Hot Dishes

FIRST prize for a Valentine’s night promotion goes to the gigantesque Gilgamesh in Camden Market. There will be a £1,000 diamond lurking in their pink martini for one lucky guest…get your booking in quickly at reservations@gilgameshbar.com.

The man of the moment is Ollie Dabbous whose small new restaurant has just opened in Whitfield Street – on the site of what was one of London’s first internet cafes, Cyberia – to critical acclaim. He was head chef at Textures but has also worked at Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons with Raymond Blanc, The Fat Duck, Noma and New York’s WD-50. His beef tartar comes with cigar oil, whiskey and rye. You get the idea…

Ollie Dabbous

Great Portland’s Street’s private grocery-cum-bar-cum-restaurant Villandry, is heading across town next year as part of the revamp of the grade II Trafalgar House at Waterloo Place. They are expecting to cope with 1,000 customers a day.

A few decades back when the French Gault-Millau guide was all-powerful, the best restaurant in the world was regarded as Frédy Girardet at Crissier near Laussane on the banks of Lake Geneva. The old place is about to be taken over and reopened in April by a former sous chef of the great man’s one Benoît Violier. The menu though is a cool 360 swiss francs…that is £248, without wine which is never cheap in Switzerland anyway. You have been warned. Get a taste of his cooking.