Like salmon biffing their way upstream to spawn against all the odds, or those toddlers who won’t take no for an answer and wear you down through sheer persistence, waves of keen restaurateurs still think that there is big money to be made from the humble hamburger. They may well be right, but just consider how many options the dining public already face. Ronald and the King have such a good foothold on our High Streets that they have inspired a faux “backlash” from the marketeers led by Gourmet Burger Kitchen and a host of other burgerologists – Ultimate, Haché, Hamburger Union, Fine Burger Co, Natural Burger – all promising to restore the burger to its former glories.

The latest hat to be thrown into this particular ring belongs to Byron, where they must have searched the vocabulary for understated authenticity before promising “proper hamburgers”. This place opened indecently close to Christmas and the owners must be gritting their teeth as the January quiet times loom large before they have had much opportunity to establish themselves. The dining room is large and bright; the menu is commendably short sticking to half a dozen burgers but offering a choice of toppings. The rubric is pretty much the same as at the other elite hamburger joints, “Our hamburgers are made from Aberdeen Angus Beef sourced exclusively from select farms in Morayshire, Scotland. They come in a soft, plain bun with lettuce, tomato, red onion, pickle and mayo”. A six ounce burger will cost you £6.75 which looks like good value, then you pay the £2.40 for fries and it works out pretty much the same as everywhere else. The burgers are sound, but when I visited the grill must have been a little cool as the meat ended up cooked through but grey and soggy – which isn’t good news when so much of the charm of a decent burger is the contrast between crusty charred outside and juicy pink inside, something you only get from fierce heat.

At this time of year it is customary for foodies to speculate on just what is to be the “next  big thing”. In January 2005, 2006, 2007 and now 2008 predicting the spread of premium hamburgers would enhance anyone’s reputation as a soothsayer.

Charles Campion

Gourmet Burger Kitchen, 13-14 Maiden Lane, WC2 (020 7240 9617)

The Ultimate Burger, 36-38 Glasshouse Street, W1 (020 7436 5355)

Haché, 24 Inverness Street, NW1 (020 7485 9100)

Fine Burger Co. 50 James Street, W1 (020 7224 1890)

Hamburger Union, 341 Upper Street, N1 (020 7359 4436)

The Natural Burger Co, 12 Blenheim Terrace, NW8 (020 7372 9065)

Byron, 222 Kensington High Street, W8 (020 7361 1717)

This is a list to leave lying around so that anyone seeking to buy you a last minute Christmas present is steered in the right direction. Failing that it will come in very handy in the New Year when that crisp book token is burning a hole in your pocket. 2007 has been a grand year for books – there are new books from both Simon Hopkinson and Fergus Henderson  - and there have been a host of good, practical books with a British theme. Here are ten books that deserve a place on your shelves.

Persia in Peckham, recipes from Persepolis by Sally Butcher. Published by Prospect Books  £17.99  Prospect Books have cornered the market in eccentric, passionate, obscure books. Persia in Peckham is a collection of recipes from a rather good London food shop. It will both charm and inform.

British Regional Food, by Mark Hix. Published by Quadrille, £25  A good book. Plenty of painstaking research, plus a feel for our very own “terroir”. Well written recipes.

Crust by Richard Bertinet, Published by Kyle Cathie £19.99 A book by a baker that may just turn you into one. With a DVD whose rhythmical dough working sequences will leave you hypnotised.

The Apple Source Book, by Sue Clifford & Angela King with Philippa Davenport, Published by Hodder & Stoughton  £16.99. A specialist book with an overt agenda – we know that we should be greener. If you feel tree-hugging tendencies coming on there is no better tree to hug than an apple tree.

Beyond Nose to Tail, by Fergus Henderson & Justin Piers Gellatly. Published by Bloomsbury £17.99 From the great man himself, as you’d expect – quirky, useful, impassioned and eccentric. The dessert and baking sections are by Justin Piers Gellatly St John’s Goth master-baker.

Moro East, by Sam and Sam Clark. Published by Ebury Press,£25. Recipes from an allotment in East London that has been wiped out (collateral damage on the Olympic site). Good recipes and an insight into London's amazing multi-culturalism.

Angela Hartnett's Cucina by Angela Hartnett. Published by Ebury Press £25. A very genuine book from a chef who is my tip to make it to the very top of the tree in 2008. Lyrical Italian dishes in a simple, easily-accomplished, form.

Week in week out – 52 seasonal stories by Simon Hopkinson. Published by Quadrille £20. When these columns were first published in the Independent (during the early 1990’s) they were very good indeed. Firstly it is great to see them all together; secondly it is uncanny how good and how modern they seem over a decade later.

Modern Mezze, by Anissa Helou Published by Quadrille  £18.99 This is a good book on a specialist subject and explains how many of those delightful little Middle Eastern dishes can be run up at home.

Pork & Sons by Stéphane Reynaud. Published by Phaeton at £24.95. A very French book from the squishy plastic cover that looks like gingham to the line drawings and “family” theming. Good recipes for charcuterie novices and experts alike.

50 Great Curries of India by Camellia Panjabi. Published by Kyle Cathie in paperback with a DVD - £14.95 A fine book. It tells you how to make decent curry in an informative and non-patronising way.

Merry Festives, Charles Campion

Number 3 Hereford Road has been a restaurant for a great while, to be precise it has been a restaurant called Veronica’s that tried, (and failed), to woo punters with a promise of authentic “Mediaeval” British cooking. However I have some faint memories of once seeing rocket and Parmesan salad on the menu which isn’t wildly Anglo-Saxon. When you write about restaurants on the internet a booming echo is left behind, so much so that if you search the web for Veronica’s a host of sites will happily offer you an address, reviews even the booking telephone number. The problem is that Veronica’s is long gone. Now there’s a hot new incumbent and the resto has been re-named “Hereford Road”. But yards of old, dead information still whirls around in the ether, it must be simpler for the techies to just abandon it than to spend time housekeeping by deleting defunct entries. My advice is to check the date on any web-published restaurant piece and treat the opinions with extra caution if there isn’t one.

It has been a blisteringly good autumn for London’s dining public. In the determined flurry of restaurant openings there seems to have been a succession of hits – Hibiscus, Alain Ducasse, Le Café Anglais and now Hereford Road. Perhaps one of the reasons why there are not more restaurants opened by disciples of Fergus Henderson and St John is that his mantra of honest, authentic, British dishes carefully made using the finest British ingredients is very hard to follow. Cooking that's so outwardly simple and so very delicious is a difficult challenge, but “Hoorah”, at Hereford Road they bring it off.

To the front of the resto there are some banquets facing the open kitchen, while to the rear there is a dining room with a large round window in the ceiling. Sit under it if you can, on a sunny day there’s a delightful shaft of light and you can look up to see blue skies.

The menu reads very like the one at St John – dishes may differ but the spirit remains true. Salt duck comes with pickled chicory – just as nice as the pickled chicory on the menu at Le Café Anglais. Lambs kidneys on toast are perfectly cooked – faintly pink within and with buttery juices soaking into the toast. The salad of Jerusalem artichokes shows a deft hand combining differing textures. The main courses range from a peerless roast widgeon on a bed of buttery cabbage with bacon pieces – wholly successful; to tender venison, lightly cooked, and a deep dark red. The whole oxtail for two – served on the bone and about a foot and a half long; rather like a huge, meaty, Flintstone’s corn on the cob - could be seen in the kitchen but only in preparation for a later service. Sticky date pudding was sticky and datey. Fine cheeses are given their moment of glory. The wine list has some modestly priced bottles and service is smooth. By the time you have consumed one of those modestly priced bottles your bill will come out around £80 for two people. That’s good food, fairly priced.

Charles Campion

Hereford Road, 3 Hereford Road, W2 (020 7727 1144)

You have to hand it to Rowley Leigh, after a couple of decades at the helm of Kensington Place - one of London’s busiest and noisiest restaurants – he has taken some time off and then dived straight back into the maelstrom. Le Café Anglais is a bright, comfortable, modern looking Brasserie on the second floor of the Whiteleys building on Queensway. I think we can be sure that the Whiteleys Shopping Centre is marching up market as this was a case of out with McDonalds and in with Le Café Anglais. This venture is a master class in how to deliver the kind of restaurant that the public wants. Spiritually it is the lovechild of Kensington Place and the Wolseley with a long menu that has its share of idiosyncratic gastro-jokes and allusions. Steamed Brill comes with sauce Duglére; the menu offers pommes Anna (both dishes that originated in the original Café Anglais in Paris). Parmesan custard. Pike boudin with fines herbes and beurre blanc - farewell quenelles brochet. But there’s no dumbing down here.

The dining room is long and has tall windows with elegant pastel banquets under them on one side and a bustling open bar, kitchen, and pair of rotisseries on the other. Rowley Leigh has made his transition from a bar stool at KP to a bar stool at Le Café Anglais seem effortless. The standard cooking is very high and the menu delights. Let’s hear it for “hors d’oeuvres”……fifteen small dishes, each costs £3, this is starter heaven – fried anchovies; mackerel teriyaki; piperade with Parma ham; a magnificent oeuf en gelée – the egg soft boiled the jelly melting and savoury; Mortadella with celeriac remoulade; competitive rabbit rillettes with delicious pickled endives; that Parmesan custard with anchovy toasts – a dish that tastes so much better than it reads.

The trouble with the hors d’oeuvres is that they restrict all but the doughtiest appetites when it comes to choosing first courses, pheasant and lentil potage purée; foie gras terrine with Pedro Ximenez jelly; fonduta with salsify and white truffles; Parma ham with pickled damsons. The main courses are drawn from fish (half a dozen options including a very fine dish of steamed whiting with shrimps and a garam masala sauce) and a section headed “roasts” – impeccable roast chicken; French partridge; pheasant served with choucroute and Morteau sausage; Rib of beef; middle of pork. The vegetables section ranges from “Brussels sprouts, well done” to purple sprouting broccoli, and the greedy man’s choice, pommes Anna. Puds lead with fresh fruit, and then cast aside all that cautious healthy stuff to revel in apple Charlotte, chocolate soufflé and a succession of outrageous ice cream sundaes. The old world wine list gives you a decent chance of drinking at under £35 a bottle. The food pricing is steady. After the bargain £3 hors d’oeuvres, first courses range from £5 to £11; fish from £9 to £23.50; roasts from £15 to £21; puds £5 to £8. There are just one jarring notes – the pommes Anna comes in at £6 which is a little strong for a spud side dish.

Service is friendly, there is a business like feel to the room and there seem to be remarkably little sign of teething troubles or new restaurant nerves. This restaurant is busy and deservedly so. Its success lies in offering the public exactly the kind of place and food that they are crying out for. Le Café Anglais is just about perfect.

Charles Campion

Le Café Anglais, 8 Porchester Gardens, W2 (020 7221 1415)