Murger HanHan, Piccadilly

After twelve years writing about food in London and elsewhere I occasionally like to flatter myself that there aren't any major world cuisines that remain a complete mystery to me. In a city like this, with a population drawn from every corner of the globe, practically every genre and subgenre of food is catered for in some form or another, and I'm more than happy to jump on the tube the moment I hear rumours of a new one to tick off the list. Surely I've covered more or less everything over the years?

Well, in a word, no. The fact is, I'm constantly reminded just how little of the complexities of world cuisines I've experienced, and how many there are I'm still to be discovered. China alone, a country of one and a half billion people, has (according to this website I just found) eight major distinctive cuisines, and countless local variations, colours and accents, not to mention the infinite varieties borne of bleeding and merging between the regions themselves. X'ian, a city in central China known to most westerners (if it's known at all) as home to the Terracotta Warriors, boasts a population of 12 million people - 4 million more than London. There are probably a thousand different types of X'ianese cuisine, never mind the more general Sichuan supergroup it's part of.

So back in Shaanxi province, there could be a restaurant such as Murger HanHan on every street corner. Maybe you can't move for handmade Biang Biang noodles as thick as a cowboy's belt and twice as long, or spicy murger buns. The residents of Xi'an possibly serve little else. But here in London, I think I'm allowed to say that food like this is a rarity, and is without question one of the most deliriously exciting discoveries I've made (after a couple of mates went first and told me about it) in a very long time.

Needless to say, trying to pretend I've made any kind of "discovery" of Murger HanHan is laughable - for a start, the original site in Euston (called Murger Han) has been open years, and on a Thursday lunchtime, right at doors-open at midday here in Mayfair, nearly every single table in this restaurant was taken, a mix of local workers and curious tourists. Service coped perfectly well with the onslaught - we were seated smartly and orders taken within minutes - although with an attitude to the task best described as "humourless". I know I'm hardly the first person to moan about friendliness of service in Chinese restaurants, but it seems a shame that with them doing almost everything else so right, a bit of time in charm school for the front of house would make all the difference.

Anyway, to the food. First to arrive, and ordered largely for the sheer novelty factor, were these skewers of "surf clams", a bivalve which apparently can be found all the way around British shores but which must generally command a higher price abroad (particularly in Japan, for use in sushi) as I've honestly never seen them on a menu in London. With a soft and meaty texture, and a sweet and fresh taste without a hint of grit or viscera, the experience of eating them was far closer to that of premium seafood such as lobster or langoustine than their closer relatives cockles. And they would have been beautiful enough on their own, I'm sure, but Murger serve them in the most extraordinary sesame and chilli sauce, a perfect foil to the meat. At £3.50/skewer and with a minimum order of 5 (we had 6), these guys aren't cheap, but take it from me, they're worth every penny.

Also brilliant, and completely new to me, was the titular "murger", a kind of loose meat sandwich made with grilled flatbread. The beef mixture was richly spiced with chilli and I'm guessing a bewildering number of Chinese seasonings involving five spice. It wasn't dripping with juices like a normal beefburger, instead it was more like the Tayyabs "dry meat" - not actually dry as such, just dense, and absolutely full of flavour. We noticed from a quick glance around the room that this seems to be the one "must order" item at Murger HanHan; literally every table had one.

Finally, the Biang Biang noodles, and oh boy were they something. They're actually probably best described in the singular, as "noodle"; one vast, thick piece of gluten coiled up in the bowl, delightfully al-dente and almost completely impossible to share - I recommend bringing scissors if you're eating with a friend and want to share. Or just get a bowl each - they're that good you probably won't want to share anyway. Into the mix was a healthy pile of braised pork, all tender and glossy with sauce, some very clever egg which seemed to have somehow been poached in tomato broth, giving it a fantastic depth of flavour, and also some vibrant Chinese greens to provide colour and crunch. Alongside the Kanada-Ya ramen, or the Café East pho, this is surely one of the great London noodle dishes.

We left Murger HanHan on this chilly weekday lunchtime splattered with pork juices, £26 a head down, and very happy indeed. Not just because we'd had a great lunch - though we certainly had that - but also for the reminder that after all this time, and despite all the looming political problems that may well still bite in the coming months, London still has the ability to showcase exciting variations of Chinese food to stunning effect. If this is the way things are going - short menus, strictly regional, uncompromising authenticity - then we have a lot to look forward to. Murger HanHan may prove to be not merely a great restaurant, but a reason to be hopeful about the state of things more generally. Or at the very least, an extremely welcome distraction.

9/10

Hide, Piccadilly

At one end of the Restaurant Ambition Scale you have a simple street food stall, where a small team - often just one person - tests the market with a highly specialised menu of variations on a theme; burgers, perhaps, or Korean-French fusion Yorkshire pudding burritos. Success at this level may lead to investment and expansion and - for the lucky ones - a nationwide chain of restaurants, but none of this happens overnight. Word of mouth travels slowly, and success has to be earned the hard way.

At the other end of the scale, there is Hide. Occupying three floors of an imposing tower block in the heart of Mayfair overlooking Green Park, consisting of a basement bar, ground floor bistro and mezzanine fine dining restaurant, there is nothing about the place that isn't lavishly, indecently confident bordering on downright reckless. As most of the London restaurant industry prepares to batten down the hatches and prepare for the long, dark Brexit winter of the soul, Ollie Dabbous and his Russian investors have decided to throw caution (and a few million quid) to the wind and open by what is by some distance the most impressively kitted-out bit of foodie real estate in W1.

Outside, it's fairly discreet - austere, even, with tinted windows only hinting at activity within, and a large unmarked entrance of dark panelled wood. Inside, though, you can see where every last penny of the £millions went; a glorious stylised wooden staircase looking like something from a Guillermo del Toro movie is the obvious centerpiece, but lovely design details lurk in every corner and it's worth factoring in a good ten minutes into your evening schedule just to make time for gawping in slack-jawed wonder at it all before turning your attention to the food.

Mind you, the food served at Hide deserves just as much slack-jawed wonder as the surroundings. The artist's eye and attention to detail that made Dabbous such a roaring success is even more amplified here, and even this cynical, restaurant-weary blogger saw several moments of genuine, game-changing innovation. Even the bread course was pretty much perfect, all of it oven-fresh and beautifully done, particularly a "foccacia" so insanely delicate it practically dissolved in the mouth - pure buttery, flaky joy.

Simmental (there's that name again) beef tartare came wrapped in cute little nasturtium leaves secured with mini clothes pegs, and despite the leaves being slightly wilted and past their best, still made for very satisfying little morsels. I couldn't detect much of the advertised 'tobacco' flavour but perhaps that's for the best.

Cornish mackerel tartare was served with one of those clever Pacojet-made snows, flavoured with eucalyptus. I don't know if you've ever had mackerel and eucalyptus before - I very much doubt it - and I still haven't, as I didn't get to try this one, but I am reliably informed it worked very well. And who can resist a moat of seaweed and dry ice, to lend a creepy B-movie atmosphere to proceedings?

At this point, my camera battery died, so I'm afraid from here on photos will look like they have all the life drained out of them, as the iPhone in low light tends to do. So just imagine how vibrant the colours were in real life on this dish of raw red prawns, and how a cool, clear shellfish consommé brought a refreshing spritz of the ocean.

Chicken liver parfait was actually nowhere near as weird and grey as it looks here; it was in fact a very attractive pink-bronze, smooth and light and perched proudly on the top of a clever bit of custom tableware, as if nestled in the caldera of a sunken volcano.

Under normal circumstances a single "sweetbread" may sound a bit of a stingy portion for a main course, but this thing was huge - not overwhelmingly so, and with a fantastic light texture, but plenty enough to satisfy. It was presented with angular spears of various pickled herbs and vegetables, and over the top was poured one of those dense, meaty sauces that you just want to order a dozen gallons of and bathe in. Actually, maybe that's just me. Sorry for the mental image.

Octopus was right up there with the version served at Holborn Dining Room, which means it was pretty much perfect. Beautifully tender and darkened with charcoal smoke, it was like sitting on a Mediterranean beach next to a wood fire at sunset. Alright, maybe not quite like that, but it was a very good bit of octopus.

Even the more straightforward dishes were never anything less than impressive. Herdwick lamb, presented in three neat sections, was perfectly cooked and boasted a texture firm yet so yielding it could almost be cut with a spoon. It was clearly excellent lamb - the attention to detail, from everything from the very obviously flashy presentations to the more subtle efforts in areas like sourcing - was quite something to behold.

We could hardly leave without seeing what magic Hide could bring to desserts, and "warm acorn cake" turned out to be a kind of rum baba, where smoked caramel was poured over the cake, itself soaked in a generous measure of your choice of rum. Whether by accident or design, our waiter left the rum bottles on the table during dessert, and it's probably only fair to point out we may have snuck a couple of extra measures before the meal was done.

I didn't see the bill - I was lucky enough to be treated to dinner on this occasion, and though this wasn't a PR invite I thought I'd mention it anyway. But it's worth saying that, really, for food of this precision and skill, in such blindingly attractive surroundings, in this part of town and presented by a team so relentlessly lovely and enthusiastic about the food and drinks they serve you feel a bit mean for not inviting them to sit down and enjoy it with you, well, I think the £100/head or thereabouts feels like something even approaching a bargain. Certainly there are far worse, and far more expensive places to eat within easy walking distance (*cough* Novikov *cough*).

So I can wholeheartedly and unreservedly recommend Hide. It hits every single restaurant pleasure point with a bullseye, and if you have the means, and enjoy eating lovely food served by lovely people, then it's hard to see why you'd leave the place any less impressed than I did. And I was very impressed indeed. So thank you Ollie Dabbous and team - it's reassuring that in these difficult times, there are some people willing to aim big, and have their lofty ambitions realised so perfectly.

9/10

Cafe Monico, Piccadilly

There are certain neighbourhoods that have taken a long time to shake off their reputation for bad food. At one time Covent Garden was the culinary wasteland, full of gimmicky tourist traps and Bella Pastas and not much else, where you'd end up by accident, never on purpose, poking glumly at a pasta penne while someone bellowed opera at you. Now, we have 10 Cases, Flesh & Buns, Hawksmoor, Opera Tavern, 32 Great Queen Street and - coming soon - Margot from ex-Bar Boulud Paulo de Tarso, surely definitive proof that this area has Arrived.

Could there ever be hope for Shaftesbury Avenue and Piccadilly? The restauarants in this part of town aren't just lazy and cynical, they're actively evil. Rainforest Café have been flogging their £15 quesadillas and frozen burgers for nearly two decades, surviving on an endless stream of frazzled parents and desperate lost tourists who recognise the brand name from back home. And let's not forget Bubba Gump Shrimp Company, a restaurant launched entirely on the back of a minor plot point in a terrible movie most of whose target customers were too young to see when it was last in theaters. It's shit, but then you probably don't need me to tell you that.

But what's this? Cafe Monico, brand-spanking-new from the Soho House group, nestled inbetween the all-you-can-eat dross and theme restaurants of Shaftesbury Avenue, threatens to actually make a trip to this part of town worthwhile. I'm neither young, attractive nor moneyed enough to make the most of a Soho House membership but I do know that Chicken Shop is one of my go-to places for rotisserie bird, and Dean St Townhouse do cracking cocktails. So hopes were high for this new place, even if, by the standards of the area, it will probably only need to not poison me to be better than the standards of the competition.

They've done a great job on the interior, with a grand central island bar downstairs overlooked by a plush balcony dining area above. The years of experience in creating a comfortable-but-not-intimidatingly-lavish atmosphere in places like Dean St Townhouse have clearly been put to use here; it's a very pleasant place to sit and eat.

Unfortunately, first impressions of the food weren't so positive. Ordering native oysters and then being brought rocks could be dismissed as early days confusion, but how many people would this incorrect order have had to go past to arrive at the table? I can't tell you whether they just misheard me or made a mistake in selection as I didn't see the bill on this occasion, but it does make you wonder. Still, even these rocks were nice, with a good sharp mignionette dressing.

Slightly more worrying was the "Parmesan custard with anchovy toast", a sure sign of Rowley Leigh's involvement in the design if not execution of the menu. When I've had this dish in the past, most notably at Leigh's Café Anglais in Bayswater, it's been a delicate pot of fluffy cheese custard accompanied with a neat stack of golden-brown toasted anchovy sandwiches. I've posted what they should look like above. What arrived at Café Monico (beneath) was the custard, which looked OK at first before you broke the surface to reveal a sad, split mixture beneath with a texture not dissimilar to scrambled eggs. And what on earth was happening with the "toast" I have no idea - this strange, chewy flat pancake with more in common with a doughy paratha than toasted white bread, and with not a trace of anchovy. Rowley - head back to Shaftesbury Avenue. Your work here is not yet done.

Happily, better things were to follow. Salmon carpaccio with chilli was fresh and attractive, not shy with the chillies and, studded with capers and dill and goodness knows what else, much fun to eat.

And both mains on my first visit were great successes, first this guinea fowl with morels which boasted a lovely golden brown crisp skin and plenty of funghi...

...and this Dover Sole which was abosolutely perfectly cooked - not a hint of either gelatinous undercooked or mushy overcooking - dressed in brown butter and a joy to eat to the last meaty, bright white bite.

Partly because the first visit was a PR invite and partly because I still couldn't make my mind up about the place, I made a return trip a week or two later. On this occasion I played it a bit safer with the menu, and was rewarded with a more consistent experience, so perhaps safe is the way to go at Cafe Monico. A French Onion soup was a fine example, vaguely wine-y and with a good rich broth.

And though I didn't get a chance to try it, this beef carpaccio disappeared very quickly, so I imagine it tasted as good as it looked.

Steak was a cheap cut I think but I was given the correct tools to work my way through this tough but richly flavoured slab of cow, and it was hardly a chore to eat. The Bearnaise had a bit of an unpleasant crust, but between the nicely seasoned and crisp fries and the juicy steak, there was plenty else to enjoy.

And also from the lunch menu, pork belly, which also disappeared with few - in fact no - complaints.

Had my second visit involved as many mistakes and disappointments as the first - and even on the first visit there weren't that many - then perhaps I still wouldn't have made my mind up about Cafe Monico. But what I mainly remember from my lunches there aren't the missing native oysters or the custard paratha but the smart service, lovely room and menu of comfort food bistro classics that I would happily order from again and again. And given that there still really aren't that many sure-thing crowdpleasing bistros in this part of town - in fact, given that there aren't really any (Zedel aside) - I can see myself eating here quite a bit. And if I ever order that parmesan custard again, I'll let you know how it goes.

7/10

I went once as a guest to Café Monico and once on my own dollar. They probably haven't quite done enough to get into the next version of the app, but you can certainly do far worse on the Shaftesbury Avenue. Meanwhile, see where else is good.

The Ritz Restaurant, Piccadilly

For over a hundred years the Ritz has stood in its commanding position on the corner of Green Park, famous throughout the world as the last word in opulence and luxury. And despite my own occasional weakness for a bit of glitz and glamour, I had never been, partly because I'd heard very little about the food in the Ritz Restaurant (and as most food bloggers eventually learn "nothing heard" usually means "nothing good") but mainly because they insist on male patrons wearing a jacket and tie, and I wasn't entirely sure my mismatched "Granddad's funeral" outfit wouldn't make look like a bit of a tit. I quite like to feel comfortable during dinner, not like I'm being interviewed. Yes, funerals and interviews, the only other times I've worn a tie.

So what changed? Well I would have been quite happily carrying on with my life and not worrying about wearing a tie if it weren't for something that rolled past my Twitter feed one evening called pommes soufflées. Just when you think you know everything there is to do to a potato comes this extraordinary technique, involving twice-fried discs of precisely-measured spud that inflate into neat little crunchy pillows of golden-brown loveliness. And in that moment, I knew I had to have them. And given that the Ritz was one of only two restaurants in town they were available (the other being Otto's, very highly regarded but a similar price point and if I'm paying this amount for dinner, I want to sit near things made of gold), I made a reservation, dusted off my tie, grabbed a mate and headed off to Piccadilly.

The vast global influence of the Ritz's own particular style of gold-drenched Baroque sumptuousness is, at first, its own worst enemy. Having seen so many cheap copies of the ornate gold fittings and velvet drapes and plush carpets in, I don't know, Vegas casinos or ironic Shoreditch nightclubs, it takes a while to adjust to the fact that here, finally, is the real thing. The cutlery really is solid silver, the statues covered in real gold. This is what real luxury looks like, and matched with smart waiters in tail suits (in various hues denoting job title and/or seniority, I imagine), the effect is quite overwhelming. And, it has to be said, pretty intimidating at first until the service relaxes you and the food arrives and you really start to enjoy yourself.

Because it's very, very easy to enjoy yourself at the Ritz. It's not just that the food is fantastic; I'll come to that in a bit. It's that almost as much fun can be had from just letting the whole theatre of being in the place sweep over you - like anywhere in such a setting that's doing its job properly, you are made to feel like a star in your own personal theatre production. But at the Ritz, they've been doing it for so much longer than everywhere else, and with such high production values, the effect is all the more thrilling.

But anyway, the food. Amuses were, from left to right, some kind of seafood cream cracker that looked quite like an Oreo, a delicate sugar tube of rich liver mousse, and - the runaway favourite - an extraordinary citrus meringue containing a light salmon mousse topped with roe. And look at the tray they were served on, and the gleaming butter dish in the background...

...and the silver basket of just-so melba toast, and the little silver chalice of sea salt. There was so much expensive tableware present at any given point it began to resemble the interiors department at Harrod's.

Of course the real show was yet to begin. Terrine of goose liver, with spiced pineapple and gingerbread was the kind of exquisitely geometric dish that you only see in places where the number of available hands in the kitchen isn't an issue. So precise and cleanly-colourful it could have gone one a pedestal at the Tate, and yet the taste as just as impressive - a silky-smooth mousse, faintly peppery gingerbread, and beside it a neat row of alternating cubes of jelly and biscuit. Topped with gold leaf, naturally, just in case the volume of elemental metals on show threatened to dip below that of a South African deep mine.

The other starter was, as is clear even from my photography, every bit as painstakingly pretty. Fresh crab (all white meat of course, no expense spared there) in a shiny green jellified roll containing cucumber and avocado (a classic combination that was probably invented here for all I know) and a side blob of various colours and textures topped with caviar. As with the terrine, it all looked so obviously hard work with all of its precisely-placed blobs and clever techniques, smashing it apart with a fork felt like a slap in the face to a hundred commis chefs.

Beef Wellington can't be the easiest thing to organise in a restaurant environment - they ask you to order it 40 minutes in advance, but it's hard to figure out how even this lead-in is enough time to get the fillet perfectly medium-rare and with a good golden brown pastry. Still, they do - just about. The one blip in otherwise perfect service during the evening was that my female friend was given the two smaller, more cooked end pieces and I (being the red-blooded male in an ill-fitting tie) got the nicer, more tender, and larger, central sections. As soon as our waiter's back was turned we evened out the portions ourselves, but this was a rather presumptious mistake to be made at this level.

Despite all that the Wellington was, though, a superb bit of cooking, with shaved truffle and a core of foie gras lifting this traditional English grand-hotel staple into the heights of international gastronomy. The pommes soufflés, as well, were everything I'd hoped they'd be, and even more exciting once I'd realised you could make a hole in one side and fill them full of gravy, like beefy dahi puri.

If the starters looked too good to eat, the desserts were difficult to even look at without imagining with a shudder the countless man-hours devoted to their creation. Wild strawberries with white chocolate and verbena was a delicate cylinder of chocolate, coloured pink as well as white, containing a light mousse studded with various strawberry textures, topped with a neat layer of the berries themselves and then on top of that a smooth strawberry sorbet. And a ring of spun sugar. And some neat dots of strawberry purée. And who knows what else.

Elderflower with champagne and raspberry took a more modernist approach, with various neat circles of raspberry and elderflower mousses, jellies, crumbles and creams. Sorry about my murky photo, but by this point the house lights had been dimmed and the entertainment had begun, first a pianist and then a quartet doing old jazz classics. Such scenes have probably happened at the Ritz for the best part of the last 100 years, the acoustics finely-tuned to allow for a general buzz of conversation alongside the live music. It was all very impressive.

But then you'd hope so, really, wouldn't you because - and there's no getting around this - the Ritz isn't cheap. Of course food like this shouldn't be cheap, and I wouldn't expect a Beef Wellington of that standard to be anything less than £85 for two, or a crab and avocado starter to be much under £35; all these things make sense to me. What doesn't make as much sense is a wine list where the very cheapest bottle is £50. I don't know much about wine but I do know for certain that starting your list at £50 means you're not even the least bit interested in providing value; you just want to rip people off. And that makes me sad.

So it is for this reason only that the Ritz doesn't get full marks. Yes the food is exceptional, the service (mainly) perfect, and all the extra frills and gold-plated accoutrements (petits fours were faultless as well) adding up to an experience hardly like any other, lavish and otherworldly. But it impresses with technique rather than generosity, it's exact as opposed to beautiful, polished rather than friendly. It's great fun, but it lacks something - not soul, because I can't describe it as soulless, that would be unfair. It's just that by the time the bill arrived (£255 with one bottle of that cheapest wine and a couple of glasses of dessert) there was a very tiny niggling feeling of having been taken advantage of. But you know what, I'd still save up again to go back. I might even buy a new tie.

8/10