We’re at the Playboy Club. Yes, there are bunnies. Yes, there are men in suits, but there are also just as many ladies, and they are resoundingly not’of the night’. The lighting’s low but more to create atmosphere than to disguise any nefarious activities. Oh, and Salvatore Calabrese, aka’The World’s Leading Cocktail Expert’, is mixing drinks and holding court with oodles of panache.

The nan is just crispy enough to enjoy but still soft enough to get a firm grip on the lamb kebab inside. The spices were well-balanced but personally I could have done with some more chilli kick. If I’d been drunk, I’d have liked a lot more chilli. Let’s face it sublety is wasted on a man full of cooking lager.

From the North to the South poles, people do like a nice bit of cake at Christmastime. Packed with the prestige indicated by copious fruit-and-nut usage, these are an often boozy, always bountiful, and occasionally barmy bunch.

Let’s face it, the majority of London’s  Ã¢â‚¬ËœChristmas Markets’ are grim excuses for the real spirit of festive commerce felt throughout Europe’s more traditional town squares. £50 for a night spent shivering in a mock chalet scoffing lukewarm bratwursts and glugging glogg? No thank you. We’ll get a cheap deal off thetrainline.com and pop off to one of these destinations instead.

Who hasn’t had that awful feeling of sitting down, stomach pleasantly a-rumble, only to have those stirrings of gastric yearning turn to icy needles of dread upon having a cheap paper crown plonked on your bonce and reading the awful incantation’prawn cocktail; turkey with all the trimmings; Christmas pudding; mince pies and coffee’ on a holly-trimmed menu?

The indomitable Cyrus Todiwala would make a rather good Father Christmas, being jolly, jocular and- sorry, sahib- slightly rounded. But that bit of extra padding is just testament, were it needed, to his wicked culinary skills. To my knowledge, Cyrus isn’t planning on appearing in fancy dress, but he does have a fulsome festive offering for his fans.

It was only a matter of time before street food met posh nosh. And FEAST was one of the first to flaunt the culinary collision, hosting a bijou collective of traders and restaurateurs at their inaugural festival at Guy’s Hospital last summer. 5,000 food-lovin’ Londoners can’t all be wrong, and the Christmas FEAST line-up is looking pretty appetising…

Please God let this be the year the death knell sounds for those tawdry selection boxes holding a grotesque assemblage of shrink-wrapped specimens nefariously studded with’fruit du jour’ or muddled with metallic herbage. This year we kindly offer you  Paxton & Whitfield’s expert selection, and the opportunity to redeem your own cheeseboard. Seize it with both hands.

The countdown to Christmas has begun and Covent Garden’s Seven Dials and St Martin’s Courtyard are inviting you to enjoy a night of shopping and merriment on November 29th.

I know it’s only November and you might not like having to face it just yet, but the time has come to talk about Christmas and more specifically, Christmas menus. Luckily for you though, dear reader, I am easing you in, as my first assignment of the festive season involves no turkey, no stuffing and no cranberry sauce. In fact, it contains virtually no discernible elements of Christmas at all…