Flesh and Buns, Covent Garden

Flesh and Buns, 41 Earlham St, WC2H 9LX

Meal for two with a cocktail: £60

The eagerly-anticipated sister to Bone Daddies, Flesh and Buns brings another little slice of Tokyo to London in the form of a hipster izakaya. It's vast and buzzing, with booths for groups and long tables to share. It's also not quite ready to be open, or at least it wasn't last Friday. The food is competent but not exceptional. The staff are charming but they lack experience. Given a few weeks or months, it may just be perfect. In the meantime, there is a risk that, like us, you'll leave feeling unsatisfied.

Blend, Paris

Blend

44 Rue d'Argout

75002 Paris

Meal for two with beers: 38 euros

It's August, and London is awash with US imports. Londoners are spending hours queuing for honest-to-god, real American burgers. Critics are vying with each other to be most underwhelmed by the experience. They must be laughing at us in Paris. They don't need a US import. They have Blend.

China Town Noodle Bar

China Town Noodle Bar

2 Bath Passage

Birmingham

B5 4SZ

Meal for two with beers: £20

This cheap as chips cafe has been a favourite haunt for Birmingham's many students for more than a decade. Ten years ago, I was one of them. But it's more than just a cut-price feeding station for those rich in time but poor in money. With a voluminous menu spanning several regions of China, as well as a handful of other Asian cuisines (not recommended), there's a reason it also attracts well-heeled shoppers and Chinese customers of all ages. And with most dishes coming in well shy of a tenner, it has long been one of my favourite places for lunch. Yet somehow life has come between me and my first neighbourhood-restaurant-love. Last weekend, after an absence of nearly five years, I returned to rekindle my affair with their Big Plate Rice.

Burger Lobster.. Bentley's?

Bentley's, 11 - 15 Swallow Street, W1B 4DG

2 course meal with wine: £55 per person

Trying to get a table at Burger and Lobster on a Friday night was, in retrospect, a terrible idea. Thankfully we phoned ahead or else we would have gone there without knowing that they already more people in the queue than they would be able to accommodate in an evening. That would have been Very Bad. Instead, we drank another bottle of wine and conducted a remote trawl of the surrounding restaurants - what did we do before mobile internet? There was a table at Bentley's, so there we went expecting to have oysters or steak but instead found lobster burgers were the special of the day... result.

A short trip to Cape Town: lunch at Groote Post

As always in adult life, time just flies by. In a blink of an eye another month goes past without much writing. Even more daunting, all of a sudden Mr F and I have been married for more than two years. Gulp. Thankfully, we seem to be as happy with each other now as ever we were in the past, even if he has spent more than 150 hours over the past year playing Dark Souls. Last year, we chose Dinner for our anniversary celebration. Topping that was always going to be difficult, so we chose the only really safe path: returning to site of our nuptials, the wonderful Groote Post. OK, so we didn't go all the way to South Africa just to have lunch. There was some family stuff involved too. However, seeing as we were there, it seemed only right to stop by... After all, it's only just about my favourite place in the whole world. Ever.

A few more London burgers

Once again, I have neglected my blog. New job, new flat (hopefully), Skyward Sword... The list of distractions is almost endless. However, with January safely dispatched for another year, I find myself with time to reflect on the meals that missed out on a write up. Among them, a mixed bag of burgers. Cue the inevitable round up post, the blog equivalent of the episode of that show you love, compiled almost exclusively from recycled old footage. 

The Poke at the Draft House

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.