Clays in Reading is a large Indian restaurant whose owners are originally from Hyderabad. We had a really good meal there, the dishes of a high standard. There was a particularly good cabbage bhajia and also an unusually good bhindi in amongst the dishes that we tried. Bronzo is a Sardinian restaurant that opened recently in Chiswick. The menu features some fairly generic Italian dishes as well as some Sardinian recipes. This is a simple, neighbourhood restaurant but I really enjoyed their tiramisu and the place is inexpensive. The Watermans Arms in Brentford serves Japanese izakaya food as we ..read more

Jeux Jeux is an okonomiyaki restaurant in the unlikely location of the South Bank. This Japanese savoury pancake is popular in Hiroshima and Osaka and is very well reproduced here, the cooking all done in front of the diners on a large steel hotplate. This was very good value and the whole experience was friendly and fun.  1890 by Gordon Ramsay is located on the first floor of the Savoy Hotel, with a view out over the main entrance. The food is quite classical and generally well made, and the service was particularly good. The issue is the price, which is very high indeed, made worse by t ..read more

The Cocochine serves the rarest of things, an a la carte menu in an upmarket restaurant. It features the cooking of Larry Jayasekara, drawing on his classical culinary training and featuring much higher quality ingredients than are generally seen in London kitchens. Set in a Mayfair townhouse, the cooking is high class the wine list is unusually kindly in its markups. This looks set to be one of the best openings of the year. Ormer Mayfair is a one-star Michelin restaurant in the basement of the Flemings Hotel. It delivered another very enjoyable meal at this most recent visit, the star dish b ..read more

Black Salt in East Sheen is the younger sister of Dastaan and generally cooks the recipes of the mothership. There was a superb new dish tonight in the form of stone bass tikka, while classic dishes like the pepper prawns and kale bhajias were as good as ever. The Ritz is a restaurant that I am constantly drawn back to. It really is the complete package, with its grand 1906 dining room, superb classical cooking based on high-quality ingredients, and slick service to match. A new dish of crab is pictured, and tasted as good as it looks. There is no better restaurant in London ..read more

[[image2]] San Sebastian (Donostia to the locals) is a charming coastal city in the heart of the Basque country. It is 102km (63 miles) from Bilbao airport if you want to fly in, an hour or so by car using the motorway linking Bilbao and San Sebastian. From the UK you can fly directly to Bilbao from Heathrow via Iberian Airlines (there is no direct British Airways flight), or from Stansted using Easyjet. San Sebastian is blessed with a glorious natural setting, with a crescent shaped harbour, a pier separating two extensive sandy beaches, framed by spectacular cliffs at either end. The archite ..read more

Hannah (pictured) is a kaiseki restaurant, a rarity in London, located on the South Bank. This is an odd spot for a serious restaurant, but the food is plenty serious. This was the best kaiseki-style food that I have eaten in London, and compares well with many such meals that I have eaten in Japan. There is a fine sake list to go with the food. Josephine Bouchon is a London take on the bouchons of Lyon, and it does a very fine job of it. Hearty dishes like sweetbreads with morels and salad Lyonnaise are the order of the day here. The food is excellent, the only drawbacks being the tiny tables ..read more

64 Goodge Street is related to the Quality Chop House, and serves bistro-style food with excellent gougeres and a hearty main course of rabbit that I enjoyed. Crepes Suzette was an example of the kind of dessert on offer.  Service was very switched on and the wine list had slightly lower than usual markups. Toba is an Indonesian restaurant from a chef who used to run a food stall in Camden Market. I would highly recommend the beef rendang, which was very good indeed. Other dishes such as the chicken satay were not in that league though they were perfectly pleasant. The restaurant was very ..read more

  At present there are 109 three Michelin star restaurants in the world, and I have now been to 102 of these with my visit this week to La Vie (pictured) in Osnabruck. La Vie cooks elaborate modern food, though the various techniques and tools chefs use these days are very much in the background, so there is no sense of molecular gastronomy in the dining room. Unlike some modern chefs Thomas Bühner is obsessive about ingredients, and has established a kitchen garden near the restaurant that can supply most of the vegetables and flowers used in the kitchen. Another nice bonus in a three st ..read more

Taillevent in Paris is one of the icons of French cuisine, running since 1946. After once having three Michelin stars, it had a relatively rough culinary patch for a time but has now been restored to two Michelin star status with a new chef. The meal we had was excellent, reflecting the quite classical style of food that characterises the restaurant. A scallop souffle was particularly impressive, as was a fine turbot dish and a whole black truffle baked in pastry.  Bebe Bob is a restaurant in the Bob Bob Ricard stable, serving only roast chicken as a main course. The starters and desserts ..read more

Cho Asia is a Putney restaurant serving food with a mix of Thai, Chinese and Indian influences. The head chef is Indian and has a serious pedigree, and to be honest it seemed very odd for him to be knocking out Thai green curry and Chinese noodles when he is capable of producing superb Indian food, as he did at his previous billeting. Jin Da Thai is a Hammersmith Thai eatery that serves authentic and good value Thai food with service that ranges from chaotic (on my last visit) to marginally grumpy (this visit). It is a simple local place and the dishes that we tried were very pleasant. We also ..read more