Last week saw the last in the “Supersizers” series on BBC2. As is so often the case the schedulers decided to force viewers into making a choice between the Giles Coren and Sue Perkins duo and the Gordon show by running both the Supersizers and the F-Word in the same time slot. For those of us un-anoraky enough to distain recording one of the programmes for watching later (this stuff is interesting, but not that interesting) it ends up as trial by remote. This is the strange situation when you watch one programme until you feel your attention wandering, then switch to the other channel for a bit until that in turn pales, whereupon you switch back. By this (admittedly unscientific) measure I can say that in terms of minutes watched the Supersizers won by about 65% - 35%.

Despite the crash bang wallop attempt to keep energy levels high in the F-Word kitchen everything seemed a bit predictable and “the medicine as before”. Here are some of the recipes featured -  scallops with quails eggs and pancetta; escalopes of chicken; raspberry soufflé; angel hair pasta with clams; spiced pork chops with crushed sweet potatoes; apple tart fine with caramel ice cream; seared beef salad with pickled ginger; herb crusted fillet of brill; soufflé pancakes with rhubarb compote – aside from catching yourself wondering how many housewives will be knocking up scallops with quails’ eggs and pancetta even for a dinner party, doesn’t it make you feel that you are trapped in pretentious gastropub? Gordon also seems to have been tailored to his part, he swears on cue; he flaunts his competitive side; he bundles and bustles everything along. This series needs something new.

Meanwhile BBC2 offered the Supersizers, a concept that has grown out of what was originally a single programme and has now been developed as a look at the food and eating habits of various periods in British history: Wartime, Restoration, Victorian, Seventies, Elizabethan and Regency. This made good television for a number of reasons. Firstly it was surprising to see what a good double act Sue Perkins and Giles Coren turned out to be. Perkins (a vegetarian forced to sample sheep’s head – respect!) dived into the spirit of things, and there has always been a streak of Byronic excess about Coren which was well suited to beer for breakfast and claret with lunch.  For once the worthy and historical side of the equation was handled gently, and the director had some good ideas. I particularly enjoyed the conceit of sending Giles, in costume, into a coffee shop – a simple device but one that graphically  linked then to now. The chefs who tried bravely to recreate the excesses of the past also did a good job, Allegra McEvedy trapped in wartime austerity, Rosemary Schrager and Mikael Weiss, who manfully (and largely successfully) tried to replicate Careme’s intricate sugar work, all stood out.

The difference between the two shows is that in one the skill of cookery was acknowledged, while over at Gordon’s the general feeling is that anyone can do anything and that all food is something of game show. Does anyone believe that Ramsay can take a brigade of celebs and that with minimal training they can turn out a professional standard meal for 50 customers? Then we are asked to believe that a high percentage of those customers will happily pay the going rate for that food?  I would rather be pondering the strains and stresses of the Regency diet.

Charles Campion

The Taste Festival goes from strength to strength, each year a bit bigger and bit glossier. This year the Action Against Hunger event was a cake decorating competition. A strong team of chefs – Aldo Zilli, Michel Roux Jnr and Pascal Aussignac - did battle with the critics: Tom Parker Bowles, Terry Durack and myself. I came fourth equal which is a posh way of saying last! Topical themes prevailed as Pascal’s winning cake was transformed into a beautiful hat in honour of Royal Ascot, and with a nod to the solstice Tom P-B’ recreated “Stonehenge” in Mars bars and Milky Ways, strangely this was very well received by those members of the audience wanting to sample the finished cakes. These annual competitions seem to revolve around the critics trying to prove themselves in the chefs’ area of expertise and failing magnanimously. Perhaps next year the chefs could test themselves on our home turf? It would be fun to see Michel Roux Jnr or Pascal Aussignac go to the suburbs for a truly ghastly, ill-seasoned, ugly meal and then have to pen 400 light-hearted and witty words on the subject.

Iconic London restaurant Kensington Place endured the hammer blow of losing its chef-founder Rowley Leigh with admirable stoicism - he ambled off some while ago to set up the wildly successful Le Café Anglais - see my earlier post: 4th December 2007. KP has also become a part of the D and D Empire (the group formerly known as Conran), but head chef Henry Vigar clearly knows his stuff and the tone of the menu remains much the same as it always was (seasonal, carefully sourced ingredients, British cooking, a scattering of French classics)even if the presentation has become a little more refined and the dishes a tad less hearty. But for a restaurant the smallest things can make an enormous difference and earlier this spring the new incumbents took the decision to add tablecloths and also to put some padding on the chairs: it turns out that this was an inspired move. For a decade or so half the customers at Kensington Place have complained about how noisy it is - while the other half have delighted in the buzzy atmosphere. Now the restaurant is a good deal quieter and more comfortable, the atmosphere is still there but you can converse without shouting.

Starters range from English asparagus with sauce vierge; line caught mackerel with a sweet shallot tart; Cornish crab lasagna; seared foie gras with apricots and baby turnips;  to pressed rabbit terrine - flavours and textures are well balanced at KP. Main courses continue in the same vein - a roast lemon sole comes with clams and tomato; middle white pork belly is served with artichoke barigoule and wild leeks; a loin of spring lamb comes with flageolets and broad beans.  There is much to commend. Puds are very good - a simple strawberry tart is made with French Gariguette berries and crème patissier. The wine list is in the throes of a re-write but like most D and D offerings it covers the reasonably priced sector conscientiously before soaring off out of reach. Service is slick, and if you like your buzz slightly less loud and a good deal less raucous the table cloths will make you happy here.

Price wise the menus tread a careful path - lunch  £16.50 (2 courses) £19.50 (3); dinner £19.50 (2 courses) £24.50 (3);  à la Carte: starters £7–£13; mains £14.50–£29.50; sides £3–£5; and desserts £6.50.

Charles Campion

Kensington Place, 201–207 Kensington Church Street, W8 (020 7727 3184)

Unless you are completely blasé, some things provoke a bout of soul searching. How would it feel if you were eating out four or five times a week over a three month period and pretty much everywhere you visited seemed to be a great restaurant? It may be cynical but you would expect at least a third of all those eager newly-opened restaurants to be merely good rather than great. There is also plenty of room for self-doubt – perhaps it’s becoming increasingly difficult to tell exceptional from ordinary? Perhaps everything is blurring and familiar benchmarks can no longer be relied upon? This state of affairs is as worrying for a restaurant writer as the gloom of a fisherman who finds that whenever he goes fishing he always catches fish.

All the restaurants that stick in the memory this spring have something in common – they all serve exactly the kind of food I like to eat, raising the galling prospect that my personal likes and dislikes may be becoming mainstream. The time has come when honest restaurants serving good food like Hereford Road, Wild Honey, Le Café Anglais, Hix Oyster and Chophouse, are suddenly run of the mill. And now Quo Vadis, the Hart brothers latest venture, offers more of the same. Leoni opened his restaurant in 1926 and quickly built up a reputation for style and glamour - fast forward 82 years and once again the place is buzzing. This old stalwart has just re-opened after a major, but sympathetic, refit. The Harts have done a terrific job. The 1920's design elements have been retained and merged with modern comfort. The place is slick once more and best of all the menu is British – yet another of those all-embracing, all-enticing, super-Brasserie menus. The Harts may have made their name with Spanish restaurants but they grew up in a country house hotel in Rutyland and Quo Vadis has a good idea where it's going - carefully sourced, British produce, simply cooked - very commendable.

Unfussy starters like crab mayonnaise; razor clams griddled with garlic and parsley; asparagus and butter; brown shrimps on toast; an Old Spot pork terrine with sauce gribiche; or steak tartare, are done very well indeed. There is good meat - a 28 day aged Lincoln Red rib of beef for two is served with chips (the chips are excellent); veal sweetbread with tartar sauce is a joy - perfectly cooked, buttery, tender, and mercifully plain, maybe "best ever". There is fish – skate with capers and lemon; grilled turbot. There are roasts – saddle of lamb or magnificent squab pigeon. Puds are exemplary - summer pudding; treacle tart; profiteroles with vanilla ice cream and chocolate sauce. The right mix of familiar and indulgent.

Service is slick and there's a sympathetic wine list. First courses cost between £6 and £12.50; mains £17 to £25; sides £3 to £4; and puddings £6 to £7. Given that this a classy, chic, be-seen-in Soho dining room those prices are very competitive. Uncannily, like nearly all of the current crop of restaurants, Quo Vadis is very easy to like.

Charles Campion

Quo Vadis, 26-29 Dean Street, W1 (020 7437 9585) 

If you are venturing as far as Taste in Regent's Park this week, please support the Action Against Hunger cake decorating competition Thursday 5.30pm, when Tom Parker Bowles and I will be competing with Michel Roux Junior and Pascal Aussignac. And on Friday I can be found clutching copies of Charles Campion's London Restaurant Guide in the Waterstone's Book Signing Lounge between 2.50 and 3.30pm!

The treadmill that is next year’s guidebook is picking up pace, in fact it feels rather like running up the “down” escalator, something I have never been foolish enough to attempt. There is a persistent list of newly opened establishments that must be investigated pretty soon if they are to make it into the book which comes out in September. One of these contenders is Vanilla Black, a vegetarian restaurant that moved to London in May after being a great success in York. This resto first made it onto the radar while still in Yorkshire when it got an enthusiastic review from Jay Rayner. Hearing that any ambitious provincial restaurant has come to London and ended up in Took’s Court EC4 is enough to make the heart sink. However good the deal on rent, this is a very dry and dusty patch of Lawyerland hidden among the office blocks just south of Chancery Lane underground station. There won’t be any trade at the weekend, (which the proprietors have acknowledged by only opening Monday to Friday), but you have to wonder if upscale veggie food is what Rumpole and his mates have been crying out for.

The dining room is comfortable and not “over-designed”, service is friendly and the right side of informal. But it is the quality of the food that impresses most. When asked to suggest restaurants for a vegetarian dinner I always recommend the excellent South Indian restos that are scattered across town, or one of the French chefs who offers a decent “garden menu” alongside his meatier offerings.

There are several reasons why the food at Vanilla Black stands out, firstly it is elegant on the plate – you are not faced with large and worthy lumps of wholemeal stuff. Secondly the chef makes good use of British cheeses – the current menu name checks Red Leicester; Duckett’s Caerphilly; goats’ cheese; Longman’s cheddar; and Dorset Blue Vinney. And finally the kitchen has a good grasp of exotic spicing – well balanced curried dishes, pickles, chutneys.

Starters range from green beans with toasted sesame, croutons and lemon; to aged feta and toasted orange cake with peach chutney and green olives; Grenadine poached tomato and black olive;  or "deconstructed Puy lentil dhal with potato puree and curry oil" - very good indeed, upfront curry flavours and agreeably contrasting textures. The mains are also delightful: hickory smoked duck egg and Caerphilly pudding with pommes purée croquette and pineapple pickle - good flavours and a well made cheese pudding. Or steamed cabbage and Longman's cheddar with braised beans – a kind of re-assessment of stuffed cabbage leaves. Or a baked Blue Vinney and Bramley apple galette. Puds are good too, chilled melon soup; chocolate parfait. The wine list is not over greedy and the pricing is simple: £24 for two courses, £30 for three. There’s also a set lunch: £18 for two courses, and £23 for three.

Vanilla Black joins the very short list of London restaurants that serve vegetarian dishes so good, so precisely spiced and seasoned, and with such interesting combinations of taste and texture, that  even hardened meat eaters don’t miss their pound of flesh. Vanilla Black deserves a warm welcome.

Charles Campion

Vanilla Black, 17-18 Took's Court, EC4  (020 7242 2622)

Every now and then a theme imposes itself on the week. At this time of year the “stragglers” must be rounded up for my 2009 Restaurant Guide. Such are the limitations of the print cycle that I need to have the text finished any day now. Granted there will be some additions and subtractions as we go through the ordeal of proofing and proof-checking but by now the content is pretty much settled even if the book will not appear until September. By some fluke of fate last week became Japanese week. One visit was to the brand spanking new restaurant opened by Gary Yau (brother of the restaurateur superstar Alan Yau whose credits stretch from Wagamama to Hakkasan and Yau’atcha).

Gary Yau’s own pedigree restaurant-wise includes the un-lamented and rather strange Taman Gang at the Marble Arch end of Park Lane – not a runaway success. His new venture is called Aaya, you’ll find it towards the Regent Street end of Brewer Street, and it is very polished indeed. The design makes you look through the thesaurus for new ways to say “lavish”, “posh”, and “slick”. Upstairs there is a large cocktail bar with an array of glinting bottles and a dining room that looks good-sized until you go downstairs and find one twice as big with what may be London’s largest and swishest sushi counter. Pricing is fierce, service is friendly in a high style sort of way and the food is good and often innovative. For a greedy eater the portions are a bit on the elegant side, but the warm mushroom salad (think stir fry of enoki) was good; the tuna katsu tateki with wasabi dressing was a picture on the plate and delivered a good hit of flavour; the nigiri sushi was well made but blisteringly expensive - £6 for one small finger of seared fatty tuna is excessive however nice it may be. But there were inconsistencies in the prices - prawn tempura roll was only £6.50 for half a dozen rolls; and a dish of slow-cooked Kakuni pork belly is a genuine main course portion for just £8. Obviously you have to learn which bits of the extensive menu are a little over the top and which are not. Aaya is a modern, suave sort of Japanese restaurant where the food always looks exquisite and often tastes great as well. It is well worth a place in the Soho section of next year’s guide.

Later in the week, so luck would have it, I got to pay my first visit to Sake No Hana – Alan Yau’s take on a modern Japanese restaurant. It is located in that strange building on St James’s Street where escalators whizz you up to a first floor dining room, even the excitement of travelling by escalator had not been enough to save this site from ignominious closure in its last two incarnations – Che and Shumi. Now it has had a sprinkling of Yau magic and is a well designed, very modern, restaurant. The staff are friendly and you long to like the place. Unfortunately, for all but the very wealthy, the prices here are high enough to stop you enjoying the food. From the appetisers  a small portion of Japanese mountain yam with okra and cod roe was almost entirely tasteless – cold and crunchy certainly but unbelievably bland, yours for £5. Five small French beans given the tempura treatment are priced at £1.80... that’s over 30p a bean. The chanko nabe with fish ball and tofu is boiled up at table, a thin broth, tasteless fish balls, a handful of vegetables – “that’ll be £15”.  Bento Boxes have been introduced to try and drum up some lunch trade but they start at £25. The wine list quickly soars off out of reach: the cheapest wine is £41 a bottle; the sakes range from £12 to £283; there are 40 shochus ranging from £48 to £175.  The old adage “if you have to ask how much it will cost then you cannot afford it” may well be wholly appropriate here, but it’s too rich for my blood and for that of my readers so Sake No Hana will not be getting into next year’s guide.

Charles Campion

Aaya, 66-70 Brewer Street, W1 (020 7319 3888)

Sake No Hana, 23 St James's Street, SW1 (020 7925 8988)

Enter the Action Against Hunger prize draw and you and five friends could be sitting down to the ultimate Sunday lunch. Action Against Hunger has persuaded four Michelin starred chefs to each cook a course - Michel Roux junior, Pascal Aussignac, Giorgio Locatelli and Tom Aikens - and the lunch will be held at Taste of London on Sunday 22 June.

Winning the “Sunday lunch with the stars draw” will also get you and your guests free VIP entry to Taste of London on the Sunday, access to the British Airways Club Lounge, and £20 worth of “crowns” (the Taste of London currency).

There are only 1,000 draw tickets on sale and they cost £10 each. All the ticket money will go straight to Action Against Hunger to help with their work fighting malnutrition – and with the current food crisis and humanitarian catastrophes in countries such as Burma this is a time of great need.

For your ticket act now,  contact Action Against Hunger  - Milo Douglas at m.douglas@aahuk.org or call him on  020 8293 6190,  you may be on your way to the ultimate Sunday lunch!

Personally I look forward to a busy time at this year’s Taste of London – on the Thursday (19TH June) I have recklessly entered a cake decorating competition in aid of the charity Action Against Hunger. My opponents will be a mixed bag of other journos and famous chefs including Michel Roux junior – do you think he knows the old make-a-face with “Smarties” trick?

Then between 2.50pm and 3.30pm on Friday 20th June I will be doing a book signing (my Guide to London Restaurants) in the Waterstone’s Book Signing Lounge.

But more important than coming to gloat at my incompetence is the AAH draw, buy your ticket now! Contact Milo Douglas at m.douglas@aahuk.org or call him on  020 8293 6190

Taste of London is on Marylebone Green, Regent’s Park 19th to 22nd June 2008

Charles Campion