Best for Father's Day

All over the country, greeting-card manufacturers are laying on extra cardboard in anticipation of another good weekend for sales. This time we are being encouraged to celebrate Father's Day: a spurious upstart sort of holiday allegedly invented in Spokane, Washington, in 1910 (or so the card marketeers would have it).

What is on record is that by 1966 the card chaps had a solid enough pressure group to get President Lyndon Johnson to sign a proclamation fixing Father's Day as the third Sunday in June. It's all a good excuse to go out for a slap-up meal, but what kind of restaurant should you plump for?

On the one hand, there's the restos that any right-minded father would choose for himself, though they may be less than welcoming to children. Or you can rifle through the child-friendly places until you find one good enough for a special Sunday lunch.

Le Petit Max
Riverside Plaza, Chatfield Road, SW11 (020-7223 0999). Mon-Sun £70

On the kid's choice/dad's choice continuum, Le Petit Max lies smack in the middle, probably because it's a foreign restaurant. Max Renzland may have been born British but he is determined that should not stop him being French, which means he welcomes customers of any age who relish bourgeois French food and eat well and enthusiastically.

The menu here is laden with familiar dishes - grilled Crottin de Chavignol salad, steak frites, coq au vin with mash, rum baba and pot au chocolat. These are the kind of ribstickers that, when teamed with a serious quantity of rustic red, will bring a smile to the face of most fathers.

Racine
239 Brompton Road, SW3 (020-7584 4477). Mon-Sun £90

Racine offers a very decent lunch. It is a good lunch on any Sunday, whether sanctified by Lyndon Johnson or not. Like Le Petit Max, Racine pays homage to the real France - somewhere increasingly hard to find. Expect slick service, a comfortable atmosphere and unaggressive pricing. As for the French dishes - celeriac remoulade with Bayonne ham, tete de veau with sauce ravigote, roast skate, rabbit, a serious cheeseboard, moody Armagnacs - expect to need a good sleep after lunching here. Happy Father's Day.

8 Haverstock Hill, NW3 (020-7482 9003). Mon-Sun £60
Marine Ices is old-fashioned, charming, erratic and particularly child-friendly - they can sit and scoff ice cream in lifethreatening quantities. Of course, fathers are not immune to this kind of single-minded excess. The sound Italian menu here is just that, sound and Italian. There are decent pasta dishes (particularly those from the oven, such as lasagne and cannelloni) and the pizzas are first rate. The house wine is bearable. Move swiftly on to the ice-cream delights. For the grown-ups there are top-flight sorbets - the lemon is particularly notable. The ice-cream sundaes are good too - there is even a Knickerbocker Glory. Then there are bombe, cassata and coppa. Who says fathers have to act their age?

Chutney Mary
535 King's Road, SW10 (020-7351 3113). Mon-Sun £90

The bald truth is that many dads nurture an affection for curry, and while getting beered up and hitting the high-street Indian restaurant may not be the best plan for a Sunday lunch in June, with guile it is possible to please everyone.

Chutney Mary is a large, elegant and sophisticated Indian restaurant. Some dishes are fancy enough for a maharajah, while others have the honest ring of home-cooked favourites. Service is slick and there is an unusually long and considered wine list with some really smart bottles lying in wait for anyone in celebratory mode.

Boxwood Cafe
The Berkeley Hotel, Wilton Place, SW1 (020-7235 1010). Mon-Sun £70

When you are obliged to bring the little darlings, the Boxwood is a good option. It's chic, comfortable and verging on flash but the menu (which has recently been revamped by head chef Stuart Gillies) ploughs through an array of classic favourites. There's a smoked bacon and spinach salad and a Caesar salad with garlic croutons.

On to 'sandwiches' which translates as lobster in a roll with Thousand Island dressing, or a burger made from veal and foie gras. Children are pandered to with their own menu that offers homemade chicken nuggets and so forth. There are even Scooby-Doo goody bags, to ensure about three-minutes' peace.