This new restaurant opened on the Market Place corner of Portland House in mid October. Our experience at Degò, was very enjoyable, their food is beautifully presented in its simplicity, excellent quality and tasty. The restaurant has an intimate atmosphere and a stylish, comfortable feel, it’s a great place to go both for quiet dinners with someone special or in a larger party.

With white truffle selling for around 10,200 euro per kilogram – actually a low price relatively speaking as the harvest is good this year – you don’t want to be shaving your slices on any old dish. Only the best will do and at Refettorio they know exactly how to bring out every nuance of the ultimate luxury ingredient with a special truffle menu available while the season and supplies last.

The room, as many have already rather sniffily remarked, is a bit odd. It’s reminiscent of attempts to recreate a Georgian sitting room in a Barrett’s home. Of course the fireplaces here are the real thing, not made of plastic, and yet the impression lingers. It’s not unpleasant, far from it, but it does strike a slightly wrong note. Thankfully the food is good enough to distract you from the décor.

Yorkshire-born chef Rob Wilkinson has set up his restaurant Juniper in Highbury to please his Arsenal-loving wife. Having worked through a clutch of Manchester restaurants before a stint at Boisdale Bishopsgate, Wilkinson now heads Juniper’s kitchen while his father-in-law does the accounts – a true family-run restaurant.

Made in Camden sits neatly between west London me and several north London friends and I will be steering them swiftly into it. A very short walk from Chalk Farm tube station, it’s the new bar and dining room at The Roundhouse. No, it doesn’t have that sterile, safe, tacked-on-to-something-corporate feel so typical of in-theatre restaurants and bars.

The Basement is one of those places where you want to hover in the kitchen and taste everything that hits the pass. As you clock every dish heading for nearby tables it is easy to dither and even harder not to trawl the other tables asking for a forkful as it all looks so good.

Steak dining is easy eating, undemanding and satisfying and what first lured suburban Britain out of its 70’s sitting rooms and into restaurants in the first place. Now anointed by the Internet it clearly meets a new metro-urban need and Hawksmoor have their finger firmly on the pulse, successfully mainlining quality meat to the multitude.

There’s a bit of a dearth of good pubs around Highbury & Islington train station in London. You can take your pick from a jiggy but rammed theatre pub, a brawly boozer full of reddened baldheads or a freezing warehouse bar. Tempted? But if you poke behind the side streets, there’s a decent gastropub and a bit of a secret.

Bincho Yakitori on Old Compton Street is a modern Japanese restaurant specialising in Yakitori, surprisingly enough. The concept at Bincho Yakitori is simple; put it on a stick, grill it, sauce it.

It was, I think, the eminent sage and philosopher Russ Abbott who first put forward the suggestion that we all love a party with a happy atmosphere. As so often in his glittering philosophical career, he hit the nail bang on the head.