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

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.

Dr Wadge of the Food Standards Agency has made the excellent point on his blog that so-called 'detox' diets and supplements are a waste of time and money. They are obviously a pile of toss and anyone who buys them is misguided at the very least. I couldn't agree with his suggestion of spending the money you save not buying them on Neil Young albums, though, perhaps Bent or Lemon Jelly...

The great British fry-up is under threat. Older readers will remember that in Peter Palmer's opinion we will not be missing much. Now the best breakfast one can get is in one's own kitchen.

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

For breakfast today I had bacon chops from Sillfield Farm.

These are really just thick-cut pieces of back bacon, but I found them quite delicious. They just require frying for a few minutes so are terribly easy to prepare. Of course, they wouldn't be the same without being made from high-quality Sillfield Farm bacon.

Tonight we made goong cha nam pla again. However, this time we used the biggest king prawns we could find at Borough Market. Turns out this was not optimal, the smaller prawns we used last time tasted sweeter and had a more mouth-coating richness to them. We also used normal red chillies rather than bird's eye chillies and this was clearly a mistake. The fiery heat is an important part of the experience and with that diminished using weaker chillies the dish was not quite so exciting.