For my special birthday dinner celebration with C, I got taken to Bam-Bou - gorgeous french Vietnamese restaurant housed in a beautiful old colonial style house in Fizrovia (top of Charlotte street).

Ooof, what a place! Dark and sensuous decor set off perfectly by the Charlotte Street lights sparkling through the floor to ceiling windows. The place felt sultry despite the dampish London weather. Lovely as the setting is, it all fades to background with the arrival of the food.

Hanoi-style short ribs were dark and unctuous, sweet but never cloying - bones were licked dry and fingers sucked clean. The other starter, salt & pepper squid, was hot, fresh and cooked in the lightest of batters.

Main courses kept standards high - Spiced barramundi with lime dressed tom and coriander salad was a feisty treat and pan fired sea bass with fennel & wild ginger slaw was subtle and delicious. Both fillets were fresh as the sea and zinged with the energy of the citrus and roots. They were also set off perfectly by a side of polished white rice and bok choi with tamari and soy washed down with a red Sancerre (I know we were surprised too, that’s why we had to try it).

We barely had room for pudding but managed to share roasted mango with lime sorbet and melted with the fruity ice…

4.5/5 (the coffee was a bit average and the service slightly erratic - but I can’t wait to go again)

Starters £3-7
Main £9-14
House Wine £17

1 Percy Street London W1T IDB
 020 7323 9130
www.bam-bou.co.uk

Well, here it is - the review I promised of the best local restaurant in Stoke Newington.

It is a friend’s birthday, she’s been away for a while, where else to go for a celebration with close friends but the place that always puts a smile on your face and the tastiest pizza and pasta in your belly?

As there were 12 of us we needed to book a table so didn’t go to our usual Il Bacio Express (no booking, no cards) but to the slightly more formal Il Bacio up the road and I can safely say that we weren’t disappointed.

Il Bacio Express has pizza and aubergine parmigiano served on plain wooden tables with clay carafes of table wine. It is a bustling little place bursting with Sardinian welcome and warmth, even the MTV above the serving hatch just adds to its holiday appeal.

Il Bacio (normal) has the same pizzas but more extensive and sophisticated pasta and wine menus, served on crisp white table cloths and the wine in proper glasses. It is a little more expensive (we paid £22 a head, Express is nearer to £15) and the service is a bit more reserved but it is still a gorgeous intimate restaurant.

The pizzas are out of this world, thin, bubbly bases covered in the best of ingredients - zesty tomato sauce, freshest buffalo mozarella and wonderful Sardinian charcuteries, mmmm. And, as I have mentioned before, Melanzane Parmigiano is another dish I’d walk 500 miles for. But this time it was the pastas that really stood out - you know a restaurant means business when there are 6 different seafood pasta/risotto dishes on the menu, we had almost all of them, and all were d-e-l-i-c-i-o-u-s.

So if you’re ever in Stokey check them out.

5/5

Starters £5-6 (but I’ve never had one for fear of running out of room)
Main £7.50-9
House wine £7.50 (1/2L carafe)

IL BACIO EXPRESS
90 Church Street
Stoke Newington N16
London
020 7249 2344
www.ilbacioexpress.com/

4.5/5

Starters £7
Main £9-14
House wine £19

Il Bacio
61 Stoke Newington N16
www.ilbaciohighbury.co.uk/firststoke.htm

On Saturday night we discovered a real gem of a restaurant, Emni a delightful modern Indian that we’ve been meaning to try for ages - and I’m very glad we did.

The place is a clean black and white, with old school attentive service and really, really excellent food.

Crispy Popadoms opened proceedings and were accompanied by an unusual take on the usual dips - one of which tasted like the best brown sauce in the world (I mean that in a good way), tamarind I think.

Then the starters which were juicy minced lamb kebab, spicy lentil patties stuffed with dried fig and a striking potato basket that came with a side that looked like chantilly cream (but tasted delightful).

Main courses were also charming, richly spiced, with a delicate heat and wonderful flavours:

- Keralan prawns with yellow lentils, beans and carrots tossed with onion and tomato gravy
- Kashmiri chicken with fresh chillies, ginger and black cardamom
- Slow grilled long aubergines cooked in sun dried tomato and fresh chilli sauce
- Smooth delicate-yellow lentils tempered with asafoetida, garlic, chilli and coriander

This restaurant is far from the huge portions and blunt flavours of your local curry house (although there is definitely a place for these in my life and heart). Plates are presented with all the style of unpretentious nouvelle cuisine and delight the palette with their thoughtful flavouring and the meal was finished with room left for coffee. All in all a refreshing and unusual joy, especially at such a reasonable price - I shall definitely be going again.

4.5/5

Starters £4-6
Main £9-14
House wine £15(ish)

Emni Restaurant
353 Upper Street
Angel Islington
London N1 0PD
020 7226 1166
www.emnirestaurant.com

I don’t often get out West these days anymore, London is often a quite partitioned city, once you have established your patch you prowl it constantly. However I was persuaded to Go West by a friend I can never resist, and I’m very glad I did.

Rossopomodoro (Notting Hill Gate) is a small restaurant with a handful of tables upstairs, another couple downstairs and a further 3 or 4 on the salubrious pavements of that little knot of shops on Kensington Park Gardens (parallel to Portobello Road). All dominated by a hulk of a pizza oven.

The restaurant is one of a small chain (3 in London, more worldwide) but feels more like an independent, they import all their ingredients and staff from Italy for a real flavour of Napoli.

Our waiter flirted us to our table and brought delicious dense ciabatta, bright olive oil and dark sweet balsamic whilst we chose our meal.

We started with a plate of antipasti cured meats, 6 in all, each a different shade, from brightest red to deepest claret, and all had that lovely waxy semi-opaque sheen that good cured meats have.

Next we went onto the pizzas, oh the pizzas, they were the real deal, abstract paintings on a plate. Mine was a big red round, surrounded by an uneven and exquisitely squishy dough, dotted with a round of cheese here, a juicy anchovy fillet there, a basil leaf, a dark intense olive. And the eating was even more of a pleasure, we enjoyed them to the last. My friend’s was one of those white pizzas, a glorious mixture of creamy textures made to soothe the senses.

We didn’t have room for puddings, only managing a very decent coffee each, but I saw several pass and they looked as theatrical as you always hope for in a pudding (well I do anyway), tall glasses and heaving plates covered in chocolate sauces and lots of cream.

All in all a delightful restaurant, and the easy 10 minute stroll back to the tube was just what was needed to aid the digestion.

4.5/5

Starters £5.40 - £13.50 (for a plate that easily serves 2)
Main £9-11 (pizza)
House wine £17-18

Rossopomodoro Notting Hill
184 A Kensington Park Rd.
W11 2ES
Tel. 020 72299007
www.rossopomodoro.com

If anyone is close enough to a Leon can I recommend their new avocado and bacon superfood salad, just out for summer. It is a delightful mix of leaves (I counted 3 kinds), quinoa, crispy bacon, avocado, a boiled egg and red onion all in a fresher than fresh yogurt and lemon vinaigrette, plus the staff are always a pleasure to talk to.

If you don’t know the Leon Restaurants then I’m sorry for your loss they really are the foodie’s own fast food restaurant - seasonal, free range, nurtitious and delicious with narry a chip or crisp in sight. They are run with love and care which comes out beautifully in their food, probably about the same price as Pret but much, much nicer.

If you do go be sure to try on of their sweet olive and fennel biscuits too, light and crumbly and quite a unique taste experience!

This delightful little Thai restaurant serves vegetarian and seafood dishes that are varied and authentic. Time Out loves the place and so do the AA (!) apparently, it isn’t hard to see why.

The restaurant is small with a handful of tables in the bright and bustling downstairs but it is even worth sitting in the smaller, less interesting upstairs room as the food is really vibrant and exciting and the service as sweet as you could want it. I have laughed a lot and eaten well in this little gem in East London.

4.5/5

Starters £4-5
Main £7-9
House wine £9

249 Globe Road, Bethnal Green, London E2 OJD.
Tel. 020 8981 5748
www.thethaigarden.co.uk
nearest tube: Bethnal Green

If you live in North East London and are thinking about getting a veg I must recommend Growing Communities Fruit and Veg boxes, in fact I recommend a veg box even if you aren’t yet considering it.

Fresher and cheaper than the supermarket (about £18 p/w on fruit and veg for two big eaters), these delicious and generous boxes are as locally sourced as possible - Hackey Salad anyone? - supporting small London and SE producers but also contain some non-airfreighted tropical luxuries, fairtrade bananas, blood oranges from sicily, to keep things interesting.

They don’t deliver to the door, you collect from one of 5 points around Hackney, which at first I thought of as a disadvantage but now it is most convenient, I pick up on my way home from work so the food does not sit unattended on my doorstep and if I am going to be out I can pick up the next day. There is often overspill produce that you can help yourself to for free and carrying heavy weights on a regular basis helps keep bones strong.

Good food, ethically sourced that allows you to get in rhythm with the seasons (and keep osteoperosis at bay ;). Plus the little thrill of what’s in the box this week…