Best places to push the boat out

I have a real soft spot for The Connaught. Sadly it has been changed a bit: to get to the restaurant one now has to walk through what used to be a quiet little side room, which has been transformed into a bar. This is probably some new-fangled preoccupation with what in, modern jargon, would be called maximising footfall or whatever. The restaurant and grill room are largely as I have always remembered them. The Connaught could never be groovy so it should never try, instead it is perhaps the stateliest, grandest place to eat in the entire country. Michel Bourdin is a great great chef, his sole Jubilee, created to mark the Queen's silver jubilee, is a classic as is the kipper p?t?, which at £9.80 is the second cheapest entry on the hors d'oeuvres section of the menu. Bourdin has a reverence for turbot, which is reflected in the price (£42 to £45), but then main courses routinely hit £45. There is also a set menu for a more modest £28.50.

Carlos Place, W1 (020 7491 0668)
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Kaspia

The original caviar restaurant and still the best, Kaspia occupies a discreet mews location just off Berkeley Square. If you have money to burn do not set fire to it, simply bring it here and spend it on caviar. What is so effective about Kaspia is the atmosphere. It is so tucked away - even when you have found the mews you have to walk through a little shop to reach it - and a place where the woes of the world disolve into a blur of fine service, champagne (or vodka) and sturgeon eggs. There are other dishes and some of them are rather good - the pave of turbot with lasagne of roasted langoustines with caviar veloute (a dangerously affordable £23.50) or the grilled Dover sole they are positively giving away at just £17.50. But don't worry, you can make up any shortfall in expenditure by ordering the baked potato garnished with Beluga (delicious, nutritious and given the price of potatoes, an eminently reasonable £104.20).

18A Bruton Place, W1 (020 7493 2612)
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The Square

The Square is not my sort of place; however, it does what it does brilliantly, namely operates as the swankiest haute cuisine restaurant in London. Undercloths on the table cost something in the region of £100 a metre and the seats are covered in something that is reminiscent of Louis Vuitton Damier canvas. At The Square you are not really a player unless you are prepared to drop four figures on a bottle of wine. However, this place is also serious about its food: the sort of thing that you can expect to eat is fillet of beef with risotto of oxtail and foie gras; roast pigeon with a stuffed Savoy cabbage leaf and Madeira; or roast seabass with handrolled macaroni, cepes and thyme.

6-10 Bruton Street, W1 (020 7495 7100)
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Le Gavroche

A genuinely top place - don't let the fact that it is neither the newest nor freshest looking restaurant in town dissuade you. It really is one of the best. I do not get down here that often, but when I do I am never disappointed. The young Roux who cooks here wants you to have a good time rather than a quasi-religious experience, thus the staff are well drilled, service, food and wines are impeccable, but it is also the sort of place where you might come if you wanted to seduce someone. I have to admit that I was sceptical about Le Gavroche until I came to eat here but now I recommend that anyone with a few hundred quid and an afternoon to spare comes down here for lunch. For fine, French-style food and excellent service I can think of few places better.

43 Upper Brook Street, W1 (020 7408 0881)
Review

The Oak Room Marco Pierre White

Marco Pierre White is so famous that he need no longer cook, but merely lend his name to restaurants. His success in this would suggest that he is as adept at running restaurants as he was at cooking in them: I have eaten well in both Quo Vadis and The Criterion. However The Oak Room is still regarded as the flagship operation. The room is so grand that I am surprised that punters are not charged an entry fee. To judge from Fay Maschler's most recent visit, Robert Reid, who now cooks here, does not let Marco down at all. The amuse-bouche was perhaps the best and most enticing prelude to a meal that she could remember, while a dish of poached egg with tomato was described as 'a Faberg? gem'. I can hardly think of a nicer thing to say about a restaurant. And if you feel you need confine yourself to the obscenely reasonably priced set menu, then at least let yourself go on the wine list.

Le Meridien, 21 Piccadilly, W1 (020 7437 0202)
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