Romance reviewed: Dans Le Noir?

Now, it’s not often that you find yourself partaking in a conga line at the beginning of an evening’s entertainment – normally that curious pleasure is reserved solely for the initiation of drunken uncles once things are well underway – but then this was no ordinary night out. So it came to pass that my companion and I were instructed to form an orderly queue with eight other diners, each placing our right hand on the right shoulder of the person in front.

There was a sudden burst of excitement at the front of the queue, and we were introduced to Cyril, our waiter for the evening. In we charged, to the depths of the Dans Le Noir? building, down a ramp, through some heavy curtains – and into the darkest space I’ve ever been in, even when I only had amniotic fluid as a friend. Your eyes just don’t adjust. You become disorientated and the room seems cavernous, with voices and the jangling of fork to plate coming at you from all angles. I’m assured the room seats 60 diners, but when you’re in there you have no idea of the size, scale or layout. Which is why it makes sense that Cyril is blind.

Before descending into the dining room you’re given the option of four menus: red, green, blue and white – meat, veggie, fish and specials respectively. Being something of a fish fiend, I went blue, while my companion was feeling experimental and opted for white. To accompany, we’d have the special surprise wine, I declared. Which leads me to my first question: have you ever tried pouring yourself a glass of vino in the dark? The more hardened among you will know that it’s actually fairly simple – feel for your glass, pop a finger in, pour s-l-o-w-l-y and stop when your pinkie gets wet. Easy.

Using a knife and fork in zero visibility? Not so much. When my starter arrived – huge pan-fried scallops and haddock fishcakes – I approached in the only way I knew how, desperately clutching my cutlery and hoping for the best. Having successfully speared a scallop, ascertained that that was indeed what it was, and sliced some off, I realised that the whole charade was pointless. My sliver of scallop was lost in the tumult of my plate. “I’m eating with my hands!” declared my neighbour, Francine from Hornchurch. And so we flouted social convention and laughed in the face of polite society, picking up our food and gnawing on it in true caveman style.

From my initial trepidation, by this point I’d begun to relax. It’s easy to see how someone with claustrophobia might make a bolt for the door, but with Francine and her boyfriend Dave for company – “Everything tastes like melon!” – my companion and I didn’t have much time for staring into the abyss or being perplexed by the fact that if you closed your eyes, everything looked the same.

And the food! Oh, the food. My main course was as hearty and succulent as the first, with Mozambique prawns the size of John Merrick’s head, some other fish – possibly bream – creamy mashed potato and a cabbage, celeriac and fennel salad. And my companion, usually a fussy-eater, wolfed down his unbelievably tender Ostrich steak quicker than you could say, er, ‘squark’. Incidentally, they do let you look at the menu on the way out to discover exactly what you’ve consumed, but I think it’s a real oversight not to give diners printouts to take home. As I’ve just illustrated, it’s difficult to remember the nuances of a three-course dinner after a brief glance at the menu when you’re hopping on the beer scooter in your wine gilet.

The pudding was possibly the only other disappointment of the evening. A trio of desserts, it consisted of a chocolate truffle, berry sorbet and melon jelly. Regardless of what menu you’d chosen, all diners got the same final dish and it was… mediocre. And for the price, you expect more than mediocre. Luckily for me, my companion was footing the bill.

Food: 8.5/10
Service: 7/10
Cost: £115, for 3 courses, including a bottle of wine, water and a tip for Cyril

Dans Le Noir?
30-31 Clerkenwell Green
London EC1R 0DU

A COCKTAIL ON A PLATE

Because, like most ladies, I like to look good, yesterday after work I spent two hours in a hairdressers being primped, trimmed and preened and whilst I came home sporting a remarkably stylish new look, I wasn't particularly in the mood to be traipsing around the supermarket situated at the bottom of my road looking for something to cook. So, I decided to see what I had in my store cupboard. Unlike Nigel Slater-a man I worship as a God on earth-my store cupboard isn't filled with such exotic fancies as White Truffle Oil and Black Olive Paté. However, I do have a pack of risotto rice, some leftover tomato and garlic pureé from another cookery adventure, some Marigold Vegetable Bouillon, various delicious tasting liquids such as Tabasco and Worcester Sauce, and my housemates were kind enough to provide me with some delectable french goats cheese bought from a local farmers market and a fair amount of Absolut Vodka. So, what better to make than a Bloody Mary...and then transfer it into a Risotto? Which, fortified by Vodka and some exceedingly good music on the radio provided by my favourite music station Revolution 96.2 I duly did.

MISS CAY'S BLOODY MARY RISOTTO (serves 3-4 people)

Ingredients:
One Onion
1/2 jar of Passata
Two tablespoons of Tomato & Garlic Puree (Or just plain old tomato puree if you're not feeling too exotic)
One pint of Chicken/Vegetable Stock (You're best off using liquid stock or Marigold Bouillon for this as I feel they give a better flavour to the dish than just a plain old stock cube)
100ml of Vodka (roughly about four/five shots. I used Absolut Vodka here because we just had it in the freezer, but any brand should do, even Grants The Exciting Vodka)
One tablespoon of butter
One pack of risotto rice
A dash of Worcester Sauce
A dash of Tabasco (as much as personal taste dictates)
100g of Goats Cheese
Salt and Pepper


MAKE IT!
:: Chop the onion and sweat it in the butter until soft
:: Add the tomato & garlic pureé and cook with the onions for around five minutes
:: Add the risotto rice and cook until every grain is coated in the mixture.
:: Ladle the stock slowly into the saucepan. Wait until the liquid is soaked up by the rice and it starts to look "creamy" before adding more.
:: Once 3/4 of the stock has been added and the rice is almost cooked, add the passata and the vodka and allow to cook for five-six minutes. Add more stock if necessary to keep the rice from drying out.
:: When cooked, add the Worcester and Tabasco Sauce to taste and stir in the Goats Cheese until melted. Serve with Celery and more Vodka if avaliable.


This is a dish best served in good company when piping hot. Preferably in front of the TV when some crap show (e.g. Big Brother) is on. Although I'm sure it would taste just as good eaten in front of something like The Culture Show. Why don't you try both and let me know?

Just like Mum made: Banh Xeo

At the weekend I was thrown into a haze of childhood nostalgia on the train when I stumbled upon a recipe for Banh Xeo (pronounced in my poor anglicised Cambodian as Ban Cheow - it's acutally a Vietnamese dish) in the Guardian.

This is one of the few things my mum cooked and I actually liked. It’s one of the few things that my mum cooked that wasn’t boiled rice (fair enough she gave me the deposit on my house but I did have a childhood of no toys, no holidays and 18 years of boiled rice for dinner EVERY DAY to pay for it).

Anyway, this dish reminds me of happy, simple times. Helping make the coconut milk (by painstakingly taking a rinder to the flesh and carving it out) drinking the juice (bizarrely I had a hatred of coconut for a long time – too many Bounty bars and bad frosting on Victoria sponges) and rushing home to stuff my face and going back for seconds.

Mum used to make us top and tail bean sprouts by hand, everything was very methodical when she cooked, rhythmic. It always took ages. I give her less credit as a cook then she deserved, but I put that down to 18 years of eating boiled rice.

The Guardian recipe for Banh Xeo was a vegetarian adaptation, but here’s my mum’s version, as I remember it.

For the pancakes
Rice flour
Coconut milk (you can buy it tinned, or spend hours making your own)
Egg
Some people advocate adding tumeric, but I don’t ever remember my mother doing so

For the filling
Minced pork
Shrimps
Onion
Bean sprouts
Salad leaves
Cucumber
Thai mint

For the sauce
Fish sauce
Lemon juice
Crushed garlic
Crushed peanuts
Chili (optional)

It really makes a difference if you can make the sauce the night before. Simply mix the fish sauce, lemon juice, crushed garlic together, altering quantities to taste. Mum used to add warm water to dilute, the flavours are quite strong.

To make the pancake batter, beat the egg and add to the rice flour. Add the coconut milk slowly, stirring out any lumps. The mixture needs to bit a little thinner than a conventional pancake mix.

Set the batter aside a while to work on the filling.

Chop the onions and fry. Add the pork, then the shrimps at the last minute add the bean sprouts. Take off the heat and leave to one side while you cook the pancakes.

Heat some oil in a large wok. The oil needs to be hot, but not smoking, make sure the sides are coated and the oil doesn’t just sit in the base. Using a ladle, spoon in the pancake batter, swirling it around to make a big, thin pancake – it should have thin, crispy sides.

Spoon in the meat and bean sprouts into the middle of the pancake and fold it in half. Transfer onto a plate and garnish with the salad leaves, mint and cucumber. Spoon some sauce, it's like a sharp vinaigrette, over the top with some of the peanuts.

We always ate this with chopsticks. It’s a challenge.

Romance reviewed: Amersham Arms

You have to feel sorry for the chef at the Amersham Arms. After eating his home-made pie with hand-cut chips, it was clear that his home must be some giant processed-food factory, and his hands must have been cut off and replaced with square blades in order to slice these potatoes in to perfect 5mmx5mm French fries.

Either that, or someone is telling porkies.

Now, I have nothing against processed food, but when you’ve stepped into a place trying to pass itself off as a gastropub it smarts when you get the cuisine of a local chippy.

Doubly so when you take into account the Amersham has been bought up by those behind the Lock Tavern – a fine gastropub if there was one. As an indie-loving teenager, I remember the Lock when it was a horrid shack of a pub, with a fridge buzzing away in the garden, serving McCoys as it’s daily special. So as it triumphantly serves fat, juicy burger and chips that have actually been hand cut, it’s disappointing that it’s new venture could live up to the reputation that proceeds it.

Food: 5/10
Service: 5/10
Cost: £12, for 1 course, including 2 pints of beer

Amersham Arms
New Cross Road
London, SE14 6TY

Romance reviewed: Pulcinella

Italian is rarely my cuisine of choice when I dine out – it’s easy enough for me to make it at home that I resent handing over a tenner for someone else to do it for me.

So I’m even more annoyed with Pulcinella who took my tenner (and a bit more) and served up some tomato slop.

I should have known better when my companion and I walked into the Italian next door (The Amalfi) and found it heaving, while Pulcinella was half full at best. Another indicator would have been the waitress, who I can only describe as dim, rather than wilfully unhelpful.

After a brief tour of the restaurant, comprising of places we could sit which didn’t involve her serving us (a choice she made, not us) we were finally led to our seats, sandwiched so tightly between two other tables, I managed to treat some other diners to a nice view of my arse as I squeezed past them.

The poor service set the tone for the rest of the evening. The music sounded like a Worst-of of Turkish European Song Contest entries from the last 10 years.

Then there was the food. The Gnocci in tomato and ricotta sauce was so soggy it could have been pre-chewed. Served on a plate that felt like it was fresh from the fridge didn’t help much, neither did the ridiculous sprinkling of parsley. The Bruchetta also displayed attributes of sogginess – perhaps this was a theme I was missing?

Their famed pizzas didn’t seem like much either – they’re so low on toppings they have to list oregano as one.

The wine was generic, the décor beige and, yes, the service was utterly crap.

Food: 3/10
Service: 2/10
Cost: £40, for 1 course, including 2 glasses of wine

Pulcinella
Old Compton Street
London, W1d 5JX

Romance reviewed: Randall and Aubin

It’s takes a pretty special restaurant to make Saturday night in Soho sound like quiet country town. Randall and Aubin is one such place, but only because it’s so loud inside, that once you step to into Brewer Street your hearing has been damaged so much the noises of London’s drunken louts seem positively peaceful.

I know I sound like an old woman: “The music was so loud, when I go out I want to be able to have a conversation, not listen to pounding funky house.”

Randall and Aubin is suffering from a sense of confusion, one part cheesy gay dance club, one part romantic-as-hell couples cubby-hole. I can’t fault the food – my lobster was as sweet as nectar, the crab linguini rich and meaty, but the noise, oh my God the noise…

It was like eating in on of the clubs you’d find down the road in Leicester Square, but instead of bar snacks, I ate oysters and shellfish – soul food, date food, not stodgy, soak-up-the-alcohol nachos.

With two-seater booths around the walls, it looked like it was designed for couples, not gaggling groups of revellers to get bladdered. The wine list was thoughtful and comprehensive and it says a lot that despite, or perhaps because of, the noise the queue was still out the door at 9.30pm.

Even now, trying to define Randall and Aubin is making my head spin – is it the place to go before hitting Soho on a giant binge, if so, is ordering the prawns that good an idea?

Once it sorts out it’s identity crisis, this could be one of London’s finest restaurants.


Food: 9/10
Service: 6/10
Cost: £75, for 2 courses, including a bottle of wine

Randall and Aubin
Brewer Street
London, W1F 0SG

OH AUNTY DELIA....

Judging from the buzz going around the more food orientated corners of the interweb this morning it appears that I'm not the only one who was more than a little disappointed with Delia Smith's culinary shortcuts showcase last night.

And disappointed really is the key word for it. It would be very simple to get mad at a woman who many view as being both saint and sinner of the British Celebrity Chef world. In my eyes, Delia Smith has always stood out as being the rather staid headmistress of this rather unruly bunch, standing over the British public with wooden spoon ever ready to give us a healthy rap on the knuckles if we didn't follow her pastry making instructions just so. And unfortunately for her, if I'm looking to cook something tasty after a hard day slaving over the computer, I'm very unlikely to turn to one of her recipes-not because they've not been constructed with love and care, but mainly because to me they've always had the lingering stench of the school Home Economics kitchen hanging around over them.

So with such stiff competition from the likes of the Jamie "Fucking Hell I've got a Garden" Oliver's and cooing buxom Nigella Lawson's of this world, is it any wonder that "Delia" (eschewing her surname in favour of us referring to her on a friendlier first name basis nowadays) feels that she has to come out of self imposed retirement and return to our screens better, faster, and generally more "sexed up"? The Delia presented to us yesterday evening seemed to be a creature of two different personalities-the "Let's be 'aving you!" good time girl, who loved Norwich City and its ilk, as well as a glass or two of Sherry during a game set against a persona she undoubtedly felt much more comfortable with-the doughty little housewife, pottering around, dutifully making pies for her husband and ruling the household with an iron fist.



As for the recipes themselves....well. The overall aim of Delia is admirable-after all, she is the woman who convinced millions of people that making fresh, tasty food was not beyond their reach, even if they were incapable of boiling an egg. So why then such a fall from grace?

Now let's get one thing clear here. I am not against shortcuts per se. I was perhaps one of the few people to not manage to whip myself up into a self righteous fury over last year's Nigella Express (although this may be born out of my father referring to me recently as the "Nigella Lawson of South Manchester" a tag I am more than comfortable with, I must say). My cupboards at home are filled with tinned tomatoes, tinned chickpeas, dried herbs and vegetable bouillon powder. But are people really so strapped for time that they have to used tinned mince and frozen mashed potato? Particularly as these products undoubtedly cost more and undoubtedly lose their taste in the cooking and freezing process? For me at least, there's something soulless about this form of cookery. Instead of investing food with time love and care, it's reduced to no more than pricking the plastic cover on a ready meal.

If Delia Smith wants to invest a love of cooking in the nation, she should sit them down and explain to them how it's really done. That yes, it may take time and effort, but that the end product is infinately more satisfying-and yes, tastier too. So what if your cheese sauce turns out lumpy or your chocolate cake falls? Surely that's better than sticking in those awful hockey pucks of reconstituted Smash. Trial and Error is all part of the learning process. Unfortunately with this programme, all that Delia is doing here is making a lot of rich ready made food manufacturers a hell of a lot richer.

FROMAGE FRAIS

Perhaps it's all down to a rogue genetic construct when it comes to my appetites, or perhaps it can be blamed on a certain maturity taking hold of my tastebuds since turning 25, but recently I've been wracked with a craving for melted cheese products. This is odd for two reasons; the first being that I've hated any kind of cheese not on a lasagne for as long as I can remember and also because a hatred of cheese has been combined with an unexplainable yet pathological fear of actually touching the stuff-so much so in fact that on one notable occasion back when I was sixteen years old, I was frog marched out of my GCSE Food Technology class by the teacher because I threatened to throw a screaming fit if I was going to be forced to plunge my hand into a bag of grated cheddar.

To this day, the mere thought of grated cheddar makes me feel a mite queasy. I'm sure the person who invented this time-saving construct must have been some kind of bizarre fromage sadist. Surely I cannot be alone in believing that it holds little to no relation to its lordly cousin, the humble block of (ungrated) cheddar? A block of cheddar feels waxy and weighty and doesn't look as though it's so radioactive it's going to leap out of the bag and grab you by the throat. Grated Cheddar feels and tastes...dusty. Just writing this sensation down makes my skin crawl.

However, call it fate, call it chance, call it my insatiable craving for something obscenely savoury, but on Saturday night after a couple of jars, I returned home with the unshakeable knowledge that melting a high quality cheddar on a crumpet with a dash of Worcester Sauce would be some kind of culinary ephihany. Which indeed it was, a incident which was made even better when I woke up and remembered I hadn't burnt my house down by leaving the grill on overnight.

On Monday evening I decided to put my newfound craving to the test by attempting to make a Hommity Pie for myself and my beloved. Hommity Pie is one of those kind of recipes that's a perennial favourite in many households and certainly provides a premier amount of stodge to shoehorn into any diet on a cold Winter's night. If you're looking to make it for yourselves, the recipe goes something like this:

HOMMITY PIE-SERVES FOUR PEOPLE

Pastry
4oz Plain Wholemeal Flour
4oz Plain White Flour
4oz Margarine
Pinch Salt

Filling
2lb Potaoes
1 Medium Onion
3 or 4 Cloves Garlic
3 Tablespoons Shoyu (Soya Sauce)
Black Pepper
1 Teaspoon Dried Parsley
8oz Cheddar Cheese (Any cheese will do really-when I made it I used Gruyére which was equally as tasty)

Method
First of all mix the flour and margarine together with your fingertips until you end up with something akin to bread crumbs.
Gradually add enough cold water to form a dough.
Refrigerate for an hour.
To make the filling, start off by cubing the potatoes and cooking until very soft.
Chop the onion, crush the garlic and then fry together in a little oil.
Add the shoyu and black pepper and then mix with the potatoes, along with a little of the potato water to make the mixture nice and creamy.
Spread the mixture out in a pastry-lined baking tray.
Grate the cheese and then spread it out over the potato mixture along with the dried parsley.
Cook in a moderate oven (Gas Mark 5) for about 40 minutes.

Unfortunately, when I made this the pastry turned out a little soggy, but I think this was more down to me dishing it up too early instead of allowing the juices from the Shoyu Onions and Garlic mixture to soak into the pastry. However, I do intend to make this again, if only because it managed to sate my savoury cravings for a good four hours or so.

As a result of my various experiments, I can now resolutely hand-on-heart say I am a cheese convert. So readers, which ones do you think I should be trying out in my quest of discovery? Please bear in mind that I don't do blue cheese. I'm all for experimentation, but I'm not yet sure that my stomach lining can handle an ingestion of mould.

Romance reviewed: Mildred’s

Or...

Ms F enters a pie-eating competition…And wins!

You know that old adage, ‘your eyes are bigger than you stomach’? Well, my competitive nature is bigger than my stomach.

I was challenged to this contest by my vegetarian boyfriend who wanted to show me there was more to meat-free meals than falafel and rice. So off we trundled to Mildred’s where I was charged to eat a whole porcini pot pie, plus sides, starter and dessert.

Mildred’s is a hugely popular vegetarian restaurant in Soho, they don’t serve fish and they don’t do Quorn. But somehow what is essentially a mushroom and err, mushroom pie is extremely filling.

Encased in a few layers of light puff pastry, the mushrooms overflow, soaked in dark ale gravy. It’s so rich, it feels like I’m eating a Christmas pudding. Having lasciviously devoured my vegetable gyoza, this was going to be a challenge,

But not an unpleasant one, the minted mushy peas provided the perfect accompaniment to the pie and the sweet potato fries (swapped instead of standard potatoes).

Dessert is what proved most tricky, the apple and strawberry crumble was a too tarte, bordering on sour and the oaty, nutty crumble topping was certainly not going to make my challenge any easier.

Still, I finished, which was as much a credit to Mildred’s as it is to my ever-expanding stomach.

Food: 9/10
Service: 7/10
Cost: £56, for three courses, including three glasses of wine

Mildreds
Lexington Street
London, W1F 0LW

Breakfast: French Toast

As the weekend approaches and I inevitably spend Sunday morning in bed while my boyfriend lovingly prepares me breakfast. For the past three weeks I have asked for French toast and he has given me fried bread, with a circle cut of the middle where in its place lies a soft fried egg. It's nice, but it's not French toast.

Here are my two favourite French toast recipes:

The basics:

1 egg, beaten
Milk
Two slices of white bread, halved, with the crust cut off

1. Mix the milk and beaten egg together and dip the bread in it. Leave to soak for a minute.
2. Heat some oil in a frying pan and fry the egg-soaked bread, turning once.
3. For a sweet version coat it with sugar - it'll make it taste like doughnuts.
4. For a savoury version, add some cheese and ham when you're frying the second side, so the cheese melts and the ham warms.

Cook time: 10 mins

More comfort food: Mira's sweet soup

I wanted to create a recipe for my friend Mira, who can't chew after suffering after an operation on her jaw. It has to be delicious and easy to make, because her cooking rarely extends beyond "pierce film lid and heat on full for 4 mins." Here goes…

This recipe has lots of sustenance and carbs, because Mira can't eat solids and she's skinny anyway, but it also features lots of goodness. Mira hates greens, but the spinach (a good source of iron) should reduce down enough to fall under the radar.

Sweet potato
Butternut squash
Garlic
Leek
Spinach
Ghee (Mira's mum is of Asian heritage, so she should have some of this, but I guess butter would also do)
Crème fraiche
Vegetable stock

1. Peel and chop the sweet potato and butternut squash (these can bought pre-cubed, if you're feeling lazy)
2. Boil these in the stock and leave to simmer for 10 mins, until they are soft.
3. Chop the garlic and leek and fry them in the ghee until they are soft and then add them to the stock.
4. Take the stock off the heat and add the spinach.
5. Leave to cool for a while before blending it all together in a food processor or blender.
6. Re-heat and stir in the crème fraiche to thicken up.
7. Season with whatever it needs - salt, pepper, paprika is a good one, so is mustard and tarragon.

Cook time: 30 mins

More comfort food: Potato and mushroom gratin

I do have other ingredients in my cupboard, than cream and mushrooms, I promise.

Finely sliced Potato
Sliced Mushrooms
Double cream
Milk
Chopped garlic

1. Fry the garlic in a pan and add the sliced mushrooms. Fry until just soft.
2. Arrange a layer of slice potatoes in an oven dish. The slices don't have to be super-thin, 1cm should do it. You don't have to peel them either, but when you're arranging them, it's best if they don't overlap too much
3. Add some of the fried mushrooms on top of the 1st layer of potatoes, then add another layer of potatoes, and so on until there are none left.
4. Mix the double cream and milk half and half with some more garlic and pour over the potatoes and mushrooms, so that it's just covered.
5. Move the oven dish around a bit so the cream penetrates each layer, rather than just sitting on top.
6. Bake in the oven at Gas Mark 7 for 45 mins. Try to avoid the temptation to keep opening the oven and peer in.

If you've got some cream and milk left over, then you can make a creamy sauce by heating it in the same pan you used for the mushrooms, then add some tarragon and whole grain mustard. Thin it down a little with milk, or white whine, or some three-day opened Veuve Clicquot which is what I found lurking in my fridge. It goes very well with chicken and fish.

Hmm, maybe this is actually why you'll never see me on a diet.

Cook time: 1 hour

Why you’ll never see me on a diet, by Ms F

I’m the fattest I’ve ever been, I’m also the happiest I’ve ever been, but I don’t think that’s related.

I never quite got why women wanted to be skinny and I certainly will never understand how it’s turned into a multi-billion pound global business.

Health reasons aside – I’m not advocating obesity here – a few extra pounds here and there never really hurt anyone (unless they were being sat on at the time, but more about my sexual exploits later). But skinniness seems to have found itself wrapped up as a measure of success.

Lily Allen (left) was just a rich kid who made it cos of her dad and an annoying song until she went from a “curvy size 12” (my current dress size) to a “svelt size 8” – now she’s a front-row fashionista, an authority on all things coture, beautiful and witty instead of fat and brash. But here’s some news, she’s doesn’t look better because she’s lost two stone, she looks better because she’s ditched the awful trainer and prom-dress combo and now wears heels by Christian Louboutin and dresses by Chanel – who wouldn’t look better if they swapped New Look for Largerfeld?


And there’s Natalie Cassidy (right) who after going from her before (and my current) weight has transformed into a proper celebrity – one that gets papped at award shows and magazine deals to talk about her “amazing new figure.” Has the weight loss made her more interesting? Well, yes if you count her now-prominent and ridiculous boob job as a talking point.

Occasionally I find myself being sucked in by the promise of being able to lose a stone I a week, but then I look closer and realise it involves drinking lemon juice and cayenne pepper and I’m not so convinced.

Why is everyone so obsessed with being skinny anyway? Starving yourself won’t make you feel better. I’ll challenge any woman to find a size-4 dress that will make her feel better than my favourite comfort food.

Sara Cox, of all people, once said something very wise: “Girls, if you starve yourself your bones will snap, your ovaries will shrivel and die and boys like tits.”

Romance Reviewed: Whighams Wine Cellar

I'd put eating at Whighams down as one of the biggest nights of gluttony I've ever enjoyed.

This Wine Cellar in Edinburgh is a dream of understated decadence. One half is decked out in fairly standard restaurant faire - all Beachwood tables and spot lighting - the other is like a collection of caves, dimly lit with candles and tea lights, like some French Resistance HQ from the 1940s.

The food itself was gout-inducingly rich. We started with Oysters, which tasted as if they were caught about 15 minutes before they were served. The menu was full of seafood staples - dressed crab, a platter that looked so full it could have been responsible for the North Sea over fishing crisis, we settled on fish cakes and a cut of fish I can't remember, because I was enjoying the white rioja a little too much…

But don't let my shortcomings detract from the splendour of Whighams. The service was attentive and knowledgeable, it a little on the slow side. It being a Sunday night and we being one of three tables occupied makes this a little difficult to forgive.

So an aperitif, starter, main, half a pudding and a bottle of wine came to about £80, the price my waistline paid, I shan't tell you.

Food: 9/10
Service: 7/10
Cost: £80, excluding tip

Whighams
Hope Street Lane
Edinburgh EH2 4EL

Ms F enters a hot dog eating competition…And loses

Why did I think I should enter a hot dog eating competition? In fact, why did I think I would WIN a hot dog eating competition?

You know, I don't even like them, I wasn't even hungry. My competitive nature must have got the better of me.

Romance reviewed: Arbutus

What is it with puree? Puree is what you feed toddlers, no puree is what you try and feed toddlers, but they spit it out in disgust. So why am I sitting at an award-winning restaurant with it glaring up at me from the menu.

Pretentiousness in food is something I despise, and it’s pretentiousness (or perhaps alliteration) that could only explain why anyone would want to serve (or eat) potato puree. At least the stuff babies get is sweet.

Arbutus won the Time Out accolade for Best Restaurant in 2004. Last year the proprietors’ second venture, Wild Honey, took the title, so I gathered I was in for a treat.

Puree aside (I couldn’t bring myself to order it) perhaps my culinary apprehension may have left me with a boring option – meat and potatoes, or steak and potato dauphinoise. I quite like the fact the waitress didn’t bother to ask me how I wanted my £20 steak cooked – there was no option for me (or anyone else) to whimp out and go for medium, or well done, or sin-of-sins or medium rare (medium rare is how heathens and idiots have their steak, it doesn’t exist, there’s no in between).

The steak was rare, whether I liked it or not. Well, I say rare, what I mean is a bit grey and brown, the kind of colour beef goes when you leave it out too long. Still, the potaties were nice.

My vegetarian companion faired much better with the one meat-free option, gnocchi. It’s easy to forget how nice gnocchi can be when it’s not bland or swimming in cheese like a bad fondue, and Abutus ticked both of those boxes.

Still, some vegetables would have been nice.

Dessert was an apple tarte tartin. If you couldn’t tell it was apple because it was so sickeningly sweet that parts of your brain become overloaded with the sugar rush, then perhaps the leftover bits of core and seeds would give it away.

Disappointing.

Food: 4/10
Service: 4/10
Cost: £80, excluding tip

Arbutus
63-64 Frith Street,
London, W1D 3JW

My favourite comfort food: Tagliatelle with bacon and mushroom carbonara

Smokes streaky bacon
Mushrooms
Tagliatelle
Single cream
One egg, beaten
Black pepper

1. Boil water in a pan and cook the pasta
2. Meanwhile heat a large frying pan and cut the bacon into small bits
3. Fry the bacon on a lowish heat and slice the mushrooms
4. When the mushrooms are browning add the cream and stir
5. Add the beaten egg and continue to stir until the sauce thickens. Add the black pepper and keep stirring over a low heat or the egg will scramble and you’ll be forced to eat scrambled eggs and bacon for tea
6. Drain the pasta and add it to the sauce. Dish it up or eat it straight from the pan to reduce washing up (I’m only partially kidding)

Cook time: 30 mins

Romance reviewed: Andrew Edmunds

‘Don’t fuck him, don’t fuck him, don’t fuck him.’ It is with this thought that I find myself sitting across the table from my date inside London’s Most Romantic Restaurant.

Andrew Edmunds is the establishment which has won this acclaim. It’s smaller, darker and cheaper than the Ivy, but still serves its food ‘on a bed of’ rather than merely next to its vegetables.

This is our Third Date - The Sex Date, which is probably why I feel the need to keep my knickers clamped on, and maybe why he thought he should bring out the big guns.

Every diner in this tiny French restaurant is a couple – they coo, oooh and ahhh over the food, feeding each other forkfuls of creamy goodness. You’ll either find it sickening, or, well, no it is sickening, but the food does make up for it.

The menu changes daily, which makes me talking about my duck breast feel a little redundant. Generally speaking it’s that old addage, 'good food done well.' There’s chicken and mushrooms if you don’t like you’re food too out there and snails and offal if you do.

The wine list is comprehensive and the service friendly, although they tend to leave you to it, lest they interrupt a moment of rampant footsie.

Food: 9/10
Service: 8/10
Cost: (He paid, I didn't put out)

Andrew Edmunds
Lexington Street
London, W1F 0LW