There is just something so inexplicably attractive about Truc Vert that draws me back time and time again. A delicatessen by day where hordes of lunchtime crowds flock in to purchase goodies such as quiches, salads and scrumptious cakes, in the evening it transforms itself into a quaint and charming French restaurant with white tablecloths and tealight candles.

So what makes it so inexplicably attractive? The place has charm and warmth and it’s hard to miss from the moment you walk past its windows, peering into the restaurant as you do so, before eventually making your way over the threshold. It has a feel of a warm country cottage with its wooden furnishings and wooden floors and the simple touch of comforting paintings dotted throughout the room. It’s unpretentious and a seemingly safe haven from the throngs of shoppers that populate Oxford Street.

From the daily changing menu, the food is solid, competent fare, with few frills, but extremely tasty all the same. The ingredients are always fresh and wholesome, the dinner portion sizes satisfying, and all round the standard of the food is enough to make you think that £18 for two courses and £22.50 for three courses from the prix fixe menu, which is available between 6pm to 7:30pm, is truly great value. And there are a reasonable number of choices on the menu too, with five options for both starters and mains. For even more variety, there is also the a la carte menu where starters are priced at about £6 to £10 and mains at £15 to £18.

Sautéed squid with Thai style vegetables

On this visit, I settled on a sautéed squid with Thai style vegetables, bok choy, egg noodles and soy and spring onion sauce from the prix fixe menu. For a starter, the portions were overwhelming generous. The squid was exquisitely tender although the vegetables were overpowered by too much soy sauce.

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This restaurant is no longer open.

The humble cheeseburger at Flash

I was reading today about a piece of artwork commissioned by the Czech Republic, the current holders of the EU presidency. The artwork was meant to go on display at the European Council building in Brussels to mark the beginning of the Czech presidency. Completed by David Cerny, a Czech artist, the finished piece of work – the ‘Entropa Installation’ – is a mosaic of each of the EU members and the ‘national symbols’ of each country. The result has caused Bulgaria to lodge a complaint as the work of art depicts Bulgaria as a series of squat toilets. France seemingly fared better as a nation of strikeaholics. And Britain? Well, it isn’t even included in this particular piece of work.

I am sometimes amused by what can actually constitute pieces of art. When I read about the Entropa Installation, I simply laughed out loud. That was amusing in a funny ha-ha kind of way. At the other end of the spectrum, art can be amusing in a puzzling sort of way when it doesn’t quite connect with my brain. If you’re anything like me, you might have on occasion ambulated around an art gallery and stared blankly (or in confusion) at one of the pieces of artwork, and asked of yourself that all perplexing question: “Is this art”?

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Le Pont de la Tour

We had lunch last Friday at Le Pont de la Tour and I was ever so grateful that despite the freezing cold we’ve had to endure thus far this winter, at least this day turned out to be one of lovely sunshine beaming down over London. One of the endearing features of Le Pont de la Tour is that it has secured a prime location overlooking Tower Bridge, and so a sunny day makes for fine viewing indeed.

Le Pont de la Tour at lunch time is a place for the suits, if the attire of those dining at the three other tables at the restaurant were anything to go by. Certainly, it can be enough to make you feel uncomfortable if you are wearing anything but. And the price tag attached to the lunchtime menu (£19.50 to £25 for mains) might warrant most people to only lunch here if they’re on an expense account. I suspect Boris Johnson, Mayor of London, and the three colleagues he was dining with a few tables down would have been doing nothing but. Unfortunately they were seated a little too far away for me to be able to eavesdrop on any noteworthy gossip on the state of London’s affairs that I could share with you. But his presence paved the way for us to spend a good 10 minutes having a nice giggle (oh yes we did) about the sort of shenanigans we could potentially get up to involving Boris that might secure us a spot on the 6 o’clock news and a chance for our 15 minutes of fame.

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When a restaurant boasts the name of Alan Yau behind it, one cannot help but have high expectations. Alan Yau is the man synonymous with the success of Hakkasan and Yauatcha, both Michelin star holders, and other well-known establishments such as Busaba Eathai, Wagamama and the recently-opened gorgeous Milanese bakery, Princi. Such is his Midas touch, it seems only just to have high expectations when stepping through the door of one of his restaurants. So it was that I went to dinner at Sake no Hana (Flower of Sake) last night, another Alan Yau offering, giddy with the weight of expectation. Add the money of owner Evgeny Lebedev, son of a Russian oligarch, and a location in the heart of Mayfair, and you would seemingly have a blend to induce one huge success story.

But for the privilege of such a pedigree, a monied backdrop and said location, comes a price. Case in point, the beer. £9.50. Yes you read right, nine pounds and fifty pence. Ok, it was good beer, Suntory premium malt (a winner of the Grand Gold Medal at Monde Selection for Three Consecutive Years), and admittedly not a kind you might readily obtain in London. But still: £9.50? It was the same price as my cocktail, the ‘Gandara Dream’ (Kumquats, Diplomatico Reserva rum, Don Julio Silver tequila, Umeshu plum liqueur, almond sugar and green tea), which as delicious as it was, was more ice than drink.

Softshell crab salad with wasabi sauce

We started with a softshell crab salad with wasabi sauce (£10.50), although we had tried to start with two different scallop dishes: the prawn, scallop and lotus root katsu (£8), and the scallop and spring onion in miso mustard dressing (£8.50), only to be told that both the scallop dishes were unavailable. Huh? It was barely 7pm, and with Sake no Hana’s pricing levels and upmarket persona, this was all too disappointing.

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