In with the new at the Vincent Rooms

The Vincent Rooms, 76 Vincent Square, SW1P 2PD

Two course meal with wine: £25 ish (we split the bill, some people had dessert)

Sometimes, when I want to escape to an imaginary world in which I have won the lottery and can afford a beautiful house in SW1, I go to Vincent Square. It's the perfect place to reflect on just how awesome it would be if I were ludicrously rich. It is quiet, it has a big playing field in the middle and the houses look like the sort of accommodation American film-makers imagine all well-to-do Londoners live in, complete with a Rolls Royce and a butler. Once a year, they even hold the London rum festival in Vincent Square; presumably so the wealthy folk don't have far to roll home. However, until recently, I have been missing out on one of Vincent Square's best attractions: the Vincent Rooms. Attached to the college that trained such luminaries as Jamie Oliver and (ahem) Antony Worrall Thompson, the Vincent Rooms lets one test the abilities of the current batch of chefs-in-waiting, and all at prices a mere mortal can afford. I only wish I had tried it sooner.

Favouritism and Great Queen Street

Great Queen Street, 32 Great Queen Street, WC2B 5AA

Meal for two: £70

What is your favourite... surely one of the most irritating questions in the world?

I hate having to reduce my appreciation of something, whether food, music or literature, into such stark terms. Favourite or not-favourite, like good or bad, can never really capture the nuances of how I feel about a thing, a person or a place. And yet... here it is: Great Queen Street is my favourite restaurant in London, if not the world. There, I said it. If you disagree, that is your prerogative, but bear in mind that I will probably question your judgement if you do. Why? Because Great Queen Street is unquestionably marvellous and peerless in its seasonal and simple yet excellent cooking. Because it is affordable and friendly. Lastly, because Mr F took me there for the my birthday when it opened, one of his most thoughtful acts in our pre-married life.

Lunch at Dinner

Dinner by Heston Blumenthal, Mandarin Oriental Hyde Park, 66 Knightsbridge, SW1X 7LA

Extravagant lunch for two: £240 (gulp)

Choosing Dinner as the place to celebrate our first wedding anniversary was a slight gamble. Back in December when I booked, there was eager anticipation but it was too early for hype: Giles Coren had yet to call it the best restaurant in the world, it wasn't particularly hard to get a table and no one, including me, had ever heard of meat fruit. Jump forward two months and the opposite is true. If anything, however, this made the choice of Dinner for a special occasion all the more precarious: massive expectations were raised, divorce was threatened if I tried to discuss the menu with Mr F for the fiftieth time and the chances of us getting away with my original plan of the affordable set lunch dwindled to nothing. Fortunately for our marriage, Dinner is as wonderful as we have been led to believe. Even the most hard-hearted super-foodie, determined to find fault with popular consensus would struggle to dislike it: so for mere mortals such as ourselves, it was a truly worthy treat.

Wednesday's child is good to fry

Masters Super Fish, 191 Waterloo Road, SE1 8UX

Fish supper and beer for one: £15

Occasionally I try to resist the fact I am slowly turning into an East London stereotype: I cycle everywhere, my shoes are always flat and, if ever further confirmation were needed, I have become hooked on blogs - including my own. It is fair to say that I am a fan of the East. Which makes it all the more disappointing that, in one respect, the East End has failed to live up to my pre-Dalston conceptions: the restaurants. 

It is not that the East is lacking in the culinary department - far from it. Without a doubt, we have some of the finest Turkish, Vietnamese and Pakistani restaurants in the capital. What it lacks is the food of its more distant history. Finding good old-fashioned British food in the area is harder than it might seem. Having already established that the best fried breakfasts in London are to be found in Pimlico, it is with a small measure of sadness that I confirmed what others have already reported: the best fish and chips are in Lambeth.