The Urchin, Hove

As soon as the sun comes out on a bank holiday, it feels like half of London heads down to the south coast, and Brighton in particular. And though that town certainly has a lot going for it, not least a thriving restaurant and pub/wine scene that can show you a great time at all budgets, I'm afraid the thought of fighting my way through those narrow Lanes alleyways on the hottest days of the year gives me the heebie jeebies.

The next time you feel like heading to the Sussex coast, then, consider the short diversion to Hove. True it doesn't have quite the abundance of choice of interesting eateries and drinkeries as its big sister Brighton, but it does still have more than you've any right to expect, with the added benefit that you're much more likely to be able to find a table. And what it also has - and this is a huge plus point - is seafood-forward gastropub the Urchin.

Combining all the best things about a quaint old boozer with a skilled kitchen serving proper live seafood at reasonable prices is an idea so blatantly brilliant it's a mystery why there aren't more of them. The Wright Bros had a bash at their place in Helford, the Ferry Boat Inn, back in the day, though I notice it's long since changed hands and now serves scampi and chips for £17.50. The Oystercatcher all the way up in Loch Fyne is closer to the ideal and really does serve some lovely food, but its so remote it may as well be parked on the moon.

Taking inspiration, I'm sure, from certain London steakhouses, the Urchin have a menu of regular dishes that doesn't change much (if at all) from day to day, and a chalkboard of "specials" that get scrubbed off once ordered - think whole brown crab and lobster - organised into various different weights and price points. We started though, with a tray of Jersey rocks, superbly cool and lean, which arrived in two styles - au naturelle, and with a very interesting pickled walnut and crispy "seaweed" (Chinese-takeaway style fried cabbage). Both were great.

Oysters dispatched, it was time to turn our attention to the big boys (or possibly girls). £30 got us a giant brown crab boasting huge fat claws, served simply with a little clump of samphire. All the bigger beasties come in these clever covered metal bowls - think two woks hinged together - meaning you eat out of one side and discard your empty pieces of shell in the other. It's a great system.

If I'm going to be brutal I'd say that - unlike the crab - the lobster needed just a slight bit more seasoning, or rather should have been cooked in slightly more saline water. Not a disastrous mistake, and one I could have quite easily corrected if there had been any salt on the table, but there wasn't. Still, you did get plenty of animal for your £61, and the chips were wonderful too, crisp and golden and moreish.

We were having so much fun by this point we didn't want it to end, so added on a cheeseboard. Can't for the life of me remember what they were, but the four varieties covered all the usual bases, being a firm cheddar, a soft, creamy blue, a Tunworth-y brie-style (which was more than likely to have in fact been Tunworth) and a nice soft goat's.

With two pints of excellent hazy IPA (brewed on-site!) and a carafe of Albarino to help wash down the seafood, the bill came to £93 each - pretty much what you should be paying for this kind of thing. If you didn't have quite the weakness for premium shellfish, and weren't quite so determined to sample all corners of the drinks menu then you might get away with something like £50pp, but honestly where would be the fun in that?

We wobbled back to the station via the Watchmaker's Arms, a craft beer bar manned by lovely and enthusiastic staff, then fell asleep on the train home. It was one of those hazy bank holiday days where everything seemed to go right, and you end up wondering to yourself why all Saturdays can't be like this. The Urchin makes the whole business of cooking and serving fresh shellfish so easy and enjoyable that it deserves to be the template for any number of "shellfish pubs" (their own description of themselves) in any number of seaside towns up and down the country, and who knows, soon enough, perhaps it will. Fingers crossed.

8/10

The Foyer & Reading Room at Claridge's, Mayfair

There's a strange kind of light in the Claridge's Foyer restaurant, a sort of otherworldly greenish hue that appears to have no obvious source. There's green detailing in the carpets and and upholstery but certainly not so much that it could create such an odd effect, and examination of the table lamps and ceiling lights positioned around the room appear to just be the normal shade of electric yellow. It's not an unpleasant experience sat in here - far from it - but the soft furnishings and tinkle of the grand piano combined with the bizarre green fug combines to create a slightly out-of-body experience, like you're living in a flashback sequence from an old VHS movie.

In this rarefied if rather discombobulating space, impeccably smart staff seem to fade entirely in and out of existence as and when required - if you need your glass refilling they are there and in the blink of an eye, and then a moment later gone again, leaving you the space to yourself. You should expect a front-of-house of this standard at places (and prices) like these but even so, experiencing international-level service first-hand is never anything less than a thrill, and watching how they dealt with the odd issue that cropped up during the dinner was a masterclass in grace and efficiency.

And yes, I had a couple of issues with my dinner at the Foyer but it's important that all these niggles come in the context of a serious restaurant serving serious food at serious prices, and I'm only pointing them out in the spirit of completeness and the fact that really, at this level, I don't think it's unreasonable to expect something approaching perfection from your dinner.

Speaking of perfection though, the house bread was exactly that - an absolutely stonking sourdough with a moist, warm, tacky interior and a delicate thin crust. How much better to be served a generous chunk of this beautiful rustic creation than some frou-frou cones of ciabatta or oil-soggy foccacia. Full marks for technique and sensibility.

How odd, then, that a kichen that at first seemed so fully in control of its baking abilities should produce these rather lacklustre gougere. They weren't awful, just disappointing - cold, slightly chewy pastry containing a mealy filling of very little flavour, and a world apart from the stunning versions served at the Ritz. And I'm allowed to compare Claridge's with the Ritz, surely?

Lobster bisque needed a bit more salt and a lot more seafood flavour - it could have passed as a tomato soup were it not for the chunks of lobster floating around in it - but I'm still easily able to enjoy a slightly-seafoody tomato soup, and the tortellini were marvellously delicate and light. But again, for comparison, try the version at Sheekey's - much more my kind of thing.

I didn't get to try any of the steak tartare but it certainly looked the part, and the person whose dish it was had ordered it before, so that sounds like a recommendation to me. Like the use of variagated leaves, too.

Tuna tartare was a hugely generous portion, particularly regarding the tuna which arrived in inch-thick cubes piled high over thinly-sliced heritage tomatoes in a nice sharp dressing. OK, this is not the most radical combination of ingredients in the world but a hotel restaurant, even one as illustrious as Claridge's Foyer, isn't about shocking with unusual techniques or flavours (you can leave that to Davis & Brook next door) but serving familiar things as well as they can be served. And I would say the tuna tartare fit that bill.

Rack of lamb was so cleanly, precisely cooked to a uniform pink that they gleamed on the plate, bathed in their own crimson light in contrast to the irridescent glow of the peas and broad beans beneath. And they came with a little jug of dangerously addictive glossy lamb jus, with a texture cleverly thick enough to cling seductively to the meat even when piping hot.

Beef fillet was - eventually - similarly well-received, but I'm afraid they needed a two runs to get this right. The first example, ordered medium-rare, arrived cooked to grey all the way to the centre, an unforgiveable error for your average high street steakhouse never mind a leading hotel of the world. But hey, these things happen to the best of us, and the staff were so apologetic and made things right so comprehensively that it was almost worth the initial disappointment just to see a world-class front of house flex its hospitality muscles. It was replaced, taken off the bill, and all the sides it was ordered with replaced too, so that they didn't go cold. Top work.

All the sides - and boy did we go for it on this front - were perfect. Mashed potato was correctly 90% butter, dauphinoise had a lovely balance between dairy and starch and a golden crust on top like a creme brulée, and chips were crunchy and moreish in the steakhouse style.

I was kicking myself I didn't have room for dessert, but all those various forms of carbohydrates defeated us, and so we filled the time with a digestif instead - in this case a couple of espresso martinis and a Manhattan. The bar work at Claridge's is, as you might rightly expect, some of the best in town, and it's not for no reason they're already back operating at capacity, their clientele (which included me earlier on that evening) spilling over not only onto the new outdoor terrace but to the bar area of Davis and Brook. It is genuinely heartwarming to see them back, and so popular.

As for the Foyer restaurant, well, I had a lovely evening and more than enough went right to make the journey worthwhile, but for an establishment that so often strives for perfection in everything they do, and usually succeeds, it felt like a step behind the rest of their offerings. Compared to the cocktail bars and even the afternoon tea served in the same room (which, by the way, is utter perfection from start to finish), it just wasn't quite there.

But anyway, it's still great to be out and about, and lovely to see the old girl lit up and full of happy punters again. A visit to Claridge's is still, as it ever was, a privilege, and I will be back as soon and as often as my wallet will allow.

7/10

Joy at Portobello, Ladbroke Grove

As far as I understand it, Joy is the name of a seasonal popup occupying the restaurant Flora, itself part of the Portobello Dock development. If it helps, you may want to just refer to it as the Dock Kitchen, because that's the name it had for eight years until 2017, when it was sadly shut down. Because not only has the space been brought back to life and brightly reimagined, incorporating a stall selling fruit & veg from the marvellous Goods Shed in Canterbury and a large, attractive outdoor terrace, but it also has back at the helm chef Stevie Parle who first made a name for himself here all those years ago.

I never got to eat at Dock Kitchen myself, but I remember the Hotdinners guys telling me that they'd had one of the best meals of their lives there once, and these are people that eat out even more than I do. So I'm going to pretend that Dock Kitchen never closed, and that the current menu at Joy - seasonal, British-Mediterranean dishes incorporating some very interesting seafood options - represents a continuation of the kind of thing that Parle was cooking back in the days when "post-Theatre" meant the time of evening, not a post-apocalyptic era, and social distancing was just something that happened after you embarrassed yourself at parties.

Our dinner began with some excellent sourdough and butter, and a negroni, and I can't think of many better ways to kick off a dinner than that. Also, eating outside on the terrace at Joy has the dual benefit of being nice and Covid-compliant but also great for photos - the late summer sun really brings out the colours.

Clams with guinciale and peas were every bit as good as they looked, and I recommend using the supplied sourdough to mop up the winey seafood sauce left at the bottom of the bowl. In fact, I'll go further - it would be criminal not to.

My trip to Cornwall, where I would be served some of the best fish and seafood I've ever eaten in my life, came a couple of days after this meal at Joy. Had it been before, I would have been even less forgiving of these sad things, scrambled into grey mush and seemingly containing just as much splintered shell as edible flesh. In the spirit of constructive criticism, just take a bit more care opening them next time and they'll be fine. Have a look at my Tolcarne Inn post for an impeccable example.

Fortunately, the next arrival more than made up for it. A whole, giant lobster with claws the size of saucers, studded with chunks of lardo and dressed in rosemary butter. It had been grilled directly over coals, a technique as risky as it is rewarding, but luckily whoeever was in charge of the process at Joy knew exactly what they were doing - the flesh was timed perfectly, the odd parts of charred shell only adding to the fun of extracting the meat, and the 20 minutes or so I spent extracting every last bit of meat I could from every last leg and joint was pure bliss.

I ended dinner with a little farewell wave to summer, strawberries and cream, incorporating little shards of meringue and topped with dahlia petals. I polished it off completely, a task even more impressive if you'd seen how much lobster I'd just eaten.

This being an invite (thank you Frances) I didn't see a bill, but a quick glance at the menu online reveals a mostly very decently priced menu indeed, with one exception - the lobster. Because £32 for a lobster that must have been the best part of a kilo is a ridiculous bargain - you could barely get it that cheap alive - and I have absolutely no idea how they're making any money on that at all. Maybe they're not. Mind you, I don't think anyone's making any money at the moment full stop.

I won't end on another miserable rant about Corona and curfews though, there's been more than enough of that already. Joy at Portobello is exactly that - a joyful experience in a joyful space, and the odd misstep aside definitely worth the money they're asking and then some. Boosted by sparkling service (particularly from one front of house I spotted ex- of the sadly-departed Ledbury) and with the tantalising opportunity to pick up some stunning Kentish fruit & veg on your way out, it's impossible not to love the place. Go while you can, and go often.

9/10

I was invited to Joy at Portobello and didn't see a bill.

From the archive: Farang, Highbury

The idea of using a recently-closed or temporarily unused Italian restaurant to host a different kitchen team has precedent in London. It was, if you remember, an abandoned "candles-in-Chianti-bottles" Italian above a pub in New Cross into which the Meatwagon team moved back in 2011 and launched #MEATeasy, introducing artisan bacon cheeseburgers and buffalo wings to a rabidly enthusiastic public. And we all know how that ended.

I'm not about to suggest that Farang, who've currently set up shop in what used to be restaurant San Daniele in leafy Highbury, are on the verge of national success; I don't think their food, individually crafted and thoughtful takes on Thai street cuisine, really lends itself to a "rollout" (I'm sure they won't mind me saying). But there's something pleasantly ad-hoc about sitting in ludicrously uncomfortable chairs in a stubbornly un-airconditioned room of wilted plants and faded photos of Tuscany, eating bowls of sinus-blasting jungle curries and vibrant chilli-spiked pickled-veg salads that brings to mind that early let's-do-the-show-right-here #MEATeasy aesthetic. It feels organic and unpredictable. It feels fun.

Of course, it helps that the food is fantastic. Chef Seb Holmes has previously showcased his idiosyncratic takes on Thai street food at the lovely Begging Bowl in Peckham. He's mates with Andy Oliver, Masterchef finalist and along with Mark Dobbie head chef at Som Saa in the city (which itself began life as a popup). Holmes was also once head chef at Smoking Goat in Covent Garden, yet another unassailably wonderful place to feast on regional Thai specialities. This community of enthusiasts has blessed London with a network of restaurants all feeding off and from each other, heralding what feels like a genuine renaissance in Thai food in the capital.

The familial connection to Smoking Goat in particular is evident in the 'Gai Prik' - fried chicken in a thick, sweet, crunchy, fish-sauce glazed batter, much like the Goat's Fish Sauce Wings. Although actually, I think I preferred Farang's take, the boneless nuggets of white meat being much more fun to eat (and far less messy) than the wings. They come draped in a fierce scotch-bonnet based sauce which boasts a complex citrussy flavour and just the right amount of sharpness to attack the chicken's glaze.

A pork belly pickled watermelon salad contained a generous helping of pork, the folds of gooey fat only just brought the right side of overwhelming by a chorus of fresh herbs and pickled vegetables, and of course chunks of refreshing watermelon. Crunch is provided not only by a delicate layer of skin on each cube of pork (quite an achievement in itself) but croutons of crackling and a topping of fried shallots.

Duck breast, perfectly pink, came sliced on blackened pak choi and an addictive dollop of roast chilli chutney. Without a touch of dryness, and with a level of tea-smoke that was neither lost nor overwhelming, this was another dish that ate as good as it looked.

Perhaps the only slight mis-step of the evening was a bowl of "pickles", which had been pickled in the same way that Churchill added vermouth to his martini - ie. not very much. In other circumstances we perhaps would have enjoyed a bowl of raw radish, turnip, cucumber etc., but I'm afraid when promised pickles I expect pickles. Still, they were pretty enough to look at.

And there was more than enough to enjoy elsewhere. 'Lon' is, we learn, a coconut cream-based curry containing minced pork belly, seafood, white pepper and a host of other Thai herbs and spices. The Cornish lobster used here was a luxurious alternative to what is presumably usually prawn, but worked really well, being meaty and fresh. The pork belly mince had a lovely loose texture in contrast to the lobster, and dissolved into the coconut cream as the curry was poked and prodded by the provided dipping vegetables. If every truly great restaurant experience must involve a genuinely new experience, this bowl of 'Lon' was it.

The speed at which London has got used to the new reality of great Thai restaurant options is surprising, yet inevitable given the ability of Holmes and his kin to present Thai food in such exciting and accessible (and, importantly, affordable) ways. It is fantastic that we have places like Farang, and Smoking Goat, and Som Saa, each a slap in the face to every lazy branch of Thai Square or box of Pad Thai slapped onto the back of a Deliveroo driver, but let's hope we never take such places for granted. This kind of thing, food cooked with care, using carefully sourced ingredients and presented with style and colour, it's not easy. They just make it look that way.

9/10

This is one of a series of articles I wrote for the now-defunct Just Opened London website. I'm republishing them here for archival purposes, but most of what I say above I'm sure still applies (apart from the fact they've now got themselves a fancy new paint job). I visited Farang in July 2017.

Smack Lobster, Mayfair

Yes, it's true, there's yet another new lobster restaurant in town. I've never been a believer in "too much of a good thing", so I don't really care how many there are as long as they're half decent but of course that's the problem - most of them aren't. If your business plan is simply to make money off a trend forged more bravely and more successfully by others, then experience shows your end product will be as bland, cynical and depressing as your motiviations for doing it. And despite its enviable number of trailblazers and risk takers, London has never been short of its bandwagon-chasers either.

But Smack lobster comes with a pedigree more promising than most. Surely one of the great London dining success stories of the last few years is the brilliant Burger & Lobster, which alongside employing some of the most skilled barpeople in town (gotta love those martinis) paired huge live Canadian lobster (grilled, boiled or in a roll) with crunchy fries, green salad and served the lot for a flat fee of £20. Apprently they also do burgers too.

Smack Deli is the Burger & Lobster team's go at fast food. You order from a short menu, wait around with a little buzzer in your pocket for your order to be ready, then either eat it in the functional seating area or take it boxed up back to the office. It's a great idea - egalitarian, attractive and accessible, bringing lovely fresh seafood to the Pret and Eat lunchtime crowd, and doing so with speed and style.

More good news - the lobster rolls at Smack are, whilst necessarily not as good as those from parent restaurant Burger & Lobster, fresh, tasty and insanely good value - £7.5 for (as far as I could tell) a whole lobster's worth inside a warm, crunchy brioche bun. The ordering system works well - I waited barely 30 seconds between picking up my buzzer and picking up my food, and though this is easy to do when you're not cooking the animals to order (the seafood itself is cold, but not of course frozen) no waiting around means no queues. I'd have liked some hot sauce on offer in the dining room, perhaps some more exciting accompaniments (courgette fries were the only option - what's wrong with potato?) but at these prices you can hardly complain. This is fresh lobster on a tiny budget, the kind of which I'd previously only seen in North America. On the face of it there's not much not to like, and on the strength of their product and process alone, Smack deserves to roar across town bashing the awful mayo-laden Pret and Eat branches into oblivion and bringing lobby rolls to the masses.

Except what's this, one of the styles of sandwich - the Japanese-inspired one, of course - is called the Happy Ending. And a sign pointing to overflow seating downstairs boasts of "wine, beer & naked women". I know, minor things really in the grand scheme of things, and perhaps I shouldn't be so bleeding-heart about it all and just let them get on with it, but... well, why is it when a restaurant is trying so self-consciously to be "edgy" that misogyny is always the first port of call? From mediocre burger joints looking for an easy route into the local papers, to trendy noodle bars plastering their toilet walls with pornography, "edgy" almost always means the same thing.

I mean, you don't see restaurants advising their interior designers to be 'edgy' and 'controversial' in other ways do you? I'm not seeing any East-African-pirate-themed hot dog stalls popping up in Camden ("All our meat is reared on hijacked container ships! Only one Khat Salad per customer!") or Civil-Rights-themed rib shacks in Soho ("Downstairs for beer wine and more slavery - sorry, spaces!"). And despite one hapless Mayfair restaurant happily boasting about hosting a Nigel Farage lunch a few weeks back (the restaurant industry being famously rarely in need of immigrant labour), I haven't yet noticed anywhere going the full-Third-Reich on the menu ("Two Goering Burgers and fries please." "Himmler Spritz?" "No, tap water's fine thanks."). Attention-seeking restaurants make casual references to prostitution because - for whatever reason - its gets them noticed (and yes, written about by do-gooders like me) more often than it gets them boycotted. Which says fairly worrying things about our attitudes in general.

Anyway, that's probably enough on the matter for now. The real shame of course is that while lesser restaurants have used "controversy" to raise their profile, there's absolutely no need for Smack to have done the same because their product is good enough to stand on its own. So hopefully, eventually, they'll rewrite the menu, take that stupid sign down and make an honest living selling fresh lobster rolls to happy customers. Let's leave the gimmicks to the other idiots, OK guys?

6/10

Photos taken with a Canon 700D with 50mm lens, kindly loaned from Canon.

Cheese and Biscuits Restaurant of the Year 2013 - Burger & Lobster

It feels like I say this every year - in fact I probably do say this every year - but choosing just one restaurant as better than any other in London is a horribly reductive, completely thankless task that gets yet more reductive and thankless every time I do it. 2013 was packed with so many not just great but unique and groundbreaking restaurants that I can think of at least twenty off the top of my head that would make a completely uncontroversial top pick, and having set myself to task of narrowing down such a talented field to just one seems deeply insulting to everyone that isn’t somewhat arbitrarily nominated “the best”.

But I’ve made my bed and I’ll lie in it, and so for no other reason than to continue the New Year tradition on this blog and to generate a bit of healthy discussion (or as it’s more commonly known on these pages, “a shitstorm of abuse”) I will pick my favourite place to eat in 2013. First though, a list of restaurants so accomplished I won’t do them the disservice of calling them ‘runners-up’. You really can’t go wrong with a meal at any of (and in no particular order):

The Clove Club

They don’t need the publicity; they’re already booked out most evenings. And they certainly don’t need the praise; they’ve had Londoners falling over themselves to rave about the place almost since the first day of opening. But there’s no escaping that the Clove Club has, in a ludicrously short period, established itself as one of this city’s all-time great places to eat. If you’ve had one eye open to the London restaurant scene over the last eight months you’ll know all about Isaac McHale’s idiosyncratic tasting menu which treads a line perfectly between experimentation and accessibility, always surprising but never less than impressive, served by a young team that give the impression they’ve finally found their calling in life. But don’t ignore the bar menu which includes selections of their house-cured charcuterie, and a classy cocktail list.

Peckham Bazaar

The lazy way to describe Peckham Bazaar is the “best Greek restaurant in London” but that’s unfair on two counts. Firstly, the standard hitherto of Greek food in the capital has been so low that being the best is really not much to boast about. And secondly, chef John Gionleka’s food is not strictly Greek - he’s from Albania himself, but the menu takes influence from all over the Balkans with the occasional Turkish twist. All you need to know is, there’s nothing this man doesn’t know about how to grill meat, fish and vegetables, and if you recognise all of the weird and wonderful ingredients he meticulously sources from local markets and delis you should probably put yourself forward as a candidate for Foodie Mastermind. A similarly eclectic and very fairly priced Balkan wine list seals the deal.

The Dairy

To stand above the crowd in Clapham Common requires little more than to not be a completely hideous, booze-led hellhole selling frozen chips to the pre-Infernos crowd. The Dairy could have made a very tidy living doing just that, but instead we have one of the most exciting new restaurants in town, a recognisably British take on fine dining served in a refreshingly informal fashion and bursting with personality. Remember to leave room for the petits fours - the citrus jellies are worth a trip alone.

Gymkhana

Most restaurants are happy to receive more positive reviews than not from the critics and public. Only a very few are so good that they receive universal praise. But only once in recorded history (as far as I know) has a restaurant received a set of marks quite as unambiguous as Gymkhana, with five stars and 10/10s from nearly every critic to pass through the doors. And if you think this hype can’t be matched by the reality, you haven’t eaten there. Delicate pastry puris filled with tamarind juice, kid goat methi (with added brains for £3 - mmm brains), a venison biryani that may just be the most perfect thing ever done to rice - this is food of the very highest order, from a menu you want to take home and frame.

Galvin at Windows

One of the rules I decided upon in the very early days of this blog was to never delete or alter the original body of a post even if I changed my mind about a restaurant at a later date. My original 7/10 review of Galvin at Windows, based on a set menu birthday meal in the early days of the then-new head chef is still there somewhere, a relic of a hotel restaurant finding its feet, and of a then-new food blogger trying hard to justify spending £50 on lunch. Since then, I’ve enjoyed some of the finest French food in London in this wonderful spot overlooking Hyde Park, and a recent meal with my housemate to celebrate various different events (Galvin is the quintessential celebration restaurant) was - and I don’t use these words lightly - utterly faultless from start to finish.

Five highlights there, but it’s only the lack of space and time that’s forced me to drop the likes of Mayfields, the Bull & Last, Tartufo, Toast, Hutong, Apollo Banana Leaf, Elliot’s, Grain Store, Story, SushiSamba, Duck and Waffle, One Leicester Street, Sabel, Goodman, Bob Bob Ricard, Newman Street Tavern, Quality Chop House, Zedel, Clockjack Oven, and who knows how many reliably wonderful trips to MeatLiquor and Tayyabs. As I said, any of the above could have won, and whichever I decided as the overall Best In Show would have left me just as guilt-ridden about the places I left out.

Here goes anyway. My top restaurant in 2013 wasn’t just a great meal, or an impressive display of logistics, or a wallet-pleasing exercise in extreme good value. It’s all of these things, but more importantly it’s somewhere that I always take visiting friends, recommend to as many people as ask me about it, and even went so far as to book it for a group on my birthday. Burger & Lobster.

Yes, it’s a chain - there are five of them now, and there will certainly be more. It’s traditionally foodie suicide to lay even mild praise on a chain or proto-chain never mind nominate it for a best of the year award, so this choice is not likely to be uncontroversial. It’s also hardly going to please every section of society - there’s no vegetarian option (unless you really are desperate to spend £20 on chips and green salad), the queues for the more popular branches can be absolutely insane, and they are never likely to be on the PETA Christmas card list.

But every time I go to any of the Burger & Lobsters, I have a really really good time. Every time. I don’t know whether it’s my age, but increasingly I find I’m gravitating towards restaurants that are consistently excellent rather than occasionally sublime, and while “occasionally sublime” makes for good copy, it’s “consistently excellent” that more often sees a chunk of my paycheck. Each time I sit down to that lobster roll, in its sweet brioche bun and gentle fresh dressing, drizzled with lemon-butter and accompanied by a neat little pot of crunchy fries, not to mention a perfectly made martini, I know everything for the next few minutes is going to go exactly to plan. And after all said and done, there’s hardly any greater praise than that.

Anyway, I’ve prattled on long enough. Well done everybody mentioned above - you make London a better place, and you make my life in London immeasurably happier. If 2014 in London is even half as dynamic, innovative, remarkable and downright enjoyable as 2013, then we’re in for a hell of a ride.