We have a semi-quest on-going with the neighbours: find the best ribs establishment in Town. Until now it has been Frankie and Benny's in the O2. Last night we tried Bodean's in Tower Hill which was a qualified success.

The decor of the place was truly amazing, a vaguely updated, American-themed, 50s restaurant: red walls, antler chandeliers and metal pig's head light fittings. Odd. I was rather horrified, if we are honest, but Daniel loved it.

The menu had plenty of barbecue favourites, and we both had a starter which included pulled pork. I had supreme nachos and Daniel a quesadilla. We had looked up what pulled pork was before arriving, and it sounded reasonably interesting. It tasted a lot better than it sounded; yummy, tender, flavoursome pork. This really made both of our dishes. Nachos with plenty of pulled pork were meat-tastic and the pulled pork-stuffed quesadillas were excellent.

We had both decided to go for a slab of baby back ribs, Daniel taking them with onions rings and I chose barbecue beans. The sides dishes were perfectly nice, the big onion rings a particular treat, but the ribs were a bit odd. They had a lovely smoked aroma, and looked quite meaty, but the texture was rather dry and tough. Nice barbecue sauce on them, but just a bit too chewy.

Drink of choice is Sierra Navada Pale Ale by the pint. Two courses and a pint each cost £55. I'd like to return, but will go for more pulled pork and fewer ribs next time.

Menu and contact details on their website.

Guest reviewer Jeff Home reports from London's foie gras outpost.

Dan and I booked a table at the Club Gascon for dinner last night - and enjoyed a medley of gastronomic delights in the company of 13 other tables.

We actually started the evening next door at Cellar Gascon and made the mistake of ordering a glass each of the "Red of the Week". I guess we should have known better... vaguely disguised vinegar would be close.

Back to the main event! We perused the menu and decided the degustation menu (5 courses) with matching wines for £70 a head was worth investing in. We were not disappointed at all!

The first course was Pine morels cassoulet (nicely foamed) with smoked oysters and fresh walnuts - matched with an earthy glass of 2006 Bergerac Cuvee de Conti, La Tour des Gendres. They were perfectly matched - the oysters especially tender.

The next dish was a real surprise in pepperiness... cured black cod with fig chutney and citrus caviar - matched with a glass of Gaillac 2006 Dencon, causse. The dry mineral and pepper tones worked so well with this dish that we would both definitely order it a la carte again.

You can see a picture of the baby squid with black polenta and chorizo jus (stuffed into the squids) below - a real treat having been slowly roasted to perfection. We had a glass of chilled 2004 Domaine de la Colombette - Coteaux du Libron. The wine worked because it was heavily chilled and just goes to show how versatile this beverage can be :)

The final main was roast duck with green apple shavings, celery and liquorice - pictured left. Nicely pink meat - not overdone at all, and with the apple/liquorice combination a delight. The matching wine was a glass of Domaine des Desmoiselles, Le Mas - Cotes du Roussillon 2006. The mix of Grenache, Syrah and Carignan spicy enough to compliment, but not over powering. Nothing too special to write home about, however.

Dessert consisted of a foie gras nougat with passion fruit jus and meringue crumbled around the plat in lumps. The meringue was a bit of a weird choice, but the foie didn't disappoint. I wasn't so turned on by the choice of Baileys with this final course, there was so little of it (and so watered down with ice chips) that it hardly mattered I guess.

The staff seemed surprised when we declared the black cod as our favourite dish - for some reason they thought the duck was a better dish. Each to their own.

The place was nicely busy - not overly noisy and we were very well looked after by attentive (and not only personable but knowledgeable) staff dressed all in black. Why don't they have a Michelin star? I've been to places that are nowhere near as good as this who are sporting one.

We're planning the next visit already!

Contact details are on their website.

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

We were informed that Sakana-tei was a destination restaurant for Japanese types in London. This we took as a good sign. Indeed, the blackboards listing specials covered in Japanese script with no translation showed the clientele they were catering to.

They did have menus in English; they seemed to have a lot of chef's or seasonal specials with no hint of how much one was going to pay. I suppose this would be acceptable if you had been before and knew what to expect, but  for a neophyte visitor it was a touch impenetrable.

We ordered a couple of starters. Raw octopus was very chewy and I didn't really go for the slimy texture. It was in some water with pickled cucumber and seaweed, both of these were nicer than the octopus.

Our second starter was some skewers of grilled chicken. This was a real success; the chicken was bursting with flavour and the sauce they had been marinated in was quite delicious. This perked me up no end after the weirdness of the octopus.

Finally, we get to sushi. We ordered a chef's special; we were asked if we wanted six or eight pieces and chose eight. The highlights were an amazing piece of eel, some great tuna, lovely bonito and a fantastic scallop offering. The wasabi levels were a bit inconsistent in these, but not enough to ruin the experience. All of the pieces ranked as serious sushi.

Overall, this ranks as the best sushi we've had in London. It is not surprising that this restaurant was packed with Japanese people, as it was serving top-quality sushi that must be a taste of home. At £82 for the entire meal, including a few beers, you just cannot go wrong. Next time I'd like to try sitting at the sushi bar, but I'd just be happy to visit again and have some top quality fish. No slimy octopus, please.

Contact details: Sakana-tei, 11 Maddox Street, London W1S 2QF 0871 0757855.

This evening we decided to visit Eat Thai on St. Christopher's Place; a Thai restaurant that some have reported as offering the best Thai food in London. If you've dined at Addie's Thai Cafe this might seem controversial, but we were willing to give it a try.

First impressions were not promising; it looked small and cramped with an anonymous interior and rather tasteless black leather and metal chairs. Downstairs was a bit less cramped, but it was really lacking in personality despite some reasonable object d'art sprinkled around. We were also disappointed that they felt the need to play background music.

As usual at a Thai establishment we couldn't give a tinker's cuss about the wine list; it is enough that they serve Singha lager. Whilst we were settling in with our first drinks they brought us some prawn crackers that transcended the normal prawn cracker experience; they tasted of prawns! 

The menu was somewhat lacking in variety compared to Addie's, but there were a few things we liked the sound of. Our first choices were a couple of salads. Duck salad with celery, shallots, fish sauce and lime served in baby lettuce leaves was quite delicious, with moist and tasty pieces of duck and a gentle chilli kick to it. This was a damned good dish. The other salad we ordered was markedly less successful: butterflied prawns still in their shells with a brown sauce made from coconut and grapefruit. It looked highly unattractive, the prawns were totally overcooked and getting them out of the shells was too much of a fight. At £4.50 per prawn this was too much to stomach.

By this stage we had mixed feelings about the restaurant, so were unsure about what would follow. One of the next dishes was back to the quality of the duck salad. It was pork neck that had been marinated and then char-grilled. This was similar to a dish we've had at Addie's and also cooked at home and whilst it was very good, both Addie's and us have cooked a better version.

The weeping tiger beef (neua pat nahm prik pao kaek) was dull and overcooked even by Thai standards. The marinade was lacking flavour and intensity. The sauce it was served with was also flavourless. Jeff the neighbour cooked a far superior version of this a last week.

Our final main course was a lamb Massaman curry. This was the star dish of the evening with very tender slow-cooked lamb. The sauce it was cooked in was complex and bursting with flavour. Delicious!

Our overall impression was that Eat Thai was more competent than most Thai restaurants; easily bettering boring, boozer-quality Thai food which we have all been forced to endure. However, it does not compete with Addie's Thai Cafe for variety, presentation or ambiance. It is also about 50% more expensive, and whilst Elitist Review is concerned primarily with excellence, it is pleasing to be able to recommend the cheaper option. Still, if you ever find yourself hungry on Oxford Street and The Square and Le Gavroche are fully booked, this would be a reasonably pleasing alternative.

Contact details are on the Eat Thai website.

Someone replied to my ad, Peter Sidebotham of Hand Picked Burgundy, and we went out for lunch. I can fault neither the lunch nor the company.

The first thing that needs saying about Andrew Edmunds is that the wine list is fantastic. It may be short, but there is an embarrassment of riches to choose from. We had two excellent bottles at knock-down prices that we greatly enjoyed.

I've been to Andrew Edmunds on countless occasions, and the food can sometimes be a touch miss rather than hit, but today it was on fine form. I started off with some really top hole rillettes of goose. This was very meaty and tasty, and came with an excellent compote of onions and some rather nice cornichons. Peter had some pigeon-flavoured pasta which he said he really enjoyed, it had big lumps of of pigeon meat in it which he claimed made it delicious.

I then had some tuna, which was seared almost to perfection, cooked on the outside and raw in the middle. Peter liked his venison stew, but said it didn't live up to the high quality of his starter. I suppose this was true of mine as well, but I still enjoyed it.

There were more great sweet wines on offer for dessert, and many offerings that I could have eaten if I wasn't so stuffed. May I recommend you choose the Baumard Quarts de Chaume should you be going here and need a half bottle of sweet wine. You should also choose the Clos des Lambrays 2002 if you need a red wine.

Lunch was excellent, Andrew Edmunds were on top form. The service was prompt and unobtrusive, the food was of a good quality and the wine list was just great. If I was being picky I would say they have too much of a white wine-friendly menu for their red wine-heavy wine-list, but they have enough things for one to prey upon.

A great lunch, made largely by the company (I feel the need to point out here that I paid for my share), but the food and wine were top bunny.

Andrew Edmunds, 46 Lexington Street, London W1R 3LH Tel: 020 7437 5708

So after weeks of chucking chunks I managed to go out and eat food! And I didn't even blow bits repeatedly throughout the meal. My stomach is still in quite a bad way, but I greatly enjoyed my trip to West London to eat the best Thai food I've had in the UK.

Addie's Thai Café, a couple of hundred metres away from Earl's Court tube station, seems rather sedate from the outside. The inside is also well-designed but unremarkable; it could be any modern Asian restaurant. Yet the relative difficulty in getting a table and the frequency with which good reviews appear that perhaps what comes from the kitchen is more remarkable than the decor.

We started off with raw prawn salad which was one of the most characterful dishes I have ever eaten The prawns were peeled and butterflied, with minced chili, garlic, Thai basil and coriander piled on them drizzled with a lime juice and nam pla (fish sauce). I say 'characterful' because they were stunningly hot; sweat poured from our brows as we manfully consumed these hot little delights. Delights they were, the combination of flavours was most pleasing and even thought they did hurt, I wanted to eat more.

Our other starter was little rice pastry cases filled with chicken, pork, peppers, sweetcorn and spices. These were quite nice little, tasty, crunchy bites that provided a degree of relief from the screaming pain-fest of the raw prawn salad. Certainly enjoyable, but relatively speaking just lacking explosive pain pleasure. By this point we were feeling rather pleased with the meal and quite optimistic about what was to follow.

The first of our main courses was strips of roast pork neck meat served with a sweet soy reduction sauce. The pork was very tender and bursting with flavour, which was perfectly complimented by the sauce. The flavours were quite intense in this dish (although it was not hot) and you really got the feeling that high quality meat had been used that had been prepared with the utmost care.

The quality of the meat (and other ingredients) shone through in the duck curry. Thai curry in coconut milk is pretty ubiquitous these days, every boozer serves some knock-off of it. However, this example had a real depth of flavour and style one doesn't find terribly often. The duck meat was great and very well cooked whilst the sauce was complex and interesting. Afterwards we decided that this was probably our least-favourite of the things we ordered, yet this didn't stop it from being a very good dish.

Our final dish was Thai spicy squid salad. This is one of my favourite dishes and something I find it hard to avoid ordering when I see it on a menu. The squid was of a very high quality, tender, flavoursome and clearly prepared with great skill. The spicy herbal salad itself was very lively and refreshing. It was clearly the best squid salad I had tried.

So the food was great. The service was attentive but unobtrusive, too. It didn't bother me that the wine list was short, over-priced and dull because I drink Singha in Thai restaurants (as should you). We drank a reasonable number of beers, fruit juice and water, and ordered a lot of food for just two of us, but the bill was still a perfectly moderate sixty notes, which seemed excellent value for the high quality of the food. Addie's Thai Café was a hit all round. Should you want quality Thai food in London, I don't know of anywhere better.

Menu and contact details on the website.

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

I met up with my step-father today, we both thought La Gavroche seemed like a good place for lunch so that is where we met up. It was a good move.

The lunch menu was a good buy at £46.50 for three courses including wine and water. The staff were perfectly happy to assist in translating the dishes that were named beyond schoolboy-French ability and we both ended up ordering the same stuff. It sounded good so why not?

There was an amuse-bouche offering of deep-fried tiger prawn with avocado vinaigrette that was quite delicious; a good sharpener to get us both in the mood for the more serious stuff to follow. The prawn was very flavourful as was the avocado vinaigrette, I am pretty sure the vinegar used was balsamic.

We then had a lobster and button mushrooms in a pastry case with a very tasty mushroom-infused cream sauce. There was plenty of lobster and the flavours of lobster and mushroom were perfectly complimentary. I am sure the mushroom sauce used something a bit grander than button mushrooms to obtain its rich flavour. It was terribly good.

The main course was supreme of pheasant with choucrote, carrots, potatoes and slices of sausage. The sausage was quite brilliant, as were the potatoes and carrots in the rich sauce. They didn't over-do the quantity of choucrote, it was all nicely balanced. Perhaps the pheasant was a bit tough, but when isn't pheasant a bit tough?

After scoping the cheese trolley we were tempted to go for cheese, until one of the desserts was translated as chestnut tart, something neither of us could resist. We chose well, for it was delicious.

OK, the wine on offer with the set menu was nothing to write home about (we chose Leon Beyer Pinot Blanc, yawn-a-rama or what?) but the food was terribly good and the atmosphere was most compelling. It was nice to go to an establishment where they knew how to fold napkins when one had to leave the table. I don't think one could find a better lunch served in more pleasing circumstances than this. I admit meals are often made by the company, and my company was terribly good, but I don't think you could go far wrong dining at La Gavroche for lunch, a top address.

Contact: La Gavroche, 43 Upper Brook Street, W1K 7QR. 020 7499 1826.

David

This is a new opening in London and it has already got a lot of good press so I was looking forward to lunch there. Even though some of what we ate was very good, I found myself ultimately a bit disappointed by the experience.

We had a table in the 'studio' downstairs, they only take bookings up to midday, and then it is first-come, first-served. The dining room was a dark, modern kind of place, with stools around a central open kitchen and some tall tables also with stools in the rest of the room. I have to say I am not much of a fan when it comes to perching on stools whilst having a relaxed lunch. I can see this lends itself to speedy dining and so getting more covers in, but I did not enjoy that aspect of it.

The offered a tasting menu, a three-course a la carte and a menu of small dishes from which you could choose as many as you want. This is what we had. The wine list was short, but had some reasonable wines on it; shame the mark-ups where so high. They have some good wines by the glass if you are only having a light lunch. The Sylvaner, Schloss Vollrads Riesling (both white) and the Crozes-Hermitage (red) are good drinks. I did ask when sitting down if they had any dry Sherry, which took them an age to search the restaurant to determine that they had none.

My first dish was sautéed squid with sun-dried tomatoes and tiny cubes of ham. This was adequate, I liked the tomato and ham, but the squid failed to satisfy due to it being over-cooked. The next course was quite brilliant, pig's trotter with ham and Parmesan shavings. This tasted divine, the combinations of flavours and quality of ingredients really stood out.

They then gave us an extra course, a scallop cooked in its shell with red peppercorns and salt. This was good too; the scallop was perfectly cooked (ie. pretty raw) and the red peppercorns had a most intriguing flavour.

I cannot help ordering ris de veau when I see them on a menu, this was ris de veau with stuffed Swiss chard and foie gras foam. The sweetbreads were very rare, and had a mouth-coating richness that made me writhe with pleasure. The foam did taste of foie gras, which was nice enough.

The final 'main' course were two little beef burgers with a lump of pan fried foie gras and roasted peppers in them. I liked the bread, burger and foie, but found the favour of the roasted peppers dominated it.

A review had mentioned that the soufflés were worth having, so I had green Chartreuse soufflé with pistachio ice cream. The ice cream was delicious, but not a patch on the extremely high quality of the soufflé, with its light airiness and delicate Chartreuse flavour. They gave us two free dessert courses, strawberries with basil sorbet and raspberries in eau de vie. The strawberries were good and I liked the sorbet, but the raspberries were screamingly unripe and it was clearly an eau de vie producer who makes evil filth.

I did mainly like the food and it is a good idea to have many small courses to choose from, I can see that making for a speedy lunch. However, I don't like speedy lunches, I like huge, baroque feasts. I could have had a hilarious time with all of those little dishes if I was able to sit back and stretch my legs for five minutes now and again, rather than balancing on a stool. I'm sure it'll do well with allowing people to roll up and take the next free table, but I'll be avoiding the 'studio' when and if I return.

Contact: L'Atelier de Joël Robuchon, 13-15 West Street, WC2H 9NQ. Telephone: 020 7010 8600

Yi-Ban is located by an old dock near London city airport, hardly a place that will get a lot of passing trade. It is also bereft of decoration, people don't go there for the surroundings. However, when we went on a Saturday lunch it was completely full and we had to wait for a table. This suggested the restaurant was good enough to be a destination; people are willing to make the trek out there in order to eat.

They serve dim sum during the day, and this is what we ordered. For this they give you a dim sum menu and a piece of paper on which you tick the dish numbers you want. This seemed like a good solution for taking orders for their stretched staff who were rushed off their feet.

Everything we ordered was of a high standard. I really enjoyed the char sui buns and the pork and crab dumplings. Crystal prawn dumplings were also good as was the roast pork cheung fen. Perhaps the deep-fried shredded squid was a bit rubbery, but the chili sauce that came with it was very nice. We ordered nine dim sum plates between the two of us and this was plenty for a hearty lunch.

The waiting staff seemed a bit rushed off their feet, there was a wedding reception going on in one half of the restaurant, but the food came speedily enough once we ordered. I wouldn't bother ordering wine there, everything they had was rubbish. Not that this really appeals to me, but it seemed very popular with families. The food was good and cheap at a bit over thirty pounds for our meal with beer. We shall return for more of their dim sum, certainly.

They also have a branch in Chelsea, which might be a bit less of a trek for those in central London.

Contact: Yi-Ban, London Regatta Centre, Dockside Road, Royal Albert Dock. Telephone: 02074736699.

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

Bentley's Oyster Bar Review

I suppose I could be a bit more lenient on Bentley's as we dined on a Sunday but I'm not going to: it was terrible.

It is not a bad dining atmosphere in the oyster bar, but it began to drag a bit as we were sat there with nothing to eat or drink for an age as the lack lustre staff ignored us. Our neighbours also were waiting for an unacceptable period and they were clearly dissatisfied as well.

We finally got to order and the food seemed bearly good enough to start with. The squid dish seemed to have been killed twice so rubbery was it. Once the starters had gone it was another interminable wait, punctuated only with them bringing a different bottle of wine to the one we ordered. This was remedied with the same degree of sloth that our orders were taken.

We were served an incorrect main course, and yet again there was huge delay in fixing this. The main courses were perfectly edible, but by no means did they make amends for the hopeless service. It was a great disappointment and I really don't see the need to return there.

Contact: Bentley's Oyster Bar and Restaurant, 11-15 Swallow Street, W1B 4DG. Telephone 020 7734 4756.

David

Sushi-Say review

When I was asked to book a sushi place for Sunday lunch I was a tad surprised; Sunday hardly seems like the best day to be seeking the freshest of fish. Fortunately, my fears were unfounded as this turned out to be the best sushi meal I've had in London.

As a South London kid, it is a bit of a trek to get to, right at the Nothern end of the Jubilee line in Willesden Green. It was worth it. Sadly we appeared to be the only people willing to make this journey on a Sunday; we dined with only the staff for company.

We ordered sashimi and sushi. The sashimi was a tiny bit cold so the flavours were initially a bit hard to discern. I suppose this is the price one has to pay for dining at a quiet time. The fish all seemed to be of high quality, the fatty tuna (toro) and salmon especially so.

The sushi was a real step up. Served at the correct temperature it really showed itself to be a step above that which I had eaten in London before. The ratio of rice to fish seemed pleasingly low, with large pieces of fish on each piece of sushi. Tuna, salmon, sweet shrimp, yellow tail and squid were really quite impressive in terms of quality. One of the clam sushi pieces I had was a bit tired, but again I see this as a reasonable price to pay for eating on a dodgy day.

The prices were perfectly reasonable for the quality, expect to pay around £30 a head, and the service was great. Heartily recommended.

Contact: Sushi-Say, 33b Walm Lane, NW2 5SH. Telephone 020 8459 2971.

David

Yauatcha review

Yauatcha is quite an impressive looking place in the middle of Soho. Upstairs there is a tea room with little cakes on offer, downstairs is the main restaurant which is the site of the best dim sum meal I have ever eaten.

The restaurant itself it quite stylish, with plenty of room between tables and a reasonable number of helpful staff milling around. It suggests you are going to have quite an expensive meal. Looking at the comprehensive dim sum menu the price for most of the dishes seemed very low. This led us to order multiple plates of the same dish. A bit of a mistake.

When your food arrives, and it does so promptly, the mistake was plain to see; portions are quite large with multiple pieces of dim sum per plate. I would recommend than even if you are very hungry four plates each would be plenty.

The dim sum was excellent. Char sui buns were as light as clouds and filled with tasty, rich pork. Sesame prawns on toast were delicious, made with a whole large prawn. The duck spring rolls were a delight, stuffed with flavoursome duck meat. All of the little dumplings we ordered were lovely, perfectly cooked and filled with flavour. There was not a single disappointing dish.

For a change, we didn't bother with wine; the Chinese beer was perfectly acceptable to eat with a large meal. Thanks to our ordering it was a very large meal and I ended up happily stuffed.

Due to our heroic ordering the price was a bit high, but if you order less enthusiastically a meal should set you back at around £30 a head.

I cannot recommend Yauatcha highly enough; if you like dim sum this is the place to go in London.

Contact: Yauatcha, 15 Broadwick Street, W1F 0DL. Telephone 0870 780 8265.

David

La Brasserie Ma Cuisine Bourgeoise review

Yes, I admit it has an awful name, and the outside looks frankly hideous, but we dined very well.

The menu has loads of French Brasserie favourites, so many recognisably fun things that the choice was difficult. Daniel and I ordered a different starters each and swapped half way through. The little crispy cake of pig's trotters I had first was very rich and strongly flavoured, really very good, but blown away by the other starter. This was pan fried foie gras with lentils. The foie gras was cooked to perfection, a good crust and melting soft in the middle. Excellent.

I did not try the main course of our guest, but she reported the lamb with merguez and beans was perfectly cooked and flavoursome. Daniel and I can rarely resist ris de veau when they appear on a menu and so we both went for this option. It was perfectly cooked and the capers and celeriac surrounding it added a bite to the rich Sauternes sauce it was presented with. This was a truly excellent dish.

The main wine list is a bit pricey; it is really lacking anything one would wish to drink. They have a fine wine list which has some better offerings, but the prices are quite steep. Our bottle of 1998 Macon was getting a bit long in the tooth, but the red Vosne-Romanée 1995 from Rene Engel was excellent.

The food made this worth the trek out to Twickenham, so it was a bit of a shame they only had one other diner in that night. They deserved to be full.

Contact: La Brasserie Ma Cuisine Bourgeoise, 2 Whitton Road, Twickenham TW1 1BJ. Telephone 020 8744 9598.

David

This Korean restaurant lives underground right next door to Holborn tube station. The decor and location are perhaps the most interesting things about it as on our trip we found the food to be woefully tedious.

We ordered a selection of meat, fish and vegetable dishes. The waitress tried her best to be informative, warning us that Yuk Hwae was raw beef and that one of the dishes we ordered was very spicy. The wine list was laughably poor so we ordered Korean beer. Sadly, when the food arrived it was as lack-lustre as the cold February night we were hiding from.

The Yuk Hwae was perhaps the most disappointing of the dishes. This is Korean steak tartare, billed as the world's best steak tartare. Strips of raw beef served with, in this case, sesame oil, grated garlic, an egg yolk and Asian pear. Not only was it served too cold, but it is was inadequately spiced with far too much pear. In this state it tasted of little beyond the pear. It needed more garlic or chili in order to perk it up and could certainly have done with far less pear. When it warmed up the beef had some taste, but it was still exceptionally dull.

The raw skate in chili sauce was the dish we had been warned was very spicy. I wish it had been. It tasted of little beyond sesame oil and the lumps of skate cartilage were distractingly chewy. Another depressing dish. We also ordered some a monk fish dish, which came with worryingly little monk fish for the fifteen pounds charged for it. Some hand-made pork dumplings were acceptable, but my local Chinese take-away does them better. The tempura-style prawns were also acceptable, but frighteningly expensive for only four, boring prawns. Another boring dish was some cold strips of squid that were reasonably tender, but seemed to have been cooked so as to remove all character.

We did get a selection of the Korean speciality pickled vegetables Kim Chee. These ranged from the incredibly dull (radish Kim Chee) to the actively unpleasant (cabbage Kim Chee). The first bite is with the eye, so it is said, so I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised these were awful as they looked like congealed vomit.

The food was so boring we couldn't bring ourselves to finish it all up; the staff looked rather surprised by this. They have had a number of good reviews recently so perhaps they were expecting us to wet ourselves with pleasure simply for getting a table. Sadly, the food was mind-meltingly tedious and so our moods deteriorated to 'stunningly depressed' as the meal progressed. By the end we were both incredibly eager to get out of there and even thought about going to a decent sushi place near by to cheer ourselves up. Unfortunately, the boring rubbish they called a meal was so frighteningly expensive that our budget for the evening was spent. The problem with this was not that it was bad, but that it was incredibly boring; I'd rather be offended than bored. It was a depressingly dull meal and I can only say that Asadal is deeply sub-interest.

David.