Brawn

The last few weeks have not, for me at least, been a very happy time in which to be a restaurant blogger. Criticism of the activity - as if all those doing it form some homogenised entity all writing for the same reasons and to the same ends - has become increasingly vocal and, at times, personal. Calls for bloggers to 'learn to write like journalists' and adopt journalistic standards (an oxymoron some might say in the light of recent scandals) have been hailed as A Good Thing, ignoring the fact that being paid to write for a newspaper or website is quite different from setting up a blog and writing, unpaid, for fun.

When bloggers  - certain bloggers - responded by introducing a table of disclosures '[placing] us at the leading edge of blog transparency', the clear implication being that anyone who didn't follow suit must be a deceitful bounder, I felt that the very heart of my hobby had been ripped out and that it was becoming more of a chore than a pastime.  The almost-final straw came when an article slating restaurant bloggers appeared in a respected publication, written by someone not only who I knew and liked but who had also been my host at a free event for bloggers some months ago. Et tu, Brute? I thought, and started very seriously to question whether the game was worth the candle.

And then I went for lunch at Brawn, and in the space of a couple of hours of near-perfect food, fantastic wines and the most exquisite company, I was reminded why it is that I do this. Not for freebies - though I won't deny they're a nice, occasional bonus - nor for any perceived credit for being the first through the door of a new restaurant to write about it, even if my hastily-written 'review' is so poorly constructed as to be barely intelligible. No, I do this because eating out, when it's as good as this, is so bloody pleasurable that to then relive it through writing about it - even if no-one reads the result - is almost as joyous as having the physical experience all over again.

Galoupet, Knightsbridge

Firstly, a public apology: when our waitress told us straight-faced that Galoupet's offering of small plates to share was a 'unique concept', I laughed out loud and reeled off a list of other places where this could be done, like the worst kind of restaurant-collecting tosser. It was an awful, Onanistic thing to do and I wouldn't for a second have blamed her if she'd tipped my (superb) Pink Basiltini cocktail over my head and had me thrown out. That she didn't, and in fact proceeded to provide unfailingly polite and enthusiastic service for the rest of the night, is to her enormous credit. Mea maxima culpa.

Whether it's entirely unique or not, the menu 'concept' (why does everywhere have to have a 'concept' nowadays?) at Galoupet - a new wine bar/restaurant/shop on Beauchamp Place from the Chateau of the same name - is a very appealing one. Fifteen dishes, most available in a small or large size, are offered in a simple list, in the order in which the kitchen thinks they are likely to be most enjoyed - so salads come first, followed by fish, finishing with some meat dishes.

For every dish there's a suggested wine pairing, served in a 125ml measure, this large variety of by-the-glass options made possible by the use of Enomatic wine storage machines. You don't have to have the suggested wine; the intriguing list offers another twenty or so varieties, including (of course) those from the Galoupet estate itself. The flexibility is there to order lots of small plates to share, each with a different wine, or stick to a conventional starter-main-dessert-and-bottle-of-wine-between-us configuration.

The Fat Delicatessen, Balham

One of the many great things about living in London is that we are absolutely spoiled for wonderful local café/delis, where we can enjoy a quick, delicious snack or light lunch and then, if so minded, buy the ingredients to make it at all over again at home. As well as well-known mini-chains like Ottolenghi, small but flourishing independents populate many of the 'villages' which, cliché would have it, make up our fair capital; locals love to think of each as being their 'little secret'.

Apologies to the locals of Balham then for blowing wide-open this particular little secret, the absolutely  delectable, worth-the-fare-to-zone-3 Fat Delicatessen. I'd walked past it numerous times on the way to and from visiting a friend who lives round the corner and always meant to go in; having finally done so for a lunch with said friend (let's call him Matthew, as that is in fact his name) and Alyn recently, I'm extremely glad I did.

Spuntino, Soho

It will probably come as no surprise - it's certainly never been any great secret - that I have something of a history of addiction. For most of my adolescent and adult life, until only a few years ago, I have at any given point been addicted to something; be it pills, powders, liquor, eating, not eating or sex, I have been there, done that and bought every t-shirt.

Over the last few years though, things have been under control; I won't bore you with the exact whys and wherefores of what I went through but I eventually reached a place where occasional excess is about as bad as it gets. So thanks a great big fat bloody bunch then, Spuntino, for inventing stuffed deep-fried olives, a snack so fiercely moreish that I was hooked from the first bite on my first visit two days after opening and returned twice in the space of a week to gorge on these hot, bitter, salty anchovy-farced pellets of pleasure, laced for all I know with a sprinkling of crack in the crispy crumb encasing them.

The peddler of these narcotic nuggets is of course Russell Norman, the man who brought us Polpo, Polpetto and most recently the Campari Bar, and whose tiny new diner in Soho already has fellow restaurant junkies queuing out the door for their fix. Although unmistakably from the Polpo stable - same reclaimed decor, same gorgeous tattooed staff, lights too low, music too loud, all creating a buzz like no other - the menu is much more Noo Yoiky, Italo-American than the neo-Venetian offering at its sibling sites. Larger snacks - spuntini - replace bite-size cicheti, and diner favourites like mac 'n' cheese, sliders and shoestring fries join a range of Italian-inspired salads and 'Plates' served in actual main course rather than sharing sizes. Polpettino this ain't.

Having never been to the Big Apple - I know, I know, it's on my To Go list - I didn't consider myself qualified to comment on Spuntino's New York credentials, so on my first visit I took along a real live American, Burberry high-up Anthony Garcia-Rios, who straight away pronounced that it was 'totally New York'. The loud, louche, sexy atmosphere, the queuing along a wall, cocktail in hand, for a seat ('no telephone, no reservations' barks the ultra-minimal website) and the scrubbed tiles and filament bulbs of the interior are, I'm reliably informed, a little slice of NYC in LDN.

As for the food, we foolishly ordered everything that sounded amazing, which was about half the menu (the rest sounds merely great). This resulted in a sorry surfeit of food and, I must admit, in an initial writing-off of the menu on my part as being too heavy and carb-laden when in fact all that was at fault was our ordering. 

In addition to those evil, enslaving olives we tried lardo and caperberry crostini, a ground beef and bone marrow slider and egg and soldiers before moving on to a selection of larger dishes. The crostini were lovely, the sharp tang of caperberries incising nicely through the unctuousness of cured fat; I've had silkier, sultrier variants elsewhere but that didn't stop me from ordering another round, and some more of those devilishly delicious drupes, on a solo visit two days later.

The slider was a very nice, rich little burger, which is not to damn with faint praise, I'm just not a burger enthusiast. More exciting was the egg and soldiers, a simple soft-boiled egg with the added bonus of a clever faux shell made of crackling, crunchy crumb - tart's comfort food.

Of the larger plates, the absolute stand-out - and a dish I knew I straight away I would order again, and did on visit three - was a courgette, mint and chilli pizzetta which there's no point over-describing; it was just a perfect eight inches of pure pleasure (sorry, sorry, I was sure I was over the sex addiction). Truffled egg toast was fun, a ham-less, gooey croque Madame which, mark my words, will  soon be every spendy Soho-dwelling queen's hangover remedy of choice. The only marginally so-what dish of the lot (and what a lot it was) was soft-shell crab with Tabasco aioli, the batter lacking crunch, the aioli punch.

On my next visit with company - this time publishing suprema, exquisitely elegant blogger and fellow good food addict Helen Brocklebank I tried, in addition to a terrific lamb and pickled cucumber slider and a good duck ham, pecorino and mint salad, a couple of Spuntino's deliciously different desserts. Pineapple with liquorice ice cream was a clever combination of sweetness and smoke, and for liquorice-disliking me one of those "I wouldn't normally eat this  but I'll take another spoonful if I must" moments. The by-a-country-mile winner though, and my favourite dish of all three visits bar those frickin' olives, was the peanut butter and jelly sandwich, the 'bread' in fact thick, salty-sweet peanut butter ice cream encasing fruit-packed raspberry jam, all sprinkled with crushed peanut brittle. It was a super-sweet riot of tastes, textures and temperatures, and I loved it.

There's plenty to choose from drinks-wise; a few wines, a few (artisan) beers, a whole lotta bourbons and a list of classic cocktails, not to mention the extensive list which exists in manager and mixer-in-chief Ajax's head (his naked vodka Martini is among the best anywhere, and a long trail of tearful barmen will tell you how hard I am to please). Service is laid back but sassy ("You didn't ask me how I wanted the steak!" a boor bellowed; "It comes medium rare" the waiter snapped back), the aforementioned atmosphere amazing, the queue an hour long at peak times  - which will be all the time for at least a few weeks but is bound to peter off.

Prices are very fair; Anthony and I paid (OK, Anthony paid) more than strictly necessary, just over £50 a head, but that was for a lot of food and booze; Helen and I ordered more modestly, drank less but still left replete for under £30 each including 12.5% service.

What can I say? I'm addicted. There's just nothing not to love about the place and there are far more destructive things to be hooked on, but this may yet be the one that breaks me. So if one night you see me slumped begging in the seedy alleyway opposite, take pity and bring me out an order of deep fried olives won't you?

Spuntino, 61 Rupert Street, London W1D 7PW No telephone, no reservations, nothing on the website but it's http://www.spuntino.co.uk if you insist.

All photographs very kindly supplied by, and copyright of, Spuntino. So hands off.

NOPI

"One hundred pounds?"

"One HUNDRED pounds?"

"ONE HUNDRED pounds?!"

This was the refrain, said with increasing disbelief and at ascending pitch, which for a good few hours after we had spent just shy of that amount on a meagre dinner and one bottle of wine at NOPI, was all my best friend Andrew could say. Nor can I blame him for such vocal incredulity; in (too) many years of eating out I don't think I've ever left a restaurant feeling as thoroughly fleeced as on this occasion, which is a shame as I genuinely believe that NOPI's intentions are far more noble than its approach to pricing.

NOPI - it's a silly neologism denoting 'North Of PIccadilly' - is the first restaurant proper from Yotam Ottolenghi, the deservedly-respected food writer and owner of an eponymous chain of high-end deli-cafés in some of London's chi-chiest postcodes. To date my only experience of Ottolenghi's food had been a dinner party catered entirely from his vegetarian opus Plenty, and very nice it was too; excitingly vibrant flavours and colours, unusual ingredients (although increasingly less so, such has been Plenty's influence on many home cooks; Ottolenghi has done for pomegranate molasses what Delia did a few years ago for cranberries) and a palpable sense that love and thought had gone into every recipe. My expectations for NOPI then were along the lines of 'Plenty: The Restaurant'; similarly thrilling food served in fabulous surroundings.

The latter expectation was at least met; there's no denying that NOPI is a pretty gorgeous space. Occupying the completely-gutted-and-expensively-refurbished site of what was The Club Bar & Dining on Warwick Street, the design makes clever use of materials, texture and light to create a room that's bracingly modern, welcoming and warm. One long wall is covered with white tiles while the wall facing it is exposed white-painted brick; beautiful brass lamps hang low, diffusing a gentle glow throughout the room and furniture is of a warm, honeyed hue. Downstairs a smaller, more casual dining room accommodates two huge communal tables with a view of the open kitchen, source of the no-more-than-OK food which lets the rest of the experience down.

Divided into 'Veg', 'Fish', 'Meat' and 'Sweets' with between six and eight choices for each, the menu consists entirely of sharing dishes and diners are informed that 'We recommend three savoury dishes per person'. With £10 being the typical dish price and several at £12 I wondered if the 'We' in question was the management of NOPI or of their bank, but obediently we chose six dishes spanning the three savoury sections nonetheless. While we waited, bread was served with olive oil and a whipped beetroot and goats cheese dip, the nice-but-blandness of which was a precursor for everything that followed.

The first couple of dishes to come to the the table were between them the most and least interesting of the six we sampled. 'Beef brisket croquettes, Asian slaw' was three Babybel-sized parcels of yieldingly tender, star anise-spiced meat in a salty, crunchy crumb which we both enjoyed, even though we agreed that the slaw - basically just ribbons of veg - added nothing. 'Green beans, roasted hazelnuts, orange' on the other hand was just plain dull; fridge-cold and with indistinct flavours it might have worked as a side, but as a dish in its own right felt rather pointless.

Our two fish dishes, 'Pan-fried sea bass, turmeric potatoes, rasam' and 'Grilled mackerel, fresh coconut, mint and peanut salad' were good but uninspiring. The sea bass, combined with the potatoes and soupy rasam, was essentially a very mild fish curry, which had I not been spoiled with the mind-bendingly gorgeous fish tikka at Trishna recently I might have found more impressive. I enjoyed the zingy salad with the mackerel because it reminded me of the beautiful lotus stem salad I'd liked so much at Viet Grill, but the mackerel with it was, to be honest, just a nice - and small - bit of mackerel.

'Twice-cooked baby chicken, kaffir lime salt, chilli sauce' was tasty enough but only in the way that a poussin, seasoned generously and whacked under a hot grill, always is. The presentation was poor, the lime salt served in a plastic pot and the chilli sauce no more than a squeeze of Blue Dragon's finest in a glass saucer. This would have been fine if we were paying a fiver in a takeaway rotisserie joint but we weren't - this was a tenner in W1.

The real stinker of the night however was our last dish, 'Baked blu di bufala cheesecake, pickled mushrooms'. It sounded so promising, this savoury cheesecake; I was expecting a clever marriage of salty and sweet, a play on flavours like Nigel Slater's awesome Ploughman's Pie perhaps. What we actually got was a wedge - not a generous one either - of New York-style baked cheesecake which had the taste and texture of a decent blue cheese quiche. And for this - reader, take a moment to absorb this please - we paid twelve pounds. TWELVE pounds! TWELVE POUNDS! Of everything we ate this was the most  overwhelmingly disappointing and egregiously over-priced dish of the lot.

We simply didn't have any enthusiasm for dessert, figuring that if the rest of the menu was this humdrum then puds weren't going to redeem it, so we called for that astonishing bill. In fairness, £25 of the £94 total was a very decent bottle of Mar d'Avall Garnatxa 2009 from the eclectic and interestingly curated list, and we certainly didn't resent the 12.5% service charge as staff had all been efficient and friendly enough. But that still meant that, factoring in service, we paid about £65 for food that really should have cost at least 25% less.

There are some truly lovely things about NOPI in addition to the decor; huge attention has been paid to detail - a gold 'O' motif is repeated across menus and staff uniforms as well as being used for napkin rings and to weight down bills (already heavy enough, surely) - and the ultra-opulent mirrored loos would satisfy a modern-day Marie Antoinette. It's just a shame that the food being served and the prices being charged for it don't do the rest of the venture justice.

Even if the prices dropped - and for NOPI to survive I really think they must - the food isn't good enough to make me recommend the place when within a few minutes walk in either direction Polpetto and Bocca di Lupo are doing the sharing plates thing so much better. Also nearby is Mark's Bar at Hix to where, snatching victory from the jaws of defeat, we adjourned for dessert; for much, much less than one hundred pounds, a piece of fantastic Amedei chocolate tart and a killer cocktail each, served by a hulking Slovak waiter, proved a very effective antidote to our disillusionment.

NOPI, 21-22 Warwick Street, London W1B 5NE Tel: 020 7494 9584 http://www.nopi-restaurant.com