The absolute star of Potli’s show is the starter Chicken 65, tender poultry in a pungent ginger and pepper batter, like an excellent and healthy KFC. We couldn’t get enough. We also had tawa machi – tilapia fish steaks marinated in ginger, garlic and mustard which were good but we’d have liked more mustard.

In a passer-by-free part of London – down the western side of Hyde Park Corner – Mango Tree is unlikely to be on your regular route unless you work locally. If you are well ahead with your Christmas wrapping and have time for a late, long lunch, or are taking a day off to Christmas-shop and need to recover from the throng by warming your wintry bones and spicing up your flagging enthusiasm, the Christmas banquet is extremely generous and excellent value for money.

Meat Liquor is here. After much anticipation. The crew behind The Meatwagon have opened the doors to this once car park – fitting, seeing as chef Yiannis Papoutsis met pub owner Scott Collins in a Peckham car park, and thus forming Meatwagon – and in doing so have caused queues snaking around corners and up Welbeck Street.

There are plenty of options at Bratwurst with meal deals of sausages, as well as frikadelle and schnitzels too. With all the hype around street food, mostly stuff from the Far East, it’s worth remembering that closer to home we have a centuries old street food that is none the wurst for being eaten indoors either. Prost!

The site of the new Boxpark ‘pop up’ shopping mall smells of freshly sawn wood and recently applied paint. But it’s a good smell. New, exciting and full of potential. And while these shops don’t have any windows, they do have a positive recession-bucking outlook selling unusual, interesting things and offering some food outlets too. We try Chop’d

Following the success of their Club Coco in Verbier, co-owner Charlie Kearns and George Adams have created a destination that’s fun but not frivolous, which is probably just as well for anyone with a finely tuned appetite.

In Cabot Square and rather discreetly fronted, the new Iberica Canary Wharf gives good Gosh when you get inside. A rack of reclining jamon legs next to the door make it clear you aren’t in a clothes shop, as it once was, and the space surges up ahead of you. A nice long bar to one side, space centre and left, and above two galleried floors for overspill.

Roussillon was once well known as a shining example of London dining. Yet that was under Alexis Gauthier, since decamped to the bright lights of Soho. With the arrival of new chef Shane Hughes has Roussillon retained its charm?

Overall the Rookery seems to be doing the right things in the right way to become a popular neighbourhood joint. There’s a lot of middle-class, recession immune, money in Abbeville village but the restaurants there have mostly got complacent, giving the Rookery a chance to fly in successfully.

Bone marrow at 8am? Foodepedia mans up for a proper breakfast treat in the City at Hawksmoor’s Guildhall branch.