The Audley, Mayfair

I ended up in the Audley, newly refurbished and reimagined gastropub in Mayfair, rather by accident on Saturday, and I'm afraid I didn't set out with my usual forensic (ha!) bloggery attitude to proceedings. I wasn't planning on having lunch out at all, but walking down Mount St on the way to the bus stop on my way from Oxford Circus I realised it was open, blessedly quiet, and absolutely bloody gorgeous. With 20 minutes before the kitchens opened I found myself ordering a Guinness and well, events progressed from there.

I always suspected I'd enjoy the place, ever since I caught a glimpse of an early menu on Instagram somewhere boasting things like smoked eel and horseradish 'toast', or London Particular and sourdough (a kind of pea and ham soup), but seeing it all up close was even more impressive, a menu of stark, poetic perfection in the St John style served at prices that for most places in London would seem very reasonable, never mind just down the road from Claridge's. With the expertly-poured pint of Guinness doing its work, I thought I needed a half dozen oysters, bowl of popcorn cockles, and a London dip beef sandwich.

And do you know what, I did need them. The oysters were expertly opened (no traces of shell), lean and fresh and served with a very nice mignionette. Popcorn cockles were cleanly-fried little nuggets of seafood which sang when doused with loads of Sarson's vinegar. And the London Dip would have been a very nice steak sandwich indeed even served without a pool of salty, rich, intensely flavoured gravy which seemed to grow in flavour with every new morsel of dipped sarnie.

The bill came to £50, which I suppose isn't cheap but then I did order more than enough for 1 person, things like oysters are never (and never should be) cheap and I can confirm it was all worth every penny. So there you go then, a little story of a nice new place to have lunch in Mayfair. Isn't it nice to have nice things?

9/10

Sarap, Mayfair

After so many *cough* (nearly 20) *cough* years living here, and nearly as many *cough* (15) *cough* writing about restaurants, it is surely something close to a miracle that London can still spring on me a genuinely new and exciting way of thinking about a particular cuisine. Filipino is one of the Cinderella foods of London - largely unsung and overlooked in the conversation about where to spend your dinner money, at least outside of a group of enthusiasts and expats, there are nevertheless a number of places doing great things. For a handy rundown of the best spots (as well as a neat summary of what Filipino Cuisine even means), I point you towards the Eater list, always a reliable place for discovering new places and/or plugging in woeful gaps in food knowledge (delete as appropriate).

I hope I'm not making too bold an assumption here but Sarap appears to be doing for the intricacies and varieties of Filipino food as Kiln does for Northern Thailand, or Lahpet for Burmese. It's a well-worn path, and one London absolutely excels at, to take authentic ingredients and traditional techniques and apply them to a modern, accessible and - dare I say it - trendy central London aesthetic. The genius of places like this - at least for the largely unitiated like myself - is that is that it doesn't matter if you know nothing about bagoong or isanal or calamansi, because the menu is shaped into a familiar arrangement of snacks, starters and mains and so you know vaguely how to order even if exactly what's going to arrive is a delightful surprise.

I was never not going to order the langoustine, and it's a pleasure to see so many of these thrusting young international bistro type places featuring their own take on the North Atlantic shellfish (see also: Kiln). At Sarap they serve theirs with aged beef fat (I mean why the hell not) and 'bagoong XO', bagoong being a fermented shrimp paste that features quite heavily in Filipino cuisine. The dressing was lovely of course, slick and satisfying with its gentle smokey beefiness and umami-rich oil, but it's worth also pointing out the langoustine itself had been timed perfectly to sweet and firm, without a hint of that mushiness or wooliness that can so easily creep in if you're not careful.

House pickles were great, especially the soft-boiled (and ever-so-gently pickled) quail's egg, an unexpectedly lovely addition which I will be looking out for on pickle selections from now onwards.

It was with the arrival of the Ensaladang Talong, though, that we realised that everything we were going to be served at Sarap would not only be exciting and unique, but thoroughly rewarding to eat. On a layer of smoked aubergine, sort of like a baba ganoush but thinner and sharper, sat a single plump slice of dark-red heritage tomato. This was topped with crumbled, salted duck egg, which not only added seasoning to the tomato and aubergine, but an extra note of creamy dairy. I don't know if the salted duck egg is a traditional Filipino thing, or something invented entirely from scratch at Heddon Street, but I do know I've not had anything like the combination before and I loved it.

I do know that pork is a mainstay of the Filipino feast and it would be a very strange thing indeed if Sarap hadn't featured it on the menu somewhere. But instead of anything as usual as roast suckling, the signature pig dish at Sarap is painstakingly boned and rolled trotter stuffed with rice and roasted to an irresistable crisp skin, the kind of thing that must involve a hundred different techniques to go exactly right at once. Sliced into neat rounds and dropped into a lovely sharp dipping sauce, this remarkable dish hit all the different pleasure points of texture and flavour contrasts, the filling of silky rice sitting next to crunchy pork rind like a kind of extra-meaty arancino, and it blew our little minds. An absolute must-order amongst must-orders.

Poussin Inasal (Inasal being a particular marinade involving lemongrass, ginger, garlic, you name it) arrived perfectly tender with a nice dark chargrilled skin, and a lick of calamansi for extra citrus. One of the more straightforward things on the Sarap menu, it still impressed with its beautifully tender flesh - and how often can you say that about restaurant chicken - and beguiling mix of herbs and spices in the marinade.

Not content with everything else, Sarap are also brilliant at cooking fish. This is turbot, neatly filleted and full of flavour, in a superb sour tomato broth studded with clams and sea vegetables.

Java Rice was ordered simply on the promise of 'mangalitsa fat', and boy it did not disappoint. On top of a mound of plump rice spiked with pickled peppers was a medallion of pork fat mixed with wild garlic. We were instructed to smush (their words) the fat into the rice so everything is coated in the herby gloss, the result being a kind of fat-washed paella (sorry just couldn't think of a better description). And yes, it was fantastic.

Not wanting the evening to end, we ordered both desserts. Burnt cassava cheesecake was our favourite, presented with macapuno (a kind of coconut as far as I can gather) whipped cream and some kind of dark green oil, maybe nasturtium. Suman, steamed glutinous rice, was interesting alright but there's something about the texture of the sticky, jellified rice that was a bit hard to get on with. But I'm sure that's just a personal thing and plenty of other people would love it.

Any even mildly curious diner could find more than enough to enjoy in Sarap, with its tastefully constructed plates of attractive ingredients, and it should easily find an audience in this part of town. But for anyone looking for something genuinely new and innovative, or for anyone who thinks London has lost its ability, post-pandemic, to take some risks and bring an often-overlooked cuisine on a new and exciting journey, Sarap is a true marvel, a unique and intelligent take on modern Filipino food that's never anything less than thrilling. I hope it has many, many bagoong-laced days ahead of it.

9/10

I was invited to Sarap and didn't see a bill, but would have been about £60/head I think

Manthan, Mayfair

Having followed chef Rohit Ghai's trajectory through London's very finest high-end Indian restaurants with intense interest, from Jamavar to Bombay Bustle to Kutir, it's fair to say that when I received an invite to his latest venture Manthan in Mayfair, I replied so quickly the PR in charge probably thought it was an out of office. In his time in charge of the aforementioned places he has probably done more than any other individual to introduce me (and many others) to the bewildering variety and sheer potential of top ingredients treated to intelligent Indian techniques.

A slightly tricky side effect to all this invention and artisinal detail, for this food blogger at least, is that figuring out what's going on in some of his extraordinary complex dishes, and subsequently writing about them, becomes an impossible task. Take these, for example, something called "Ram Laddoo". I know from reading the menu they are little bitesize spheres of fried lentils, and I can tell you they were lovely and moist and moreish, topped with pickled raddish and surrounded by a fantastic coriander chutney, but if you want any more detail, well, I'm afraid you're going to have to look elsewhere.

Buttermilk chicken skins, though, was slightly more familiar territory. Of course I couldn't tell you what into the spice mix other than pink peppercorn, curry leaf and ginger (thank you Mr. Menu) but I can tell you that they were so ridiculously addictive, greaseless and crunchy on the outside and soft within, they all disappeared in a matter of seconds.

Ghai has a particular skill with fish and "Sekwa" was three fillets of whitefish, each with a lovely crisp skin, in a spicy tomato sauce studded with sharp purple pickled onions. Anywhere else this would be a standout dish, but here it was merely another thing to coo and gurgle over before the next wonderful thing arrived.

...which were these jackfruit tacos. Now, you can believe me or not, but we didn't see a menu until halfway through the dinner (Ghai had offered on arrival to send out his favourite dishes as a kind of blind tasting, and who was I to argue with that) and I swear that when we were eating these we assumed they were pulled pork or lamb, so completely meat-like were the fatty, richly flavoured fillings. To later discover they were in fact spiced jackfruit did set off a certain amount of panicked soul-searching. If vegetarian food can taste so convincingly meaty, what's the future of actual meat? I should add, though, that although available in vegan form I believe the taco "shells" themselves involved dairy of some kind, so... phew. To be quite honest.

Fortunately, shami kebab was very definitely real meat - goat, in fact, in a thick, dark sauce of beguiling complexity and served with - hooray! - a portion of roast bone marrow. Together with a soft and flaky bundle of roti it was another completely unassailable match of flavour and technique, the soft pieces of goat melting in the mouth, loosened by the marrow.

Finally, "Osso bucco" bookended the mains, another fabulously dark and rich sauce containing slow-stewed lamb on the bone, served with a bowl of "risotto" - spicy wet rice flavoured with who knows what (curry leaf, Jaffna spices - menu). Both the lamb and the rice were of course great, but somehow even more interesting were little pancake things (I know, I know) which had an extraordinary flavour, smooth and buttery and meaty.

To describe this dessert, I am having to enlist the help of Google. That sphere on top of is the "gulab jamun", a kind of syrup-soaked spongecake (look I'm sorry if that's wrong, but I'm doing my best) and it sat on top of "srikhand", sweet strained yoghurt. Underneath that was more laddoo, here providing a protein-rich base for the dessert rather than a savoury starter. Look the point is it was all very nice, that's all you need to know.

And finally, without wanting us to leave without being completely discombobulated, we were presented with kheer ("a sweet dish and a type of wet pudding popular in the Indian subcontinent, usually made by boiling milk, sugar or jaggery, and rice") spiced with garlic, slightly although not completely as weird as it sounds, and in a very pretty little pastry casing. And I don't know about you but I'd rather be challenged than mollycoddled when it comes to rice-based desserts.

I really do apologise for my embarrassing lack of Indian food knowledge, I only hope that, as in certain other areas of my life, what I lack on detail I more than make up for in enthusiasm. The fact is, though I completely fail to do justice to the amount of effort and culinary knowledge that clearly goes into it, the results at Manthan speak for themselves - this is genuinely spectacular Indian cooking by a kitchen at the top of its game, and though I wasn't paying on this occasion, given the glittering Mayfair location the prices are pretty fair. No one dish is over £20, and you could expect to leave with a bill of around £70 a head with a couple of glasses of wine and/or a custard-based digestif.

And while Manthan is the latest and most attention-grabbing restaurant in his empire, I should remind you that Jamavar, Bombay Bustle and Kutir in Chelsea still exist and are all still brilliant. In fact next week Kutir are launching a game menu and if you're like me and will order anything with feathers that's been shot out of the sky, that's more than a reason to revisit. But mainly, just rejoice that you can eat food as good as this anywhere, and more to the point in these strange times, you can eat anywhere at all. If you want to celebrate a return to normality with some of the best Indian food in the capital, you can do hardly any better than a meal at Manthan.

9/10

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

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

Betterment at the Biltmore, Mayfair

Given the significant budgets five star hotels in London have access to, the network of connections to the world's best chefs and operational staff, the beautiful (usually) and vast (sometimes) spaces they can dedicate to kitchens and dining halls, it's somewhat surprising how few hotel restaurants turn out to be any good. For every Alyn Williams at the Westbury*, where every course on a recent tasting menu was touched with pure genius, there's a Siren at the Goring, uneven and disorentating. For every Holborn Dining Room, where the staff are the best in town and the pies miniature works of art, there's the ever-changing restaurant at the Sanderson, who don't seem to be able to hang on to a head chef for more than a month, a rudderlessness reflected in their half-assed, dreary menu.

But even if you manage to snag a well-regarded head chef, a beautiful dining room and an association with one of the best hotels in town, success is by no means guaranteed. I may be in the minority (the numbers it does suggest I very much am) but I've never been particularly keen on Berners Tavern, because no room decked out like the Paris Salon is going to distract me from the fact I'm paying £22 for fish and chips with - horror of horrors - crushed garden peas instead of proper mushy. So it's fair to say I didn't have stratospheric expectations for Betterment, Jason Atherton's new project in the Biltmore on Grosvenor Square, which - at first glance - serves a faintly similar menu of international modern hotel favourites.

And yet. And yet. From the moment the house bread at Betterment (I really do not like that name) landed on the table, it was clear that this was going to be a step above the average hotel restaurant experience. Steaming hot, with a firm but yielding crust and served with room-temperature salted butter, this was an unimpeachable bread course, every detail of it correct. And it's that kind of attention to detail - exacting but enjoyable, if occasionally a bit leftfield - that carries through to everything the Betterment produce, to often quite wonderful effect.

For example, on paper, raw langoustine dusted with powdered, dried summer berries sounds like the kind of thing that could very easily sail very close to disgusting, but instead was a delight, the fruit powder serving as a kind of gentle seasoning that still allowed the sweet flesh of the seafood to shine. It was experimental, definitely, and ever-so-slightly wacky perhaps, but still a mature, well-crafted starter that impressed on every level.

Roast scallop came cutely framed by some sliced cep mushrooms, the advertised girolles forming part of a parmesan-seasoned mixture underneath. I didn't get to try any of this myself, as it had disappeared before I'd looked up from my langoustines, but I suppose that only goes to show how good it was.

99.9% of the time, the answer to the question "Should I use rose water in this starter?" is a resounding "Bloody hell no", and yet this neat arrangement of white crab meat, ajo blanco and a generous layer of caviar seemed to weather the intrusion of Eau de Old Lady quite well. It probably helped that there was so much caviar (nobody has ever complained about there being too much caviar), and that the crab was lovely and sweet and fresh. And it also probably helped that there was hardly any rose water in it at all. This is a good thing.

In contrast to the other relatively complex starters, king crab was prepared and presented quite simply, cut into bitesize portions and spritzed with yuzu and lime. The best seafood rarely needs much doing to it (take note Norma) and this crab, previously frozen but none the worse for it (king crab freezes very well), was a very fine bit of seafood indeed.

Mains continued the theme of being inventive, attractive, and charmingly eccentric. My own ox cheek tortellini had a good bite - firm but not chewy or hard, the perfect done-ness - a nice rich filling, and the horseradish velouté wasn't the least bit bitter but instead kind of earthy and salty and quite lovely. In lesser hands, this kind of geographic pick'n'mix cuisine, bits from Italy and Japan and France and the US, would be confusing and disappointing, and Lord knows enough hotel bistros are. But it's abundantly clear that not only does Atherton (or whoever) write a good menu but he has assembled an incredibly accomplished kitchen team - lead by Ben Mellor, at least on the night we visited - to make sure it all gleams with style and finesse.

And talking of accomplishments, blimey the chips. I said on the night on the meal on Instagram, belly full of negroni and a glass or two of Sauvignon Blanc, that they were the best chips I've ever eaten. Now, sober and less prone to hyperbole, I should probably revise that statement. They are, in fact, definitely the best chips I've ever eaten. Sorry Blacklock, sorry Chik'n'Sour, sorry Hawskmoor - the Bettermore's beef dripping chips were in every way perfect, silky smooth inside with a good crunch on the surface, seasoned sensitively and glowing with colour and flavour, I can't imagine anywhere else beating them, now or ever. True, they were £9 for about 8 of them but if that's the price of perfection, so be it.

A sharing portion of turbot was a glorious thing - meaty and firm in texture with a great taste and nice crisp skin. There would be a lot to be said for turning up at Betterment, ordering this and a few dozen portions of chips and calling it a lunch. I suppose that's the beauty of a menu as intelligently drawn up as this, the flexibility to enjoy your food in a myriad of different ways. Or maybe I'm just fantasising excuses to order a lot, lot more of those chips.

I didn't try the venison, but it looked the part and I didn't hear any complaints. I did get to try some of the onion flower with chive emulsion, presumably a tongue-in-cheek tribute to the Outback Steakhouse blooming onion, something that I would ordinarily chide as a bit naff if a) it hadn't been so tasty and b) we weren't all having such a great time.

There was one more dish of a cheesecake that for some reason I only photographed the non-cheesecake part of, which was clever of me, but trust me this again was wonderful. Initial disappointment at being served a 'deconstructed' cake soon turned to delight when it was sampled - a basque-style baked affair this was, incredibly rich and buttery and so fiercely authentic it could have come from the kitchens at La Viña in San Sebastián.

This wasn't an PR-led invite or anything like that but it was a birthday treat, and I didn't see the bill. You can probably work out how much the four of us spent by cross-referencing with the menu but I imagine it wouldn't have been much less than £100 a head, possibly a little more. That is not a cheap dinner, of course, although you can spend a lot more in the area - we all knew what we were letting ourselves in for booking into a five star hotel restaurant in Mayfair. What came as more of a surprise - and delight - was food this playful and full of personality and flavour, top ingredients treated well but without overdue reverence, the kind of thing you rarely see anywhere never minds in a restaurant that needs to keep so many different, and often competing, interests happy. For all my moans and groans about London food recently, there are, after all, still places that dare to be different. Cherish them wherever you find them, and make sure you get yourself down to the Betterment. Even if just for those chips.

9/10

*Alyn Williams at the Westbury is, at time of press, Alyn-less. I'm hoping they'll sort something out though because that place really is good.