Trinity is the second Clapham restaurant of chef patron Adam Byatt, with the first being the now defunct Thyme, and it works very hard to amalgamate fine dining with its friendly neighbourhood restaurant ethos. Soft lighting gently framed the windows with only a small discreet plaque revealing the restaurant within, Trinity.

If anyone gives you lip about South London being a cultural wasteland and tells you the only food we specialise in is fried chicken, I suggest you take them down to The Cambria where it’s so good they’ll feel very much at home, wherever they’re from.

Intense. That is probably the best way to describe the experience at Bel Canto. You see, at Bel Canto, guests are served by waiters who perform opera at regular intervals. And in the relatively small room of the restaurant, that’s quite a lot of reverberations to take in.

Champion sabreur, at table philosopher and Depardieu look alike, Weiss is the front man of Brasserie St. Jacques, the jolliest incarnation of what was the original ‘Petrus’ many arguments ago…

There’s nothing like starting your evening with an escort. By this, I don’t mean a pre-prandial visit to a lady of the night but instead having a man beat a path through a crowd to ensure that you make your reservation on time.The necessity for this bustling though was down to the Witchery restaurant lying only a few yards from Edinburgh Castle.

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.

I really wanted to like Redhook but there’s a balance between making customers feel like part of the crew and casting them out on such a long line that they feel lost and forgotten, bobbing around in a sea of other thirsty and hungry people. Put some welly into front of house and Redhook could be reeling them in.

You can tell a lot about a person from their sense of humour, and while, naturally, I take great pleasure in witty wordsmithery and brilliant badinage, my funny bone belongs to sauce. So when I saw that the new Bavarian Beerhouse is located in Crutched Friars, I confess that I allowed myself a small, but heart-felt ‘oo-er’.

I rang the restaurant upstairs and said ‘Hello I’m eating oysters downstairs and its freezing and making me sad. Can I come and have lunch in your nice warm restaurant please?’ And the man said ‘Yes but you have to order in the next six minutes because the kitchen closes at 2.30.’

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.