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