Brigade Bar & Bistro

At risk of being accused of platitudinous middle-class hand-wringing - the dreaded #firstworldproblems - I've been thinking a lot lately about the ethics of eating out.

This week The Trussell Trust announced the biggest ever annual increase in use of its UK foodbanks, just as many London foodies were getting in a tizz over yet another new restaurant where the cheapest option is a £45, six-course tasting menu. Some of us are agonising over whether to go for  6 or 10 courses at lunch; some of us are agonising over whether we will eat at all today. Never, that I can recall in my lifetime, has the gulf between 'haves' and 'have-nots' seemed so painfully wide.

But I'm not about to say that eating out, and enjoying it, is wrong, or immoral; it'd be vastly over-simplifying matters, not to mention hypocritical of me, to say that because some people can't afford to eat, those who can should feel bad about it. What I would say however is that where an opportunity presents itself to support disadvantaged people while stuffing our faces, it is - I think - incumbent on us, at least occasionally, to take it.

Brigade Bar & Bistro, on Tooley Street, presents just such an opportunity. A social enterprise offering six-month apprenticeships to people who have experienced or are at risk of homelessness, Brigade supports the Beyond Food Foundation which helps apprentices into careers in catering and hospitality. It's a similar principle to Jamie Oliver's Fifteen - which celebrates ten years in business this year - but, lacking as high-profile a figurehead as the ubiquitous Jamie O, is rather less well-known.

To deal first with the only thing I really couldn't bring myself to love about Brigade, the dining room is not going to win any design awards any time soon. Although the room has as its focal point a fashionable open kitchen, the decor is harsh and dated with cream pleather chairs and fake flowers doing nothing to diminish the impression of having walked into a suburban budget hotel with airs, not a smart modern restaurant in an increasingly-happening part of London. It's noisy too; the shrieks of a large group ricocheting off every hard surface made it at times hard to hear or think on my visit. The rest of the building, which houses private dining and meeting rooms, a cookery school and offices is, by contrast, rather chic.

Fortunately that's where the gripes end because the food - which is, ultimately, what it's all about - is very good, and certainly well above the standard one might expect from a brigade of mostly chefs-in-training. Bar a couple of minor, and in the circumstances excusable, glitches, old school-friend David and I each enjoyed three pretty much perfect courses.

To start, David chose Wiltshire venison carpaccio, each deep red petal carved carefully to a uniform thinness and served with aged Old Winchester cheese, a clever British substitution for the usual Parmesan. My sardine tart, from the daily specials, was beautifully presented, two plump glistening silver fillets framed by puff pastry. The fish tasted deliciously fresh, its natural oiliness balanced by the crispness of the pastry.

David's main course of pan-fried lemon sole was, as my sardines had been, impeccably good fish, firm textured but delicate, although the lemon butter it was served in didn't taste of lemon at all and could have used a more generous whack of citrus. My chicken mousse-stuffed breast of guinea fowl was excellent, the mousse sufficiently boldly-flavoured as to  not be overwhelmed by the game. Guinea fowl is all too often overcooked to dryness; not so here. 

Sides were interesting but needed tweaking; deep-fried broccoli with a small bowl of rustic tomato and white bean stew was tasty stuff, notwithstanding slightly clumpy batter on the broccoli, but was such a huge serving that it would have been better offered as a starter than a side-order - a surfeit of food can be as bad as a lack. Roasted beetroot, cumin seeds and honey meanwhile used lovely earthy beets but I couldn't detect any cumin, by taste or sight, leading me to wonder if it had been left out altogether.

Desserts were a highlight. Caramelised apple tart - tarte aux pommes a l'alsacienne in anywhere less proudly flying the flag for all things British than Brigade - with Calvados ice-cream was a textbook assembly of thinly-sliced apple fanned around a crisp, fine base, while white chocolate and raspberry crème brûlée was luxuriously unctuous without being overly rich.

Helped by the fact that service was faultlessly polished and polite and despite the decor and noise, David and I thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. The food was mostly very impressive, if in places lacking nuance and finesse - the unlemony lemon butter, the missing cumin - which can of course be excused knowing that the chefs here are learning on the job and will only do so by making mistakes. That said, the pricing at Brigade is pretty punchy with starters at £5.95-£10.50, mains at £14.95-£28.50 and desserts £5.50-£7.95, so one might not unreasonably expect (even) better. David felt that I was being harsh on this point and that if the money spent at Brigade is going to support good work - which it plainly is - then the pricing was justified.

Which brings us neatly back to my original point, and the one that I would ask you to take a moment to reflect on, namely that while there is of course no reason for us to stop going out and having lovely expensive meals just because 346,992 people received a minimum of three days emergency food from Trussell Trust foodbanks in 2012-13, wouldn't it be great if, just occasionally, we could find a way of doing it that benefits others? Thanks to Brigade, we can.

Brigade, The Fire Station, 139 Tooley Street, London SE1 2HZ Tel: 0844 346 1225 www.thebrigade.co.uk

Another very worthwhile campaign I'm supporting:

Posted by +Hugh Wright

Elliot's, Borough Market

Penicillin. Post-It Notes. The Negroni Sbagliato. Me. All wonderful, all indispensable to modern life (to anyone who might beg to differ about the cocktail, I say: Try one) and all of us happy accidents. Fleming's slovenly lab hygiene, Spencer Silver's failed glue, a barman not knowing his Prosecco from his gin and the power cuts of September 1975 all resulted in something quite unplanned but with hindsight, extremely welcome.

A few weeks ago I had a very happy accident of my own, when my friend Gay James (as distinct from Straight James, Posh James, Fat James or Baby James) managed to get off the bus a few stops too early for our assigned meeting place and called to say that he was in Borough, not Bermondsey, and lost.

It was easier to go to him than to try to direct him to me, so we found ourselves on Borough High Street, late-ish at night and with no idea where to eat. I figured that if we wandered towards Borough Market, somewhere would still be open; somewhere was, and it was Elliot's, which turned out to be fabulous.

Roganic

Photography throughout courtesy of www.paulwf.co.uk

Although fully aware that in doing so I am laying myself open to accusations of being an oral examiner of equine gifts, I must admit that I initially declined a very kind friend's invitation to dinner at Roganic. For one thing, I hated the name, a vain, corny play on proprietor Simon Rogan's, to the same irrational extent to which I hate buskers and people who own folding bicycles. For another, I was put off by the cost - £55 for six courses or £80 for ten before even a drop of liquor passes the lips might not shock these days what with the cost of eating out in London soaring to record levels, but it still isn't exactly what I'd call affordable.

I was further turned off by the fact that Roganic is cringeingly styled as an 'extended pop-up' - Rogan having taken a two-year lease on a vacant site on Blandford Street in Marylebone - which irritated me even more than pop-ups do in general; part of the joy for me in eating out often is the sense that I will from time to time come across somewhere so good that I will want to go back again and again, and pop-ups are anathematic to this. Finally, I was afflicted by early-onset review fatigue; with everyone being served exactly the same dishes, within about a fortnight of Roganic opening I was so fed up of reading only subtly different takes on identical meals that the last thing I wanted to do was eat there myself.

Never one to take no for an answer however, my particularly persuasive pal Paul Winch-Furness crossed off all my objections (apart from to the name, which even I was able to see was not reason in itself to boycott somewhere): Cost? I'm paying, he said. Pop-up? That's as may be agreed Paul, but if you like it you can go back a few times in the space of two years, and if you really like it you can always visit its parent restaurant, L'Enclume in Cumbria. As for repetitious reviews, Paul pointed out that the week he had in mind to go would coincide with the first change to the menu since Roganic opened in early July. How could I say no?

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.

Trinity, Clapham

For all that this blogging lark is really rather fun as hobbies go, for a number of reasons I don't actually do it very often. Firstly, I don't write about every meal out that I have; I'd be a hypocrite to sneer at those who write up (seemingly) every sandwich or takeaway they eat, given that it was a particularly splendid sandwich counter which inspired my first post, but I don't have the time or inclination to do it myself.

Secondly, while I don't have any hard-and-fast rules to speak of (in blogging as in life...), I generally don't write about meals that fall into certain 'private' categories; I include in this meals with family (with the occasional exception), business lunches and friends' birthday dinners - for this reason, and this alone, a particularly dreadful central London Mexican restaurant can breathe a sigh of relief.

The main reason however is that I'm essentially a creature of habit, and once I find somewhere I like, I go back again and again (and in some cases, again); great for the restaurateur's balance sheet, but not so good for generating new material. I might tweet about how good (or otherwise) a meal at a favourite restaurant was, but I don't 're-review'. Or rather, didn't, until now.

Criterion Restaurant, Piccadilly

Criterion Restaurant is rather like Narnia. Not only in that you step through unremarkable doors into a realm of almost unbelievable splendour, but also in that however much you might ask around you'll struggle to find anyone who's ever actually been.

For several years a high-profile outpost of Marco Pierre White's in-name-only restaurant stable, after the turban-wearing one's departure Criterion struggled for some time to find an identity for itself and slipped from the culinary radar, sustained I would imagine by special offers and passing trade - of which, on Piccadilly Circus, there must be plenty.

Now however Criterion is seeking to assert its status as a serious food destination and based on the evidence of my recent visit, they certainly mean business. Membership of the Sustainable Restaurant Association asserts their eco-credentials and all the favourite foodie buzzwords - local, seasonal, organic - are present and correct on a menu which majors in best of British with some high-falutin' fine dining touches. Served in what is indisputably one of London's most spectacular dining rooms, a neo-Byzantine orgy of soaring mosaic ceilings embellished with more gilt than Midas' loo, it's an attractive proposition - but does it deliver?

Trullo, Highbury

Notwithstanding the three-figure pocket money, sumptuous homes, elite private education, Porsche for your seventeenth birthday and winters in Zermatt, it can't be easy being the child of a famous parent.  Follow mum or dad into the trade in which they made their very bankable name (Rufus Wainwright say, or Michael Douglas) and you will forever be compared to them, and find your family labelled a 'dynasty' as if your achievements derive only from your DNA and not any actual effort. 

Plough a different furrow - viz, Stella McCartney - and unkind souls will say that you only got where you are because of your famous name, which is deeply insulting not just to you but also to your fans or, in Stella's case, customers, as it implies that ladies only buy your exquisitely cut jump-suits because your dad co-wrote 'Eleanor Rigby'. 

It must then be doubly hard when both parents are very famous indeed; from expensive cradle to cosseted adolescence the burden of society's expectation weighs upon your honey-hued, Ralph Lauren-clad shoulders as the gossip mags wait to see whether you'll take after mum (step forward Georgia May Jagger) or dad (take a bow, Sean Lennon). Jordan Frieda, son of pop legend/gay icon Lulu and hairdresser extraordinaire/global haircare deity John Frieda, has done neither and, after a creditable stab at acting during which he most notably played Prince William - a man who also knows a thing or two about having famous folks - has opened Trullo, a perfectly nice little neighbourhood Italian in Highbury.

There's not a great deal of information on Trullo's website but from what I can gather someone who's involved in the project (possibly Frieda himself) has worked at River Cafe in the past and Trullo seeks to emulate, if not actually replicate, Ruth Rogers' and the late Rose Gray's simple cooking of excellent produce to authentically Italian methods. They're certainly not replicating the River Cafe's notoriously nosebleed-inducing prices; everything on the succinct, daily-changing menu is very reasonable and most wonderfully of all, no bottle on the all-Italian wine list is marked up by more than a tenner, a pricing model which must have other, greedier restaurateurs quaking in their boots.

If you're wondering what I was doing so far from home, in the noisy environs of Highbury Corner, the answer is that I'd arranged to dine once again with the delectable James Ramsden and we wanted to try somewhere new to both of us, which isn't easy when you eat out as much as we do. Trullo had blipped quietly on the outer circles of both our radars and with the added selling point that it's basically at the end of James's road, we booked ourselves in. 

Good job we did too, because even on a Tuesday night the place was packed, with hopeful walk-ins prepared to queue. This must be down to some seriously good PR or wildfire word-of-mouth, because from the outside Trullo's not an immediate draw; its midnight blue exterior and discreet half curtains are rather foreboding.

Inside, it's groovy and modern but extremely noisy and with a slight air of the unfinished; display shelves run around the walls but display next to nothing, and the smell lingers of the battleship-gray paint on the vertiginous stairs down to the lavs. The menu borders on the combative - it takes a certain amount of proprietorial chutzpah to have veal, lamb sweetbreads and two fish dishes as the only main courses - and staff appear to have been briefed to expect customer confusion given that we were asked, twice, if we had any questions (to which I responded mischievously by asking, 'What sort of questions do you expect?').

Starters were fine. Grilled ox heart with horseradish creme fraiche was an unfussy plateful of thin, nicely chewy slices of smoky bovine ticker, while James's Heritage tomato and mussel soup was a satisfying bowlful of good-if-not-great mussels atop robust chunks of toms of every colour - more a stew than a soup. We shared a pasta dish of stracci with green beans, pesto and black olives which was unremarkable, the only real interest coming from the fun, irregularly-shaped pieces 'scratched' from a sheet of pasta. I had to ask James if the pesto, which didn't taste super-fresh, might have come from a jar; he thought not but we agreed that it tasted like it might have come from a good deli. This is not praise.

Mains were a lot better and my lamb sweetbreads with broad beans, summer carrots, pancetta and borlotti beans was particularly belting (though, memo to the menu writer, having borlotti beans as one of only two side dishes on offer when they already feature on a main course is not a good sales ploy). James's veal saltimbocca with baked radicchio was also molto bene and jumped appropriately in the mouth; thicker slices of veal might have been nice but there was plenty of it, and the crisp baked leaves were a tasty touch. 

The only real let-downs were the desserts; cherry ripple ice cream was bland and a grilled white peach with mascarpone and Amaretto was pleasant enough but carried no trace of the almond flavour one would expect from its extended bath in the liqueur. They rounded off the meal well enough but added nothing to it.

From that altruistically priced wine list we chose a Nero d'Avola at a bargainous £16; it was a great bottle for the money, bursting with black fruit and mellow sweetness. Adding three courses each, the shared pasta dish, aperitifs and digestifs (yes I know it was a schoolnight but I still made it to school today, so there) we still only managed to rack up a bill of £84; even with a tenner added on for service - entirely voluntarily, no discretionary 12.5% nonsense here - we felt like we'd had very good value indeed if not the most amazing meal of our lives. Service was fast, friendly and mostly relaxed, delivered by delightful staff wearing smiles suggesting that no-one involved in the business can quite believe their luck.

Jordan Frieda - and his less-recognisably-nomenclatured partners - are certainly onto a winner here; once the initial buzz has died down I can see Trullo fulfilling its aspiration of being a good, perhaps the best, restaurant in an affluent, eats-out-a-lot neighbourhood. Personally, I liked it well enough but weeell...it didn't make me wanna shout.

Trullo, 300 - 302 St Paul’s Road, London N1 2LH tel: 020 7226 2733 http://www.trullorestaurant.com

HIX, Soho

Regular readers - and there are literally ones of them - of this blog will know that I am a great admirer of uber-chef and fellow Dorset boy Mark Hix. I've eaten at most of the restaurants with which he has been associated over the years, including actually being cooked for by the man himself in the days when he could be found knife-wielding at The Ivy, and weekly devour his column in Saturday's Independent, often trying my hand - to mixed degrees of success - at his always innovative recipes. 

I treat as authoritative his articles on ingredients, farming, fishing, provenance and locality, and have learnt a great deal on each of these from him; it is no exaggeration to say that Mark Hix's cooking and writing have shaped the way I eat today, my food tastes, likes and dislikes. Years ago, when I threw up a Hix signature dish at Rivington Grill (through, naturally, no fault of the chef's own), it felt akin to blasphemy.

I'd been excited about the prospect of eating at HIX (block capitals seems to be the accepted rendering of the name) for ages, ever since noticing by chance, walking down Brewer Street, that the site of Gary Yau's short lived haute-Japanese Aaya had been reborn as part of the burgeoning Hix empire (there are another two restaurants bearing his name, one in London, one in Lyme Regis in Dorset, as well as a consultancy gig at Brown's Hotel). Alas for me, the opening up of HIX coincided with my opening up by a surgeon, and the dreary recuperation diet I was put on precluded any fancy-pants restauranting for a few weeks. 

I could only read, weep and salivate as reviewer after reviewer got in there first, almost all agreeing (with the notable exception of Metro's Marina O'Loughlin, who I greatly admire) that Mark had pulled off the unthinkable and opened a surefire success of a restaurant in the middle of The Worst Recession In Living Memory (TM). But, as one day surely shall the economy, I recovered, and when it came to deciding where to have a celebratory lunch there was only one choice. My glamorous friend Nina, over on business from Bermuda and no stranger to fine dining, was my lunch companion.

So that I can focus on all the good bits about HIX - and there are many - let me begin by getting a handful of really quite minor but collectively significant gripes out of the way. Firstly, booking a table at HIX was not an all-together painless experience. Three attempts to get through were aborted due to unacceptable times waiting for the call to be answered, and when I did get through I was spoken to, if not with disdain, then not with the degree of warmth which one might hope for from a person one has been kept waiting for the privilege of speaking to. It's also not nice to be told that your table - booked for 12.30 - will be needed back after two hours; I am unlikely to want to linger for two hours over lunch, but if I am, are you really expecting to be fully-booked at 2.30 on a Monday, Mark? Really? It just felt unnecessary and ground my gears. 

Then there's the menu. For the most part it's in plain enough English - 'Atlantic prawn cocktail', 'Devilled lamb's kidneys on toast' and so on - but there's also an awful lot that needs deciphering and I thought we'd done away with that when we all started calling creme brulee burnt cream. Serious foodies - and readers of Mark's Independent column - will be fluent in the language of crubeens, cod's tongues (which, nota bene, are not exactly the tongues of cod) and slip soles, but I suspect that many diners are not and may not care to have to ask the staff to have to explain quite so much of the menu to them. I don't for a second doubt that the delightful staff would take great pleasure in doing so, but it just seems a little bit cliquey, a little bit insular, a little cleverer than thou. 

Last of the niggles is that unlike almost all other restaurants playing at this level of the game, HIX lacked anyone discernibly in charge; several (lovely) ladies welcomed us at the door and waved us off, and there were a number of suited chaps of both sexes wandering, unsmiling I noted, around the dining room ostensibly overseeing things, but if there was a maitre(sse) d' on the premises I failed to spot him. Maybe it's a deliberate thing, part of the studied informality which typified the service, but personally I like at some point during my three courses to receive a fleeting visit from someone high up in the honcho stakes just to check that I am a happy chappy; a little bit of extra love over and above the waiter's customary 'Is everything OK?'-type enquiry.

Venting over, I can now unleash the praise,and the hitherto identified quibbles notwithstanding, HIX is really very good indeed. Really, seriously good. Even the front door is good, a Brobdingnagean slab of heavy dark wood which it took all my not-insubstantial weight to open; it's foreboding and inviting at the same time, hinting at decadence and maybe danger within. The interior's a hit too, a very New Yorky, mostly white, high-ceilinged space decorated sparsely but modishly with mobiles (not phones, though that would be fun, but the suspended variety) designed by Hix's big name artist pals.

Tables, bare wood with sturdy but comfortable leather seats, are generously spaced out around the L-shaped room and I honestly couldn't spot what I would class as a 'bad' table. Once seated, water (in fun pub counter whisky jugs) and bread - a whole, home-baked mini-loaf of it - are brought swiftly before, in another Big Apple-style gesture, the day's cuts of steak are paraded on a butcher's block at your tableside. As well as being a nice bit of salesmanship - the sight of the 1KG Porterhouse is truly mouth-watering - it's helpful to have the three cuts on offer explained, although I was a bit baffled by the surely oxymoronic 'fillet served on the bone'.

The menu, even with its scattering of obscurities, reads wonderfully; it's comfortingly similar to that at Rivington Grill - even the font is almost identical - and only slightly dearer, so the soups, salads and traiteur-type meat-treat starters are around the £8-£9 mark while mains are in the range of £14-£21 unless of course you're minded to have that Porterhouse steak at £65 for two. Contrary to what one might infer from the reverence afforded to beef, the menu is actually slightly fish-biased and this being a Hix restaurant the emphasis is on sustainability, with gurnard, silver mullet and haddock all making an appearance (although how Mark squares serving only the 'tongues' of cod, and not the rest, I'm not sure; nose-to-tailfin eating this ain't). 

Nina and I both started with soup, she the pumpkin with sage and chestnuts and game with soft poached egg for me. Both were very good, Nina's was full of flavour, brightly coloured and packed with fragrant sage, and mine was a heart-warming and filling, if slightly over-salted bowl of rich, creamy broth packed with shreds of partridge and tasty mallard.

To follow, Nina chose the beef flank, porter and oyster pie - OK yes, down the pub it would be called steak and ale pie but this is HIX, sweetie - a dark, rich stew of fibrous, tender meat in thick gravy under a golden, crackling crust topped with a solitary gratinated oyster. The lonely bivalve, whilst as bracingly fresh as being knocked off your feet by a morning wave, seemed somewhat surplus to requirements; the pie itself disappeared to approving noises from across the table.

I opted for the flat-iron steak (a thick cut from the shoulder, similar in texture to onglet) with baked bone marrow. This was the star dish of the meal, the tender steak chargrilled to black on the outside but still yielding and rare in the middle, and full of barbecue flavour. The accompanying bone marrow - one of my absolutely favourite things - was mashed up with herbs and seasoning and served piled back into a shin bone, split down the middle and hollowed out. It was a carnivore's delight, almost primal in conception but resolutely modern in delivery. A nice touch was its being presented with three mustards to choose from, English, wholegrain and - my favourite, Tewkesbury, somewhat like Dijon but cut with horseradish for extra bite. I loved it all. 

The only flat note food-wise was a side of chips, which were just, well, extremely ordinary chips. There simply wasn't room for dessert; portions at HIX are fairly huge and it's all too good to leave even a scrap of. Wanting to at least try something from the puddings list we ordered 'Julian Temperley's cider brandy & Venezuela black truffles', and a more intense whack of pure cocoa flavour has seldom passed my lips. Diners with room for more can choose from a very British selection including rice pudding, Bakewell tart and berry posset.

We drank modestly and well; we toasted our reunion and my return to health with a glass apiece of Joseph Perrier (Laurent's younger, cooler brother perhaps?) champagne, louchely served in a retro coupe, and accompanied our food with a 500ml carafe of a smooth, blackcurrant-heavy Barossa Valley Shiraz/Cabernet Sauvignon chosen from the excellent and reasonably priced list. France is most prevalent but fans of Spain, Italy and the New World won't be disappointed; light drinkers and those on a budget will also welcome the superb selection of wines available by the 175ml glass and carafe. 

Service throughout was generally good, the comfortable informality of the staff never tipping over into over-familiarity, but as the room filled up attentions did seem to divert slightly to other tables and we had to attract our waiter's attention in order to place our dessert order and request the bill. 

All in, the bill came to just over £50 a head which I think will work out as about the going rate here. Downstairs there's a very attractive bar area - all but empty in contrast to the buzzing restaurant but I would imagine it's a very different story by night - and had we had more time before or after lunch I would gladly have stopped in to sample some of the delights on the interestingly compiled cocktail list. There's a separate bar menu and I can easily see this becoming a very fashionable, club-like Soho staple.

HIX may be a new address on the rapidly lengthening list of Soho hot spots but there's nothing really new about it; I mean this to flatter, as HIX is a synthesis of all the very best bits of the restaurants through which Mark Hix has blazed his trail. HIX combines the mystique of The Ivy, the excellence of J. Sheekey and the fashionableness of Rivington Grill, while at the same time being unmistakeably all about Hix; at reception, in the bar and even on the menu you are reminded that the great man, as well as feeding you in his restaurant, can also sell you his books, salad dressings and souvenirs. 

It's a very well-executed enterprise and before long I can absolutely see it taking over from, or at least rivalling, The Ivy and Scott's for sheer cachet. Now that my digestion is fully functional again, and provided I can get through to book my two-hour slot at a table, I intend to revisit HIX as often as I can until the celebs and media barons take over and getting in here becomes as much of a challenge as at those, for now, more famous competitors.

HIX, 66-70 Brewer Street, London W1F 9UP Tel: 020 7292 3518 http://www.hixsoho.co.uk

The Clubhouse Shoreditch @ The East Room

As of March 2010 The East Room is closed for the foreseeable future due to a devastating fire. Fortunately no-one was hurt but my thoughts go out to the wonderful team there. I hope that their talents find a good home, and quickly - any hospitality venue would be lucky to have an 'East Roomer' on their staff.

As a general rule I don't think it's productive to review the food offerings at members' clubs; existing club members and anyone interested in joining aren't going to be (much) interested in one reviewer's opinion on what the grub's like, and anyone else is not likely to care enough to read about food of which they are unlikely to be able to partake. I have to make an exception however for the outstanding 'pop-up' space at Shoreditch's The East Room, because it's aimed squarely at, and is perfect for, an up-market Christmas party crowd and you, dear reader, might just have the task of organising such a do.

For those unfamiliar with it - and many will be, given its deliberately much lower profile than its flashy, brash competitor Shoreditch House - The East Room is a very elegant, unstuffy, innnovative members' club on Tabernacle Street, on the doorstep of, but not within, the media, creative and fashion hub of Shoreditch. It's part of a small but growing group of members' bars and clubs including Milk & Honey in London and New York, Soho's ace cocktail lounge The Player, and boutique hotel, restaurant and members' bar The Clubhouse in Chamonix. It's upon this latter that The Clubhouse Shoreditch is based, and it's a pretty amazing sight. What is usually a pleasant, well-shaded roof terrace (pictured) - quite the place to not be seen, unlike a certain other, better-known roof terrace up the road - has been magically transformed into a faithful recreation of an Alpine lodge, with wood-burning stoves, an open fire, comfy sofas, a (fairground) helicopter and tongue-and-groove walls. On entry, you're encouraged, though by no means obliged, to shed your shoes and swap them for cosy ski socks, and to take your pick from a selection of apres-ski clothing including scarves and gilets. While the heat of the fires makes the room rather too warm for the winter woolies to be kept on for long, it's a charming and fun touch.

The food on offer has been mainly devised to appeal to groups, as it's envisaged that the space will predominantly be used for parties during the three months of its scheduled existence. In typical East Room style however there's not a satay stick or mini-burger in sight, nor are you going to find traditional turkey 'n' trimmings. Instead, in perfect keeping with the chalet theme, groups can order vast vats of tartiflette (the ambrosial if coronary-inducing marriage of potatoes, cream, cheese, bacon and onions), cheese fondue (for 2-12 people), coq au vin for twenty, daube of beef for 12...the menu reads mouthwateringly and prices, if not valley low are certainly not Alpine high, coming in at about £15 a head for food only. Extras available include salads, starters and sharers, and for occasions when the space is being used as an overflow for the floors below or just by smaller groups, there are dishes suited to 1 or 2 people. From these, we sampled the fabulous three cheese fondue (£30), brought to the bubble in a capacious cauldron at your table and served with copious amounts of bread chunks, radishes, endives and Chantenay carrots; and the charcuterie board (£18), a generous assemblage of ham hock terrine, chicken rillettes, chicken liver parfait, saucisson, Parma ham (particularly good), pickles and bread.

Imagination has clearly gone into the drinks offering too. Grey Goose and Eristoff vodkas are the building blocks for a clever, seasonal cocktail list and also feature in exhibitionist party pleasers including a rehoboam of Grey Goose set in a block of ice at £600 and a vodka luge (price on application!) 88- and 54-pint beer kegs with self-service hand pumps are also available and sure to make any party (and many a party-goer, no doubt) swing. We thoroughly enjoyed, and I can recommend, the vin chaud, otherwise known as mulled wine but hey, this is Chamonix! Served, of course, in half pint tin mugs, the aroma alone bellows 'Christmas'.

The overall experience is, at risk of sounding wanky, really quite magical and a very great deal of thought has obviously gone into designing it. The dressing up, the smells, the decor, the food and the hospitality (provided by The East Room's terrific staff who have mastered the art of being as cool as, but not cooler than, thou, a rare thing indeed in this part of town) all combine to truly transport you to another place; stepping out onto the City Road afterwards gave me new empathy with the Pevensie children. If you're organising a party over the next couple of months - The Clubhouse will disappear, as quickly as it popped up, in February - and want to take your cohort somewhere genuinely fresh, fun and unique, then The Clubhouse Shoreditch surely has to top your list. If not, but you fancy giving it a try, then do try to bag an invitation from a member (thank you, sister, for mine!), or failing that, consider joining yourself; for (final unfavourable comparison with a certain other club, I promise) membership here is open to anyone willing to pay their dues, follow the house rules and 'not act like a wanker'. And that, as a general rule, is the kind of place which deserves to be this favourably reviewed.

The Clubhouse Shoreditch @ The East Room, 2a Tabernacle Street, London EC2A 4LU Tel: 07000 847876 http://www.thstrm.com

Rivington Grill

My first visit to Rivington Grill, about five years ago, was memorable for all the wrong reasons. It was not long after the place had opened - to rave reviews - and a fashion-savvy, early-adopter girlfriend had booked a large table for Saturday lunch to celebrate her birthday.

It should have been an exciting opportunity to try out the coolest new place in town - Shoreditch was still very underground in those days - but alas I had tried out rather too many of the uncool places in town the night before, drunk myself rotten, made it to the restaurant only by the grace of God and four Nurofen, and was feeling absolutely fetid.

A 'medicinal' Bloody Mary did me no good at all and it is with shame and regret that I remember to this day my starter of braised calf's cheeks and beetroot shoots coming back up looking pretty much unchanged from when it had gone down. Given that at the time the head honcho in the kitchen was none other than cooking deity Mark Hix, this less-than-favourable emetic reaction to the food was akin to blaspheming in church. Rivington and I did not get off to the best of starts.

Fast forward to summer 2009 and Rivington and I have reacquainted ourselves; I now work in no-longer-as-cool-as-it-was Shoreditch and my bestie Kate lives in so-hip-it-hurts Dalston, so it's handy for both of us and we've paid two visits recently, the second because the first was so damn good. Mark Hix may have moved on (to set up on his own just round the corner, so there's no danger of him taking revenge for the calf's cheeks debacle) but his signature style of simple cooking of seasonal, local ingredients is indelibly stamped on the Rivington's menu.

On visit one, I was delighted to see gull's eggs with celery salt and mayonnaise on the starters as I'm a complete egg addict and had been dying to try this variety, new to me but very much a late-Spring delicacy. I wasn't disappointed; the large-ish egg had a distinctive, rich flavour and unctuous creamy consistency that amply demonstrated what the fuss (and price - £5.50 per egg) was all about.

On our next visit I opted for the delicious-sounding chilled beetroot soup with horseradish cream; velvety-smooth and slightly-sweet - my guess would be that chicken stock is used - it was a light, refreshing earthy delight. Kate liked her first course of Evesham Beetroot and St. Tola goat's cheese salad so much the first time that she had it again on the second, on both occasions pronouncing herself very pleased with it, particularly the tangy freshness of the cheese.

Main courses offer a wide variety of meat and fish dishes (nothing for vegetarians I note, but that's not for here) and of the four we tried over our two dinners, three were excellent. I loved the breaded rose veal with mushrooms and wilted nettles, the huge, finger-thick escalope eating wonderfully with the tiny ceps and herby leaves; Kate was similarly enthusiastic about her dived Lyme Bay scallops with wild garlic and bacon, both dishes politely allowing the main ingredient to shine with the imaginative accompaniments simply adding polish.

Grilled lemon sole with sea purslane and brown shrimp butter was equally good, the excellent - and substantial - fish swimming along most agreeably with the salty, fleshy herbs. The only slight disappointment was the Barnsley lamb chop with kidneys and bubble and squeak; the generously proportioned and undoubtedly well-sourced chop was sadly not well-sauced, crying out as it was for say some redcurrant or mint jelly, neither of which the kitchen was able to provide. This isn't to say that the dish was at all bad; it just wasn't quite as good as the other three triumphs.

Despite the sheer size of the main courses (and my having successfully kept everything down), we nonetheless managed to sample the cheeses and desserts. Whereas some restaurants which generally do well on locality and seasonality can rather give up when it comes to puds, Rivington does not, and everything we tried made the very best use of the season's best fruits: gooseberry pie with Jersey cream, Eton Mess, and raspberry burnt cream (I love the fact that Rivington's Britishness extends even to eschewing the use of 'creme brule'). For me though, as a fromageophile (yep - totally made that one up) the real highlight was the cheese plate which as well as a lovely Gorwydd Caerphilly featured one of my personal favourites Harbourne Blue - a rare, pasteurised goat's milk blue which has all the punch but less of the saltiness of many cow's milk blues.

There's an excellent wine list starting at a very reasonable £15.00 and not going too dizzyingly high after that; it's French-biased but also offers a variety of New World choices to suit every palate and wallet. On our first visit we opted for a terrfic 2007 Picpoul de Pinet, a lovely off-dry fruity white and an undeservedly under-rated grape which I've been enjoying of late, and on our second we embraced the summer and picked the Berry's House Rose Vin de Pays de L'Aude, a complete bargain at fifteen quid and as good as you'd expect from anything Berry Bros would put their name to.

This very fair approach to pricing extends to the food too; prices are all absolutely reasonable to the extent that neither of our bills, both for three courses, wine and service, exceeded £100, unusual these days at this level of quality. Combine this with excellent service - just the right side of informal, unfussy and friendly - and truly stylish decor (there's a Tracey Emin neon on one wall for Chrissakes!) and you can see why this is still a hard-to-beat hit in a neighbourhood which, unlike when Rivington opened, now has a wealth of high-end fashionable restaurants for diners to choose from. I might once have been sick in Rivington Grill, but I'll certainly never be sick of it.

Rivington Grill & Bar, 28-30 Rivington Street, Shoreditch, London EC2A 3DZ Tel: 020 7729 7053 www.rivingtongrill.co.uk