Some people have a good idea and then fail to have the successive good ideas that make the first one work. This is very much the case at Viet Baguette in Charlotte Place: making Vietnamese sandwiches (banh mi) was a good idea but it needed to be backed up with further ideas like having good ingredients or employing competent staff.

OK, I am not going to fart around here: this lunch establishment had so many problems we may as well get down to them. The staff were hopelessly dizzy, drippy farts who tooled around even though the queue was just getting longer and longer; when we got to the cash desk the poor dear seemed so confused that the prices she charged were effectively random.

But, if the food is good, who gives a tinker’s cuss about the hopeless staff? Sadly the food was boring. It lacked all of the fresh, tangy, savoury, fiery, delicious characters you want in a Vietnamese sandwich. The chilli sauce lacked any form of flavour, the chillies they  used were too mild and you had to repeatedly ask for more of them in the hope of getting a bit of heat.

When they are good, banh mi can be powerful, flavoursome entities of raw intensity. But Viet Baguette totally failed to deliver any of this pleasure. They were dreadful sandwiches of raw depression.

I’ve said where they are in London, but don’t, just don’t go.

Right, so you’ve got a bit of Vacherin Mont d’Or and the bloody ‘priced like Harrod’s’ corner shop has no bread. So, the cunning idea arises to buy some crackers. And for the very best part of three quid I get a 150g box of The Fine Cheese Company’s Wholemeal Crackers. They are filthy pieces of horribleness.

I suppose some people might like the rough, sandy texture of these biscuits, but I could feel them abrading my teeth. This is something I rarely want to experience. As to the taste, it seems to be a taste which is very similar to the smell of cardboard tubes one finds in the centre of bog roll: dry, tough and associated with toilets.

What I want to know is why the hopeless shop Couture have to sell crap like this. Sure, it may say that it is organic, free-range, or other varieties of leftist shite, but that doesn’t necessarily make it taste nice. It’d be great if Couture could carry some things that you actually need to buy at reasonable prices rather than baroque, over-blown ephemera at stratospheric prices.

Vacherin Mont d'Or, originally uploaded by David Strange.

I love Vacherin Mont d'Or. It is one of the great treats of the year to see the first Vacherin Mont d'Or of the season on sale. I always make sure I leave it in the fridge for a few days before noshing it all is a cheese-a-rific orgy of stinky fermented curd, this means the fridge will smell of the cheese for a few months.

I know a lot of people have a 'thing' about eating the rind of cheese, but you shouldn't worry about that with Vacherin Mont d'Or. I'd also suggest eating them quite quickly once you've broached them, otherwise they go super-liquid and really start to honk.

What you are looking for in good Vacherin Mont d'Or is a creamy and rich, yet grassy and fresh combination of flavours. It should taste of a lot. Spread (spoon) it onto some nice crusty bread and you will not go far wrong.

Presumably you know about Freud's problem with cheese? Something to do with the symbolism relating to his lactating mother in solid, rancid form. Weirdo.

I’ve got a bit of a thing for boudin noir, black pudding and the like. They are clearly very good for you, look at what a healthy person I am! I was very pleased to see some French West Indies boudin noir in Le Marche du Quartier (opposite Sillfield Farm in Borough Market) last Friday. It promised chilli action, and whilst there were hints of this its main character was a very tarragony herbal flavour. This was certainly interesting, but the slime-tastic texture was not terribly pleasing. It doesn’t compete with the boudin noir from the butcher in Nuits-Saint-Georges and is a country mile behind Sillfield Farm’s offerings.

Shall we remind ourselves what the totally amazing Stornoway black pudding from Sillfield Farm looks like?

But I found this to be very funny:

It is from Sillfied Farm, of course. The wild boar Italian style sausage, pictured below, is a truly thrusting sausage of pulsating brilliance.

I’ve mentioned Sicilian style sausages from Sillfield Farm before. I am a fan of their finely balanced, deeply porky, slightly spicy favours. The wild boar Italian style sausage is much the same, flavoured with wine, cheese and chilli, but they are also stuffed with wild boar meat. Wild boar is perhaps best in sausages and it works a treat in these.

The sausages are very meaty, with a salty, cured flavour. The chilli heat is just powerful enough and they have cheesy hints. This is a complex, flavoursome sausage for lovers of food that has a high interest quotient. Great stuff.

I should add that they are gluten free. Hooray!

When Dan the neighbour invited us around to nosh on his bloody sausage I was very pleased to see this when we arrived at his flat:

They are three different types of black pudding from Sillfield Farm (London’s best pork butcher). The idea was to compare and contrast to see which style was our favourite.

Black pudding is easy to prepare, you just slice it (if it is not already pre-sliced) then fry the slices for a few minutes each side. Here it is ready to be put in the pan:

The styles are Bury (the smaller round slices), Homemade (the rectangular slices) and Stornoway (the large round slices).

Fry them up and serve with other piggy goodies and you have a marvellous breakfast:

So, on to the taste-off. We tried the Bury style first, which was a densely textured black pudding with lumps of belly fat and grains in it. This was Daniel and Jeff’s favourite; they said they liked the texture, the melting loveliness of the fat and its rich flavour. For Dan and me this was good, but we preferred the other two styles as we thought this was not strongly flavoured enough.

The Homemade style black pudding was similar in texture to the Bury, quite dense with fat and grain added, but it also contained some onion. In my view this onion really enhanced the flavour and added complexity. Again Daniel and Jeff really liked the texture. All four of us ranked this black pudding second out of the three.

Finally there was the Stornoway, Dan’s and my favourite. This was very different from the other two in that it was more loosely textured, as if it had been minced. Dan and I loved this texture, Daniel and Jeff were less impressed. I found the onion and spice added to this really made the flavour complex and interesting.

All three of these we could happily eat, but the pronounced differences between them made it possible to easily pick favourites. Since our views were so divided all I can do is suggest you have the same tasting challenge at home so you can decide for yourselves.

It has been years since I last went to Saint John; I always loved dining on novelty bits of animal expertly prepared. Our return last night showed there was little development with the menu, but the food was still excellent.

First, let us get the problems out of the way. The wine list is appalling. Not only do they have largely crap wine but it is also laughably expensive. Would you pay £33 for a Vin de Pays de l’Ardeche blanc from those swine Chapoutier? I wouldn’t. This problem can be easily solved, they have some great beer including offerings from the wonderful Meantime Brewery. We drank them dry of the Oktoberfest-style beer. They have 750ml bottles of the excellent Meantime London Porter if you feel you need a large bottle of something on your table.

The second problem is the dining room: it is very stark, with high walls and lots of tables crammed in. This makes it seem very loud and busy. If you want a peaceful, relaxing meal this dining room will not provide the right ambience. When you go to Saint John you’ve got to be prepared for a bit of bustle.

Now we can turn our attention to the food. And what fun we had with it. The menu was short but we all felt they had several options we could happily go for. As usual when presented with a pleasing menu I was groaning and grunting with anticipation. I’ll go through the starters in order of increasing brilliance.

Rolled pig’s spleen with bacon was well presented, and whilst the flavour that was there was good, it didn’t taste so strongly. When you order something that would petrify fussy eaters you hope it would have a touch more character.

Daniel ordered smoked eel with celeriac. The eel was perfect,  strongly flavoured with a good smoked character and not the slightest bit silty. The celeriac was a good combination with this. This may not have been the best starter we had by cripes was it tasty.

Roast bone marrow with toast is one of the signature dishes at Saint John, and it has never failed to impress me. If you remember the dog food adverts which claimed to be ‘filled with marrowbone jelly’ you’ll have a pretty good idea of the texture of the marrow which you have to scrape out of the bones. Sure, it may look like another dish to scare the hard of eating, but the taste! Oh the taste! If you should visit Saint John at least one of you should order this and pass bits around, you’d be missing a lot if you did not.

Finally, we come to what was universally agreed to be the best starter, potted beef. Now, we have had truly excellent potted beef at Hawksmoor and I never thought I would have better, but this stuff was the nun’s nethers. Incredibly rich and meaty with an incredible depth of flavour. The texture was also an improvement over Hawksmoor’s offering, less slimy with more meat fibres. It is just great when you have a favourite dish somewhere different and they surpass your previous experiences, and your expectations. We loved this totally.

Moving onto the main courses provided us with even more laughs and giggles. ‘Non-Stinky’ Jeff ordered tripe, which seemed a brave move to me as I cannot stand the texture of the stuff. He said it was well worth trying, but having it once, probably as well prepared as one was ever likely to have it, was enough. He also said the texture was not totally pleasing. He loved the bacon bits that came with it and I am not in the least bit surprised, they were clearly of the highest quality. I neglected to ask who their bacon supplier was, alas.

Dan ordered pan-roast lemon sole with fresh tartare sauce. He said the tartare sauce failed to enhance the fish, which was quite superb. I agree the fish was wonderful, not over cooked in the slightest and with a great flavour. I suppose they should have provided a bone dump-bin as the plate was somewhat crowded with the fish on it and there was not a lot of space for general filleting manoeuvres. Alternatively, they could have filleted the fish before serving it, but I suppose it would have looked less impressive that way.

Then, of course, there were Daniel and my main courses. I’ve said before, when sweetbreads are on the menu I cannot help but order them. Daniel had eaten this concoction of lamb’s sweetbreads with bacon and carrots a couple of months ago and he told me they were lovely. He was wrong, they were super special (special in the very best way). Long time readers may know we had almost exactly the same ingredients at Hix Oyster and Chop House; they were abysmal, these were amazing. I will do almost anything to eat good sweetbreads and for these I’d kill. Kill lambs, anyway.

We did order some side dishes. Dan and NSJ said the potatoes were excellent but I was more interested in the best welsh rarebit I’ve eaten. Great stuff, really cheesy with a lovely Worcestershire sauce flavour.

You’ve got to be a bold diner to enjoy a meal at Saint John, but surely all the best people are bold diners? Internal organs are not cooked better than here in many places. Sure, the wine list can be skipped, and it is a bit noisy, but you’ll go out full of innards and charged with life. Saint John is still one of the best, and easily one of the most enjoyable, restaurants I’ve been to.

Contact details: Saint John Restaurant, 26 Saint John Street, London EC1M 4AY. Telephone 020 7251 0848

Many thanks to Jeff for the pictures and, indeed, all of the boys for being such wonderful company.

I’ve mentioned before that The Ginger Pig is the best beef butcher in Town. Last night we got to meet the meat in a more intimate manner as we attended one of their beef butchery courses. It was a veritable festival of the very highest quality beef, most instructive too.

The evening started off with a introduction to the Ginger Pig. They told us about how they raise their free-range longhorn cattle. Not organically, it seems, but they claim there are problems with organic certification. The pictures of their longhorn cattle looked almost as delicious as the large bits of dismembered cow hanging up behind us.

We had an over-view of the different cuts of meat on a cow, and we were told which cuts were best cooked which way. The charismatic French butcher who lead us through this was fundamentally against gratuitously using the most expensive cuts: if you want mince get a cut suitable for mincing rather than a steak cut. A useful gem of information he passed on to us was the if you want the best rump steak, get them cut from the thin end of the rump: this end is closer to the sirloin so will be more tender.

They were very keen to point out the advantages of the dry-ageing process their meat goes through. The butcher was candid enough to say it puts the price up, but results in superior grade beef. He did point out that ageing beyond a certain point (depending on the size and type of the cut) was pointless: needlessly wasteful without improving quality. This first part of the evening seemed an incredible sales pitch for The Ginger Pig, and we got the feeling he was not exaggerating the quality of their meat and butchery skills.

Then it came to hack up cow. Another equally charismatic butcher went through the cuts again but this time pointing them out on the large piece of cow saddle he had us feeling up and generally hauling around. It was clear this was supposed to be a really interactive experience, if you have the compulsion to always keep your hands clean this part of the evening would revolt you.

We got through three saddles of beef, chopping the carcasses into different servings under the expert guidance of the butcher. Most of us showed a somewhat embarrassing degree of ineptitude when it came to even the comparatively easy task of using a saw. The meat looked amazing, and as we cut it us he kept re-enforcing which bit was which and how it should best be cut. It was an educational experience.

Before we were allowed to wash our hands we got given two ribs of beef each to prepare for roasting. Once again, our skills at perhaps the easiest part, tying knots in the string to hold the beef in shape, showed us to be impractical city types. All fascinating stuff, and another sales pitch for The Ginger Pig’s skilled butchers. It certainly made you think that you should be going to a decent butcher and getting him to prepare your meat.

There was a terribly pleasing end to the evening. Whilst we’d been mauling beef the first butcher had disappeared off to the kitchen and roasted a massive hunk of beef. We stood around the butcher’s block and gorged ourselves on this powerfully flavoursome, tender, delicious, wonderful meat of utter brilliance. It was freaking triple-A, man.

We left with our two ribs of beef that we had prepared questionably well, full, happy and armed with the knowledge that a good butcher is a treasured resource. We have always known that butchers are great people, but learning more about their skills and knowledge made us respect them even more. Tomorrow night we’ll roast our beef and we thoroughly expect to raise a little toast to The Ginger Pig and its butchers as we nosh.

More information is on The Ginger Pig’s website.

My chums Edward Tully and Peter Palmer (who are also both ex-captains of the Oxford blind tasting team, Peter one year before me and Edward one year after) decided to meet up for a hedonistic lunch. Mr T suggested Corrigan’s and, whilst it cost a pretty penny, the food was quite wonderful.

Corrigan’s is clearly a destination, the restaurant was full whilst we were dining there. Just reading the menu gives you the beginnings of an idea why: everything sounded excellent. I was groaning and sighing with pleasure as I read through it. We then got told about daily specials and all were things I would happily nosh on. They also had a three-course set lunch including a couple of glasses of wine at £27 for the more modest diner. ‘Modest’ in price terms, but not lacking in interest and quality. This is what Peter chose and he dined very well.

Peter’s starter was lentils with confit of cod. The lentils were expertly cooked in a stocky, flavoursome broth and had the most perfect texture. Great cod too. After trying a forkful of this I almost wished I’d gone for that option. However, my starter was even better: carpaccio of octopus with grilled baby squid and chorizo with some feta cubes. The octopus was not in the slightest bit chewy, and the grilled chorizo and squid just melted in my mouth. All of the ingredients are things I love so having them together and so well prepared got me groaning and growling again. Mr T also chose well with his slices of veal tongue with braised pearl barley. Tongue is not something that normally tickles my fancy but this was meaty and flavoursome. The pearl barley was an inspired combination. Yum.

My braised veal rib with sweetbreads was another combination of ingredients that get me terribly excited. The veal was a wonderful piece of meat with a little fluffy cloud of lewdly exciting sweetbread sitting atop it. Such things warp the mind with pleasure if you are an enlightened lover of fine things. Edward’s main course was one of the daily specials, a stuffed piece of hare. Quite easily the most top bunny piece of bunny I’ve had in a very long time. Peter had quail and we all loved it and wanted more. Quail can be a little tough and dry if inexpertly prepared, this was not in the slightest like that. The quality of ingredients and skill with which they were prepared was quite spectacular.

Edward and I shared a tarte tatin which was easily the best I’ve ever had; whipping the arse of Gordon Ramsay’s version and also a country mile ahead of the best one I had previously at The Atrium in Edinburgh. Peter’s dessert was Stilton with a Port jelly. Sounds odd, eh? He reports the combination was most pleasing.

I would happily return here on many, many occasions. The attention to detail, selection of seasonal ingredients and the preparation of them are faultless. I think the set lunch menu is a total bargain, considering the rollercoaster-ride of thrilling food on it and I would be hilariously happy just to order from that in future. If you want to order wine, from their reasonably well-chosen but a somewhat pricy wine list, you would not go far wrong having a bottle or two of their excellent selection of Sherry. When a wine list has good Sherry it is a sign that things will go well with your meal. As I write this I’ve been chatting with Peter online and he says:

Yes, it was brilliant. I have too often been disappointed with smart places in London, either with the food, or with the stuffy atmosphere, or both. That place was altogether really great - great food, very relaxed and fun. A really fine experience.

I couldn’t have put it better myself.

Contact details: Corrigan’s of Mayfair, 28 Upper Grosvenor Street, London W1K 7EH. Telephone: 020 7499 9943

This morning our great friends Dan Nye and ‘Non–stinky’ Jeff Home invited us around for breakfast. The important parts of it, the meaty things, came from Sillfield Farm. Long-time readers will know that we consider this to be the best pork butcher in London. The sausages and bacon from them are always excellent and today was no exception, but this time Dan and Jeff got something I had never tried before: Stornaway black pudding. It was a mind-warping black pudding of total brilliance. Rich and tasty with a good fatty character, but what made it so special, I feel, was the addition of a small amount of onion. This enhanced the complexity of flavours and had me wishing I could have had it all for myself. Amazing stuff. Go to Borough Market and buy some.