I used to blow up custard powder and flour when I was a youth, but this lorry driver managed a far bigger explosion than I could have dreamed of. It would have been fun to watch.

Sitting just off Edgware road Green Valley can be found; a Lebanese delicatessen of such quality it is deserving of destination-status for any lovers of Lebanese food.

We have been there many times before, but as we were coming back from Oxford via Paddington today it seemed an ideal opportunity to drop by without trekking off the path home. As ever, our visit there was most profitable.

They have a wide selection of Middle-Eastern foods to choose from. Their lamb kibbeh are always pleasing, we got six. For general snacking purposes the falafel are the best I've had in London, delicious. They have a range of prepared salads, mujadarah (lentil salad with fried onions) is a personal favourite. I have many happy memories of this dish causing me to fart like a trumpet major: this merits buying a large tub full. They have excellent bean salads and great hommous.

As well as the array of prepared goodies they have a well-stoked meat counter, which usually has such things as lamb testicles, whole ox tongue and for the more conventional diner the beef, veal and lamb look excellent.

There are plenty of Middle-Eastern canned goods and excellent flat-breads which are so good it is deeply painful that I cannot eat wheat. In the fridge you shouldn't miss out on the Power Horse energy-drink, hits the caffeine spot and sounds vaguely suggestive.

There is such an embarrassment of riches it can sometimes be hard not to splurge out excessively but, as we know, the path of excess leads to the palace of wisdom. What can I say but cruise up the Green Valley and enjoy noshing.

Contact details: Green Valley, 36 Upper Berkeley Street, London W1H 5QF. 0207 402 7385.

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.

Those of us who have difficulties with wheat can have a miserable time choosing food; wheat is in bloody everything. However, on my last trip to our local branch of Sainsburys I checked the ingredients of two of their 'Taste the difference' range of sausages and was delighted to see they didn't contain wheat. Hooray! I love sausages and it is great that a supermarket is pandering to picky eaters like me and making some gluten-free ones. The favours of choice are Sicilian and British pork and herb.

OK, they may not reach the stellar quality of the gluten-free sausages from Sillfield Farm, but they'll do very nicely, thank you.

My dear mother used to make chicken in cider when I was but a fresh, young thing; I have many memories of enjoying this when growing up. It is easy to cook and provides a lot of pleasure. You will need:

4 top-quality chicken thighs
250g un-smoked streaky bacon cut into 2cm long pieces
250g characterful mushrooms chopped into slices
2 large onions finely chopped
1 litre good, dry cider
1 tablespoon Marigold vegetable stock powder
A couple of tablespoons of butter

Fry the mushrooms in half the butter until they are soft, transfer them to a stew pot. Fry the onions in the remaining butter until they just start to colour, then transfer them to the stew pot. Fry the bacon bits until they are cooked, add to the other cooked ingredients in the pot. Quickly fry the chicken thighs so the outside is just cooked, transfer to the stew pot. Add the vegetable stock powder then the cider. Bring the stew gently to simmering temperature, then leave it to simmer over the lowest heat that has the surface quivering, you don't want it boiling too fiercely or the meat will dry out and go stringy. Let it simmer for a couple of hours then serve with rice. My mother used to thicken the cider sauce with corn flour, which you are more than welcome to try, but I don't think it adds anything to the experience.

I have railed against the danger of salad in the past: lettuce will give you cancer. Obviously lettuce is to be avoided wherever possible, but there are ways to make it even less healthy.

Leftist-shite sloppy thinkers generally believe that organic fruit and vegetables are more healthy than standard fruit and vegetables. This is, of course, total bullshit. Organic fruit and vegetables are not sprayed to prevent them from rotting, so by the time they reach the supermarket shelf they are laced with carcinogenic fungal metabolic by-products that non-organic offerings do not have.

Now, the hard of thinking may think that the compounds used to preserve non-organic fruit and vegetables would be dangerous. This is really sloppy thinking, who would knowingly lace food with toxins that damage people? Of course, you can wash these preservatives off the surface of non-organic food, where as organic fruit and vegetables contain their carcinogenic compounds all of the way through; they cannot be washed away.

It is only organic fruit and vegetables that are dangerous, organic meat is fine (to be sought out, in fact). So, avoid lettuce, definitely avoid organic lettuce. Not buying organic fruit and vegetables will also save money; cheaper and healthier, hooray!

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.

Last Saturday we joined the neighbours to cook a veritable feast of Thai food. We could not have done this without the truly excellent book Thai Food by David Thompson. It is much more than a cookery book; it has much to say about the food culture and history in Thailand. It is a fascinating, mouth-watering read and experience has shown that the recipes are reliable.

Of course, to make Thai food you need the correct ingredients. We are extremely fortunate to have an Oriental supermarket just down the road from us; a trip to See Woo (known as See Woo Run for those of us who grew up with Janet and John books) provides all one needs. We cannot be alone in cooking Thai food in South-East London as See Woo is generally heaving with shoppers.

We started off with pla hoi shenn or raw scallop salad. The scallops were quite lovely with all of those fresh lime, coriander, mint and chilli flavours, but we didn't have quite enough scallop meat to keep the dish balanced. Good of Daniel to try preparing something new; we shall probably re-visit this recipe.

Our second course was a dish we've prepared before: goong cha nam pla or raw prawn salad. This is always a real roller coaster of a dish with all of the garlic and chillies keeping you interested, not to mention in pain. Chilli pain is good, though, gets those endorphins flowing. A top dish prepared with plenty of skill by Daniel.

Our final effort on the salad front was nahm dtok, grilled beef salad. This is a dish which deserves a damned-good piece of beef and grilling it only until it is very rare. David Thompson suggests this could also be made with pork, venison or hare, but I like the rare beef path.

We then had a soup course: dtom yam gung - hot and sour prawn soup. There are two tricks to making this. Firstly, the soup broth is made by boiling up all the the prawn heads and shells; this makes a powerfully flavoured stock. The second trick is not to cook the raw prawns directly over heat, but put them in the serving bowls and let them cook very slightly by pouring the hot soup broth into the bowl. This makes for a lively, exciting soup with perfectly (under-)cooked prawns

Moving onto main courses we started off with neua pat nahm prik pao kaek - stir-fried beef with spices. This is a powerfully flavoured dish, even though it doesn't have much chilli. The combination of beef and the spices makes this very reminiscent of cooking from the middle-ages in Europe. Well done Jeff for pulling off this dish so successfully.

A Thai meal at home would not be the same without Dan cooking a green curry. He has mastered the art of cracking coconut cream, a necessary step in the production of a first-rate green curry. I was very pleased that the chicken he cooked it with was thigh meat which is just perfect for this kind of dish.

Daniel prepared the final dish: pla meuk tort gratiam prik thai - deep-fried squid with garlic and peppercorns. The squid we chose was pretty big, as you can see in the picture, and it was perhaps a bit leathery. This was the least successful dish of the meal.

Overall, the boys did well. It was a great meal, filled with all of those exciting, fresh, pure flavours of Thai food. If you wish to follow our example, Thai Food by David Thompson is a must buy: recipes, history and (let us be honest) a pleasing degree of food porn.