Many art galleries have their cafes tucked down in a basement but the architects of the Tate building, which was opened to great acclaim in 1993, have given over their most prestigious level, the top floor, to the all-important purpose of visitor sustenance with The Café priding itself on sourcing its ingredients from Cornish growers and suppliers.

With a set menu at £14 for two courses, and just £17 for three, that looked really very tempting and excellent value Harrison’s goes up against a restaurant group like Locale (also in Balham) and wins by classy mains cooking and a far more central, buzzy, location.

Five months after the actual event, I was being treated to a birthday dinner at The Dorchester’s Cantonese, ‘China Tang’ which takes its name from Sir David Tang, clothes designer, gold-miner and cigar aficionado – Cuba’s Honorary Consul no less.

‘The whole area was an orchard before 1892,’ says co-owner Edward Bracken, thoughtfully spearing a warm garlicky olive, part of a large spread of tapas he’s had set out in front of us. ‘It once served as the Turkish Embassy, but otherwise was a hotel almost from the start almost a hundred years ago. As a hotel it was originally run by two descendants of Captain Cook!’ Such links to the past seem to come naturally to this unique place.

They apparently used to make arrows in Fletching – the fletch being the bit with the ‘wings’ on. Arrows used by the English at Agincourt were made here and anyone who has seen Olivier’s Henry V will recall that those arrows pretty much saved the day. Is a meal here going to save my day though?

Situated in Richmond’s fashionable shopping area, Brouge has been created out of the basement of a former cinema. Delivering great food and an exrensive range of Belgian beers, Brouge is well worth a visit.

If Kirsty Young invited me to name my desert island dish rather than disc, I would probably say ‘shellfish”, which seems apt. A recent craving for crustaceans took me to Essex, but not as you know it. Colchester’s Mersea Island is just five miles by two of tidal salt marsh

In the gorgeous Landmark Hotel in London whilst the menu upstairs in The Winter Garden is all fine dining, downstairs the menu at the intimate and rather chic Twotwentytwo has all bases covered. Steaks for Mr Business Traveller? Check. Burgers for the timid eater and the sullen teen? Check. Caesar Salad for the American arriving in his time machine from 1970? Check.

Le Cercle keeps a low profile, but the standard is consistently high and its ability to offer reasonably priced, streamlined and stylish food particularly at lunchtime is welcome. The people around Sloane Square may not be that strapped for cash, but those shopping around for bargains can always avoid cutting culinary corners by going to Le Cercle.

L’Etranger, I imagined, had been a destination joint in the 1980s, still humming on a Monday night in the noughties. This, I dreamed as D and I were led to our seats, was where Duran Duran might have been taken on the cusp of a record deal, or where Docklands’ mandarins with flinty eyes seeded the City’s birth.