Writers and commentators tend to pay particular attention to the fringes of the restaurant business. Pondering whether such and such a place is more of a gastropub than a restaurant… whether a new 150 seater is best classified as a restaurant or a brasserie… or whether the influx of hot new chefs from Francewill have an impact on London dining. It’s surprising that, with so many of us tracking the restaurant industry so obsessively, more of us don’t get things right more often.

The Pantechnicon Rooms is from the same stable as the Thomas Cubitt in Victoria. The Cubitt was a gastropub downstairs and a restaurant upstairs. The prices in the restaurant are fulsome if not quite fierce enough to provoke a sharp intake of breath. The standard of cooking is in the good-to-great bracket. The Pantechnicon Rooms moves things on. This place is one the site that was once a spectacularly seedy pub much beloved by SW1’s rugby players (Mainly Richmond and Saracens if my memory serves). With the new establishment we have another clear split between upstairs (a formal restaurant) and downstairs (an informal restaurant with bar). You’ll note that neither gastropub, pub, bistro, tavern, brasserie or inn are in any way appropriate pigeon holes. This place may be the beginning of a new genre – somewhere that’s upmarket from a gastropub but doesn’t wholly embrace restaurant snootiness.

The first floor restaurant is very comfortable with widely spaced tables and crisp service, the wine list is comprehensive, and the menu is long, relying heavily on seasonal British produce and perfectly in tune with the current trend towards big flavours, traditional influences and simple presentation. There’s a very fresh dressed Devon crab. There’s a splendid lobster cocktail. Steak tartare. Smoked trout (name checked as from the river Test). The mains tick the steak box; also duck magret; and rose veal with green beans salsa verde - a very good dish, it is easy to forget the pleasure of chewing a good piece of meat. Continental veal is pallid and genuine texture is somehow elusive. Puds range from dark chocolate marquise to a banana tart with sea salt caramel.

Downstairs the bar menu has much in common with the restaurant carte, although there are a range of “small plates” presumably for those “second bottle of Chablis” moments - charcuterie; Pantechnicon fish fingers; smoked buffalo mozzarella; lamb cutlets. Seating is the combination of stools and high counters that was pioneered at the Real Greek Souvlaki. There is one draught real ale but any elderly rugger folk looking for an echo of the Turk’s Head will be hard put to find one. This is a very slick operation and would look pretty ambitious and rather expensive were it in any other postcode, on Motcomb Street it seems perfectly at home.

Charles Campion

The Pantechnicon Rooms, 10 Motcomb Street, SW1 (020 7730 6074)

“Momo” Mazouz has a glint in his eye. He stalks around Sketch’s Gallery restaurant fretting about the service, worrying about the food and taking a personal interest in each and every party throughout the building. Where he gets the energy from is a mystery, but energy there is, crackling from his fingertips. The extravaganza that is Sketch opened in 2002 and is a joint venture between the tireless Momo and headlining French chef Pierre Gagnaire. When Sketch first opened critics took turns to put the boot in and their common theme was unjustifiably high prices. Perhaps everywhere else has caught up but now the prices (starters £8.50-£22; mains £11-£32; side dishes £3.50-£5; desserts £7-£10) do not seem quite so out of place given that it’s an upscale restaurant in Mayfair. It’s a shocking milestone to pass, but the idea of paying £70-£80 per person for the food element of dinner no longer seems outlandish. Judge the Gallery on the basis of its cooking (not concerning oneself with the buzz of the place; the video art show; or the silky service) and it makes a good impression.

The style of the dishes may be a little rarefied – think Michelin style, very complex French food with confident presentation and the occasional jolting combination of ingredients. But at the basis of everything is a respect of quality ingredients – there’s a main course pigeon dish “roast fillet of Anjou pigeon with sarlette / marinated, then deep fried pigeon leg / red pepper and mango marmalade / jus emulsion with foie gras”. The fruity flavours work well with the pigeon that is barely cooked and wine red - the meat itself impossibly tender. Skilfully sourced and skilfully cooked – the head chef Jean Denis le Bras (Mon. Gagnaire is billed as consultant) has real talent. Also impressive were starters like “Kiki” – this is roast saddle of rabbit / rillettes with cumbawa / coco bean velouté / Venetian jelly / caramelised pistachios. What you get is the fascinating contrasting textures of the rabbit and the jelly, it’s a very impressive plateful. Some of the most charming dishes are hiding out in the side dishes section – “ronde lettuce and anchovies” is a stunning combination with the vinegary pickled anchovies acting as “dressing” for crisp lettuce leaves. And then there’s the mashed potato. Truly greedy people will forgive much in exchange for mash this good, and this buttery. Puds are also epic with the inspired choice being “From the Parlour” which earns you three or four “petits gateaux” – presumably a device for using up the day’s surplus stock from the tea room. You’re unlikely to pop into the Gallery for supper on your way home; and dinner here is probably best saved for a special occasion (note that the Gallery is only open in the evening); but this place has bags of atmosphere and well cooked, sophisticated food.

If the Gallery sounds a bit rich for your blood, then BBC Radio Four could do with a helping hand. Entries for the 2008 Food and Farming Awards must close at midnight on August 10th 2008 and one area where they are keen to see more suggestions is the Take-away category. To nominate your favourite chippy, kebabbery, burger bar, Chinese, Indian or whatever.. just jot down a couple of hundred words saying why you think it’s so special and post them with your name and address to:

BBC Food and Farming Awards, Room 6045, Broadcasting House, Portland Place, London, W1A 1AA

Or you can send an email to foodawards@bbc.co.uk. You’ll find more details at www.bbc.co.uk/foodawards, and the other categories are also worth a look.

More wilful self-promotion! click here to view this photo

Charles Campion

The Gallery at Sketch, 9 Conduit Street, W1 (020 7659 4500) www.sketch.uk.com

View this photo

Even now, in top-secret offices at a hidden location, planners, designers and marketeers are burning midnight oil as they seek the Holy Grail for their masters the mid-range restaurant companies. What they are all looking for is a modern fish and chip concept that can be rolled out and turned into a fast growing chain. Doubtless the current economic climate has forced them to re-double their efforts, in times when people are keen to cut their spending, fish and chips is what it has always been: the meeting place between good food and good value. The only fly in the ointment being that it is so very difficult to get right. The fish has to be bought carefully, cooked carefully, priced keenly and sold the instant it comes out of the fryer. While it takes a number of years for a chip shop to gain the confidence of its customers, it only takes one soggy, smaller than usual portion for the word to spread that standards have slumped, thus spooking the nervous herd of customers so badly that they trample off to try elsewhere. This is why family-owned, old-established, small, individual fish and chip shops always serve the best food; and is also the reason that so many expensive fledgling “chains” of fish and chippers have crashed and burned.

Lauriston Road, in E9 on the edge of Victoria Park, has a pleasant villagey feel to it. A decade or so ago it was home to the only restaurant with aspirations in the locale – the bistro called Frocks, which has recently been sold and awaits a new fate. But during the last few years Lauriston Road has gained a very decent gastropub – The Empress of India; the local Indian has spruced itself up; a splendid butcher’s shop has opened (this is the second London outlet of Marylebone’s Ginger Pig), these all signs of a gastro-renaissance marking the area as being just the place for a good, modernist, fish and chip shop. The Fish House follows the traditional layout, as you walk in the fryers are in front of you and there is a takeaway zone, the dining room lies to the right. The tables are large and glass topped, the chairs look dangerously stylish but turn out to be large, modern and comfortable.

The menu is backed up by a specials board that ventures into fish restaurant rather than chip shop territory. Tuna salad Niçoise. Saffron and lemon seafood risotto. A whole sea bream. Barracuda with sun-dried tomato pesto. Cold cooked King prawns with garlic mayonnaise. A traditional prawn cocktail with apple and dill – this came in a sundae glass and hit the nostalgia notes with chopped lettuce, plump prawns and pink gloop – perhaps it needed a tad more gloop but very creditable, the dill was particularly welcome. Fortunately the core items here – battered haddock or cod – are well done: light golden batter with the fish steamed within. Add splendid chips. A bowl of rather sweet, luminous green mushy peas. And top wallies (this is the Londoner’s pet-name for the sweet and sour gherkin), here they are the size of miniature Zeppelins.

Charles Campion

The Fish House, 126-128 Lauriston Road, E9 (020 8533 3327)

According to best estimates there are about 20,000 restaurants, cafes, canteens and other eateries in London, which makes the job of picking 400 or so for the guidebook a tricky one. What is also self-evident is that different restos offer different things to different customers. While West End heavy hitters strive for perfection on a plate and charge like a wounded buffalo there are a plenty of restaurants whose raison d’etre is to feed the people who live locally. A genuine neighbourhood restaurant is a real asset, so if you live on, or near to, Marylands Road in W9 you’ll know all about Tsiakkos & Charcoal.

This restaurant is a small, rather ragged, old-style, Greek Cypriot establishment. The tables are covered in garish printed oil cloth, the walls are home to a strange assortment of pictures and there is a prevailing feeling that you are in someone’s rather untidy back room. To the rear is a garden area roofed in with some elderly sheets of corrugated perspex. Music blares out – anyone old enough to remember the Doors will feel right at home - and there’s a computer with a DVD playing so that the those cooking in the open kitchen behind the counter have something to entertain them.

The food here doesn’t win any gastronomic medals, the starters round up the usual suspects from the mezze repertoire. A soft taramasalata - rather long on bread and short on roe; a bowl of fassiola (which would be better had they used large beans rather than the smaller haricot style pulse); loucanica sausage; bastourma; these weigh in at a wholly reasonable £3 each. There are also some salads (at £6) these are great value, a large bowl full of perky tomatoes, sound feta, crisp cucumber. Mains include lamb kebab, chicken, or kleftico. These come with a choice of salad or rather good savoury rice. The meat is generally overcooked but portions are good and the prices don’t stray over £10.

Tsiakkos is a glowing example of a restaurant where the quality of the food is not of over-riding importance. If you live within a half mile radius it’s a brilliant place to pop into for some supper on a summer’s evening. A large bottle of cold Keo beer or a sound bottle of reasonably priced wine, some dips, and a kebab. Or make up a table with friends out the back and ignite a party. You can expect cheery service, honest food and sensible prices, which means that Tsiakkos is something of a local hero.

Charles Campion

Tsiakkos & Charcoal, 5 Marylands Road, W9 (020 7286 7896)