Back in 5 Minutes, a restaurant and private dining room hidden at the back of a designer tailor’s, launched in June, bringing quintessentially British food to one of London’s last bastions of Bangladeshi cooking. Anita Pati disappears inside

This article must begin with an apology. A heartfelt sorry to Anjum Anand’s scampish daughter for crashing her family lunch and making a vast dent into her pile of fresh roti and keema peas. It’s almost as criminal as taking candy from a baby. But, in my defence, you just weren’t showing due appreciation for how deft your Mum is in the kitchen. Yet. But you will. Her flaky parathas and vibrant veggies will win you over.

The bread is Roman, which is to say a Rome speciality and not something dug up by Baldrick on Time Team. Pizza Bianca Romana is baked in two metre long, 30 cm wide slices and cut horizontally for filling. The outside is golden and crunchy and the fillings we found to be a mix of good tradition with innovation

At other festivals you’ve either got good food or good music, but at Jamie Oliver’s Big Feastival, punters don’t have to sacrifice one for the other. You can wander around the food stalls while waiting for the next act to appear on stage.

Today is suspiciously auspicious. Not only is it my dining partner’s birthday, but also that of the bloke behind us. And, to cap it all, it’s only Navroz (New Year) for the Zoroastrians- the Persian sect from which the Parsis of India descended. The Parsi community has a well-deserved reputation for enriching both culture and cuisine wherever they tread- and, since landing at Gujarat in the 17th century, their influence has spread far and near.

Revealing itself like one of Tsarina Alexandra’s glamorous Fabergé eggs from its rather theatrical (if not to say OTT) presentation case, a bottle of Russian Standard Gold Vodka cannot be described as a’shrinking violet’ in the spirits marketplace.

Mmmm chicken, lovely, lovely chicken. You can keep your disgusting foie gras, your morbid pate en croute and your silly pan fried medallions of monkfish, it has to be fried chicken for me every time! Who would have thought that it was so very, very good?

Will a spicy working lunch raise morale and get the ideas flowing? El Camion think so and sent us round a sample of their office takeaway to prove the point. It certainly made everyone happy, if not exactly Speedy Gonzalez fast.

Fancy a laugh? Pick up a gatefold menu next time you’re passing the local takeaway, and prepare to enter a surreal comedy world where dishes ‘sauteed with springs’ are the least of your worries- and you’re every bit as likely to quash your appetite as awaken it.