3 January
Jan Moir goes health-conscious at mycafe, the café collaboration between the Aveda corporation and myhotel group in London
The mycafe menu is divided into straightforward teas/juice/soups/sandwiches/ salad selections and is full of proselytizing about "nuts of life", omega 3 essentials and all that wellbeing malarkey. At least the service is efficient, with a smart young man in a suit delivering the dishes after you have ordered from him at the counter. "One salad of life and one smoked mack, the acceptable snack," he says, sliding the dishes across our wi-fi enabled, Japanese-style maple table with a pink glass top. The idea of pairing hunks of smoked mackerel with the blast of wasabi - a nice change from the usual horseradish - is a sound one and the added peppery bite of watercress gives this mack snack a clean and fresh appeal. However, the fish is carelessly boned, which makes eating it an experience akin to munching on a mouthful of pins, with the added danger that you may choke on one and die at any minute. And there is nothing healthy about that. (Main course salads, £6.50)
3 January
Matthew Fort loves chef Christine Manfield's fusion cuisine at East@West, London WC2
Manfield's cooking seems to spark off severely divergent opinions. There are those who think it pretty whizz-bang and there are those who, frankly, think it bloody awful. I am firmly in the whizz-bang camp. Not only do I find the dishes themselves brilliant - brilliant, that is, in terms of colour, contrast, definition, complexity and balance; brilliant, too, as in vivid - but that the contrast between them also sets up a kind of rhythm between the sets of flavours. The sharp, pointy notes of pickled fennel and mint with the salmon confit, for example, neatly set up the gentler, more ruminative flavours of the tea-smoked duck breast dish and the slow-braised lamb with white truffle noodles, chanterelles and green peppercorns.
(Rating: 17.5/20. Menus: Wicked Dinner, £35 for five courses or £40 for six; Divine, £35 for five courses or £40 for six; Delicious, £32 for five courses, £37 for six)
6 January
Guy Diamond finds his ideal pub in the shape of the Coach and Horses in Farringdon, London, owned by Giles Webster and chef Juliet Peston
George Orwell wrote about his ideal pub in a newspaper article in 1946 - an imaginary place called 'The Moon Under Water' - only to have this moniker appropriated decades later by a pub chain. If Orwell were alive today, I'd like to show him that bland chains haven't taken over all pubs, and that there are a few pubs where progress has been made since his day. I'd start by taking him to the Coach and Horses. There's a bar menu which might include a pint of prawns and mayonnaise, oysters, or fish stew; or there's a full menu for hungrier dinners. London Particular is thick pea soup with strips of salty ham, served with generous slices of own-made herb breads; warming and filling. Equally autumnal is potato gnocchi served with a rabbit ragu topped with freshly grated Parmesan: yum.
(Meal for two with drinks, about £40)
3 January
Gillian Glover postpones her New Year's diet while on a trip to Santini Bis, the Italian bistro at the Sheraton Grand hotel in Edinburgh
The risotto was everything it should be. It was creamy yet still had bite, and the goats' cheese was served in a warm slab on top, along with a few rocket leaves and sun-blushed tomatoes - an irritating phrase, which sounds as if the cosmos is telling dirty jokes. (Two-course meal for two with coffees, excluding wine, £34.50)