Sheba has done well in Brick Lane, even being winner of the 2006 / 2007 Chef of the Year Brick Lane Curry Festival. Fading clippings in their window testify that local papers like it and that one day, the Evening Standard even popped in. I didn’t see a clipping of Ken Livingstone shaking the owner’s hand but it must have been there somewhere, every curry house had to have one of those back in the 1980s, it was a GLC by-law.

Eight over Eight closed down in 2009 as a result of a fire which, given the restaurant’s clientele, was possibly started by a member of the working classes with a chip on his shoulder. It’s no good looking at me though guv, I’ve got a cast-iron alibi.

On a foodie stretch of Old Brompton Road Thali is up against the long standing and well loved Star of India and relative newbie Kare Kare, but Thali is in a different class. This is modern (but not mucked-about) north Indian cooking based on family recipes brought bang up to date – exactly the formula London foodies search for.

Allt-yr-Afon really is heaven on earth for diners with a yearning for delicious food, robust flavours and tradition with a big T.

Why are some cash machines located lower than others? In any row one will always be a couple of feet nearer the pavement than the rest. Is it like the special urinal in the gents, the one that allows small boys to relieve themselves without having to jump up and down, a procedure that tends to get a bit messy?

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.