Plaimont Wines

This French co-op, produces a range of wines using local grape varieties, many of which they have saved from extinction in order to maintain the originality of their wines. Plaimont wineries all use modern procedures in order to track the grapes from the vine to the bottle, using management software, to enable winemakers to know exactly where the grapes were grown.

Oscar Wilde menu at The Cadogan

The Cadogan is a bit confusing to get into. There’s the main lobby of course, but around the corner is the Langtry’s restaurant door. There’s also the Tradesman’s Entrance, but using that got Oscar Wilde arrested at The Cadogan some 115 years ago.

Don’t be slow to try an Escargot at Cafe Rouge

If you like snails then don’t be slow to head to Café Rouge . encouraged by the reception given to Heston Blumentahl’s Gothic Feast and now a record 50,000 Burgundy molluscs have been shipped in by Café Rouge for this month alone, as the nation celebrates National Escargot Day today 24 May.

Bar Boulud, London

Already critics have been raving about Bar Boulud, although that’s probably all part of the backlash against the kind of food that Blumenthal has so far championed. Now people, who a year ago would have sneered at you loftily for liking a burger, are actually saying they prefer nothing better than meat in a bun.

Sake No Hana, London

Sake No Hana feels comfortable, intimate and not remotely pretentious like some of the other well known celeb-laden Japanese eateries (mentioning no names…) in the vicinity. So if you want great food, attentive service in an un-fussy environment than Sake No Hana is for you. But if WAG culture, drunk D-list celebrities and rude staff and generic service is what your after then head to Berkeley Street for your Sushi

Maker’s Mark -make mine a bourbon

Gosh, everything’s a masterclass these days. If it’s not pointing Dutch bricks in wigwam stylee, it’s (very three years ago) butchering a cow or slicing gouda into helicopter blades. I plumped for a more traditional lesson – the master distiller of Yeehah Maker’s Mark (that redneck waxed bottle found on the top shelf), givin’ us all the lowdown on how the corn-rich distillate came to be a bourbon