Head for land

One of the main things this job has taught me is life's too short (and my metabolism too slow) to eat bad food. Retaining the distinctive, functional and classic design of the human form is easy. You can eat fois gras, avocados, even lard as part of a diet which is nutritionally useful and varied and still get to take a decent body to the grave.

As long as, that is, you stop eating when you are full. Harder than it sounds, as a lot of people will know.

There are only ever three reasons for overeating. One: you are in a Cool Hand Luke cream cracker/pie/boiled egg eating contest. Two: you need a shrink. That's when food is a substitute for what you really need: love, free time, friends, clarity. Food fills emotional gaps, which are much more roomy than the average stomach, so it shows elsewhere. Recently, the Priory released research that found half of adults in the UK eat to smother feelings of boredom, loneliness and stress, highlighting the relationship between what we eat and how we feel. We're talking food going from a thing of joy and pleasure to something to be feared.

Paradoxically it is hard to overeat really good food. I ate my first grouse of the season at Locatelli's this week. A mild young bird, boned for me, and served with its livers chopped up on unsalted Tuscan bread with a slosh of marsala. Ruthlessly good, yet I left some. It's plain, boring, unsatisfying food that makes you overeat as you constantly try to satisfy yourself.

Here's the third friend of gluttony: unsatisfying food, particularly stodgy stuff, doesn't press the off button.

My meal at the Landseer comes to mind here, where the portions were hearty, but the flavours somewhat lacking. My starter, a vast slab of chicken liver parfait, had a liverish graininess to it, and tasted plain, more like chopped liver than a decadent, rich parfait. Still, liver's enjoyable - and this was cooked to an enticing pinkness - yet it had barely a trace of seasoning. Dull.

The onion confit was too vinegary. I was eating with two other critics, Ben and Carl. Ben said his warm chilli beef salad was basically a nice steak sandwich. Carl thought his grilled mackerel with gooseberry confit was nice as well, but I found the confit more like a sour pie filling and terribly bullish.

The other two liked the spacious room, pot plants, huge windows, sofas, old Methodist church chairs, glass atrium - 'Less pub, more brasserie,' said Ben. Carl thought it would be nice on a Sunday morning with lots of space to stretch your papers into. Apparently there is a cat around somewhere - I wished I could see it because the whole place felt a bit cold.

As our starters were the size of main courses, main courses would require air freighting in, presumably. Lamb burger looked exciting on the plate, but the big chips were a tad cardboard and warm rather than hot, the little roasted shallots were unpalatably tepid, the lamb burger was fine but too lightly seasoned and a billowing quantity of salad in a too-sharp dressing covered the plate and its flavours.

It wasn't bad, not at all, but halve the amount of food on the plate and it would have been less taxing. Ben's fishcake was over potatoed and underseasoned and the poached eggs on top were hard. Carl's venison lacked that precious jewelled ruby centre, but he liked the bits and bobs that came with it. 'This place is almost really good,' he said. I listen to him because he writes for the FT, which impresses a slackmouthed simpleton like me.