Ember Yard, Soho

I've often told people that with a restaurant obsession as unhealthy and fanatical as mine, the only other city in the world I could live in is New York. The depth and maturity of its restaurant scene, the variety of its cuisines, their service culture and a love of eating out that's embraced at all levels of society, it all adds up to one of the truly great food cities, somewhere I'm very sure I could find a happy home.

There is a downside to the place, though, and one that's almost a dealbreaker for a food blogger. New Yorkers like their restaurants dark. And while I'm sure that's great for a first date, or cultivating that traditional New York speakeasy vibe, it plays havoc with the illustrations on a review. The lighting scheme at Ember Yard takes me right back to New York City, places like Maison Premiere or the Breslin, where the gloomy candlelit dining rooms are only occasionally pierced by people turning their mobile phone torches on to read the menu. What I mean to say is, sorry about the pictures you're about to see. It was very dark in there.

Fortunately lighting aside, Ember Yard is a blast. The fusion Italian-Spanish thing done so well by their sister restaurant the Opera Tavern shines just as brightly here, with hand-carved Iberico ham offered alongside various premium Italian charcuterie, both Spanish and Italian cheeses, and a largish list of dishes that skip daintily but confidently around the Mediterranean. Padron peppers, blistered attractively, went incredibly well with a glass of La Gitana. Yes that is a photo of a bowl of padron peppers and a glass of sherry. I promise.

Next, boquerones, sharp and sweet like mini pickled herrings, also excellent quality and not overly pickled and mushy like they can sometimes be.

If I was so inclined, I could criticise the ham at Ember Yard for being carved a bit clumsily and thick, but in all honesty it was still soft and perfectly easy to eat, and with that nutty, earthy flavour of the finest Spanish pig. In fact, the thick slices just meant we ended up with more ham, and as any Iberico fan will tell you, More Ham is always a Good Thing. Even if I'd ended my evening at Ember Yard here, I would have come away with a smile on my face - the care that goes into the food is evident from the smallest snack to the largest sharing plate.

I didn't get to try this, the courgette flower stuffed with Monte Enebro (goat's) cheese, but given the rate it disappeared I'm sure it had plenty to recommend it.

I would have been very annoyed if I didn't get to try any of the octopus and chorizo skewer though, so I made sure to leap in there quick and grab my share. The octopus was beautifully tender with a good "crispy bit" quotient, and the chorizo was soft and fatty and spicy as the best examples always are. If you like chargrilled octopus, and you like chorizo, and you'd have to be pretty odd not to, then this is a must-order.

I'd noticed early on that the Ember Yard rib-eye comes with 'chicken jus' and from that moment knew I'd have to end up ordering it. It didn't disappoint - a huge amount of beef, carefully charred in the Josper, dressed in a thick, umami-rich chicken gravy that somehow didn't battle the natural flavour of the beef but enhanced it. I think I'd prefer it if they'd presented it charred-side up rather than laying all the slices down on their sides, but that's a minor niggle. Also, all this lot cost £28 - not a bad price at all for so much cow.

"Cheesecake" was in fact more of a caramelly mousse on a bed of biscuit crumbs, dressed in a sauce made from carrot and blackcurrant. The dulche de leche made a great base for the dairy, and the carrot & blackcurrant sauce wasn't as weird as it sounds, as the carrot flavour was fortunately quite subdued. A very enjoyable dessert, this one.

And finally churros, a straightforward and familiar dish perhaps but one you'd have to have a heart of stone not to enjoy. Fried pastry, chocolate sauce and chantilly cream. Perfect.

I was always going to like Ember Yard. The Salt Yard group are distinct and sophisticated restaurant operators that know good food and know how to cook it, and if you've ever had a bad meal at any of their places you must have been very unlucky indeed. Restaurants like these - tastefully realised, authentic enough, keenly priced - are the backbone of the London dining scene, the kind of friendly and flexible space you can pop in for a plate of ham and a sherry or settle in with a group of friends for a long session; on the evening we visited there were plenty of people doing both.

And it got me thinking, perhaps I couldn't live in New York after all. I don't think NYC really has any answer for these kind of places, or countless other uniquely London restaurants that take a cuisine and reinvent it for a local audience without losing the glow of authenticity. Or I don't know, maybe it does, I've not been for a few years and it all could have changed. All I do know is that New York doesn't have Ember Yard. And I'd certainly miss that.

9/10

I was invited to Ember Yard and didn't see a bill.

Antidote, Soho

Much as I'm tempted to describe West London restaurant and foodie gastrotemple Hedone as "polarising", it's increasingly clear I'm just going to have to admit that when I have one opinion and the rest of the bloody world has another, that's not "polarising". That's just me being wrong. I didn't hate Hedone at all, but for the astonishing price and next to the tidal wave of hype from some of the biggest names in food in the capital, I just couldn't see what the fuss was about. But fine, OK, whatever. you win. Hedone is God's own diner and serving a poached onion on a plate is a work of genius. See? No egos here.

But what do you do, as a Michelin-starred chef behind one of the most critically-lauded restaurants in town, when you get tired of being associated only with the foams and frills of fine dining and want to see if your meticulous (/dangerously obsessive/emperor's new clothes - delete as appropriate) approach to ingredients works in a less formal environment? And also, what if you don't want the expectations and hype behind your flagship kitchen to cloud customer's experience in the new place, where after all you aren't pushing for the same levels of international haute-cuisine? Well, you go undercover.

The rumours of a "big name" chef casting his eye over the menu at Soho wine bar Antidote had swirled around Twitter and the blogosphere for a week or two, but it was only when one bright spark spotted a pear and cevennes onion gratin on the chalkboard menu that the pieces seemed to fall into place. We are, of course, talking about Mikael Jonsson of Hedone, and exactly how his influence breaks down is yet to be revealed completely, but we do know he is involved, and his new menu forms part of a wider refurb and revamp of this pretty little spot tucked around the back of Carnaby Street.

Of course, I had to try the aformentioned pear and cevennes onion gratin, and as the most Hedone-like thing on the menu, again I was underwhelmed. The crust on top was golden brown and gently salty, and the sprigs of greenery had a lovely sharp dressing, but beneath this was a bland, semolina-like mush of diced vegetables, with very little to recommend it.

But from here on, Antidote got better and better. Salt marsh lamb shoulder was beautifully cooked, and though weird at first the seaweed purée beneath actually worked well once the shock wore off, seasoning the meat with a deep, mysterious brine.

Cheeses were perfectly kept and very well chosen. I tried a 2-year aged gruyere, which was quite salty but had a lovely smooth texture and plenty of nutty alpine charm. And a Camembert packed a great big punch of farmy goodness, and was so moreish that I timidly nibbled around the skin before finally giving up and ate that, too. But better even than the cheeses was the house bread, with a delicate crust and a bouncy, moist crumb, so fresh and light that whoever's making bread at Antidote (and it is all made in-house) should be very pleased with themselves indeed.

And it's a gorgeous room, and the staff were charming and helpful and couldn't do enough for me, and there's even a quiet little outside terrace for when the weather improves or if you fancy a cheeky smoke. It's not even that expensive, although I imagine with a bigger appetite and a keener eye for the wine list (largely natural, I'm told, and with some real bargains though don't quote me on that) you could drop a good deal more than the £31.50 I managed on this lunch. For central, though, and considering the obvious effort that's gone into the food, I'd still call it value. Perhaps the most bizarre thing about the experience at Antidote is that, cevenne onion obsession aside, it's almost as different to Hedone as you could imagine. In fact, you could say, it's the anti- oh, I see what they did there.

8/10

Copita, Soho

There was quite an interesting reaction to my post about the new Brindisa place Tramontana in Shoreditch. Let me repeat that I had a great time there - I thought the food was very accomplished, the staff friendly and I loved what they'd done with the room and open kitchen. But, it seems, not many other people did. You can read the comments from disappointed customers yourself on the post, but as well as those, no less than food & wine writer Fiona Beckett, whose tastes normally overlap mine fairly reliably, didn't think much of it.

I'm not sure which is stranger, though - that different people could have such different reactions to a meal in the same restaurant within the space of a week, or that, given our wildly differing fetishes and foibles, we ever have enough in common to recommend a restaurant at all. I mean think about this - some people don't even like Tayyabs. I know! Madness.

Following Tramontanagate then, and given the practical impossibility of finding an objectively good restaurant, it perhaps shouldn't have been too much of a surprise that much-loved and award-winning tapas bar Copita didn't excite me as I thought it was going to. But I was mainly disappointed not because I was expecting it to be brilliant, but because I really wanted it to be brilliant - another reliable ham-and-sherry outlet in the centre of London is always cause for celebration.

The first problem was with the Iberico ham, and given my hopeless addiction to the stuff I find it quite hard to forgive problems with Iberico ham. It was £15 for a fairly mean portion - close to the same amount that José sell for £9 - and was pretty badly carved, shredded and hacked into weird irregular bits and pieces, much of it dry and chewy. The flavour was still good, but the way it had been treated made me sad inside.

The rest was better, fortunately. Mussel croquettas weren't anywhere near as weird as they sound, in fact they were better than those at Tramontana, with a nice golden crust and creamy filling. Crispy cauliflower & piquillo sauce began enjoyably, delicately encrusted and seasoned well, but the sauce was underpowered and there wasn't enough of it, so very soon all you were eating was fried cauliflower and wishing you weren't. A lamb bun with harissa was very good though, my favourite overall, with tender chunks of slow-cooked lamb and a good kick from the harissa.

We got a cheese board too but as the waitress merely dumped them and ran off without explaining what they were, I can't tell you much about them other than I liked the gooey goat's and spongey blue, but the harder (mountain?) cheese was a bit bland. £11, mind.

With the cheapest bottle of sherry, itself a whacking £39, the total for two came to £88 and it's really in the value-for-money department that Copita loses most of its stars. The food was good, but not extraordinarily so, and I'm sure Soho rents have as much of an effect on the bill as the cost of ingredients which were generally of a high standard, but I couldn't help feeling that we didn't get a great deal for our £44 a head and had we been hungrier and thirstier the results could have been disastrous. Then again, perhaps you'll visit yourself, have a great time for a pittance and wonder what the hell I was moaning about. Such is the strange business of writing about restaurants.

6/10

Copita have been in touch to point out that their cheapest sherry is £15 for a half bottle, so a bit cheaper than the £39 full bottle we had.

Tramontana, Shoreditch

Poor old Brindisa. Once upon a time they were the unchallenged masters of Spanish food in London, beloved by punters, raved about by critics, showered with awards. Then one day some upstart employee called José Pizarro gets ideas above his station and decides to open his own place, an insultingly short walk away from the Borough Market flagship bar. And as if that wasn't enough, next thing you know this José character has them queueing out of the door every night and starts collecting awards like they're going out of fashion. The cheek.

Of course, they have nothing to worry about. While faddish foodies (guilty) chase after the novelty and the new, Brindisa's mini chain of restaurants (now four in number) has been quietly and confidently getting on with producing some of the best Spanish food this side of the Pyrenees. I have never had a bad meal at any of their sites, and if last night is anything to go by, the latest addition to the fold will be nothing but another roaring success.

Tramontana have kept the basic internal layout of previous occupant Saf, but the vast open kitchen has really come alive now it's hung with legs of ham and lit by flaring pans instead of being a plating area for sad little piles of vegan food. (I'm told Saf have a stall in the food hall at Whole Foods Kensington these days, if you miss them terribly. Anyone? No, didn't think so.) It's a really lovely room, and the quiet garden out back will be fantastic, too, once summer returns - in the pissing October rain it's a slightly less attractive option.

There wasn't much to fault with any of the food. Boquerones were sharp and soft, draped over rustic house potato chips. Croquettas, while not quite as good as the supremely accomplished versions from the Other Place on Bermondsey Street, still were perfectly good, stuffed full of rich béchamel and salty nuggets of Iberico ham. And a separate plate of Iberico ham - surely a foodstuff that's as close to proof of the existence of God as you can find - was utter perfection, sliced into exact squares each containing just the right amount of fat and meat.

A daily special of mushrooms and truffle was probably only disappointing next to the quality of other dishes, but I did think it could have done with a lot more truffle and a lot more seasoning. Fortunately the same criticism couldn't be levelled at some little slices of cured tuna, which were incredibly punchy - pretty little things too, glowing in deep red.

Strangely, considering I've spent most of my holidays in Girona every year since I was 8 years old, this was the first time I've ever had fideuà. Best described as a Catalan version of a paella made with noodles instead of rice, this version contained huge, meaty prawns and cubes of squid, the noodles clumping together in satisfying chunks. Bacalao (Catalan for salt fish) was gorgeous too, moist and rich and balanced on top of a commendably light mayonnaise.

Then finally, if Tramontana hadn't already ticked enough boxes in my personal "how to do restaurants right" list, they also do a burger. The slider-size "black and white" is made from white Catalan butifarra sausage and morcilla (black pudding), and is so good it even gives the Opera Tavern's Iberico & foie gras version a run for its money. And at £4.50, it's also a bit of a bargain.

With a £30 bottle of Fino, all this came to just over £97 including service, and between three people I think that's very fair. In all honesty, I knew I was going to enjoy Tramontana - I've been a fan of Brindisa for almost as long as they've been serving food in London. But a restaurant as enjoyable and accomplished as this is never simply inevitable. It's the result of hard work, attention to the important details and, of course, being incredibly good at what you do. That their fourth restaurant still has the capacity to surprise and delight is testament to an extraordinary talent, and London is all the richer for having them.

9/10