Pre-lockdown it was full since the day it opened. The reason for this enthusiastic response is because Santiago Lastra, the Mexican chef, was project manager for René Redzepi’s Mexico Pop up in 2017, so there is a sprinkling of stardust from the leading chef of his generation.

Despite the sniping from some who found it unpalatable to spend US$750 a head for René’s Mexican experience, the Pop Up was a great success, with a menu that featured dishes such as cactus with tamarind, grilled chillis stuffed with chocolate sorbet and tortillas filled with grasshoppers and tomatoes.

I have eaten at Redzepi’s Noma and also at his Pop Ups from Poland to Peru – and can testify he is a master at creating dishes that stun you with their juxtaposition of flavours and textures from local ingredients.

Santiago Lastra declares he is following the same path with Kol, though his ingredients come mostly from Britain rather than Mexico. Apart from a chef’s table menu, which wasn’t specified, there are only two options – four courses for £55 or £70 for the same dishes plus a langoustine taco.

Everything is prepared in an open-plan central kitchen area with efficient service from the predominantly Spanish staff.

The first amuse was a seaweed and chili broth served in a stoneware cup, which packed a satisfying umami hit and quite warming, perhaps thanks to some mescal, though the chilli sensation was purely surface and lacked depth.

Then there was a tiny scoop of pistachio mole with a scattering of salad leaves and a corn crisp. This could easily be visually confused with guacamole except that it was virtually tasteless, not helped by the dominance of the corn flavours from the challengely hard crisp. Next, the ceviche of kohlrabi was a thing of beauty and the only savoury dish that was served without a tortilla, taco or corn crisp. It was subtle and satisfying, assisted by the smoked beetroot cubes and an excellent side portion of chilli sauce. The langoustine taco was satisfyingly sweet and enhanced by squeezing the juices from its tailless body over it. However, it was hardly more than a mouthful given the size of the langoustine. The next dish was semi-raw lamb cubes, and a herb salad guajillo mayonnaise completely hidden by a large corn disc. Again, the corn flavours overshadowed the subtlety of the dish.

The main course we chose was the whole grilled octopus with bone marrow and a tiny cup of Jerusalem artichokes. The octopus, which came from Spain, was exquisitely cooked and meltingly soft. It was cooked in lamb fat, which wasn’t a problem but the accompanying bone marrow didn’t have any relevance to the main ingredient. In fact, it was a hindrance as it was caramelised with sugar, which made it sweet and sickly. The waiter’s suggestion was to wrap the octopus up in freshly baked tortillas, then add the bone marrow and artichoke. Again, I failed to see how the combination enhanced the experience – in fact, every dish was more satisfying if you actually stripped away the corn element.

The pudding was a traditional chocolate steam cake wrapped in a banana leaf with corn husk ice cream and sea buckthorn. The chocolate cake was more like a paste but everything worked well together.

There was a wine pairing for each of the two menus, ranging from £45 to £60, but given that the list had a preponderance of obscure natural wines from Georgia, Czech Republic, Croatia and Switzerland, I declined. There was a minor Chardonnay from Burgundy, which was priced at £96.75 (retail cost £22). Kol has a strict policy of no corkage, so the options are narrowed to drinking predominantly fringe wines, which they call the “new classics”.

To sum up, this was not a satisfying experience – there were not enough highlights or original combinations to stimulate the palate. A good example of how to succeed with this approach is Ikoyi, which is described as a Nigerian restaurant but is in fact a Modernist reinterpretation of Nigerian ingredients. There was precious little feeling at Kol that the combinations created something greater than their parts. Also, for the price, one would expect more generous amounts – the so-called whole grilled octopus we were offered for our table of three was in fact a quadrapus and the lamb dish was the only other one that might barely qualify as even starter sized.

Regardless of this, post-lockdown it will be a commercial and critical success, such is the marketing power of an endorsement by René Redzepi and the craving of the dining community for something apparently innovative and ground-breaking.

Kol Restaurant, 9 Seymour St London W1H 7BA

Set Menus – £55 and £70, https://kolrestaurant.com

The situation has been partially ameliorated with the arrival of Dan Keeling and Mark Andrew, whose Noble Rot opened on Lamb’s Conduit Street in 2015. At best, the cuisine was the equivalent of thoughtful pub food, cooked by Paul Weaver and overseen by Stephen Harris, chef of the renowned Sportsman near Whitstable, Kent. However, the food was secondary to the wine list, which itemized hundreds of wines. It was a pleasure to uncover obscure offerings such as Château des Tours from Rayas or Burgundy from Roulot. Their passion for wine extended to an eponymous publication, which, along with The World of Fine Wine, are the best wine magazines in the business.

A year ago, Keeling and Andrew announced they were opening Noble Rot Soho on the former site of Soho’s Gay Hussar, the favoured restaurant of the Literary Labour Left. It was vaguely Hungarian food, thanks to the influence of proprietor Victor Sassie, who had spent time in Budapest. Relying on its unique blend of “gossip and goulash”, Sassie was the major reason for its success – he once threw out George Brown, the then Foreign Secretary, for groping a woman at a neighbouring table. Fellow Labour MP Tom Driberg, who Churchill once remarked was the sort of person who gave sodomy a bad name, was once stretchered out from one of the private rooms. As he reached the front door, he hastened to reassure the startled diners that he was suffering from a heart attack rather than food poisoning. I used to go there occasionally more than 40 years ago with Christopher Hitchens, but the only Labour figure I recall seeing regularly was a jovial Roy Hattersley. Latterly, it was allegedly the gathering place for Tory Wets to engineer the removal of Margaret Thatcher.

Greek Street still lives up to its louche reputation. Not so long ago, I was lunching at Soho House, when I glanced across the street and there silhouetted on a blind over a first-floor window, was a couple copulating energetically. Further up Greek Street, no such view was on offer at Noble Rot Soho, probably because the first-floor window panes are slightly opaque. Such is the reputation of Keeling and Andrew and the deluge of praiseworthy coverage; it was impossible to get a reservation for at least a week. The décor is attractive and cosy, with saloon style seating along each of the mirrored walls with a display of decanters along the dado. The central open corridor leads to the upstairs rooms, which are more atmospheric, with full length murals celebrating the street front and former guests. The current customers all looked like they bugger around in the arts, with not a tie in sight. The bearded pair on the adjoining table were discussing the merits of Château Léoville Barton versus Beychevelle (Roy Jenkins favourite) though they ended up drinking Lafon-Rochet 87, a minor Saint-Estèphe from a questionable vintage, though the sommelier assures me it was perfectly potable.

Overall, the wine list offers few bargains under £60 – you are better off trying Andrew Edmunds or 10 Greek St. However, once you go above this figure, there are plenty of interesting bottles nudging £80 and upwards. If you want to celebrate with some Champagne, Pol Brut Blanc de Blanc 02 for £132 and Cristal 08 at £240 are both steals. Corkage is a reasonable £25 and the general mark-up is usually double or less, which is rare for London. The set lunch of the day looked like a bargain at £22 for three courses. I drank a bottle of Murgo Etna Rosso 17, which was a perfect light fragrant lunch time wine.

Maybe it is a mistake to review somewhere so early after opening as the food didn’t really excite me – the Choux bun, duck liver parfait and Tokaji jelly was slightly chilled on the inside, so not a lot of impact. The game stuffed cabbage and sour cream was pleasant enough but verging on bland – it was impossible to guess what the game actually was. And the Swaledale beef shin goulash “Gay Hussar” was not exactly packed with flavour – like a lot of beef shin, it was slightly dry in the middle – perhaps beef hearts would be a better alternative. I imagine that paprika was somewhere in the mix, but it didn’t raise its voice. One argument could be that the food is kept distinctly under-seasoned for the sake of the fine wine, which is a valid enough excuse.

The Armagnac Baba and whipped cream wasn’t saturated enough for my taste either, though admittedly the only Baba Rhum that knocked me sideways was at the Hotel de Paris in Monte Carlo and it probably cost more than the entire meal at Noble Rot Soho.

It almost seems irrelevant though to carp on about the cuisine, as the atmosphere is addictive – perfect well-informed service, reasonable prices and everybody having an exceedingly good time. It is extraordinary how such a new venture has already embedded itself in Soho. If only a few more restaurants would offer this range of wines for such amounts. However, a problem faced by all restaurants that offer rarities at sensible prices is that they can sell out within the month and often can’t be found again. The proprietors mentioned in their advance publicity that they had Cecile Tremblay Burgundy but I doubt if it will still be there by the end of the year – ditto any wines produced by Rayas. However, there are plenty of alternatives to keep you amused or simply bring your own rarities.

Noble Rot Soho (www.noblerot.co.uk) 2 Greek Street Soho W1D 4NB +44 207 183 8190. Closed Sundays. Set Lunch £22 for three courses or £18 for two without wine.

Despite the earlier havoc created by the spread of Coronavirus in Italy, firm measures appeared to have worked, although Rome was never the epicentre. In recent weeks, new cases here vary between zero and single numbers.

One of the greatest tourist destinations in the modern world has been reclaimed by the Romans, with foreigners a rare sight even in cosmopolitan destinations such as the Vatican and Capitoline museums. Normally the Vatican Museums deal with upwards of 25,000 visitors daily but at present the figures are restricted to 10% of this, which means treasures usually obscured by jostling spectators can be viewed sometimes with no one else in the room. From a balcony overlooking the Forum, it appeared to be virtually deserted. On the streets, there are a few brave souls from Germany, Austria and Britain but no Americans, Russians, Chinese or Saudis. This gives one a privileged feeling of being enveloped in another culture, enhanced by clusters of local youth just chattering and laughing in the narrow streets surrounding the Pantheon and Campo di Fiori.

Not many of the well-established hotels have re-opened yet but those that have, including the Hotel de Russie on Piazza del Popolo are now populated by groups of Romans in the public areas, all wearing face masks until they are seated. The management took advantage of the earlier lock down to completely restore the rear “secret garden” on the Pincian Hill, which was designed by Guiseppe Valadier.

Behind the scenes, such places are hurting as occupancy rates are around 15%, given that nearly half of all Summer bookings were Americans. The heavily occupied open-air restaurant and gardens, though, do evoke a sense of normalcy.

Very few of the multi-Michelin-starred restaurants are currently open, but they were never the point of dining out in Rome. Instead, there are a plethora of casual local establishments serving versions of cucina povera, usually with wine lists you can only dream of elsewhere.

This was the reason for a return to La Matricianella, a family-owned place on a side street equidistant between Augustus’s tomb and the Italian Parliament. Popular with politicians and other power brokers, it possesses one of the greatest value wine lists in Rome, crammed with superb Amarones, Barolos and Barbarescos below current wholesale prices. Given how crammed the outside terrace is, there were Perspex “Sneeze Screens” shielding surrounding diners but these were soon mentally dismissed. Perhaps the head chef was on furlough because apart from a satisfying tagliatelle funghi porcini, the remaining dishes of veal, roast potatoes and spinach were verging on overcooked and parched. Remarkably, I wouldn’t hesitate to return, thanks to my forgiving nature and the spectacular Produttori del Barbaresco Asili 2014 for less than £40.

The next day was occupied by visiting the Vatican Museums. The 25-minute walk from Piazza del Popolo was broken by a visit to Franchi’s, a simple deli with tables that has been on the Via Cola di Rienzo for more than a century, serving pasta dishes, whole quail and delicious cold peppers, spinach and artichokes. On the return journey, further along the same street and opposite the Piazza della Libertad is Gelateria La Romana, which serves some of the best puddings and ice creams in Rome.

Supper was at Da Armando Al Pantheon, a tiny restaurant on a side street adjoining the Pantheon, which had been recommended by Katie Parla, one of Rome’s leading food writers. This serves the essence of Roman Cuisine – gutsy, offal-based dishes such as Panino con Coratella d’abbacchio (heart, liver, lungs of lamb on a bed of spinach) along with a fragrant Spaghetti alla Gricia – cured pork jowl, pecorino and black pepper. However, the dish of the day was Faraona ai funghi porcini (luscious Guinea fowl with porcini, pine nuts and Sicilian spices). Again, the prices were ridiculously cheap, though perhaps that explained why my roast lamb chops also contained dangerously hidden shards of bone that could easily take out a tooth with an incautious crunch.

The next day was devoted to exploring a segment of the Via Appia, the original cobbled superhighway from Rome to Brindisi. We grabbed a bottle of mineral water and a porchetta panini from Norcineria Viola, which has been serving all porcine products in the Campo de’ Fiori since 1890. Only five miles out of Rome and suddenly you are on a two-thousand-year-old dead-straight road interspersed with catacombs, ruined churches, roman tombs and the floorplans of former villas. We began in front of a huge circular mausoleum, originally occupied by Cecilia Matella, the daughter-in-law of Marcus Licinius Crassus, the richest man in Caesar’s Rome. Opposite is San Nicola, a ruined fourteenth century Gothic church.

The Via Appia is virtually traffic-free as any car attempting to drive along the rutted road tips and up down like a boat in a storm. There are also some contemporary villas, one of which was occupied by Sophia Loren, but they are out of sight behind locked gates.

Our cultural pursuit the next day was the Capitoline Museum, the world’s first public collection of sculpture, with the staircase entrance dominated by the gigantic third century figures of Castor and Pollux. At the current time, you can linger as long as you please to see the highlights such as the colossal head of Constantine or the original she-wolf of Rome, said to be of Etruscan origin, though some recent research suggests it was created in the Middle Ages. From a terrace, you get an uninterrupted view of the Forum, again, virtually deserted. Just in front of the Curia, there is a small clump of greenery – an olive tree, a vine and a fig tree. Our friend Ivan Ruggeri pointed out that in the Old Testament, they are sacred in Ancient Israel but in this case, they relate to early Roman myths, though they were replanted in the Twentieth Century.

London friends had spent a week in Rome ahead of us and insisted we try Taverna Trilussa in Trastevere, the Roman equivalent of Shoreditch. This was heavily endorsed by Alessandra, the impressively forceful and bossy concierge at the de Russie. I named our preferred time, which she said would be fine, despite it being one of the most patronised restaurants in Rome, even during these restricted times. When I asked her how could she be so certain it would be available then, she smiled: “Do you think they would ever dare not find space for my customers?”

Taverna Trilussa is the Roman version of London’s River Café – a smart, popular place with special care to provide the best ingredients regardless of cost. This was definitely the most accomplished meal we had – bucatini all’ amatriciana served in its cooking pan and stinco di agnello da latte con patate arrosto (milk-fed lamb shank with roast potatoes). The service was also equal to that of the River Café, with everybody eating outside surrounded by greenery and large umbrellas. If any city appears normal during these stressful times, it is Rome because everybody eats outside in the Summer months anyway. It was only when I spoke to the Trilussa manager that a more challenging picture emerged. “We normally serve 350 covers nightly but now, we never have more than 140,” he explained. Not only that, the wine list is full of Italy’s finest wines – Barolos from Conterno, Giacosa and Gaja and Super Tuscans from Ornellaia and Sassicaia, all for hundreds of pounds a bottle, but no one is ordering them as these are invariably purchased by wealthy tourists. The manager explained that usually, more than half of their customers are foreigners but at present, they are lucky to have even a handful.

On our final day, we managed to get highly prized tickets to the blockbuster Raphael Exhibition at the Quirinale – to be honest, this was another bit of sleight of hand from Concierge Alessandra. Happy we went to it but because of lockdown, only groups of ten were allowed into each room at a time with whistles blown to move you on, which somehow took away the magic.

Taking advantage of this paucity of tourists, we dined on our final night at Da Fortunato al Pantheon. The food was straightforward save for a luscious mezzemaniche all’amatriciana con pecorino romano e guanciale di Amatrice and a well-executed risotto ai funghi porcini with a reassuring number of coin-sized slivers of black truffle. However, in this case, what made the experience memorable was the view from the outside tables – a large chunk of the Pantheon looming at the end of the street.

There is nothing gloomy about the atmosphere in Rome at night – everything appears to be functioning normally especially as every square and side street has voluble people seated outside enjoying themselves. Until mainstream tourists consider it safe to return though, Rome will be in the same uncertain boat as the rest of us, though I know where I would rather be until things finally change for the better.

Chef-owner Brett Graham told me that it was simply not viable to re-open at this stage, given that nearly two thirds of his diners are either over 50 or from abroad. Social distancing would also prove impossible even if reduced to a metre – how do you serve someone a plate of food without being less than three feet from them? And then, there’s the tiny kitchen space and the narrow stairs to the single occupancy male and female lavatories. But I suspect it’s not just the technicalities, it’s the way such a tip toe approach to serving food and wine would destroy the entire atmosphere of the place.

For the past decade, this former pub on the perimeter of Notting Hill has been the first destination for Britain’s – and the world’s – most knowledgeable chefs and oenophiles. Australian-born Brett Graham gained his first Michelin star here in his mid-twenties and has since doubled that number and clinched most other awards, including being in the top ten of the Worlds 50 Best Restaurant ratings and twice winning the British National Restaurant Award. Even if you ignore the accolades and the peerless cooking, what made it so memorable was the sheer enjoyment of eating there and service that was genuinely friendly and unfussy. It was not just over weight gourmands or City Grandees or even former Prime Ministers, but young lovers on their first serious date or giggling Japanese girls photographing every dish. So many luncheon guests lingered over a second or third bottle of wine, that there an unwritten rule that they had to leave by 6pm so staff could prepare for the evening service. In my own case, I live within minutes of the front door, so it also qualifies as my “local”. This proximity meant I occasionally had friends to stay from abroad who were booked in for dinner and lunch the following day.

It is interesting to reflect on how some outstanding chefs take some time to find their culinary feet, so that a review in the first few weeks, can fail to spot future greatness. I have been guilty of this myself, having eaten at Raymond Blanc’s very first restaurant in North Oxford more than 40 years ago and being favourably impressed but in no way clocking him for the talent he became. I could say the same thing about Brett Graham – my first few meals after it opened in 2005 were certainly excellent, but no more so than a handful of other places in London. It was only by 2009 that word spread about his skill, especially in dealing with simple products like mackerel or venison and creating iconic dishes such as flame-grilled mackerel with smoked eel and shiso or roe deer flamed in pine needles. And then there was that slightly obscene sausage-shaped crapaudine (beetroot) cooked in artists clay and bone marrow.

In those relatively early days, when lunch reservations were rarely full, the Ledbury became a haven for wine lovers as Brett would allow free corkage and then cook dishes he deemed appropriate for whatever the wine theme happened to be – bottles of 1990 vintage Burgundy or a vertical flight of a grand Pomerol like Chateau La Conseillante.  And then there is Brett’s obsession with hunting. He regularly shoots deer and grouse on various grand estates. He has taken this interest to a further stage, and is the first person to gain permission to import from the white deer herd owned by the Danish Royal family. He now has more than 70 at Aynhoe Park in Northamptonshire, along with two other herds – 120 Fallow Deer from Petworth in Sussex plus 100 Sika deer, which are kept at the Duke of Buccleuch’s estate at Boughton House in Northamptonshire. Last year he sold 15 tons of venison to various leading restaurants and is now turning his attention to Spain. Twenty-two Iberican pigs from Huelva are arriving next week, which will be the first herd of this famous species to be imported into Britain. The aim is to breed them for meat as well as begin curing their hind quarters for a British version of Iberico ham.

You never quite knew what would turn up on your plate. At my last meal there a few months back, we were served Grilled River Teign Oyster with smoked butter and sea purslane. They were monsters, somewhere around eight inches long with an intense maritime flavour and the texture of foie gras. Or when I bumped into him one night after a day’s hunting and he promptly pulled out three deer hearts from his bag and advised me on how to cook them at home.

Brett is at pains to point out that he has paid all of his staff and suppliers in full and is even meeting next month’s quarterly rent payment. As much as he hated having to take these measures, Brett believes it was the only honest grown up thing to do. He intends to spend the next few months working with his suppliers to improve their quality as well as selling his raw produce online. We certainly haven’t seen the last of this immensely talented, charismatic chef but whether he returns to The Ledbury, is something that is still in the balance. Scientists were always telling us that the flapping wings of a butterfly in New Mexico could eventually lead to a hurricane in China. How ironic then, that the consumption of a bat in a Wuhan market has ultimately closed one of the most loved restaurants in Britain…

There is also the mock tension about whether or not something will go wrong on screen – a few grams too much salt or an overcooked fillet of sea bass and you are left with something unsalvageable. We can all relate to kitchen disasters, even if our own experience is nothing more than burnt toast or uber-hard-boiled eggs. There must also be menu envy too, where impossibly complex dishes verging on food porn prompt some people to fantasize about the dish.

Despite this, for me the terrestrial TV programmes are so formulaic and contrived that I can’t be bothered to watch them. Besides, the dishes created by contestants are more than twenty years out of date – no serious chef these days piles half a dozen or more diverse ingredients on a plate, but this seems to be the norm in television kitchens. I would really like to see a programme where contestants could choose just three ingredients and then have to create three completely different dishes – rather like a culinary version of the Goldberg Variations, but I’m not holding my breath. (When it comes to food programmes, the honourable exception is Chef’s Table on Netflix, which treats food – and the chefs – with a degree of understanding and respect.)

So, where does someone go who is curious to know how a serious restaurant kitchen really functions? There aren’t many options – in Britain, too often food writing is seen as the comic slot, with the task being to make the punters laugh at over-elaborate metaphors. Or finding some dysfunctional place and declaring it to be the worst meal of your life.

For details of the inner working of restaurants, you really have to turn to books. There’s Michael Ruhlman, with his elaborate accounts in The Making of a Chef and The Soul of a Chef and then there’s Bill Buford. His first food book was Heat, an hilarious saga of working for Mario Batali, the New York Italian celebrity chef before ending up in Tuscany under the tutelage of Dario Cecchini, Italy’s most famous chef/butcher. Dario quotes Dante while carving his gigantic Bistecca Fiorentina and declaring in his limited English vocabulary: “To beef, or not to beef”. Now, with his latest book Dirt, Buford is applying the same approach to get under the skin of French rather than Italian cuisine.

It is an altogether trickier quest, which may explain why Buford completed his fieldwork for Heat in less than a year, whereas France occupied him and his family for five years. Buford sets his sights on becoming part of the brigade at a Michelin-starred restaurant in Paris. It is an already slightly fanciful notion that a fifty-something well-proportioned New Yorker could survive the heat of a high-powered kitchen. He manages to get a number of impeccable introductions, not surprising when you are a staff writer for the New Yorker magazine, but despite this, nothing eventuates. I can’t say I am surprised, given that there are hardly any chefs of Buford’s age still working in kitchens, let alone novices who barely understand French. Success only comes after he moves to Lyon, the gastronomical heart of France and spends several months at L’Institut Paul Bocuse, France’s leading cookery school.

Having previously been rejected he is now taken on in the lowliest of positions at La Mère Brazier, which in the Thirties was the first Three Star Michelin restaurant run by women and has now been revived, ultimately ending up with two Michelin stars. Even then, he is subject to various tragi-comic humiliations by the all-male kitchen, even from a teenage colleague.

Hortense, a young woman who is training with Buford at L’Institut turns up, but soon leaves with a broken foot and there are incidents of male chefs miming mounting her when she passes. On another occasion, she has to dodge pots and pans hurled at her for some minor infraction. Kitchen life can be brutal and perhaps this is a reinterpretation of Heisenberg’s Principle of Uncertainty, namely that merely by observing an experiment you alter the outcome.  In this case, the malign behaviour of the French staff seems to be the pre ordained response to an outsider being in their space. As Buford, learns, “built into the culture of the kitchen is a pathological intolerance of the novice and a perverse bully’s pleasure in watching a novice’s failed efforts to figure out a kitchen that everyone else there already knew”. The ethos of the kitchen was la rigeur – there was never an excuse good enough to justify being late – one young chef was sacked for failing to turn up after being injured in a car crash.

This is only one strand of Buford’s book – apart from an ongoing debate about how influential Renaissance Italy was in the origins of French cuisine, the most interesting subplot is his apprenticeship with Bob, considered the master baker of Lyon. It was a one-man band, with Bob even delivering his baguettes in an ancient Citroen. The secret of his product was the flour, especially from small farms in the Auvergne.

There is a lot more detail about French cuisine and the time he spends making the perfect omelette or Béarnaise Sauce. Paul Bocuse, the most famous chef in France, makes numerous appearances as does Daniel Boulud, originally from Lyon and now the most successful French chef in the US. There are also amusing bitchy asides, like his side swipe at MFK Fisher (“the languidly lazy, self-consciously I-am-literary prose of MFK Fisher”), who is shown not to have a clue about how to make a ratatouille…

The casual brutality inside the kitchens of La Mère Brazier is from another era – also, 15 years on, a French kitchen without female members would be the exception to the rule. Perhaps this change is reflected by the title of his last chapter: “Just About Everybody Dies” – I won’t spoil the fun by revealing who he is talking about.

Dirt by Bill Buford (Knopf) £22.73

John Murray turned it down, because of what he termed its “wicked spirit of jesting at everything.” In the end, Kinglake had to pay £50 to get it published and its first reviewer commented on its puzzling and daring indifference to the prejudices of society. Such hostility is rarer now, save the lone voice of Edward Said, the progressive Palestinian academic, who accused Eothen of being “a pathetic catalogue of pompous ethnocentrisms and tangled nondescript accounts of the Englishman’s East.”

The early editions didn’t even mention the authors name, as he was making his way as a barrister and thought it might offend potential clients. I only became aware of it in my Thirties, even though it has been in and out of print since publication. It is centred around Kinglake and his travelling companions and servants, one of whom is always on the lookout for “gentlemen’s seats” while Kinglake makes constant comparisons to how a river reminds him of the Thames at Eton or a discourse about Dr. Keate, the flogging headmaster there.

At the beginning of his journey, the Ottoman Empire is suffering from the Plague, so once his party travel to Belgrade, they are forbidden to return without undergoing a fortnight’s quarantine. They are invited to an audience with the local pasha in his castle and this is where Kinglake’s flights of fancy take over. Rather than describe the routine events, he goes off on an hilarious tangent about an imaginary meeting between an English traveller and the potentate. He complains when his dragoman mentions he comes from London as the pasha will think he is a mere cockney and then boasts he should have been the Member for Boughton-Soldborough in the last election and deputy lieutenant of the country but for some skulduggery. In return the dragoman describes him as “this possible policeman of Bedfordshire”. I can well imagine some of the more backwoods MPs of my acquaintance uttering similar sentiments today…

There are many hilarious encounters that make it so memorable, such as his description of the drinking habits of the Monks of Damascus: “… of all the holy brethren in Palestine there are none who hold fast to this gladsome rite so strenuously as the monks of Damascus; not that they are more zealous Christians than the rest of their fellows in the Holy Land, but that they have better wine… Dear old fellows!” Despite these warm words, Kinglake was a self-proclaimed atheist and once remarked “I dislike churches, and had I my way, I would write in every church, chapel and cathedral only one line: ‘Important if True.’”

When passing through Galilee, Kinglake is taken by the enormous variety of fleas to be found in a church in Tiberias: “It was a carnal, self-seeking congregation, wholly inattentive to the service which was going on and devote to the one object of having my blood. The fleas of all nations were there. The smug, steady importunate fleas from Holywell Street- the pert jumping ‘puce’ from hungry France – the wary, watchful ‘pulce’ with his poisoned stiletto – the vengeful pulga’ of Castille with his ugly knife – the German ‘floh’ with his knife and fork, insatiate, not rising from table – whole swarms from all Russias and Asiatic hordes unnumbered-  all these were there, and all rejoiced in one great international feast.”

Certain passages would not pass muster in the Modern World, especially his adoring words about the “romping girls of Bethlehem” – not in a carnal sense, but more as if they were like a flock of timid gazelles, “this gushing spring of fresh and joyous girlhood.” Another memorable encounter is his description of Lady Hester Stanhope, the eccentric niece of Pitt the Younger, who dressed as a Bedouin and lived in an abandoned monastery near Sidon.  Lady Hester had been a friend of Kinglake’s mother, so he was granted an audience, where he was bombarded with warnings of an imminent cataclysm plus her penchant for magic and sorcery. According to Kinglake, she would veer from this to “the sort of woman that you sometimes see, I am told, in London drawing-rooms – cool, decisive in manner, unsparing of enemies, full of audacious fun, and saying the downright things that the sheepish society around her is afraid to utter.”

The climax of the book is Kinglake’s description of the Plague in Cairo, which is written in the same detached ironic style though a certain terror pervades it. He is warned not to go near the place by an impassioned Frenchman: “I thanked him most sincerely for his kindly meant warning. In hot countries it is very unusual indeed for a man to go out in the glare of the sun and give free advice to a stranger.” A week after his arrival he notices the silence descending on the city, with around 1200 Cairenes succumbing daily out of a population of 200,000. He admits that most people he had any dealings with, such as his doctor, banker, landlord and magician – even one of his servants and his donkey boy – all died of the plague. He never explains in a satisfactory way why he took such huge risks and instead notes that pipes and arms are cheaper in the local bazaar than in Constantinople before going sightseeing at the Pyramids and Sphinx.

Kinglake was a Liberal MP from 1857 to 1868 and well known in London literary circles. He mixed with the likes of Thackeray, Dickens, Tennyson and Henry James, who remarked just before Kinglake’s death in 1891, “such a character, such a figure, as the generations appear pretty well to have ceased to produce.”

It is ironic that this so-called superficial account of a journey in his twenties has lasted for nearly two centuries – in fact, a new edition has just been published by Eland Books, (though curiously they call the author William Kinglake). It would never have occurred to Kinglake that this would be what he is remembered for rather than his magnum opus, which was a highly regarded (but now unread) eight volume history of the Crimean War, which took him more than 30 years to complete.

The Plaza-Athénée is the chicest of the grand Parisian Hotels. It is located at Ground Zero in the fashion world, with LVMH opposite and Christian Dior and Hermes just down the road. Most of the more well-known models stay there during Fashion Week and the tall lady having breakfast who looks like Naomi Campbell actually is. Given this well-established niche that the Plaza-Athénée occupies, it was considered quite daring when Alain Ducasse decided to reopen the signature restaurant in 2014 after a lengthy renovation, by excluding all meat from the menu and instead, opting for a cuisine of “naturalness”.

The customer reaction in the first year was not very approving, after all, if you have become accustomed to their version of ris de veau or pate en croute, it is quite a shock to be told you must instead be satisfied by the trinity of fish, vegetables and cereals. I admit that I was also one of the sceptics to begin with. Given that at that time, Ducasse already had three stars at the nearby Le Meurice, another Palace Hotel, I suppose I put his new approach more down to the need to take a different approach for the sake of novelty rather than ideology. However, Ducasse is nothing if not up to speed with every international trend in haute cuisine. I don’t know how often I have tried the latest fashionable place in Shanghai, Cadiz or Copenhagen, only to be told “Oh yes, we had Monsieur Ducasse here only last week”.  Apparently, he has the best intelligence network in the culinary world as he always keeps in touch with the chefs who train in his kitchens and work around the globe.

The actual restaurant looks like a docking station for a space ship, with three white pods in the middle along with a white overhanging shell on the side. It feels slightly clinical and futuristic but I suppose that is the intention. Anyway, his philosophy of naturalness couldn’t be more on message now. Also, as much as he professes to want to work with humble ingredients to show their true colours, it is hard to beat the signature dish of caviar surrounded by a wheel of sturgeon bone marrow.

For those who find this too rich, he also has a version with chickpeas. The following dish was a string of four scallops along with a slice of cauliflower gratineed tart – it works because of the supreme quality of the simple ingredients.

Another unadorned dish was a slice of perfectly cooked turbot with mussels and “pomme de mer”, or potatoes actually grown on the seashore.

There was also a superb pasta smothered in black truffles and a flambeed lobster – hardly humble ingredients but cooked in a way that allowed them to express their flavours and textures to perfection. There is definitely a backlash against the multi-course tasting menu as only five dishes were served on the night I was there, which is a welcome sign of sanity returning to haute cuisine. This trend is obviously catching on – Richard Ekkebus of Amber, the most acclaimed European chef in Hong Kong, recently announced that he was removing all meat from his menu along with gluten and dairy.

Romain Meder, Ducasse’s head chef at the Plaza Athénée, doesn’t want to go to those extremes, although all of the bread is made from rice flour, hence gluten free. There are bound to be more chefs experimenting in this way and to a certain extent, if a large proportion of your clients are from the fashion world, perhaps they are more at ease with this philosophy than most. The most critical thing to always bear in mind, as one famous Scandinavian chef said to me, that regardless of how he cooks his food, it must be yummy. The Plaza-Athénée certainly wins on that score.

Alain Ducasse at the Plaza-Athénée  www.alainducasse-plazaathenee.com/en

Lunch menu with wine £180 per person

Dinner £350 plus wine

It is when you venture beyond the M25 that the situation changes for the worse, save for perhaps a couple of dozen establishments throughout the kingdom. Given this state of affairs, I am always encouraged when a talented chef closes shop in London and heads to Sussex or Somerset. This has occurred recently, with Tom Kemble leaving Bonhams restaurant to open The Pass in Horsham, Tracey Peterson and Paul Merrony from Giaconda to the Newell in Sherborne and more recently, Merlin Labron-Johnson at Osip in Bruton.

It is curious how rare it is to find serious restaurants outside of London. For instance, on the drive down to Bruton on the M3 and A303, for the entire distance of 120 miles, there is only one Michelin starred restaurant within 15 miles of the route and that is a pub that no one I know has ever heard of.

Bruton is already a magnet for the sort of people who frequent good restaurants – just like Stratford on Avon has theatre, Aldeburgh has music and Bruton has art to pull people in. Hauser and Wirth, one of the leading international art dealers, spent tens of millions setting up their galleries and restaurant complex on the edge of town and earlier, a converted church called At the Chapel was also a big draw for the sort of people who read FT Weekend. The food at both of these places is good in its way, but doesn’t really aspire to the heights. The other source of customers is Babington House, which is the Soho House outpost close by. Now there is a fourth attraction in the shape of the Newt, a luxurious hideaway hotel with spectacular gardens, which I have yet to visit.

I have had my eye on Merlin Labron-Johnson for a couple of years – he was head chef at The Portland, run by the people behind the Quality Chop House as well as Emilia at Bonhams and Clipstone. After three years there, and the youngest recipient of a Michelin Star, he ran the kitchens at the Conduit, a private club aimed at rich philanthropists in Conduit St in Mayfair but after a year there he decided to return to his roots in the West Country. The last time I bumped into him was in Sicily, where he was hired to cook and do courses for the most stylish private mansion on the island.

The name Osip is Merlin’s second name, which stemmed from his father’s love of the Russian poet Osip Mandelstaum, who was killed by Stalin in the late Thirties. It is a small house at the end of the High St with about 20 covers and only three people in the kitchen apart from Merlin.

The menu is eclectic – there is no beef, lamb or pork as Merlin prefers to work with wild food such as mallard and deer, plus locally reared vegetables and foraged items. There is nothing rarefied about the dishes though – the meal starts with treacle and ale bread with smoked butter, a selection of pickles and potted pheasant.

My favourite plate though was a gloriously rare Torte de Gibier, or more accurately, a Mallard Wellington.

Later, Merlin explained how he ended up in Bruton:

“I grew up in the West Country so this place always had a natural pull for me. I also wanted a place that was an escape from London but wasn’t too far for you to drive down for lunch. Also, most of the produce that excites me comes from the West Country and especially Somerset. This means we tend not to use things that are not locally available, for instance there is no lemon but incredible dairy, game, vegetables and fruit.”

They base each menu on what is available on the day. A local farmer brings in a red deer every fortnight. They end up using every part of the carcass. Merlin knows he could never operate like this in London, where you might serve 100 covers a day – here at best it is around half that number on a good day. There is also a small stylish hotel connected to the restaurant, so he hopes to attract the art crowd who already come to Bruton or perhaps in the summer, people driving down to Cornwall who want to stop off half way. For the moment, it is half locals and half outsiders but it shows every sign of making its mark. One can only hope that more talented young chefs will make the break from London and create places like Osip that do justice to the local produce at a reasonable price.

https://osiprestaurant.com

A la Carte £80 for two. Evening eight course tasting menu £49 – wine pairing £40

There has been a revival in retro chrome plated Deco diners. For the first time a Michelin-starred chef has created a haute cuisine diner in the middle of Paris – Pavyllon – the Gastronomic Counter. Yannick Alléno, the only chef with two three-star Michelin restaurants in France, has converted a section of the ground floor of Ledoyen, his grand Parisian restaurant, into a 50-seat diner, complete with semi-rectangular bar in front of the exposed kitchen. There are a handful of small tables along the wall, but the real action is at the counter. The elegant spare design seems more Japanese than the juke box look of the classical diner, but the homage is definitely there. When it comes to the food though, the similarities fall away – this is inspired three-star cooking in a fast food setting. Other chefs, such as Joel Robuchon, created counter dining with his L’Atelier de Robuchon concept, but these are smaller and more inspired by the pintxos bars of Spain.

Alléno has long been one of the most innovative of the great French chefs, starting with his campaign promoting Parisian terroir. Next was his revival of sauces as a key component of contemporary cuisine and more recently, a budget offering called Allénothèque, with an equally generously priced wine list. Ledoyen is a French institution, starting just before the French Revolution and relocating to its current garden location off the Champs-Élysées in the 1840s. The top floor of the classical mansion is devoted to the three-star restaurant while downstairs there is also a sushi bar with a Michelin star. Pavyllon takes up one side of the building with a spectacular view of the Grand Palais.

Once you are seated at the long counter, a trio of different sushi arrives along with the sommelier to discuss what wines you would prefer for the upcoming pairing. We agree on a Vougeraie Corton-Charlemagne 17, with its flinty characteristics within a honeylike interior making me almost wish to simply drink the entire bottle. Now the culinary fun begins with what is deceptively described as an artichoke salad with black truffle. In fact, it is a small fortress with truffle walls and an exquisite salad poking out of the top like a perfectly tended garden. Then, a plate of lightly smoked mackerel swimming in sour milk, flowers and yuzu – this looked like a perfectly preserved mosaic from Pompeii and had an enticing blend of sharpness and intense flashes of smoked mackerel.

By now we had moved onto a 12-year-old white Hermitage from Chapoutier accompanying a scallop cooked with bone marrow and caviar and smoked pike eggs with gnocchi and toasted walnuts – perfectly memorable but dwarfed by what followed.

It was a light slightly wobbly Comté souffle adorned with cubes of foie gras and camouflaged by leaves of black truffle – this combination was the ideal warming dish. I didn’t realise at the time but this was merely a preamble for my ultimate Winter experience so far – a half sphere of sea urchin filled with hare agnolotti – this oozed of umami flavours and gutsiness with the alkaline intensity of the sea urchins’ gonads in the base.

I almost skipped over the next dish of sole completely covered in black truffle like some fighting daemon from His Dark Materials because of the novelty of the next dish – two tiny milk-fed lamb chops with curry and coconut stew lemon grass. It is not something that sounds nearly as palatable as it was but the Morey St Denis 15 from Feuillet probably played its part. What should also be mentioned is that small selections of tempura appeared during some of these dishes, which acted as a palate cleanser and vegetable substitute. Again, there was a danger that the wine outshone the puddings but what do you expect when it was Yquem 15? This is the first time I have tasted Yquem so young but the experience was certainly not unpleasant, with its underlying power encompassed in hints of crème brulee.

It was a completely satisfying experience with all of the culinary fireworks that Alléno can muster at half the price of a meal upstairs. It would be difficult to tell the difference in the clientele too – the usual collection of power brokers and a fashionable crowd of mainly Parisians, though the occasional Japanese diner was there too. Vir Sanghvi, a greedy friend of mine from Delhi, thought it was already one-star Michelin quality nudging two stars. My opinion is that it is more like two with the third one briefly sighted in some of the dishes. If L’Atelier de Robuchon in Hong Kong can be awarded three stars, it seems churlish not to at least speculate about such things here, though it would never happen because of where it is located.

The whole concept is a clever idea, given that Ledoyen is now closed for lunch in the early part of the week, so this offers a glimpse of the same quality in more casual surroundings. It is not just me that approves of it – it is the first time I have ever seen a restaurant entry in TripAdvisor where every single entry gives it top marks. I doubt if Walter Scott would recognise this reincarnation of his concept, but he would certainly appreciate the way the Old World had reinvented his creation to provide such pleasure and value, even though there wasn’t a pie in sight.

https://www.yannick-alleno.com/en/restaurants-reservation/pavyllon.html

Claridge’s has always attracted HNWIs (High Net Worth Individuals) or perhaps to be more accurate, couples or families, but their culinary tastes, while sophisticated, tend to be more in the conventional rather than avant-garde mould. This time the task has fallen on Daniel Humm of Eleven Madison Park in Manhattan. He certainly appears to have the relevant qualifications – three Michelin stars, four from the New York Times and perhaps the icing on the cake, former Number One on the Worlds 50 Best Restaurant list.

Davies and Brook (a play on Claridge’s street corner) opened in December in the same room as Fera but it is stripped down with a welcoming bar at one end with the only decoration being a wraparound series of puzzling landscape photographs by Roni Horn of what look like conical mountains with nipples.

The last time I saw Danny Humm was at a highly enjoyable but bizarre culinary event next to an Inca temple in Peru, where a handful of famous chefs cooked their interpretation of the sex life of an octopus. It was backlit with a photograph of Daniel stretched naked on a beach while an octopus appeared to be ravishing him in that style so beloved of Japanese erotic print makers. So, hats off to Claridge’s for selecting a safe pair of hands, if not tentacles.

But of more importance, does Danny deliver in these spectacular kitchens in London – and will it find favour with the HNWIs, HNWCs and HNWFs, not to mention the local and travelling enthusiasts who just come for the food? Well, I am happy to stick my neck (and stomach) out and say yes, on all counts.

For me, the real pleasure in eating Danny’s cuisine is his passion for letting all of the ingredients sing in harmony yet still project their innate flavours.

It started with a stunning amuse bouche, always a good indication of how a meal is going to progress. If you can’t get the opening act pitch perfect, there isn’t much chance that the overall performance will deliver. This was a trio of taste sensations, starting with thinly sliced raw Orkney scallops with layers of pickled green apple. It was seasoned with lemon vinaigrette and grated fresh horseradish, which was captivating as all the flavours shone through with a laser like intensity.

Not only that, but it came along with a small cup of perfect scallop broth consommé and a wholemeal laminated roll with butter the colour of a Van Gogh sunflower topped with scallop jelly and smoked seaweed seasoning. This was one of the most pleasurable starters I have had all year.

The meal progressed with more pleasurable creations which still remained faithful to the product – Sea Bass ceviche topped with an avocado cap that looked perfect enough to be an art work and yet had an intense avocado taste. Here too, an element of subtlety was the tiny cucumber cubes interspersed within the ceviche along with some shrimp oil.

The caviar dish comprised my favourite strain of Ossetia from China (also used by Alain Ducasse and Eric Ripert) and was served in a butternut squash which spread easily on the accompanying naan and smoked shellfish infused cream.

I am not a fan of wine pairings but thought it would be churlish not to see what was on offer and on this occasion, the choices were excellent and innovative – a superb English Chardonnay from Gusborne, more known for their Sparkling Wine or an earthy mineral backed Pinot Noir from Hirsch Vineyards on the Sonoma Coast of California. Then there was the spectacle of a trolley being wheeled into sight with a Bunsen burner and a red-hot pair of tongs which were used to crack off the top of a bottle of 2013 Cote Rotie from Ogier. It was an entirely redundant performance but it seemed to rouse the interest of the other diners. The accompanying dish was a perfectly cooked slice of dry-aged duck glazed with honey and lavender along with a delicate combination of beetroot and black pudding with a full flavoured civet sauce. For me, what was also impressive was when we moved onto a second bottle of this exquisite Northern Rhone, the sommelier brought out fresh glasses showing that he understood that no two bottles of fine wine should be mixed as they are never identical.

Not every dish was absolute perfection, but no meal ever is. My only quibbles would be that for me, too much seasoning was used in some of the sauces, though overall, they were admirable. The black truffle sauce on the celeriac baked inside a pig’s bladder overwhelmed it, and it was also marginally overcooked. Also, there were not many vegetables used, but given that it was mid-winter, perhaps this was understandable. The puddings were simple but satisfying – I have never yet eaten a doughnut that made me want another one but, on this occasion, it was a thing of beauty, stuffed with miniature pieces and a purée of Granny Smith Apple. The Mandarin segments along with a Mandarin sorbet stole the show though, helped perhaps with a perfectly mature 2002 Sauternes from Chateau Suduiraut. Again, for me this showed a fine appreciation of the wine as most high-end restaurants would go instead with the 2001, one of the Sauterne vintages of the century yet nowhere near ready.

So, an impressive debut with food already approaching two-star Michelin level. The prices too are reasonable for this quality – a seven course tasting menu for £145 plus an amazing two course offering for an express lunch for a mere £38. This is potentially the most impressive haute cuisine restaurant currently in Mayfair, despite the presence of Ducasse, Roux and Darroze just around the corner.

Contact: www.daviesandbrook.co.uk

Speculating on the likely trends in the fine dining end of the restaurant trade is not quite as hazardous, but here are a few things that I think might occur in the coming year.

Red meat will not suddenly vanish from main courses but will be treated more as one component on the plate rather than the main event. Of course, there are always going to be examples of its complete disappearance – Dominique Crenn, the USA’s only female three-star Michelin chef, recently announced she was removing it entirely from her menus. Foie Gras is also on the retreat – its sale and production is already banned in California and recently New York State announced that it would go within three years. Foie gras was quietly removed from the famous meat fruit dish served at Dinner by Heston in the Hyde Park Hotel, to the detriment of its taste.

Concurrent with this will of course be an elevation in the role of vegetables. The interesting aspect of this is that it is not related to the growth of vegetarianism or veganism as none of these trailblazing chefs entirely rule out meat, fish and poultry in their restaurants but they have elevated the importance of vegetables. It originated where the chef has his own kitchen garden, such as Simon Rogan and Raymond Blanc in Britain, Alain Passard and Mauro Colagreco in France and Daniel Berlin in Sweden. Rogan has recently opened one of his Roganic restaurants in Hong Kong, which is relying on five local farmers to provide all of their vegetables unlike other haute cuisine establishments which fly in their produce daily from France.

Inevitably, the whole Modernist movement, as exemplified in their different ways by el Bulli and the Fat Duck, is definitely on the decline and is being replaced by the farm to table movement. One hopes that this trend will also see the demise of boil in the bag techniques (sous-vide) so beloved of busy kitchens. There is nothing I loathe more than sous-vide game birds – they have an artificial consistency and in the case of pigeons a jelly like texture which is repulsive. The Modernist movement relied on a number of artificial ingredients such as stabilisers, emulsifiers, gums and preservatives. Ferran Adria, the Godfather of Modernist Cuisine, published an encyclopaedic history of every single one of the hundreds of dishes served at el Bulli. I hazard a guess that not one of those dishes is replicated on a daily basis anywhere on the planet. There is a simple test for whether or not something is a natural ingredient. If you close your eyes, you should be able to identify an item by taste alone. Expect to also see more restaurants emulating Brat in Shoreditch, which grills whole turbot or large portions of meat over flame rather than cooking it in an oven.

One piece of welcome news is the growing disappearance of the overblown tasting menu. These are the ones that involve you eating a dozen or even more tiny plates with not even a mouthful on each one. Alongside this, I wish I could make the same pronouncement about the demise of the “Small or Sharing Plates” phenomenon but I fear this will be with us for slightly longer. It is one of the great con jobs of the modern era that a restaurant can call something a sharing plate when it has smaller dimensions than a plate for a single diner. I am afraid that such dishes are so profitable they will not disappear overnight.

The other trend that is interesting is a backlash against offering dishes that do not contravene the growing number of food allergies and aversions. It is a serious issue as last year 10 people died in the UK from allergic reactions to specific foods such as sesame seeds or nuts. There are allegedly 170 different foods known to cause an allergic reaction to some people while there are a vast number of others that some diners are simply averse to eating, such as offal, broccoli or even bananas. This is the area where chefs are likely to say they cannot significantly alter a dish merely because the diner doesn’t enjoy that particularly product.

Grant Achatz at Chicago’s Alinea, one of the leading American restaurants, has recently announced he can no longer guarantee there is no cross contamination in his kitchen. Richard Ekkebus, head chef at Amber in Hong Kong, has recently removed all dairy and gluten products from his menus but in his case, it is more to do with healthy eating than pleasing diners with allergies. I suspect that more chefs will declare they cannot guarantee that a dish they serve is not contaminated with dairy or other products. Kobe Desramaults, a leading Belgian chef who recently opened Chambre Séparée, also refuses to accommodate extensive allergies or dietary restrictions.

I wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year and always remember to keep your hand on your passport when having your fortune read.

On an occasion more than a decade earlier, while I was a war correspondent in Indochina, there was a memorable dinner in Phnom Penh in the closing weeks of the war. It was a harrowing experience, with constant rocket fire and an impending sense of doom as the perimeter around the city shrunk on a daily basis. As a diversion from this, a group of fellow correspondents had arranged for the best French restaurant in town to stay open after curfew. There was much consumption of Dom Perignon plus an entire suckling pig to help us forget about the miseries we witnessed. Despite the intermittent sounds of gunfire and mortars, we were able to leave safely, though the staff had to remain overnight, generously compensated by us for their exceptional efforts.

My recent visit to Hong Kong was hardly on the same level of danger as that, though it was impossible to avoid the roadblocks and conflicts between the police and protesting students. The interesting thing is that while there are always flashpoints in war or civil conflicts, equally, there are even larger zones where life proceeds on a more or less normal basis.

My Sunday lunch at Belon in Hong Kong, a self-described “Neo-Parisian Bistro”, can safely be filed away as more than memorable – instead, it was a revelation. This was spectacular cooking of the very highest level in a kitchen, which is smaller than the one in our own home in West London. And, there are only five chefs. It was certainly not happenstance that took me to Daniel Calvert’s Belon, as I had heard about him from other writers and chefs for the past year. But despite that, it was indeed staggering to be served dishes of the highest level of satisfaction and technique in such a modest location – a side street in SoHo, with a non-descript Thai Restaurant opposite plus a place called “Pop Vegan”.

Still in his early thirties, the boyish Daniel has an impeccable record of a decade spent in the leading restaurants of London (Pied a Terre), New York (Per Se) and Paris (L’Epicure) but this is the first place under his command.

The décor is nondescript, with a padded bench surrounding the dining area and simple wooden tables and chairs in the centre. My eye was drawn to a wall of empty bottles of the finest wines – Pétrus, Montrachet, Domaine Romanée-Conti, Domaine Raveneau – until I remembered that because Hong Kong has zero import duty on wine, these were all local collector’s BYOs rather than being on the wine list.

The meal began in a fairly conventional way – four starters – aged Comté cheese gougères, a generous loaf of leavened bread with salted Brittany butter, a hand made Saucisson de Bigorre and finally, a bombshell – a tiny tartlet with herbs on the top which was a Japanese version of taramasalata made of cured cods roe and with Japanese Bottarga and a herb called Mitsuba or wild chervil – a cross between parsley and celery leaves. It is always a sign of good things to come when something as non descript as this blows your socks off with its intensity and exotic flavour.

The oyster tartare with Ossetia caviar was almost equal to a similar dish at Le Cinq in Paris and the following Sanma “Nicoise” or cured Japanese mackerel with a Mediterranean mixture of vegetables and herbs was the only dish that didn’t grab my full attention.

Never mind, as the subsequent fresh Ikura (salmon eggs) wedged between a seaweed “feuilletage” was the dish of the day – layers of puff pastry with the popping eggs almost evaporating in your mouth.

There seemed to be no stopping him now – this was followed by a circular slice of “Foie Gras au Torchon” surrounding a confit of chicken and Champignons de Paris. I was curious how such a perfect combination was achieved and learned later that the central chicken portion was confited, rolled into a sausage and then frozen while the foie gras surrounding it was poached in a towel and hung for a week.

The next dish was a playful version of “Drunken Pigeon” with Celtuce (Chinese lettuce) and Sorrel, inspired by the Chinese version of drunken chicken, which simply means it is poached in an alcoholic beverage. Given Daniel’s severe case of francophilia, it was inevitably Anjou Pigeon prepared in a stock of Vin Jaune from the Jura with a sauce comprising the unused portions of the pigeon.

The next delight was a Hokkaido scallop in two versions – one with a sauce comprising four different types of seaweed and the other liberally plastered with fresh Alba truffles and cream.

What really impressed me with all of these dishes is that they were pitch-perfect and superbly balanced, yet Daniel refuses to resort to the usual short cuts, like sous-vide or hydrocolloids and meat glue so beloved by the Modernists such as Heston Blumenthal or Ferran Adria.

The hours were ticking by but there was one last main course – and it was certainly worth waiting for – a veal sweetbread “en brioche” with béarnaise sauce. Again, a highly technical dish with the sweetbread sautéed but still almost raw before being cooked in a spinach leaf and then surrounded by a shrimp farce and brioche. As a special treat we were given another slice of this, smothered in white truffles

I was almost too sated to manage dessert, but was glad to have managed it – a “Mont Blanc” or puréed chestnuts with whipped cream, although in this case nine individual miniature buns with portions of cream between them.

I hope I have managed to convey how extraordinarily accomplished this meal was – far far beyond what could be termed a “Neo-Parisian Bistro”.  Daniel already has one Michelin star and a place both on the Worlds 50 (actually 100) Best and the Asian 50 Best but this is cooking of at least two star calibre. It is not just my opinion – Yannick Alléno, the most feted French chef, with two three star Michelin restaurants, commented under a picture of a dish I posted on Instagram… “The best in Hong Kong”.  This is not to side-line other renowned Hong Kong Chefs, such as Richard Ekkebus with Amber, his two star restaurant which has made the bold – and successful – conversion to a dairy and gluten-free experience. It is just that it is indeed rare to come across a chef as young as Daniel, who is already creating dishes that are nudging perfection, which surely indicates that the best is yet to come.

https://belonsoho.com

Set Meals: from £125 a head plus wine 

A la Carte – approx. £300 a head

So given this formidable record of success and a sprinkling of stardust, is there room for a rival establishment slightly upriver in the shadow of Hammersmith Bridge? Well, Sam Harrison thinks so, and he is the brains behind Sam’s Riverside, which opened its stylish door earlier this month within the newly developed Riverside Studios.

There is no disputing the superiority of the vista from Sam’s, which only has a public footpath between its large windows and the turbid waters of the Thames. The prices too, are roughly half of Ruthie’s, though the last thing that River Café devotees look at is the bill. But is it attempting to take on such an icon? Not really – it is aiming more at a casual West London audience and I suspect they will flock here. For a start, Sam Harrison really is a local, having run two successful places in Chiswick and Balham. It was crowd-funded directly from his previous client base, which is a useful way to get the punters in. The food too, doesn’t have an especial bias towards Italy. Rather, it is what could be termed Contemporary Anglo-Euro, which is no surprise given that Rowley Leigh, of Kensington Place and Le Café Anglais fame, is the culinary director. The head chef is Harvey Trollope, who has solid credentials from having recently worked at the London Ritz and before that at Wheeler’s.

The décor is reminiscent of a Post Modern Ocean Liner with concrete columns and large flat circular lights, which could be mistaken for H.G. Wells era UFOs. Next to the superb vista of the Thames, there is a Crittall Wall, which divides the private dining area from the main restaurant. There is space for around 100 covers including a large square shaped bar and in the more clement months, there is outdoor dining. Sam Harrison may be an Etonian but there are no superficial signs of it – he is a hard grafter with lots of front of house experience.

I have been a couple of times, including during the prelaunch and it has the feel you get when a place is going to take off. There is a comforting array of oyster types – Jersey Rocks, Carlingford No 3’s, Morecambe Bay No 3’s and Falmouth Natives as well as diver caught scallop ceviche, whelks and langoustines at affordable prices. The main menu offers a blend of the conventional with the unusual – pork loin, pickled red onions, roast red leg partridge plus steak and kidney with dripping on toast or clams, braised trotter and white beans. The game terrine starter was also reassuringly cohesive, with the surrounding strip of bacon holding the entire sphere together. It emanated comforting intense and diverse flavours along with pickled girolles for contrast. The star of my first meal was a pair of peppered venison chops with onion squash and sprout tops. Harvey managed to produce perfectly pink venison which exuded satisfying flavour and it was not masked by the absurd practice of marinating it to tone down any intensity.

Robust flavours continued with a subsequent dish of sticky braised ox cheeks with a dollop of buttery mash potato and young carrots. This was another faultless execution of a classic British dish, which could easily have been served in a Michelin starred restaurant such as the Ritz. The puddings were simple and correct – chocolate mousse, lemon tart with figs and a trio of sorbets.

Another selling point is a set lunch menu of two courses for £16.50 and three for £20.50 with a wine list that had plenty of options around the £30 mark. These are early days but the plan is to have a proper breakfast offering for all of the commuters who use the Thames footpath. There are pleasant enough pubs in the vicinity but no Gastropubs. Harvey Trollope is a dedicated locavore and a tiger for seasonality, so it will definitely rack up points among the more concerned local citizenry. The only major fault is that at night, the Hammersmith Bridge is not lit up, but that is not something within their control.

It never takes long for a tricky customer to appear – there was a slight altercation at the entrance while I was having lunch – an aggrieved walk-in was told they were already fully booked the following night, though he seemed to think he had the last laugh on the receptionist. “You obviously don’t know who I am,” he said menacingly. “Sir, you are right – I am afraid I don’t.”

Sam’s Riverside: £100 for two. Set lunch – two courses £16.50 three £20.50

1 Crisp Walk, London, W6 9DN

Tel: 020 8237 1020

https://samsriverside.co.uk

Appropriately, Vercelli is also home to the only Michelin-starred restaurant that specialises in risotto – Cinzia da Christian e Manuel – better known as the Costardi Brothers. With beards that birds could happily nest in and an encyclopaedic display of tattoos, they look like they would be more at home in Shoreditch than a non-descript hotel near a traffic junction in northern Italy. However, they are deadly serious in their approach to risotto, offering tasting menus plus nearly 20 different risotto dishes all for £20 each.

Christian explains that it didn’t take much reflection to choose this path: “It’s very simple – we were born and brought up in the land of rice, so we have a responsibility to focus on it in our restaurant. Unlike in most restaurants, we also make a point of not demanding that it is not just served in portions for two people.”

Their approach is different to conventional methods – they don’t cook it on a base of fried onions or other products such as carrots, celery or even wine before the rice is actually cooked. Christian believes: “It is difficult when you add cold white wine to the dish as it creates a temperature drop, which stops the rice from cooking, so the grains crystallise and the inside is not properly cooked.”

They also only use vegetable stock in the cooking process and add further ingredients at the end to ensure that the risotto’s natural flavours remain the dish’s foundation. Their most unconventional dish is served in what looks like an Andy Warhol Campbell’s soup tin but is labelled Costardi’s condensed tomato rice. The base is of basil pesto and tomato infused risotto with an extra dollop of pesto on the top. Thanks to their first-rate ingredients and their careful cooking process, there is a welcome intensity of flavours.

Although it is possible to only eat the risotto dishes, it is so filling that after three you will feel like bursting. There are a number of other ambitious dishes, such as a fillet of raw red mullet with miso and grated liver on top or veal sweetbreads in Marsala sauce. All excellent but the point is to explore their risotto options.

There were three on offer on my first night – Carnaroli peperoni, acciuga e maggiorana (risotto with peperoni, anchovy and marjoram); carnaroli, bocconcini di coniglio, foie gras, crema di formaggi piemontesi e riduzione di vino (risotto with rabbit, foie gras and cream of Piedmont cheese) and Nuove Memorie – brodo di grana padano, grasso di grana padano e ghee – a sublimely simple dish of plain risotto with a jus of grana padano cheese and clarified butter.

The peperoni and anchovy were beautifully integrated into the dish, giving the risotto a touch of crunchiness. The rabbit and foie gras combination slightly overwhelmed the risotto element but overall was irresistible. Strangely, the most accomplished dish of the evening was the simplest –the plate of perfectly cooked cream coloured risotto with a spoonful of semi-transparent jus in the centre, a combination of clarified butter mixed with liquid extracted from boiled Grana Padano cheese. Its impact came from the simplicity of its smooth and creaminess with the mildest taste of the cheese along with a sensation of hazelnuts from the clarified butter.

It is possible to eat risotto with any number of wines but we were fortunate enough to have some of a stunning Gaja Barbaresco 2009 and an even more serious vintage Barolo Triumviratum 2001 from Michele Chiarlo. Both of them are from the Nebbiolo grape, which has the necessary tannic backbone to cleanse the palate after each mouthful. Nervi, a local Gattinara vineyard, recently acquired by renowned Barolo producer Giacomo Conterno provided a relatively cheaper option that was almost as good.

Visually, the region is not exactly exciting, consisting of endless saucer-like fields. There is however, a superb rice museum located within Riso Buono, the Guidobono Cavalchini family estate. Directly opposite, there is a world-class sculpture museum called Materima, founded by Turin-based gallery owner, Nicola Loi. When you have had your risotto experience, you can always drive a bit further and visit the vineyards or experience Alba truffles if they are in season.

Christian and Manuel Ristorante plus Hotel Cinzia www.christianemanuel.it

Menus from €70 – €130. Rooms (quite basic) €85 – €140

Shortly after this, Norbert Niederkofler, a young chef from the Dolomites in Northern Italy, made a similarly abrupt decision to fundamentally change his cuisine, starting with removing his signature dish of foie gras four ways. Nearly 90% of his clients at St Hubertus at the Rosa Alpina Hotel in San Cassiano, used to order this dish, along with more exotic international produce like abalone from Tasmania or catfish from Norway. Norbert’s decision to abandon foie gras wasn’t because he was squeamish about removing fattened livers from unsuspecting geese or the feelings of eviscerated abalone. Instead, it was a realisation that here he was in the middle of a mountain range and instead of exploring the culinary possibilities of his region, he was shipping in rarefied luxury ingredients from all around the globe. He was also bored, like many of us, of always coming across the same French-inspired haute cuisine dishes, whether he was in Helsinki, Munich, New York or Melbourne. The Michelin inspectors agreed and last year, he was awarded three Michelin stars.

Curiously, he was initially inspired by restaurants as diverse as Ferran Adria’s el Bulli in Spain and René Redzepi’s Noma in Copenhagen, not because he in any ways replicates them, but the fact that they were thinking outside the box inspired him to do the same. “Everybody was running behind them and so there was no sense in copying everything, so I started to think about what to do next, started to ask questions about what my diners wanted when they came here. I realised that although very little was written down about Alpine Cuisine, there were oral traditions and culture and especially sustainability, which affects everything.”

On the back of this reflection, he developed a concept called “Cook the Mountain”, which is shorthand for making your immediate environment the source of virtually all of your ingredients. This is relatively easy to do in the summer, as there are all of the usual vegetables along with local asparagus, though it only has a season of five weeks or so. Norbert realised he would have to dig deeper into local practices, which included fermentation of products for the winter months. “So, for the past decade, I have being building up a network of farmers and now we have 50 that are working directly with us. Initially, we were ordering everything through middlemen and then when it arrived we were not happy with the product, so we eliminated all the intermediaries and spoke directly to the farmers. They are all in the Alpine region, including Austria – I am not bothered about zero kilometres as it doesn’t work – mountain culture is more important. We reset the whole type of cuisine – we started to use everything, especially with the meat, so we use the entire animal in one way it is respect for the animal and in another we help the farmer because he can sell the entire carcase, so it works out really well.”

Then they decided we wouldn’t use any citrus fruits because at 1700 metres above sea level, there were no citrus trees in the neighbourhood. Vinegar became a useful substitute. When it came to olive oil, that was also eliminated and replaced with grape seed oil with the addition of various local herbs.

“When you close one door, you have to look around and you end up opening 10. We have a lot more work in the summer because we have to store things for the winter and it is always a bet on nature, because you have to take what the farmer produces and then learn how to preserve it and now the biggest problem is we are running out of space.”

I recently flew to Venice and took a three-hour car journey north to spend a long weekend with Norbert, just before he ended his Summer/Autumn season before reopening in December for the ski season. There is nothing boring or predictable in his signature dishes, starting with a dish called “Tomatoes?” This originated after Valentin, one of his fruit and vegetable suppliers, brought in several hundred ripe plums. Rather than use them in a dessert dish, Norbert and his sous chef decided to ferment them and check out the different flavours month by month. By five months old, it had a rich Umami taste with a dash of acid and they discovered by adding some basil leaves and sour breadcrumbs, it tasted exactly like bruschetta with tomato.

The point of starting with this dish is to show how with a creative approach, it is possible to substitute local ingredients to become a stimulating alternative to classic ingredients.

Another example was “Tartare di Coregone” or raw char. The flesh was seasoned in salt and sugar and served at room temperature with its scales dehydrated, fried and then sprinkled on top with its bones and guts reduced for the sauce. The next dish was an exquisite herb salad of 20 or so local examples – something that is only available in the summer months. Then there was a kaleidoscope of local mushrooms, which were served with an exceptionally memorable glazed eel.

The main event of the weekend was a four hands dinner with Albert Adria, the younger brother of Ferran Adria, who has several restaurants in Barcelona, including Michelin-starred Tickets and Enigma. Albert had never been to the South Tyrol and hadn’t even met Norbert before the event, which was held in AlpiNN, Norbert’s James Bond style Modernist restaurant in Kronplatz at the peak of Plan de Corones, reachable only by a 20 minute cable car ride to the 2300 metre peak.

Albert arrived with his sous chef and managed to conjure up several of his own dishes in this surreal environment with views stretching over the Austrian Alps to the north and the craggy Dolomites to the south. While Norbert offered simple but superb renditions of barbequed lambs hearts or his famous char tartare, Albert offered classically executed dishes of lettuce soup with avocado and fresh pistachio or charcoal grilled lobster cured in aged ox fat. The alternate dishes couldn’t have been more contrasting but with dishes of this calibre, there were no complaints from the hundred or so guests.

Interestingly, there are no local people working in Norbert’s St Hubertus restaurant but instead the 20 or so people in the kitchen come from all over Italy. They have obviously learned a lot by their exposure to his approach as his former workers now hold 15 Michelin stars throughout the country.

Spreading the word is something that Norbert takes enormous pride – “I have shown that you can reach all the way up to three Michelin stars, purely using local produce. Before, everyone thought you had to use French products or other luxury ones from abroad – I have nothing against French products, but young people in say Sicily, or Naples or Calabria, can also achieve what I have, merely using the products around them –I am not going to change the world, but this is the best message I can offer.”

St Hubertus www.rosalpina.it Menus: €200 – €300

AlpiNN Food Space & Restaurant https://alpinn.it/en/  From €35

The British food scene has flourished in the past 30 years, thanks to local talent such as Rowley Leigh, Simon Hopkinson and Alastair Little while the influence of the French-born Roux Brothers, Raymond Blanc and Pierre Koffmann has been incalculable. And of course, when it comes to Italian, Indian, Chinese and Thai Cuisine, Britain can now boast a string of world class restaurants (to Michelin’s credit, their assessments of all of these categories is more or less spot on) – it is at the very top where the credibility of the brand is most at risk.

There were gasps in the dining room of the Hurlingham Club when it was announced that the sole new Three Star for 2020 was Pierre Gagnaire’s Sketch (Lecture Room & Library). They were not of delight but despair – yet again, a high profile branded French chef pulls it off in Britain – Anne-Sophie Pic also crept up from one to two stars for her diffusion brand – La Dame de Pic, which can be found in Paris and Singapore. The quality of Sketch is high but there is zero buzz about the cooking there and it is rarely mentioned at all in culinary circles. We all know that top chefs are not always behind the stoves in their kitchens, but in four of the five British three stars, they are basically there in name only – the sole exception being Alain Roux at the Waterside Inn.  But that really isn’t the main issue – the important point is that most critics and other guides do not consider these the leading five restaurants in the UK. Of course all of these rankings are subjective, but there is a general feeling amongst critics that three two star chefs – Brett Graham at the Ledbury, Simon Rogan from L’Enclume and Clare Smyth of Core, are equally or even more, worthy of the honour, than Michelin’s current list.

The Good Food Guide only ranks two of Michelin’s top five in their top 50 list – Gordon Ramsay at Number 7 and Fat Duck at 18, while the AA Guide also ranks only two (Fat Duck and Sketch) in their top category. When it comes to the Worlds 50 Best Restaurant Awards, Michelins main international rival, not one of the British three stars makes it onto the list at all, Fat Duck having fallen off in 2018 and not being eligible this year because of a change in the rules concerning restaurants that had previously been number one. The Worlds 50 Best has only two UK restaurants on it – Lyle’s and the Clove Club, both innovative and stylish Shoreditch places, with one and two stars respectively, though in the two other UK guides, neither of them are ranked as high as they deserve to be. La Liste, which is the only other influential international list, merely has one UK restaurant – Gordon Ramsay at 88 in its top 100.

In terms of reliability, I have found the French Michelin Guide the best, followed by Spain and Germany. The Italian Guide can be wayward, recommending bizarre country places in modern hotel blocks at the expense of more traditional establishments. The Scandinavian Guide thinks that Geranium (three stars) in Copenhagen is superior to Noma (two stars) but otherwise, reflects my version of reality. I suppose the real problem with the UK Michelin Guide is its conservatism in doling out top awards. It also interesting to note that the Waterside Inn has had three stars for so many years and that the former international head of Michelin (Derek Brown) has subsequently had a commercial relationship with the restaurant. As one leading critic of three star Michelins remarked, the Waterside Inn would be considered a reasonable provincial one star if it was in France rather than the Thames Valley.

I am happy to concede that the greatest European haut cuisine restaurants are in France, with Spain also in the ballpark. However, it is pointless to assess the British food scene solely through French tinted glasses and even worse if the highest awards here go to what are in essence French branded spinoffs, which are not in the same league as their original places. Having a Michelin star or two is critical for international reservations and will continue to be for some time to come. However, sales of the Red Guide have slumped considerably in the past decade or so with the UK Guide rumoured to sell only a few thousand copies.

There were rumours that Gwendal Poullennec, the newly appointed international director of the Michelin Guides, was going to shake things up because of the growing competition from other international guides. However, Michelin UK still appears to be ploughing the same furrow it has for the past decade, which will inevitably lead to its importance being further marginalised in the coming years.

Shortly afterwards, she very reluctantly brought the plate back – still with the bite out of the chicken. Covered in embarrassment, she told my wife the chef refused to replace it because that was how it was supposed to be cooked. Rather than face further awkwardness, she left it uneaten and ordered something else. She can’t even recall if it was taken off the bill – when things go as badly wrong as this, it’s hard to focus on the follow up.

It is a puzzle how people, allegedly in the hospitality industry, can get something so egregiously wrong, but it happens more often than you would think. What makes it even more puzzling is how little official advice there is on what needs to be done when problems arise with a meal. I checked out various manuals for restaurants, including the Bible of them all, The New Catering Repertoire, a 1300-page work devoted to everything you need to know to run a restaurant. Volume Two goes into the minutiae required, such as Receiving Customers, where to place the caviar knife and Dealing with Spillages on Tablecloths. However, nowhere in all of these detailed pages of common-sense advice is there is a single word about how to deal with a complaint – valid or otherwise – from a customer.

It would probably be difficult to categorise all the sorts of issues that can go wrong, but I was impressed with one ad hoc solution to a customer complaining to a Soho chef about a grub in her salad. He simply bent down, picked it up and then ate it.

A recent trip to Marseille provided me with some virtually textbook examples of how to both ameliorate and to inflame an unhappy customer. We hadn’t been back since some memorable meals at Gérald Passedat’s Le Petit Nice, which is arguably the greatest seafood restaurant in France, if not the Mediterranean.

On this occasion, time was in shorter supply, since we had to visit the recently completed MuCEM (Museum of European and Mediterranean Civilisations) on the site of Fort St-Jean, which dominates the entrance of the Old Port. There are any number of simple restaurants nearby, so we chose Chez Madie les Gallinettes, known for its classic take on Provençal Cuisine, including such obscurities as couilles d’agneau (lambs testicles) as well as more conventional offerings like bouillabaisse. The outdoors space looked full but we were more than happy to take the last remaining table, which was only half in the shade. What more could one desire? A sunny table within paddling distance of the two and a half thousand year-old port and a commendable €18 set lunch?

The drinks and gazpacho turned up within ten minutes, but then we entered the dreaded limbo of waiting interminably for the next course. After nearly half an hour, anxious enquiries to the scurrying waiter elicited off the shoulder comments about how it was coming in five minutes until the owner, a kindly middle-aged woman, apologised and said she would sort it out. Before she did, a complimentary plate of delicious hors d’oeuvres arrived, including fresh asparagus stalks, grilled red mullet and fried squid. Fifteen minutes later, the main dishes emerged, including my gardiane de taureau, a sticky Camargue bull daube. We rather rashly then ordered some glasses of wine, though alas, they made it onto the bill, but not the table. On departure, we pointed this out to madame, who was already furious with her staff and kept apologising and offering us wine. Overall, the service was extraordinarily incompetent, but we left with no hard feelings as we felt that every effort had been made to sort it out. The secret here was to leave us with the feeling that the management were on our side.

If only the same could be said of our attempt at an evening meal at Le Bistrot des Dames on the opposite side of the port. Located at the far end of Place aux Huiles, it was a buzzy place with tables spilling onto the street. We ordered drinks and food and then absorbed the atmosphere, which was confirmation that the revival of the Old Port was well under way. French friends had warned us that service in Marseilles has always been problematical, not just for tourists but anyone who was from beyond the city limits. Twenty minutes on and still no sign of the drinks, which prompted me to walk into the restaurant to speed things up. Ten minutes later, the drinks arrived, but any attempt to discover when the food might appear was met with a vague promise that it was on the way.

After another delay, the waiters would simply ignore the request and simply pretend we were not there. We decided the only correct response was to become invisible ourselves by leaving, which is the first time I have ever done this, though the staff almost seemed relieved to have fewer people to deal with. Although I rarely rely on TripAdvisor before eating somewhere, it was salutary to read the comments from others. Everything seemed to be fine there until the past year, when the majority of comments were about the interminable delays and rudeness of the staff, including one poor customer who was threatened with violence after he complained.

Ultimately, it is the sincerity of the response that matters – I still fume about being kept from our allotted table at a smart place in Manhattan, because some “personality” turned up unannounced. We were given a conciliatory glass of champagne while we sat in reception but it felt robotic and hollow.

All of this pales into insignificance compared to the story an hotelier told me. An elderly couple had wanted to celebrate their wedding anniversary at one of the most famous hideaways on Bali, so had a special bottle of Romanée-Conti 69 (retail price £10,000 plus) shipped out weeks in advance. They arrived for dinner but were puzzled not to find their treasured bottle decanted and waiting by the side of the table. It turned out it had been sent to the wrong table, where the guests thanked the sommelier profusely before drinking it. History does not relate which shack on Kuta Beach currently employs the sommelier.

I suppose the peak time for restaurant going is when you are in your mid twenties to early thirties, when cash is not in short supply and before marriage or commitment. It’s that time when if you are too late to find a room in a foreign hotel within your budget, you inevitably go for the more expensive rather than the cheaper, option. The Ledbury was certainly a cut above the other locals, but not excessively, though I confess, my visits are not on a weekly basis. It was founded by Nigel Platts-Martin, the most discerning restaurateur in London – at that point, he also owned The Square, then my favoured grand restaurant. Brett Graham, an Australian then in his mid-twenties, had spent four years there and been chosen to open The Ledbury, which he now part owns. Curiously, there was nothing especially exceptional about those early meals, rather in the way I never imagined in the mid-Seventies that Raymond Blanc was going places when I first ate at his restaurant next to Oxfam on the Banbury Road in North Oxford.

Within three years though, word went around how brilliant Brett’s food was… wine lovers also flocked there for lunch, as he was happy to cook elaborate yet complementary meals to go with great wines. I had oenophile friends from abroad who would stay at our house because they were dining and then lunching the next day there. Like 192, the menu changed twice daily, though regular dishes appeared such as crapaudine, a rather suggestive sausage shaped beetroot baked in artist’s clay or his superb flame grilled mackerel or Roe Deer baked in Douglas Fir and served with smoked bone marrow. Brett has an obsession with game of all sorts and regularly hunts venison, grouse and pheasants at the leading shoots in Britain. He has taken this interest to a further stage, importing some from the white deer herd owned by the Danish Royal family and now has more than 70. They are kept at Aynhoe Park in Oxfordshire, along with two other herds – 120 Fallow Deer from Petworth in Sussex plus 100 Sika deer, which are kept at the Duke of Buccleuch’s estate at Boughton House in Northamptonshire.

Such is his obsession with quality that he is experimenting with at least 10 different types of grass to feed them, as well as using restaurant waste to supplement their diet. The herds at both estates are part of a plan to repopulate their deer parks for aesthetic reasons as much as anything else though he has started serving the Sika at the Ledbury and ultimately will offer the others too. The last time I saw Brett in the street, he had just returned from shooting in Berkshire, rootled around in his bag and presented me with three fresh deer hearts along with detailed advice on the best way to prepare and cook them. His enthusiasm and sense of excitement when he describes a new dish or the tweaking of an earlier one is infectious, which adds to the gaiety of the experience.

But a great restaurant is not just measured by its chef’s passions – it has to be a seamless combination of three things – food and wine, ambiance and service. When it comes to this trinity, it surpasses its rivals in all three. There are plenty of wines listed for less than £50 a bottle while at the top end, the margins are usually less than double. There is something completely friendly and unrushed about the atmosphere – young couples on a meaningful date, curious Chinese, regulars plus a scattering of chefs from the elsewhere trying it out for the first time. There are always a couple of tables still occupied by five in the afternoon. I also recall eating at the Ledbury and hearing that a certain chef from a one star Michelin had just been in and two weeks later dining at his place and discovering several blatant copies of Brett dishes on his set menu. How do you describe the cuisine? Innovative Anglo-Continental? Invariably, the essential ingredients of the dishes are usually identifiable and have the intensity and purity that only a great chef can muster. One memorable dish in a recent meal was Grilled River Teign Oyster with smoked butter and sea purslane. They were monsters, somewhere around seven inches long with an intense maritime flavour and the texture of foie gras. Or perfectly pink breasts of roast grouse with girolles and lemon thyme – every dish has that freshness and execution that takes an immense amount of trouble and care to achieve.

A former pub, the single floor dining area hasn’t changed since opening – a spacious blending of columns and white-clothed tables for four with the kitchen in the basement. Most of the leading chefs around the globe have been there, including Alain Ducasse, who was dumbfounded by how tiny the kitchen is. During the riots in 2011, a group of local yobs stormed the restaurant and attempted to rob the clients. They were foiled midway when the kitchen staff stormed the restaurant brandishing cleavers and knives. Boris Johnson, the then mayor, was so impressed he visited the Ledbury the following day, although unlike David Cameron, he had never eaten there. He assumed the clientele wore lots of bling, but was told that in fact that was more the looter’s style. Brett refused to close and barricade the place the following night and kept open without any further disturbances.

The Ledbury has certainly won a clutch of awards, including several years at number one on the National Restaurant Awards, two Michelin stars and until recently the highest UK restaurant on the Worlds 50 Best list. However, the one accolade it has yet to receive is that third Michelin star, which is as curious as it is unjust. Any serious diner will tell you that the cuisine is far more creative and thrilling than what is served at Ducasse at the Dorchester, the Waterside Inn or Gordon Ramsay yet until now, Michelin hasn’t budged. Perhaps under new management in Paris, things might change this year, as there has been a tendency in the last France guide to show more appreciation for younger, innovative chefs.

If your budget does not run to the set menu of £125, there is a four-course lunch for £80, which might sound expensive unless you have seen the prices of similar places in Paris. It is common to pay nearly double that for a meagre three-course offering and treble that for dinner.

In the past year, the Roux family have opened Caractère, which is actually now my closest neighbourhood restaurant. Although the cuisine to me is superior to its flagship, Le Gavroche, it could never win my heart, as it has a printed menu, which remains unchanged for months at a time. I may now only go to the Ledbury a couple of times a year rather than every couple of months, but there is still nothing this side of the Channel that raises my spirits so high before arriving and then fulfils them for the ensuing four or five hours.

https://www.theledbury.com/

Cyril could have also mentioned the satisfyingly mesmeric sound of cicadas when you drive beyond Valence into Provence. Perhaps part of their attraction is because it is tangible proof that you have left northern Europe behind or that they only sing when the temperature is above 83F.

One of my favourite indulgences is driving through France while my family looks through restaurant guides to find anything intriguing an hour or two further along the route for lunch. I have never quite understood the logic of the Michelin Guide’s grading restaurants according to the distance you are prepared to travel to eat there. In their reckoning, one star is worth a stop, two a detour and three a special journey.

Perhaps I am an extreme case, but why should the length of the journey be purely dependent on whether or not a restaurant is renowned and expensive? I have actually driven from one end of France to the other (Noirmoutier to Orange) to dine in a restaurant that doesn’t even have a Michelin star. To make matters worse, my car at the time was suffering from an extreme bout of emphysema and struggled to go up even the slightest incline at more than 40 mph. On this occasion, the day-long journey was certainly worthwhile as it was to go to Restaurant La Beaugravière north of Orange, which has one of the greatest wine lists in France at modest prices.

Located just off the Route National Sept in Mondragon, Guy Julien and his wife Tina have run this simple establishment for 45 years, serving local specialities like Pieds et paquets d’agneau à la Marseillaise (lambs feet stuffed with tripe) or Poularde de Bresse with black truffles under its skin, better known as half-mourning chicken. However, the reason people flock to La Beaugravière is more to do with its wine list, nearly 50 pages painstakingly written and updated by the patron, who has four cellars underneath his restaurant, full of the greatest Rhone wines, along with classic Burgundy all the way back to his own (excellent) birth year of 1949.

On this particular journey, I was also travelling further south to the other side of Orange to visit Château de Beaucastel, one of the finest Châteauneuf–du-Pape vineyards. Co-owner Francois Perrin showed us around the estate, which has been organic for more than half a century and biodynamic since the mid Seventies. The journey was with Stephen Browett, head of Farr Vintners and James Suckling, then the chief wine writer for the Wine Spectator, which probably explains why Francois kept opening older and greater bottles in his vast cellar.

After ending with the 81, one of my favourites, we headed off to his new venture above Gigondas, a small plot of old vines in the shadow of the Dentelles de Montmirail, the jagged limestone outcrop that resembles an ill-kempt row of teeth. Francois said we may as well have lunch at L’Oustalet, his local restaurant in Gigondas, which he has opened with chef Laurent Deconinck.

Belgian born Laurent has worked in a number of well-regarded places, such as Pierre Gagnaire and Michel Rostang in Paris as well as Raymond Blanc in Oxfordshire but here he focuses on exquisite simple regional dishes – Roast veal with Spring Truffles or John Dory in almond milk. But it is not just the cuisine, or the splendid wine list of the local specialities as well as Bordeaux and Burgundy from further afield, but the location. Perched on the side of the village square, this simple stone Provençal house has to be in one of the most evocative locations of any restaurant in France, with its outsized table constructed around an old olive tree with a natural canopy provided by the overhanging plane trees. L’Oustalet has just this year been awarded a Michelin Star, which is well-deserved but almost irrelevant, as for me it is the simplicity and unpretentiousness of the place that makes it so special.

After wandering over his new estate, Francois took us down the hill to an outside table at L’Oustalet. He brought along a handful of the very best Beaucastels from our tasting but was curious to hear our opinion about Clos des Papes, a highly esteemed Châteauneuf. He conjured up a 2007, one of the first Châteauneufs to be awarded 100 points by wine guru Robert Parker. I was expecting it to be an OTT fruit bomb, given that it has an alcohol level north of 15%, but it was extraordinarily balanced and elegant for such a behemoth. I remember thinking that only someone supremely confident in their own wine could serve such a formidable rival.

If you would like to make an entire journey from Paris to the south of France only eating at simple but perfect places, the other restaurant worth making a detour for is La Ferme de la Ruchotte, a rustic farmhouse only open to the public on weekends just outside Beaune. On first glance, chef Frederick Ménager looks more like a roadie than a chef, with his intricate tattoos and Black Sabbath T –Shirts. He only serves set lunches at the weekend using local produce such as girolles on toast or one of his organic chickens or guineau fowl. This and a vast cheeseboard is why it is a favourite haunt of leading Burgundy producers such as Jeremy Seysses of Domaine Dujac.

Of course, it is also fun to make the journey south from Paris only stopping at the classic three star restaurants that have been around for 80 years or more, something I have done in a Morgan AeroMax, but that is another story.

La Beaugraviere: www.beaugraviere.com

L’Oustalet www.loustalet-gigondas.com

La Ferme de la Ruchotte www.lafermedelaruchotte.com

Perhaps I am being prejudiced, but for me, typical German fare is stodgy and unimaginative. It seems to consist of bland sausages, schnitzels, pork knuckle, dumplings and pancakes, invariably accompanied by heaps of sauerkraut and red cabbage. Red wine hardly features, as the drink of choice is beer in an unwieldy porcelain tankard.  Side salads are quite popular, but usually have hearty helpings of cold potatoes to add to my gloom. It is akin to being served bad pub food at a church fete.

Size is important too. Everything seems to be made for gluttons – even the croissants look as if they have been crafted by Fernando Botero. One way out of this dilemma is to “go ethnic”, which usually means Turkish food. However, that too is invariably pedestrian – or there is Thai or various interpretations of Italian cuisine, but they often don’t deliver either. President Chirac was caught off camera declaring that the only European cuisine worse than English, was Finnish, but then again, he was talking to Chancellor Schröder.

It would be wrong to assume there are no decent restaurants in Germany – we had a delightful classic meal of pork shoulder and whole trout at the historic Restaurant Heilig-Geist Spital over the Pegnitz River in Nuremberg. The trouble is to have anything memorable beyond these classic dishes, you have to confine yourself to the score or so finest restaurants in the entire country. Tim Raue in Berlin (two-star Michelin) is the only German restaurant on the World’s 50 Best Restaurant list and it certainly deserves to be there, though it is Asian Fusion rather than German cuisine.

Interestingly, Germany has twice as many three-star Michelin restaurants (10) than Britain and from the ones I have tried, they are excellent and even relatively reasonably priced for the quality. The one thing they do have in common though, is that none of them focus on traditional German food – they are all heavily French-influenced, although some have occasional Japanese flourishes. Almost the only thing Teutonic about the dishes will be a postmodern version of Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte (Black Forest gâteau). It is true that of Britain’s five three-star restaurants, three of them are definitely French-inspired – Ducasse at the Dorchester, Gordon Ramsay and Michel Roux’s Waterside Inn – but the big difference is there are numerous quality restaurants apart from these that offer original, innovative and ingredient-driven cuisine that is not in any sort of culinary straight jacket the way most German places are.

I have had superb meals at Sven Elverfeld in Wolfsberg and Tantris in Munich, both of which have trained up chefs who have gone on to open their own three-star restaurants elsewhere. The most renowned German chef of his generation is Heinz Winkler, the youngest ever chef to gain three stars while at Tantris, and then regained them at his eponymous Residenz Heinz Winkler, in Chiemgau at the foot of the German Alps.

Happenstance is a fine thing, so while recently driving to a friend’s Schloss in the Austrian Alps, we found ourselves only minutes from Herr Winkler’s restaurant, which was doubly inviting because it has one of the worlds largest and cheapest selections of white Burgundy from Coche-Dury.

Less than an hour south east of Munich, it is located in a picture post card Bavarian village close to Lake Chiemsee. The restaurant and 32 bed hotel overlooks the Kampenwand Mountain and reeks of luxe, calme et volupté. Heinz celebrated his seventieth birthday while we were there, but most of the actual cooking is now done by Steffen Mezger, who moved here five years ago. Heinz briefly worked abroad in France and Spain and considers Paul Bocuse the greatest influence on his own classic cuisine, which has no magic formula except focussing on the main ingredient and ensuring that his sauces are not too heavy. Steffen Mezger says the current style is basically French with New Nordic and Mediterranean influences. He says the sort of things that I have always thought, namely that “You should be able to look at a plate and know what it is” and that three or four different components on the plate is enough. Perhaps it is because of this dogged classicism that the restaurant was demoted from three to two stars a decade ago – a similar fate befell L’Oustau de Baumanière in Provence, though there too, there had been no drop in quality. Perhaps it would be better if guides or lists of top restaurants had separate awards for classic and innovative cuisine. Of the half dozen tables occupied at the Residenz the evening we were there, I suspect we were the only foreigners, which would not be the case in the leading restaurants of France, Spain or Italy.

Apart from the a la carte menu, there were two set menus – a five courses one for €165 or eight for €193 plus slighter cheaper vegetarian offerings. The dishes were exquisite, starting with marinated raw scallops with Yuzu and cucumber and a parfait of duck liver with rhubarb and Greek yoghurt.

The balance and harmony of the ingredients were easily up to three-star Michelin standard, as was the Breton Red Mullet with leek and lime vinaigrette.

I never tried the wine pairing – instead, Alexander, Heinz Winkler’s sommelier son, served a Grafen Neipperg 2015 Riesling GG (Grosses Gewachs), which means it is the quality equivalent of a Grand Cru Burgundy. Perhaps because of my lack of exposure to the very best Riesling, this was seriously impressive, with its floral elements and intensity of flavours.

For me, the best dishes of the night were the venison with chanterelles and red cabbage along with the veal with mustard cabbage and wasabi.

Again, it was the simplicity and harmony of the ingredients that made both of them exceptional – each perfectly rosé and pink. Given this mastery and celebration of French cuisine by Herr Winkler, it is perhaps fitting that Germany’s greatest homage to France is a mere 10 miles away to the north. Perched on an island in the middle of Lake Chiemsee is King Ludwig’s Herrenchiemsee Palace, a faithful copy of the central portion of Versailles, complete with a hall of mirrors. Sadly, it was never completed and the cost almost bankrupted the Bavarian Court. Ludwig created this vast palace in honour of Louis XIV and I suppose you could loosely posit that Heinz Winkler has been inspired by his mentor Paul Bocuse, but there is nothing incomplete or OTT about his restaurant. Even better, the experience is certainly great value and will not bankrupt any hungry diner.

Residenz Winkler  www.residenz-heinz-winkler.de