It’s encouraging, the arrival of more and more restaurants where the emphasis is on flavour and value, not seeing how many micro basil leaves chef can make dance on the head of a pin. Antony Demetre has his Michelin stars, but more importantly he has his eye on the culinary ball.

I think it was when the keen young waiter gamely attempted to interest us in his breadbasket for around the sixth time that P’s patience finally snapped. ‘If he reappears with that bread one more time,’ she snarled to me sotto voce, ‘he’s going to find himself with a mini baguette in an unusual place.’

Brought to you by the minds behind Smithfield’s Club Gascon, what was the formerly burger heavy wine bar, Hodgson’s has emerged leavened.

I’ve been keen to review Pho for a while, having endured a frantic September filled with meetings, weddings, stag parties and business trips. I found it’s ideal for a quick meal and an escape from the zombie filled Oxford Street.

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.

Amico Bio is billed as “Charming, friendly, welcoming and meat-free- everything you wouldn’t expect of a City restaurant” and although the food was a mixed bag, it’s true to say that the restaurant does feel unique.

‘Fish is the star of the plate, not the chef’ proclaims Buddhist chef, Eric Ripert across two pages of Le Bernardin’s menu…

I’ve been banging on about Indian Zing since I first popped its roasted gram flour and cumin poppadoms into my greedy mouth three years ago. This is contemporary Indian cuisine at its very best – stylish but unpretentious, high class but reasonably priced and served with friendly warmth and knowledge.

I have never been to the Caribbean, I have never eaten Caribbean food. With my narrow appreciation of island cuisine all I knew to expect from the recently reborn, tropically themed bar and restaurant Mustik was perhaps some rice and peas, possibly a goat curry and a half decent mojito. The only clue from the outside that this is a Caribbean concept is the thatched straw canopies over the windows and main entrance.

If you like your pizzas about the same size as those spare wheels you see on the back of 4×4’s ostentatiously daubed with the credentials of an upmarket car showroom, then Basilico is for you. Their pizza, much like a small planet, is large enough to have its own moon.