I’ve reviewed Franco Manca, Brixton’s brilliant pizza establishment, already (go here for the review). I don’t really need to repeat all of it, but it is worth re-iterating that their pizzas really are of wonderful quality and very affordable. It is a great place to stop for a quick lunch, which we did today with our lovely friend Katie. As you can see in the last picture , she was well up for diving right into her pizza.

My choice of pizza was one of their home-cured Gloucester old spot ham offerings; quite delicious. It looked like this:

The partner had a pizza topped with fresh and dried chorizo; he was most satisfied with it.

Finally, Katie had one of the daily specials: a quattro stagione. Her enthusiasm for quality pizza is plain for all to see!

If you want a quick lunch, or a really high-quality pizza, or preferably both you will find Franco Manca delivers the goods. We shall return many more times.

It was rather cold when we set off for our trek across London to Broadway Market, our quest was for the highly recommended banh mi stand there. Banh Mi 11 delivered the goods in terms of excellent Vietnamese sandwiches even if they took a while to prepare.

Banh Mi 11 are part of the Ca Phe Vietnamese coffee stand, located in a little courtyard half way along Broadway Market. This gives them space for some seating. They start serving banh mi at 10am, but as we got there a bit early they gave us some Vietnamese green tea as we waited to keep us warm on the bitterly cold morning. Then we got our banh mi

First up was a quad meat special. The banh mi lady apologised that the bread was smaller than usual; apparently it was made that morning and it had been so cold the bread hadn’t risen properly. It didn’t matter as we found the bread to be crispy and flavoursome. All the usual goodies of pickled carrots and radish, cucumber batons, coriander and (not quite enough) chillies. It was powerfully meaty with a good pork liver character from the pate. Quite delicious, but (as I said) a bit lacking on the chilli front.

Our second sandwich required an even longer wait as they cooked the pork to order; additionally it took a while for them to finish building and firing-up their barbecue. When it did finally arrive this Imperial BBQ banh mi was well up to standard. The pork was perfectly grilled and (this time) seasoned with a decent amount of chillies. Worth hooning across Town for, we thought.

In summary, very good banh mi were on offer at Banh Mi 11. The bread was in a league of its own, but the fillings were not quite up to the standard of Baguette and More in Greenwich. However, if Broadway Market is in range for you it would be a mistake not to go and try these, just don’t turn up too early on a cold morning. There are other foodie-tastic stands in the market as well.

As we have now tried the offerings from six banh mi establishments it is interesting to note the variety in the standard recipes. Banh mi 11 had red peppers and very little umami flavour, we like the umami character.

We were supposed to be going to Mon Me for lunch today, but (pleasingly) I have been asleep for the past twelve hours.

Find Banh Mi 11 on the web or really with-it people (like me) can follow them on Twitter.

After barely any food yesterday and another drag of a night with insomnia I thought I’d cheer myself up with a tasty breakfast treat. Most of the breakfast establishments in Woolwich are just too horrific to visit, so I found myself in MacDonald’s. How bad can it be, I thought? I had no idea…

This was what MaccyD’s had the temerity to serve me under the pretence of it being breakfast:

This travesty of a dining experience consisted of a bacon roll with brown sauce and a hash brown. The roll itself was a flavourless piece of spongy pap; bread only in the very vaguest sense of the word. However, the appalling bread was not a patch on the utter horror that was the soggy, limp, strangely chewy and actively nasty bacon. I’ve had some pretty poor bacon in my life but this was a memorably ranking experience in the annals of vile food. The brown sauce? Well, it was brown. I’d like to dispense with the hash brown as rapidly as possible: it was a rancid lard-soaked conglomeration of fungal foot shavings. Only not so tasty.

I was staggered by how mind-bendingly nauseating this array of filth was. I could not bring myself to choke down more than a few mouthfuls. Even after a night of no sleep and little food there are some depths to which I cannot sink.

Vietnamese sandwiches, also known as banh mi, are clearly the fast food choice of the moment. When they are well made from quality ingredients they combine fascinating flavours and textures which are totally harmonious and completely compelling. The first time we had was them was back in 2005 at Nicky’s Vietnamese Sandwiches in New York City. It was a real drag to get there, but the banh mi were impressively good.

People are sometimes surprised when I tell them banh mi are baguettes (which ideally should be made by using some rice flour along with wheat flour, this gives them extra-crispiness) and often have pate and mayonnaise as fillings. They do not think these are terribly Vietnamese ingredients. They forget that Vietnam was once a French colony and some of their foods became lodged in Vietnamese culture even after they left.

Pate and mayonnaise are common ingredients in the type banh mi, but other types of meat can be used. They will always contain pickled carrot and giant radish, which have a great crunchy texture and piquant flavour. Chillies are a minor component, but most places will add extra if you ask. They are seasoned with salt, pepper and usually Maggi seasoning sauce. So where can you get these wonderful things?

Not from Viet Baguette on Charlotte Place (near Goodge Street), that is for sure. Our experience there was so disappointing. The banh mi were nowhere near the quality they can attain, just plain boring with no passion or excitement, and the staff were a bunch of feckless drips. It did not deserve to be as busy as it was.

The identically named Viet Baguette on Macbean Street in Woolwich is a much more satisfying venue for banh mi of real quality. On our first trip we enjoyed them so much that I now go there regularly, whenever I am charged with the mood for a quality lunch. I’m amused they’ve pinned our review and pictures to their wall, fame at last!

Less far out from the central London action is Baguette and More in the Greenwich food market on Greenwich High Road (between Stockwell Street and Nelson Road). They have more flavours of banh mi here, including a brilliant barbecued pork version which is our favourite option from them. This is a slightly better source than Woolwich’s Viet Baguette (quite brilliant as they are) because of their broader range of offerings, but it is only open at weekends. You have to eat outside (benches provided) which is a bit vexatious when is cold or raining, but order one of their banh mi and you will soon smile. They have a branch in Broadway Market as well.

The banh mi establishment in central London we really want to visit is Mon Me in the Sunday Upmarket off Brick Lane in Spitalfields. It gets rave reviews, like this one in The Independent, but we are yet to feel like trekking into The City on a Sunday (the only day it is open) even with the promise of top banh mi if we do. We’ll be there when the weather improves a bit. Many thanks to unwholey on Twitter for giving me a ‘heads up’ about this establishment.

Banh mi are about as interesting as sandwiches get (although I will admit to liking very simple sandwiches from time to time), if you are yet to experience them you should rectify that as soon as possible.

We have tried to get into Yalla Yalla a couple of times, but it has always been heaving. When we rolled up for a pre-theatre dinner at five in the afternoon we were delighted to get a table, and even more delighted by the food (shame the performance we went on to see was such a drivelly load of old rubbish).

Yalla Yalla promises a taste of Beirut, and if you’ve eaten much Lebanese food you’ll know that is not as worrying as it sounds; Beirut street food can be seriously good. They have a range of wraps sitting on the counter, handy if you just want to drop by to pick up a tasty sandwich for lunch, but it was the main menu which drew us there. Click on that link and try to resist all of those wonderful sounding dishes. We couldn’t.

Order a couple of mezze per person (to share). The only one we had which was a tad on the pedestrian side was the grilled halloumi, everything else was the very best example of that particular Lebanese dish we have tried. The baba ghannouj and kibbe nayye (raw lamb, which they made sure we knew before they took the order for that) were just the cat’s arse.

Our main courses were also on the seriously pleasurable side of experience. I was particularly jollied up by my kafta meshoué, which was a brilliant re-working of the kebab concept. The mixed grill provided quite a lot of meat which was too much for our guest, but we helped her finish it and enjoyed every mouthful.

One of the really pleasing things about Yalla Yalla is the thought that has gone into the composition of the dishes. Rather than everything being served with an identical salad or the same style of rice, most of the dishes are presented with accoutrements that match the dish, be they vermicelli rice or smoked green wheat with raisins, prunes and apricots.

Yalla Yalla don’t take bookings, so if you urgently need quality Lebanese food get there early. We were the first diners of the evening to arrive, by six it was full. They have Lebanese wine and beer on offer (go for the beer), some cocktails (which I didn’t notice on the menu until I was on my third beer, curses!) as well as a baroque selection of fruits juices. Neither the food nor the drink will break the bank, so go crazy and enjoy those tastes of Beirut.

Contact details: Yalla Yalla, 1 Green’s Court Soho, W1F 0HA Telephone: 020 7287 7663

Sometimes you really want a pizza. It would be easy to just swing by a branch of La Porchetta, London’s best pizza chain, but we decided to try somewhere new. We were happy we did as Franco Manca provided top Neapolitan pizza for almost no money.

If you head into the slightly scary Brixton market you’ll find Franco Manca occupying two facing premises and spilling out into the market street. Most of the tables are outside, and when there are queues you may find yourself sharing a table. This is not really a place for dallying, you arrive, have your pizza, then get on with the afternoon’s larks.

There are only six main choices of pizza on offer, with a few additional toppings if you like and a couple of daily specials. The brief menu also tells you of their pride in making proper sour-dough pizza bases (matured for at least twenty hours) and their ethical sourcing of ingredients. We particularly liked that their buffalo mozzarella was sourced from Somerset, as we are told mozzarella should be as fresh as possible for pizzas. Even their homemade lemonade was organic (and really very tasty).

Our pizzas came quickly and we dived in to eat them before the cold London winter weather cooled them down. The crusts were indeed characterful, lovely and crispy with a few hints of char from their 500 Celsius baking in a brick, wood-fired oven. The tomato sauce was very fresh and bursting with flavour and the mozzarella had a lovely stringy texture, certainly living up to the press. The cured old spot ham on one of ours was really delicious, and they didn’t skimp on quantities. Our other pizza, with fresh and dried chorizo, had a bit less topping but we didn’t feel hard done by. These were great examples of Neapolitan pizzas.

Some people have complained that Franco Manca is only open from 12-5pm Monday to Saturday, but this is clearly a fast lunch establishment. One or two knuckle-dragging morons have moaned about the pizzas; how wrong they are. Since the most expensive pizza on the menu is £6.80 and a glass of wine is less than two quid I do not think you are going to be too dissatisfied. We loved it.

Contact details: Franco Manca, 4 Market Row, Electric Lane, Brixton SW9 8LD. Telephone: 020 7738 3021

Banh mi are the new cool thing, we feel at the cutting edge of food style sourcing them out across London. Today’s offerings from the Greenwich vendor were perhaps the best we’ve had.

Located in the little food market on Greenwich High Road (between Stockwell Street and Nelson Road) there is a banh mi stand called Baguette and More. They had a range of Vietnamese sandwich offerings. I had a barbecue pork and Daniel a ‘special’. All of the ingredients seemed good and they were clearly well prepared. Both of our sandwiches were really excellent examples of the oeuvre, all the right flavours and textures: spicy and salty, crunchy and soft.

We were feeling a bit smug about the high-quality action at Viet Baguette in Woolwich, now there is incentive to head further afield for our lunchtime banh mi fix.

At the end of last month we visited a totally boring purveyor of tedium called Viet Baguette. A comment on a blog was our only hint that a identically named, but much better, banh mi establishment was here in horrible, horrible Woolwich. Lurking somewhere near Lidl, that scummy merchant of prole swill, we were told. A trip into the foul rain and wind was rewarded with excellent sandwiches for very little money.

We had a spicy pork and ‘special’ banh mi. Both bursting with freshness, with the desired combination of sweet and savoury, soft and crunchy flavours and textures. My spicy pork sandwich was chillied up just perfectly, but Daniel said he would have liked his a bit hotter. If we are being really picky I could say that the bread wasn’t amazing, but at £2.80 for my sandwich I am not going to lose much sleep  over this.

Given that it is now possible to buy a decent sandwich for lunch, Woolwich is now somewhat less of a total dump. I will be going here regularly.

This was my sandwich:

And this was Daniel’s:

Some people have a good idea and then fail to have the successive good ideas that make the first one work. This is very much the case at Viet Baguette in Charlotte Place: making Vietnamese sandwiches (banh mi) was a good idea but it needed to be backed up with further ideas like having good ingredients or employing competent staff.

OK, I am not going to fart around here: this lunch establishment had so many problems we may as well get down to them. The staff were hopelessly dizzy, drippy farts who tooled around even though the queue was just getting longer and longer; when we got to the cash desk the poor dear seemed so confused that the prices she charged were effectively random.

But, if the food is good, who gives a tinker’s cuss about the hopeless staff? Sadly the food was boring. It lacked all of the fresh, tangy, savoury, fiery, delicious characters you want in a Vietnamese sandwich. The chilli sauce lacked any form of flavour, the chillies they  used were too mild and you had to repeatedly ask for more of them in the hope of getting a bit of heat.

When they are good, banh mi can be powerful, flavoursome entities of raw intensity. But Viet Baguette totally failed to deliver any of this pleasure. They were dreadful sandwiches of raw depression.

I’ve said where they are in London, but don’t, just don’t go.

Sometimes you really need a kebab. We wanted the best Turkish kebab London has to offer, so we trekked to the other side of Town to get one. We were not disappointed.

From the outside Mangal 1 Ocakbasi looks a bit like yet another tatty ‘bab shop, but walk inside and there is a vast charcoal grill and truly epic quantities of meat on skewers ready to be put over the fire. There are tables so you can sit down and enjoy your kebabs, but the idea is to eat and leave without much dallying. This is the general idea of Ocakbasi food, it is stuff you eat whilst you are out not what you go out to eat.

They’ll give you some warm, fresh bread and it is a good idea to get some hummus to eat this with. At two pounds per portion you cannot go wrong with the Turkish pizzas as a starter. They are nicely spiced and quite meaty, with salad provided to wrap up in them. I’ll say at this point beware the pickles, they are the saltiest things in the universe.

Then you’ll want a kebab. We ordered an Adana Kofte (pictured front-most) and a lamb Beyti (in the background). The meat was pretty good quality, so much so that we welcomed it being just on the rare side of cooked. The kebabs were very well seasoned, in the Beyti especially which was studded with green bits of fresh chilli and coriander. That one was rather hot. They were both rather delicious.

Mangal 1 does not have an alcohol license, so you can take your own booze in. I’d go for beer (or cider) here rather than wine.

OK, it is pretty undemanding food, but fast food has its place and good food fast food has a better place. Probably not worth the huge trek across Town on a regular basis, but well worth going to try the best that London can offer in this sphere of fun food.

Contact details: Mangal 1, 10 Arcola Street, E8 2DJ Tel: 020 7275 8981

After our highly successful breakfast at Fuzzy’s Grub I decided to trek into Zone 1 to meet up with Daniel and try lunch there.

At lunch time they do a selection of roast meat sandwiches and I was keen to try what can be one of the most satisfying sandwiches it is possible to make: roast chicken on buttered bread with a good grind of salt. Simple, eh? But if the chicken and bread are good, there is real butter and enough salt this sandwich can be magic.

I ordered mine is one of their excellent baps, which I praised in my last review of them; the bap had real flavour and a great texture. They used real butter, which melted into the bap because the chicken was warm. The chicken itself was wonderfully good; moist, flavoursome and there was a lot of it. It was also subtly seasoned with herbs, which added to rather than masked the flavour. They put enough salt on it. This was a great sandwich, it made me happy.

The locations of their branches are on their website. Find your closest one and get there for lunch ASAP!

Daniel and my chum Keithy have been raving about the sandwiches at Fuzzy’s Grub for a while, so I was terribly pleased to be cruising past one of their branches at breakfast time. I can now see why they raved.

Our breakfast order was simple enough, we both wanted a bacon and egg bap, with the egg yolk slightly runny, the bap buttered and with HP sauce. They excelled in all departments.

I suppose the first thing that I should write about is the bacon. They use excellent dry-cure back bacon. They don’t cook a huge batch of it first thing in the morning and leave it to dry out over as the day progresses, but instead cook batches throughout the period of breakfast service. Moreover, it is not over-cooked and crispy. It tastes just great.

The eggs are cooked freshly when you place your order, and they seemed quite delicious to me. As I suggested, they cook them as much or as little as you request. Go for a ‘medium’ egg if you want the yolk slightly runny but not so runny as to ruin your tie.

Finally, the bap. How interesting can a bread roll be, you might wonder. But this was a top piece of bread, freshly baked, with a great texture and real flavour. It was buttered with real butter and just enough HP sauce. Lovely, just lovely.

I have to go past a branch at lunch time to try one of their roast meat sandwiches (roast chicken, I think I’ll go for), but breakfast was a top experience.

You can find a list of branches on their website. I urge you to pay them a visit.

Cafe East has moved since we first reviewed it. It is now in a rather soulless shopping centre, and the cafe itself is more like a school dining room than the previous slightly squalid but charm-filled establishment. However, if you want quality noodles and Vietnamese food in London this is the destination of choice.

We started off with both vegetable and meat-filled spring rolls. Both were pleasingly crisp and packed with flavour. Quite delicious. I preferred these to our other starter, bi cuon, or crispy pork-skin rolls. These tasted just fine but they were predictably on the chewy side.

One of our number chose a chicken curry, com curry, as his main dish. It had chicken, potatoes, sweet potatoes, carrots and coconut milk in it, quite like a Thai curry. The speed with which he necked it spoke volumes about the quality. I had a little taste and was most impressed.

Daniel and our other guest had two variations on the noodle dish bun bo hue. Daniel had raw beef with his and it was quite brilliant. The stock was rich and bursting with flavour, with thin slivers of beef and top-class rice noodles. The other variant was with prawns, which were in a prawn-tastic broth that I had to keep stealing spoonfuls of, so good was it.

Naturally, I chose the best dish, pho dac biet, or beef, chicken and prawns in spicy broth with vermicelli. The pieces of meat and prawns pleased me no end but the spicy stock was even better; just spicy enough but not in the slightest painful. The vermicelli were all one could ask for of noodles. I was tickled pink.

Two courses each and drinks cost us £12 each, a bargain! The food is clearly superior, as is the dining experience, to other noodle bars such as horrible, horrible Wagamama’s. A simple but faultless meal that was keenly priced. I strongly urge you to visit.

Cafe East, 100 Redriff Road (Surrey Quays Shopping Centre), London SE16 7LH. Telephone 020 8691 7777.

Tailend Restaurant and Fish Bar, Edinburgh

Tailend Restaurant and Fish Bar was our last meal in Edinburgh; they served the best fish and chips I’ve had as well as other seafoody goodies. It was a great experience.

We walked in via the fish bar, the kitchen seemed large and busy. The fish bar was suffused with a meaty smell thanks to their use of beef dripping to fry the food in; unlike most such establishment it did not smell rancid. On going through to the restaurant we were pleased to see it was full and we got one of the last couple of tables.

The menu was packed full of fishy wonders, and they were willing to grill fish as well as fry it in batter or breadcrumbs, which suited Leena as she was a bit worried about having fried food. When our battered delights came Daniel and I thought she was missing out.

The wine list was short and uninteresting, as were the beer and cider offerings. I soon moved on from boring, boring Magner’s cider to Irn-Bru (check out drinks.elitistreview.com for an examination of this odd drink).

For a chippie the menu was unusually extensive. Leena started off with a couple of scallops grilled in their shells, they looked a bit too small for us to ask for a taste, they also looked a bit over cooked. She said she liked them. Daniel had dressed crab. The white meat was quite tasty, and we were surprised by how much we enjoyed the brown meat which is normally not such a thrill. My fork kept straying into the crab shell so I could have a bit more. My starter was also a great success, battered fresh water tiger prawns. I loved them! Dense and meaty with quite wonderful batter.

Leena chose grilled monkfish tail for her main course, it was well-prepared and very fresh. My haddock was quite delicious, although a tad over-cooked. Fish from a chippie is usually over-cooked, so I didn’t mind in the slightest. It tasted wonderful, the batter was brilliantly light and crispy and not grease-soaked. The mushy peas that came with it were a treat. Daniel ordered what must be the single greatest thing I have ever eaten from a chip shop: battered langoustine tails. The batter was prefect, crisp and crunchy, but the langoustine tails themselves were just on the edge of being cooked. They were soft and yieldingly tender in your mouth. Super top bunny! We had a vat of the chips to eat, which had been fried in beef dripping so had a pleasing meaty character.

We didn’t bother with dessert as we were completely stuffed. On our way out I felt I had to lean into the kitchen and say how much we enjoyed the food; they looked pleased to have some feedback.

Maybe there are better chippies in the UK, but I doubt it. It was a great experience, if you like this kind of food you’d be a fool to avoid Tailend on a trip to Edinburgh.

Contact details on their website.

And so our reports from Edinburgh draw to a close. It was a great city to visit, with interesting architecture and some lovely places to eat and drink.

I recently blogged about simple pleasures; the cafe Two Thin Laddies in Edinburgh delivers them very well.

I was a bit worried when we walked in, it seemed as if it was going to be only free-trade, organic, vegan, leftist-shite food. We were relieved when we looked at the menu and saw it was packed with meaty offerings and they were clearly proud of using high-quality, local ingredients. They had a good range of breakfast offerings, and also some more substantial dishes for lunch and dinner.

Being a man of simple tastes, I chose a humble bacon roll both times we went (with butter and HP sauce, obviously). The bacon was freaking excellent as was the bread; I bloody loved them. Daniel was pleased with his first bacon and egg roll, but preferred the bacon and sausage roll we had on our second visit. We agreed on the quality of the bacon, and he said the sausages were quite superior to any he had experienced in any previous British cafe.

It may have been only a cafe, but lovely bacon, good sausages and great bread can charm. We enjoyed it.

I’ll be writing up the other restaurants we visited in Edinburgh over the next few days, and there were some great ones, so do come back and check them out.

I love fish and chips, a fantastic meal which suits the requirements for a quick lunch very well. With mushy peas, obviously. Yesterday my local establishment, the Fish and Grill on the market square in Woolwich, shocked and appalled me with the shit they had the temerity to serve.

I've been there before and had some good stuff, but this time there was a new moronic, rancid fool doing the cooking and as soon as I gave him my order for the fifth time I knew things would just be awful.

The bloke before me in the queue ordered kebab meat and chips. Moron food fryer pours the contents of the kebab meat container over the chips, flooding them with filthy water. At this point I just wanted to run.

I got my fish, chips and mushy peas and so impressively bad at cooking was the food fryer that he even managed to cock up the mushy peas. He had over-cooked them so they had a worrying, tough, dry, green layer on top. The fish was so badly over-cooked that it was in dry lumps, with quite terrifyingly greasy, fat-soaked batter. The chips were also soaked with this filthy grease, and had the consistency of something that had been lightly steamed rather than fried.

I wanted to vomit.

I will never go there again. The bastards.

Kake Pugh has given me a 'heads up' that London's best noodle bar, Cafe East, is on the move. You can find details here.

I've never had any other Vietnamese food in London, so I suppose this counts as the best I've had. It is certainly an oasis of pleasure in a run-down location, even if it looks like a squalid take-away.

Cafe East is not terribly large so if you want a table you have to turn up reasonably promptly after they open otherwise you'll have to queue. When we were there it was heaving with Vietnamese people after a taste of home; I don't think they were disappointed.

The menu is short and packed with noodle dishes. They some rice-noodle offerings, which helps those of us with wheat problems. There are a token few non-noodle dishes, like the sliced Vietnamese sausage we ordered, but it is clear these are not the main focus of the cuisine. The sliced sausage was meaty and quite satisfying.

Daniel's noodles with raw beef certainly put a smile on his face, as did my rice noodles with chicken slices on mine. The broth they were served in had clearly seen plenty of bones to make a tasty stock; very powerfully flavoured. The noodles were quite delicious as were the bits of meat; Daniel was enthusiastic about the raw beef. Next time I will wimp out and ask for a fork, eating noodles with chopsticks is a bit of a drag.

Cafe East does not have an alcohol license and we failed to ask about the possibility of BYO for our next visit.

It may look a bit of a dump and be located in a serious dump, but the quality of the food cannot be denied. It is also a bargain noshing experience; it cost us £11 per person.

Contact details: Cafe East, 24 Evelyn Street, London SE8 5DG. 020 8691 7777

Photo by Kake Pugh.

Last weekend we took some people to La Porchetta. This time we went to the Islington branch. The food was, once again, high quality and I can highly recommend the Messicana pizza; the fresh sausage on it is delicious.

I should point out an omission from my review, whilst people can smoke away happily in La Porchetta there are also no smoking sections in all of the branches.

David

Last Saturday night we stopped off in Holborn for an early dinner at a branch of La Porchetta; it was quite the best pizza I've had in Town since I last went to one of their establishments.

The restaurants themselves are quite unpretentious, with tables crammed in to bursting point, staff shouting orders about and (until it is banned in a few months) people smoking away happily. But you don't go to La Porchetta for the environment, you go for the food.

They take the food very seriously. Pizza dough is freshly made each day, as is the tomato sauce, pasta and all pasta sauces. If you order pasta they'll bring a large lump of Parmesan to the table and shave off slivers onto your plate. The pasta is good, but the pizzas are out of this world.

Before you order a pizza and a starter have a look around for someone who has already been served; the pizzas are pretty big and garlic bread is the same size. Order both and your stomach will stretch. They are traditional Italian-style pizzas with a thin, crispy base, and a reasonable crust around the outside. They are baked in a very hot oven as decent pizza should be baked.

We ordered two old favourite pizzas, a calzone and an Americana. The calzone is a folded pizza with tomato sauce, cheese, onion and lots of sausage slices; it is a packed pocket of loveliness. So good did I find this pizza that when we lived closer to one of their branches this is all I ordered trip after trip. The Americana had tomato sauce, cheese, green peppers, salami and chillies. I would go as far as saying this was the best pizza I have ever eaten. The ingredients were of the highest quality and the flavours were harmonious.

Don't bother with the wine, it is practically undrinkable, get a beer (the Weiss-bier is nice). We had two pizzas and two beers and got out of their with a bill for less than twenty-five pounds including a tip. For the quality this was extremely good value.

They have branches all over London (check out their website for the addresses) and they all stick to the same principles, so go wherever is convenient for you. Make sure you do go if you like pizza, La Porchetta is the cat's arse. I have to say I am distinctly jealous of Daniel whose office is a brief bus-ride away from the Holborn branch; I'd love to have such a great source of lunch nearby.

David

On Friday night we visited Haché in Camden, it is a gourmet burger establishment. As usual I looked at the wine list first, which was laughably poor, but I was there for burgers rather than wine so I was not too bothered.

They have a range of toppings for the burgers, also chicken, lamb and vegetarian burgers. Beef was my aim. I was very pleased that they asked how well done you wanted your burger. Rare seemed the way forward to check the quality of the meat. I ordered a Canadian burger which came with mature cheddar and bacon.

The quality of the burgers we had were very good, they did cook them rare as ordered. They were of a reasonable size; big enough to fill but not so large they were a struggle. Their chips were also good. Prices all seemed pretty reasonable, a meal with plenty of beer and 12.5% service cost three of us fifty pounds.

Not much else can really be said about it, they were good burgers at a reasonable price. Haché is well worth a visit if you are in the area and want an uncomplicated meal.

Contact: Haché, 24 Inverness Street, NW1 7HJ. Telephone: 020 7485 9100.

David