Long time reader, Mrs Trellis of North Wales, will remember the horrific travesty of a restaurant Serge et Co that tried their hardest to insult Daniel and me on our woeful visit there. For all those who think that ability and good work should be rewarded will be as delighted as I was to learn that Serge Burckel has given up and closed his restaurant. Well done the natives of Strasbourg for recognising quality (or rather lack of it in this case) and voting with their feet.

As well as attending the mind-bogglingly awful Serge et Co. (there are only torrents of invective that can describe that place) we also visited two much better places. I have reviewed them before so you can just click on the links: Restaurant l'Arnsbourg and Chez Yvonne.

I should add that this time we stayed a night at l'Arnsbourg's new hotel: Hotel K. It was completely lovely. Very comfortable, good beds, peaceful environment and marvellous baths. Also, on my third visit to l'Arnsbourg I once again had the best meal of my life; they just go from strength to strength.

Your could only enjoy Serge et Co. if you had a spoon fetish; they kept bringing them and taking them away with incredible frequency. For everyone else, it is a little restaurant of horrors.

When visiting Strasbourg for a night we decided to visit this restaurant as it had got good reviews and sounded like they were making interesting food. Indeed, they had recently been awarded a Michelin star, how could we go wrong?

The first suggestion that we could go wrong occurred when we pulled up outside in the taxi: The restaurant was hideous, Every wall was painted a different colour, lovely combinations of orange, grey and brown screamed out through the windows. We walked in and things only got worse: they had an incredibly tasteless ceiling duvet hanging from the roof and the vile walls were adorned with livid red 3D pictures. A veritable Australian's nightmare.

As Daniel was reading the wine list I asked him to wipe the look of horror from his face. He suggested that I look at it instead; seconds later he was telling me not to look so appalled. It was a shameful selection of wines for a restaurant in a great wine region. There was virtually no Riesling one would want to drink and we agreed there was only one red wine we could possibly choose.

The menu promised 'contemporary cooking' and we chose a five course, Euro68 menu which we hoped would get us back in the mood. We were to be not only disappointed by it but also personally offended.

The amuse bouche they offered us was a ravioli of ceps and foie gras in a cep broth. The pasta had clearly been cooking all day so limp and flaccid was it, with a watery, flavourless filling and the broth it was in was thin and totally lacking flavour. Oh dear.

The first proper course had sounded like an interesting take on foie gras, a maki roll of foie. This consisted of a lump of foie gras wrapped in rice which had been pan-fried sitting in some iced turnip water. The foie was nice enough, but the fried rice was pointless and the turnip water completely vile. “Why?” was all I could repeat on trying to choke this filth down.

We then moved onto sole with mussels, puy lentils and a mousse of what looked (and I dare say tasted) like grilled baby vomit on top of it. The sole managed to be both over-cooked and distinctly chewy and the mussels were tinned pieces of awfulness. The lentils were at least properly cooked, but again they were sitting in a watery, characterless broth. We shall pass over the grilled baby vomit mousse as this defied description, although Daniel dimly remembers having something similar, but far tastier, in a Findus frozen fish gratin, in his youth.

We chose two different main courses. I had venison with a little bolognaise of meat sitting by it. The venison was lacking any form of flavour that might have made it nice. The bolognaise reminded me of an ex-girlfriend's breath; she used to eat tinned cat food. Daniel had roast lamb that was tough, over-cooked and tasted of wool. With this came some play-dough-like gnocchi and, can you believe it, two edible things: a slice of lamb sausage and some choucroute with fennel. Two swallows do not a summer make, alas.

The first three courses had been actively unpleasant, so it was almost a relief to have a cheese course which was merely boring, if weird. Some brie sprinkled with truffle powder and wrapped in a thin sheet of pasta. With this waste of decent brie it meant that Serge et Co. had managed to turn France's three great treasures, wine, cooking and cheese, into shameful parodies.

The feeling of depression over our corner of the restaurant was now very deep, so we almost perked up when desserts came and they had ideas. Alas, the ideas turned out to be as hollow as Serge's cooking was nauseating. Daniel had a smoking cigar of chocolate with a vanilla cream filling served in a cigar ash-tray with vanilla and berry sauce to dip it in. It was shit. David had 'frites' of battered pineapple with some unidentifiable white foam to dip it in and a little toothpaste tube of red fruit ketchup. The ketchup was flavourless, the white foam can only be thought of in terms of its texture, far too reminiscent of jizz, and the frites were simply big fingers of grease. After these horrors we were convinced that Serge Burckel was a talentless poseur who could only have got his star by dosing the Michelin inspector's food with hallucinogenic drugs.

As you can tell, we didn't enjoy this at all. From the terrible decor, via the embarassingly poor wine list to the frankly horrible food this was a catalogue of shame. The only redeeming feature of the place is that the taxi they called us got there quickly, allowing us to leave this travesty of a restaurant behind us; but they can hardly be applauded for a taxi's promptness. We were truly amazed that the place not only had other clients, but was full; are the denizens of Strasbourg so keen to try novel cooking they are willing to put up with it being dire?

We are not going to give contact details for this restaurant as we would not even want our worst enemy to visit this horrible, horrible, temple of awfulness.

Daniel with his chocolate cigar:

David's greasy frites:

After the total shite of a Saturday, Sunday lunch was a complete treat. Le Buffet at Isbergues, an hour away from Calais provided excellent food and wine at complete bargain prices.

They had four set menus on offer, the most expensive of which was an inexpensive 60€. We chose a 45€ menu, which seemed to offer reasonable entertainment for the money.

We started off with three amuses bouches: a mousse of beetroot and some kind of fish, this was completely delicious, the fish was really tasty, not over-cooked at all. This came with a carpaccio of sea-bass with pistachios, which was a tad fishy but perfectly acceptable. The final amuse bouches was a soup of pumpkin, quite lovely. These all really perked me up and set me in the mood for an excellent meal.

The starters were great. I had some truly lovely foie gras with an apple sorbet and a cinnamon poached pear. This was brilliant, the parts all worked in harmony and were of excellent quality. The partner had some perfectly cooked scallops in a creamy mussel froth with some lovely root vegetable frites. The quality of these starters was very high for the price we were paying.

We all chose fillet of local beef for our main courses. It was perfectly aged and cooked as little as we asked for. It came with excellent mushrooms that were full of flavour and a little bowl of mashed potato and pumpkin velouté, which I could take or leave but everyone else liked. Again these were excellent quality for the price.

We had a white chocolate mousse with very rich dark chocolate sauce for dessert. The sauce was very powerful, and the mousse quite delicate, they matched perfectly. The chocolate was served with a passion fruit and mango sorbet, which was quite refreshing. They also brought out some green and orange lollipops with this that were hilarious but a bit too sweet to finish.

The menu was very well-balanced and in command of seasonal variation. And, it has to be said, a complete bargain. The wine list was very well chosen and had perfectly reasonable mark-ups. Finishing off with a huge bumper of green Chartreuse really put a smile on my face. An excellent meal that didn't break the bank and left us all with a warm glow of satisfaction. The best place to eat in the Pas-de-Calais, without a doubt.

Restaurant Le Buffet, 22 rue de la Gare, Lieu-dit Molinghem, 62330 Isbergues. Tel: +33 (0)3 21 25 82 40 http://www.le-buffet.com/

We are in France to pick up cheap Champagne and stopped off at the hamburger chain Quick for a much-delayed lunch. I thought I was so hungry I could eat anything, how wrong I was.

The food was totally, stomach-churningly, soul-meltingly vile. I can hardly bring myself to think about it again so utterly nauseating was it. I've had many nasty experiences in my life and this will be a memorably disgusting one.

I ordered a Supreme Cheese burger, that was wet, with meat that tasted vaguely of piss and cheese that stretches the definition of cheese to beyond breaking point. The bits of fried cheese they offered as a seasonal special were too vomit-inducing to eat more than the smallest mouthful one could foolishly ingest. They had 'rustic frites' as another special. These were slightly raw in the middle but tasted only of burnt potato skin. They, too, buggered the imagination as far as horribleness was concerned.

What I shall euphemistically call 'the meal' was a ranking depressing experience in recent years. To be honest, even the three day old wet sandwiches served up in the Woolwich loony bin have more claim to be edible than this shit. I felt personally offended by the total crap they had the gaul (ha!) to charge us money for. It was completely inedible. No, it was worse than that, it was the contents of the seventh circle of culinary hell. I've had more enjoyable kicks to the testicles than this offensive shite. Never, ever again. No way. Not on your nelly. Death is too good for the designers of the Quick menu, as far as I am concerned. Way below sub-interest, to be a bit briefer.

After our hearty but unchallenging lunch at Chez Yvonne we moved distinctly upmarket to the two-star Au Crocodile. This venerable restaurant (opened in 1971) was all kitted-out to advertise their new TGV tasting menu, created to welcome the fast train route into Strasbourg, with model trains and station names everywhere. We didn't opt for this menu and instead went for a different tasting menu.

After we had chosen out menu and some great wines from an extensive but geriatric wine list, which included such horrors as a selection of 1970s Pinot Blancs or Muscat from the fifties, we were brought out some spoons of nitrogen-frozen mint foam. Nice enough, but nothing special. This was followed by a 'cappucino' of cardamom and carrot. Again this was amusing enough but somewhat trite.

Oddly, the menu offered a choice for the first course, but for nothing else. David went for a boneless quail stuffed with raw goose liver, which was quite excellent, whereas everyone else has grilled duck foie gras with rhubarb and sweet and sour sauce. This foie was extremely good and perfectly grilled, but the rhubarb and sweet and sour flavours were somewhat overwhelming.

We then moved on to roasted sea bass with mashed carrots and potato dumplings. The fish was fresh, flavourful and so skillfully cooked it was almost raw. The mashed carrots could have been straight out of a jar for three-to-six month-olds. There was a degree of debate about the potato dumplings, Daniel loved them whilst everyone else found their play-dough texture and lack of flavour disgusting.

Now for the real disaster. Why do French classical chefs of the old school feel the need to churn out Asian/fusion shit. It doesn't make them modern and it doesn't make the diners happy. Two skewered langoustines were topped by a lemongrass foam. With this there was a risotto of flavourless chanterelles topped by a fried quail's egg itself garnished with flakes of fried ginger.

Underneath the vile foam the langoustines had a mouth-coating rich texture and were cooked to perfection. They deserved better.

A palate-cleansing oxtail consommé with a herb-filled ravioli floating in it followed. Considering how repulsive consommé normally is this was a delight, light yet full of flavour.

The meat course sounded quite dull: Lamb chop with white beans, artichoke, broad beans and garlic cream. However, the lamb was of the very finest quality and cooked quite brilliantly. The white beans were cooked in some animal fat and so therefore better than they sounded, whilst the garlic cream was packed with garlic goodness and rich, creamy flavour. The dish ended up being most pleasing, and not just another boring piece of lamb.

The cheese trolley was big and heavy, befitting a restaurant of this calibre. The cheeses themselves had obviously been very well-stored: the Munster was in great condition and there was a truly impressive tomme de chevre. Even the Epoisses didn't stink of piss.

Another dish more suited to the elderly and toothless was gratinated rhubarb, strawberries and banana. No.

Our final course was strawberries, blueberries and raspberries in a bowl with lychee foam. The foam has a quite nauseating texture, but tasted fine. The fruit was good and fresh although the blueberries were farmed. This was a bit odd considering that Alsace has the best wild blueberries in France.

Petits fours and chocolates included nice patés de fruits.

The meal left us with mixed emotions. The quality of ingredients and the standards of preparation were undoubtedly very high. We found imagination and real personality to be lacking. It was a very pleasant meal and a lovely restaurant but it has clearly seen better days; it is closer to losing another star rather than re-gaining its third.

The most vivid memory will probably be of the effortless way the sixty-something Mme Jung presided over the dining room in her impossibly tight-fitting dress and bouffant hair that would rival any of Gaudi's creations.

Finally, for the porcelanophile, we should note that every dish and amuse-bouches came served in different tableware from a variety of manufacturers, all white and elegant.

Contact details and menus on the Au Crocodile website.

Four of us traveled to Alsace for a weekend's dining, what better place to start than one of the most traditional dining establishments in Strasbourg?

Chez Yvonne S'Burjerstuwel is a cosy little place right near the cathedral. Daniel and David visited before quite by chance a couple of years ago, and so impressed were we by the quality of traditional food on offer that we thought a second visit was in order.

The menu is simple enough, filled with Alsace treats that should keep anyone satisfied and stuffed. We started off with some snails, presskopf and some foie gras. Their snails are the best we've had in Alsace, served out of their shells in a pitted plate filled with bubbling butter, Riesling and garlic. The are quite delicious. Jeff seemed very satisfied with his presskopf, which was served in a jar of reasonable size and kept him going for a while. The goose foie gras terrine was excellent.

We then moved onto the main courses, which included the main reason David wanted to re-visit. On the previous visit the waiter described a dish called Maennerstolz as a "Good sausage, big sausage, good sausage for men!". Upon our return from the trip we discovered that said sausage can be up to a metre long and translates as 'man's pride'. How could we refuse?

This time, we didn't. The owner of the establishment came up to me as I was gawping at the sausage and said "It is a good job you are not a woman if your mouth falls open every time you see a big sausage." The sausage itself was really good, very meaty and smokey. Dan and Jeff both chose huge slices of suckling pig and Daniel went for a traditional coq au Riesling. The meat in this was sadly a little dry and tough and was the least successful dish we ordered.

The desserts are quite formulaic. The Granite of vendanges tardives Gewurztraminer was delicious and pleasingly vinous. There was an option of mixed sorbet swimming in eau de vie which was both refreshing and pleasingly alcoholic. Good as it was, skip the creme brulée, it is just too much like every other creme brulée.

The wine list was quite short, but there were a few gems worth picking out. The Andre Ostertag wines are very good. They have some great Marc Kreydenweiss eau de vie with which to end your meal.

This is a great place for large portions of traditional food. Don't go if you are afraid of meat, or suggestive comments from your serving staff. It is quite the bargain for traditional food of this quality.

Contact details and menu on the Chez Yvonne website.

We've been here before. The owner/chef's obsession with eating many different breeds of chicken continues to great effect.

The first course was a poached egg served in a broth with trompette and chanterelle mushrooms gathered by the chef's mother. The egg was meltingly soft and full of flavour. Very good to have some fresh mushrooms.

This was followed up by coq au vin jaune, made with the weird Vin Jaune of the Jura region. The broth was incredibly strongly flavoured of chicken and was not yet another intense wine reduction. Some of the bits of meet needed serious gnawing to get off the bones, so much of the bird was in there, but the meat itself was tender and completely delicious. This was served with grated potato made into some form of cake, the name of which currently escapes me. This was certainly yummy scrummy in my tummy, but I did feel that the total volume available was a tad small.

Any lack of volume in the main course was made up for when most people in the restaurant had left and he bought out a stack of sugar crepes that he had forgotten to serve to everyone else. I like sugar crepes.

This is a great place, and the wine list is super with well-priced beauties. Cheap Clos des Lambrays is not to be sniffed at.

Contact: Ferme de la Ruchotte, 21360 Bligny sur Ouche. Tel +33 3 80 20 04 79 Fax +33 3 80 20 03 29

After a heavy afternoon's tasting we fancied going for a nice meal. Our choice of the one-star le Jardin des Remparts in Beaune was inspired. Not only did it have a very good, and reasonably priced, wine list but also the food was very high quality.

I was highly amused by the first course, melon with pepper. The melon had been made into a little egg yolk and was liquid in the centre; quite delicious and a lovely texture. I was blown away by the next course, which is one of their signature dishes: tartare of Charolais beef with oysters. I suppose some people might be nervous about eating oysters in the summer so far from the sea, but this was really terribly good. There was a pile of beef tartare surrounded by a carefully dissected oyster. Brilliant.

We then had poached langoustine with langoustine sorbet and cubes of coconut milk. I didn't really go for the coconut milk, but the langoustine and sorbet were a treat. Snails with morels followed, they were tender and full of flavour.

The piece of line-caught sea bass that followed was perfectly cooked, no hint of over-cookedness about it. This was served with sardine butter and seaweed puree which was a really good match. Foie gras is something I love and the escallop of foie was fried to perfection; a lovely crust and meltingly soft in the middle. Apple and goat's cheese came with this and the balance of flavours was superb.

The final course before cheese was a croustillant of ris de veau with shrimps. I am a big fan of ris de veau, but have never had them cooked in this way. They were quite well cooked so they developed a firm crust on the outside. It was delicious.

The service was excellent and they had a very pleasing terrace to dine on which made a hot evening's meal a lot easier to bear. The food was damned good. This is another place I'd like to revisit.

Contact: Le Jardin des Remparts, 10 rue Hotel Dieu, 21220 Beaune. Tel +33 3 80 24 79 41 Fax +33 3 80 24 92 79

When visiting Burgundy the one restaurant I cannot recommend highly enough is La Cabotte in Nuits St. Georges. I've eaten many good meals there and never left with an empty wallet. It is right in the centre of Nuits and is a great place for a relaxed, good-quality lunch or dinner.

On this visit I chose the most expensive menu they have, a steal at €45. We took along some of our own wines, but also got a couple of bargains from the list. Pibarnon rosé 2003 really helped to cool us off and the Mugnier Chambolle les Fuées 2001 was quite lovely.

I was amused by the amuse bouche, a test tube of tomato water, and really pleased by my first course, carpaccio of foie gras. The foie was removed of its nerves and served raw in very thin slices. This was followed by grilled shrimps with quite the most brilliant piece of pork rib I've had. It was meltingly tender and full of flavour. This was supposed to be served with langoustines rather than prawns, but the chef was not happy with the quality of the langoustines.

The main course was a perfectly cooked piece of sea bass with a sesame crust. Quite lovely. We then had a selection of very well stored cheeses, including one of the best pieces of epoisses I've had. I skipped dessert as I was stuffed, but people seemed very pleased with what they had.

If you are travelling to Burgundy and have business in Nuits you cannot go wrong with a trip to La Cabotte. It is a great place.

Contact: La Cabotte, 24 Grande Rue, 21700 Nuits St. Georges. Tel +33 3 80 61 20 77

David

It was Daniel's birthday last Sunday; cannot be avoided, we all have to get older once a year. We wanted to go for a relaxing meal with some good wine and our knowledgeable hosts in Burgundy suggested Ferme de la Ruchotte. This was sold to us as a farm house dining establishment where one eats what the farmer slaughtered that week. "Brilliant!" we thought.

Describing the owner as just a farmer is selling him short. Frédéric Menager is a very skilled chef who has an impressive list of restaurants on his CV. I had sampled his food before at the Castel de Très Girard in Morey St. Denis and was impressed. He moved on from there to start the farm where he breeds rare breeds of animals prized for their flavour. Then kills and cooks them.

It was quite a drive beyond the Côte to find the place; many tiny, twisty roads that would have deeply worried me if I was driving. It is quite a beautiful location once you get there. We parked and went into the dining room, which really was the farmhouse dining room with one large table and a smaller table in it.

There is no menu to choose, you eat what he is cooking that day as listed on a chalk board. There is a comprehensive wine list, which is not over-priced considering there are some gems on it.

The first course was a poached egg with duck gizzards in a soup of nettles and tarragon. The egg was one of the best I have eaten, clearly his chickens are from a pretty serious breed, and it was soft-poached perfected. I hoovered up the gizzards with great speed as I love them. The soup had a really good flavour. This was a very pleasing starter.

We were then presented with a côte de boeuf. This piece of meat looked marvellous, great marbling and perfectly cooked (ie. quite rare). It was served with sautéed new potatoes. The potatoes were quite lovely, slightly crispy on the outside and fluffy on the inside. Everyone was impressed with the quality of the meat and we soon finished it up. It was excellent.

We had some home-made goat's cheeses to help mop up our remaining red wine. These were very good, flavoursome and pleasingly lacking in goat sweat character.

I had a different dessert to everyone else as I am off wheat at the moment, it was an excellent duo of very eggy creme caramel. Everyone else had a rather baroque looking cake which seemed to slip down a treat. This is us before attacking the cake:

The meal was very reasonably priced, we paid €40 per head plus wine (note: some of those wine we brought along ourselves, thanks to brilliant negotiation by our host). It was an excellent, relaxed meal in charming circumstances. I hope I get to visit again.

Contact: Ferme de la Ruchotte, 21360 Bligny sur Ouche. Tel +33 3 80 20 04 79 Fax +33 3 80 20 03 29

David

This is not much of an entry, I don't see any point in regurgitating the hard work of others. Just to say that the excellent food blog Chez Pim has some information on the new Michelin guide for France. I've been to perilously few of those restaurants....

Nestled in the Vosges mountains of the Lorraine just outside the tiny village of Baerenthal is the three-star L'Arnsbourg; this is the site of the best meal we have ever eaten. After the sashimi and sushi experiences in New York left us in paroxysms of pleasure, this really restored our confidence in classical European cooking and demonstrated that the limits of pleasure are yet to be defined or reached.

The restaurant itself is in an extensively converted farmhouse. On entering you walk over a glass floor offering views of the wine cellar below. The dining room itself is in a modern extension, a large, light and open space. As we dined we could see mist gathering in the valley in which the restaurant sits; I half expected pixies to come out and start dancing. On arrival we were swiftly ushered to our table by staff that all seemed to speak perfect English and were given the menus and wine list promptly. This resulted in the restaurant having a very relaxing atmosphere.

Since we had travelled so far for what is thought of as the second best restaurant in France we naturally ordered the tasting menu. Eleven courses which all sounded interesting. A picture of the menu is below:

At the time I (David) was having a bit of a problem with wheat, I told them this and they breezily said this would not be a problem. It turned out to be quite good for me.

We ordered half a bottle of Trimbach Clos Ste. Hune 1996, a bottle of Riesling Grand Cru Schlossberg L'Inedit 2000 from Domaine Weinbach and a bottle of Volnay Premier Cru Champans 1999 from Marquis d'Angerville. We would be drinking well, at least. The wine list was extensive but not exhaustingly large. It was a bit pricey, but there were a few bargain offerings for those who do not want to drink so well.

The meal started off with innumerable amuses-bouches. I particularly enjoyed a 'nougat' of foie gras that was given to me as I couldn't eat one of the wheat based offerings Daniel had. All the amuses-bouches were very compelling and really excited us about the prospect of a good meal.

The first course was simple incredible in terms of quality and extremely well presented. We had rectangular plates on which there was a rectangle of very thin sheets of raw veal. On top of this were scattered tiny cubes of feta and granny smith apples. This was then dressed with a light truffle scented honey. It almost seemed a shame to disrupt the plate, but it was well worth it. It tasted fantastic.

The poached langoustine that followed was also extremely elegantly presented; this was a recurring theme in the meal. It was warm, but almost raw. It had a superb texture and had a mouth-coating flavour that was very rich and unctuous. These first two courses were simply brilliant and so our excitement for the rest of the meal was palpable.

An extra course was thrown in at this stage, and we were incredibly happy that it was. It was an oyster. Since this was served in the mountains rather than by the sea one might have been worried, but it was quite lovely. The oyster water had been replaced by a rich stock, whilst the water itself had been whipped into what is termed 'an air'. This could have been contrived and clumsy, but here it somehow managed to have both the most perfect oyster flavour and texture combined with considerable richness. Words can’t do this justice, we both loved it.

We then had some grilled foie gras that was cooked perfectly: the outside had a slightly firm crust and the inside was meltingly soft.

Red mullet followed with a tomato-sorbet affair that really complimented the flavours of the fish. The accompanying tapenade was of the first quality, too.

We then diverged slightly from each other. My wheat problem was dealt with very well, as whilst Daniel had his truffley semolina pudding I had a bowl of one of the famous house specialities, a foam of potato soup topped with a layer of summer truffles. Potato soup may not sound terribly interesting, but it was bursting with flavour and was incredibly decadent. Daniel looked quite envious.

A palate-cleansing savoury caipirinha with a wonderful texture came next, before we had our pigeon. The pigeon cooked with incredible skill. It was tender and very flavoursome. It went very well with the Volnay. The puréed Ratte potatoes with it were very good.

You might think, at this stage, that we'd be getting tired of all of this food. Not so. The portions were perfectly judged in size and the pace of the meal was very carefully judged; we were not rushed nor did we find ourselves waiting overly long at any point. The cappuccino de petits pois was a subtle affair, but the taste of peas and olive oil were very distinct and complemented each other very well.

I fancied some cheese that this stage to assist with finishing off the red wine. Bernard Antony, their affineur (cheese maturing expert), is clearly an incredibly skilled man. I have never eaten Comte as good as that served. All of the other cheeses were in top condition, including a Morbier as exceptional as that cheese can be.

After numerous pre-desserts, the main dessert course was a cherry soup and ice-cream affair, which seemed nice enough. The cherries were very good.

Having cleaned up the petits-fours and chocolates, we retired to their lounge and ended up discussing food with a visiting owner of a Dutch one-star. We felt we had done extremely well that night and celebrated with a big glass of rum each from their excellent spirits list. I also had a huge cigar.

Whilst we were sitting waiting for our taxi, getting increasingly jolly, we noticed a toddler who had been exceptionally well behaved in the restaurant, having a nappy change. The Maître d’ seemed perfectly happy to spirit away a used nappy. This sums up the standard of service; friendly, keen to satisfy, yet unobtrusive.

Jean-Georges and Cathy Klein clearly have a winner on their hands. It is a shame it is a bit inaccessible, but they will be opening an associated hotel shortly so it will be easier to stay over after dining. It was a faultless meal in wonderful surroundings: we shall return.

David and Daniel.