John Charlick

Many moons ago, I was a young graduate working near Chancery Lane.
The smoky old-man boozer where we used to go on Friday nights is now an airy gastro pub, and the cafe where I bought my morning croissant and coffee for 99 pence is long gone.
But one local institution is still going strong -- John Charlick.
It's a tiny deli, serving sandwiches and salads to lawyers and other locals for three decades worth of lunchtimes.

I was pleased to see that my favourite mackrel pate is still on the short menu. Spread thickly on rye bread it still tasted absolutely divine.
There are a couple of tables outside, but Gray's Inn Road isn't the prettiest spot. If you have kids, grab your sandwich and head to Coram's Fields, a seven acre playground and park in to which adults are only allowed if accompanied by a minor. Or, for a more serene atmosphere, head to Gray's Inn Field.

John Charlick, 142 Gray's Inn Road, Holborn, WC1X 8AX; Tel.
020 7278 9187 www.charlick.co.uk

Pearl

The "modern French" food is masterminded by TV-regular Jun Tanaka, and the name harks back to Pearl Assurance who once occupied the grand building in the heart of London's law district. Real pearls, though, are everywhere, hanging off the ceiling in jawdropping chandeliers.

Considering a single main course will normally set you back a whopping £31.50, the toptable three-courses-for-£30 seemed like a vertiable steal. But be careful, supplements and drinks will quickly inflate the bill.



I am surprised by my strarter of osso buco -- a Milanese dish of braised veal shanks -- which essentially came deep-fried. Still, the meat was tender and as a cheese-loved I quite enjoyed the addition of mozarella. The accompanying artichokes had an unpleasant pickled flavour though and the cold roasted peppers, though nice, tasted like they could have come from a posh jar.




My main course is also not really a winner, the tortellini are tiny, with little sign of the advertised parmesan, and the Swiss Chard turns out to be just an accompaniment rather than a filling. It's a bit bland and confirms my theory that you should steer clear of vegetarian food in expensive restaurants.



Others fare betters, sampling the sea Bream with clams, grapefruit vinaigrette wild leeks and samphire,



and a beautifully pink rump of salt marsh lamb with wild garlic and beans.



In the only desert we sample the dark chocolate contrasts beautifully with the slight tartness of raspberries. And, as all the food, it looks stunning on the plate.



The artisan cheeses come with a £6.50 supplement - a bit much when you only get six slivers from what is, admitedly, a very impressively burdened cheese trolley. We ask the sommelier to recommend a red wine for the cheese. His choice is quite dry and we are not that impressed - something fruitier, more full bodied might have gone better. We are even less impressed when the glasses appear on the bill at around 13 quid each, costing more than the champagne. They are not very gracious when we complain, but do remove one of the glasses from the (already quite hefty) bill.

It leaves a bit of a sour impression. Overall I would say the setting is stunning but taste-wise the food is merely good -- which at these prices isn't enough.

Pearl Restaurant & Bar, 252 High Holborn, WC1V 7EN; Tel. 020 7829 7000; Tube: Holborn; ww.pearl-restaurant.com

Ciao Bella

Ciao Bella is enormously popular - on a wet, miserable Tuesday evening even the barely-sheltered outside tables are abuzz, and the two stories indoors also fill up. There is an old school, traditional Italian hospitality vibe - it's the kind of place where you feel you should know the owner.



I arrive first, and they willingly bring out my tap water, as well as plates of olives and chunks of gutsy parmesan (but be careful - though unbidden, these will appear on the menu at £2.50 a pop). We dither over the lengthy menu and luckily decide to skip on the starters.

The main course platefuls of pasta are ginormous - each enough to feed two or even three pretty hungry people. The meatballs in spaghetti con polpette (£7.20) are as big as potatoes, while spaghetti all'aragosta (by the far the most expensive thing on the menu at £15.50) comes with what looks like an entire lobster. Of the four of us, only one comes anywhere near finishing, though not through dislike of the food. Even the signature tagliatelle "Ciao Bella" (£6.80) is surprisingly tasty despite mixing salmon with dolcelatte. The valpolicella (£14.50) is very quaffable lubricant for a pleasant, low key evening.

Everyone should have a good local Italian, and Ciao Bella fits the bill very well. It would work as well for a large group as a loved up couple. Plus, being Italian, they happily welcome children too. My loyalty, though, lies firmly with Venezia and its dolcelatte steaks.

Ciao Bella, 86-90 Lamb's Conduit St, WC1N 3LZ; Tel. 0207 2424119 www.ciaobellarestaurant.co.uk

Number Twelve

I was intrigued by Number Twelve -- it's not often that you get good reviews for hotel restaurants (unless they are really super-posh hotels).
This restaurant also happens to be based in the hotel where we stayed for a couple of nights many moons ago, while flat-hunting for our move to London. Now we are plotting our departure (for a few years) so a visit to the restaurant had a nice full circle feel to it.
The hotel has had a complete refit in the intervening years -- my memories are all of chintz and flowery bed spreads, but the photos on the website are all minimalist chic. The restaurant is modern too, but still feels like a hotel eaterie, its decor unmemorable except for the pretty flower stems etched into the flower-to-ceiling windows.
The place was empty, which didn't add to the atmosphere, but then it was 2.30pm on a Sunday. Luckily they sat us at a window overlooking the narrow Woburn Walk, with its pretty balconies, so we could people watch and utterly forget about the empty restaurant behind us. Plus we got two friendly waiting staff to ourselves, ensuring speedy service.



The home-made bread selection was amazing and, at £2, utterly bargainous. I could come here and just eat that with a glass of wine and consider it a pretty perfect repast. This included bread topped with manchengo-like cheese, a croissant-shaped roll speckled with walnuts, a focaccia-tyle cube studded with a cherry tomato .... and plenty of fragrant olive oil to dip it all in.



The 'small' chicory salad (£5.95) featured half a chicory head, its bitterness off-set by slices of pear and walnut, in a surprisingly light dressing Coston Basset stilton (they are big on provenance here), all topped with crispy fried parsley.



The juicy Donald Russell rib eye (£12) came with a gratin dauphinoise which managed to be utterly moreish despite being light on the cream and the cheese, beautifully cooked French green beans and a cute shot glass of the potent meat juices.

From the more than two dozen (!) wines available by the glass or a 375 ml carafe, I chose a glass of the cheapest -- a rich, pungent Temparanillo for a very reasonable £3.50. Generally I'd say the place was pretty good value (especially if you fill up on the bread!) -- their pre-theatre menu includes half a bottle of wine per person, and comes at a very reasonable £22.95 for two courses or £25.95 for three.
And they even give some very nice freebie cakes with the bill!



My biggest regret was that, as it was lunchtime, we were too full to try the huge cheese selection from La Fromagerie (£8.95). Guess we'll just have to come back!

PS While you are in the area, I can highly recommend a visit to the Wellcome Collection, where, among other things, you can see every possible design of forceps, a shrunken head and Napoleon's toothbrush. They do great 30 minute tours perfectly tailored to our (my) modern short attention spans.

Number Twelve, 12 Upper Woburn Place, WC1H 0HX; Tel. 0207 693 5425; Tube: Euston or Russell Square; www.numbertwelverestaurant.co.uk; closed Saturday lunchtime and Sunday evening.
There's a 25% off food deal on toptable at the moment, and on our bill there was also a voucher for 25% off food if you come back within a month.

Shanghai Blues - Notes of Class

In our search for live music eateries, we'd never previously considered Shanghai Blues. It looks a bit scary and unwelcoming, hidden inside a door-manned building on a busy road near Holborn. Plus, I'd never seen it in Time Out and the like, and thus hadn't really twigged that the "blues" bit was a reference to live music. But now, luckily, our ignorance of the place has been remedied by a Saturday night visit. This is the kind of place where you wouldn't feel at all out of place in your swirliest cocktail dress, and where the doorman will shoo you away in a pair of shorts. We had got our act together too late for a table in the restaurant, and so lounged instead on sofa-type seats in the bar. The really rather good jazz band played from a balcony above us (though you can sit on that level too, possibly with a cover charge). The cocktail list looked stunning, but £8 a pop. So we opted instead for a delicious bottle of New Zealand sauvingon blanc (at £25 this was the cheapest thing on the shortened bar wine list - though they may well be cheaper options in the extended version - but this was no vin de pays, so I didn't mind paying). It came with free nibbles of spicy nuts and prawn crackers. In a way, it was a bonus that they put the bottle in an ice bucket out of our reach, or it would have gone much more quickly! The £12 selection of dim sum dumplings from the short bar menu certainly didn't hang around. The dumplings were tender and delicious, though far too few in number to make much of a dent in my hunger. Next time we will book in advance, bring the credit card and settle in for a night of sophistication. Alternatively, this would be a great place to come for a cocktail to kick start a night out - £8 isn't so much if you only have the one, especially if you factor in the free nibbles, the free music and the glamorous setting.

Shanghai Blues, 193-197 High Holborn, WC1V 7BD; Tel: 20-7404-1668; Tube: Holborn; www.shanghaiblues.co.uk

Norfolk Arms

Who would've thought that a lick of cream-coloured paint could make such a big difference? The Brunswick centre has morphed, almost overnight, from a dump, to a shiny, trendy, desirable hotspot. The area around the centre also seems to be basking in new energy, with lots of lovely looking pubs. The Norfolk Arms has tables on the street for the sun-lovers who are brave enough to withstand the spring chills. Inside there is a cosy, European feel. The tables, chairs, floor and wall are all roughly coloured in creams and whites. The wine comes in glass tumblers and there are yummy-looking sausages hung behind the bar. We started with 1/2 pints of juicy prawns served with delightfully yellow home-made mayonnaise for dunking. The main course (chosen from the £10 set menu as part of a token-collect offer in the Times) was lentil and squid stew - a hearty bowl of puy lentils, blackened further with squid ink and sprinkled with bits of squid. My one complaint was that it would have tasted even better with the addition of some juicy chorizo. Tapas plates carried past us to other tables looked pretty good too and we needed a big dose of will power to resist ordering more wine (a very quaffable rose for £14) and a plate of charcuterie "for dessert". This is the sort of place you could easily linger in on lost afternoons.

Norfolk Arms, 28 Leigh Street, WC1H 9EP; www.norfolkarms.co.uk; Tube: Russell Square

Acorn House

Last night we discovered that the rumours are true, Kings Cross is indeed 'up and coming'. OK, round the station it's still unquestionably a dump. But veer off on to the dark side streets and you will find not one but two shiny new(ish) restaurants. And not just any restaurants, but the ultra trendy, organic, low-on-the-food-miles and fully-booked-at-dinner-time kind. The organic, eco friendly Acorn House was able to fit us in a bit earlier than the funkily decorated Konstam -- which specialises in food produced in London. So we went organic. The menu featured about 6 starters, 6 mains and a few pastas. The service friendly and the £20 bottle of Chapel Down Bacchus (excuse me while I polish my food miles halo) went down a treat with the delicious bread. We wolfed down two of the surprisingly ample £8 starters between four -- a salad of pheasant with pomegranate pips and dandelion leaves and a plate of smoked mackerel. For my main I had a large plate of pasta with plentiful shreds of tender, slow-cooked venison (£10). My companions happily gobbled up the pork chops, the swordfish with horseradish and the sirloin steak which came with some delicious anchovy butter (£10-14). For a trendy restaurant, the flavour combinations were surprisingly simple, which was a nice change. To accompany an interesting wine list, there was also a good selection of beers from Greenwich's Meantime brewery. The only slight disappointment was the rather uninspiring cheese plate -- but may be that's because there is a limited range of organic cheese out there. Overall though a big thumbs up. Lets hope the rest of the area catches up soon though, and someone opens up a nice bar near by for pre/post dinner drinks.

Acorn House, 69 Swinton street London WC1X 9NT ; Tel 0207 812 1842; www.acornhouserestaurant.com; Tube: Kings Cross

PS I keep meaning to start taking beautiful pictures of the food - with which all the other foodie blog seem to be adorned - but then inevitably get too absorbed in the drinking and the eating and forget. One of these days though...

The Bountiful Cow

Ignore the garish neon lights, and duck in to a small, cosy dark bar. The highlight, according to other reviews, is the landlady, a one-time doyenne of Ronnie Scotts and sadly absent during our visit. The young waitresses were perfectly helpful though, escorting us to the more spacious restaurant down some hard to find steps. The dinner came courtesy of toptable.co.uk, paid for with loyalty points accumulated from far too many expensive lunches and dinners over the past 12 months, and consisted of two courses from a very limited menu. My salad came in a huge bowl, piled high with tomatoes, onions and chunks of feta cheese. My companion braved the liver in a bid to overcome an aversion that dates back to horrific school dinner experiences. It turned out all creamy and pate-like, with some rather nice toasted bread. For mains, we both opted for juicy burgers, topped with cheese and served in huge buns with chips and salad on the side. The meat was juicy-pink in the middle, and yummy on the tongue. The generous side orders defeated us, leaving no room for deserts. For a free meal, it certainly got my seal of approval, and was nicely washed down by some drinkable house white (£11.50).

The Bountiful Cow, 51 Eagle St, WC1R 4AP. Tube: Holborn

My Old Dutch Pancake House

May be my tastes have got more sophisticated with the years, or may be the pancakes have got worse, but my last trip to this one-time favourite didn't leave me with any great desire to return. The Holborn branch feels a bit like a canteen crossed with a wine bar, with its unfussy decor and wooden tables. The speciality is huge Dutch pancakes, covered in toppings, pizza-style, and served on huge Dutch plates with the traditional blue and white motifs (around£6-8). There are plenty of fillings to choose from as well as a pick your own section and the pancakes are very filling. But it's worth leaving a bit of pancake and trying the deep fried cheese balls for a starter. Wash it down with some Dutch (or Belgian) beers from a decent selection (£3-5). It's quite quick and friendly enough, and certainly eminently edible - and drinkable. But amid the hunderds and thousands of eateries in London it seems to lack that extra something that would draw you back. If you're hungry for pancakes, a more atmospheric bet would be the tiny and busy creperie near South Ken tube.

My Old Dutch Pancake House, 132 High Holborn, London, WC1V 6PS; Tube: Holborn. They have a branch on Kings Road too. http://www.myolddutch.com