Restaurant review, The Beckford Arms, Fonthill Gifford, Wiltshire.

It gives your dinner added spice to know you're eating it on the premises of a notorious degenerate. And the names 'Beckford' and 'Fonthill' summon up a chap who, in the early 19th century, was thought by many to be "the most evil man in England".

He was William Beckford, author, occasional MP, art collector, builder, critic, traveller and sexual predator. His debut fiction, Vathek, written in three days and two nights when he was only 21 and in the grip of heaven-knows-what stimulant, was one of the earliest English Gothic novels, a big influence on Lord Byron, who called him "England's wealthiest son" – Beckford inherited the equivalent of £110m from his dad, who owned slave plantations in Jamaica. Scandal engulfed him when he was exposed in the newspapers as a bisexual sadist and paedophile, once discovered in the act of whipping a 10-year-old boy. He had the enormous Fonthill Abbey built to his design, but it featured a massive phallic tower which collapsed one night, bringing the roof down, in 1825.

The eyes of the weary traveller on the A303 from London fall with delight on the Beckford Arms, on the old Fonthill estate. It's a big white inn covered in ivy and lit with welcoming lamps. The bar has been modernised to look more like a sophisticated country house than a pub. The tables and chairs are as lumpy and bandy-legged as Mrs Patmore in Downton Abbey, but the décor is on-trend: more Farrow & Ball than Colefax & Fowler. There are sofas, newspapers and a blazing fire in the sitting-room, wall-hangings in the dining area, and eight bedrooms

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Restaurant review, HKK Broadgate West, Worship Street, London.

The "bespoke Cantonese fine dining" restaurant HKK is the latest opening from the Hakkasan group, which scored a Michelin star with the original eponymous restaurant and, more recently, has given Londoners the haute (and strange – beef with candyfloss, anyone?) Japanese Chrysan.

HKK occupies the same anonymous metal-and-glass City carapace as Chrysan – financiers must have the same enhanced sense of gastronomic direction as they do for sniffing out advantageous interest rates. Once inside, sitting on a banquette in the surprisingly modest dining-room, things take a turn for the posh.

I suspect that only I see the resemblance in the po-faced installation above the central food station to pink buttocks (it's a collection of round bone china peaches that bob about, lit with rosy hue). I snigger. My banquette neighbours pull their iPads a little closer.

I receive a menu – a change to HKK's original ethos of offering only an epic eight-course set lunch (£48) or 15-course dinner (£95). Chef Tong Chee Hwee's idea was to take the best available produce and use both traditional and modern techniques to send out unknown dishes that delight.

Now there's an à la carte section, so I'm guessing not everyone liked the idea. (I imagine a captain of industry murmuring, "Chef Tong, I think you've delighted us long enough.") But since I've nowhere to go this afternoon, I choose the eight-course lunch tasting menu, while Mr M (a late sub for my cancelled lunch date) goes temporarily veggie.

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Restaurant review, Massimo Restaurant and Oyster Bar, London.

It happens sometimes in a foreign city. You leave the tawdry, neon-lit sprawl of the main drag and wander down an unpromising side street, only to stumble across The Perfect Restaurant – golden and gorgeous and oozing relaxation and low-key glamour. Emerging hours later, as though from a dream, you forget to note the name of the restaurant or the street, and when you return, you never manage to find it again.

Weirdly, given that I'm meant to know all about new restaurants, a version of this happened to me in my home city the other week. A friend invited me for dinner at a new hotel I'd never heard of, The Corinthia, which opened earlier this year on Northumberland Avenue, a street off Trafalgar Square that appears on the Monopoly board but otherwise doesn't feature very largely in London life.

We had a perfectly OK meal, in an expensively bland, modern British restaurant. And then we set off to explore the rest of the hotel. Creeping down marbled corridors, past shadowy cocktail bars, we arrived at a discreet, unmarked door. 'Ah, this must be Massimo – let's look!' said my friend, and I agreed, though I had no idea what Massimo might be.

We pushed open the door, and by God, there it was – the Dream Restaurant. A vast, elegant, Deco-ish brasserie, a sepia-tinted tableau of steam-age glamour, with its own lost tribe of interesting, arty-looking customers. Acres of conker-coloured leather banquettes stretched into the distance. Huge, hemispherical light fittings set the mosaic marble floor twinkling, and a parade of candy-striped Corinthian columns lent the room a fantastical, cartoonish dimension, like the Wolseley reimagined by Dr Seuss.

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Restaurant review The Balcon Sofitel St James, 8 Pall Mall, London.

Having returned from a week of eating rough-hewn slabs of ibérico ham and messy heaps of paella in southern Spain, taking Sunday lunch at a new brasserie in London seems a good way to ease gently back into dismal, autumnal English urban life by way of some refined dining.

The first items placed on the table – a little dish of saucisson and two baskets of bread – are more holiday fare than swish city offerings, but there's a significant difference in the surroundings. The Balcon is within the Sofitel St James, part of the French luxury-hotel group; it used to be Brasserie Roux – care of the legendary Albert – but it was a slightly soulless roll-out conceit. The chef, Vincent Menager, arrived a couple of years ago, a long-time Sofitel hand. Now he's been given sole control. And introduced some soul.

His menu blends classic French and British produce and techniques to appeal to West Enders without scaring off the trad hotel clientele. Charcuterie is from Trealy Farm in Monmouthshire and Mas le Rouget in Cantal, France; Herefordshire snails come with Mas air-dried ham while wild Devon mussels marinière arrive on Welsh rarebit. There are rotisserie dishes and slow-cooked rib-stickers, grilled meats and fish and some tarts and tartines for lighter meals, as well as the aforementioned charcuterie plates – 16 of them. The salad section is small but well-formed, although quite what steak tartare is doing there is anyone's guess.

We're directed by friendly, textbook-French staff towards the items in bold on the large-format menu; these are chef's signature dishes. No argument from me – the pike custard with King's Lynn brown shrimps, crustacean velouté and sourdough toast (£10.50) is both pretty and delicious, an unctuous, delicately flavoured confection with punchy shrimps scattered on top and a jug of rich sauce.

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Restaurant review The Hansom Cab, 84 Earls Court Road, London.

The unique selling proposition about The Hansom Cab – an elegant Victorian boozer near Kensington High Street – is that it's been bought by Piers Morgan, the TV personality and former journalist. Mr Morgan is a curious figure: a chap who seems to revel in being disliked and to enjoy the popular consensus that he's a conceited git. By cunning and chutzpah, he has snagged himself a corner table at Planet Celebrity, advising Tony Blair, high-fiving Simon Cowell and making himself agreeable to the vice-presidents of CNN.

He bought The Hansom Cab last December, in a joint venture with his younger brother Rupert, who used to manage Guy Ritchie's ancient (est 1760) Mayfair pub The Punch Bowl, and with Tarquin Gorst, who co-owned it. (Tarquin, Piers and Rupert, eh? I can remember a time when London pubs were owned by people called Nobby, Del and Sid.) After the purchase, Morgan did lots of celebrity-schmoozing in the pub; I suspect the place is meant to attract the kind of people who'd travel miles to clap eyes on James Corden or Freddie Flintoff.

One's first impression is of cramp. It's a gastropub that's got too much bar and too little restaurant. The marble bar protrudes so far into the room that the dining tables are squashed against the wall. Eaters have to contemplate a lot of strangers' bottoms at eye-level. In the back bar, things are more stylish: lots of fancy Victorian engraved glass and black-painted walls covered with framed Jak cartoons from the Evening Standard and monochrome photographs of Parisian artisans. A porcelain pelican broods menacingly on the bar. The place looks welcoming. But you still feel you're dining in a long train carriage.

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Restaurant review Cut at 45 Park Lane, London.

Vulgarity takes many forms, and some are more tolerable than others. Wolfgang Puck, the Austrian-American who transformed popular eating habits in Los Angeles and Las Vegas, specialises in a type that is forgivable because it is honest. There is nothing worthy, ethical or sanctimonious about his latest opening, at 45 Park Lane in London's Mayfair; rather, it is unapologetically ostentatious and expensive. You visit knowing vast sums of money will change hands, and expecting to be extremely well fed. Both those things will most likely happen, so you will leave happy, which, after all, is the aim of the ritual.

Puck opened his first restaurant, Spago, in West Hollywood in 1982. It was renowned for its haute-cuisine pizzas. Three decades later, he has become probably the world's most celebrated steak chef, mainly because of the branches of The Cut he has opened in Los Angeles, Las Vegas and Singapore. Now it has come to London, sitting by the Dorchester hotel.

The interior might, as some critics have suggested, resemble an airport lounge; if so, its visitors must be flying first-class. The dark-tan leather sofas, sparkling cutlery, immaculately uniformed doormen, gleaming table-lamps and marble flooring all ooze money-no-object. The main room is deep and thin, almost corridor-like, on the ground floor and adjacent to the whizzing sports cars and restored Routemaster buses of W1. On the table next to us, a posse of young executives with over-gelled hair spend 35 minutes inspecting their nails, after which David Haye, the recently retired heavyweight, turns up dressed neck to toe in black. The Cut is the sort of place where boxing champs keep their entourages waiting.

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Restaurant review, Roti Chai, 3 Portman Mews South, London.

Uh-oh. I used to think that the Indian restaurant at the end of my road was my perfect partner. I've been so loyal to it over the years that at one point I just ate "on tick" and paid at the end of the month. But like a marriage that's lost some of its excitement, recently I've been finding the tarka dahl a bit, well, lacklustre. I've tried branching out from my usual order to spice things up, but I think we need a break.

I may have found a new love in Roti Chai, an "Indian Street Kitchen" tucked away in a mews behind Oxford Street in central London. It may not have the virtue of being on anyone's doorstep, much less mine, but it's definitely worth cheating on your regular with.

Open since summer, Roti Chai has been created by Rohit Chugh, who wanted to bring a taste of the all-day street food of India that fuels the bustling country to London. It's like a typical Indian railway canteen – if the trains were run by the staff of Monocle or Wallpaper magazines. Plain refectory tables and chairs are neatly arranged, while across the back wall, a well-stocked bar and view into the kitchen reveal finely choreographed activity.

Kitschy faux-adverts in classic Indian style proclaim "since 2011", and at the front desk there's an artfully chosen range of spicy products to buy. It's all very agreeable – and on a Friday night the place is full, with everything from an office outing of 20 to dating couples. Downstairs is a restaurant proper – "Dining Room" – which has round tables and soft lighting and its own bar area; the food samples dishes from all over the subcontinent. Looks promising, but it's the snacky "Street Kitchen" at street level that really appeals.

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Restaurant review The Pig Hotel, Beaulieu Road, Brockenhurst, New Forest, Hampshire.

Announcing its presence on a sign with a brass silhouette of a cheerful porker, The Pig Hotel sits in the heart of the New Forest.

"Welcome to the Forest," says the short, extremely pretty girl at Reception, giving you the key to the Tamworth Room (many of the rooms are named after pigs) and you soon feel like you've stepped back to a calmer, simpler, more rustic life. The bedrooms are in the country house's old stable yard. They have wooden floors. A key design feature is the hefty log pile in a rectangular wall-space. An old-style telephone, the kind you dial with your finger, sits beside the bed. The bath is old and claw-footed. An old-style leather-clad Roberts radio is tuned to Radio 4 (of course). It's wonderful. This hotel room is the accommodation equivalent of comfort-eating. It's newly and beautifully renovated but it feels at least 50 years old.

It takes a while to put your finger on the prevailing influence. The Pig is a sister restaurant of Lime Wood in Hampshire and both are deeply in thrall to the shabby-chic, traditional-with-a-twist style of Daylesford. The restaurant is a conservatory bolted on to the old house, but it's been done up as a Gardeners' Question Time dream of a greenhouse. The glass roof slopes down to a long window. Led to your seat by another short, amazingly pretty girl, your eye is drawn by a hundred details of watering cans, climbing plants, wooden trugs, wooden crates, terracotta pots of thyme and rosemary. It's set-dressing of a comprehensive kind. No greenhouse in history ever had such a patchwork floor of Moorish tiles. No garden shed ever boasted such a giant pine dresser or such a vast, UFO-like chandelier.

The menu is rather archly divided into six sections. 'Piggy Bits' are pre-starter snacks, 'Starters and Small Plates (Or Bigger!)' are more substantial hors d'oeuvres, 'Literally Picked This Morning' are foraged dishes, fresh eggs and fish, 'Forest and Solent' are the main courses, including The Pie @ The Pig (steak and Old Thumper ale with bubble'n'squeak), The Pig's Hampshire bacon chop and Dorset cockles and Cornish mussels. 'Garden Sides' offer greens, onions, pumpkins and potatoes from The Pig's much-vaunted walled garden of home-grown produce. It crosses your mind that they're trying to emulate the vegetable garden at Le Manoir aux Quat' Saisons, plus the restaurant-in-a-greenhouse that is Petersham Nurseries plus Mrs Patmore's kitchen in Downton Abbey...

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Restaurant review Young Turks at The Ten Bells 84 Commercial Street, London.

The original Young Turks wanted to reform the calcifying Ottoman Empire and raise its standards closer to those of its Western rivals. Their name has since entered our language as a general term for thrusting and precocious types, who often have a predilection for subversive art and radical politics. In its latest invocation, it now also refers to a wonderful food collective whose latest venture is an exhilarating coup at the Ten Bells pub on the edge of the City of London. That, too, is a part of the world that has been calcifying of late; and in terms of food at least, the Young Turks have raised its standards closer to the City's West.

The chefs are James Lowe and Isaac McHale. Lowe was previously head chef at St John Bread & Wine, which is barely yards away from his new redoubt. McHale has worked at a pop-up at the Pavilion Café in east London's Victoria Park and as development chef at The Ledbury. Their credentials are excellent. A third comrade, Ben Greeno, is currently working in Sydney. The front-of-house operation is run by the convivial pair of Daniel Willis and Johnny Smith, who hail from The Clove Club, a dining crew in Dalston. "We are young and ambitious, have worked in some of the best kitchens in the world, and now we want to do things our way," their website declares. And you can tell.

The Ten Bells is (in)famous for its attendance by the victims of Jack the Ripper (the pub was, from 1976 to 1988, renamed The Jack the Ripper). Its ground floor is always packed, though rarely with City types, who thankfully prefer the bars closer to Liverpool Street station. In the far corner, italic neon letters and an arrow point to a door which says, "No Entry – Toilets are Downstairs". But behind the door is a steep, battered wooden staircase leading up to a sign saying, "Live East, Die Young", and a single room overlooking Commercial Street.

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Restaurant review Aurelia, 13-14 Cork Street, Mayfair, London.

I've been eating in a lot of spartan, hole-in-the-wall restaurants lately. Places where the furniture is reclaimed from an old factory, the staff are reclaimed from a Kooples poster, and you can eat anything you like, as long as it's a big hunk of meat.

Don't get me wrong – it's great that London has got its own scruffy, borderline-fetishistic dining scene. But sometimes, as a break from all this gastro-machismo, wouldn't it be nice to go somewhere pretty and be treated like a laydee?

Aurelia is just the place for that. Depending on your perspective, it's a reminder of the old days, when ladies were made to feel special and the gentlemen paid the bill. Or it's a ridiculous throwback to a past geological era – the Permatan period, perhaps – when Continental restaurant managers flirted gamely with ladies of a certain age, while white-jacketed barmen conjured up overpriced Bellinis.

Aurelia is the latest thoroughbred from the family-run stable that includes Zuma, Roka and La Petite Maison, and its modern Mediterranean cooking is apparently inspired by the Aurelian Way, the Roman coastal road to Spain.

Posh Italian, in other words, with a side order of Jamon Iberico. But head chef Rosie Yeats has spent the past few years cooking modern Japanese food at Roka, so Aurelia promises to be more than just another upmarket Mayfair trattoria, even if the Aurelian Way never made it as far as Kyoto.

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Restaurant review Union Jacks, 4 Central St Giles Piazza, London.

Boak. It's a horrible word, really. Boak. But it does sum up how I felt after putting the food at this week's restaurant in my mouth. Boak. Sorry Jamie.

I feel bad because I've got a lot of time for Mr Oliver, whose grand ambition extends to some really rather good recipes and entertaining TV. His Jamie's Italian chain is, by all accounts, pretty decent and I'm fond of the Jme wooden chopping board in my kitchen.

Although it's now been announced that a second branch will open soon in Chiswick, his latest venture, Union Jacks, was supposed to be a one-off in a new development near London's Oxford Street, and the music, décor, drinks and tableware (the plates say "Stop looking at my bottom" on their base) are suitably witty and pretty. But the food is dire.

Actually, that's not fair. The starters and puddings are delicious, with the wit and flair of Jamie Oliver Inc at its best. But the central concept is a reinvention of the pizza. What's that? Pizza doesn't need reinventing, being one of the world's most loved, perfectly assembled dishes? That's where we're wrong, apparently.

Union Jacks is a celebration of British produce and flavours, showcased on "flats" (that's pizzas to you and me, not that you'll see the p-word on the menu). There's nothing wrong with showcasing the fantastic meat, cheeses, veggies and herbs of our nation. Just not on the same plate as a "flat" – not even one made by US chef Chris Bianco, whose pizzas are fabled and who's been brought over by Jamie to recreate his Arizona magic here.

It starts well with roasted beets with Westcombe curd and smoked seeds (£4), prawn and Morecambe Bay shrimp cocktail (£6), potted British seafood (£5.50) and catch-of-the-day fish fingers with tartare sauce (£5). All on the modest side, but that's about right for the price and as a curtain-raiser for something stodgy like pizza, sorry, flats.

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Restaurant review A Little of What you Fancy, 464 Kingsland Road, London.

Finding new Dalston restaurant A Little of What You Fancy is a bit of a challenge.

It hides in plain sight on the Kingsland Road, blending in beside 'Angel's beauty and slimming clinic', a unisex hair salon and an off-licence cum mini-market. It's difficult to find because it doesn't have a sign.  A chalkboard near the street is the only indication that this is the right place, which with a smeared scrawl, announces the restaurant's name. This is either a stroke of marketing genius or a mis-judged attempt at projecting an underground image.

Inside it's stripped down, yet homely, with crates of eggs and lemons sitting around, a drafty toilet and reclaimed school chairs. It's packed with loud and chatty people, uniformed with undercuts and boat shoes for the boys, artfully dishevelled hair and baggy jumpers for the girls - a typical Dalston crowd.

But the prices are not Dalston prices. You could feed a whole family at Huong-Viet, just a few blocks down the road, for the price of three-course meal here. I suspect that A Little of What You Fancy is aiming to pull in the second wave of Dalston dwellers. The ones who came because they liked the edgy, vibrant area, and could afford the inflated rents. The ones who work in the City by day, but want to feel quite bohemian of an evening.

The ones who would love, in other words, to go to a dishevelled, word-of-mouth restaurant on the Kingsland Road and be served with potted shrimp and confit duck. Maybe that lack of a sign really is a cunning idea. Then again - it wasn't the only absent aspect of the evening.

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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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Restaurant review Copita, 26-27 D'Arblay Street, London.

Some joints are so obviously designed for couples in the early stages of courtship that, should you go along with the intention of securing a table for four, you can immediately feel the soft stigma of social exclusion. This is us in Copita. It's a buzzy little tapas station in the middle of Soho, but we're not here to advance any amorous schemes, so we feel a little out of place.

If you need confirmation of its suitability for a date – second or third, I'd suggest (not snazzy enough for a first outing, but saucy enough for one soon after) – just look at the clientele. Barely two months after opening, it is heaving with thirsty, smart young folk, the sort who spend all day asking clients what their social-media strategy is or advising on brand optimisation.

Plus, just about every other feature of the eating experience here seems date-friendly. For one, the music is loud, though not as ear-crunching as the raucous din of the diners, which means I find it hard to hear the person opposite speak. Then there are the staff, who swarm about the place with constant smiles but only a passing interest in the food: three questions about the contents of arriving dishes are met with incredulity, suggesting their priority is a quick turnover. In fact their fleeting presence gives the whole meal a sense of transit, so that even on sitting down it feels as though we're moving.

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Restaurant review Mishkin’s, 25 Catherine Street, London.

The cable channel Dave famously got its name because the marketeers believed everyone had a friend called Dave. Mishkin's, a new Jewish(ish) diner in Covent Garden, has a similarly ersatz provenance – named for its owner, Ezra Mishkin, who sounds like the kind of mensch who'd feed you good chicken soup and bad jokes, but who doesn't actually exist.

The real owners of Mishkin's are those men with the Midas touch, Russell Norman and Richard Beatty, whose fun and funky openings in Soho have brought such a buzz to central London's restaurant scene.

Two years ago, Norman and Beatty opened Polpo, an updated Venetian bacaro whose menu of cicheti and small plates proved such a hit that the concept is now appearing at a Zizzi near you.

Having launched two further school-of-Polpo restaurants, and the dirty diner Spuntino, Norman has professed himself "over" that whole small-Italian-plates thing. He describes his latest opening, Mishkin's, as "a sort of sexy, fun version of a Jewish deli". Which, if you've ever eaten in one, you'll know is a bit like saying a sexy, fun version of Arthur Mullard.

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Restaurant review, Granger & Co, 175 Westbourne Grove, London.

To throw yourself into the melee of the restaurant scene in London must be terrifying, even if you're already a bit of a superstar. I feel for our own food writer Bill Granger, whose eponymous restaurant has finally arrived in west London after a few false starts.

A big name is no guarantee of success, as many will attest. On two early visits to Granger & Co, I'd say success is on the cards, but the white heat of a new place can cool quickly, especially in the swanky environs of Westbourne Grove, where families think nothing of dropping £80 on breakfast with the kids (as two dads with three toddlers did when I was there).

Early reviews have questioned the somewhat lackadaisical service and Bill clearly has been quick to act; things have tightened up. On both of my visits the female managers corralled staff and customers with searing efficiency. This is what's needed in an all-day establishment that doesn't take bookings. Which is my only quibble, really. I have to arrive for dinner at 7pm to make sure of a table for six, and 8am for Sunday breakfast for four.

At dinner, the manager quips to me – as I survey the quiet, elegant room with its leather drapes at the door, blonde-wood tables and chairs, and lovely panelled wood ceiling – that things would very soon be bordering on mayhem. She is right: it's that white-heat moment. Glossy couples and groups of creative-industry types look a bit disgruntled as they push back those curtains and see they're going to have to stand and wait.

From my snug, smug corner table for six, I feel glad I'm settled in. This is no Wagamama – once in, you want to relax and take time over the menu. Aussie and Pacific influences abound, which is to be expected from the man whose Bills restaurants are one of Australia and Asia's biggest hits.

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Restaurant review Newman Street Tavern, 48 Newman Street, London.

When does a "gastropub" become a "tavern"? When the owner wants to boost sales. That was my initial, cynical feeling when preparing for this visit to Newman Street Tavern, and the discovery that it lives on a site once occupied by a Ping Pong dim-sum factory only fortified that opinion.

People who say tavern instead of gastropub belong in the same class as those who use "quotidian" when they mean "everyday", "fuchsia" when they mean "pink" and "pulchritudinous" when they mean "beautiful" – frauds, the lot of them.

Well, so much for cynicism. Taverns are inns that travellers stay in; pubs are houses open to the public. Obviously there is a huge amount of crossover, but because of the overnight element, the former put a greater premium on comfort and domesticity. I should think that nobody but the very drunk or the very mischievous will ever stay overnight at Newman Street Tavern, but many more visitors will wish they could, because a more comforting place than upstairs here would be hard to find in London.

Much like GrEAT British in Mayfair, the venue I wrote about earlier this month, the emphasis here is on seasonal produce, patriotically sourced. First built in the late Victorian period, the walls sport portraits of scenes from coastal life. Images of trawler boats, fishing nets and swollen waves make the sea seem close, as does a board listing the seafood platter and extensive range of oysters and crustacea on offer.

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Restaurant review, Neighbourhood, North Avenue, Spinningfields, Manchester.

In Manhattan, restaurateurs and chefs maddened by the blitzkrieg of bloggers' flashbulbs are starting to ban diners from taking photographs of their meals. In Manchester, where new Manhattan-inspired mega-restaurant Neighbourhood has just opened, photography seems to be positively encouraged. Dressed-up gal-pals are merrily snapping away at each other, and even the staff are at it; you've got to love a chef who proudly captures a hamburger on his BlackBerry before letting it leave the pass.

There's an appealing swagger to this city-centre newcomer. A feeling that they're doing something a little bit different, and doing it well. Pimped-up American comfort food may already be all the rage in London – sliders, mac and cheese, Southern-fried chicken and the like. Now, with the opening of Neighbourhood in the shiny new Spinningfields development, the craze has spread north.

Here are wagyu sliders, lobster tacos, fried oysters, buttermilk-coated chicken wings, grilled stone bass and pot-roast chicken thighs. Here are broiled steaks, pasta and pizzette. Here is a 'raw bar'. Only the cocktail list, which offers a range of Wag-pleasing curiosities, including the Belle Epoque Blazer (it involves a bottle of vintage Champagne, Martell XO cognac and flambéed summer fruits, and costs £325 for four people) gives a clue that we're not in east London or on the Lower East Side.

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Restaurant review, The Pipe & Glass Inn, West End, South Dalton, Beverley, East Yorkshire.

The flotilla of nightlights on the tables outside the Pipe & Glass – a welcome sight after much peering at the map and several U-turns on dark, narrow lanes – formed an infinitesimal reflection of the glittering constellations arching over rural East Yorkshire. Coincidentally, many of the customers, who pretty much filled the car park on a wintry Tuesday night, were lured by a single star of a distinctly non-celestial nature, being bestowed by a tyre company based in Clermont-Ferrand. Less than four years after taking over a "tired and unloved" pub in the village of South Dalton, local boy James Mackenzie was awarded his county's first and only Michelin star in 2010. This glory was further burnished when the Pipe & Glass was named Michelin's Pub of the Year for 2012.

Mackenzie's ambition is indicated by the menus from stellar figures of the culinary world – Paul Bocuse, Thomas Keller, Fergus Henderson – that line the walls of his comfortable bar. The proceeds of his stardom have been ploughed back in the form of a large, gleaming kitchen, a conservatory, two bedrooms and a sexy salon privé. The main dining rooms are spacious and retain an idiosyncratic décor. Our table was flanked by a dressmaker's dummy and a Gerald Scarfe poster of local bard Alan Ayckbourn.

While mulling over a wine list that oddly classified wine under "Poultry & Game" and "Cow, Pig & Sheep" rather than price or provenance (our Beaune at £26.95 was fine), we were joined at the next table by an Anglo-Dutch party of six poultry entrepreneurs. It did not require Holmesian powers to deduce their occupation since for the next two hours they talked about battery farming without deviation or hesitation but with much repetition. Going by their choice of eatery, mass-volume eggmen prefer not to eat their own output.

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Restaurant review, Hereford Road, 3 Hereford Road, London.

I saw Fergus Henderson walking in my direction in Farringdon the other day. The champion of British nose-to-tail eating, dressed in trademark navy pin-stripe, was ambling in his usual wonderful way, true to Orwell's description of "that bobbing gait of the Indian who never straightens his knee". He doesn't know me from Adam, of course, but what with so many of my heroes having died in the festive period (Vaclav Havel, Christopher Hitchens, Kim Jong Il) I wanted to introduce myself, thank him for his remarkable service to our cuisine and stoicism in facing Parkinson's disease, and pay him as high a compliment as I could muster. Of course, being an idiot, I did none of these things, and bobbed my own bent knees into the horizon.

In something like an homage to the man, ruefulness at this missed opportunity, and bold defiance of New Year's resolutions to generally make a greater enemy of all calories, I have come with a group of friends to Hereford Road in west London.

Imitation probably is the sincerest form of flattery, and this place is nothing if not a compliment to Henderson's influence. It was set up four years ago by Tom Pemberton, who had been head chef at Henderson's St John Bread and Wine, and still boasts a menu that, from nose to tail, carries the stamp of Hendersonism. Or, as I like to think of it, an offal lot of offal.

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