The Corner Room, Bethnal Green

Viajante was one of my favourite meals of 2010. Off the wall in places, but comprised of some great dishes in a casual dining room. Getting the chefs to deliver the dishes they had just so carefully tweezered into place straight to your table, and to chat through some of the components was interesting and interactive. It was definitely fiddly food (see previous comment about tweezers) but good food. I meant to go back at some stage and give the full tasting menu a go, but with so many great new places opening every month, never had the pennies saved up to warrant another visit. Two years later, I returned to the Town Hall hotel, not to eat at Viiajante, but to give it's little sister a go. The Corner Room is hidden away in a corner of the hotel, once you've found the carpeted moose head, you know you're there. The whole place is smaller but equally beautiful. Understated, quirky and functional.

[In pictures] Feng Sushi

It's not often I head over to Canary Wharf, but I can't help but feel that this is what London should be like. Tall buildings, wide pavements, modern atmosphere. Everything is made of steel, stone and glass and the streets are clean. Add the dark clouds and the torrential rain I was wading through to get to Billingsgate market, and it felt like Gotham. You could almost here the Batman theme in the background (the films, not the camp TV superhero fest of the 60's). All this was in aid of was a specially prepared menu from Silla Bjerum, the Danish owner and head chef of sushi delivery firm, Feng Sushi.

Unshackled: Alyn Williams at the Westbury, Mayfair

Procured off the Westbury website 

When it comes to fine dining, I actually often find it very hard to put the experiences into words. Most of the time, it is impossible to fault the cooking of the food, but I can't help that the higher up the Michelin scale you get, the higher the chance of the food boring you to death. This is partly why I have never got round to writing up mega-restaurants such as Gordon Ramsay or Alain Ducasse at the Dorchester. Both restaurants definitely rolled out course after course of well cooked dishes, with great produce and fantastic service at the core of what it is trying to achieve. Yes they were good, but lacked any wow factor.

Santa Maria, pizza to make you smile

"All men are made equal", but the more I eat and try new food, I realise that those immortal words certainly don’t ring true about food. All food is different. Even the same food is different. For example, take the humble burger, one of the most hotly discussed topic amongst my food loving twitter friends. Open or closed, sauced or unsauced, cheddar or American, pink, how pink? With such a plethora of requirements and protocol around the humble burger, I guess it is unsurprising that many other comestibles have a strict list of points to make it “right”.