Tonyfinch

A lot of the best Indian options are not in Central London but in surrounding areas where more people actually live and where the Asian population is concentrated. For vegetarian/semi vegetarian you could try Malabar Junction in Great Russell St., Diwana Bhel Poori House in Drummond St(behind Euston station),and Rasa Samudra in Charlotte St. The best upmarket places are Chutney Mary in King's Rd, Bombay Brasserie in South Kensington and Veerswamy in Regent St. Tamarind in Covent Garden and The Red Fort in Dean St are praised to the skies by some but others are sceptical. You could also try Mela in Shaftesbury Ave. and doubtless Simon would wish to point you in the direction of India Club in The Strand. If you're happy to travel futher afield there are lots of other places.

Hesitate to comment as I was at Le Caprice about 6 years ago,although I gather it doesn't change much. Basically the food both there and at The Ivy is not the primary purpose.The menus are "safe",by which I mean that the famous and fashionable can eat from an eclectic menu which doesn't attempt to challenge or push the boundaries of gastromony in any direction. Ambience and,in the case of The Ivy,clientele are all important. I would only go to these restaurants if needing to feel yourself "fashionable" or gawping at celebrities is more important to you than the scoff. I exempt J Sheekey from that. I have had two exemplary fish dinners there.

Demi sec champagne. Demi sec Vouvray. Very spicey/soft brown sugar fruit Australian Shiraz.

Mine was definitely at The Cinnamon Club-a pale,craven shadow of Indian food.

I enjoyed my meal at Embassy in January bit the best dish I've had so far was Osso Buco with Parmesan Risotto at Incognico.

If fine wine can taste of sweaty saddle and farmyard why not kerosene and pine needles? Retsina has its place. That is in a Greek fishing village with the sun bouncing off the blue sea drunk ice cold in a tumbler accompanied by deep fried calamari and other assorted fish and seafood and a large bowl of Greek salad. Admittedly you might not want it anywhere else but in those cicumstances you wouldn't want anything else.

£15 for smoked eel and potato salad? Hmmmm I've had some lovely dishes at St.John and some good times but on my last couple of visits I felt the wheels had come off a bit- rushed service, tepid, ordinary food and presentation that wasn't so much minimalist as slapdash and lacklustre. I'm not for poncing food up for its own sake but if you're going to make a virtue of plainness then you've got to tread a fine line carefully or else you tip over into pointlessness-and start serving a bowl of peas in the pod. I sense St.John is beginning to cross this line more frequently and is beginning to trade on its style at the expense of its substance.

Come on Jay. Diss and tell.

The serious point is this. Reviewers like Gill, Nick Foulkes, Giles Coren and several others have no respect for their job. Gill's contempt for it shines through every line he writes. Like Meades in the year before he called it a day,they are bored with restaurants and consider restaurant reviewing beneath them. At least Meades admitted it finally,and called it a day. One would think it a prerequisite of being a film critic that you should love film as a generic concept. Editors do not appear to include a passion for food and restaurants in the job description for their restaurant reviewers. There are exceptions- Fay Maschler brings the right degree of gravitas to her work, Charles Campion is very enthusiastic and encouraging, our very own Jay seems to have got over his Embassy aberration and is lucid and informative. Generally,though,restaurant criticism,when compared to other forms,is often an embarassment to read-badly researched,factually inaccurate and full of sneering attitudes and irrelevant prattle.Come on editors.It doesn't have to be this way.

Gill describes Racine as a restaurant that "wants to go back to the roots of French bourgeois cooking" and that "seems to be making quite a good job of simple French food". He praises the salad lyonnaise and the tete de veau but says that "this is a tricky time of the year for potatoes" and goes on to describes the Chocolat au Pot as "too Protestant,bitter and covered again in creme fraiche" ????? He ends saying "I wish Racine well:food in London desparately needs its roots seen to" If you are privvy to the mind of AA Gill and understand what this blithering idiot is going on about then good luck to you.

Forced by The Observer's distribution problems to buy The Sunday Times I turned to A A Gill's column with forebodoing. I was not disappointed. Nominally reviewing Racine,Gill spent two thirds of his "review" prattling on about Rome and statues therein. Whyowhy doesn't an editor at the ST ask him/herself whether anyone is interested in this pointless drivel. When he can finally drag himself around to writing about the restaurant, Gill comes up with gems of culinary history,viz: "I miss French food. Time was when virtually every restaurant in Britain was French, or at least had a menu in French. The word "restaurant" meant French food-everything else was a grill or a caff. French food shrivelled and withered because it was so badly made". Er,wrong actually AA. On just about every count.Still why bother researching the truth about restaurants in Britain when you can get paid for hacking out any old claptrap knowing that no-one's going to bother to check whether its bollocks and even if they do nobody cares do they?

You're right, Jon. The trotters are boned first then braised in wine,port and veal stock for three hours.They are then stuffed with sweetbreads and chicken breasts pureed with egg white and cream. They're chilled then steamed in foil until heated through.The reserved stock is reduced,enriched with butter then poured over the trotters. The recipe and photos of PK preparing the dish are in his book La Tante Claire-a highly readable and personable account of his culinary life.

At Lola's,which Simon mentions above,I watched as two chain smoking stick thin women at the next table were served their starters. One might have just said something funny but I would bet money on the fact that their beaming smiles were due to the miniscule portions and the blissful realisation that they were not going to have to eat very much that night. Seems these days some people would rather contract lung cancer than put on a couple of pounds in weight.

It may be that I'm just a fat greedy b.....d but in a couple of London restaurants recently I've been aghast at the tiny portions I've been served up. Scallops as a starter now seems to mean one scallop,or two at most. Two or three weeny slices of potato are normal with main courses. At a trendy North London eaterie the other day I could have placed all three courses on tablespoons and downed them in one. I don't want huge portions in restaurants but I'm beginning to wonder if restaurants have cottoned on to the fact that 99% of people in the Western world obsess about their weight and are only too pleased to be served up tiny portions that won't bust their various diets.Helps keep costs down too.

The gourmet version of pig's trotters as "invented" by Pierre Koffman has the trotters boned before being stuffed with foie,sweetbreads and whatever and then glazed to a mahogany brown.I've also encountered this dish at L'Oranger(where Koffman was acknowledged), The Crescent and Maison Novelli.

I can't do the 11th or 12th. Ok if I join you on the 5th Simon?

With prices as inflated as the banquettes it's clear that a high proportion of your bill will go towards paying for the design rather than the food on the plate. Since I am totally uninterested in the former it'll take food praise of the highest order to persuade me to pay this kind of money.

Well...er...back to topic. Another option along there and also much better value than LPDLT is the Blue Print Cafe. Again great views of the river and Tower Bridge, good,well cooked though unspectacular food of the "Modern European"sort. Although I find it a tad irksome when expensive restaurants call themselves "cafes" (The River Cafe, Cafe Spice Namaste etc.) I've had two very enjoyable dinners at the Blue Print and the service,especially at one mad pre Xmas works outing,was excellent.

In a recent Delia Smith programme she claim to have finally "cracked" roasting a whole duck after years of faffing about. Prick skin with fork. Rub skin with salt. Roast on a high heat (200-220C) for the whole time (20 min per lb). Pour off fat from time to time but do not lower heat. That's it. Works perfectly

EIGHTEEN MONTHS!!?? I used to be at the spewing red wine and curry over the clothing stage by 18 months. Not too many of my relationships lasted 19 months.

Funny,when I got Byriani home she slipped off her linen jacket without demur.

Next time, Simon, Why don't you try the Butler's Wharf Chop House.Exactly the same view, still Conran but a little less pretentious and expensive than La Pont de La Tour. Foreigners like it because it is that rare thing-a British restaurant.

Joe, I confess I have never worked in a professional kitchen,let alone for the Roux brothers.However the Michel Roux I'm referring to is not Albert's brother who runs the Waterside Inn at Bray,but Albert's son who took over the reins at Le Gavroche a couple of years ago and who apparently is far calmer,courteous and less volatile in the kitchen than his father and uncle,according to reports anyway.

Its also because the bullies know that there'll be little or know organized resistance to their antics in terms of union backup. Kitchen work is often casual and low paid and workers are unlikely to be union members or have their union taken seriously by their employees.

The arguments used to defend bullying and abusive behaviour in professional kitchens remind me of the arguments put forward by gangsters from slum backgrounds justifying their sadistic crimes: "It's a dog eat dog world out there" "It was the only way to survive in that environment" "If you didn't hurt them they were going to hurt you" and so on. In fact its all BULLSHIT. 99.9% of people from poor backgrounds have never deliberately hurt anyone and would never dream of doing so. What Bondo highlights is bullying plain and simple. I don't know but I would hazard a guess that the majority of chefs don't do it. In London two of the top chefs-Michel Roux and Pierre Koffman- are known for treating their employees with fairness and courtesy while still running tight well organized ships. If they can do it why can't everyone else.? Others have a tendency to bully and abuse others and have found an environment which enables them to do so with relative impunity. Claiming that they are weeding out the men from the boys or putting their hapless victims through a rites of passage are classic arguments used by bullies to justify their behaviour since time immemorial. Every single study of human motivation in the workplace has shown that people work better and more effectively when treated with courtesy and respect. This does NOT mean a lack of rigour or discipline or frank discussions with employees about their performance. But cruelty,humiliation and abuse seve only to satisfy the inner needs of the perpetrator. They serve no other purpose and no -one should kid themselves for a minute that they do.