We left Heinz Beck’s after paying £610 for four people – far too much even for food this good. Outside the door was a Ferrari Enzo costing about $670,000. It could just have been a Russian oligarch’s, but I think perhaps it was just Heinz’s.

A short walk from Balham station, and very close to Clapham common, the Avalon is a little away from the main shopping drag, but in our view is all the better for it. A popular destination, serving great food, it is well worth a visit.

The names of some bars and eateries give little away as to the mood to expect inside. The Big Chill House, on the other hand, tells it like it is. Depending on which way you interpret the name grammatically, this is both a place where you can chill – big time – as well as a big house in which you can chill. Either way, you get the picture: chilling is the name of the game here.

Set in the heart of Hoxton, The Real Greek is serving up traditional Greek food with a calorie-counted menu and new Cretan-inspired dishes that promise to make dining out and balancing a healthy lifestyle easy.

It’s a cliché of course to say that restaurants like Greens offer comfort food for the upper classes. This is a notion based on the idea that the upper classes don’t like ‘fancy’ food or stuff from Johnny Foreigner. They’re supposed to only like food that reminds them of nursery or public school. Well, as it happens, I am an ex-public schoolboy meself doncha know and we were never served oysters or lobster at our place. No doubt things were different at Eton.

It isn’t easy to fill venues on the industrial stretch of Bethnal Green road where Beach Blanket Babylon has hunkered down. Brick Lane’s melee bristles five minutes away. Commercial Road’s pencil moustache and cupcake brigade posture to the right. But despite the relative quiet on our Friday night visit, the punters seemed still to be loving it.

In a TV commercial a few years back a grumpy old lady bitterly complained that her local bank branch had been turned into ‘a trendy wine bar’. Well here around Threadneedle Street there’s hardly a bank branch left that isn’t now a restaurant or bar and while Mint Leaf may be the only ‘Indian’ it is rather trendy.

This imposing Victorian pub is cavernous and it is not until you walk through the entrance that you get a feel for the scale of the place. With good quality, well cooked dishes at reasonable prices, The Britannia is certainly worth visiting.

A short canal-side walk past the bustling bars and eateries left our abstention seeming ill founded as, in the middle of the after-work crowd, we spotted our destination, Massis. A curiously subdued venue set amid towering hives of industry the food here is simple, tasty and a wonderful conduit for easy bonhomie among friends.

There are a couple of things everyone should have local to them, a good curry house and a relaxed bar/restaurant. Until recently Wandsworth residents had The Chutney to satisfy the former, but since the demise of Dittos Bar & Restaurant nothing has come along to replace the latter. Now there’s Steam to give Wandsworth some puff.