I seem to have an aversion to dining at restaurants around major museums. It cannot be that hard to devise a lucrative ‘special 2 course meal’ for the tourist in search of a ‘good’ (cheap, low quality) deal. I would like to think that true foodies such as us could never be blinded by such flagrant attempts to entrap.

With afternoon teas and a menu that also includes Welsh Rarebit, vegetables foraged for chef from the Kent countryside, classics like potted shrimps, a beautifully British cheeseboard and even schoolboy scarer prunes, the Goring is a great big Dreadnought of British imperial dining power steaming its own unique track through a sea of mediocre, me too, ‘Modern European’ restaurants. We stand up salute it.

Three days following a fun lunch at Heston Blumenthal’s revamped ‘Little Chef’, I was at ‘The Fat Duck’ for the strangest lunch of my life. Linen guides rate it the world’s second best restaurant and despite it being in Berkshire, one guide even describes it as ‘London’s finest’.

If only all pubs were welcoming drinking taverns that also managed to knock out robust and hearty British nosh. Unfortunately, far too many ‘gastro pubs’ have forgotten that they were once pubs at all, while the rest of the capital’s locals now seem to now serving Thai food.

It would be a shame to let the hotel atmosphere downstairs put you off ascending to Nipa because the combination of warm welcome, authentic carefully considered cooking and really rather reasonable prices mark this place out as well worth a visit.

It’s hidden place Saki. In the evening the shop above closes and you could be forgiven for thinking there was no restaurant there at all. This shyness, combined with the Dickensian darkness of West Smithfield at night, means you might never venture down the stairs to the bar and restaurant beneath. You’d be slapping yourself forcefully with a wet tuna if you didn’t though because this is a very good restaurant indeed.

I ventured to ‘The Double Club’ on a double date. The west meets the Congo (and vice versa) in this temporary venture, produced by Prada. Down a dark cobbled alley behind Angel tube, it was an unlikely find. A Victorian warehouse is awning to three spaces woven by artists and graced by fashionistas. The mind behind is Carsten Höller, a German gripped by Congo-mania..

Recession what recession? Those in work are having it large, with ever decreasing mortgage repayments giving them more cash to splash. Maybe that’s why here in Gilgamesh on a Wednesday night the bar is pretty full and the restaurant is too. In the private dining room, a hundred and fifty people are tucking into chef Ian Pengelley’s Pan Asian food and the man himself can be seen in his open kitchen toiling away happily.

Knowing my fondness for frippery and resistance to retail, I was surprised when Foodepedia’s Führer posted me to the ‘Meat & Wine Co.’. Established on the approach to Westfield, London’s latest shopping juggernaut, it represents a South African firms first stake (and steaks) in the U.K.