AdamLawrence

Thom, where would you recommend to drink Holt's? I love the beer, but Cheetham Hill frightens me, and I'm a Northerner ;-)

Slightly unfair. I've been a CAMRA member since I was 22, and I've never owned an Arran sweater. But if you go to the GBBF at Olympia in August it's true that there are lots of fat blokes with beards. On the subject of London pubs, I always liked the Warrington in Little Venice, though I haven't been for a couple of years. Lounge bar quite stunning, pub bar cheap and cheerful, excellent pint of London Pride. Simon, do you know anywhere in London (other than the Dog and Gun on Greek Street, which is worth a try, because the beer is invariably excellent, but is quite tiny and has slightly eccentric opening hours) where you can reliably get Taylor's Landlord?

So is this a point about quality or principle then Simon? Gary Rhodes cooks at Dolphin Square every other day, that's sufficient. I can buy that. Ramsay is at Claridge's for how many services each week? What if you go to RitS when Gary is off doing telly? The extreme is Shaun Hill, obviously; go to the Merchant House, you know who cooked your dinner. But in a 'normal' restaurant, whether the chef's name is above the door or not, who was on the pass when your meal came out? Was Robuchon obliged to run more services when he changed the name of his place from Jamin? I think the only possible judgement criterion is whether the meal was up to scratch. The Petit Blancs are OK, by the way, but no better than that. The Oxford one I think has gone downhill a bit in the past couple of years. Crappy service and a relatively big bill last time I went.

The thing about the Parker debate is that - in some ways - both sides get upsides and downsides alike. Those - like Steven Shaw - who find their palate calibrates well with Parker's can take his recommendations and use them to buy wine blind with less risk. The price they pay is that - because of Parker's legion of followers - it'll cost them more, and they may not be able to get hold of the real plums (as they see them). Those who don't like the fruit-forward, oaky Parkermonsters are warned about wines they won't like and benefit because stuff they do like will be better value (example: German whites, which to the best of my knowledge Parker hardly ever review - Majestic Wine Warehouses in the UK has some wonderful older Germans from great vineyards for six quid a bottle). The only gripe the Parkerphobes can legitimately offer is that, because his style is becoming so dominant, there will be fewer of the alternative style wines around. But is that really true? There are tens, hundreds of thousands of winemakers out there, not all of whom are embracing the Parkerstyle.