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Whether you are in search of fine ales, weekly quizzes and live sport, or some good old banter and a bite to eat with friends, The Curtains Up can offer an ideal spot for you. Both daily specials and hearty British favourites come together to form the delicious menu which is served from midday until 3pm and in the evening, with longer hours at the weekend. 

If you're not feeling too hungry, a simple eggs Benedict or fish finger sandwich could do the trick but equally you could rise to the challenge of a rib-eye steak or a char-grilled beef burger. If you fancy a traditional meal then try collar of bacon with carrots and champ, or beer battered fish and chips with tartare sauce and mushy peas. If you still have room try the summer pudding, or Swayledale, blacksticks blue, and coloomey camembert.

To gain further information, just visit their extremely comprehensive Website.

The Crown is yet another jewel in the Geronimo collection of pubs with style, traditional British food, worthy beers and an excellent wine list. Located only a short distance from Victoria Park it has something for everyone whether you are looking for a place where quiet meals for two are on the agenda, a group booking or just somewhere friendly where a few friends can gather for a few drinks and a yarn.

Lunch and dinner is served seven days a week with Saturday brunches that blow away any vestiges of the previous night's end of the working week feste, and Sunday lunches where that great British custom can be celebrated in a relaxed and timeless manner.

The Crown is a very outdoor sort of place too, with a beautiful roof terrace and beer garden. Two function rooms, the bright and airy Livestock Room and the more intimate Paper Room both have private balconies overlooking the Park and comfortably accommodate 25 people for a seated event. If it's something bigger you have in mind the entire first floor for you and 79 other people standing is yours, with its own private bar.

So really there's not much excuse for looking any further no matter what your requirements. 'Yes', you say, 'but what about the food and drink'. In the immortal words of the late Peter Sellers, "what indeed!" Let's start with with the wine list created by John Clevely, Master of Wine and driving force behind Geronimo pubs. What with warm hearted reds, cool elegant whites and a visit to most of the major wine producing areas in the world, there really is no contest. Nearly every one is available by the glass, and prices only occasionally stray across the £20 barrier, and frankly if you don't feel that £50 is a fair price for a bottle of Pol Roger Brut Reserve should you really be out?

And so to the rations which are perfectly straightforward, with two menus, lunch and dinner, and no messing about. In case you think that lunch in Victoria Park is not an event, let me assure you otherwise. Cured salmon with herb pancakes, shallot and capers make a good opening event, or perhaps a goat's cheese croustade, with leek, onion and pine nuts is more your way?

Time to spare, friends to meet? A sirloin steak with green peppercorn sauce and hand cut chips takes some beating, but a roasted pork fillet with horseradish mash and smoked black pudding is in the same league. The blessed burger is now respectable and there sure enough is a cheese and bacon burger with more hand cut chips. For the maritime-minded a pan fried seabass is served with risotto cake, baby pak choy and sweet chilli sauce.

Dinner is more of the same with additional dishes such as braised ox cheek, swede and cider, crispy salmon with wilted spinach, fondant potato and pea jus, and a chicken liver salad, pancetta and raspberry vinegar.

Desserts change daily and be on the lookout for some decent British cheeses.

Walk into The Crown and chances are you will feel instantly at home which, in the view of many is what a good pub is all about. Their Website will keep you up to date with special events, menu changes, and private hire possibilities.

Boasting an enviable location on the Covent Garden Piazza, Dirty Martini is a stylish contemporary bar with a distinctly New York ambience. Enjoy a cocktail of your choice and sample a range of freshly prepared international bar snacks.

Dirty Martini's delectable range of cocktails includes classic cocktails, luxurious signature martinis and prosecco infusions. Take your pick from dirty martinis, Donegal and contemporary classics like the mojito or Mexican mule. Skinny cocktails, wines and beers are also available at Dirty Martini London.
 
The Dirty Martini menu offers choices of sun-dried tomato and basil risotto balls with a cucumber, mint and yoghurt dip, spicy Thai fishcakes with a soy and mirin dip, and char-grilled lamb skewers marinated in maple syrup and mint. The vegetarian, meat and seafood platters at Dirty Martini restaurant are perfect for sharing.

In the heart of Covent Garden, Dirty Martini is close to the London Transport Museum, and Fortune and Cambridge Theatres. Covent Garden and Leicester Square Tube Stations are a short walk away.

To gain further information, just visit their extremely comprehensive Website.

The Papaya Tree is a contemporary style Thai restaurant with lightly coloured walls and wooden floors, serving authentic Thai cuisine using fresh herbs flown in from Thailand. Don't let the fact that it is in a basement put you off; all you can spot is a simple glass doorway on Kensington High Street but even as you step inside it appears a lot more welcoming than many.

Whilst there is a huge choice of Thai restaurants in London this place has consistently produced a higher quality than you tend to find elsewhere, all produced from an amazingly tiny, semi-domestic kitchen.

Their dishes are also much more innovative than you might expect, particularly some excellent seafood like the delicious ocean stir-fry, a combination of fruits from the sea served in chilli sauce.

Lunch presents especially good value with reasonably priced dishes encompassing such delights as pad pet, a stir-fried dish with a spicy Thai chilli paste; geang pet, a red curry with mixed vegetables and coconut milk or pad preow wan, a stir-fried dish with fresh tomatoes, pineapple, cucumber, onion and green peppers in a sweet and sour sauce.

The price is decided by whether you choose seasonal vegetables as the main ingredient, sliced chicken or pork or sliced beef, duck or mixed seafood, served with a bowl of steamed jasmine rice. Or you can select from various noodle dishes like pad bah mee noodles, stir fried egg noodles with sliced spring onions and baby corn all tossed in a light soya sauce, or tom yum dry noodles, rice noodles mixed with a hot and sour sauce with crispy garlic, chilli and ground peanuts, all priced similarly.

Their special dishes are much more innovative than you might expect, particularly some excellent seafood like the delicious and spicy Thai fisherman's treasure, a combination of fruits from the sea served in the famous hot pot with fresh hot basil leaves, chilli and garlic. Don't lightly ignore the green oceanic curry, your choice of king prawn or squid with bamboo shoots and seasonal vegetables in coconut milk, or a selection of various shellfish mixed with glass noodles.

Meat options include tamarind duck, stir fried roasted duck in tangy tamarind juices with sliced tomatoes, pineapple and Thai spices or moo prik king, stir fried pork with runner beans and the chef's special chilli sauce. The normal á la carte offers dishes such as moo pad krapow, stir fried pork with fresh basil leaves, onion and chilli, guaranteed to clear any stuffed up nose, or gai pad met mamuang, stir fried sliced chicken with crunchy cashew nuts, spring onion, mushrooms and roasted chilli.

Two excellent starters are their satay, strips of marinated chicken on bamboo skewers with Thai peanut butter sauce, and the delicious khanom jeep, delicately steamed pork and prawn dumplings, served with a slightly sweetened soya sauce.

Now possibly you can understand why we return time and again to the Papaya Tree, and if you cannot actually get there, then take advantage of the fact that they offer free delivery to the following postcodes in London: W8, W14, SW5 and SW7.

Finally, if you enjoy a fragrant Sauvignon Blanc with your Thai meal, their South African version slips down a treat, light and fruity, a perfect accompaniment.

However, their Website, with the full menu and sometimes some special offers as well, (a 20% off card at present), is the best way to find out full information about this rather special restaurant; and lastly do tell them that Richard Bradford sent you there.

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.

In trendy Shoreditch, Viet Grill offers a delicious selection of Vietnamese cuisine in a French colonial-style setting. A 3-minute walk from Hoxton Rail Station, Viet Grill London features a sleek, contemporary dining room.
 
Exotic and eclectic, the Viet Grill menu offers starters such as Vietnamese tamarind soup, grilled Red Sea prawns and charcoal grilled beef fillet served with fermented soy dip, and salad of lobster and pomelo or lotus stem with shrimps. For the main course at Viet Grill restaurant, enjoy Dong Du lamb curry, cognac 'Luc Lac shaking beef,' wok seared with whole garlic, cloves and black pepper or banana leaf-roasted mackerel, marinated in saffron, galangal and lemongrass.

A selection of traditional Vietnamese pho dishes and noodle or rice bowls, as well as an express lunch menu are also available. Desserts like banana fritter and coconut ice cream bring the meal to a delightful end. Refresh the palate with traditional sake, beer, spirits or wine from Viet Grill Shoreditch.

To gain further information, just visit their extremely comprehensive Website.

Villandry originally opened its doors in 1989 on Marylebone High Street, an intimate, endearingly-ramshackle shop full of wonderful smells and delicious goodies. Bursting at the seams it relocated to its current larger, smarter premises on Great Portland Street in November 1997. With oodles of space, a gorgeous Foodstore, informal Restaurant and buzzing Bar were created to establish Villandry as one of Fitzrovia's most popular destinations.

Their team of bakers work throughout the night to produce the very best breads, patisseries and cakes, and undoubtedly the most incredible 100% all butter croissants. While the chefs beaver away in the Villandry kitchens cooking up a huge array of lip-smacking dishes prepared from well-sourced ingredients.

Exciting changes are in progress to ensure Villandry continues to celebrate its heritage by focusing on the very best produce. The gourmet grocer and deli provides a large range of exceptional foods; from the freshest and most flavoursome fruit and vegetables, to wonderfully fresh bread, pastries, chocolate and spices.

The cheese and charcuterie counters are a treat for the taste buds and the take-away counter - for everything from snacks to three-course meals - has queues for breakfast, lunch and dinner, with orders also taken by phone. A diverse range of picnic hampers is also available for that balmy summer's day in the park, at Wimbledon, Lord's or Henley. A full catering service is also available on request. The 100-seat Restaurant and 60-seat Bar are also available for exclusive private hire.

Villandry Restaurant is run by head chef Brian Scully, who leads a team of dedicated chefs. The fresh food is produced without fuss and particular attention is paid to the quality of the ingredients. Its relaxed, European-style ambience continues to woo people from all over London keen to try delicious, uncomplicated flavours in Villandry's simple but excellent cooking.

The Restaurant menu is a short, sharp list of dishes, which covers the full range of carefully sourced, seasonal favourites, including grilled lemon grass prawns with green mango, cashew, tomato and coriander salad, poached chicken terrine with leeks, mushroom and spring onion and not forgetting the mouth-watering peach and raspberry crumble with cream.

For full meals, eat in the Restaurant. For breakfasting, light lunching, snacking, chatting, sipping, gossiping and meeting from morning until night, the Bar is ideal. From 8am you can enjoy boiled eggs with soldiers, Scottish smoked kippers or some Villandry granola and fruit salad. If you are feeling continental, why not have a pain-au-chocolat from the Bakery or some French toast with maple syrup?

For lunch you can choose from the changing menu - crispy, crunchy vegetable salad with cashew nuts and apricot dressing, accompanied by 28 day dry-aged steak - 10oz sirloin with chips and béarnaise before finishing off with a seasonal fruit salad. These are but a few of the excellent choices. A small dinner menu and bar snacks are available in the early evening, with charcuterie and cheese plates available from the deli in the shop.

Free wireless internet access is provided, so you can check your email and surf the net at super speeds, all in the comfort of the Bar.

Villandry Foodstore is a gourmet shop for serious food lovers in central London. It sells the finest quality ingredients sourced from specialist suppliers around the world. Many other items are homemade in the Villandry kitchens and sold either as takeaway meals or served in the Restaurant and Bar.

Their products would shine in the most finely fitted kitchens: olive oils, vinegars, wines, cheese and hams from across Europe; pickles and chutneys; a daily selection of fresh fruit, herbs and vegetables from Secretts Farm; specialist items to order, and enough chocolate to last you through the year. Order bespoke hampers from them as the perfect present or wine by the case. Their wine list is extensive and they are always happy to discuss choices.

To contact them, order hampers, or to get on their mailing list, use the form provided on their Website.

If at first sight Crouch End in North London does not strike you as one of the more compelling parts of London, just reconsider your stance. Well, Deborah Ross, witty writer and self-styled non-domestic goddess, is rumoured to live there. But far more importantly it is home to one of the most renowned and lively Thai restaurants in the country - yes, that's country. So why? Probably because owner and Head Chef Somchai Kantavanich of O's Thai gives every appearance of having thrown the rule book out of the window and decided that they're going to have a good time and they'd like all their customers to join in with them.

Charles Campion writing in his London guide in 2008 said, 'O brings a youthful zip to Thai cuisine. His café is fast and noisy with current favourite music at high volume', before going on to extol the food.

With main courses at around £7 each there is room for experimentation. If you lack the confidence to do that the cheerful and well informed staff will offer helpful advice if needed. Further more you can knock a few more bahts off the bill (53.5 bahts = £1) by vacating your table before 8.30pm, their answer to the early bird supper. So one way and another it's a pretty accommodating place.

Décor is minimalist with blond wood furniture, a long narrow room with no pretentions to glamour, everything concentrated on good sound food at even better prices. Amongst the starters and snacks are Thai vegetable spring rolls with sweet and sour sauce, kow keap kung, Thai prawn crackers made with real prawns, and luk chin tord, deep fried chicken or fish balls, or their special starters for however many there are in your party, chosen from the menu with spicy peanut sauce and yet more sweet and sour. And, of course there's the ever faithful spicy soups, Tom yam and Tom ka made with lime leaves, coconut cream, lemon grass and galanga.

Some eleven main courses ring the options between meats, bean curd and king prawn as the main constituent. One of the great things about Thai cuisine is the subtlety with which the dishes are composed, where one apparent minor shift of ingredients can make so much change. Amongst the house recommendations are pad morragode, a spicy dish made with king prawn stir fried in 'morragode' green curry coconut sauce, vegetables, fresh lime and sweet basil leaves, served with a veritable mountain of rice.

Watch out as well for their blackboard specials, which could include steamed salmon with fresh ginger and spring onion and soya sauce or yellow egg noodles with shrimp curry paste and lemongrass.

Despite, to our ears, its unpromising name, khow tom mud makes the most delicious dessert with banana and sticky rice wrapped in a banana leaf and served with hot coconut cream. Failing that move your attention to kanom moor gaeng, coconut flavoured sponge made with egg, coconut cream, ground yellow beans and palm sugar, served with warm coconut cream.

A short but thoughtful wine list, starting at £11.95, draws heavily on New World and South Africa, with a Stormy Cape Shiraz from Western Cape amongst the reds, a Cape Coral Rosé from Stellenbosch and a beautiful Montana Reserve Sauvignon from Marlborough NZ, all nearly at or under the £20 mark.

Their special lunch has three choices each of starters and main courses, served between 12 and 3, at an incredible £6.95 per head. Their Website should prove a huge help in guiding you round all the exciting choices available there.

Housed within the iconic Blakes Hotel on Roland Gardens, Blakes Restaurant expertly combines the best of Eastern and Western cuisineenhanced by elegant service in splendid surroundings. Located in the well-heeled South Kensington area of London, it's close to well-known attractions such as Hyde Park, the Victoria and Albert Museum and Royal Albert Hall while the shops and boutiques on Brompton Road are just a short drive away.

The work of the reputed designer and London socialite Anouska Hempel, the restaurant's atmospheric setting combines classic design with luxurious furnishings and exotic artefacts to create a unique ambience in which guests cannot but relax and unwind at leisure.

Dinner could begin with starters of miso soup with silken tofu, carpaccio of beef with parmesan, tortellini of foie gras des landes or salt and peppered soft shell crabs. Add a luxurious touch to your meal with Oscietra or Royal Beluga caviar served with Balkes blini or warm potato soufflé and vanilla ice cream.

Follow with delicious mains of angel hair pasta with black truffle, black cod with miso and ginger sauce; beef fillet teriyaki with hot sake or rack of English lamb and rosemary with mint cous cous. Diners looking for a lighter bite could enjoy refreshing salad of buffalo Burrata mozzarella with tomatoes or warm chicken salad with avocado, pomelo, cashews and nam jim sauce. The lunch menu offers ginko nut curry with lime risottini, baby chicken with thyme and lemon or peppercorn fillet of beef. While the bento box selection includes miso soup with silken tofu, beef teriyaki, lobster toast and ginger rice.

The desserts menu at Blakes is a joy in itself and includes tempting gems such as the light and refreshing dessert of coconut ice cream with lime and palm sugar, a simpler tropical fruit salad or a richer dark chocolate fondant with vanilla and pistachio ice cream and finally, if you wish, coffee with cardamom or ginger tea.

The restaurant's all-day menu serves a selection of dim sums; fried prawn and yuzu sauce, soups, sandwiches and hot food; toasted poilâne sourdough chicken sandwich with avocado and ginger and Blakes burger and French fries and salads; oak smoked scotch salmon.

Breakfast is also served at Blakes with choice of a full English, continental breakfast or more exotic fare such as Changa Turkish eggs, two poached eggs served with leaf spinach, chilli oil and yoghurt; classic Scottish smoked salmon with scrambled eggs spicy Parsee eggs a dish of scrambled eggs with fresh green chilli and coriander. For a healthy alternative try Bircher muesli with Greek yoghurt and fresh berries or compôte of fruit with cornflakes and prunes.

For a delightful break during the day the afternoon tea menu at the adjoining Chinese Room or Courtyard offers finger sandwiches with fillings of beef and chilli horseradish, smoked salmon and egg and cress; fresh scones with fresh strawberries and cream; a selection of tea cakes and choice of tea from Earl Grey, Lapsang Souching and Darjeeling.

An extensive wine list with a range of whites and reds from Italy, France, Germany, Australia and South Africa complements the food perfectly.

To gain further information, just visit their extremely comprehensive Website.

The Goya restaurant chain was established in 1993 and its success has never been in doubt. Specialising in authentic Spanish tapas each site offers locals and visitors alike an excellent range of this increasingly popular Latin/European food. Stylish decor provides a mixture of sophisticated ambience and Spanish design, which, combined with the uncomplicated food and friendly staff, makes for a great lunch or evening out.

Passing through the handsome and commanding entrance is to find that Goya Pimlico has one floor as a tapas bar, another as the restaurant with intimate alcoves that exude an atmosphere of intrigue and intimacy, in fact the sort of place where you would not be surprised to find secrets being traded or risky liaisons enacted. However in summer sheer force majeure ensures that the business of eating, drinking and possibly even flirting flows out on to the pavement, exposed for all to see, so be sure to choose your weather.

One of the off-putting factors - in fact about the only one - is that there are so many of them, which can be confusing. Here at Goya there are between 30 and 40 choice of tapas, all sufficiently different to carry their own appeal, so no real problem at all. Kidneys cooked in Tio Pepe sherry, creamy croquettes, bean casserole or pork fillet done the Galician way are but a few of this attractive range of mini-dishes across which one can graze the afternoon away, or restore the equilibrium in the evening.

The main menu takes of course a wider view, with starters of the soup of the day, gazpacho, fresh oysters and melon with Serrano ham, or Scotch smoked salmon. There is nothing to stop substitution of starters with tapas, the choice is entirely yours. A tasty range of salads invokes avocado, Thornback crabs, asparagus and cheese, bacon and croutons.

With an extensive range of coastline upon which to draw it is not surprising that Spanish cuisine makes the most of its unfettered access to the sea, and the main course menu opens with seven seafood dishes, with a fresh seafood casserole done Catalan style, paella with shellfish and chicken, or shellfish only, and a House Speciality, the grilled seafood.

A dozen or so meat dishes do ample justice to the cause of carnivores with most of the classic cuts grilled to order. The return of veal to the menu, more humane methods having been found to produce this delightful meat we are told, is celebrated with an escalope in lemon sauce or done the traditional way with breadcrumbs and piquillo peppers. The agonising choice between duck in sherry sauce with olives and shallots or fillet of beef with Dijon mustard, caramelised brandy and cream is not one I would care to have to make too often.

As night follows day so do desserts make their appearance on cue, and Catalan cream with coffee infusion leads the way for many. Spanish cuisine is keen on its fortified wines but there is a good range of liqueurs for those who treasure their Sambuca or Grand Marnier. The wine list rarely strays over the Spanish border, starting at a sensible price structure and keeping well clear of the stratosphere.

For details of events, party arrangements and special offers do click on their Website, as colourful as the food but much less tasty.