Brasserie l'Ouest, Lyon

Quite honestly, this could be one of the best lunches I've ever had. As we were leaving Les Pasquiers in Beaujolais, our hosts Guillaume and Marylène Peyraverney recommended a few restaurants for lunch in Lyon as we were continuing our journey south. The Peyraverneys lived in Lyon until they took over Les Pasquiers earlier last year and given how much we'd enjoyed lunch at Domaine de la Madone which they'd suggested, we were keen to ask for more advice.

Nathan was driving and I had no idea where we were going – neither did he really as all he'd done was keyed the address into the satnav following Guillaume's instructions. I'd been chatting with Marylène in the kitchen at the time, so didn't know what had been discussed.

Anyway, it was one of those days when everything just fell into place. The weather was bright and sunny, our drive took us through the southerly Beaujolais crus before we picked up the A6 to Lyon and the satnav did its thing, directing us to a cool industrial site on the leafy banks of the Saône river on the outskirts of Lyon. Given the predictable image of dining in Lyon is based on traditional bouchons in the city centre, this airy, modern brasserie was quite unexpected. L'Ouest is part of the Nordsud chain of brasseries established by the hero of Lyonnaise cuisine, Paul Bocuse.

We parked beside the river and, without a booking, settled down inside at one end of a large shared table with views across the terrace to the Saône and around the buzzy restaurant and the open kitchen. It was a busy Friday lunchtime with a fascinating mixed urban crowd. The rotisserie caught our eye, so we instantly ear-marked the roast Montrevel chicken from the set menu for our main course. For starter Nathan had tartare of fresh salmon with dill and I had melon with Serrano ham – almost too generous a portion to finish. I managed though. Daughter Alice did splendidly with the menu enfant – salmon fillets with buttered noodles.

Having already been bowled over by the starters, our chicken arrived which was exceptionally good. Juicy, richly flavoured corn fed chicken with a buttery sauce and a medley of seasonal vegetables. Beautifully simple. Keen to have some Rhône wine as that's where we were heading, glasses of St Joseph blanc partnered the dish brilliantly.

On to dessert and Nathan was very happy with his raspberry tarte sablée and I was delighted with my rum baba, served deconstructed with the bottle of rum left on the table (I wasn't driving). Alice had ice cream. With two coffees, this lunchtime feast came to less than 100 Euros (the set lunch cost 32.50 Euros, 35.50 if you included cheese; menu enfant 11.50). Fantastic.

Brasserie Zédel: Paris comes to London

If you love Paris and classic French brasserie food, then you will love Brasserie Zédel. You'd need to really, as it's practically a Parisian theme park. It's certainly right up my street (or boulevard) and, given how busy it was when we visited recently one Friday evening, it's clearly a crowd pleaser.

I'm sure the location helps Zédel's popularity, being seconds away from Piccadilly Circus and Leicester Square in the basement of the Regent Palace Hotel, the same premises of the old The Atlantic Bar and Grill. The main restaurant is big and buzzy in a grand fin de siècle style and there is a more chic and intimate art deco Bar Américain for cocktails. Brasserie Zédel opened in 2012 courtesy of Chris Corbin and Jeremy King, the slick team behind The Wolseley, The Delaunay and now also Colbert on the old Oriel site in Sloane Square.

As we hadn't booked, we had to wait a while for a table, but, once seated, we were immediately impressed by the quality of the food and service. Given the enormous scale of the place, this is quite an achievement. We really enjoyed our starters – spinach tart (£4.25) and egg mayonnaise (£3.25). The tart had a beautifully thin, crisp crust and the eggs ticked all the right retro boxes. My husband enjoyed his seafood with saffron sauce main course (Friday's dish of the day, £12.75) and my hanger steak with shallots and red wine sauce was particularly good (£10.95 including fries). We finished by sharing some nougat glacé which had an interesting, seasonal garnish of poached cranberries (£3.95). This was all great value for money – especially the steak. Presumably prices need to be reasonable to keep pulling in the punters. It's a huge space to fill. Wine isn't such an obvious bargain, but, helpfully, all but two of the 28 bottles on the nicely edited French list are also available by the glass and carafe. What's more, there are some keenly priced quirky French apéritifs including one my favourites, Pineau des Charentes.

Une très bonne adresse!

Brasserie Zédel
20 Sherwood Street
London
W1F 7ED
020 7734 4888

The GrEAT British

Just around the corner from Oxford Street in North Audley Street is a new British restaurant, The GrEAT British. I'm not sure about the word play of the name, but I do like the what they're trying to do. The menu offers classic British dishes made with well-sourced ingredients, for instance Mrs Kirkham's cheese, smoked salmon from Pinney's of Orford, British Label chicken, Longhorn beef and Loch Duart salmon. The drinks menu offers a potted selection of British ale, cider and wine and Fentiman's soft drinks. Some Luscombe Devon cider was delicious with my main dish of pork belly and my husband enjoyed his glass of Bolney Estate Pinot Noir from Sussex with his sausages and mash.

Apart from the dish of the day at £10, the prices are a bit steep (ten minutes walk away is Quo Vadis offering remarkable value), but I guess this is Mayfair. However, there is a big gap in the market for a decent British restaurant chain and, perhaps, that's what's in store for The GrEAT British.

The GreEAT British
14 North Audley Street
London
W1K 6WE
Tel 020 7741 2233

Pizza East Kentish Town

It's all happening round here. Restaurants, bars and shops are opening, pubs being done up and there's a big new French lycée (I hear as much French as English spoken at times, especially at my daughter's ballet school in Dartmouth Park). We have the dynamic Kentishtowner website keeping us updated on all things local. Tufnell Park is a Transition Town and has a weekly market and there's also a comprehensive farmers' market in Parliament Hill. However, something that's whipped people up into a frenzy is the arrival of the Soho House Group at Highgate Studios in NW5 with Pizza East, Chicken Shop and Dirty Burger.

Wary of the hype, I wasn't quite sure what to expect when a friend and I strolled over there a couple of Wednesdays ago. I guessed it would be busy and it was. Heaving, in fact. Both Pizza East and Chicken Shop (in the basement) were rammed, so we left a mobile number with each and went across the road to The Vine (recently revamped) and sipped a zesty Spanish white. After about 20 minutes, Pizza East was the first to call with a table, so we downed our drinks and legged it back across the road. It was interesting to sit down and take a good look at this Lower Manhattan-like airy industrial space and feast our eyes on all the suspended hams and jars of goodies lining the shelves. The space also boasts a large wood-fired oven and a long bar that winds around the room where it would be great to perch for a quick bite. I was tempted by the speck, mozzarella and taleggio pizza – deliciously oozy with a light puffy base – and my friend went for lasagne which she was very happy with. We also ordered a rocket, parmesan and pine nut salad which was surprisingly tasty and we loved the crunchy texture. The only negative point was that our 500ml carafe of gluggable house Sangiovese came with some silly tumblers, rather than stemmed glasses. Call me traditional, but I'd be reluctant to trade up to a smarter wine if these are the only glasses available.

Our charming, helpful (and, I must say, rather good looking) server then offered us the dessert menu and we were tempted into sharing the salted chocolate tart and figs with mascarpone and honeycomb. The tart was good, although it seemed as though the salt had just been sprinkled over the top, whereas the figs were fabulous. I recreated it at home a few days later as it was so gorgeous (although I used a roughly chopped Crunchy Bar instead of home-made honeycomb). Including the wine, our bill came to about £50. Great stuff (despite the annoying glasses).

Blueprint Café

The London restaurant scene is full of big names and big egos. Jeremy Lee of the Blueprint Café does not fit these descriptions, despite being much more telegenic than the usual suspects with his wit and wealth of knowledge and the fact that he is a great chef. We were treated to him, firstly as a contestant on the Great British Menu, and then as a mentor on the same programme. He also appeared with his friend Fergus Henderson on Could You Eat an Elephant? This was great television and I wish the producers would consider another series. I had the pleasure of meeting him at the launch of a book I'd worked on. The man is a national treasure.

I've always loved the Blueprint Café where Jeremy Lee has been head chef for the past 15 years. It has a spectacular location above the Design Museum on the south bank of the Thames overlooking Tower Bridge and serves well judged, seasonal British cooking that doesn't try too hard. It is a refreshing change from many London restaurants (and those names and egos). However, I'm not averse to big names: we've recently been to Heston Blumenthal's Dinner (more to come in another post). But there are big names and there are big names. Enough said. However, Jeremy Lee does a sterling job at the Blueprint Café which remains somewhat below the radar. Press and punters alike have become too enthralled by new openings.

Our visit to the Blueprint Café was on a glorious, warm evening, just before Easter (Maundy Thursday, in fact, so everywhere felt demob happy). We had arranged to meet up with some friends who live in Greenwich (and who had incidentally had their first date at the restaurant and were only too happy join us there). We kicked off with Negronis and settled on the fixed-price menu, with a bottle of the aromatic, yet full-bodied southern Italian white, Falanghina to start us off wine-wise. Most of us had the beetroot salad, mustard, horseradish and soft boiled egg and my husband had chicken liver pâté, pickles and toast. Two types of beetroot were in the salad – peachy tasting golden beets, as well as the usual purple. It was an extremely tasty, seasonal dish – perhaps a bit dominated by the fiery horseradish, but an appetising start to the meal. The pâté was richly flavoured, with a satiny texture: very fine.

Our main courses were the chicken, fennel, celeriac, puntarella (a type of chicory) and wild garlic and the smoked haddock, wild garlic mash, beetroot and horseradish. Some reviews have been critical of ingredients reappearing on the Blueprint Café menu, but it didn't bother me as the restaurant is so honestly seasonal (and I love the chance to relish treats such as wild garlic). These were delicious, confident, well-flavoured dishes and a second bottle of the Falanghina went down just was well as the first.

Moving on to desserts, the walnut meringue and rhubarb mess from the fixed menu was a decadent spring pudding, if a bit messy-looking. We also had rum baba with orange and lemon curds and ice cream from the main menu, along with lemon posset and rhubarb and we shared a 250ml carafe of Monbazillac.

We concluded with coffee and fresh mint tea, with the bill coming in at about £50 a head. I hadn't been to the Blueprint Café for a few years and was delighted that it's still as solidly reliable and that the riverside view has only got more magical (although the opera glasses are a recent development).

Blueprint Café
1st Floor
Design Museum
28 Shad Thames
London SE1 2YD
Tel 020 7378 7031
http://www.blueprintcafe.co.uk

Les Deux Salons

While it's fun to visit a newly-opened restaurant when it's still a 'hot ticket' – I'm very excited about the table I managed to book at Dinner for early May – it's also well worth holding off for a while to let a restaurant bed in and get into its stride. Les Deux Salons was one of the big openings of 2010. I'm a big fan of Arbutus, so Anthony Demetre and Will Smith's new venture had really caught my eye. I also liked the fact that it had been inspired by classic French brasseries. Looking at their website, there wasn't much on the menu I didn't really fancy.

Last week, about four months after it opened, I met up with couple of old friends there for an early evening meal – one of whom had been before and had not been overly impressed. In particular he objected to the cheeky and greedy policy, common to many London restaurants, of serving many main courses without key elements such as potatoes, obliging you to order vegetable side dishes (often bumping the price of a main course up to £20 or so).

We opted for the three-course pre-theatre menu for £15.50 (two choices per course). One of my friends was running late, so we ordered on her behalf and sipped some refreshing unoaked Chilean Chardonnay, observing the gently humming, relaxed and stylish environment. Once she arrived we enjoyed our starters – my friends had minestrone soup and I had rabbit rillettes – all very tasty and well executed (and great with the wine – its acidity cutting nicely through the richness of the food).

For main course, my friends had Cornish mullet with leeks and boulangère potatoes (thumbs up from my previously critical friend). I chose ox tongue – meltingly tender with complex flavours, served with a tangy sauce gribiche. Very good. The Chardonnay was a good partner for the fish, while I had some Tempranillo from Castilla y Leon in Spain – Rioja-like mellow berry fruit and supple tannins working well with the rich meat. We rounded off the meal sharing some cheese (Pont l'Evèque was especially good) and a rather lovely apricot and pistachio nougat glace (made even lovelier by some Muscat Beaumes de Venise). We moved to the bar for coffee and to finish of the wine as, by now, we needed to vacate the table. We didn't feel rushed by the staff and we were perfectly comfortable sitting at the bar.

Including service, our bill came to £95 – good value for such decent quality in a very central spot (seconds from Trafalgar Square in a site that used to be a Pitcher and Piano). The 'theatre supper' is for orders taken between 5 and 6.30pm (Monday to Saturday) and the £15.50 menu is also available for lunch on the same days. Highly recommended, but I'm looking forward to exploring the rest of the menu on my next visit. The bavette of beef and the Barnsley chop cooked on the 'Josper' grill look particularly tempting and I'm intrigued by the snail and bacon pie starter. Soon, I hope.

Les Deux Salons
40–42 William IV Street
London WC2N 4DD
Tel 020 7420 2050