Nice, but food emporium badge is a bit silly

One of the books that terrified me as a child was The Day of the Triffids, a science fiction book about giant plants that take over the planet. Written by the underrated John Wyndham, a memorable chapter has the hero wandering around a deserted London where the familiar looks awfully strange. It's a long time since I read it, but I was reminded of it the other day, pondering how, at the end of July, familiar scenes in London begin to change. The reason is that we're all off on holiday (hope-fully to find some sun) and as we vacate our city, the tourists - rather than tall deadly plants lashing out with their stings - move in. Streets usually full of business people become deserted; while other places, normally quiet, throng with life.

Like a lot of Londoners, I find tourists a mixed blessing. They're like dentists. You know you need them but you dread your encounter with them. I have a wish list for tourists. I wish they wouldn't stop dead in a clump on Oxford Street. Or mill around outside fast-food restaurants. Or stare at me from the top of tourist buses making me feel like a specimen in a lab. Or ask where Westminster Abbey is when they are standing in front of it.

At this time of year, some parts of the capital really are taken over by visitors: they flock in like the pigeons before Ken got his hawks on them (perhaps he's currently training them to swoop down on Boris's bike). Knightsbridge, and Brompton Road in particular, is one of those places where you can't move for someone staring in utter confusion at an A-Z. It's a funny old area - prosperous, but rather ugly - mainly thanks to the busy road. It has the fairground glamour of Harrods at one end, and the imposing magnificence of the Natural History Museum at the other. And surprisingly, it's where a lot of smart Londoners still go shopping and eating. The shops and restaurants in Beau-champ Place are mostly for the very rich and the very thin, with the possible exception of the traditional Italian Montpeliano over the road, and the sexy Zuma nearby for the more fashion conscious.

But in every part of the city there are areas that go unappreciated by visitors and Londoners alike and this one is no different. Recently, a friend from out of town insisted on seeing Brompton Oratory, one of our oldest Catholic churches. It has a good school attached, which the Blairs found very handy in the days (how long ago, thankfully, they seem already) when they lived in Downing Street.

The church is a dark, solemn and beautiful building, but astonishingly there were only three other people in there. If we'd been in Paris or Rome it would have been full of people eager to view its abundant treasures.

Not far from this basilica is the Brompton Quarter Café, where I took an architect friend to dinner in the restaurant. Architects are my favourite kind of people: it's their combination of aesthetics and practicality which is so irresistible. (Goethe wonderfully described architecture as 'frozen music', which would be an enchanting name for a One Aldwych cocktail.)

I wasn't sure how my designer friend would judge the interior of the Brompton Quarter, but he approved of the high level of natural light flooding in (which is apparently life-enhancing). There is a restaurant downstairs and a café above - and the latter looked much more fun, but unfortunately we were booked in at the restaurant, which specialises in pan-Mediterranean food.

A starter spaghetti with tomato sauce was fine -it's easy to muck up such a simple dish - and my guest's seared scallops were surprisingly good. My main course was organic Lebanese skewered chicken served on mash - something you wouldn't try at home! But I ate every bit of it. No pudding (unfortunately, there were no ladies present to insist on it) but we drank the usual Sancerre.

This is a perfectly nice neighbourhood restaurant, although I thought the 'food emporium' badge a bit silly (don't all good restaurants 'make their own food'?). The only drawback was the hordes of fat Americans (which is rapidly becoming a tautology) ordering hamburgers. I wonder whether, as well as instruction in the use of Oyster cards, all tourists should be banned from ordering fast food except from fast-food restaurants. Or let's send the Triffids after them.

Who goes there?
Well-heeled Knightsbridge types and Cameron Diaz. Mark 'Return of the Mack' Morrison is a regular.