Mishkin's, WC2

Photos throughout by Paul Winch-Furness www.paulwf.co.uk

For anyone operating a restaurant specialising in the cuisine of a particular country or culture, being considered 'authentic' by experts and ex-pats can be both a blessing and a burden. While a reputation for the truest tapas, realest rendang or most verisimilitudinous Vietnamese usually results in a clamour for tables and healthy profits, get things wrong and your faux French or ersatz Asian will make you the object of every food snob's opprobrium.

Only a restaurateur with the supreme confidence and chutzpah of Russell Norman would dare to open a restaurant as wilfully, joyously inauthentic as Mishkin's, described on its website as 'a kind-of Jewish deli with cocktails'. Even as I write this, I can't help but wonder if from conception to delivery Norman wasn't chuckling knowingly to himself at the froth some critics would work themselves up into at just how un-kosher the place is, not only in the sense of the food not adhering properly to kashrut  - there's a pork hotdog on the menu for G_d's sake - but also in the liberties it takes with Jewish culinary tradition.

I make no claims to any level of expertise in this area (hell, in any area) so I really can't tell you if the matzo balls are dense (or light) enough, if the salt beef has enough (or too much, or too little) fat, or if the oxtail cholent needs more or less seasoning. But to judge the food qua Jewish food is to completely miss the point of Mishkin's, the point made by that all-important 'kind-of': this isn't meant be an authentic Jewish deli, this is Norman's own playful take on one - and oy is it fun.

Polpo Covent Garden

Since writing this post 'da Polpo' has been re-named 'Polpo Covent Garden'.

In much the same way as people are always 'rushed' to hospital and champagne is always 'quaffed', it's seemingly impossible for Polpo, Russell Norman and Richard Beatty's Beak Street restaurant (as if you didn't know that) to be described as anything other than 'wildly' popular. I should know - mea culpa.

For many restaurateurs, such success would be enough, but there's been no R&R for R&R who, in under two years, have gone on to open Polpetto on Dean Street and Spuntino on Rupert Street, as well as converting what was the private dining room at Polpo into a stylish Campari Bar. The latest addition to their burgeoning empire (do empires ever do anything but 'burgeon'?) is da Polpo in Covent Garden, their first foray outside of Soho.

Despite what the name might suggest, da Polpo is more than just another branch of Polpo, although it's certainly closest to the original site in character and size. Rather, it's a combination of all the best bits of the other restaurants, with a couple of new details added due to popular demand. A 'Greatest Hits of Polpo' if you like, following the difficult third album, with its interminable delays and creative crises, that was Spuntino. So, filament lamps, brown paper menus, maps of Venice and, most importantly, the now-familiar Italian-influenced food are all present and correct, but now bookings are taken into early evening (until 5.30) and there's a table that seats groups of up to twelve. It's the most obviously commercial and, in more ways than one, accessible of the group, and unsurprisingly, it's very, very good.