Vesuvius eruption in AD 79, and re-discovered in the 18th century. It is remarkable that you can still read many of the original inscriptions on the walls, see a mural beautifully preserved inside a house and countless other sights from almost two thousand years ago.

The Amalfi coast itself has stunning views along its winding coastal road, with pretty villages such as Positano and Ravello (third picture). Driving can be a hair-raising experience given the narrow roads, the steep cliffs and the remarkably reckless overtaking habits of the local drivers.

We tried four restaurants of significance in the area. Quattro Passi was good in places, but served one poor main course, and had some other ups and downs. The staff were at least extremely nice about the problems that occurred, which is more than could be said at two star Taverna del Capitano, where we had a quite frosty service experience even before we had a problem with our main courses.

October is late in the season here and many places close over the winter, but I was surprised that the head chefs of these famous restaurants were absent this week. This matters little if there is a well-oiled team in the kitchen capable of turning out high quality food whether the head chef is there or not, but the wild inconsistency at these two restaurants in particular suggests to me that their chefs would be better off paying attention to what is happening in their kitchens than heading off for consultancy contracts and cooking shows elsewhere.

Much better cooking was to be found at Torre del Saracino, a seafood-oriented restaurant directly on the coast. In particular I had an excellent main course and a superb dessert here, while service was classy.

However the best cooking of all was at Don Alfonso 1890, whose cooking is deliberately simple and aims to highlight the produce used, which is of the highest quality. Many ingredients are grown on the family farm just a few miles away, and the quality of the tomatoes in particular here was extraordinarily high. We had a couple of dinners here and found the cooking to be consistently excellent, and the staff were particularly welcoming. I would highly recommend this establishment to anyone planning to be in this part of the world.

A busy week revisiting some old favourites

The Ivy has been serving food since 1917, though in recent years it has been come something of a celebrity haunt, and a very hard table to reserve. I haven’t been here for many years, but nothing much has changed: the menu still has its long list of appealing comfort food, and the service is welcoming whatever your celebrity status. The wine list is highly marked-up, and this can send your bill northwards very rapidly.

I thought it would be good to give Bistro Bruno Loubet another go after a poor meal just after opening, now that the kitchen has had a chance to settle down. It was indeed a lot better, and I have nudged up the score to reflect this, though I still have a slight sense of unease regarding the value for money factor here, as there were still some inconsistencies, though far less than on my first visit.

The Mall Tavern has a playful retro menu but the team in the kitchen can actually cook. The salmon here is smoked on the upstairs balcony and is superb, the bread is made from scratch and the deconstructed pork pie was excellent. As at my previous visit, desserts were relatively the least successful course, but still entirely pleasant, and prices are very fair indeed.

The Bull and Last is another serious gastropub, this week delivering excellent soft shell crab with macaroni, good stone bass and pleasant venison. The chips here are superb, and although the mixed fish starter was inconsistent (with over-peppery potted prawns) the desserts were very good indeed e.g. fine bread and butter pudding.

Amaya serves excellent tandoori food at a high price, and delivered some good dishes this week, especially a lovely tandoori prawn (pictured). Service was unfortunately intrusive and inept. Our waiter insisted on interrupting our conversation to deliver his lines about the concept of the restaurant, despite my saying that I had been several times previously. The wine service was dire: on choosing a Gewürztraminer the waiter confidently said “ah yes sir, a red wine” and then promptly whisked the bottle away, with topping up just a distant dream. Eventually we asked for the bottle to be left on the table. I really do not mind topping up my own wine, but if a restaurant is to do this themselves then they need to do it properly, not leave empty glasses for minutes on end, repeatedly.

Michelin released their western Japan guides (Tokyo comes out in early December), covering Kyoto, Kobe, Osaka and, new this year, the old capital of Nara (a particularly pretty place to visit, incidentally). At the three star level, there was no change in Kyoto but promotions for Fujiya 1935 and Koryu in Osaka, and a new 3 star in Nara called Wa Yamamura. There were seven new two star establishments in Kyoto, with 31 two star restaurants now, and 71 one star places compared to 56 last year. Osaka now has 15 two star places compared to a dozen last year, and 88 one stars compared to 59 in 2011. Kobe has two extra two star places, with 12 in all now, and 44 one star places, compared with 38 last year. As well as its solitary three star, Nara has three two star places and 21 one star restaurants. The current three star list is here.

I have now completely revamped the maps on the website. These now use a more modern mapping technology and have been completely updated. There are maps for London, the UK Michelin starred restaurants (this one is a work in progress for now; it is incomplete at present but will be filled in fully soon), all 3 star restaurants globally and a map of all restaurants that I have reviews for. Please let me know if you spot any anomalies (there will be some) or have any feedback on this.

Next week I will be eating mostly Italian food.

Dining in SE1, and other stories

Jose is the tapas bar creation of Jose Pisarro, previously co-founder of Brindisa. There are no reservations taken and the space is tiny, packed out even very early on a weekday evening, so we ended up eating our food standing up off a window ledge, squeezed into a corner. The tapas was quite good but if you are planning a visit then don’t bank on a leisurely, relaxed dinner.

The Anchor & Hope is a place that I have never had a particularly good meal at, despite its reputation, and I thought it was time to give it another shot. My meal here was much as I recall it, uneven to say the least, and in this case with some truly dire service thrown in. It is particularly interesting to consider the price for lunch here and compare it to the kind of special offers for lunch you get at most Michelin starred restaurants in London.

At my twelfth (!) meal so far at Hedone I had a couple of new dishes. I was particularly impressed with the depth of flavour of the chicken, which was no ordinary bird. Many top London restaurants (including Michelin starred places) use either Label Anglais chicken or (more likely) Poulet Noir, which are decent but do not compare with the flavour of good chicken that you can get in France (the chef at Hedone uses Poulet Noir chickens, but only for making stock; he considers Label Anglais chickens not good enough even for stock). This evening the bird was from the Loire: Geline de Touraine chicken, which had that wonderful deep chicken flavour that people vaguely recall that chickens had in childhood, but probably never really did (at least not in my childhood). In addition the Hare Royale was an excellent preparation of this classic dish, with fine foie gras, superb, rich hare and a lovely jus. Scallops (pictured here) were lovely and sweet, a huge contrast to the tasteless scallops I ate last week in San Diego (the sugar content of scallops drops the longer they are out of the water, so sweeter scallops will normally be fresher). The chocolate bar dessert has also developed since the early days here, and is becoming really classy.

Yauatcha is an impressive operation, never seeming to put a foot wrong despite its scale (on a busy night they will get through a little matter of 600 covers). Old favourites like har gau and the venison puffs were as good as ever, and service is silky smooth. I cannot recall having a problem dish here over many meals, which is remarkable given just how large the operation is (with no less than 50 chefs working here in all).

Kiraku is a terrific place, an unassuming Japanese restaurant in Ealing that specialises in grilled food. I have tried a few dishes here on prior visits, and this time opted for grilled eel on rice: presented in a pretty box, this was an excellent dish and a lunch by itself. If you are ever in west London and fancy a Japanese meal, this is surely your best bet. It is also almost absurdly cheap at lunch.

The Michelin lists on my web site are now fully updated, and the maps have been substantially revamped, now with a preview and photo if available on each map flag. The 3 star map is here and the UK map here.

A week in San Diego

San Diego has the best climate in the USA, like Goldilocks' porridge, not too hot and not too cold, practically on the Mexican border; indeed it was part of Mexico until 1850. It is the base of the US Pacific Fleet, and if you walk along the seafront you will frequently see assorted warships cruising past (pictured). You can tour the decommissioned aircraft carrier USS Midway should this take your fancy. Despite being the eighth largest US city it is not over-endowed with good restaurants. It is particularly tough to find anywhere decent to eat in the downtown area, where the Victorian-era Gaslamp district is full of cynical places targeted at the nearby convention centre. Owners know that few customers will return, and each new convention brings a new crop of tourists to prey on.

I had a tolerable meal at Cafe Chloe, a simple brasserie, though the service there was poor. The worst meal of the week was at 1500 Ocean, the flagship restaurant of the historic (by American standards) Hotel del Coronado. Despite a new chef who has worked in at least one serious restaurant in Europe, the meal here was dismal tourist fodder. Coronado has a view across the bay to the San Diego downtown, and in this area I actually preferred my meal at Candelas, a simple but competent Mexican restaurant.

I ventured into the suburbs to Narraya, a Thai restaurant with a reputation for using unusual ingredients, but the execution was very ordinary. I was quite impressed with the food at Hane Sushi, sister of the well-regarded Sushi Ota; mixed tempura were unusually well-made, and my eel dish was also good.

The best meal by a country mile was at Addison in Del Mar, north of San Diego up the coast. This restaurant, in an extremely smart newish hotel, delivered an excellent meal along with impeccable service.

My wine app featured in two press articles this week. One was in Eat Out Magazine, and the other was in the Sunday Times (the latter is behind the Times subscription firewall).

The first crop of the 2012 Michelin Guides appeared. In New York Michelin corrected the absurdity of Eleven Madison Park having just one star in a big way, bumping it to three stars in one go. They also elevated Brooklyn Fare to three star level, a restaurant so simple it lacks even a wine list, let alone tablecloths.

In the UK there was no change at the 3 star level, but two stars were granted to Sat Bains and (mystifyingly) to The Hand & Flowers, while Pied a Terre lost a star in the wake of the departure of its head chef. Stars were awarded uncontroversially in London to Dinner, Hakkasan Mayfair and Pollen Street Social, and (absurdly) to North Road. Outside London stars were awarded to Coworth Park, Sir Charles Napier, Butchers Arms, The Pass, Tassili, Black Swan and Drfitwood. In Scotland, Glenapp Castle, Castle Terrace and Martin Wishart at Loch Lomond, while The Checkers in Wales gained a star. The following restaurants lost their single star: The Samling, La Becasse, Ynyshir Hall, The Plumed Horse, Champany Inn, Tom Aikens and The Bingham.

3 star Michelin Arnsbourg revisited

It is almost a decade since I sampled the innovative cooking of Arnsbourg, just after it received its third Michelin star. It is not an easy place to get to: last time it was a long drive from Strasbourg, and this time it was a long drive from Luxembourg (pictured). The business has clearly prospered, with a larger dining room and also some rooms that you can stay overnight at. Yet I found this meal, while technically capable, rather less satisfying than my last one here. Service was superb once more, and there were some clever touches, yet this time I had the sense that the food theatre was sometimes at the expense of the dish. I didn’t get this impression last time, and have the impression that it has lost some of the edge that earned its third star. It is an interesting debating point as to when a top restaurant is really delivering its best meals during its development. Few places get constantly better and better, and in many cases a restaurant’s best meals seem to be just before or after they have gained their third star. It must be difficult to keep up the same level of intensity, and easy to coast somewhat knowing that the third star pretty much ensures a constant stream of business, even in a location as out of the way as this one. I still enjoyed Arnsbourg, but I have fonder memories of my earlier visit here.

The current closure of Royal China in Queensway is giving me an excuse to try some other places I have not been to for years, one of which is Four Seasons. This bustling place produced some very good food this week, with particularly good sea bass and gai lan. It was not entirely consistent, but this is definitely some of the better Cantonese cooking in London.

Malina has been getting some press attention recently, and I am always curious to try and find a good Polish restaurant. This occasional quest has had some distinct disappointments over the years, including in Krakow a few years ago. Molina was actually pretty good, and although the dishes did not compare with the very best food I had eaten in Krakow (at Under the Angels), Molina was actually better than several other well-known restaurants that I tried when I was over there, and certainly better than the places I have tried in London. It is at its heart a simple neighbourhood restaurant rather than a destination place, but if you are in west London and want to try Polish food then you can do much worse (trust me: much, much worse…).

I also had a quick visit to long-time favourite Diwana Bhel Poori. In case you thought food in London was always expensive, we had enough snacks for two people (bhel poori, aloo papri chat, samosas) and lassi to drink, and the bill came to £14.40. Not each you understand, but for two. £7 a head for genuinely tasty food.

I have revamped the 3 star Michelin map on the web site. This now has proper previews and link through to the reviews from the map “pins”. Please let me know if you spot any glitches.

I venture to Newbury

The Yew Tree Inn, in an attractive a 17th century building near Newbury, recently went through a change of ownership and chef, with Nick Bevan now behind the stoves. Despite the name it is more restaurant than pub, with ironed white tablecloths. This suggestion of formality did not translate into the service, which was really inept. Fortunately the kitchen was in safer hands, and a steak pie in particular was very good. Otherwise the cooking was generally competent, and although not of a standard to merit a lengthy journey, it is a good dining option if in the area.

The Regency Club (hat tip to Alok and also Nigel for the suggestion) serves authentic north Indian cuisine in a pub-like setting in Queensbury, an area that these days feels almost like a small version of Southall, with a concentration of Asian shops, restaurants and businesses. This is casual dining, but the spicing was good and the dishes well made, especially some excellent naan bread; it is extremely fairly priced, and definitely worth a look if you are in this part of the world.

The Bleeding Heart is a wonderfully named restaurant on the edge of the City. Its basement setting is cosy but the food on my visit was no more than adequate, and there was a real problem with the dessert. I was having the cheap lunch, but prices a la carte are quite steep given the level of cooking that I encountered.

I had another most enjoyable evening at Cambio de Tercio, which for me is the best Spanish restaurant in London. I particularly liked a simply dish of sardines and grapes, while more technically elaborate dishes such as crisp cod and fried sardine bones wrapped in rice with Romesco sauce also worked well.

I notched up my tenth visit to Hedone this week. As well as the high quality fish (turbot in this case) which is a trademark of the place, I tried their blueberry tart (pictured) for the first time. This had really impressive pastry, showing some serious technical skill in the kitchen. The restaurant is already making some culinary waves in the London dining scene, showing the quality of ingredients that can be obtained in the UK if chefs put sufficient effort into sourcing, rather than just picking up the phone and accepting what their usual suppliers end them.

From fish and chips to fine dining

The Riding House Café is sister to a couple of Bermondsey eateries (the Garrison and Village East) and offers all day dining with the trendy “small plate” format. The British cooking that we experienced was capable enough, though as often with such places the bill ends up being more than I initially imagined it would be (all those little plates and side dishes add up; even the bread is charged as an extra). It did have excellent service and was clearly very successful, with tables being turned around us.

Mandarin Kitchen is another place that knows about turning tables. We went during the Chinese mid-autumn festival, a harvest festival where moon cakes (lotus seed pastries) are traditionally served. The restaurant had numerous red paper lanterns hanging in the room as part of this festival. Despite a reservation we had a bit of a wait for our table, though the meet and greet person was very nice about it. Seafood is the speciality here, and fried prawns with chill were carefully cooked, though it was odd that a seafood restaurant managed to butcher the filleting of a sea bass. I slightly prefer Royal China in terms of food quality, but service at Mandarin Kitchen was noticeably warmer (admittedly, this is not exactly difficult). Incidentally, Royal China in Queensway is currently undergoing a long overdue refurbishment, the restaurant due to re-open in November.

I revisited Marcus Wareing at the Berkeley, and had a lengthy tasting menu (which is now £120 a head compared to £90 just two years ago). The best dishes were very good indeed, such as precisely cooked sea bass, and quail with peas (pictured). Desserts were also on form at this meal. There were a few relative misses amongst the hits though, and although technique was hard to fault, I do find a tendency to over-complicate dishes here. However this is undeniably accomplished cooking.

Kerbisher and Malt is a new fish and chip shop in Brook Green. It is remarkably hard to find even decent fish and chips in London, and after a string of places serving soggy chips and fish of debatable origin hiding in a thick slab of greasy batter I had almost given up (honourable exceptions are the excellent Two Brothers and Toffs, which happen to be a long way from where I live). Kerbisher and Malt, with a chef who has cooked at some good London restaurants, managed an entirely capable version of haddock and chips, let down only by some ordinary mushy peas and tartare sauce on the side.

Apsleys produced another excellent meal this week, the cooking continuing to improve at each successive meal I eat here. I particularly enjoyed superb langoustines with fennel and grapefruit, while a risotto of scallops and peas flavoured with saffron was also very good. This is a restaurant that had some very ill-informed negative press when it opened, but persevered and was rewarded with a deserved Michelin star. The cooking has developed steadily and this seems to me firmly in two star territory now.

Pied a Terre after Shane Osborn

Portobello Ristorante Pizzeria perhaps undersells itself by the use of “pizzeria” in its title, which rather implies that it mainly does pizzas. In fact there is a full Italian menu, and I ate a pleasant rabbit tagliatelle dish as well as sampling some very pleasant slices of pizza. This is a restaurant that goes as far as making its own bread, and the service I encountered was that genuinely friendly style of service that some Italian people seem able to provide effortlessly.

Sushi Say is another neighbourhood restaurant with good service, but this time serving Japanese food in the unpromising location of Willesden (which saw off even the excellent Sabras). Sushi Say seems to be prospering, and certainly provided some pleasant dishes, though this was good rather than outstanding Japanese food.

Fitou is the new branding of what was Number One Café (no ownership change is involved). I had a good meal here earlier this year but my meal this week was better. Fitou serves classical Thai dishes in a simple setting at a very fair price indeed. The spicing in a red curry with prawns was well-judged, and sea bass had a refreshing citrus and chill sauce. You can bring your own alcohol at no charge, and £18 per person bought us more food that we could finish; I wish London had more places like this.

I paid my first visit to Pied a Terre since Shane Osborn left, and initially my meal seemed to still be at the same high standard, with excellent nibbles and a lovely quail starter (pictured). However an over-salted main dish and less than stellar desserts meant that the overall experience was less consistent than previously, so I have nudged the score on the web site down a notch to reflect this.

I also popped back to my long-time favourite Gujerati snack place, Diwana Bhel Poori. The bench seating is uncomfortable and the service can be a little scatty, but for year after year they have delivered excellent vegetarian dishes such as aloo papri chat with vibrant spices. This week some pooris were very good as well as the usual dishes I eat here, but as ever it is best to stick to the snacks rather than stray into the curries, which are ordinary, and the only reason I don’t score this place higher. We seriously over-ordered and still did not spend £15 a head.

Dining in Sydney

Sydney is one of my favourite cities to visit. It has a beautiful natural setting, with the harbour, spectacular beaches like Manly and Bondi, and numerous attractive bays and points. On this trip I tried a mix of high end dining and more casual places.

At the latter end I tried a couple of dim sum places. East Ocean is a long established place but it seemed quite ordinary to me. Much better was Din Tai Fung, a Taiwanese fast-food chain specialising in dumplings, which was very good value.

Ms G was modern pan-Asian cooking in a trendy setting, with very capable food and a good atmosphere.

Icebergs serves mainly seafood in a striking setting on cliffs overlooking Bondi beach – I even saw a pod of dolphins swimming near the beach when looking out from my table. The food was simple and capably cooked, though you are certainly paying a premium for the view.

It was a similar story at the more up-market Quay, which has a superb view across Sydney Harbour to the Opera House (pictured). The food was good, though quite expensive given the level of cooking, though this large restaurant was completely full and clearly very successful commercially.

Rockpool Bar and Grill was another place where there was a sense that you were paying for the setting, in this case a beautiful dining room with vaulting ceiling and spectacular display of Riedel glasses. Essentially a superior steak house, the food was good but the bill was distinctly high.

Est was a very fashionable restaurant in a trendy boutique hotel, serving classical food in a quite large dining room. The food was well executed but I confess to preferring this chef’s cooking when he was at the small scale Cicada (sadly now no more) many years ago.

The two best gastronomic experiences by some margin were Marque and Tetsuya. Marque was ultra-modern cooking with elaborate and unusual ingredient combinations, just the kind of food I often dislike. Not here though, as the cooking not only was technically very accurate, but the ingredients were good and the flavour combinations worked harmoniously. Service was superb. An interview with chef Mark Best is here.

Tetsuya has moved premises since my last visit here over a decade ago, and is now in a beautiful building with a lovely Japanese garden. The meal here was technically hard to fault, with enjoyable dishes and very slick service. An interview with Tetsuya can be found here.

Eating in Melbourne

I used to visit Australia fairly regularly in the late 1990s, but have not been for over a decade. At that time Melbourne offered some good value Vietnamese and Greek food and some decent mid-range places, but little at the high end of the dining scene (such as Stephanies, now defunct, and the Flower Drum, a merely pleasant Chinese restaurant). Things have really changed with the passing of time.

At the everyday level I enjoyed Chin Chin, a modern Thai/Asian place that produced very capable food. I was impressed with MoVida, a tapas bar that would compete well anywhere, other than with its lighting, which was murky in the extreme. Hare and Grace served up a rather mixed bag, with a lovely braised beef dish but also some oddities, and at a high price point.

One thing to note as a visitor is that wine in Australia is surprisingly expensive. This is not just a matter of exchange rate: the government attaches two taxes to wine with an effective tax rate of 41% on local wines, with an extra surcharge for foreign wines. This means that wine prices in restaurants seem high even compared to London, and indeed when I checked the prices of a few wines at a local shop, some wines were 30% higher than the retail price you would pay in the UK.

At the high end of things Melbourne now has some serious restaurants. Attica was the kind of ultra-modern place with complex dishes and unfamiliar ingredients that I was not really looking forward to, but in fact it was excellent. The dishes were not only pretty, but the components made logical sense together on the plate. The chef’s emphasis on foraging also meant that the vegetables had good flavour, which was generally a weak link that I noticed here. I spoke to a leading vegetable supplier here and he confessed that the quality here was generally low compared to Europe.

Vue de Monde now has a serious view in its smart new premises, but the food is the star here. Considerable effort went into sourcing, and dishes were not only very pretty (one is pictured) but had excellent flavour balance. Service was superb at both Vue de Monde and Attica, and both are world class restaurants.

Next week I will write about the Sydney dining scene.

A week in China

First in Beijing I went duck hunting: Peking duck to be precise. On my previous visit I had eaten some dazzling Peking Duck, amongst other dishes, at Made in China. This time I was curious to see how that compared with other places in Beijing that had a serious reputation for the same dish. Although historically Quan Ju De established a reputation for Peking Duck, I gather from foodies familiar with the city that it is past its best, with dozens of branches now, eight in Beijing alone (the largest serves 5,000 meals a day in a seven storey building, accommodating 1,200 timers at one time). Duck de Chine and Da Dong appeared from my research to be the main rivals on the Peking Duck front now, so I tried both.

Duck de Chine (at least the new, second branch) was very smart indeed, with lovely décor and vast numbers of staff in attendance. However I was not that taken with its duck, and indeed preferred a Szechaun prawn dish. It was certainly a pleasant restaurant to eat in, but nothing remarkable on the food front.

Da Dong has perhaps the best reputation for duck, a place in itself that now has four large branches in Beijing. This is much less smart than Duck de Chine but is undeniably popular, with queues of people at the door even for lunch. It has a large menu (in every sense) and certainly the Peking Duck was very good here, the skin in particular better than that of Duck de Chine, and with very thin pancakes.

However it was when I returned to Made in China that I found the duck of my dreams, with ultra-thin skin, crisp yet so delicate it melts on the tongue, with superbly cooked duck meat to match. For me this was a class higher than the others, and what was most impressive to me was the standard of the other dishes. Beggar’s chicken is a complex dish that was superb here, but simply vegetable dishes were also dazzling. I ate here three times on this trip, and after five visits in all this is consistently the best Chinese food I have eaten anywhere.

Beijing is not an easy city to visit, a vast place that has been substantially rebuilt with the proceeds of the rapidly growing Chinese economy. Many hotels are ultra-modern and of a very high build quality, yet service can be mediocre in even the smartest places. There is little English spoken, and many taxi drivers have limited grasp of geography, on several occasions giving up trying to find the destination address altogether, so you need to allow plenty of time and patience for even seemingly simple journeys. The almost permanent haze of pollution hanging over the city does not add to its charms.

On to Hong Kong, where I tried some places that I missed on my last trip. The Hong Kong Michelin guide is, in my experience, easily the least reliable of all the Michelin restaurant guides. New three star Sun Tung Lok was a very ordinary experience, and indeed I had better meals at several other restaurants, both in and out of Michelin. Ming Court (two star) was very impressive, with a consistently good meal and friendly service. Man Wah was almost as good, and this restaurant is entirely overlooked by Michelin. I also ate well at One Harbour Place (another Michelin exile). My one French meal was at Amber, which had some highlights but also more inconsistency than I had hoped for, especially give the considerable price tag.

Hong Kong is a far easier place to navigate than Beijing, and it is much easier to communicate in English. The views over the harbour in particular are striking (pictured is a view from the 100th floor of the Ritz Carlton hotel). The W hotel where I stayed had particularly impressive staff (though after the service standards of Beijing it would not be hard to dazzle).

The blog will be a couple of days later than usual next week, to accommodate some further travel well off the tube network. You can follow my travels on Twitter if you wish.

Mumbai and Singapore dining

Mumbai is a challenging city for a visitor, due to its truly dire traffic and chaotic nature. The area down by Marine Drive has some nice views out to sea (but we are not talking some azure Mediterranean view here however, the sea here being a grey/brown colour), the famous Chowpatty beach with its stalls and hawker food, and some fine if poorly maintained grand buildings from the colonial era. Nearer the airport are a clutch of smart hotels, but bear in mind that it can take well over an hour to drive from that area to downtown, even with the help of the new Sea Link toll road (a rare road in India with several lanes and no potholes, at least not yet).

I was fortunate to be shown around by Rashmi Uday Singh, the number one food writer in India and columnist for the Times of India. She took me to two venerable Mumbai restaurants, very different from one another. One, Gaylord, was very smart and serves traditional north Indian food. The other was a simple vegetarian place called Thaker serving Gujerati food. The latter was tucked away in a hectic alley near the market, accessed via a grimy corridor and up some flights of stairs. Despite the contrasting settings, I found the food at Gaylord very ordinary, whereas Thaker had really vibrant spicing and some delicious snacks. The meal at Thaker (all you can eat) cost less than £4, which would not buy you a small glass of beer at one of Mumbai's smart hotels. Rashmi wrote up our evening in her weekly Times of India column that week, and it was odd to be in a distant country looking at a photo of yourself in the newspaper (the print and online editions of this newspaper differ, including their photos).

I returned to Peshawari at the ITC Sheraton, which is modelled after the well-known Bhukara in Delhi. It offers north Indian frontier food, with most dishes coming from the tandoor. It is very good, though is distinctly pricy, at more than ten times the price of the meal at Thaker. A pint of beer at Peshawari cost more than £10, and yet the place was full, an indication of how much wealth is being created at the top of the heap in Mumbai these days.

It was a contrast to move from there to Singapore, which must be the most well-organised city in Asia. The airport is a delight; from touching down on the tarmac to sitting in the taxi took 25 minutes flat, including picking up checked luggage and clearing immigration. Singapore operates the most sophisticated traffic management system in the world, a system rather like London's congestion charge but with variable charges according to how busy the traffic is, and the consequence is that the traffic flows freely. Taxis are bizarrely cheap and plentiful, in addition to the city’s excellent mass transit system. The city itself is very modern, though efforts have been made in recent years to "green Singapore" via extensive tree planting throughout the city, and indeed this was noticeable compared to my last visit here over a decade ago.

The restaurant scene has moved on since I was last here; I used to travel to Simgapore quite regularly in the 1990s, but at that time there were some pleasant Chinese restaurants but nothing really high end. These days there are plenty of ambitious restaurants, of which I tried four. Iggys is perhaps the most well-known, serving elaborate modern fusion food. It was good, though the kitchen seemed to be straining to be elaborate for the sake of it at times, and yet took some short-cuts in other places that detracted. I preferred Gunthers, a small restaurant run by a Belgian chef and serving much more classical French food. This was excellent, with very friendly staff. I was disappointed by Jaan, which has managed to lose not one but two head chefs in the last eighteen months (the last a few weeks ago in controversial circumstances), and the spectacular 70th floor view could not make up for some quite ordinary, expensive and at times curiously tasteless French cooking. Hayler’s law: “food gets worse as it gets higher” applies here.

However the best meal by some margin was at Waku Ghin, the first venture by Tetsuya Wakuda outside Sydney. Rather than mimicking the fusion formula of Testuya in Sydney, Waku Ghin is straight down the line Japanese cooking. The large and lavish premises accommodate just twenty diners, with almost as many chefs working as there are guests. You sit in teppan style at a bar across a hot plate from your own dedicated chef (pictured), and we were treated to dish after perfectly cooked dish in a meal that used top ingredients from both Japan and Australia in particular. The owner happened to be in that night, and he spent a generous amount of his time chatting with us in between courses: he seemed a genuinely modest man, passionate about food.

Next week the blog will cover China.

The Gilbert Scott in St Pancras

The Gilbert Scott is the brasserie of the Renaissance Hotel in the revamped St Pancras station. The dining room is attractive even though the tables are small and crammed in. The British food (with some nods to old classic dishes) on this visit was mostly quite capable, with a good slab of plaice and even a nice piece of pork pie. The quibble, and it is a large one, would be the bill, which quickly mounts up to a size that it is not easy to justify given the level of cooking here. This seems not to trouble the diners around here, as the restaurant is doing a roaring trade – recession, what recession?

The Old Pack Horse was my latest leg of my quest in mostly fruitless search for decent Thai food in London. Although just a dining room at the back of a pub, the restaurant here had a certain amount of promise by dint of being sister to the excellent Addies Thai. The food at The Old Pack Horse is not at all in the same league, yet is pricier. A nice green curry was the best dish, but there was also a downright inedible starter to balance this. The food here is acceptable if you live nearby, and it is better than many other places in the area, but then that is not setting the bar very high.

Roganic is the London sister of l’Enclume in Cumbria, which has carved out a reputation for very modern cooking based on local, often foraged, ingredients. I confess to being a little nervous before the meal, as some of the ingredients are unfamiliar, and I was worried that the effect might be to show off how trendy the cooking was rather than actually tasting good. In fact I need not have worried, as the flavour elements worked very well together throughout the meal. The lengthy tasting menu flowed logically and was carefully judged, and I would also add that this is some of the prettiest plating I have seen (an example is pictured; see the review for lots of full size photos). It reminded a little me of the meal I had earlier this year at Viajante, but I much preferred the cooking at Roganic.

Dishoom has a permanent queue of people waiting to dine, but this week delivered a very inconsistent dinner, much lower in standard than my initial lunch here. Although there were still a few good dishes there were far too many slips (burnt potatoes and singed chicken, over-salting) for comfort. I have adjusted the website score down a notch to reflect this, and even the current score feels rather kind.

I was unable to resist a quick lunch to revisit the superb grilled mackerel at Kiraku in Ealing, which was every bit as good as I remember it. At some point I will manage to get past this excellent dish and order some other food here.

The Brilliant is one of the most consistent restaurants that I know, delivering full-flavoured Punjabi dishes successfully night after night. This week, as well as some of the regular dishes such as excellent fish pakora, I also sampled an off-menu tandoori rabbit dish, which was quite interesting.

I also sneaked in another meal at Hedone (my fifth in two weeks), encountering some very fresh mackerel and utterly superb lamb. This lamb, from Yorkshire, was the best I have tasted, bar none. The chef here really has a gift for spotting high quality ingredients.

The blog is going to take a short break and will resume in a couple of weeks; it should have some interesting stories to tell on its return.

Formans now have a restaurant

Forman’s is well-known for its “London cure” smoked salmon, which you can buy mail order but is also widely used in restaurants. The smokery, with the exotically named “Fish Island” address near Bow, has now opened up a restaurant with a view over the Olympic stadium. Although the smoked salmon itself was good, the rest of the food was distinctly up and down, the best dishes where the kitchen had little to do with the food, which is rarely a good sign. This was a shame as the room is attractive and I liked the idea of eating fish in a salmon smokery. Ah well.

I had contrasting fortunes in my meals in Chiswick this week. The Devonshire Arms is a new incarnation of The Devonshire, which Gordon Ramsay failed to make a success of despite his brand and what I thought was competent, if over-priced, food. The new version is from the owner of The Drapers Arms and, based on this visit, he has a lot of work to do. Our meal had a couple of decent dishes but also some real howlers, and I think that they really need to improve if the place is to prosper in an area with plenty of competitive offerings.

The Duke of Sussex is one of those competitors, a pub offering hearty, robust British food but with a distinct Spanish influence. I always warm to a place where they take the trouble to make their own bread, and it is very good here. A chorizo heuvos was a particularly good and comforting dish this week.

Old favourite Zafferano continues to be consistently good, delivering not only an excellent summer salad but also a new pasta dish on the menu: a tubular pasta with arrabiata sauce was really excellent, the pasta texture good, the tomato in the sauce having depth of flavour, and a very well judged level of pepper kick enlivening this deceptively simple dish. Service was terrific as ever.

By far the most interesting meal of the week was at Hedone. I have written previously about the lack of really ambitious London openings in recent years. There have been no shortage of bistros and pubs, but how many recent restaurants have really been aiming for the culinary stars? Exclude those in hotels (Helene Darroze, Apsleys, Alain Ducasse) and it is a struggle to think of any since the late lamented Ambassade de l’Ile and, going further back, Tom Aikens. Hedone is unusual in many ways, run by an ingredients expert and food writer rather than a classically trained chef, but above all the food is genuinely ambitious. The chef/owner has scoured the UK for small suppliers who can provide really top quality produce, supplementing this from France and Italy when necessary. The cooking, which is deliberately not over-technical, is designed to showcase these ingredients, which are really dazzling. Scallops were so fresh that the slices of sashimi scallops were still moving when plated. Another example was a lovely dish of girolles with slow-cooked egg and sourdough crouton crumbs (pictured), which featured remarkably good Scottish girolles. I have now had four meals at Hedone since its opening its two weeks ago, so this is no flash-in-the-pan. It provides arguably the most exciting cooking in London right now: go while you can still get a reservation.

I am also delighted to add to the web site a chef interview with Grant Achatz, chef of Alinea. I had a stunning meal at Alinea on my recent visit to Chicago, and Grant was featured as one of Time Magazine’s 100 most influential people list, the only food-related person to be honoured in this way.

The only two star Michelin food in Scotland

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After days of rain on my trip to the Napa valley a few weeks ago I looked at the BBC weather forecast for Glasgow and saw unremitting rain cloud symbols as far as the eye could see (or at least as far as the cursor would scroll). In reality we had excellent weather there, sitting in a friend’s garden to have tea and snacks each day, fitting in a trip to a couple of restaurants. Andrew Fairlie is in the Gleneagles Hotel (pictured) and is the only two Michelin star restaurant in the UK that I had not been to. The meal there was pleasant, but for me fell rather short of truly two star standards; it was interesting to compare this with Tom Kitchin and Martin Wishart’s restaurants in Edinburgh, both of which seem to me very strong one star places indeed; of the three places, I would personally say that Andrew Fairlie was the least memorable meal of the three based on my experiences. That said, the food was capable enough, and a chocolate dessert was impressive.

This was more than could be said for MacCallums Oyster Bar at Troon (or “Oyster Ar” as the sign on the wall outside would have it). I gather this once had a good reputation under chef Douglas Smith, but although the seafood itself was fresh the cooking of it at my meal was quite disappointing except for a competently cooked slab of halibut. It is a pity to see good quality produce not shown off to proper advantage. If the owners can’t even be bothered to fix the sign on the wall of their restaurant, how much attention are they paying to the kitchen? Not much based on this meal.

Cay Tre is a pleasant, simple Vietnamese café in Old Street that I visited many years ago, but was not inspired enough to want to return to. The owners have now launched a supposedly up-market version of Cay Tre in Soho, but based on the meal I had this week the formula has got lost in translation. The décor is indeed smarter than the Old Street branch, but that is not setting the bar real high, and despite the best efforts of the capable manager, the staff seemed to me to feel uncomfortable in the slightly more formal setting. Most importantly, the food is no better, and despite a pleasant pho there were also some quite poor dishes, which is a lot less forgivable at the higher prices charged in the Soho setting.

Esarn Kheaw was another leg in my quest to find decent Thai food in London outside Patara, and despite a nice tom yum soup and good noodles was another flop. A dish of minced pork salad was utterly inedible, fish cakes disappointing as they so often are in lesser Thai restaurants. At least the bill here was reasonable.

I also had time for a quick lunch at The English Pig, Johnny Mountain’s shrine to pork. I only had the chance to try a couple of dishes, such as pork scratching salad, but the dishes were both well made, and if you like pork then this City oddity is worth a visit.

Next week I will review a really exciting new London restaurant; it was so good on the first visit that I am going back this week to make sure I wasn’t imagining it or was overly inebriated. All will be revealed next week.

The Square revisited

Koya is one of those places that focuses almost entirely on one kind of food, in this case udon noodles (the thick white ones). It does so very effectively, the hot noodle dish that I tried this week with miso soup being genuinely excellent; a prawn tempura dish was also classy. This is a casual place with no reservations taken, but it is rare to find somewhere in central London with high quality food and low prices, rather than the other way around.

I went back to The Square with some American visitors this week and went for the tasting menu. As ever, the food was carefully executed and the menu featured lots of appealing dishes that do not try to shock the diner with weird ingredient combinations. I especially enjoyed a dish of scallops with coco beans (pictured), and the signature dish of langoustine tail with Parmesan, potato and truffles. Service was excellent, something the Square has improved at significantly in recent years.

Cassis delivered another enjoyable meal. As on my previous visit, the savoury dishes were very good but easily the star turn was the dessert course, in this case a really classy orange and Grand Marnier soufflé - their pastry chef really can cook. The restaurant was very busy on a mid-week evening, and I can see why.

I also returned to Franco Manca, which continues to produce the best pizzas in London from its high-end Neapolitan pizza oven. I am always amazed that the price of the pizzas here is actually less, rather than more than, the high street chains. The little details are also excellent, such as unusually good espresso from the Monmouth Street coffee shop. This is a real bargain, though the service is distinctly chaotic.

I am pleased to add a chef interview to the site with Steve Terry, who produced a couple of excellent meals for us at The Hardwick on our recent trip to Wales.

Next week will feature a meal or two off the tube network.

In other news, Gauthier became the first Michelin starred restaurant in the UK (and possibly anywhere) to add calorie counts for dishes to their menu. Given the way the wind is blowing (in New York restaurants with more than a certain number of branches have had to display calorie information for three years now, and some UK chains have already followed suit following a nudge from the UK government in 2009) this seems a smart move to me to get ahead of the curve. It was nonetheless greeted with adverse comments from certain print journalists. Personally I can’t see any harm at all, and for those following a diet such information is really useful, as generally in restaurants it is difficult to estimate calories just from their descriptions.

I complete my Welsh tour at The Walnut Tree

The Walnut Tree is a fixture of high-end Welsh cuisine, having had a number of owners over the years. It is now in the safe hands of Shaun Hill (pictured), who established Gidleigh Park’s reputation in its early days. Shaun produces no-nonsense, seasonal dishes based on the good quality produce that can be found in the area, with minimal messing around with the food. The meal that we tried there was very good indeed, with an excellent rabbit dish and a lovely mango lime curd tart, amongst others. It was packed out on a weekday lunch, as well it might be.

As I have mentioned before on this blog, it is surprisingly hard to find decent Thai food in London. There is no shortage of restaurants, but other than the consistently good but slightly expensive Patara mini- chain there just seem to be endless mediocre places. This week I tried Addie’s Thai (hat tip to Sanjeev for the recommendation), which has been serving authentic Thai food in simple surroundings in Earls Court for many years. There were plenty of Thai diners and the food was generally very good, definitely a cut above the norm. As a bonus the prices were also very fair.

A far less successful Thai meal was at Thai upon Thames, just on the wrong side of the Richmond bridge. Although this has been going for some years and must appeal to the locals, the meal we were served varied from ordinary to bad, with a grossly overcooked salmon dish and a deeply unappealing tom yum goong soup.

Another less than satisfactory meal was to be found at Thali, a quite smart Indian restaurant in the Old Brompton Road. This was a frustrating meal as there were flickers of competence in a decent aloo papri chat and some pleasant vegetables, but my main course was wildly over-salted and a prawn dish came with two good prawns and one utterly inedible prawn, which was bizarre. This is not a cheap place, and needs to be more consistent to price at this level.

I am pleased to add two excellent chef interviews to the site this week. Shaun Hill is a thoughtful and witty individual, and his detailed interview here is well worth reading. Bryan Webb of Tyddyn Llan has contributed an in-depth and insightful interview also, in particular showing some of the perils of running a restaurant. Thanks to both of them.

From Las Vegas to Wales

On a short trip to Las Vegas I decided to eschew the wildly expensive outposts of famous chefs, which often seem aimed at people on expenses who won’t necessarily return, and went off piste, or at least off the main strip of Las Vegas. I tried the Lotus of Siam, which has a strong reputation, and certainly seemed to serve quite authentic Thai food, much of it from the north of Thailand. As a bonus it had 38 pages of German wines, which are one of my favourites. The cooking itself was pleasant but hardly striking, but the place is reasonably priced, so if you set your expectations at sensible levels you will have a decent time.

Better was Aburiya Raku (hat tip to Ali for the suggestion), a Japanese grill restaurant tuning out genuinely good grilled food with considerable skill. The menu format is one of little dishes, so you can try plenty of things even as a lone diner, and prices are extremely fair. I was the only westerner in the place when I went, and it was deservedly packed out. I would highly recommend this if you are in Vegas.

After that I headed off to that other symbol of decadent living and hot weather, Wales (Raglan Castle pictured). It began well with an excellent old-fashioned meal at Tyddyn Llan, where Bryan Webb demonstrated the same skill that he did at Hilaire in London many years ago (which used to be a regular haunt of mine). This meal featured good produce, well cooked, with sensible, appealing ingredient combinations.

Ynyshir Hall showed more technical cooking, but what arrived on the plate was generally very good. The meal for me was marred by some truly aloof service as only the French can do properly, exacerbated by the dishes arriving at an agonisingly slow pace. This was a pity as the cooking itself was capable.

The Crown at Whitebrook was also of the more formal style of service, and produced a rather mixed meal, with a couple of really good dishes but also some distinctly less good ones, which was a little surprising given its Michelin star.

I really enjoyed the food at The Hardwick, where Steve Terry no longer teases out fancy Michelin-style food but instead concentrates on superior pub food with top quality produce and big flavours. It was so good we went back for a lunch, and we thoroughly enjoyed dish after excellent dish of simple, but really well made food. I would heartily recommend The Hardwick if you are ever in South Wales.

A week in the Bay Area

My last night on this trip to Chicago was spent at Alinea, where Grant Achatz has built up a reputation as the Heston Blumenthal of America, with inventive molecular gastronomy offerings. I had some misgivings about going, since I generally prefer classical food, and Alinea has had such praise heaped upon it that I would not have been surprised if expectations were not met. I was wrong. Alinea produced a simply dazzling meal, creative and complex but with a recurring emphasis on flavour balance; the were often a great many elements in a dish, but each was there for a reason. The detail of the meal is in the (lengthy) review, but suffice it to say that I found this the single best modern meal that I have eaten (well, maybe a tie with Marc Veyrat when he was cooking).

From a wet and cold Chicago I went to a wet and cold Napa Valley, and stayed at Meadowood, a country resort where rooms are self-contained cabins spread across a hillside. The main restaurant here (avoid the simpler Grill here as a dining destination, where I had a risotto that looked and tasted remarkably like wallpaper paste) recently was elevated to three Michelin stars. The food makes heavy use of local ingredients, with many vegetables grown in the local garden, some edible flowers foraged nearby, and a generally light style of contemporary cooking. I enjoyed the meal very much, though for me it was not quite edging into true three star territory (if this were in Paris, I doubt it would get three stars). However, the long series of amuse-bouches in particular showed some real ability in the kitchen, and the menu combinations are modern without, in general, frightening the horses. One dish did not work for me, but mostly the flavour combinations made sense, and the meal was a real pleasure.

While in Napa I also tried Ubuntu, a purely vegetarian restaurant that was thoroughly enjoyable. It is casual with a remarkably cheap wine list, with enthusiastic staff and carefully delivered food using good quality local produce.

From there we moved on to San Francisco. I did not enjoy Coi at all, a rather oppressive meal in an oppressive dining room, where flashy technique seemed to be elevated above pleasure as an objective of the kitchen. I preferred Saison, a restaurant that felt rather too achingly trendy for its own good, but with an emphasis on local ingredients and generally good technique.

A place barely on the foodie press radar is One Market, which actually delivered the best meal I tried in the city on this trip; solid one Michelin star cooking. I also liked Cotagna, the casual sister of Quince, which I could not fit in a visit to on this trip. Cotagna's simple but skillful Italian cooking was thoroughly enjoyable, with a couple of terrific dishes.

It was also a great pleasure to be able to venture down to Silicon Valley to sample the cooking of David Kinch at Manresa. On the way we were able to stop off at the iconic Ridge Montebello vineyard, perched at the top of a winding road with a spectacular view (see picture) over the valley below. Apparently, as well as the resident rattlesnakes, a mountain lion was once spotted on the property, which must have livened up that particular wine tour. If you are in this part of the world then it is worth the trek up the hill (tastings are by prior appointment, incidentally).

Manresa itself produced a superb meal, a long tasting menu with hardly a false step throughout, and showing great attention to detail (if there is better bread in America then I would like to find it). This was a lovely antidote to the disappointing Coi, and a restaurant that I can highly recommend.

I have also added to the site an interview with Francis Brennan, head chef at 3 star L20 in Chicago, and also Danny Grant, head chef of RIA, and David Kinch of Manresa.

A week in Chicago

After a brief visit to Roux at Parliament Square (which was on good form under its new chef) and Haandi, which was as reliable as ever, I headed off to Chicago. In my time there I was able to try most of the high end restaurants, as well as a few casual ones. Chicago is an exciting city to visit if you are even slightly interested in architecture, as it has some of the most interesting examples of modern architecture anywhere. Frank Lloyd Wright had his offices here, and the fire of 1871 that destroyed most of the centre of the city enabled a blank canvas for architects around the world to try out their latest ideas. Sadly on our visit the city demonstrated why it has the nickname “the windy city”, with some biting wind and plenty of rain, but I can testify from my previous visit that this is not always the case. On the food front, Chicago is the latest US city to have the attention of Michelin.

RIA has 2 Michelin stars and was in the hotel where I was staying (The Elyisan, excellent by the way). We had an excellent meal at RIA, with an attractive room, excellent service and very good food, showing good technique and sensible flavour combinations. Presentation was also quite pretty (example pictured).

Avenues was less successful. Also in a hotel, it delivers ultra-modern food, but not entirely happily on our visit. A number of flavour combinations made little sense to me, and ingredient quality also at times seemed secondary to showing off flashy cooking techniques.

L20 is one of the pair of restaurants awarded three Michelin stars in the inaugural Michelin Chicago Guide 2011 (the other is Alinea). Controversially, the chef left just about the time the guide was published, following a disagreement with the owner. I was a little nervous about the effect that this might have on the food, but fortunately the kitchen is in the safe hands of his former chef de cuisine, and we had a terrific meal there. It was that rarity for me, a 3 star Michelin restaurant in America that would, in my view, be worthy of three stars in Europe (say, in France). There was just one technical slip during the meal, but also some real highlights.

Mexican food in the USA has been popularised by celebrity TV chef Rick Bayless, who has published numerous cookbooks. He runs several restaurants in Chicago, the best known being Frontera Grill and Topolobampo, which are co-located alongside a Mexican fast-food outlets called Xoco (which was pleasant and inexpensive). Frontera Grill was casual and extremely popular, but on the lunch that I ate there I was unable to really figure out what all the fuss was about. Better was Topolobampo, a more upscale take on Mexican dining. I had an enjoyable meal there, but it is baffling to me why Michelin awarded it a star. It was good Mexican food and better than most Mexican places, but not the best I have eaten in the USA.

Next week I will review Alinea and catch up with my week in the Napa Valley and San Francisco.

London gets a proper sherry bar

Rhodes 24 does not get a lot of press but does have both a Michelin star and a spectacular view (pictured) over the City from its 24th floor position. My meal this week was very capable indeed, fully star-worthy, and it is only the costly wine list that raised any concern in my mind. If you are looking for high-end food in the City then you could do much, much worse than this.

I am quite fond of sherry, so was always likely to enjoy a sherry bar serving authentic tapas. Capote y Toros is the little sister of the excellent Cambio de Tercio, and served us some very good tapas dishes this week as we explored the delights of a flight of sherries. It really did feel like a little bit of Spain transported to London, and the packed premises early on an early weekday night suggests that this is an appealing combination.

Spuntino emulates a New York diner, and serves comfort food on uncomfortable bar stools. This is not somewhere to linger, but I enjoyed my remarkably calorific lunch this week, the star of which was classy macaroni cheese. Even on a Tuesday lunch time the place was full by noon, so the formula is clearly working well.

I tried two gastropubs this week, one of which had good food let down by dismal service, the other with good service but rather ordinary food. The Fox and Anchor is just off Smithfield Market and served an excellent chicken pie amongst other things, but I encountered some of the rudest service I have come across for quite some time. It was pretty clear that the staff couldn’t wait to see the back of us on the night of our visit, and I am happy to oblige them by not returning. This is a pity given the quite good food I ate there.

The Ealing Park Tavern had pleasant service and decent enough food, though its fish and chips suffered from poor batter. However other dishes were fine, and it is only when I consider the bill that I question the value for money here, at least at lunch time.

Best wishes to chef Shane Osborn,who leaves Pied a Terre today to go travelling.

The blog will deviate from its usual schedule in the next couple of weeks.

A visit to Nottingham

After my visit to Sat Bains I was able to try two further restaurants on my visit to Nottingham. Harts serves modern British food in a hotel setting, and was actually quite impressive. The food here is not trying to be innovative or clever, but did deliver clean flavours and enjoyable dishes; as a bonus the wine list was very fairly priced by London standards.

On the way back we stopped at The Plough at Bolnhurst, a village in Bedfordshire. In this seriously old building we had some very pleasant pub food, and I was able to examine a remarkably good and kindly marked-up wine list, which featured unusually detailed tasting notes as well as prices that in some cases were only a little above retail price. Tom Jaine, editor of the Good Food Guide back in the 1990s, once told me that “there is no good Food Guide entry in Bedfordshire, and there never will be”. It took a while, The Plough entering the Guide in 2007, but if you are in the area then you could do much worse.

Bistro du Vin has taken the place of Eastside, which sadly closed some time ago. It is less culinary ambitious but was pretty full on the night of our visit. I think this is partly due to a very appealing menu, and partly to a fairly kindly marked-up wine list. The food itself was a very mixed affair, with a perfectly good steak served with dismal chips, and good quality smoked salmon served with bad pumpernickel. Service was also a complete shambles on our visit, which did not help the experience. I see that Fred Sirieix (star of the recent BBC food show “Service”) now has a training board game available for restaurants to help them hone their service skills; I think Bistro Du Vin should buy one of these.

I had an enjoyable lunch at The Square, taking advantage of their £35 three course menu (one dish pictured), which seems to me very good value indeed when you consider the level of cooking here. There are plenty of trendy London “small plates” dining places where it would not be hard to run up a bill of this size for food that is not remotely in the same league. My lunch featured some beautifully cooked bream as well as a lemon tart.

The lunch I had at Apsleys reflected the continuing development of the cooking here, which started out excellent and seems to get better with each meal I eat here. This week a risotto of wild garlic garnished with tuna was stunning, of the quality you might find in a multi-starred restaurant in Italy. For me this was a two star Michelin meal, and it will be interesting to see what happens to their rating next January.

Kiraku is a Japanese restaurant in Ealing with a deeply tacky-looking shop front but a room full of Japanese diners. On my second visit here I had a particularly impressive dish of eel marinated in Japanese pepper, but also several other very capable dishes, all at an almost absurdly low price..

I am very pleased to add Jason Atherton to the list of chef interviews.

Sat Bains reviewed

Trullo cooked up a very pleasant and fairly priced Italian meal for me this week, with decent pasta dishes and one good (and one less good) dessert. This has become an extremely popular place, and certainly Islington needs good restaurants.

Great Queen Street serves up a short menu of simple British dishes, and produced a generally competent meal. However the food element of the meal came to £28 each, which may not sound excessive but is more than the cost of a set lunch at somewhere like Gauthier. There are some real bargains to be had in London at lunch the high end restaurants, one of the best being the £48 lunch including wine at Gavroche (which is why it is booked weeks ahead).

The Sportsman was on good form this week, the tasting menu containing old favourites such as the pork scratchings with dazzling flavour and lovely turbot, but also excellent slip soles and some fine chilled asparagus soup with cream herb parcels made with delicate pastry. The cooking here is deliberately simple but the purity of flavour and quality of ingredients is superb.

I am being to wonder if there is any decent Thai food in London these days beyond the doors of the Patara mini-chain. Thai Taste near Gloucester Road was mediocre and far from cheap, and seemed to be populated mostly by walk-in tourist trade. Surely someone in London can cook Thai food better than this? Oh for the days of The Thailand in New Cross; now that was a restaurant, all four tables of it.

Sat Bains (pictured) has achieved a high profile for his inventive cooking, but this is the first time I have had the chance to eat there. I had the full tasting menu and an extra course, and had a very interesting meal. For me the two dishes that worked best were the two with the least elements, and at times I found some dishes just had too many flavours present, not always working together. However the service team was top notch and there were some real highs in the meal; I think Sat has every chance of getting a second star if he can pare back some of the complexity that currently characterises his cooking.

The Red Fort has been going for decades now, and I have had many meals here over the years of varying standards. At present it seems on good form, with two recent meals showing off some particularly good tandoor cooking. It is quite expensive, with extras in particular priced greedily, but the food is good.

Four new London reviews

Ilia seemed a little chaotic at times but delivered some excellent Italian dishes. Most of the ingredients come directly from Italy, and this shows in the lovely flavour of the vegetables in particular – such as tomatoes that actually taste of tomato. All this doesn’t come particularly cheap, but I would happily return if in the area.

The Mall Tavern is unashamedly retro, serving such reinvented delights as Chicken Kiev and Arctic Roll, which those of us old enough will recall from our childhoods. It was rapidly clear that this was not just a little 1970s joke though – ingredients were excellent, from the Gloucester Old Spot pork used in the pork pie to the home-made bread and the unusually good fennel. Desserts didn’t quite match the savoury courses, but this was a thoroughly enjoyable meal, and all at a modest price.

Joe Allen is one of those restaurants that quietly trundles along, without needing to publicise itself. I had been there over a decade ago, and after the meal this week I remember why I didn’t come back. The odd thing was that there were a couple of entirely decent dishes, yet other parts of the meal were monumentally bad. It was almost like going through a time machine to eat in an earlier, much worse, era. It is the restaurant that time forgot.

I have squeezed in a couple of visits to Tapas Revolution, which is situated in the distinctly unpromising setting of Westfield shopping centre. This is a place where there are queues for Nando, yet where the only reasonably serious attempt at food (Croque Gascon) died within months: it was as if the crowds here could sense good food and instinctively avoided it. Hence I wasn’t sure what to expect from Tapas Revolution, whose owner chef has a highly respectable culinary heritage. There are limitations to the format with no proper on-site kitchen at the bar, but given this major problem the food was entirely decent, and you can always just sit back and eat excellent pata negra.

Pollen Street Social has been one of the most anticipated London openings of 2011, it being the first venture from Jason Atherton outside of the Gordon Ramsay fold. The space has been cleverly designed, looking sleek and yet not too formal, and there are interesting touches such as a bar area serving tapas, and a dessert bar in the main dining room. The cooking was very accomplished on my visit this week, dishes that had a lot of work put into them (see picture for an example) but without being over complex or with too many elements. This has already become one of the most difficult reservations to obtain in London, and I can see why.

Chez Bruce has long been the best restaurant in south London, a hallmark being consistency, as in all of Nigel Platts Martin’s restaurants (The Square, La Trompette, Glasshouse). While the meal this week featured very good desserts and had no technical issues, the experience was rather let down by some ordinary fish: farmed salmon had little taste, but I was more surprised by some mediocre mackerel. Service was excellent but the fish quality was rather troubling.

Madhu's is the other high-end restaurant in Southall alongside its cousin The Brilliant (owned by another branch of the Anand family). It was on particularly good form this week, with an excellent biryani (which has always been a strength here) but also lovely malai tikka, with only the breads failing to really stand out. This is high class Indian cooking in smart surroundings at a fraction the cost of central London.

I also had the surreal experience of doing an interview for an Australian breakfast radio show, where “live” meant midnight in the UK, all done from a studio in Soho. We truly live in a global world.

The blog will be a little later than usual next week.

A trip to Honfleur

I had a rather bizarre trio of meals in and around Honfleur, the historic Normandy seaside port (pictured). The highlight without a doubt was a stunning meal at Sa Qua Na, which is one of the most promising restaurants in France (one Michelin star within months, two the following year, three next?). The modern cooking has purity of flavour as a recurring theme, and dish after dish featured dazzlingly fresh ingredients, beautifully executed. One dish, sea bream with quinoa, was one of the best fish dishes I have eaten.

However a meal at Michelin-starred Auberge de Vieux Logis, which serves a classical menu bordering on old-fashioned, was rather disappointing given the very substantial bill that we managed to run up (the latter not entirely the fault of the wine we drank). The food was decent enough, but with even the starters weighing in at around €40 apiece there is not much room for error here, and unfortunately there were some slips.

Moving way down the scale we had lunch at Le Breard in Honfleur, which has a bib gourmand in Michelin. I wasn’t expecting anything remarkable but the meal we had was ghastly, from a chewy salmon madeleine, through grey tuna and ending in an utterly dismal soufflé. To add insult to injury the manageress insisted on lecturing us about how great the cooking was and how we clearly didn’t understand this. At €45 for the set menu for lunch this may be some of the worst value for money I have encountered anywhere: at least at McDonalds they don’t sternly tell you had great it all is.

Ye Olde Bell has a history going back to the 12th century, and has recently had a significant upgrade in the kitchen. The place is pretty with extensive gardens, and serves simple British, seasonal food. This was mostly well executed at my meal this week, and although there was a certain amount of inconsistency this is clearly a place that is trying hard and is a nice setting for a meal in the country.

I also had two enjoyable curries this week. Trishna specialises in seafood, and I had both a good seafood biryani and an excellent potato chat starter. They make their own desserts and prices are not excessive – somewhere I look forward to returning to. Diwana Bhel Poori is an old favourite, selling south Indian snacks in basic surroundings but at very low prices. I had plenty to eat at a meal this week, had a lassi and a dessert and the bill came to £12 a head. London may be an expensive place to eat at times but Diwana shows that you can get genuinely good food at very low prices.

My iPhone wine app had a major new version this week. Version 1.2 (if you already have the app then it will appear as a free download in your iPhone app store) has a major new feature. As well as being able to look up the average retail price of a wine and so see the level of restaurant mark-up, you can now look up the wine merchants that stock that wine. If you wish the app will dial a merchant directly, look at their web site or email their details to yourself. This feature also extends the scope of the app, since you can now use it when out wine shopping. Before purchasing that tempting wine on the shelf, check how the shop price compares to other merchants. In my own experience I have found significant variation of wine prices in UK shops, especially for classier wines, so the app could really save you some money here. You can download the app here.

The press was suitably excited by the St Pellegrino Top 50 Awards (actually it is the Top 100), a brilliant PR idea dreamed up some years ago by Restaurant Magazine, which has become a major media event. As I have written before, I find the list itself pretty much absurd (Japan is barely represented on this supposedly global list, with less entries than Sweden on the Top 100, while the sequence of entries and indeed the omissions for France is beyond laughable) but it gets people talking about high end restaurants, which can only be a good thing for the industry. Nice to see Ryugin getting some recognition at last, as well as Aqua and Schauenstein, and perhaps the list works best as a way to gain attention to places that may otherwise be overlooked, like the excellent Quay in Sydney. I will not dwell on the absurdities: Kitcho, perhaps the best restaurant in Japan, languishing 13 places below the dismal Nahm in London, is just one example. However I think non-Michelin starred bistro Chateaubriand being rated best in France sums up the accuracy of this list best. This alone makes it beyond parody.

I am delighted to be able to add to the web site a chef interview with Alexandre Bourdas, chef/patron of the wonderful Sa Qua Na. A star of the future, in my view.

Eating in Berkshire

The Artichoke is technically on the tube network, though Amersham is not exactly central London. The small premises (about to get larger) in historic old Amersham are the showcase for the cooking of Laurie Gear, whose wife runs the front of house. I enjoyed the food here, though there was a tendency towards complexity and I didn’t like one dessert much, but there were some very good dishes too. I enjoyed a warm salad of quail and I thought that the rhubarb and ginger pre-dessert was excellent. It is easy to see why this is such a popular place.

Stoke Place is a boutique hotel in landscaped grounds in Stoke Poges (near Slough, but they probably don’t emphasise that in their marketing). Its restaurant has a nice view over the gardens, and is determinedly modern in character. Some of the flavour combinations worked distinctly better than others, and the meal was a little erratic, with a very good beef dish (pictured) but also a flawed lobster and pasta dish, though the overall standard was still pretty good. This is somewhere to consider if you are in the area and in the mood for some adventurous dining.

On my second visit to Dinner I was able to try some favourites from the first time, and also some dishes that had eluded me on the first visit. The Iberico pork chop was a real success with superb flavour, but I was less sure about the hay-smoked mackerel and the braised celery, which were decent but not of the calibre of the meat fruit or the saffron risotto. Still, the desserts were lovely and service was excellent.

Chutney Mary delivered a disappointing meal this week, particularly in comparison to a very good meal at the same restaurant less than a year ago. A monkfish dish was inedible, while several other dishes were flawed. I had assumed there must have been a chef change, but apparently not. Given the high prices here this sort of variation of standard is not on, and I have adjusted the web site score accordingly.

Tarantella is a little local (to me) family-run Italian place that I like, partly because of the extremely welcoming staff and the friendly atmosphere. It is somewhere I can sit and enjoy a capable pizza without having to think too hard on a Friday night, all at a very fair price.

In other news, Grant Achatz of Alinea finally opened his much delayed next restaurant venture, called, er “Next” last week. There will be a no-choice menu, changing quarterly, starting with a menu called “Paris 1906 - Escoffier at the Ritz”, all sounding very classical in nature rather than the molecular gastronomy of Alinea. What is intriguing commercially is that there are no reservations, only “tickets”, so if you don’t show up then tough (and no vegetarian alternative either, at least on this menu). This is certainly a radical notion, and will be watched closely by other restaurant owners: this completely eliminates the very genuine issue of no-shows, but of course you have to have a powerful brand to contemplate such an approach. Since 19,000 people pre-registered for tickets before the place opened (thanks Amanda for confirming the numbers), and given that scalpers are already selling the USD 85 tickets for up to USD 500 a head on the black market, the early signs are that it has not exactly put off the punters (hat tip to NG for letting me know about this).

One curiosity is that choice of name for the menu: 1906 was when the Ritz in London opened, and at that time Escoffier was mainly cooking at the Carlton hotel in London, as well as acting as a consultant to a German shipping line. He was not in Paris at that time (though he did help recruit chefs for the kitchens there in 1896). Escoffier attended the opening of the Ritz in London and was a consultant for the opening, but was never a chef at the London Ritz. The first chef at the London Ritz was Monsieur Malley, who ironically came directly from the Paris Ritz after working at Grand Vefour (thanks to Amber at the Ritz for the confirmation of this background). Hence I wonder whether Next’s menu should really read: “London 1906 - Escoffier at the Carlton”. Obsessive – moi?

Medlar reviewed

It was nice to try a new London opening this week and be pleasantly surprised for a change. Medlar has an experienced team in the kitchen and the front of house, almost all the staff having worked at either Chez Bruce or The Square. The Kings Road setting is pleasant and the modern British menu appealing, but what impressed me was just how good the food was immediately after opening: I suspect that the kitchen was a lot more frantic than the calm, measured atmosphere in the dining room, but all credit to the staff for getting up to speed so quickly.

Simpsons on the Strand is a very traditional British restaurant, with a lovely old-fashioned formal dining room, and has some real history, originally opening as long ago as 1828. Unfortunately the food that I ate also seemed to be rather stuck in a time-warp. There is nothing at all wrong with serving traditional food (as at Wiltons or Rules, for example) but it does need to be cooked carefully, and too many elements of the meal I tried this week were flawed in some respect. I did enjoy a beef Wellington dish, but the problem is that the prices here are set at a level implying something pretty special, whereas what arrives on the plate is sadly not.

I went back to two wildly successful Asian restaurants this week, both of which were on good form. E&O packs in the fashionable denizens of Notting Hill, while Zuma does the same for Knightsbridge. The food at Zuma is classier (an example tuna salad is pictured), though the prices reflect this. In both cases I have found the food experience highly consistent over the years, while the service operation is also well drilled in both establishments. Delivering an appealing menu consistently clearly pulls in the punters: a quiet weekday lunch at Zuma involves 150 – 200 covers, for example, numbers that most restaurateurs can only dream of.

The Royal Oak’s cooking continues to impress me, the kitchen team delivering another consistently excellent set of hearty British dishes, worthy of its Michelin star. It is in a somewhat remote spot, but if you are ever near Ascot or Maidenhead this is a place I highly recommend that you try.

In general the London restaurant scene feels like the boom times again, no matter how much economic doom and gloom there is in the newspapers. The trendiest places are seeing strong demand: Jason Atherton’s new venture Pollen Street Social had 5,000 reservations calls on the first morning the lines opened, and the restaurant has yet to open.

Next week this blog will be off its usual schedule by a couple of days.

3 star dining in the Alps

This was the first time I have visited the Dorchester Grill since its previous chef Aiden Byrne struck out on his own. The cooking of Brian Hughson was not in the same league, but is fine – a butternut squash risotto was very good for example. However the prices here are crazy, with £47.50 for Dover Sole, and a wine list whose prices are regularly five or more times the retail price. The weird décor does not help the experience, and it is hard to see what appeals to anyone other than hotel guests, preferably those on expenses.

It was not a great hotel dining week all round, as Capability at the new Waldorf Astoria showed. The pastry chef is quite good, but there were assorted and pretty blatant errors in the cooking of the savoury dishes, and no chef to moan at since he had already taken himself off elsewhere. I don’t know what it is about some UK chefs; if I ask “is the chef in today?” in a restaurant in France or Germany they look at me as if I am mad (“of course he/she is”), but so often in England they are off filming something, attending a conference somewhere exotic or on holiday. This is OK if the kitchen runs like clockwork, but how a chef two weeks into a new opening can choose not to be present in the kitchen simply eludes me.

By contrast when I popped into Zafferano Andy Needham was visibly present, and produced an excellent lunch, as his kitchen pretty much always does: things here do not arrive at the table raw, or burnt, just perfectly cooked, time after time after time. I also had a very enjoyable meal at Cambio de Tercio, with a particularly interesting dish of slow roast tomato, cooked for eight hours, with tremendous depth of flavour, as one highlight. Cambio now has a sister sherry bar, Capoto y Toros, just a few doors down from the main restaurant, selling 100 different sherries, plus some tapas: sherry is a much underrated drink in my view, and I really hope this place prospers.

I also had a short jaunt to Switzerland to try the only new three Michelin star restaurant in Europe this year: Schauenstein. This was excellent, with terrific food in a very pretty alpine setting. The cooking involved very fine ingredients and great technical precision, and can be thoroughly recommended. Oh yes, the chef was there too.

On the way back we stopped at The Restaurant in Zurich, recently elevated to two star status. The cooking here is much more modern in style, but although there were some exotic flavour combinations these almost all actually worked, and the technical skill in the kitchen was very high. One dish of white asparagus with egg yolk (illustrated) was enhanced with various tiny elements to add a texture here, a little acidity there, and the overall effect was dazzling. It occurred to me while eating that if this was in London it would probably be the best restaurant in London, yet has only just been awarded a second star.

A Japanese hidden gem in Ealing

Kiraku is just a few doors along from the very good value Atariya, which I reviewed last week. It is even better, offering unusually good tempura and a stunning piece of grilled mackerel that many Michelin star places would struggle to improve upon. The prices are very fair too. This is a restaurant that seems almost unknown outside the Japanese community, and I will most definitely be back here.

Haandi is one of my favourite Indian restaurants: despite its ordinary décor and at times overly relaxed service, it is great value due to its consistent and fairly priced Punjabi cooking. This week fish tikka and murgh burra tikka were both tender and well-spiced, while the vegetable curries here are superb: aloo gobi is as good as you will find anywhere. Parathas are also very good, and even the popadoms are superior to almost all others I have tried in London.

Roux at the Landau delivered an excellent lunch this week, the cooking slightly more consistent than at my previous meal here: for me the food here is definitely on the borders of Michelin star level. I think this is one of the prettiest dining rooms in London, and it also has some of the most professional service. I feel this place is getting less media attention than it deserves.

I had a quick lunch at Bar Boulud, able to compare the Yankee burger with the piggy burger this time (piggy wins for me). The charcuterie board here is unusually good for London. The place was packed even on a weekday lunch, so the formula is clearly highly successful.

Last time I went to Galvin at Windows I had an enjoyable, capable meal that seemed to me quite expensive for what appeared. My opinion did not change based on my visit this week. Ingredients were so-so, the cooking actually quite capable (one nice dish of salmon and crab is pictured), and the service very good. Yet £155 a head with a good but not wildly high-end wine (£90 on the list for a £30 retail price bottle) seems an awful lot of money for a meal at this level, even allowing for the fine view over London.

I am working on (well, specifying, someone who actually knows what he is doing is coding) some interesting new functionality for my wine app, and this should be ready in a couple of weeks, subject to final testing; more on this to follow. On the subject of wine in restaurants, I recently discovered an interesting website called Winechap, where somebody (@winechapUK on Twitter) has analysed the wine lists of a number of high end London (and New York) restaurants and come up with a series of recommendations for each: what an excellent idea.

The Opera Tavern reviewed

The Opera Tavern (pictured) is sister to Salt Yard and Dehesa, and delivers the same good quality and moderately priced tapas as at its siblings. Over two meals, one dinner and one lunch, I was able to try a fair proportion of the menu, and the general standard was consistently high, with good quality pork in particular in evidence in several forms. It is particularly nice to have a decent restaurant in Covent Garden, which has long been home mainly to tourist rip-offs. However in recent times we have seen Terroirs, Les Deux Salons, Dishoom and now Opera Tavern open, and raise the culinary bar for the area.

Chabrot Bistrot was altogether less consistent, though its savoury dishes were generally very good indeed; however its desserts were a let-down. This is not somewhere you are likely to stumble across by accident, down an alleyway in Knightsbridge, but the chef has serious credentials and it will be a place to watch as the kitchen settles down.

Atari-Ya, the top supplier of fish to Japanese restaurants in London have now directly taken over Sushi Hiro in Ealing (now renamed Atariya), which was always an excellent, unassuming sushi venue. Never a venue noted for its décor, this functional place continues to produce high quality sushi at a very fair price indeed.

I can resist anything except temptation, and Franco Manca is hard to walk past; its softly textured Neopolitan pizzas are superb, all for a price lower than the high street chains. No wonder they are already planning further openings.

Michelin brought out its final guide of the season, its “Main Cities of Europe” guide. This is mainly of interest because it covers various countries that do not have their own country guide, primarily in Scandinavia and Eastern Europe. There was no change at the two star level, but some new one star restaurants: Olo in Helsinki, Onyx in Budapest and Thörnstroms Kök in Gothenburg. In Copenhagen Bo Bech and Faustian lost their star, as did Carma in Helsinki and Haga in Oslo and Sjomagasinet in Gothenburg.

The new version of the wine app made it to the iTunes store this week. This version (a free update) is intended for people travelling. The app auto-locates the country in which you are staying and switches to the appropriate currency, and now lets you compare the wine prices in a restaurant with those shops in the local country as an alternative to the global average price, which is what it currently defaults to. Sounds useful? Download now.

Spice Market reviewed

The Spice Market is Jean-Georges Vonvichteren’s return to the London restaurant scene (those of you with long memories may recall Vong). This new restaurant, in the W hotel, reminded me quite a bit of Vong, including the same maître d’, the excellent Bertrand Person. While the service was in good hands, the kitchen was all over the place at this meal, with dishes ranging from quite good to pretty poor. Hopefully these problems will be ironed out in time.

The Bull and Last is a really fine gastropub, and the only reason I don’t go more often is that it is a bit awkward to get to from where I live. This week it was on good form, with a particularly well-made linguine with chilli and crab dish a highlight.

While on the subject of gastropubs, the Hinds Head (pcitured) has a fairly new head chef, and on my visit this week I was pleased to find that it was firing on all cylinders. Kevin Love intends introducing some seasonality to the menu here (which has long been my caveat on this whole restaurant family), but the precise technical cooking was certainly in evidence this week.

Hakkasan Mayfair was quite a contrast to Spice Market, a remarkably slick operation where they just do not seem to have off days or problems in executing the menu, despite the considerable scale of the restaurant. The place was completely heaving even at an early dinner.

I am usually a creature of habit when it comes to dishes that I enjoy, but I tried a few different dishes at the Brilliant this week. Tandoori lamb chops were very good, spicy and tender, while fish pakora was a tasty starter. I even sampled a dish of lamb brains topped with little pieces of crisp fried spinach, which worked quite well.

I am delighted to add to the roster of chef interviews to the site. Daniel Humm is head chef of Eleven Madison Park in New York, and has cooked me two of the best meals that I have eaten in New York.

Also this week was a charity event called “Who’s Cooking Dinner?”, where a celebrity chef line-up of twenty chefs design separate menus and cook dinner for tables of ten, with the twist that there is a draw for who cooks at which table. This is in aid of the specialist leukaemia centre at Hammersmith Hospital, and each table can bid in an auction for the chefs to cook at the homes of the bidding diners. Thanks to the generosity of the bidders a remarkable £431,000 was raised in this one night, a terrific achievement. Rainer Becker (Zuma) achieved the highest bid of £26k, with Pierre Koffman next at £20k. A great event in a great cause.

The wine app is about to have an update (this will appear automatically in your app store if you already have the app) that will allow you the ability to compare local wine prices only with global average prices. This version also warns you if there is a problem with the mobile provider blocking “adult” content (which bizarrely includes wine sites) over 3G to your phone: this is a reaction to the block that O2 so helpfully put in place without warning last week (to actually resolve the issue you have to contact your mobile provider and get your settings changed).

A busy week includes Dinner in more ways than one

Royal China Putney is not related to the main Royal China in Bayswater (and Baker Street). It was once part of this group, but they parted company many years ago. Sadly the cooking standards also appear to have departed, based on a pretty mediocre meal this week at the Putney restaurant. To add insult to injury, service was terrible, of the kind that I vaguely remember in places like Won Kei in Chinatown decades ago.

Chisou is a well-established Japanese restaurant in Mayfair that I have managed to overlook until this week. I was impressed with the quality of the prawns in particular that were being used, and had an excellent dish from the a la carte menu in addition to my set lunch. Even on a weekday lunch Chisou was full, and they have opened a sushi bar next door as well.

Ledoyen in Paris delivered a stunning meal this week. See the review for details and lots of new photos (an example is pictured), but what struck me overall was the gulf that exists between restaurants like this and the top restaurants in the UK: the ingredient quality and technical precision on display here are simply in a different league to even the best UK restaurants.

Talking of which, Dinner by Heston Blumenthal has certainly been the London restaurant of 2011, and I finally managed to get a table this week. Doubtless you will have already read one of the numerous reviews that appeared the day after it opened, so I can only offer a personal perspective. It seems a restaurant that is very much in the character of the Fat Duck, with its playfulness and strong cooking technique, just on a much larger scale. I didn’t take to all the dishes, but the best ones were lovely, and I got the sense that the cooking will develop significantly; it has only been open a month, after all. The hype is hard to live up to, and I can imagine some people being disappointed, but I found a great deal to like about Dinner. Well done to Ashley and his team for taking the high ground, showing off British cooking, and not just grinding out another bistro, as so many others have.

Apsleys cooking continues to develop in sophistication, the kitchen turning out some really accomplished dishes at a lunch visit this week. Lobster tagliolini in particular was magnificent, as was a slow-cooked chicken dish, while desserts have been a strength here from the beginning. This is perhaps the most under-rated high end restaurant in London.

The Michelin France 2011 Red Guide came out, with no new 3 star entries (the first time this has happened since 1992) and a demotion for Michel Trama. There were five new two star entries, including Passage 53, where the cooking of Shinichi Sato has been making culinary waves. Jean-Francois Piege (who has struck out on his own after gaining two stars at Les Ambassadeurs at the Crillon) and the recently moved l’Atelier du Joel Robuchon-Etoile were the other Paris eateries elevated to two stars, in addition to Thierry Drapeau Logis de la Chabottiere and Villa Archange outside of Paris. Incidentally, this tally means that Japan has more three star restaurants now than France (26 in Japan, 25 in France).

I was very pleased that my wine app was mentioned in the Guardian this week. Hopefully the app will help make the pricing of wine in restaurants more transparent.

Incidentally, if you live in the UK and have an iPhone via O2, you will find that as of this week your phone can no longer access “adult” web sites, which includes things like wine sites and assorted other dubious sites, plus my wine app, unless you manually “opt in” to such content. You need to dial 61018 from your mobile, or go to here in order to prove you are over 18 to O2. Heaven forbid that someone under 18 would look at a web site with bottles of wine listed, or possibly even illustrated. Lucky they can't do that in shops - eh O2? I will not say what I think of O2’s decision as otherwise my language would doubtless cause this site to be blocked too. The problem does not occur over wi-fi, which is a good job. Luckily it is inconceivable that someone under 18 would ever think of using wi-fi to access a web site.

In other news, Shane Osborn is leaving Pied a Terre to go travelling. Marcus Eaves of Autre Pied takes over; quite a risky transition for the restaurant, and from a personal perspective especially so after my disappointing last meal at Autre Pied: we shall see. I wish Shane well: he is a dedicated and talented chef.

A trip to New York

A bright but chilly New York (pictured) saw me try three restaurants. Momofuko Ko is a peculiar little place, resembling like a sushi bar in Tokyo except for the modern American food and the utter absence of courtesy from the staff. Many moons ago I had some training as a restaurant inspector, a key element of which was learning to separate the food experience from the service experience. The latter is somewhat a matter of personal taste, and although food criticism is hardly a science, it is possible to assess ingredient quality and whether something is properly cooked on a fairly objective basis. This is why I only ever score the food, and not the service. I have to say that Momofuko Ko really stretched this separation, as it really was one of the least welcoming experiences that I have had (though Sukiyabashi Jiro in Tokyo still retains the top prize in that regard). The cooking was really very good, with technical execution strong and some really inventive, thoughtful highlights in the meal. The service experience, however, was dismal. I can understand when things go wrong, but it felt here to me as if its borderline hostility to its customers was actually by design, which seems simply bizarre to me. Maybe some New York diners are masochists, but if I am going to lay down a large amount of dollars for a meal then I do expect a basic level of civility that entirely eluded the staff here on my visit.

By contrast I then had two more meals where the service range from excellent to superb. Eleven Madison Park is the high-end sister to the Gramercy tavern, and the whole experience here was hard to fault. The lengthy tasting menu was inventive, the technical skill in the kitchen high, the room is magnificent and the service was pretty much faultless. It was so good that even the pretty high bill seemed just fine to me.

I also had time for a lunch at Bouley in Tribeca, which has a much more intimate dining room, very good food and an almost absurdly cheap lunch menu: $45 buys a generous tasting menu. Service here was friendly, if not quite as well drilled as at Eleven Madison Park, but this was a really charming little place to which I would happily return.

I was able to test out my wine app in New York; judging by the concerned reaction of one of the sommeliers as it dawned on him that the mark-up policy was now transparent to diners, I think it has plenty of potential:

Back in London, to Paradise, or at least to Paradise by way of Kensal Green. This is a really good gastropub that has quite quirky but appealing décor, friendly staff and very well made British food. It may be rather out of the way, but I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Changing of the guard at The Harwood Arms, and I went to the last ever service of chef Stevie Williams, who is off travelling for at least a year. He and the new chef Barry Fitzgerald really did us proud with some fabulous game: slow cooked shoulder of venison in particular was a terrific dish.

Monday sees the announcement of the 2011 Michelin France guide, the last of the country guides for 2011 (just the Main Cities of Europe to follow in late March, which covers Scandinavia and Eastern Europe). This year has been quiet in Europe at the top level for Michelin, with just one new three star restaurant so far – will France change the picture?