Grace and Flavour: Rochelle Canteen

I arrived at Rochelle Canteen in Shoreditch fresh off the train from five days in Blackpool, longing for 3G broadband, coffee which wasn't a Mellow Birds sachet with UHT milk, and a plate of anything not crudely made of refried trans fats served with sploshed with red sauce from a farting bottle. I needed London badly and Rochelle Canteen slapped my face with everything I adore about being here. This restaurant will make no sense to a non-Londoner, the mere description will have them mopping the corners of their eyes with a napkin in mirth. The canteen serves only lunch and breakfasts on weekdays. Forget dinner, forget weekends, you snooze, you lose.

It's hidden down back streets, on an ex-council estate where a discreet buzzer on a high brick wall permits entry into a Harry Potter-esque schoolyard. You dine in a small, sparce, white conservatory, on shared plain formica tables, surrounded by enormo-spectacled fifty-something art gallery owners, silent Japanese foodie tourists and gossipy locals. The menu is a simple white A4 sheet offering exemplary Potted Pork with a crowd of vibrant green mini-gherkins, great hunks of white Brill with saffron courgettes, hearty Ox Liver or Lancashire Hotpots. No booze is available - it's BYO - although the Acai juice at £8 juice tastes like good virgin Sangria.

The food is staggeringly good. The Celeriac Soup was the queen of comfort foods, I'd like a daily flagon delivered to my house. After a week in taste-bud wilderness, a bowl of tender lamb with turnips restored my faith in knives and forks and I swear the bowl of buttered greens single-handedly saved me from the brink of scurvy. I'm a great believer that puddings are an exact science and I'm certain whoever made my Bakewell Tart with Jersey Cream was possibly wearing a white coat and lab goggles. It was perfection. On several occasions since this lunch I've deliberated on this moist, moreish tart, with slightly chewy toasted almonds a zingy layer of home-made raspberry gooey jamminess and perfectly doled out pastry. Also, many raunchy food-porn direct message tweets have since been swapped with my lunch partner about the Bakewell's partner in calorie-crime: marmalade ice cream served with palmiers. Oh London, I love you, let us never be apart again.