The Barbary, Covent Garden

There are two good reasons for eating at The Barbary. One is the Jerusalem bagel, a wondrous piece of baking. Served warm from the oven, encrusted in spicy sesame seeds it must be the best bread roll in town.

The second is tha it’s an under-the-radar escape from the tourist hell of Covent Garden.

Oh and the third - there are, pace Monty Python THREE good reasons - the cauliflower Jaffa-style, a gorgeous plateful of spiced, singed cauli with tomatoes and fresh herbs If you’re a cauliflower aficionado you should definitely go.

Other then that, well, I’m not sure. I’m a big fan of The Palomar it’s parent/sister restaurant half a kilometre away just off Leicester Square which combines the buzz of sitting in front of the kitchen with some more relaxing tables at the back.

The Barbary is all about the bar, a big horseshoe-shaped, zinc-coated monster around which you all jostle on uncomfortable stools, unless you’re standing at the bar at the side waiting for a slot. Or queuing outside. Yes, it’s no reservations, small plates, loud(ish) music, yada yada yada - three of the things that have come to irritate me most about eating out over the last couple of years. But then I’m well over 40.

Prices include VAT and service

Because of the limited number of seats (24) there’s also an understandable tendency to try and push up what you spend. Ordering a glass of Massaya rosé I was asked if I’d like to try an Israeli one, on the basis that they were the only place in London that stocked it. Very lovely it was too but fortunately I asked what it cost - ‘a little more’ which turned out to be £11.50 for a small glass which is going it a bit. But the BIG PLUS is that their prices include service - or hospitality as they call it. No nasty surprises at the end.

Back to the food which is mostly delicious though there’s the occasional hardcore dish like a goat shishbarak, a slightly gamey deep-fried dumpling that I suspect won’t rock your boat unless you were brought up in Beirut.

The veggie dishes appeal most - fat chunks of earthy beetroot with a cumin and chilli glaze and some very good yoghurt were the perfect partner for the bagel. A restaurateur friend sitting along the bar strongly recommended the sardines. On a previous visit we wolfed our way through the the lamb-stuffed arayes (terrific), chicken msachen (hearty home-style chicken dish), swordfish kusbara and some pata negra neck. All good but definitely too much to stuff down in a short space of time. The fresh-tasting kohlrabi salad is a good counterpoint to such punchily-flavoured, rich food. The knafeh (cheese pastry) isn’t as good as Honey & Co’s IMHO.

Most people are mad about it so why am I being so equivocal? Basically because I like The Palomar (and Honey & Co, for that matter) better but if neither existed I suspect I'd make The Barbary a regular port of call. You just need to know how - and when - to eat there. Which is, I reckon, to swing by late lunchtime or early evening for a couple of dishes and avoid the queues. But don't on any account miss The Bagel.

The Barbary is at 16 Neal's Yard, Covent Garden in a small alleyway just off Shorts Gardens. It's closed on Monday and between 3 and 5 on other weekdays but opens all day Saturday and Sunday.

See my match of the week from The Palomar: salmon uri with spicy ginger beer

Peckham Bazaar - well worth the detour

The thing about neighbourhood restaurants is that they’re a pain to get to if you’re not a local. In general that’s not a problem. They’re nice for those who live nearby, you tell yourself, but you don’t envy them unduly. But Peckham Bazaar is another matter ...

It was on my radar already as one of my occasional contributors, ex-sommelier Donald Edwards (right), is one of the partners and had put together the winelist (more on that in a minute) And I’d read some great reports on the food so when I took up temporary residence in East Dulwich over Christmas it seemed too good an opportunity to miss.

Talking of missing things you could easily walk past. It would be an understatement to say it isn’t smart. Basically it’s a shack with an outdoor barbecue and a main room that looks more like a community centre for disaffected yoof than the deli it apparently was in its former existence. I say this not because it's not congenial (it is) but because I don’t want you to go trekking across London thinking you’re heading for some polished designer joint.

The food - billed as pan-Balkan by Albanian-born chef John Gionieka - is something else, though. We went on a Sunday night, just after Christmas, just as they were closing, which must have been the worst possible time for them. They’d run out of a couple of dishes* but that didn’t stop them serving up a feast.

Our two shared starters (the octopus was sadly off) were some irresistibly fat, juicy, smokey chicken ‘winglets’ with tsatsiki and sucuc, a spicy sausage with shakshuka, the middle-east’s answer to ratatouille.

Amazingly the mains - a let-down in so many restaurants - were even better: slow roast lamb with a punchy citrussy avgolemono sauce, a sublime beef stifado with cauliflower purée and, because they’d run out of the other mains, a hefty slice of grilled manouri with butter beans and a generous dollop of skordalia. No pretty pictures of the first two because the light was dim and stews never look that alluring. But what a relief to have food that tastes better than it looks. Give me substance over style every time.

The only disappointment was a slightly stodgy pistachio and orange cake with poached quince ice-cream. I’d venture that desserts aren’t their strong suit. If I were them I’d just stick to a selection of ice-creams which would reduce the pressure on the tiny kitchen.

Oh, and the wine. The wine list is brilliant - quirky, adventurous, full of rare treats from Greece and elsewhere in the Eastern Med (so massively on-trend). Several like the Simcic Opoka Ribolla - an orange wine from Slovenia are quite out there, others like the Greek reds, rather more mainstream. If that still makes you nervous stick to the basic Bulgarian house white and house red at a very reasonable £16.50 a bottle. Oh, and the Eduardo Miroglio Brut Zero, an amazingly classy Bulgarian sparkling wine is a great way to kick off the evening.

This is the kind of restaurant you (or rather I) wake up in the middle of the night dreaming about. The kind of place where chefs head after work and the sort of food I’d make myself if I had time, lived in Albania and had an outdoor grill. Not flash food to impress but food to feed the soul.

* apparently they normally have a longer menu - take a look at the old menus on the site. Actually take a look at them anyway. You'll want to go even more.

Peckham Bazaar is at 119 Consort Road, London SE15 3RU and is open from 6-11 Tuesday-Friday, 12.30-11 on Saturdays and 12.30-8 on Sundays. Phone number - not listed on the site but how else are you to book? - is 07875 107471. They're also on Twitter @peckhambazaar.

My son and daughter-in-law took me there so I don’t know what they paid for the three of us but I’m guessing about £25 a head for food. Ridiculously good value.

More about the delights of sarf London here.

Balthazar, London: beautiful but curiously dated

There’s no doubt about it Balthazar is drop-dead gorgeous. You only have to see the golden lights winking through the windows to be drawn through the door like a moth to a candle. But how does the food stack up?

I managed (with considerable difficulty) to get a table for dinner this week and found it already heaving with almost as many waiters as punters. Oddly that didn’t make the service especially responsive. They had a knack - as waiters do - of looking round the room to see if anything needed doing but managing to avoid your eye in case you actually wanted anything. It took a while - and a reminder - to get our order taken and a further prompt - after we spotted a basket on our neighbours' table - to be given some of the very good bread.

The menu is French in the way the Americans do French - i.e. with supersize portions, lashings of frites and a wildly indulgent dessert menu.

There was plenty to tempt so I suppose I shouldn’t have ordered a very un-French lobster and truffle risotto. It sounded too good to be true at £10.50, and indeed was with a strong taste of truffle oil and a mound of pallid rice that managed to be both sticky and underdone. My daughter’s frisée aux lardons was a better bet though the bacon shallot vinaigrette was bigger on vinegar than on bacon.

Her cheeseburger though was strangely gamey (the burger, not the cheese) suggesting very well hung beef - an odd way of handling a menu option that would be chosen by conservative eaters. And my steak au poivre, which I am embarrassed to admit I remember fondly from its '70s heyday, was disappointingly unpeppery with a rather dull gravy-like sauce. Top marks for the frites and the perfectly cooked spinach that came with it though.

Desserts were much better - a really gorgeous moussey, New York style cheesecake with a slick of apple purée and a light-as-air cinnamon apple doughnut and some pretty good profiteroles though with a not-quite-chocolatey-enough chocolate sauce.

Wines by the glass - a slightly tired aligoté and a very good 2009 Rasteau that was perfect with my steak - were on the pricey side at £9 a glass.

I’ve never been to the original so can’t comment on how it measures up but the obvious comparison here is with the equally glam but rather more authentically French Brasserie Zédel which is ironically run by Chris Corbin and Jeremy King, former owners of the Caprice group which has now taken McNally’s Balthazar under its umbrella. I prefer Zédel (not least for the pricing) though others in search of more of a scene might well not.

What struck me forcibly though is how curiously old-fashioned the food seems by London 2013 standards. That might seem an odd thing to say of a restaurant that pays tribute to a classic French food tradition but it harks more back to 1997 New York (the date Balthazar was founded) than the 1970s Paris that Zédel apes. There are better casual French restaurants in London - Racine and and McNally's adopted compatriot Daniel Boulud's Bar Boulud among them - and better burger joints (Honest Burger comes to mind). And the portions seem ridiculously large by today’s standards.

What was McNally’s aim in coming to London? A faithful reproduction of his New York restaurant for ex-pats? I’m sure he’ll have achieved that. A new beacon restaurant for London? I’m not so sure.

That said it already feels as if it's been there for months, never mind days. If you want a bit of New York glitz without jumping on a plane, Balthazar is for you. And knowing McNally’s reputation as a restaurateur I’m sure he’ll get the food and the service right. In the meantime stick to a couple of starters or a main course and a pud and you’ll be able to walk out feeling a little lighter than we did and with a slightly lesser hit on your wallet.

My bill at Balthazar was £115.31 for 2 for 3 courses, 2 glasses of wine, 2 lemonades and a mint tea.

Balthazar is at 4-6 Russell Street, London WC2B 5HZ (just off the Covent Garden piazza) and is currently only open for dinner. Lunches start on March 4th and brunch and breakfast in due course. There is a rather gorgeous-looking bakery next door.

HKK - where the drinks are as fab as the food

Maybe Chinese restaurants are like buses. You don’t get any new openings for a while then several come along at once. So after Bo London the other day, it’s HKK, the latest project from the Hakkasan group.

It’s much more mainstream than Bo - no edible condoms here - but, like Bo, an unmistakeably contemporary Chinese restaurant with dishes served individually Western-style rather than placed on the table together. Which of course makes them much easier to match.

We opted for the 8 course lunch menu (£48) rather than the 15 course evening one which costs a daunting £95 (this is the City, after all). Our sommelier agreed to bring the soft drink options as well for us to try - one pairing for each couple of courses. A well-priced option at only £24 a flight.

There’s a good deal of theatre about the presentation. The main course of cherry wood roasted Peking duck (served with a lovely Pfalz Pinot Noir from Stepp & Gaul) is carved on a table in the middle of the restaurant then served with a pancake on the side rather than a basket of them for you to do your own rolling.

The dim sum* - some of the very best I’ve tasted - arrive with a small paint brush for you to anoint them with just the right amount of soy sauce. And the tonic in the 1724 non-alcoholic cocktail that was served with it was poured through a strainer full of saffron then topped with a spritz of grapefruit zest from an old-fashioned perfume spray. Stylish and really delicious.

Other highlights were a dazzling dish of steamed razor clam with steamed chillies and a deep-fried ball of mui-choi glutinous rice (below) - slightly overwhelmed by the heavyweight Barossa Valley Nine Popes that the sommelier paired with it - and two outstanding desserts: lychee tapioca with passion chiboust and passion jam (probably the best rice pudding I’ve tasted) and a pineapple fritter with salted lime jelly and vanilla ice cream - an elegant riff on the fruit fritters of more traditional Chinese restaurants.

In fact there’s little to fault. The jasmine tea-smoked Wagyu beef was a little tougher and fattier than Bo’s. You rather lost the Iberico in the Four Treasure Iberico ham wrap, pretty though it looked. And some of the soft drinks such as the white grape, prune, apple and clove cocktail were a bit too sweet and gloopy for the delicacy of the food. But this is quibbling. I wouldn’t be surprised if it picks up a Michelin star in March despite the fact that it will only have been open a couple of months.

The good news is that they’re putting on a dim sum menu at lunchtime which will probably be pricey but hopefully cheaper than the set menu. And the dim sum was exquisite. There’s also much more to explore in terms of the wine list which includes both wine flights and an extensive selection of wines by the glass. And there’s an interesting cocktail list and a tea trollley to investigate.

So, not cheap, but very, very good. Go if you can afford it.

HKK is at Broadgate West (just off Bishopsgate), 88 Worship Street, London EC2A 2BE

Tel: +44 (0)203 535 1888.

I ate at HKK as a guest of the restaurant.

* Truffle har gau, pan-fried Szechuan dumpling and sour turnip puff