Anita Pati

Tamarind spring menu

Alfred Prasad continues to deliver the goodies at his subterranean Indian Mayfair restaurant. Until the end of April, diners can have three courses for £19.50 or £29.50 with wine £29.50

Trullo

Hurray, Trullo! Some nine months after it opened, I have finally been! Brushing past it on my way to Highbury & Islington tube, this esteemed neighbourhood restaurant, in my own neighbourhood, has been rammed happy every time I pass. It’s been impossible to book, I had to wait over a month for a two-hour window and that only at 7pm on a Monday evening but I pounced on it. This place is in high demand.

1 Lombard Street

Hackney hackles all a quiver, Anita Pati finds she has to choke back her class warrior gut feelings as she guiltily spoons some rather fine scallops into her mouth. Sometimes, she has to admit, posh food is really rather nice and that most bankers are from Essex anyway.

Blacks private members club, 67 Dean Street, Soho

My first taste of the exclusive Soho private members club Blacks was when a snooty man with a stuck up nose said snottily that I was ringing the wrong doorbell to get in. So exclusive are these PMCs that it’s impossible to find them. In fact, the entrance was in the cellar. And once in, what a charming bar that welcomed us with blazing hearth.

Eight course Menu Legumes tasting menu at Roussillon

Losing its Michelin star this year will not deter Roussillon, say the staff of the genteel French Chelsea restaurant. They’re hoping fresh blood and head chef Dan Gill will win it back. The twelve-year-old menu is apparently a stalwart with vegephiles and it’s certainly rare to find such a thing in restaurants.

Inamo St James London

Anita Pati finds that ordering her meal off a touch screen is a touch odd, but warms to the food at Inamo St James the second branch of a concept that's had a mixed reception for it's Pan-Asian cuisine and futuristic concept.

India Cookbook: by Pushpesh Pant and Regional Cooking of India: by Mridula Baljekar

A sirius whisky tasting at The Dalmore/Spectator Burns night supper

Anita Pati goes into the lions' den at the intimate, oak-panelled offices of the Spectator magazine as a host of Dalmore whisky to drink from the last known bottle of Dalmore Sirius, a 1951-vintage single malt whisky with a retail selling price of £20,000 per bottle. Apparently there were only ever 12 bottles of the Sirius in the world, all of which sold out in four days

From pork to fork

The day would one day come, I knew, when I’d be confronted with pig carcass. And that day came to pass in rural Oxfordshire this winter, and I was armed with a handsaw. I’m not vegetarian so when Peaches, the 13-strong chain of gastropubs, invited me to a butchery session at their headquarters near Bicester I reckoned it was only honest to go.

Agua at Sanderson launches spa cuisine menu

Ready for your January Health drive? New Year, New You? Agua Spa at Sanderson is launching a new spa cuisine package this January where you can get a health-focused meal to complement whichever spa package you go for. Anita Pati went to try it out and found herself feeling a lot better, if still a litle hungry after

Elena’s L’Etoile,

Elena’s L’Etoile, with its bistro charm, kicks out naughty frills and Frenchness like the can-can. Its eclectic and Art Deco decoration includes random brass wall inlays and two stained glass windows inserted in the ceiling. Pictures of actors and slebs – not all visitors – plaster the tobacco-coloured walls. Diners are respectable, good-humoured, full of bonhomie.

Taste of Christmas safari with Vietnamese pork

The Big Game? Anita Pati dons pith helmet and loads her 12 bore to go on Safari in, errr, well in Clerkenwell actually. She bags us a nice Vietnamese style slow-cooked pork recipe from The Modern Pantry

Juniper Dining London

Yorkshire-born chef Rob Wilkinson has set up his restaurant Juniper in Highbury to please his Arsenal-loving wife. Having worked through a clutch of Manchester restaurants before a stint at Boisdale Bishopsgate, Wilkinson now heads Juniper’s kitchen while his father-in-law does the accounts – a true family-run restaurant.

The Duchess of Kent, Islington

There’s a bit of a dearth of good pubs around Highbury & Islington train station in London. You can take your pick from a jiggy but rammed theatre pub, a brawly boozer full of reddened baldheads or a freezing warehouse bar. Tempted? But if you poke behind the side streets, there’s a decent gastropub and a bit of a secret.

Patak's Curry Club

The Patak Empire strikes back from the dusty shelves of Asian grocers nationwide. Those purveyors of pickles have teamed up with Masterchef winner Dhruv Baker and wine expert Suzy Atkins to launch a curry club from their website.

Sienna, Dorchester

Chef Russell Brown is showing us a crippled lobster with one claw. Once a warlord, it now lives in an oxygenated tank in a fish processing plant. These mighty fallen are part of the Dorset fishing haul that makes up the Michelin-starred chef’s menu at his Dorchester restaurant, Sienna.

Canadian ingredients at L’Atelier Des Chefs in London

We’d come to L’Atelier des Chefs cookery school to learn about Canadian ingredients hosted by the Canadian Tourism Commission. And despite the Canadian chat about syrups of birch and maple, berries of cloud and lingon, almost every attendee was neck-craning for the fiddlehead ferns.

'Hand-picked' by Harvey Nichols

The idea of Handpicked is that head chef Jeremy Bloor from Harvey Nick’s OXO restaurant takes the press to visit one of his suppliers, in this case, his cheese one. Towny girl Anita Pati tags along avoiding cowpats and gets to  eat a locally sourced al fresco lunch in a field with a load of random strangers.

Tom's Kitchen, Somerset House

Tourists will enjoy Tom’s Kitchen with its elegant décor and views down a terrace to the Thames. And the food, on the whole, is good. But it won’t blow you away – which is not what he wants. He wants you to stay.

Tempo

Tempo, with its barley-coloured walls and splendid turquoise upholstered chairs could seem formal when empty. But as a Regency drawing room in a listed building, its cornices, fittings and curves substituted any lack of warmth. Perhaps the waffle ceiling and square arch could be more sympathetic but they also showed boldness- like the food.