Benoit

Another weekend and another Paris trip. Its too temptingly easy isn't it when you can hop on a train early in the morning, have a snooze then wake up in Paris. Only problem with such an early start is the rumbly tummy you have by the time you arrive but then Paris is full of solutions to that particular predicament. 

I had been intrigued by Benoit for a while so slipped a late lunch into the itinerary. Every Parisian lunch should begin with Champagne, there ought to be some kind of law in my opinion. This particular Champagne was Alain Ducasse's house champagne.

Starting the #WineGrapeChallenge

1386 different grape varieties. In a possibly ill-advised moment of insouciance I agreed to a challenge as something of a now very belated New year's resolution. To find and drink wines made from each and every one of the grapes featured in Jancis Robinson's bible of oenology; "Wine Grapes". A fit of bravado committed me to the project when the lady herself confirmed via Twitter that she didn't think anyone else had done it before. 

Rex & Mariano

I remember when this place was a Vodka Revolution bar stuck down a grotty side street in Soho whose raison d'être was little more than for the drunken amorous encounters of late night revellers or an apparent double purpose as an emergency loo. Nothing good has ever happened in a Revolution bar. I recall it to be a dark, gloomy cavern offering dubiously flavoured vodkas by the stick. You would frankly have had to have paid me an awful lot of money to be found there. Scratch that, I just wouldn't. So, one rainy Saturday night I find my phone directing me down a dark alley with a little trepidation.

Times change and so does Soho thankfully.

Dip & Flip

Another day, another burger joint. Yawn. As soon as I saw the crazy moustachioed hipster man on BBC's The Restaurant Man last year introducing Southampton to the delights of drippy burgers in squishy brioche buns in a room of exposed brick walls it finally felt as though the burger's moment in the sun must be done. 

So it was with some surprise and a little burger fatigue that Dip & Flip popped up in Clapham Junction a while back now and, whilst conforming to some of the burger stereotypes- those brick walls and the no reservations policy being just two- the food is rather good. 

Wokit, Borough Market

I made a decision a while ago that I was going to be less negative on this website. Despite people clearly preferring reading an article when I get the semantic daggers out (the website stats are testament to this), the places I am writing about are the result of someone's hard work, hopes and dreams and who I am I to trample all over that? It was all going so well until I had the misfortune to need a quick supper in Borough one Saturday late afternoon.

Everyone knows that Borough Market is home to some of the best food that London has to offer right? Especially tourists who flock there in huge numbers expecting everything to match up to scenes from Bridget Jones' Diary or the Trip Advisor reviews - I particularly loved a recent one penned by Ted in California who proclaimed it "without a doubt the best market in Great Britain" - granted it's good but I do question how many others Ted might have visited to make such a sweeping statement.

34

There are some people who exude money. I don't mean it literally of course, no one has pound coins popping out from behind their ears magician style it was more that the other diners seemed very expensive. The whole experience felt very expensive. I'm sure that you know what I mean? Even before I arrived I felt slightly inadequate just trying to find the restaurant. Address: 34, Grosvenor Square. Except there isn't a 34 Grosvenor Square on Grosvenor Square.  We drove around at least twice looking at numbers and found nothing. It started to seem like an insider joke - if you can't find the secret door you can't come in. The cab driver suggested that maybe it was actually IN the neighbouring US Embassy but even I knew that was a silly idea, imagine the security clearance needed just to get supper. Finally in desperation- and now five minutes late for the reservation- I called the restaurant; the entrance is actually around 100m down South Audley Street - as I would have known if I'd checked their website to be fair. 

This may all say more about my navigational skills and powers of observation than the place itself but it wasn't the most auspicious start to the outing. Neither was fighting my way up the steps through a cloud of smoke past leggy, sleek, thoroughbred racehorses in skyscraper red soled Louboutins suppressing their appetites with cigarettes  as I trotted up like a Shetland pony.  

Brasserie Lipp

Waking up on a Sunday to a gloriously sunny (and unseasonably warm) Paris morning and it would be churlish to do anything other than go for a long stroll through the streets of the Left Bank. Meandering up to the Musée Rodin to do a bit of 'thinking' followed by a roam along Rue du Bac gazing into the windows of all those wonderful patisseries

Several hours and a labyrinth of St Germain streets later and we had built up quite an appetite which brought us to the door of Paris institution Brasserie Lipp.