The Colony Grill Room, Mayfair

My evening at the Colony Grill Room, the restaurant at the swanky Beaumont Hotel in Mayfair, did not begin well. Being a few minutes early (I'm always early) and soaking wet thanks to the weather being very April, I thought I'd pass the time by taking a few shots of the grand entrance hallway, which leads through the American Bar towards the restaurant at the back. Now I admit, thanks to the weather, I was looking even more scruffy and unsuitable than usual but I was still taken aback by the speed and ferocity of hotel concierge's reaction to my clicking.

"Sir! No photos. You can't take photos of the guests."

"I honestly wasn't, I'm just taking some of this hallway here, you can't make out any faces."

"No, you can't take photos. People come here for a reason."

I wasn't sure what he meant by that. I should hope they did come here for a reason, and weren't just lost on the way to Debenhams. "Well, I'm here for a reason - you invited me to review your restaurant."

"No photos in the lobby."

Anyway, their place, their rules, though you'd wonder how a 5-star hotel in London survives at all with a no-photo rule in their lobby in the age of Instagram. If we follow even a handful of the same people, I'm sure your feed will be just as heavily populated with the gleaming black & white Claridge's foyer, or that grand marble staircase at the Rosewood. Isn't showing off on social media what hotel lobbies are for?

Fortunately, once seated in a plush booth in the Colony Grill Room, things were slightly less fraught. Oysters may not be the fiercest test of a restaurants skill set, but they were lean and sprightly things, the Carlingford Lough and the smaller Claires both carefully opened and in good condition. I wasn't entirely sure what to do with a few slices of buttered wholemeal Hovis (or similar) they came with, though. House bread (nice crunchy rolls) had already been served. Perhaps someone can enlighten me?

Lobster bisque next, and a very decent example of its kind it was too. Fresh lobster meat and seafood-friendly herbs and veg (chives amongst others) were prettily arranged in the bottom of the bowl before the thick soup was poured on top. To be brutally honest (and this is after all why you're here) I've had more spectacularly-flavoured bisques elsewhere, but even a fairly humdrum lobster bisque is usually worth the effort, and this was far better than humdrum.

A friend's fried artichokes were enjoyable in pretty much the same way - not spectacular, nothing fancy, timed to just have a bit of crunch on the edges and dressed with a sharp salsa verde, they were familiar and gently rewarding without rewriting any artichoke rulebooks.

Things continued in this vein, pretty much. I don't want to sound like I'm being down on the food at all - it was all objectively perfectly decent stuff, better than your average hotel restaurant and not ludicrously priced considering the location. But I got the same feeling here as I did at most other Corbin & King places, that the food is playing second-fiddle to the swish surroundings and sense of occasion, and that myself and the other diners that evening (mainly older couples and the odd celeb - Marc Almond was on the next table) weren't that interested in having their culinary boundaries pushed. This was calf's liver and bacon, the liver cooked nicely medium-rare and bacon nice and crisp, and was polished off quite happily.

The reason I was here was to try the grilled cheese sandwich - apparently it was National Grilled Cheese Sandwich Day, and I was told they were particularly proud of their version. I have to say, having tried it, it didn't really do much for me. Perhaps the grated cheddar was deliberately undercooked and chalky - it still looked grated - and perhaps the rather timid colour on the bread was a reaction to the demands of the elderly clientele, but if you're going to go down the American comfort food route you need to commit to it in full, with huge mounds of oozing plastic cheese, crisped up and burned at the edges. Chips were good though, so I'll give them that.

And soon enough desserts were here to lift our spirits. Baked Alaska, flambéed dramatically tableside in kirsch, would have been a bit more enjoyable had the centre not been absolutely rock-solid, although the flavour, once it had been chipped off and sampled, was good.

The Colony had one final trick up its sleeve, though. "Fruit sorbet", ordered mainly because dessert was part of the deal and hardly out of hunger, was quite unexpectedly the most powerfully-flavoured and impressive bit of sorbet work I've had in many years. In fact the last time I can recall sorbet this good it was at Little Barwick House all the way back in 2014, and that I still think about it to this day shows how good that one was. So whoever made the version at the Colony should be very pleased with themselves indeed - give yourself an icy pat on the back.

In the end, I can pick fault with the food as much as I want (and I do want) but as I mentioned before, a slightly less-than-perfect cheese toastie and a less-than-spectacular lobster soup will be of supreme unimportance to the average punter at the Colony Grill. I'm not their target market and that's fine, I can live with that - I wouldn't rush back to the Delaunay or the Wolseley either, other Corbin & King flagships (though of course Zedel is almost perfect, the exception to the rule). But it's clear that what they do very well is own and operate grand, romantic restaurants with an exquisite sense of style and occasion, and they do that very well indeed. Corbin & King are, undoubtedly, fantastic restaurateurs. There's every chance you will love a meal there. Just don't take any photos.

7/10

I was invited to the Colony Grill Room. I know, there's been a bit of a run of invites lately, I'll try and make sure I pay for the next one and do it properly.

Delancey & Co, Fitzrovia

With my usual route to work disrupted due to a large chunk of central London spontaneously bursting into flames a few weeks back, I've had to get used to a slightly longer commute in the morning. So instead of taking the bus up Kingsway, surely one of the least inspiring roads in Britain, passing on the left Eat, Costa, Subway, Wasabi, Pret, Café Rouge, Caffe Nero, Starbucks, another Subway, another Eat and finally emerging at Holborn station bus stop wanting to emigrate to anywhere that doesn't think cheese and mayonnaise is an acceptable sandwich filling and doesn't need my first name to sell me a bottle of orange juice, I instead take a stroll through Covent Garden.

Covent Garden, it's true, still has its fair share of dreadful tourist-bait grothouses, but dotted amongst them are gems such as the Opera Tavern, Mishkin's, 10 Cases and the ever-wonderful Kanada-Ya. There's also exciting new indoor food market Startisans, which during the week showcases a variety of interesting stalls and on Friday becomes a mini beer (and mead) festival hosting some of London's newest producers. The point is, look even slightly off the beaten track in London and you will invariably find something interesting going on - all any of us often need is a little push in the right direction, be that a block-wide underground electrical fire or even (ahem) a handy app.

So yesterday morning I was winding my way up Catherine Street and noticed a little place calling itself a "Smart Burger and Vodka House". It seems their claimed USP is to be able to match burgers with vodka, and indeed the short menu of all-bases-covered sandwiches (a normal burger, a fish burger, a chicken burger, a vegan burger) each comes with a short list of suggested vodkas. Lemon, saffron and horseradish to go with a cod burger, for example, or cranberry, lemon or mint flavours to go with the vegan. "What an interesting idea," I thought, "just what we've all been waiting for."

Actually, I didn't think that at all. Of course I didn't. No, what I actually thought was, "the very last thing that's going to make me feel happy about having to eat a grilled courgette and pumpkin purée 'burger' is the thought of having to wash it down with a shot of Toilet Duck-infused petrol." So, shaking my head at the seemingly endless ways dollar-eyed restaurateurs will conjure up to squeeze the last drops of bloody juice out of London's burger obsession, I walked away. And instead of a rant about Smart© (their copyright symbol, not mine) Burgers and tarragon vodka, I'm here to tell you about Delancey & Co.

Ironically, there isn't too much to say about Delancey & Co because it's really just a little sandwich shop on Goodge St selling salt beef, turkey and smoked salmon sandwiches in a couple of different breads with a couple of different toppings for not very much money. In New York it would hardly register as anything worth noticing at all, but here in London we've still not quite got past the stage of a New York-style deli being a wonderful novelty, and for that reason Delancey & Co deserves a lot more attention.

A salt beef sandwich on marbled rye was a doorstop-sized beauty, filled with an over-generous amount of meat and loosened with Swiss cheese. The most important ingredient here is clearly the beef, and it was of superb quality, with ribbons of translucent fat woven through the pink flesh and cut into satisfying thick slices. The cheese had been melted on with a blowtorch, a nice time-saving feature, and American mustard added an extra layer of authenticity. My only minor niggle was that the top slice of bread was slightly stale on one side; a shame as the attention to detail shown else where couldn't be faulted. Let's hope these are starting-months niggles.

Friends I was with had similar ingredients inside a Challah roll, which by all accounts was even more successful, firstly not being stale (which helped) but also having a lovely soft brioche-y sweetness which was even more evocatively Old Americana. House pickles were also fantastic, coming in home-cured 'Sweet'n'Sour' and 'Salty' variations a cut above what you might expect from most other sandwich shops in town.

OK so, it is "just" a sandwich shop and yes, salt beef in rye is hardly a concept unknown in the Western world. But people doing this kind of thing this well are still very few and far between - I could point to the Brass Rail in Selfridge's (good but expensive), the Beigel Bake on Brick Lane (good and cheap but on Brick Lane), Tongue & Brisket on Leather Lane (decent but inconsistent) but even doubling the number of purveyors of lovely fresh salt beef in rye bread would I'm sure still not meet demand. At least, it shouldn't do. Salt Beef sandwiches are a wonderful thing, and deserve to be obsessed over just as much as any burger. Having said that, if it ever gets to the stage someone opens a salt beef sandwich and vodka matching bar, I'm emigrating.

8/10

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Afternoon Tea at Claridge's, Mayfair

For a long time, I dismissed afternoon tea as a twee, anachronistic routine laid on purely for day-trippers and tourists. I was in no rush to drop half a ton on some cold sandwiches and cakes, and I saw little to recommend spending an afternoon in a stuffy hotel foyer surrounded by loud Texans in ill-fitting house jackets. Real Londoners, I thought, should avoid it in the same way we'd avoid the changing of the guard or Portobello Road on Saturdays - let's leave afternoon tea for the tourists, and cut our own crusts off some Boots Meal Deal sandwiches if we felt so inclined and head down the pub.

In most cases, too, I still think I'm right - there are way too many places doing this kind of thing pretty half-heartedly (think bought-in sandwiches and cakes and packet jams) just so some timid out-of-towners can tick it off their "things to do" list, and none of them are cheap. They all suffer from that depressingly common affliction of anywhere popular with tourists - like Leicester Square restaurants and Madame Tussaud's, if you're going to be full anyway, why bother being good?

So it's all the more impressive that despite all the reverse-snobbery and emotional baggage I took with me to Claridge's of a Sunday afternoon for a friend's birthday, I managed not only to enjoy a few hours of the most wonderful gastronomic theatre, but left with my mind completely changed about the ceremony of afternoon tea itself.

That ceremony begins the moment you step through the handsome revolving door from Brook Street, onto the gleaming black and white marble floor, and up to the twinkly foyer restaurant. It's a building to take your breath away - luxurious, certainly, but refined and elegant in a way that nowhere else could dream of matching. Not even its closest rivals, the Dorchester or the Connaught or (arguably) the Savoy can manage this kind of effortless, stately glamour; even the odd modernist touches, such as the vast Dale Chihuly glass chandelier coiling out from the middle of the foyer ceiling, only seem to compliment the art deco twirls and flourishes and the floor-to-ceiling mirrors. The word "timeless" almost only tells half the story - Claridge's seems to exist in an entire enchanting, glittering dimension of its own.

In this room, in this hotel, attention to detail is everything. And so, with the arrival of crustless finger sandwiches on a classic Limousin porcelain, anything even slightly out of place would have raised a (polite, gently disapproving) eyebrow. But the sandwiches were seemingly cut with a razor blade and ruler in immaculate rows, accompanied by delicate gougeres which dissolved into cheesy savouriness the second they hit the tongue. Sandwich flavours were traditional, but with the occasional unexpected twist. Smoked salmon, for example, was pressed not next to normal dairy but "shrimp butter" and samphire, adding an extra seafoody dimension, and roast chicken tasted of the highest quality bird and a mysterious note of tarragon.

Once the savouries had disappeared, they were replaced (gracefully, almost invisibly) with mini scones, home made jam and quite honestly the best clotted cream I've ever tasted in my life. Dense without being cloying, tasting of farm-freshness and as bright as the driven snow, it was magical stuff, and we still talk about it. It would almost - no, it would, definitely - be worth going back just for that.

And nothing so simple as "cakes" to follow the scones, either. No, instead here are four examples of the finest French patisserie, including a cherry cake with a handsome flourish of carved chocolate on top, an eclair with a gentle pear flavour, and a kind of blackcurrant medallion with an elaborate topping of soft meringue. Again, not a berry, base or button out of place. Some of us couldn't finish them (not me of course, but I was sure to cast a disapproving glance at those in question), and they were boxed up and tied with ribbons to take home.

Teas are by expert tea-lady Henrietta Lovell, the house champagne is Laurent Perrier (of which we took full advantage), and on the way out you're encouraged to fill your own bags of Victoriana confectionary for the journey home. Everything gleams with care and attention; you can't - you literally are unable to - fault any of it, from start to finish.

Well, almost everything. For as much fun and joy as afternoon tea at Claridge's undoubtedly is, blimey do you pay for it. The advertised £50 a head is just the start - with service, champagne and God knows what else (I don't think they even include tax as part of the inital £50 but I could be wrong, annoyingly I forgot to take a picture of the bill) you'll probably not get away with much less than £80 per person. And I'm not so much of a hopeless Claridge's fan to understand that is way, way more than what most people want or are able to spend on tea and cakes.

But what tea and cakes. And yes it's a lot of money but I honestly enjoyed this more than I've enjoyed many £80 dinners at restaurants elsewhere. The cliché about afternoon tea is that the sandwiches and cakes aren't really the point, that it's more about the formalities and traditions and stealing glances at old Mayfair ladies with big hair than the food. This, in many lesser places, is certainly true. But along with all that, serenaded by piano and cello and in the most beautiful dining room in London, at Claridge's you also get food and drink of purest gold. Surely that's worth paying for, once in a while?

Thanks Hannah and Alison for some photos.

9/10

The Holborn Whippet, Bloomsbury

Sometimes I even surprise myself with my capacity to get annoyed about bad food. You'd think by now, wouldn't you, after 33 years on the planet, the best part of a decade in London and six years writing a restaurant blog, that a disappointing dinner would just be one of those things, a professional hazard, a passing inconvenience, water off a (force-fed) duck's back.

And yet, the opposite seems to be the case. I find myself getting increasingly grumpy whenever dinner I've paid good money for isn't up to scratch. I take it personally when I'm on the receiving end of some half-assed fusion concept or desperate bandwagon-jumping relaunch. I heave great sighs of anguish over a feeble steak, a sugary Pad Thai or stale Yorkshire Pudding. Perhaps I'm spoiled after so long spent seeking out the very best the city has to offer, but my capacity for disappointment seems to be at an all-time low; and what's worse is that the harder I try to avoid such disappointments, the more often they seem to be thrust upon me.

Take my lunch today, for example. The Holborn Whippet is a newish craft beer bar and diner at the end of Sicilian Avenue in Holborn. Sicilian Avenue is one of those hugely over-elaborate Victorian arcades which at one time you would have hoped housed fine jewellers and shops selling gentlemen's smoking accessories but now, given presumably sky-high rents and its proximity to main tourist drags like the British Museum and Covent Garden, is mainly populated by dreadful nationwide chains like Spaghetti House. But the Whippet is not a chain (at least not yet), and thanks to a very tasteful job on the interior and an impressive line-up of proper beers behind the bar, I had high hopes a similar effort may have been spent on the food. I can't emphasise that enough - I had every right to believe that lunch at the Holborn Whippet would have been worth paying for. I did nothing wrong.

The first creeping elements of doubt appeared once I'd had the chance to study the menu in more detail. The Whippet club sandwich, for example, is described somewhat unnecessarily as "two or three slices of toasted bread with mayonnaise and slices are held together by small sticks". The steak sandwich is apparently both "padded with roasted vine tomatoes" and "Severed[sic] with crinkle fries" which makes it sound rather dangerous. All menu items, in fact, seem to be paired entirely randomly with either "crinkle fries" or "string fries" apart from the Bloomsbury Burger (a name they're so pleased with they've seen fit to TradeMark(TM) it) which is "served with string and crinkle fries", which either means two different types of potato product on one plate, which would be odd enough, or, er, some string.

As it turns out, the Bloomsbury Burger(TM) comes with neither string fries or crinkle fries (or even string) but a mound of pappy school-canteen chips pointlessly scattered with parsley. The burger itself looked the part at first - the glazed brioche bun reminded me somewhat of Goodman's, and there appeared to be a nice dark crust on the two rounds of beef - until a bite revealed watery, grey meat of barely supermarket mince standard. "Cheese" (an optional extra for 50p and not included as standard) was in fact a very strong blue of some kind, cold and unmelted, that had been sandwiched in between the two patties and did nothing but utterly overwhelm the tasteless meat. Salad and some decent sliced pickles did the best job they could, but the battle was already lost.

Oh yes alright then, you can probably have a decent time here if you stuck to the beers and didn't eat. I'll have to give them that. And a few years ago I wouldn't have been anywhere near as harsh on the burger, either - I certainly still wouldn't have enjoyed it but perhaps I would have said that at least the bun was good and the pickles came sliced and it still cost less than a tenner. But unfortunately for the Holborn Whippet this is 2012 not 2008. The very first thing a new diner opening up in central London should do is check out the competition; and either they have, and are unable or unwilling to do things properly, or they haven't, in which case they deserve everything they have coming to them.

Anyway, I don't think serving a nice range of craft beers is ever going to be a good enough excuse for serving crappy food. They're still charging for the stuff, none of it comes free with a drink. It was still my lunch hour they spoiled, my money they took, and had I only bought a club sandwich "held together with small sticks" to soak up twelve pints of Adnams Gold I most likely still would have considered it a waste of money. So, damage done, all I can do is ensure that as many other people as possible don't make the same mistake, and make a solemn promise to try extra hard to avoid any such disappointments in the future. Wish me luck.

3/10