Grain Store, Kings Cross

As if it wasn't enough to have one beautiful, modern restaurant, Granary Square (Kings Cross), home of Caravan, now has two. The latest, Grain Store, is commendable for two main reasons. Firstly, and most obviously, it's very good; you'd have to be a real curmudgeon not to be impressed by the décor, the food and (to only slightly lesser of an extent) the service in this ambitious new restaurant. Secondly, it's a relief that finally, albeit slowly, London is shifting its focus away from burgers and hot dogs and the other American diner staples and taking inspiration from different and (let's face it) healthier places.

That's not to say Grain Store is derivative, not at all - we tried a huge number of dishes of style, colour and finesse, and aside from the odd Clove-Club/Noma presentation quirk here and there, there was some real innovation going on. I already knew Bruno Loubet was a gifted chef from a visit to his original Bistro in Clerkenwell a few years back. What's interesting about Grain Store is that it's completely unlike his first place in almost every respect. There is no attempt to further the "brand" Loubet here; there are no "signature dishes"; Grain Store is no proto-chain or Loubet-lite in the vein of Brasserie Blanc or Heathcotes. It is just another accomplished, grown-up restaurant which plays to a different set of the chef's strengths and impresses in a whole new set of ways.

Oh, except maybe if you're unlucky. On the long walk to the toilets there is a quite hilariously bad table, with two chairs positioned facing a dark corner of the room. Whoever decided this was a suitable place to plonk paying guests for dinner needs to reassess their restaurant design career. There are also a row of miserable, lonely bar stools right next to the entrance to the bathrooms, where if you were sat you would also quite naturally assume someone hated you. So on booking, just make sure you ask for a table away from the loos, and you'll be fine.

The cocktail list, developed by Tony Conigliaro of Zetter Town House/69 Colebrooke Row fame, is worth a shufty while you're waiting for your table. The innovation applied to the food is paralelled here - and I was a particular fan of the Twinkle, containing vodka, champagne and elderflower cordial. "Butter and hay champagne" just tasted like a glass of champagne though (albeit a nice one), so perhaps some of the staff still aren't fully up to speed.

We went for the five-course tasting menu, because generally five courses that the kitchen itself chooses for you are likely to be the five best they do, plus quite fancied the sound of the pigeon special so ordered that too. First to arrive was a lump of bark covered in pine needles (there's that Clove Club thing I mentioned earlier) topped with two excellent mushroom croquettes, perfectly fried and full of woodland flavour.

Then this, a little flowerpot full of radishes, which you roll in a "cashew and yeast" dip then in something called "olive soil", a pile of dessicated dried black olives. On the same plate were two slices of rye bread covered in seaweed butter and topped with the miracle of biology that is the "oyster leaf", a succulent from coastal areas up north (Scotland I believe) which tastes, however unlikely this sounds, exactly like oyster. Honestly, you should try it. Look at the presentation, too - stunning.

Beetroot, pickles and "goat labneh" (sort of a yoghurt made with goat's milk) continued the theme of visually attractive and summery, as did something with very lightly cured salmon and slices of peach and watermelon. Not a combination I'd tried before, or one I'd expect to work on paper, but there it is anyway, and very nice it was too.

This next course was I think extra to the tasting menu, and something that the kitchen was trying out for the first time. "Lobster and elderflower soup" was rich and gently seafoody, with a base of cool lobster jelly which dissolved in the mouth in the most extraordinary way. In fact, it was so good it didn't really need the chunks of rather tasteless cold lobster floating in it, which only distracted from the smooth textures elsewhere.

Butternut squash ravioli, and courgette, broad bean & prawn falafel were each very good examples of their type, playing with the form without losing sight of tradition or context. Also I should say a special word about the broad beans which accompanied the falafel because they were probably the best I've ever eaten anywhere, like little sweet flavour bombs.

Corn & quinoa tamale with pork belly and lamb belly on cucumber were each also very good, the pork mixture in the tamale being tender and satisfying, and the lamb belly skewers cooked just-so, like a sort of deconstructed kebab. On a stick.

Pigeon was always likely to be my favourite dish (it usually is, in any given restaurant), but Grain Store gets extra points for cooking it in a very smokey Josper grill to lovely pink (quite an achievement given other recent Josper-related disasters I've suffered) and serving it with an artichoke mousse of some kind served in the shell.

A goat's milk panacotta with candied tomatoes isn't perhaps quite as weird as it sounds, but it was still pretty weird and I certainly preferred the light panacotta itself to the tomato element. Even so, in the context of the amount of dishes we'd tried and the amount of invention going on, one slight dud is pretty good going.

A bottle of Zinfandel and the aforementioned cocktails bumped the bill up to £137 with service, so Grain Store isn't about to win any budget dining awards, but as I've banged on about to tedium in the past, value for money can occur at many different price brackets. And because you can see the effort, skill and love going into the food (literally while you eat - you may have seen open kitchens before but I bet quite as open or dramatic as this), you are guaranteed to walk away happy. Just make sure you're not sat near the loos.

8/10

Camélia, Paris (by Badoit)

There are advantages and disadvantages in unshakeable self-belief. The certainty that you are the best in a particular field surely (I wouldn't know, but I'm guessing) gives you the confidence to push further and in more radical directions than others not blessed with such convictions. For chefs, not normally a group of people known for their insecurities, self-belief allows greater levels of experimentation and risk-taking, but crucially also the ability to convince others along for the ride with you, particularly important if you're leading a large kitchen team and can't realise your vision on your own.

But there's often a fine line between confidence and self-delusion. I wonder whether the same drive and determination that allowed Marco Pierre White to win two Michelin stars in a poky restaurant on Wandsworth Common in the mid 90s, also led him to believe that endorsing a mass-market stock cube would be a positive step forward for his career, and not (as it turns out) an embarrassing blot on the CV of a once-great chef. Or whether the ego and energy that comes with the intergalactic talent of some young chefs in London is also the reason they all-too-easily get the hump and abandon ship when they feel their genius isn't adequately rewarded.

Thierry Marx is an extremely talented chef. There's little doubt of that, or of his CV, which glitters with Michelin stars as far back as 1988. He is currently head chef at not one but two restaurants in the Mandarin Oriental in Paris, the 2-star tasting-menu-only Sur Mesure par Thierry Marx and the "more informal" (these things are all relative) Camélia next door, to which I was very kindly invited along with a couple of other bloggers and journalists earlier this week. We were there as the guests of Badoit sparkling water, a brand well-known on the continent but which is just now making tentative inroads into the UK.

Objectively, and I'm not just saying this because they've just bought me lunch in Paris, Badoit is a very nice product. Naturally carbonated (astonishing as it seems, it actually emerges from the ground already fizzy), not as overwhelmingly bubbly as Perrier or as medicinally-mineralised as Vichy Catalan, it has everything you'd want from a table water, and I can see it doing very well over here. What was more interesting however, to me at least, was how Marx was pushing it as an indispensable kitchen ingredient, with magical properties to speed up the cooking of vegetables while retaining flavour and colour. Lunch at Camélia would prove whether he was on to something.

I don't think, in all my years flouncing around posh restaurants at home and abroad, I've ever seen a more exquisitely presented set of dishes than the starters at Camélia. Try, if you can, to look past my useless food photography skills and imagine how much more impressive they would have been up close. There's the crab in daikon wrap, a cylinder of utter geometric precision, topped with spheres and stalks of pickles like an Ascot ladies' hat. There's a fan of salmon tataki, measured so as to match up in a perfect circle, expertly mimicking the Mandarin hotel's logo. There's an oblong of paté de foie gras, edges and corners sharp enough to have been forged from iron, topped and tailed by shocking red gelée of Garriguette strawberries so correctly cut it resembled something from a fine Parisian patisserie. And there was my lobster dish, with vegetables turned and tweaked and arranged on the plate like some magical miniature forest. Gasps and coos spilled around the table as they arrived, each dish more spectacular than the next.

And then we started eating, and silence slowly descended like a yuzu-infused fog. It wasn't that any of the food was inedible, or even particularly unpleasant, it's just that the taste of any of it couldn't hope to live up to the standards set by the presentation even if it had been near perfect, and near-perfect it most definitely wasn't. The vegetables in my lobster dish were fridge-cold, and brought down the extravagantly-poured bisque to their temperature before I'd taken a second bite. The immaculate-looking gelée under the crab, too, was chilly, and infused with that kind of unpleasant jumble of organic odours spent from too long sat absorbing other members of cold storage.

More generally, though, the complaints were about underseasoning. A foie gras could have been less like window putty with just a touch more salt, ditto a sea bream tartar, ditto the crab, ditto a couple of bright green sticks of asparagus. The lobster, I should say, and despite its faults, was seasoned perfectly, and there was elsewhere enough to enjoy not to make the whole course a waste of time, but it's fair to say we expected more.

Mains, interestingly, flashed more frequently with genius despite having generally a much more subdued presentation. My own pigeon and foie gras was, in all regards, a triumph, each element singing in harmony, from the pink bird to the ethereally-light foie to the stalks of charred white asparagus beneath. And a very sloppy-looking turbot dish was even more impressive, a better bit of fish I doubt I've ever had before in my life, offered Japanese-style with the powerfully-flavoured fin-edge meat separately to marvel at.

But a tranche of "Farmer's" chicken breast was underseasoned, and its relative lack of flavour made the strange gel-like substance it was wrapped in that much more challenging to plough through, despite the confit leg meat being very good indeed. And a huge risotto-stuffed squid body was dense and samey and incredibly hard work, presented with a tentacle that was so stubbornly unyielding (overcooked? Undercooked?) it couldn't even be swallowed.

Later that afternoon, Thierry Marx proudly demonstrated how he cooked the vegetable starter using no seasoning other than Badoit's natural mineral salts. Blanched in the sparkling water for half the amount of time (we were told) that it would normally take to do such things, he then spoke about how the spent asparagus water could be used in other dishes and how as little as possible was wasted. "I give each of my chefs just two bottles each to last them all service" he said, pre-empting anyone who was about to wonder out loud if cooking asparagus in premium sparkling mineral water was why they felt they could charge €34 for two sticks of them.

But you know what those asparagus could have done with? A bit more salt. As could many of the dishes we tried at Camélia, and I can't help wondering whether cooking vegetables in Badoit is really the best use of the product, or just the result of a big-name chef with a sponsorship deal letting his imagination run away with him and nobody having the nerve to tell him that actually, salted tapwater might work better. Still, he seemed happy enough with the result so who am I to judge.

Back in Blighty, and the Badoit bandwagon rolls up to Soho Square next Thursday (13th) lunchtime, where as part of the awareness campaign, M. Marx has designed a menu for a "picnic restaurant" called Badoit Express. Fred Sirieix of Galvin @ Windows is arranging the service, so for that reason alone it's bound to be an enjoyable afternoon, and I look forward to tucking into a nice cold glass of Badoit in the Soho sun (fingers crossed). As for the food, perhaps the more informal environs of a picnic will showcase his talents better than the prim, plain and polished demands of a Michelin-gazing Parisian 5-star hotel restaurant, or perhaps even I'll have some kind of conversion to the benefits of Badoir-bathed asparagus. Just in case though, and I mean no offence to anybody, I may smuggle in a salt shaker.

6/10

Lunch at Camélia, plus Eurostar there and back, kindly provided by Badoit & We Are Social

The Big IF...

Please excuse this brief break in normal programming. I've been asked to say a few words about the Big IF... campaign to combat global hunger, and their rally in Hyde Park this Saturday (8th June).

I'm sure I don't need to flag the irony of a restaurant blogger being asked to ally himself with a charity like this. We could all do more, every day, to help those in need but coming from a self-confessed glutton who eats out far more than he should, I can understand why you'd want to tell me where to stick it.

But if all my years of food blogging have left me with anything tangible apart from a gut and a faint whiff of tandoori lamb chops, it's a platform to tell a chunk of the internet about a good cause, and so I hope you won't mind me doing so.

The story is a simple one. The world produces enough food for everyone, yet hunger kills over 200 children every hour. This, clearly, cannot be allowed to continue, and this year with David Cameron leading the G8 group of richest countries, we have a once in a generation chance to make sure everyone gets the food they need to live. It’s within our reach, IF (hence the title of the campaign) we act together.

At an evening hosted by tireless activists from Save the Children and very ably catered for by the River Café (head chef Danny Bohan and head sommellier Emily O’Hare) we learned about how the charity helps families in East Africa not merely by handing out food aid but by providing ways in which they may become self-sufficient, such as a dairy cow and training on animal husbandry. Crucially also, an extra focus this campaign as opposed to previous years is on tax transparency, and helping the governments of affected countries to collect the taxes that are due to them from business operating in their countries. External investment in jobs is welcome, but will not help break the cycle of poverty unless taxes are reinvested in internal infrastructure.

There's all sorts of things you can do to help, detailed on the website. But the biggest show of strength would be to register and attend the Big If rally in Hyde Park on June 8th, something which would be impossible to ignore by those in power.

I promise I'll get back to "moaning about Michelin stars or drooling over the latest hip burger joint" (© The Observer) as soon as is humanely possible. Meantime, take a few seconds to register on the website or tweet or do whatever you can do to get the word out. This time, and perhaps for the only time on this blog, it really is a matter of life or death.

Photographs by Jiro Ose/Save the Children

Story, Bermondsey

There is nothing wrong with a bit of ambition. In a town where most new places are aiming for no more than to be the next filthy burger joint or comfort-food slop-house ("hey guys, can we do what X are doing, only worse and with bigger profits?"), it's hard to get too irritated with anywhere with the opposite problem.

Hard, perhaps, but not impossible. Story tests our patience to such a degree, with its twee, pretentious concept laid on so thickly, that the whole thing threatens so dissolve into self-parody from almost the first moment we sit down. The menu is hidden inside a weather-beaten copy of Bleak House, dishes are introduced as if they were deeply personal emotional statements and not just a bit of food on a plate, and - the real kicker - diners are encouraged, for some bizarre reason, to bring their own book to leave at the restaurant. Or to put it in their words, "Our dream is for all guests to leave a book at Story, which will remain there to evoke the inspiration in others that we hope our food will evoke in you." It's almost enough to put you off your horseradish snow.

That our meal at Story ended up being so enjoyable, then, is thanks to one thing and one thing only - that ignoring all the ego and frills and affected flummery, the food is generally of an incredibly high standard. Which is just as well, because if it hadn't been I'd have wanted to shove that copy of Bleak House somewhere even the most determined of kitchen porters would not have not been able to extract it.

Not feeling brave - or flush - enough for the full ten courses for £65, we thought we'd settle for "just" the six for £45. As it turns out, though, there are so many little extra bits and bobs before and after the tasting menu proper that it certainly didn't feel like we were missing out. Crispy cod skin topped with creamed roe and summer herbs was the first to arrive, and was brave enough to taste very strongly of fish, unlike the kind of reimagined Quavers you might get elsewhere. And it was for this reason I liked them, while my friend wasn't so sure. This was one plot device that was going to reoccur throughout the course of the lunch.

Then nasturtium flowers filled with oyster purée, radishes filled with seaweed butter, eel mousse "Oreos" (Storyeos?), and deep-fried rabbit "sandwiches", all arriving in quick succession but just the right, and fun, side of enjoyable. I preferred the delicate oyster flowers to the rather soggy rabbit bites, but my friend thought the opposite so take your pick. The joy of a meal like this is that you're not forced to love everything; the relentless pace keeps you interested even as the individual elements don't.

Anyone with a passing interest in the London restaurant world will already know all they need to know about the famous Story "dripping candle". Briefly, it's a very ordinary-looking candle but is made out of beef tallow, and once lit slowly melts into the candlestick base where you are encouraged to dip the house bread. Yes, butter would have probably tasted better but it's a thing so inventive and so clever that only the most cynical would take issue with it. Much more fun than actually eating it, in fact, was watching it gracefully dissolve into weird and wonderful shapes during the course of the meal.

"Burnt onion, apple, gin and thyme" was a beautiful-looking thing, and if you can't enjoy a bit of caramelised onion there's something wrong with you. Perhaps the only real criticism to be levelled here is that it seemed very like something you might be given at one of the other current temples of modern British gastronomy, but then any novellist will tell you, there's always power in repetition.

There were things I didn't like about "Beetroot, raspberry and horseradish" - the beetroot hadn't been treated (pickled? marinated?) enough to remove that slightly unpleasant soily taste, and I didn't eat every last expertly carved lump of it. But the horseradish snow was as addictive as the substance it resembled, melting in the mouth into a kind of salty, umami-rich cream, and the superbly flavoured raspberries unexpectedly matched it perfectly. Again, horseradish snow is not a unique concept (see: The Ledbury, amongst others) but who cares when it tastes as good as this.

Then my favourite bit of Story - "Pigeon, summer truffle and pine", which was pretty much everything I like about this kind of food on one plate. The pigeon was bloody and wonderfully smoky (done in the Big Green Egg BBQ stood proudly outside the restaurant), the pine was I think represented by two blobs of shocking green purée which tasted of thick vegetation, and the truffles were liberally sprinkled around the place and were also packed with flavour. But even more impressive were the greens not mentioned on the menu, such as an utterly perfect example of broccoli and some seared root vegetables of some kind which would have been enough to cause a stir on their own. Technically impressive, visually stunning and immaculately realised, this was a world-class dish.

The tersely-described "lemon" was a few clever treatments of the fruit - some more of that snow, a sharp blob of sorbet and a bit of white chocolate mousse. Faintly familiar in that kind of Noma/Ledbury/Clove Club way but nonetheless very easy to eat.

And then another famous Story creation, the "Three bears porridge", where you are asked to guess which is "too sweet", "too salty" or "just right". Of course, none are really "too" anything; it would be a very strange thing for a restaurant to do to deliberately overseason a dish just for a somewhat laboured fairytale parallel. One is sort of a salted caramel affair, one is all toffee and nuts, and I've no idea what went into the "just right" but the fact it was my least favourite probably says more about me than the skill of the chefs. I still ate it.

With just a little chocolate teacake and sweep of impossibly delicate toffee ribbon of some kind, we were done. By now, I imagine you've made your mind up whether you think Story is an overthought pile of foodie-frottism or a fun and exciting to spend a couple of hours of your life, and you will have probably also guessed that I'm firmly in the 2nd camp. We went a bit OT on the booze (two bottles of £40 prosecco between two may not be how everyone will choose to start their Saturday) but there wasn't much on the wine list under £30 and I have a feeling this might be something approaching an average spend, so as with any of these things, if it doesn't look like your kind of thing and you balk at paying this kind of money for lunch, then Story probably isn't for you.

But crucially when you're spending a lot of money on food, or drink, or damn near anything, it all comes down to value. Despite not loving every bit of everything, my lasting memory is of the dizzying highs of that pigeon or horseradish snow or the fascinating organic shapes created by a slowly-melting stick of beef fat. There was enough care and skill shown, overall, for the odd irritation, in the end, to not mean so much. And so, even if this may not be the final, perfect Story, as a first chapter, it deserves our attention.

8/10