Hooray! There’s something magical about coincidences; this is posting number 100 on this blog and tomorrow is publication day for the 2009 edition of my restaurant guide. This year the guide is bigger than ever before (over 400 restaurants – all recommended, no makeweights) and there’s a record 79 new restaurants to visit.

The foreword is by Tom Parker Bowles – who is very kind – “…armed with this book, you need nothing more than a healthy appetite to find the best of London eating” and the book has notched up some flattering comments elsewhere “Gives you all the information you need”, Fay Maschler.  “Cannot be bettered”, Giles Coren. “The definitive guide to eating out in London", Alex James. "He's the expert's expert, the restaurant critic that other critics turn to first". Toby Young.

If you a regular reader of this blog you will have learnt about some of these new restaurants from postings during the past year, but there’s no substitute for browsing through the crisp pages of a new book, (Giles Coren also defined an earlier edition as “the best bog book ever”).

I hope you buy a copy, support bookshops or go to Amazon! As the saying goes “No bad meal can ever be cheap enough” If my guide saves you from only one disaster it will be money well spent.

Charles Campion