PHO at Westfield

I had better profess an interest here, and confess to a deeply unfashionable love of shopping malls that dates back to my childhood in Canada. To me, they were cosy yet exciting places, where you could guarantee being kept warm, dry and amused while outside the blizzard raged. Whole days could be spent drifting from store to store holding Mother's hand - sometimes buying, and sometimes eating. In a spooky reminder of those far-back North American days, there were snowflakes whirling when I arrived at Westfield in Shepherd's Bush.

I was meeting the actress, who was outraged that the President of Venezuela had recently halted work on a similarly large-scale shopping mall and instead appropriated it for government use. Apparently, he doesn't like shopping. What a fool.

The name Westfield is misleading - there isn't a field in sight. In fact, the only natural greenery I saw was on the high screen erected in front of the external restaurants (presumably to kill traffic noise) which was covered in climbing shrubs. Verdant and lush, it had the look of a faux Wimbledon and was surprisingly pleasing on the eye.

A short walk away from two Tube stations, the complex itself is futuristic. Curved and gleaming and pale turquoise, it reminded me of one of those overpriced vases you sometimes find for sale at the Hayward. Yet, rising up seamlessly between existing skyscrapers and contrasting with the vast skies of West London, the place has its own kind of stark beauty. And the statistics make you dizzy. Westfield sits on 43 acres. There are 265 shops. Seventy valets. And a choice of 50 restaurants. Yes, 50. So shift your mindset to grazing, which makes a much more sensible accompaniment to a shopping spree than a mammoth three-course blow-out.

Like an Opposition party manifesto, all tastes are catered for at Westfield. You can eat Italian, Greek, Mexican, French. Cupcakes, ice cream or risotto. It's a bit like all the different foodstuffs on offer at Borough Market, only here you have a roof, gushing water features and lots of escalators. It's a big enough place to get lost in and the maps provided are the kind James Bond gets given before a mission - but the staff are supremely helpful and will guide you.

This is mix-and-match eating. There are standalone restaurants inside and outside, plus a food court (where we ate). If you go with a group of picky friends who can't agree, you could all get food from different places and then eat it together.

I bought a delicious chicken sandwich and coffee from Birley Sandwiches while the actress queued at what she thought looked the most interesting venue. Pho was certainly the most popular, with a long queue that zigzagged like a share-price graph. Pho serves Vietnamese street food and is named after the national dish - a noodle soup with fresh herbs. In fact, all the food (and there were mountains of it) that she brought over to the table was outstandingly fresh. There were rice-paper-thin pancakes filled with prawns, lettuce and herbs and served with piquant dipping sauce. It was bargain-priced, too.

We ate pork and lemongrass meatballs and then spicy mango, shrimp and pork salad, topped with a crunchy caramel layer of peanuts. Next came a lemongrass beef bun noodle soup. I can't remember the name of anything - they all sounded like the words to songs boy scouts sing round a campfire.

Vietnamese cuisine isn't big on pudding, so we wandered downstairs to the Sacred coffee shop (we wondered if there was a sister store nearby named Profane) which was manned - or the female equivalent - by a delightful young woman from New Zealand. The coffee was excellent and we shared (or, rather, squabbled over) a giant slice of carrot cake, which unconventionally had a little paper container of jam and cream on the side, which tasted rather good. Suitably refreshed, we hit the shops.

I like Westfield. Not just because it makes me nostalgic for the past - it also happens to be easy. Every single shop you could ever want and enough space not to feel hemmed in. And Shepherd's Bush is the ideal location - it takes just minutes to get here from the centre of town.

Thank heavens we don't live in Venezuela, is all I can say.