Frontline Restaurant

The Frontline Club was founded in 2003 to provide a base in London for frontline journalists, diplomatic service, aid agencies and those who otherwise tend to meet each other in the hotspots of our modern world. Some of the great names in the business have been, or more sombrely were formerly, members of the Club, which runs an excellent restaurant in Norfolk Place, only 5 minutes from Paddington Station.

Given that Paddington is not widely associated with notable cuisine, the arrival of Frontline is a big step forward, and the even better news is that you don't have to be a member of the club to use the restaurant, which offers a menu that is both thoughtful and tantalising.

Amongst Head Chef John Taylor's starters expect to find crispy pork with hot Tewkesbury mustard and watercress, rocket, pear and Doddington cheese salad with spiced crème fraîche and walnut dressing, or organic oak-smoked salmon with dill pickled cucumbers.

Frontline Classics include Old Bob's sausage, mash and caramelised onion gravy or shepherds pie with braised cabbage - all the sort of things I should think you tend to dream about when shot and shell are flying and you have your head well down. The full-blown main courses are pretty classical too - pollock with sweetcorn, bacon bits, minted pea puree and butter sauce, cannon of Welsh mountain lamb with confit belly or fillet of beef with steak ale mushroom pie and caramelized red onion jam.

Triple cooked chips are always available on the side. If you've left room finish off with a Queen Mab's pudding with raspberries and shortbread or treat yourself to the ever-reliable sticky toffee pudding.

To satisfy the likely expectations in wine of people so widely travelled in every sense, is no mean feat. The list is clearly not only compiled by somebody with clear views - it is too decisive to have been done by a committee - but is also relatively easy on the pocket. Wine author Malcolm Gluck has seized the opportunity to fulfil a long standing ambition to create a list that covers a, "range of delicious wines, many of them unusual and out-of-the-way, all affordable at non-rip-off prices," in a leading London restaurant.

So quite apart from being comfortably dined amidst surroundings that would do credit to a regimental mess, you also have the opportunity to meet some pretty interesting people as well. In 2005 Frontline won a prestigious Remy Award in Harden's Guide to London Restaurants. More recently Giles Coren of The Times enthused, "... the Frontline is a staggering find: big, grown-up, lots of wood, but light and jolly with just a hint of foreign battles."

However, you can check out further information about the place on their Website.