The Dairy, Clapham: Smart, casual

I’d heard good things about The Dairy, not least from my son Will (of Hawksmoor*), one of whose favourite restaurants it is, but being south of the river it took me a while to haul myself down there.

In fact even longer than I’d anticipated. It was a tube strike the day I went so I had to take a bus which progressed in sedate and leisurely fashion from Marble Arch to Clapham Common, a not disagreeable experience on a sunny spring evening. As I was trying to avoid the rush hour and was early I also managed a brisk walk on the common to work up an appetite, a strategy I can strongly recommend.

The restaurant is much smaller and more rustic than I’d imagined, more like a gastropub or bar than the fine dining set-up you'd expect from an establishment with a tasting menu. Thankfully they don't impose that on you - you can also order dishes individually which is what we did. There’s some ambitious cooking though, no doubt about that.

The most memorable dish which has had me obsessing about it continuously since my visit was chicken oysters with a couple of little stacks of crisp deep-fried chicken skin, wild mushrooms and asparagus. It obviously looks a great deal more enticing than this shockingly bad photo. Make sure you order your own portion. Don’t share.

Other great dishes were a cracking chicken liver mousse (oddly on-trend at the moment) with rhubarb and apple, broad beans with smoked ricotta, house lardo and whey (at least I think that’s the version we had), a gorgeous dish of rooftop carrots (presumably grown in their 'urban garden') with goats cheese, oat granola and buttermilk, and Galician octopus with tomatoes, fried bread and rooftop herbs. We also, I see from our bill, had some squid. I can’t remember for the life of me how it was cooked. It was a catch-up meal with an old friend and we were yammering too much.

We also found room for two desserts: salted caramel with cacao and malted barley ice cream and that chocolatey 'soil' you see everywhere which I found a tad rich but I probably wouldn’t have bothered with dessert had we not felt we *should* do the menu justice. And something more refreshingly rhubarby - also good I seem to recall but which has vanished into the mists of time. And some warm madeleines or maybe that was somewhere else.

As is usual with small plate restaurants it’s easy to work up a fair sized bill without realising it. A modest drinks tally of one cocktail (a deliciously refreshing Fennel and Apple Hendricks, below), one ‘virgin’ version and two glasses of wine came to £28.25 + service - almost a third of the total £100.40 bill.

You could easily do significantly more damage to the short but appealingly quirky wine list which is divided up by style and mood (textured, intricate, mouth-filling whites and dark-toned, fleshy, energetic reds, for example). On the other hand you could drink beer - there’s a short but well-chosen list - and eat rather less or stick to the bar snacks. And there's a 4 plate lunch for £25 from Wednesday to Friday which is a steal.

Is The Dairy worth the detour? I’m not sure it is if you’re based the other side of the river. Not that it’s difficult to get to but if you're only in London for a short while there are plenty more central alternatives. But it's a fantastic place to have on your doorstep if you’re a sarf Londoner like Will or my lucky friend. I might just have to scrounge a bed for the night to re-taste that chicken.

The Dairy is at 15 the Pavement, Clapham Old Town, London SW4 0HY. Tel: 0207 622 4165

* never resist an opportunity to give the family a plug ...

The Hole in the Wall, Little Wilbraham: not your average country pub

The Hole in the Wall at Little Wilbraham near Cambridge sounded like the sort of twee country pub that I hate. Discovering it had a celebrity chef and a tasting menu made it appeal even less but on my visit last week I was bowled over

The pub is run by 2010 Masterchef finalist Alex Rushmer and his business partner Ben Maude who have been friends since they met at Cambridge. Both are self-taught but produce beautifully nuanced light, elegant food in a country pub with a decor that harks back to the ‘70s. (The swirly carpet has to be seen to be believed.) It’s as if Noma had pitched up in the Essex stockbroker belt

As we sat down we wished we’d opted for the à la carte which looked comfortingly familiar. Airy pies and triple-cooked chips wafted past. And then the first dish arrived. A velvety curried parsnip soup with some warm chunky rillettes and matchsticks of apple tumbling off a couple of fingers of toast. The perfect start on a chilly spring evening. The accompanying Harviestoun Bitter & Twisted blonde ale was a bold and clever match.

Next up a simply gorgeous bread board - two hefty chunks of homemade tomato and herb foccacia, black treacle bread, a vivid wild garlic pesto and the best imaginable home-made crisps. It was as much as we could do not to scoff the lot

There was applewood-smoked mackerel and broccoli from the allotment, with a smooth velvety broccoli purée offsetting the rich oily mackerel. (Apparently they smoke it just before service.) A tricky dish for wine, cleverly paired with a 2012 Kurt Angerer, "Kies" Grûner Veltliner.

Next a fantastic cauliflower dish roast, raw and puréed with a curried peanut granola and a sweet and sour raisin dressing. Sounds a bit of a car crash but it was so well judged - the sweetness of the raisins playing on the caramelisation of the cauliflower and the slight sweetness of the accompanying wine, a Cave de Hunawihr, Pinot Gris Reserve, 2011. (The pairings were in general as good as the food.)

There was super-fresh seabass, with a lovely crisp skin, wild garlic purée, a sweet, mealy new potato, a couple of girolles, a spear of asparagus, a couple of leaves of hispi cabbage and a slick of lobster sauce. A perfect miniaturised fish dish with its own veg - The Hole in the Wall's thoughtful contribution to your 5-a-day. It needed a slightly drier wine than the Domaine Treloar muscat it was paired with though - a Savennières maybe.

Next the dish that Rushmer cooked in the Masterchef final 4 years ago - two slices of very rare duck breast, pickled cucumber and spiced caramel with a crisp rectangle of rosti (below). Impressive but slightly overworked - not quite in the same relaxed, intuitive register as his current food. Brilliantly matched with an orange wine though - the 2010 Equipo Navazos, Bota de Vino Blanco 44, "Florpower".

An extra dish - beef cheek and shin of a marvellous fall-apart texture with celeriac and bone marrow mash. Full marks to the kitchen for resisting the temptation to coat it with an over-extracted sauce. It was partnered with an equally robust Languedoc red, the 2009 Domaine de Trinités, La Deves which the sommelier Joel Servy recommended when he found we had a house in the Languedoc and hadn’t tried it.

For dessert, to which I admit we didn’t do full justice, there was a coconut panna cotta with green mango and tamarind sherbert, and a truly lovely warm white chocolate cake with seared strawberry, sumac and ‘sticky micky’ jelly (below) made from a late harvest wine of the same name from the Eradus estate in Marlborough, New Zealand Oh, and the lightest, airiest doughnuts and a pool of salted caramel to dunk them in - as if we hadn’t eaten enough ...

Although, as I say, I’m generally not a fan of tasting menus this was a stunner. It’s rare to find a meal achieve such a high standard course after course. (Rushmer cites Thomas Keller of French Laundry fame as a major influence.) The engaging Servy, who drives the team, has done time at Midsummer House and Hedone.

It’s a very special place which if there’s any justice will get at least one Michelin star. Though I do worry about the carpet.

The Hole in the Wall at Little Wilbraham is about 6 miles east of Cambridge city centre (about a £20 taxi ride if you don’t want to drive but don’t let that put you off). Tel 01223 812282. Lunch from Wednesday-Sunday. Dinner from Tuesday to Saturday. The tasting menu is £45, matching wines £35. A la carte is also very reasonably priced or you can eat in the bar which is just like a typical country pub (apart from the food, of course).

Disclaimer: We paid for our tasting menus and most of the wine though were brought a couple of extra dishes and glasses to try. Our bill was £135 for two.

My two favourite restaurants in Paris

Whenever we come to Paris, whatever new places we book, we still always make time to see two old favourites, Le Baratin and Bistrot Paul Bert.

Why? Because they’re two places that remind you that restaurants are not just about eating but the whole experience of being there. They have hinterland, character and soul.

Actually last time we booked the trendier Le 6 Paul Bert and regretted it. Not because the room wasn’t lovely or the food isn’t good but because it lacked the parent restaurant’s cosiness and theatre

The Hercule-Poirot like figure sitting in a maroon velvet smoking jacket by the entrance at what was presumably his favourite table. The two old girls (80 at least) who’d come in for a good gossip and a slap-up lunch. The young woman scribbling earnestly in a notebook with a pencil. A pencil! All Parisian life is there.

The set price lunch must be one of the best bargains in the city: 19 euros for three generous courses. And there’s choice - increasingly rare in the hipper hangouts in Paris these days. I had a generous slab of coarse, chunky terrine which arrived with a sharply dressed salad (with shallot in the vinaigrette - full marks) and a perfectly seasoned steak tartare and chips with plenty of capers. And I’m difficult to please on the steak tartare front. Dessert was a simple but delicious slice of roast pineapple and vanilla ice cream.

My husband ordered from the more expensive 38€ menu so we could have cheese. And what cheese! It arrived on a massive cheeseboard which was just left on the table. Only the fact we’d already eaten so much prevented us doing more damage to it. He also had a mound of fat white asparagus and a huge portion of veal kidneys in mustard sauce. Cooked just pink as he ordered.

You would of course spend a great deal more if you did full justice to the wine list which includes a fine selection of Burgundy, Rhone and Bordeaux. We contented ourselves with a relatively modest Beaujolais (a 2011 Descombes Brouilly) which suited the food perfectly. It was served at exactly the right temperature (cool) and again left on the table for us to help ourselves instead of having our glasses relentlessly topped up. (Does that annoy anyone else?)

Le Baratin is admittedly less immediately congenial. For a start it’s in a rougher part of town. The welcome is not particularly warm if you’re a first timer or, worse still, don’t speak French The clientele who have made the trek sometimes seem more concerned to tick the experience off than actually enjoy it. The girl on the next door table had obviously come to eat just one dish and snap it with a large SLR.

The food isn’t fancy. But it’s made from impeccably sourced ingredients and tastes like the best home cooking you’ve ever had. Which it may well be. Unusually the mains are high point - big generous platefuls of food that you dream about for months afterwards.

On a Friday evening I had a mound of roast chicken from a bird which had obviously lived - a breast, a flavourful drumstick and a deeply savoury wing along with a cascade of fresh vegetables that tasted as if they have been harvested earlier that day - spring onion, leek, carrots, potatoes and chard. No sauce, just the natural meat and vegetable juices.

My husband had a roast shank of Pyrenéean milk-fed lamb with barely wilted spinach and sweet, mealy new potatoes - hardly seasoned but so intense in flavour. Both dishes showed off our wine - Jean-François Nicq’s 2012 Les Foulards rouges Glaneurs, a pure, bright, vivid grenache, to perfection. It wasn’t on the chalked up wine list which is more by way of being a conversation-opener about what you might want to drink. It’s pretty well all natural.

Starters by contrast are simply a warm-up act - a big plate of Iberico ham (husband) and braised artichokes with lemon (me). Both tasty without stealing the show from what was to follow. They absolutely do the job.

Finally an extraordinarily good apple crumble of exactly the right texture, temperature and proportion of topping to filling. Only the cheese - an oddly bland Beaufort - was a disappointment. Our waiter sent for the gaffer who lurks behind the bar sizing up the clientele like a bird of prey*. We quaked but explained that we didn’t think it matched the quality of the rest of the ingredients. He shrugged as if we were mad but found he had taken it off the bill (€120 for two compared to €98 at the Paul Bert but Le Baratin is also cheaper at lunchtime.)

Bistrot Paul Bert is easy to love. It’s the French bistro of dreams. The Baratin less so but if you succumb to its offbeat charms you’ll be as hooked as we are. As many have remarked it's more like eating in someone's home than a restaurant. No wonder so many chefs hang out there.

These two Paris institutions have been there for years but won’t go on for ever. Philippe and his wife Raquel who presides over the Baratin kitchen must at least be thinking about retirement and it won’t be the same when they’ve gone. Go while you have the chance.

Bistrot Paul Bert is at 18 rue Paul Bert. Tel: 01 43 72 24 01 Nearest Metro: Faidherbe Chaligny

Le Baratin is at 3 rue Jouye-Rouve. Tel: 01 43 49 39 70. Nearest Metro: Pyrenées

NB. There is another Paul Bert and another Baratin in Paris. Make sure you go to the right ones.

* That said he did recognise us this time, cracked a smile and gave us a table big enough for 4. We've obviously passed the test.

Thai tapas in Paris at Le Mary Celeste - updated March 2015

Eating Thai tapas in a city like Paris represents everything I dislike about eating out - a mish-mash of cooking styles, food you can eat anywhere - and yet I loved it. (Apparently the chef has moved on. See my update below from a subsequent visit in March 2015)

My husband, the master planner of the trip but not normally a Thai food fan was insistent we should go back to Le Mary Celeste, a restaurant we'd only managed to have a drink and a couple of oysters in on our last trip.

His meticulous researches (see How to plan a food trip to Paris) had revealed that it was now the scene in the Marais where we’re staying. It would be convenient, he argued, on the first night.

When I saw the menu I thought ‘Ha! He’ll hate it’ - apart from the natural wine list. There was next to no meat and far too many vegetables for a red-blooded Welshman. Of course I was proved wrong.

Apart from the oysters which are the speciality of the place dishes are in fact slightly bigger than tapas - more like raciones - but still designed for sharing as our very sweet waitress explained. (The service is unusually friendly for Paris.) The tables are so small they have to be served one by one.

The first dish - roast cauliflower with some chilli-infused fish sauce, hazelnuts and herbs (coriander) was unlikely but a real winner, the sort of dish you want to work out how to make at home. ‘Thai tacos’ (below) with a larb-style pork patty and pickles and chilli mayo was a dribblingly messy sandwich of a dish I’d happily go back for. Oeufs du diable, a spicy riff on egg mayonnaise was a spicy mouthful of bright fresh ginger, onions and crunchy fried rice. Gorgeous. Only some rather strange slabs of rice cake with a fiery radish dressing didn’t quite come off. My other half chomped his way contentedly through the meal admiring the chef’s boldness with seasoning. Wonders will never cease.

The wine we drank - a Tête de Gondole, a crisp blend of chenin and sauvignon from Domaine Chahut et Prodiges, frankly struggled to keep up with the onslaught. We’d have probably done better to order a cocktail which was obviously what most of the young clientele were going for. I was particularly tempted by the Koh Garden (Aalborg aquavit, homemade kaffir lime leaf and galangal syrup and lime) though it might have possibly been an overload with all that punchy food. And they cost 12€ (£9.88/$13.63) which would have undoubtedly bumped up the cost of our otherwise very reasonable €59 (£48.57) meal though remember French bills include service.

The menu changes daily so we might even go again during our stay. If we can get in, that is. It gets rammed so you need to book during the limited time they take bookings - or be prepared to queue.

Update from a subsequent visit in March 2015

Returning to the Mary Celeste a year later I’m not quite sure why I dubbed it Thai. Sure there are Asian inflections but not specifically Thai ones.* Only the oysters and oeufs du diable still remain on the menu and are as good as ever - the rest was a bit of a mixed bag.

A chickpea salad with beetroot, feta and mint was fresh and tasty as was a plate of panisse with chimichurri sauce but an ‘assiette de broccolis’ was tough and undercooked with barely a smear of the advertised smoked haddock purée.

The wine list is more extensive than on earlier visits - we drank a delicious pet nat (petillant sparkling wine) called X bulles from Muscadet producer Vincent Caillé which suited the food perfectly.

Mary Celeste is noisy and cramped but it has an incredible buzz. Think of it more as a bar to have a drink and a couple of snacks than a restaurant and you won’t be disappointed. Our bill was a reasonable €76.20 (£54) for two but we could have spent less.

*I've since learnt the chef has moved on.

Le Mary Celeste is at 1 rue Commines, 75003 Paris 09 80 72 98 83. They open at 2pm but don’t start serving food till 7pm and you can’t book after 7.30pm.