Restaurant review Soif, 27 Battersea Rise, London.

EM Forster once wrote an essay called "Battersea Rise". It was the name of the house where his great-aunt, Marianne Thornton, lived, a very grand place somewhere among the huge Edwardian mansions around Clapham Common. The Rise itself never had many pretensions, however. It's a strip of London's South Circular up which, in the 1960s, enormous car-transporter lorries used to run through the night and make the houses shake.

How do I know? Because, dear reader, Battersea Rise was where I grew up between the ages of 10 and 18. I know every inch of it. I remember when, across the road from our house at No 8, you'd find Midwinters the grocers, Kalsi the chemist, Edwardes the furniture store, plus a butcher and a baker.

I remember when Battersea began to change from grotty up-the-Junction rat hole to a rather fashionable suburb; it was when Acquired Taste appeared, the first wine shop-cum-delicatessen with its array of posh clarets and French cheeses and the salutation in the window that asked passers-by, rather snootily, "Why cross the river?". (On the other side of the Rise, the newspaper shop put a jar of peaches in the window, with a cheeky sign that read: "We got peaches in brandy and we sell fags. Why cross the road?".)

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