Restaurant review, FM Mangal, 54 Camberwell Church Street, London.

I suppose it was inevitable. We've had the posh burger, the couture hot dog, mac and cheese deluxe – and now kebabs are getting the attention of foodies. Two enterprising young men, Oliver Thring and James Ramsden, writers and bloggers with sharp eyes and a fork into every emerging trend, have started Kebab Kitchen – a roving grill serving lamb and chicken of good provenance with ritzy accompaniments.

I tried their kebabs the other rainy Bank Holiday and what they lack in blistering heat (a wobbly mobile heater) they make up for in zingy flavours (smoked salt, red cabbage with pomegranate molasses...). They admit they're on a learning curve, so before I go back with my critic hat on, I thought I'd remind myself what an old-school, unfashionable kebab is like.

Will, a man of my acquaintance who likes good food and Northern football in equal measure, reckons FM Mangal in south London is the business. Since he lives in north London, I'm listening. Only a real aficionado would cross a city for a bit of grilled lamb in a flatbread. But what's really got him salivating at the mere mention of Mangal is the special pickle juice that accompanies a pre-starter (now, there's posh) of char-grilled onion. The ingredients of this liquid are, apparently, a closely guarded secret. That's piqued my interest enough.

Read more at http://www.independent.co.uk

Read more at The White Swan Inn, Market Place, Pickering, North Yorkshire.

Pickering in North Yorkshire is a country town with exactly the right sort of attractions: 12th-century castle; bustling steam railway; church with medieval wall paintings admired by Pevsner and, not least, a quietly handsome inn on the high street.

So often, this kind of establishment can disappoint. Outside, they look tempting but inside, the piped music, the laminated menu, the knocked-through walls, the dreary, bland décor with food to match indicates the dread-hand of corporate ownership.

Entering the White Swan, owned by the Buchanan family, a small, wooden bar selling Black Sheep ale from Masham is the first indication that you have struck gold. Seating 10 maximum, it is the definition of cosiness. Any overflow can be accommodated in a comfortable bay-windowed lounge.

Long, low and rectangular, the dining room at the back of the inn is an object lesson in refurb, with maroon walls, stone-flagged floor and room dividers in the form of folding screens. At 8pm on a Thursday night, it was filled with a friendly buzz of chat and singularly well-behaved children, who have their own menu at a tempting £5.85. The grown-up menu starts with Black Sheep-battered Whitby fish and chips at £12.95, though most dishes hover around £20. The meat is notable for its provenance. The menu declares: "All meat except feathered or with antlers is from the Ginger Pig".

Read more at http://www.independent.co.uk

Restaurant review, The Diamond Jubilee Tea Salon London.

High tea – there's a thoroughly English concept. Not quite tea and not quite supper, a collision of sweet and savoury flavours, a repast based on "the cup that cheers but does not intoxicate" but with the possibility that the tea will be laced with rum.

It was well established by the mid-19th century, and was more associated with the north than the south of England. Arnold Bennett, in one of his Staffordshire 'Five Towns' novels, describes "a high tea of the last richness and excellence, exquisitely gracious to the palate, but ruthless in its demands on the stomach ... hot pikelets, hot crumpets, hot toast, sardines with tomatoes, raisin bread, currant bread, seed cake, lettuce, homemade marmalade and homemade hams...". It's cognate with the 'tea' that working-class labourers wolfed down on coming home from work – though when it was introduced to the Home Counties, the savoury components became more delicate than their northern equivalents.

Fortnum's, the Queen's grocer's shop, has been dishing out tea to paying customers since 1707 and has turned the afternoon ritual into a posh and pricey business. The fourth floor, fine-dining area, christened the St James Restaurant when it opened in 1957 (F&M's 250th anniversary) was tarted up for this year's royal celebrations, renamed the Diamond Jubilee Tea Salon, and opened by Her Maj in March.

Read more at http://www.independent.co.uk

Restaurant review Morston Hall, Morston, Holt, Norfolk.

Early success can be tough for creative types. The bargain bins are crammed with unfancied releases by brilliant songwriters and wunderkind filmmakers who never found an audience after making their dazzling debuts.

Chefs, too, can buckle under the strain of early glory, and end their careers joylessly grinding out the greatest hits that won them fame. The awards that decorate the entrance hall of Morston Hall, the north Norfolk redoubt of former boy-wonder Galton Blackiston, tell a story of meteoric success – the walls are barely visible beneath the thickets of rosettes and stars. Closer inspection reveals that most of them date from the early-Nineties, when Blackiston and his wife Tracy opened for business in this handsome flint-fronted manor house, and got their first rave review (from Emily Green, in The Independent).

This year celebrating his 20th anniversary at Morston, Blackiston still looks impossibly boyish, as his appearances on TV shows such as Great British Menu and Saturday Kitchen bear witness. But despite its owner's high media profile, Morston Hall isn't somewhere you hear foodies getting excited about. Clearly, though, it has been doing something right all these years. The Michelin star awarded in 1999, Norfolk's first, has been retained, and regulars include Delia Smith, who encouraged local lad Blackiston to return to his native Norfolk all those years ago.

The location is a draw; this stretch of coastline is so mistily picturesque, it seems to have been designed by a committee of water-colourists. The hotel, originally a 17th-century farmhouse, is buffed, smart and a bit matchy-matchy. The heart of the operation is the restaurant, arranged over three interconnecting rooms, each table swagged like a bishop and sprouting a gleaming array of silver and glass.

Read more at http://www.independent.co.uk

Restaurant review The Hare & Hounds, The Green, Fulbeck, Lincolnshire.

Everybody knows the English public house is in terrible decline. The emergence of health zealotry and puritanism as a common theme of government, the tyranny of pubcos that sell rent for cheap before squeezing the life out of tenants and cut-price booze in supermarkets are all forces too strong to bear. Last September the reputable Campaign for Real Ale suggested that two pubs close every day.

All of which puts a premium on the remaining members of this endangered species, and never more so than when they are as charming and welcoming as The Hare & Hounds. We must hope that decades from now it will be remembered that such pubs were named for the vigorous pursuits that gave country life its meaning and virtue. Those ways of life are under threat now, too, of course; and everything about this recently and excellently refurbished venue embodies an obstinate defiance of what is perceived, in rural England at least, to be an onslaught from officialdom.

It wasn't always thus. Acting as a kind of fulcrum to the village of Fulbeck in Lincolnshire – a shire to which (due to its location, house prices and landscape) I'm convinced a chunk of my generation will end up moving – this pub used to have a rather Gothic upper level, in which overheard whispers subtracted from each table's privacy. Now, under new management, upstairs has been given a new lease of light, the downstairs has been covered in inoffensive beige-green carpets and paint, and the walls boast portraits depicting the quainter aspects of country living: the blazing hearth, the proud stag, the hare and the hounds.

Sadly, not much can be done about the fact that the pub's best face to the world is hidden from view, in a back alley, while the main road has only the back of the pub and a giant car park in view.

Read more at http://www.independent.co.uk

Restaurant review The Lawn Bistro, 67 High Street, London.

The actual tennis of Wimbledon is played in Southfields, two Tube stops away from the famous suburb, but that doesn't stop the world and his tennis partner from descending on the Village like the Assyrians on Jerusalem. What they find to eat when they arrive can be uninspiring. For every good, reliable restaurant (such as San Lorenzo Fuoriporto at the bottom of the hill), there are too many yawn-making gastropubs, chains and iffy spice houses.

The Village, a trendily bourgeois zig-zag of bars and pricey clothing shops, has seen a fair turnover of classy restaurants, all aching to be the one that plays host to the Williams sisters or to Andy Murray on their night of triumph. And bang in the middle of the Village's main drag, on a site formerly occupied by a stolid joint called Lydon's, is the latest challenger for the title: The Lawn.

Its owner is a Surrey-dwelling Uzbekistani called Akbar Ashurov, unknown to me as a restaurateur, but its chef, Ollie Couillaud, has an impressive track record. He cut his teeth at La Trompette, Chiswick's finest French eating-house; he wielded a mean cleaver at Tom's Kitchen; he could be found in the best hotels, including the Dorchester Grill and the Grosvenor House restaurant called Bord'eaux, whose annoying Hear'Say-style apostrophe was surely one reason for its early closure.

It's surprising, given this fancy CV, that The Lawn is so unpretentious. From the website photos and the sample prix-fixe menu, I went expecting a hushed and priestly atmosphere. Instead you walk into a noisy, rather crowded, extremely friendly neighbourhood bistro.

The décor is pared-down chic, cautiously neutral. The walls are painted (I'm guessing) that Farrow & Ball shade of grey called Elephant's Breath, the button-back sofa is grey with orange buttons, the mirrors are artfully distressed, the pictures apparently a job-lot of images specially selected to leave no trace in the memory. But it seems rude to carp at the fittings when the main thing you experience in The Lawn is the eager chattering of a Friday-night crowd unintimidated by serious high-end cuisine or hefty prices.

Read more at http://www.independent.co.uk

Restaurant review, The Hampshire Hog, King Street, London.

The Hampshire Hog is not, as you might expect, a country pub. It is in what is called Chiswick borders, west London – admittedly, one of the leafier enclaves in the city, but nowhere near Hampshire.

Mind you, the people who own it used to run The Engineer in Primrose Hill, an area so ritzy the nearest an engineer came to it was when that dear little Polish chap popped round to fix the neighbour's Bose sound system. So much for names.

The journey from NW1 to W6 was not a happy one: after 17 years serving good food in a convivial atmosphere to celebs and swanky types, Tamsin Olivier and Abigail Osborne were unceremoniously removed by the landlords (who wanted to take the space into their 1,000-strong branded portfolio). There was a Facebook petition and lots of anger from regulars – some famous – but that's where it ended.

Luckily, this bit of London is not short of prosperous foodies. They're also well served – everything from experimental (Hedone) to classic (La Trompette) aren't far, and the streets around King Street and Chiswick High Road are a gastropub ticklist. But strolling into the Hog on a warm Saturday evening, something of the special vibe of The Engineer has travelled with the crew. It feels like an urban country pub, if that makes sense. Mismatched furniture and soft lighting make the large space welcoming.

The staff seem to be having a whale of a time, which is good to see on a busy weekend. One gripe: our waiter has a V-neck T-shirt cut so low you can see the hair reaching down almost to his navel – makes you wish for one of those factory hairnets to be fashioned into a chest cover.

Read more at http://www.independent.co.uk

Restaurant review, Tramshed, 32 Rivington Street, London.

It's a basic principle of the restaurant trade that when planning your adventurous, seasonal menu, you should always include some safe bets. People know what they want when they eat out, and mostly, they want chicken and steak.

Instead of fighting against this tendency, Mark Hix has taken it as a challenge and run with it. His new restaurant, Tramshed, offers only two main-course options: chicken and steak. No fish, nothing for the vegetarians, just plain old chicken and steak. This idea seemed rather kooky when Mark first mooted it; after opening something like eight restaurants, The Independent's favourite chef has encouraged us to expect something more exciting than some Hixian variation on an Angus Steak House.

But beneath his somewhat ramshackle exterior beats the heart of a very canny restaurateur. Once he'd secured the landmark building, a former tramway generating station in the heart of fashionable Shoreditch, Hix knew instinctively what he wanted to do with it. The launch was delayed by planning wrangles for a year, but as the production team on this magazine know all too well, Mark isn't a man to be daunted by a missed deadline.

By the time Tramshed finally opened, that pared-down menu was perfectly in tune with the new trend of doing just a few things sensationally well. The launch generated the kind of excitement normally reserved for obscure pop-ups and secret supper clubs, rather than 150-seat restaurants from established industry figures.

Read more at http://www.independent.co.uk

Restaurant review, The River Café, Hereford.

When another, local critic visited the River Café near Hay last year, he ventured the view on leaving that the food was ‘disgusting’.  His remark was apparently in jest (although it did nothing for the stress levels of the chef) for when his review appeared he scored the restaurant four stars out of five.

There is plenty to be said for under-promising and over-delivering, which is what I suspect that critic was doing. Much better than vice versa, certainly. You can imagine the delight and relief in the kitchen when the review finally appeared – not least because they've framed the page and put it on a wall here. The difference with my visit is that if asked, I would lie and say it was great, even though it wasn't. I can't bear the awkwardness. "Disgusting" would have been stretching it; but "mediocre" would have been about right – at least where the food is concerned.

A bunch of us have come, one of those delegations from London via the annual book festival, which is such a mixed blessing to locals. It was like monsoon season this year, which made the festival feel like a soggy obstacle course, and put the lovely balcony on the River Wye at this restaurant out of bounds and comfort. Never mind: inside, you see, is snug. It has a clinical kindergarten feel, with big tables and white walls, open brickwork, and a blackboard on wheels which serves as the menu, possibly because printing all those sheets of paper would be an affront to the Welsh worldview.

Read more at http://www.independent.co.uk

Restaurant review, Mazi, 12-14 Hillgate Street, London.

So Greece votes against departing from the eurozone and embracing devaluation hell. Hurrah. Holidaymakers can return to Paxos or Lindos, safe in the knowledge that the currency won't go all funny while they're in mid-bouzouki dance. Foodies can explore Greek suppers again without wondering if dolmades and feta exports are going to dry up.

But where can you get authentic Greek food? Travellers know how hard it is to locate taramasalata and tzatziki – apparent staples of every Greek menu – anywhere in Athens. Londoners have wondered how much the souvla or stifado dishes in Charlotte Street are the food of Homer and Socrates rather than their Balkan neighbours. Now here's a restaurant which claims to be the only authentikos eaterie in England.

Mazi (which means 'together') stands in a street behind the Coronet cinema, on the site of Costas Grill, one of London's first Greek restaurants which opened its doors in 1957. A popular feature over the years was its back courtyard and abundant vine – both of which survive in the new incarnation. The 60-year-old vine overhangs Aegean-blue metal chairs. The place was full, after only two weeks. Lots of the clientele were Greek, possibly due to the presence nearby of the Greek Embassy at No 1, Holland Park.

It's a young person's place, the brainchild of Thessaloniki-born Christina Mouratoglou and her French husband, Adrien Carre. Both are purists to a striking degree. When I asked why there was no sign of hummus or pitta on the menu, Adrien briskly replied, "Because we're a Greek restaurant, not a Cypriot". (Did you know hummus was exclusively Cypriot? Me neither.) They've hired a brilliant chef called Athinagoras Kostakos, twice named 'Best Greek Chef' by Condé Nast Traveller, if you please, and a cook determined to make Greek cuisine rival that of anywhere in Europe.

Read more at http://www.independent.co.uk

Manuka Kitchen, Fulham Road, London.

As foodies and health neurotics will tell you, manuka is a kind of super-honey, honey with magical healing properties. There was a buzz of excitement about it four years ago, when it was claimed that its antiviral and antibacterial wonderfulness meant it can heal flesh wounds: when you've finished spreading it on your toast you can smear it on your hurt finger. It comes from a single source – the bees that pollinate manuka trees in New Zealand's East Cape region – and costs a bloody fortune.

At Manuka Kitchen, I expected to see the stuff all over the menu. But apart from a single appearance on the crème brûlée, manuka honey doesn't feature at all. The owners seem to have chosen the name simply to suggest a) Kiwi influences in the kitchen, b) some healing effects and c) a hefty outlay of money. The chef, Tyler Martin, is indeed a Kiwi, from New Plymouth on the north island, and the restaurant that he and his Lebanese business partner, Joseph Antippa, have just opened does bring balm to the soul – but without it costing the earth.

It's situated in Fulham, close to Stamford Bridge FC: excellent, of course, for the passing trade on Saturday afternoons when Chelsea are playing at home, although Tyler's rabbit-and-venison-sausage rigatoni is unlikely to attract rank-and-file football fans. Maybe just as well since they have only 22 covers. The décor is minimal: tiny wood tables, terracotta tiles, plain white walls with dangling green lamps. You can see into the kitchen, which is the same size as the dining area and isn't a pretty sight: dirty white tiles, messy sink, too much greasy realism. But Tyler and Joseph are on a tight budget. They've opened their restaurant with their own funds and without bank or City loans, so the 'minimalism' and grubbiness aren't style choices but the product of financial necessity.

Read more at http://www.independent.co.uk

Restaurant review, Gilpin Lodge Country House Hotel, Lake District.

There are not many things I'd rather do than sit by a hot fire with a cold G&T. The weather outside is filthy and it's a rare night off from domestic duty, so… bring on the Hendrick's. Admittedly, I've had to travel 250 miles for my quiet night by the fire, but it's been worth the trip.

Gilpin Lodge, at the southern end of the Lake District, is a well-established hotel, run by the Cunliffe family for 25 years. I would say, if it were a person, that it's comfortable in its own skin. Yes, new-generation managers Barney and Zoe, son and daughter-in-law Cunliffe, have brought in a few modish extras – such as a hot tub at the edge of the lake, and smoked popcorn as a bar snack – but the overall air is of a contented, conventional club.

There is nothing wrong with that. Hotels and restaurants off the beaten track must give the guest what they want and in comfort. And while I'm sitting by the fire, nursing a drink and reading the menu, all thoughts of the challenging dishes of London's most fashionable new restaurants (ox-cheek doughnuts, bacon panna cotta) slip away.

For here are crab and lobster, venison and Gloucester Old Spot, Lancashire leeks and Goosnargh chicken. A whole charcoal-roasted chicken crown and leg stuffed with truffle and smoked bacon, to be precise. Roast chicken is my desert-island dish. So, although the £58 four-course menu has plenty of tempting classics, it has to be chicken. The long-suffering Mr M concurs, which is lucky, because it would've been embarrassing to order the two-person poultry for one.

Read more at http://www.independent.co.uk

Restaurant review, Donostia, London.

As holidaymakers know, Donostia is the Basque name for San Sebastian, the lovely, sun-drenched municipality on the north coast of Spain that's capital of the Basque country. Tourists spill into it every year to, um, bask in the Bay of Biscay, to drink txakoli and nibble pungent snacks in the tiny bars of the Parte Vieja (or 'Old Part of Town') or sample the classier cuisine of the Michelin-starred Arzak restaurant.

It's the former eating experience that the owners of Donostia are keen to promote in this small but lively addition to the eateries of London's groovy Seymour Place. There's a no-frills, canteen look about the place: a long white train carriage of a room, minimally designed with a stark rectangle of untreated wood as a nod to rustic authenticity.

Diners can perch on stools to eat at the counter area which lines the kitchen, or sit at tables that hug the wall. It's a bit cramped and noisy, but you can forgive that. Less forgiveable is the fact that the tables are slightly too high and too wide, so that dinner companions have to lean across the table and shout at each other. "It means that women have to rest their bosoms on the table," said my friend Julia. "It makes it sort of mandatory."

There were, in fact, few women in when we got there at 9.20pm. The place was packed with macho-looking gents wearing loafers and no socks, sitting up straight at the counter. From where we were seated, we had a ringside view of hips and thighs. It's quite possible they were Spanish. Although the inhabitants of San Sebastian call themselves 'Donostiarras' (tiaras, indeed), it's a macho kinda city. On San Sebastian Day, most of the male population marches around town dressed as cooks and soldiers, before feasting in sociedades gastronomicas, or gourmet clubs which, until recently, excluded women.

Happily, a lady called Melody, one of the co-owners, was around to introduce us to the wonders of Basque food and drink. She urged us to try Agerre Txakoli, a light Basque prosecco, poured from a great height into a beaker and drunk while still frothing. It seemed to me tasteless and pointless, like drinking Alka-Seltzer with no prospect of curing a headache. A picoteo (tiny plate) of chorizo, flattened and cross-hatched until miraculously soft, and served with oil and watercress, was better. Of the five pintxos (snacks), the octopus in Basque marinade stood out for its bonsai mosaic of chives and red pepper dusted with paprika, and served in crusty bread saturated with olive oil. Tempura prawns interspersed teeny slices of Bayonne ham between prawn and batter and soothed the resulting saltiness with cubes of mango.

Read more at http://www.independent.co.uk

Restaurant review, 28° - 50°, London.

A few months ago your very fortunate correspondent raved about Ollie Dabbous, the young chef who has given his name to the most exciting opening in London this year. Dabbous is a former student of Raymond Blanc; so, too, is Agnar "Aggi" Sverrisson, an Icelandic chef starting to have a profound influence on the capital's food scene.

Sverrisson was head chef at Blanc's Le Manoir aux Quat'Saisons, worked at Gordon Ramsay's Petrus, then set up the Michelin-starred Texture, where Dabbous was head chef. Small world, London's restaurants, and the Sverrisson formula – Scandinavian ingredients cooked in a very modern way – is making a big impact, not least at 28°-50°.

This is the second restaurant named after the latitudes between which most of the world's wines are produced. The first is in Fetter Lane and, like this, was set up by Sverrisson and sommelier supreme Xavier Rousset. It is brazen to open wine bars in a recession, but then to a certain kind of upper-middle-class Londoner, the kind that comes to wine bars, the recession hasn't been so bad after all. That is one reason I expect this place to be a dazzling success.

Another is design. The interior is an isoscelean delight, with two of the sides essentially vast window panes that ensure summer evenings are deeply felt. There is a beautiful triangular bar in the centre, with an army of hanging wine glasses; and the back, the non-window side, is a cascade of wine cases that leaves you in no doubt about priorities here.

Somehow an illusion of extensive space is created in what is not a large restaurant. The tables are generously spaced, which provides privacy. My friend Dominic said that when he went to Dabbous, its major failing was the acoustics; being a high-ceilinged, full room, it was hard to hear what was coming from the other side of the table. You couldn't say the same about here.

Naturally, there are some thumpingly good wines, the sort that transport you to nurtured soils in hot foreign climes, and don't give you a hangover the next day. Some of it you might even consider affordable on a very special occasion. Peter, who I've come with, knows more than most sommeliers, and he says the 2010 Saint-Joseph (£45) is surprisingly good value for the centre of town.

Read more at http://www.independent.co.uk

restaurant review, Brasserie Zédel, London.

It's the sheer scale of the place that strikes you first. The subterranean dining room, reached via a staircase larger than most new restaurants, is on a scale so epic, it could well be visible from space. Tables recede into the middle distance. Far-off fields of velvety banquettes command their own microclimates. Even the menu cards are the size of small tables. Zédel, the new opening from London's fêted restaurateurs Corbin and King, is so generously proportioned, it could comfortably accommodate the clientele of their two existing restaurants, The Wolseley and Delaunay.

The big question is, would they want to go? For Zédel (named, like its predecessors, after a discontinued car marque) is a departure for the lords of the restaurant universe; a mid-market offering pitched squarely at what The Wolseley's celebrity diners would refer to as "civilians".

Expensively carved from what was once part of the Regent Palace Hotel, and more recently the Atlantic Bar, it's a loving recreation of the grand brasseries of Paris, the restaurant equivalent of Woody Allen's dewy-eyed Midnight in Paris. But there's many a slip between La Coupole and Lipp. French brasserie food has fallen into enemy hands in this country, debased into cliché by the likes of Café Rouge. The challenge for Zédel will be whether it can rekindle our excitement for the likes of boeuf bourguignon and confit de canard.

The time-capsule menu is vast; crowded with plats du jours, prix fixes and formules rapides. You could easily visit 20 times and never eat the same thing twice. At first glance the most exciting thing about it is the prices, which are competitive – starters rise from £2.25 for soup, and mains from £7.50 (for steak haché and frites) – remarkably so in a lavishly refurbished ocean liner of a dining room in the heart of the West End.

Read more at http://www.independent.co.uk

Restaurant review, Reform Social and Grill, London.

Did you think that gentleman's-club dining – Brown Windsor soup, game-heavy main courses, "savoury puddings" like Welsh rarebit, a "roast" that's carved, table-side, from a carcass on a silver trolley by a chap who expects a tip – had gone the way of the bowler hat and the maiden aunt? You'd be wrong. While Jeremy King and Chris Corbin are reintroducing the Mitteleuropean grand café concept to London (with the Wolseley, the Delaunay and now Brasserie Zédel) others – from Mike Robinson to Mark Hix – are breathing life into traditional club grub.

The Reform Social and Grill has nothing to do with the club in Pall Mall; it just wants to borrow its elderly glory. Housed in the Mandeville Hotel, in what used to be the DeVigne Bar, it's a dream of gruff male camaraderie, with its button-backed leather sofas, marble-top tables, a huge clock at one end that suggests a station waiting-room and a menu presented in circus handbill typefaces.

I rather like this effortful image-making. I certainly liked the old-fashioned attentiveness of the French cocktail barman who made a fabulous Cîroc vodka martini, while my friend Simon, a slave to fashion, floored an Aperol Spritz, that trendy orange aperitif that tastes of weak Campari and looks like Tizer.

To emphasise the gen-yew-ine Englishness of the place, the menu name-drops a dozen local suppliers, all the names suspiciously Hardy-esque and characterful: Brancaster pea and broadbean soup, Thornby Moor goat's-curd salad, Blythburgh pork chop and something called a Wealdway Ashed Goat Log, which turns out to be an artisanal cheese from Sussex. Even the snails are from Herefordshire. I suppose if they hailed from Orpington, they wouldn't hold half the menu-appeal.

Clubland aficionados will hail old favourites like crab tart, sardines on toast, lamb cutlets and Eccles cakes – but will the horde of foreign visitors who invade Mayfair in the next few weeks? Is Englishness enough of a selling proposition? I ask because, when Simon and I dined there, we dined alone. There wasn't a soul in the place at 8pm on a Tuesday. Solitary dining isn't fun. Dining without any neighbours isn't a lot better. "However sparkling the company or brilliant the food," said Simon severely, "if you're the only people in the place, you could be in Garfunkels." We reflected that, if you're opening a restaurant in the middle of the most alfresco-tastic street in England (James Street), around the corner from the platinum-grade eateries of Marylebone High Street (Roganic, Orrery, Providores), you need to sell your wares more vividly than the owners are doing.

Read more at http://www.independent.co.uk

Restaurant review, Shrimpy's, London.

Where have they all come from? All these hipsters, tiny of beard and large of spectacle? Is there a shuttle bus, bringing them over from east London? Why is that man wearing some kind of shortie pyjama suit? And shouldn't that girl try and cover up some of those tattoos with a pretty scarf?

This week we're in Shrimpy's, which pretty much represents the cutting-edge of London dining, at least for those of us who don't get out much. Look away now, if you are sensitive to any of the following words. Pop-up. Art space. Urban regeneration. Calexican food. For Shrimpy's is – in a move guaranteed to stymie even the most ardent parodists of trendy nonsense – a temporary diner housed in the kiosk of a former petrol station. Marooned in the interzone of high-rise developments behind Kings Cross, the old filling station has been re-purposed as a canalside gallery, bar and restaurant, and rebranded as – hah! – King's Cross Filling Station. Once, this was a notorious red-light area. Now the miniskirted girls are buying, rather than selling.

Last time I queued in this space, it was to pay for pump number four and a packet of Rolos. Now I am threading my way across an al fresco terrace, through what seems to be a staff outing from Perfect Curve, and lining up for a table in the booked-out diner. It's small – imagine, say, a petrol station kiosk that has been taken over by architects. The look is American diner with a quirky urban twist, the counter lined with bar stools but sporting flowers and thrift-store pineapple lamps, the walls painted with naïve primary-coloured motifs, like the window display of a particularly inept tattoo parlour.

But the welcome is warm, the velvet banquettes comfortable and the tables draped in crisp linen. Staff are impeccably turned out, in classic French waiter garb of white jackets and black ties. The formal effect was slightly undermined by our Amazonian waitress's double-decker hairstyle – a bleached white bubble perched atop a dark buzz cut. "I've never been intimidated by a waitress's hair before," whispered Harry.

Read more at http://www.independent.co.uk

Restaurant review, Dock Kitchen, London.

It's funny how just walking into the Dock Kitchen makes you feel trendy. Perhaps it's the neighbours. Stevie Parle's dockside restaurant is part (easily the largest part) of an industrial complex. Lurking beneath it, like a chic troll, is the designer Tom Dixon's studio, while next door is the HQ of Innocent, the smoothies firm.

Mr Parle is a bit of a young smoothie himself. He's been cooking professionally since he was in rompers, he's put in time at the River Café, Moro and Petersham Nurseries (can there be a cooler pedigree?) and The Observer named him Young Chef of the Year in 2010 when he was 15. Oh all right, 24. He has the looks of the young Mike Oldfield. And his ideas for food come from all over. He will not cease from exploring exotic locations – India, Beirut, Morocco, Vietnam – to bring back dishes you've never heard of, with ingredients you can't spell. It's hard not to grind one's teeth about such ostentatious groovy-osity. The night we went, I asked the waiter if Parle was cooking in the kitchen. "Actually no," he said, "Stevie's away filming a TV series called Spice Trip. In Mexico. And Zanzibar."

I've been to the Dock Kitchen three times and enjoyed each trip, with reservations. At lunchtime, it looks terrific. Whether you approach it from Ladbroke Grove, or by the metal gangway at Portobello Dock, it's a miracle of airiness and light. Sunlight (if you're lucky) pours in through the glass wall and bounces off the Tom Dixon globe lights, polished like Anish Kapoor mirror-spheres, that hang from an industrial-chic ceiling. Black metal struts and exposed brickwork are on-trend too. So is the open-plan kitchen. So are the menus, in being printed on recycled grey paper (very Polpo).

Late in the evening, the look is less successful: the lighting makes the diners look like they're being kept under warmers. Negotiating the menu is like leafing through an Esperanto cookbook. You're confronted by several words that you have to ask the waiter to explain. "Labneh?" (It's yogurt cheese from Lebanon, duh.) "Freekeh?" "Trombetta squash?" "Pied bleu?" "Salanova?" It's kind of Mr Parle to educate us in this foodie arcana, but I couldn't help feeling there was a touch of well-travelled conceit about it.

The lavash bread is like a first-draft pizza base covered in balsamic vinegar. It looks amazingly dirty, but tastes OK. The labneh, served with pickled celery, cucumber and sweet herbs, was shockingly salty. My friend Lucy pronounced the signature starter of chicken livers, cooked in 'seven spice' and pomegranate molasses, delicious, the livers enormous, bloody and syrupy. "Leopold Bloom would have found it at the exotic end of the inner organs he liked so much," she said smartly. I've never liked liver much, and I found this borderline emetic. My cured Cornish cod with fresh dill was fine, but served on huge lumps of 'bull's heart' tomatoes. Laid across the plate was a dark plank of rye and malt crispbread ("A weird mixture of All Bran and brandy snap," said Dan) that tasted of nothing, and a pile of butter mixed with buttermilk. It was, I learnt, a dish invented by the Nordic chef Trina Hanhamann, a re-imagining of the classic gravadlax-on-rye; but the convergence of fish-with-tomato and fish-with-butter still seemed perverse.

Read more at http://www.independent.co.uk

Restaurant review, Castle House Hotel, Castle Street, Hereford.

Shortly before the 2010 General Election the Tory MP Jesse Norman tried to explain to me the virtues of Hereford, where he was standing. The first thing, he said, is that it's not Hertford; though three times as far by train from London, his would-be constituency had greater charm. And the second thing is that it has great restaurants.

I remember thinking at the time that this was probably the usual guff prospective MPs trot out to prove their affections for an adopted home. But I was impressed that Mr Norman, who has acquired some notoriety recently for leading parliamentary rebels over House of Lords reform, should mention food so high up his rankings. So on a recent visit to his constituency, I set about examining his claim by visiting what both reputation and search engines classify as Hereford's finest.

Castle House is a Georgian townhouse hotel within minutes of Hereford's extraordinary cathedral. Head chef is Claire Nicholls, one of the most talented in the West Country. She started out at Hereford Technical College, before going on to Birmingham College of Food and then jobs in Wales and Shropshire, so this is in some sense a return to where it all began for her.

The dining-room is formal, with large, well-spaced tables, taupe-teal walls, lampshades on the wall and art I don't much rate. It has the clinical efficiency of an upper-end tourist attraction, and even if really packed would, I imagine, make you feel guilty for laughing too loudly. I can't tell whether the clientele are rooming here as well as eating, but they are silver in complexion and seem to have a keen appreciation of wine.

There is a seven-course tasting menu for £50 where they don't tell you what will be served. You have to just trust the chef, which is fine by us.

First up is a crab-and-potato tian with quail egg and paprika aioli, all of it excellent. Then there is a broccoli and Shropshire blue soup, which is thick, hot and aromatic; and then there is a ham hock-and-asparagus terrine, with a piccalilli, watercress and apple salad. The little segments of apple are both crunchy and juicy, though the piccalilli could have done with a bit more turmeric. The ham is very good.

Parts of this menu and the à la carte betray the Asian influences Nicholls acquired when her father, who was in the Army Air Corps, was posted to Hong Kong during her childhood. So next, we have a sea trout with Bombay potatoes and a ginger and coriander sauce. The sea trout is excellent: firm and flavoursome. But the Bombay aloo, as they might be called elsewhere, are a little lacklustre: boiled potatoes with a hint of chilli and other spices, in a serviceable sauce. A proper curry – one with a masala made from mustard seeds, garlic, chilli, turmeric and fresh coriander – would pack more of a punch.

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Restaurant review, Redwing Bar & Dining, Exmouth, Devon.

For those of us who don't live in Devon, the name Lympstone, if we've heard of it, is synonymous with the Royal Marines. The nearby Commando Training Centre can boast international renown; but that it should forever associate Lympstone with human killing machines must be a matter of regret to at least some of the locals in this gloriously bucolic civil parish on the eastern coast of the Exe Estuary.

There is a church tower, built in 1409, and a waterfront and harbour that bear the heavy imprint of a once-thriving maritime industry and constant fear of flood waters. Fishing – for cod, salmon, and mackerel mostly – and ship-building used to provide the income for most of the residents, who even now number fewer than 2,000. That economy is mostly gone. Now most of the jobs lie to the north, in the swelling belly of Exeter.

What's been left in Lympstone is a quaint, becalmed village stalked by the ghosts of glories past. This quietude and heritage have yet to make it a fashionable destination in the manner of, for instance, Padstow – which is much bigger – or Port Isaac – which isn't, but received an extended visit from Martin Clunes in Doc Martin, after which locals complained the show was ruining their home. Short of getting Clunes and his crew to relocate, perhaps the only sure way to make Lympstone the tourist redoubt it deserves to be is the installation of a fine restaurant.

Redwing Bar & Dining is nearly it, and certainly could be fully it soon.

Barely a year old, the clue is in the name: this is not just a pub you can eat in, but two quite distinct entities. In the front is a local bar, with local people; further back is a restaurant full of foreigners such as me. And full it is: on this, a pre-school-holidays Saturday night, there aren't too many spaces going. A chasm seems to separate the locals from the foreigners, in comportment and clothing as well as distance. They don't mix at all.

There is an extremely charming maître d', and an extended menu and specials board that bears no resemblance whatsoever to the menu on the website. The seared scallop and smoked salmon with a caper-and-parsley dressing is good but not worth £9.95. The deep-fried poached egg with asparagus and black pudding salad, at £7.25, is infinitely better: the sunset-coloured yolk has an ideal consistency, and the black pudding is suitably salty in a well-dressed salad.

Read more at http://www.independent.co.uk

Restaurant review, Aloka, Brighton.

They are not the words you hope to hear on being shown to your table in a new restaurant: "Enjoy the space. Enjoy the emptiness". But Aloka isn't just a restaurant. It's a 'Quality of Life Centre' in the heart of alternative Brighton, a holistic spa serving vegan and raw food. Here, a dinner service for only two customers isn't a problem, but an opportunity to connect with stillness and mindfulness. Those empty tables just represent the road less travelled.

It would be all too easy to make fun of Aloka. But I'm not here to do that. I'm here because my Brighton friend Marina has summoned me, excited by the quality of the food on offer at Aloka's buffet counter. In the tiny storefront café, you can fill a box with vegan goodies, pay by weight, and eat at a shared table, or head off for a picnic on the beach. Upstairs, there's a restaurant, open in the evenings, and it was there that we made our – as it turns out, unnecessary – dinner reservation.

Bravely, Aloka is situated almost directly opposite Terre a Terre, one of Britain's busiest and most famous vegetarian restaurants, whose steady stream of customers Marina and I were able to watch arriving from our window-side table in Aloka's empty dining room.

In contrast to the warm, woody feel of most vegetarian restaurants, Aloka is as white and shiny as an operating theatre. White moulded plastic chairs and linen-shrouded tables give it the feel of an upmarket cosmetic-surgery clinic. There are pendant lamps made from what look like test tubes, and chill-out temple fusion pulses from the sound system. So far, so spa.

But the food is a treatment in itself – colourful, healthy and crazily inventive. Normally a menu might offer up a few unfamiliar ingredients. Here there are whole strings of them – the 'Botanical Living Special', for example, which reads like a spam e-mail: 'Nshiki-Dori Market daikon layered terrine, nori white miso "rice" crackers, soramame and peavetta, dulse kimpi, "raw".' What, no 'Vigara' [sic]?

With its emphasis on Asian ingredients and use of sprouting, fermentation and dehydration, Aloka aligns itself firmly within the modernist wing of the vegetarian movement. The menu offers no meat or fish, obviously, but also no eggs or dairy, and no refined flour, sugar or grains.

The balance falls roughly 50/50 between the raw and the cooked. A mezze platter contained more vegetables than the average corner shop, most of them elaborately primped and prepped – a vivid shot of raw butternut squash and apple soup; peppery beetroot crisps; griddled aubergine wrapped round something ratatouille-ish; pliable linseed crispbreads for dipping in tapenade or a cashew nut and cardamom dip; various unidentified, but mostly delicious, gloops and grains. And weirdly, amid all those raw ingredients, a sprig of oven-roasted grapes and two piping-hot tomatoes, adding a levelling touch of the full English to an other-wordly plateful.

Read more at http://www.independent.co.uk

Restaurant review The Pig and Butcher, London.

Before the Pig and Butcher turned up, there was a pub on Liverpool Road called the Islington Tap. It was rather good, with decent ales, friendly staff and an inoffensive clientele. But on its main window was a strip of verbs instructing potential customers on what to do: "Eat. Drink. Chat. Party. Laugh."

The Tap is no more, and quite why I couldn't begin to guess. But two things always struck me about its rules. First, it was a breach of the unspoken contract between publican and patrons – come into my house, pay your way and do as you please, within reason – that made English public houses the envy of the world; and second, it was the inevitable consequence of a new puritanism and health zealotry in which emissaries of the State tell us not to smoke, drink excessively, or eat the wrong kind of quinoa. It was as if the Tap had taken those warnings now on cigarette packets, and applied them to a pub setting.

In direct, pleasing and probably intentional contrast, its successor advertises no such instructions. And that it is a magnificent public house – from the people behind the Princess of Shoreditch and the Lady Ottoline, with excellent cocktails and a reasonable wine list – is doubtless related.

A short, sublime menu full of meat butchered on site completes the victory. There are six starters, eight mains, four desserts and a cheese board.

To start, Matt gets the monkfish scampi and aioli (£6.95), Charlie gets the red and white endive with home-cured bacon and blood pudding (£8.95), and I get the goose rillettes with cornichons and toast (£5.95). It is a triple triumph.

The batter on the monkfish is a little too greasy, and couldn't be described as light; but the fish inside is moist and muscular and stands up well to the aioli, whose quotient of garlic could be fatal to a post-dinner smooch. The endives, meanwhile, are crisp, the bacon comes in giant salty lardons, and the blood pudding has a very rich but not bullying flavour. And my goose rillettes are ideal: neither completely smooth nor so rough as to demand prolonged chewing. The cornichons are wrinkled and pungent. The only letdown is the plain brown toast, being an inch deep, which is too thick for the rillettes, and hogs precious space in our stomachs.

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Restaurant review, The Olive Branch, Main Street, Clipsham, Rutland.

Around 100 miles up the A1, the hunger pangs begin in earnest. Regularly toiling north on this thoroughfare, I have become only too familiar with the meagre fare offered at the noisome Peterborough Services and craved more substantial replenishment. After some research into halfway houses, I discovered the near-perfect solution. Just two miles off the A1, the Olive Branch in the Rutland village of Clipsham is one of only 13 UK pubs to hold a Michelin star.

I say 'near perfect', because there is a slight problem for the casual caller. You can't. When I rang on a Thursday to reserve a table for two on Saturday lunch, normally a tranquil time in rural boozers, I was told that we could only be accommodated in "the barn" (presumably converted, but not quite what I wanted). Sunday lunch was, of course, fully booked. How about Friday? "Sorry, sir." So we postponed our trip to Monday.

On a rain-lashed lunchtime, the car park was packed and so, it appeared, was the picturesque pub. Originally created from three farm cottages in 1890 by the local squire as a placatory replacement following his closure of a more raucous establishment (hence the curious name), it was refurbished in 1999 by three alumni of the nearby gastronomic palace, Hambleton Hall.

Initial signs suggested that our protracted wait was worthwhile. A neighbouring table told the waiter that their meal was "absolutely gorgeous". The overture to our meal took the form of a warm half-loaf of brown bread. You're given a whacking big bread knife and 'olive and herb butter' to slather on. The demi-loaf lasted us approximately three minutes.

Though the owners also have an elegant hotel across the road, they evidently adhere to the maxim 'Clutter is Good' where pub décor is concerned. Every surface is laden with empty wine bottles from grand chateaux and well-thumbed cookbooks (Larousse rubs shoulders with volumes on Australian and Portuguese cuisine) from the collection of cook and co-owner Sean Hope.

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Restaurant review, Duck & Waffle, London.

It's never great to arrive at a restaurant ashen-faced and shaking, but for those with a fear of heights, it's a distinct possibility at Duck & Waffle. Forty floors up London's glittering Heron Tower, the place has jaw-dropping views and a delightful atmosphere; it's just that the vertigo sufferer will need a few minutes and a stiff drink to recover from the high-speed journey up in a glass lift.

Luckily a stiff drink at D&W comes in the form of a special yuzu-accented gin and tonic, which does much to put me in the right mood. My more robust friends Russell and Kornelia have glasses of English fizz of the moment Nyetimber (it seems only right, since they're still in the afterglow of their honeymoon).

As they prowl around the floor-to-ceiling wraparound windows, noting everything from Wembley Stadium to the Olympic Park, I feel safer staring down at the menu. Why am I putting myself through the ordeal of a vertigo-inducing venue? Well, Duck & Waffle has been the talk of the foodie town since it opened a fortnight ago; for its location, its rather bonkers eponymous signature dish and for its 24/7 opening hours.

I'm here for dinner as the sun sets. The bar, through which you walk from lift to dining-room, is heaving with City folk, most of whom have their backs to the window. I guess they work if not in this skyscraper, then one of its neighbours, so they don't need to rubber-neck like us.

The room has long, hefty, wooden tables for large groups, and semi-circular banquettes with marble tables for the likes of us. The staff are in blue button-down shirts and appear to have – at this early stage – enough pep to cope with the 3am club kids in search of posh burgers and the 5am power-brokers refuelling on a foie gras all-day breakfast.

Yes, that's a thing here. Like the duck and waffle (£12, two classic waffles stacked with a big old confit duck leg and a fried duck egg and a jug of mustard maple syrup), D&W goes the extra mile in high-energy, wham-bam flavour combos. That foie gras on brioche (£10) is topped with bacon, a dinky egg and a thick slick of chocolate spread. Roasted beetroot with goat curd (£7) has great shards of honeycomb (the Crunchie kind, not the bee kind) over it. I find it a bit much, but those with a sweet tooth are in for a treat.

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Restaurant review, Lima, 31 Rathbone Place, London.

What do we know about Peru? "El Condor Pasa", Incas, Machu Picchu, Paddington Bear, Mario Vargas Llosa and guinea pigs. Only the last-named, however, has any connection with cuisine. Guinea pigs are popular lunch treats on the Peruvian sierra, charcoal-roasted and served with garlic and chilli. (All those years you watched your children's piebald pets in their cages, nibbling lettuce and twitching their noses, and you never thought of them as a bite-size snack? Have you no imagination?) Also traditional are boiled or mashed potatoes, corn tamales wrapped in banana leaves, and ceviches of seabass, scallops or crayfish. And that's about it for Peruvian nosh – or was until recently.

Suddenly nouveau-Peruve is all over London: there's Ceviche in Frith Street, Soho; Tierra Peru in Islington – and now Lima, a collaboration between two entrepreneurial Venezuelan brothers, Gabriel and Jose Luis Gonzalez, and Virgilio Martinez, a Peruvian chef who owns Central, the highest-profile eaterie in the Peruvian capital. After much to-and-fro-ing across the Atlantic, they've opened this colourful boîte in Fitzrovia, in an attempt (Gabriel tells me) "to bring to London what's happening in Lima today".

The first thing they've brought over is colour. The exterior is a lovely Inca blue, the main dining room, designed by Eric Monroe, is all muted beige enlivened with a busy mural. And the dishes, as we'll see, are a visual gallimaufry of their own.

We started, of course, with pisco sours. People speak nervously of pisco sours, as if they induce madness, like absinthe or mescal, but they're only South American grappa gussied up with lime, syrup, bitters and egg whites. The Lima sours are fabulous, though – salty, limey and frothy all at once.

The menu starts with eight small dishes that mingle classic ceviches (fish marinated in citric fruit) and tiraditos (cuts of raw fish somewhere between sashimi and carpaccio) and causa potato dishes, with more familiar hors d'oeuvres: duck with foie gras, artichokes with fava beans. My salmon tiradito, tenderised with tiger's milk (a concoction of lime, ginger, coriander and herbs) was smothered in rocoto pepper, given a line of green samphire and a lick of ginger. It looked gloopy, but tasted sublime, the salmon's flavour miraculously intensified as if it had been surreptitiously having sex under its duvet of orange pepper.

Read more at http://www.independent.co.uk

Restaurant review The Ledbury, Ledbury Road, London.

What is there left to say about the restaurant everyone's been talking about for the past couple of years?

The Ledbury just can't seem to stop getting plaudits. Two Michelin stars, highest climber at this year's World's 50 Best Restaurant awards, and now the 2013 Harden's Guide has it ranked as the best-rated top-end restaurant in London (displacing Le Gavroche), while Food and Travel Magazine last week named it London Restaurant of the Year.

It did, in fact, open in 2005 (as sister restaurant to The Square), but chef Brett Graham has been on a steady – if more recently steep – incline to stardom. So why review it now? Well, The Ledbury has managed to make that elusive leap from flavour of the month to culinary superstar, where so many others have failed. And while trying the new kids on the block is fun, I want to tick off this modern classic. My esteemed erstwhile colleague Terry Durack called it "seriously good" in its first year, and by common consent it has got better since.

It's taken a while, as booking a table is not easy. The past two times I've tried I had to book so far in advance that when the evening came, a work deadline or child emergency precluded it. Vexed by others' tales of mythically terrific meals, I finally get a Tuesday 9.30pm booking.

The hushed reverence that greets us as we enter is almost a parody. Not that the staff are snooty – far from it, our waiter indulges our anguished delay over choosing between the tasting menu and à la carte. I do wish he'd pointed out, however, that we could have had the epic-looking tasting menu in the same time as the three-course à la carte offering. Because of the late hour, and it being a school night, we are worried about still eating after midnight.

I choose the plainest dishes; for that, surely, is how to judge somewhere with such a stellar reputation. A tomato salad, then a piece of grilled fish. Mr M chooses a posh take on cheese-on-toast with onion soup to start, then pigeon. For these lowly ingredients we will be paying £80 each, not including drinks. I swallow hard. And that's before I've put any food in my mouth. This is where I think about what my parents would say to such flamboyant expenditure; and about last week's grocery bill for four (yup, £160).

Then the heritage tomato salad with goat's curd, dried olives and green tomato juice arrives. Each component is so delicious, so ripe and rich in flavour it makes me giddy. A grey-green pottery plate is the perfect backdrop for this riot of colour and flavour; two crisp cylinders contain the curd and are edged in granules of olive. Just, wow.

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Restaurant review, Momofuku Noodle Bar, New York.

It doesn't look much from the outside. A plain glass frontage, with a paper menu tacked up on the door. Only the relative spruceness of the building, in a stretch of flyblown ethnic restaurants and head shops, gives a clue that we have reached our destination – one of New York's foodie places of pilgrimage, the legendary Momofuku Noodle Bar. Outside, a British tourist is taking a photo of the menu on her phone. Oh, hang on, it's me. Sorry, I seem to have got a bit overexcited.

Last time I was in Manhattan's East Village, more than a decade ago, this was a scuzzy part of town – it has since been gentrified, and is now just seedy – and Momofuku's inspirational owner, David Chang, was still on a pilgrimage of his own, cooking his way around Tokyo.

Chang went on to open his New York version of a ramen bar, Momofuku, in 2004, and inadvertently started a revolution. With no reservations, no fancy manners, and no respect for purist convention, Momofuku was ecumenical in its approach, mashing up influences from Japan, Korea, China and the US, and creating in the process one legendary dish – the iconic pork bun. Two soft, steamed buns, holding a thick slice of pork belly, and finished with hoisin sauce, spring onion and cucumber, it became a sensation. Only in America, and more specifically, only in the overheated, neophiliac climate of New York dining, would customers queue patiently outside the hot new place for the latest must-eat dish. Or so we used to think. Hollow laugh.

Possibly the only empire built on a bun, the Chang dynasty grew to include three more restaurants in New York, plus a bestselling cookbook, and a bakery chain, the Momofuku Milk Bar, serving crazy-sounding specialities like crack pie and compost cookies. With new branches in Sydney and Toronto, the pork bun has become the sandwich that ate the world.

So I thought it was time to go back to where it all began, the original noodle bar, before my fellow critics discovered I'd never eaten a Momofuku pork bun and had me blackballed, or barbecued. Arriving for lunch a mere eight years after the early-adopters, I felt genuinely excited. A feeling which instantly evaporated on being politely, but firmly, directed to wait for my guest on the pavement outside, in the middle of a July heatwave. Momofuku doesn't seat incomplete parties, even ones who have opted to lunch at the fashionably early hour of noon. I don't mind queuing outside a full restaurant, but queuing outside a half-empty one? Way to harshen the buzz.

Read more at http://www.independent.co.uk

Restaurant review, Caravan Granary Building, London.

For the past four years I've cycled to work. The beginning of my journey has two main attractions. First, the offices of The Guardian. Never underestimate what nourishment to the soul a daily sighting of the enemy can provide. Second, what was a once a vast forest of cranes and concrete has, by some mysterious urban pupation, recently turned into one of London's most lovely piazzas. It takes the name of Granary Square, and on one side of it, next to a branch of Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, is Caravan.

I cycled to the square a couple of times during the Olympics, part reconnaissance ahead of this report, and part an attempt to soak up the atmosphere of our sporting summer. What I saw was quite the picture- postcard: parallel fountains spurting water; children gambolling through their foamy residue; adults everywhere smiling and reading. Freed at last of the grey clouds that have hovered over us since March, this scene was the highlight of my year – apart from getting engaged and scoring 40 at Lord's for the Authors CC.

The Grade II-listed Granary Building, which dates back to 1851 and dominates this square like a playground bully, was given a special award by Mayor Boris Johnson in January in recognition of the clever planning behind architect Paul Williams' restoration. Its refurbishment was timed almost perfectly to start with my new cycling route, for which I am grateful, though the main beneficiary is the campus full of fashionistas, with their workshops, studios and salons.

Next door to them, however, the foodies should consider themselves pretty lucky, too. The interior of Caravan feels like an industrial-scale riposte to the summer bliss outside. It's warehouse-chic with a touch of class, all high wooden beams and low-hanging lights. The kitchen runs along one side, and behind the bar is a giant Probat coffee-roasting machine. The vibe, as at the sister restaurant on Exmouth Market a mile-and-a-half away, is humming and friendly. And the service is a triumph of professionalism and joy.

There are oysters, deep-fried or natural; seven choices under "bread, cheese, meats"; 14 small plates; five pizzas; five large plates; and gem salad, green beans or fries for sides, all at £3.

Let's do the positives first.

A few of the plates are wonderful. The jalapeño cornbread with chipotle butter (£3.50), baked cauliflower with smoked San Simon cheese, breadcrumbs and sage (£5.50), and chorizo-and-butternut-squash croquettes with saffron aioli (£6) are in this category. The ox tongue with mustard, honey and beetroot (£7) isn't far off, either.

Read more at http://www.independent.co.uk

Restaurant review, Perkin Reveller, London.

The restaurants on the south side of the Thames at Tower Bridge have been bustling for 20 years, pulling in tourists like trawler nets snaring cod. The north side, by contrast, hasn't seized a similar opportunity, despite the presence of the tourist nirvana that is the Tower. The land just beside the Tower is owned by the Historic Royal Palaces, who leased it for ages to a café. Their catering partner, Ampersand, has now summoned a creative agency and a catering consultancy called Truffle Hunting; between them they've launched Perkin Reveller, tucked into the elbow formed by Tower and Bridge.

The name comes from Chaucer. Taking their cue from the fact that the great Geoffrey had a hand in building Tower Wharf in 1390, the new owners have plundered The Canterbury Tales, looking for a name. The Knight's Tale? Too stiff. The Merchant's Tale? Too sexy ("Gan liften up her smocke and inne he throng…"). The Miller's Tale? Too much farting. Eventually they chose the slightest of the tales, the unfinished, 58-line Cook's Tale, because of its main character, an apprentice chef called Perkin, who's a sort of medieval headbanger. "At every wedding party he would sing and dance… when there was any procession in Cheapside he would spring from the shop towards it… and he would gather to him a crew of his own sort, to dance and sing and make such fun."

Does Perkin sound a bit of a trial to you? Does he sound like the bloke outside your window at 4am, singing "Teenage Dirtbag" with his zany chums? In that case, Perkin Reveller may not delight you. It's pretty much designed for a Medieval Fayre. Many of the tables are banquet-size, long enough to accommodate a small army of varlets and mead-swilling serfs celebrating Lammastide with earthenware beermugs…

It's not really as crass as that. There's a cosy bar area that resembles a chapel with original stone pillars, white tiles, flickering wall-sconces, zinc tables and squashy cushions. In the main dining room, the old features have been overlaid with wood panelling and crammed with stripped-pine furniture. In the evening, when it's almost empty, it looks a bit… staff refectory. Very much not a couples place. The outside terrace is wonderful, though, with the wall of the Tower beside you, the vast, blue-lit majesty of the bridge to one side, and the grotesque spike of the Shard obscured by trees. I can imagine visitors and Londoners alike fighting to get a table out there. They even provide you with rugs, and a sailor's chest of games to keep you amused.

The food and drink are much better than you'd expect in such a touristy haven. Dominic the cocktail waiter does a fabulous vodka martini, and, for the ladies, a Seasonal Shrub: your date takes a spoonful of marinated cherry-and-blackcurrant jam on her tongue, then has a gulp of gin-and-lemon juice. It's very bracing. The menu is – what did you expect? – very English Heritage, but full of nice touches. Queen scallops are given a peck on their white cheeks by some lovely chorizo. A salad of ham hock with English peas benefited from the ham being served warm in a soft croquette. Smoked eel fishcake with crispy bacon and endive lettuce filled the mouth with flavour and added thick tranches of actual smoked eel as a contrast to the cake.

Read more at http://www.independent.co.uk