Tea at The River Caff

I have many favourite restuarants but two shine out, the joint firsts among equals: St John and The River Cafe. Both celebrate eating rather than cooking, and therein lies the secret of their success. They take pleasure in your pleasure rather than in the navel-gazing one-upmanship of clever-than-thou cookery. They are fantastically foam free.

Last night we ate very well at The River Cafe. You couldn't not. Not with that stunning fennel salami and fruity artichoke or that salt-crusted farinata with its mily-soft mozzarella. Not with the indecently fresh langoustines or the spaghetti with crab (note to self, add fennel seeds next time). Nor the parpadelle with the wild duck ragu or the delicate spinach and buffalo curd ravioli. Not to mention the melting soft osso buco with its half-butter-half-rice risotto or the wood roasted turbot, lifted and lightened with lemon, herbs and those tiny life-affirming Sicilian capers.

We washed it down with Vajra's 2004 Barbera, a juicy, violet-infused red that delighted in the food - even the cheese plate, a guilty, greedy end to a meal.

Home Sweet Home

We got home on Sunday night about 6, dumped the bags and darted straight down the road again to Kastoori for their Sunday Thali. It consists of a wonderful roast aubergine curry (almost smoked in fact, the flesh melted into tomatoes, onions, chilli and mustard seeds), a coarse millet chapati (rough and grey and filling), some overcooked rice mixed with mung beans (think good old fashioned peas and rice) and a hot yoghurt soup (a sort of inverse raita- uplifting, spicy and sharp rather than cooling and fresh). Real comfort food straight from a rural Indian village.

I like the fact that it takes vegetarian Gujarati food to make me feel at home.

Comic Timing

Comedy, cricket and cooking all rely on timing and in the last few days, I've got one meal spot on and the other horribly, wastefully wrong. Remember that rib of Welsh black beef? I incinerated it. How did I do it? By trusting a cookbook, some scales and some mental arithmetic rather than my own eyes and experience. The theory said it would be rare after about an hour and a half. After 55 minutes it was already too late. The fact the beef was utterly delicious made me feel even worse. Poor cow, it deserved better than that.

I redeemed myself with some whole pigeons on Monday night. A quick hot sear then eleven minutes in the oven. The meat was beautifully, evenly rare and that deep, bloody crimson colour that lifts the heart of any cook when he or she starts to carve and knows they have got it absolutely spot on.

Deepest, Wettest Wales

A happy feeling. The weather be as grey and damp as Our Boys' chances against South Africa in Cardiff this afternoon but my spirits are soaring. I have a view over the estuary, a fire, a pot of tea and some writing to do but best of all, there's a huge rib of Welsh Black Beef in the fridge and some posh Pinot Noir on the windowsill. Let the weather (and the Springboks) do their worst!

Saint Felicien: Patron Saint of Perfect Cheese

Guess where it is from? Burgundy! Oh joy of joys. Choosing it was part good luck - I'd never heard of it (or couldn't remember hearing of it, anyway) and it is hard to tell how ripe a soft cheese is when it is wrapped up - and part a result of following The Cheese Rules.

Cheese Rule no. 22: always trust a soft cheese in a terracota pot. If it needs ceramics to keep it upright and decent, it probably has the capacity to ooze, drip and goo.

It was delicious; teetering on the edge of refusing the attentions of a knife and demanding a spoon. It was rich, creamy, cheesy and complex but not hadn't reached that testing, slightly acrid stage where cheese becomes less of a meal and more of a dare. It sagged as the first crackerful was lifted out, deflated and beaten. It knew its time had come.

The Michelin Man Gets Fat on Sushi

The scores are in. London has a malnourished 50, New York an undercooked 42, Paris a better than most 98 but Tokyo is the Official Restaurant Capital of the World. It has 191 Michelin stars - deliciously one more than the other three combined.

But outside the fat egos and bellies of western foodies does anyone care? Probably not. Certainly not the patrons of most of those recently garlanded restaurants. Writing in The Guardian Jay Rayner notes many of them are tiny, sometimes seating just 5 or 6 diners, and that getting a table there is nigh on impossible without being a blood relative of the chef. I expect the news Michelin now deems them "good in their category" or "worthy of a detour" will not trouble them greatly. And nor should it. They didn't need the blessing of a French motoring guide to tell them they knew how to cook.

Our need to rate, score and classify everything can get quite tiring and when a guide or critic starts to affect the very thing it or he/she is supposed to be a detached observer of, it can get dangerous. I present Robert Parker Junior - the Baron of Bordeaux, the Barossa and Baltimore - as my first exhibit.

I spotted the term "Michelin ambitious" on a restaurant's website recently. It made my toes curl, immediately conjuring up images of over-designed plates and nasty copies of Gordon Ramsay dishes pinched from one of his books. Oh, the stink of culinary desperation. This was a restaurant trying to second guess inspectors, imitating others and not being true to itself and, more importantly, its punters.

Is cooking simple good food and keeping you customers happy no longer enough? I wish more restaurateurs would stop reaching so purposefully for the Stars. The irony being that, like Japan, if you ignore Michelin and do what you are good at you might just find the tyre man comes looking for you.

Never Order a Trilogy

I should know better. Trilogy is on my black list of words to be banned from menus. How can a trilogy of foie gras improve on either a whacking great slab of the stuff with some warm toast and cornichons on the side, or some seared liver, crisp on the outside and melting within? Answer: it can't - especially if part one of the trilogy insults both duck and diner by freezing it into Foie Gras Ice Cream. And don't get me started on the Foie Gras mousse dribbled in to a shot glass with some overly sweet carrot puree. The whole plate was an essay in pointlessness.

All of which made the main course a surprising delight. Pink pigeon breasts, plump roast garlic and thick slices of ceps is a proper Burgundian meal. It was a soberly conceived and impeccably cooked dish as was the pairing of veal sweetbreads and morels on the plate opposite me. I greedily finished both after the sweetbreads' owner gave up halfway through, no doubt saving room for the eighth portion of Epoisses of the week.

Burgundy was full of good food. My notebook is crammed with hastily scribbled notes about Oeufs en Meurette, Jambon Persille, Ox Cheek, Poulet de Bresse, Cote de Beouf, Dauphinoise spuds, Pigeon, Ceps and, bien sure, Epoisses. But eating this way, twice a day, is excessive. A week is enough, by Friday I was dreaming about broccoli. Frequently the only greenery was a handful of lamb's lettuce wilting under the weight of some pan seared gizzards. Back in London, the soup pot will see some action this week. A coarse minestrone put me back together yesterday and a weak miso broth awaits tonight.

I've returned with some good addresses though, including Ma Cuisine in Beaune and L'Auberge du Vieux Vigneron in Corpeau near Chassagne (anywhere patronised by Anne-Claude Leflaive has to be good). Check them out if you are in the area - and don't worry there won't be a trilogy in sight.

"I don't do bones, I'm not a dog."

Ben Collins is missing out. He left a perfectly good bone from a juicy cote de veau - full of meat - left ungnawed. His canine excuse clearly fell on deaf ears, as I shredding a confited pigeon wing with my teeth at the time. But then I've always thoughts dogs had some of the best ideas.

Ma Cuisine in Beaune was on fire tonight. The Jambon Persille had really good jelly (herby, garlicky and firm) while the pigeon was gamey and rich. The Cote de Veau eaters purred too, bone or no bone. And finally, the Epoisses - not compulsory, but bloody good.

The Rules in Burgundy

I'm in Burgundy for a week tasting wines. Hard life, I know. But there are a few golden rules to remember food-wise.

1. Snails are not an acceptable mid morning snack
2. Fermented grape juice doesn't count as one of your five a day
3. Epoisses is not compulsory at every meal

My primary aim for this week is to find the perfect Jambon Persille - that's a ham hock terrine set in some seriously parsley'd up jelly for those who have never come across it. It's a perfect vehicle for dijon mustard and half-decent white Burgundy. I'll keep you posted with how I get on.

Toku Time

Clothes shopping in central London is my idea of hell. The presence of an affordable, unpretentious Japanese restaurant makes it all the more bearable. The thought of some barely marinated mackerel smeared with nose tingled wasabi will get me through a lot of shops with clothes that cater for skinny boys and not lovers of tete de veau.

Today at Toku we had some beautifully cooked tempura vegetables - even the baby corn was worth eating - and a plate of spanking fresh sushi washed down with a can of Sapporo lager. Walking back on to Piccadilly we found that we had lost our London edge. We'd slowed our pace, stopped getting frustrated by meandering tourists and found fewer being uttered under our breaths as we got cut up by inconsiderate people dragging wheelie bags behind them. With good food inside, London is less of a battle.