The reason we go to back to London again and again is because of the extremely high standard of restaurants. There are few cities in the world that have such of diversity of top class food. We have already written a couple of reviews of restaurants in our last trip (see Hand & Flowers review and St. John ), and below are some short reviews of other restaurants we had the pleasure of visiting on our latest London jaunt.

Fera @ Claridges
We have wanted to eat Simon Rogan's food for sometime, so were delighted when we heard he was opening in Claridges. We were not disappointed either as the tasting menu on the whole was of a high quality with dishes ranging between average and excellent. The best dishes were cauliflower dumplings which were rich, warming and moreish. A serving of veal tartare was beautifully balanced with apple and kohlrabi. And a dessert of figs with gingerbread was a perfect ending to the meal. The worst dish was sea bass with crosnes, razor clams and leak, which was disjointed and lacked cohesion - the crosnes adding nothing to the dish. The food was seasonal and regional, but sometimes the dishes fell short of the mark on taste. The dining room is large and impersonal and the food would be more suited to an intimate setting with a closer connection to the kitchen. In all the highlights of the meal far outweighed the lows and a Saturday in Claridges isn't a bad way to spend an evening.

Lima Floral
We don't know much about Peruvian food and this was our first experience of it, so we have no real comparison for our experience in Lima Floral. It seems that balance is key to Peruvian cuisine with mingling delicate and strong flavours paramount . This was evident throughout the meal, none more so than the beautiful sea bream tiradito starter which married delicate raw fish with a spicy sauce. Another highlight was the earthy black quinoa main, but perhaps the best dish was the sweet potato dessert which had the perfect amount of sweetness.  Our lunch was extremely good with each dish being light, vibrant, flavoursome and extremely moreish. It is easy to see that this food in the wrong hands could be a serious let-down as it takes skill and a refined palette to get the balance and execution right. If our meal is an indication of Peruvian food, it is no wonder Peru is becoming such a gastronomic hotspot - a visit to Lima (the city, not the restaurant), may be on the cards in the near future.

Hibiscus
Our lunch in Hibiscus was, despite some very nice servings, probably the most disappointing meal of our four day trip to London. The lunch started well with two very nice starters. Pork belly and lobster ravioli with frozen raspberries was interesting with a sharp contrast of both flavour and temperature, but it didn't leave you wanting more. A very autumnal pumpkin soup with blue cheese was very warming, slightly sweet with a lovely nuttiness from the blue cheese. The mains were also quite good, especially a beautiful serving of veal cheek. But it was the two desserts that let this lunch down. Roast figs with whiskey ice cream was very dull; the ice cream was too subtle and the figs lacked flavour. The other dessert was worse though; crema de birro panna cotta with lychee and black sesame was let down both by an unpleasant yeasty flavour and by a lack of texture. The pre-desserts, amuse bouches and petit-fours were some of the best on our trip and the service was excellent. Another plus were excellent and very reasonably priced wine pairings. Our overall impression was that when they get a dish right it could be amazing, but now and again it might go a bit awry.

St John in Smithfield, London is a restaurant stripped back to it's bare essentials. The dining room is sparse and all white. There are no heavy linen tablecloths. The glassware is rudimentary. The menu is printed on a sheet of A4 paper. Service charge is not added to the bill, unlike most good restaurants in London. You may not think you are sitting in one of the most important and influential restaurants of the last 20 or so years. But it is the austerity of St John that helps to make this restaurant what it is, as it is all about the produce and the food, anything else is simply not important.

Chef and co-founder Fergus Henderson's ethos showcases seasonal British produce in a simple and unadulterated way. He is a champion of nose to tail eating, treating each part of the animal with the same respect. The menu changes twice a day ensuring the freshest of ingredients. One read of the appealing menu shows that many dishes only have two components and it is rare to see any with more than three. This isn't a place to go for avant garde creations and innovative techniques - there will be no gels, foams, leathers or spherification here. There will be no fancy presentation either - unique crockery, swirls and swipes have no place. St. John is just about the ingredients cooked properly and purely. There is no hiding place in this food - over or under cooking, seasoning errors, balancing issues would be very apparent, but there was none on our visit.

One constant on the menu typifies St John: roast bone marrow served with toast and a parsley salad may seem frugal on first appearance, but it is far from it. The marrow becomes a luxurious rich butter for the toast and the salad gives it a lightness and a freshness. Other dishes delighted too; grilled ox heart was beautifully tender and a pigeon that was perfectly prepared. Desserts were indulgent and decadent; ginger bread and butterscotch was like a warm hug. 

St John shows that in age of great culinary innovation or pushing boundaries that you can still excite with just great produce and excellent classical cookery. Fashions, trends and fads will come and go in the restaurant world, but St John's food will always be in vogue - it's timelessness is in it's integrity and unpretentiousness. If you only like going to the latest trendy hotspot then this might not be the place for you, but if you love food then you couldn't not love St John. If we lived in London we would probably be regulars.

You can sometimes spot a chef who isn't cooking the food they are passionate about. The food can be clinical, sterile and, sometimes, lacking in identity. There are chefs who end up in high end dining using techniques and components in a bid to show how clever they are, without being excited by what they are doing. It is easy to see how it happens, a young talented cook works under the tutelage of a chef who is passionate about these techniques and this type of cookery, a chef who is able to use it to showcase their philosophy. But if the young apprentice later goes on to open their own restaurant attempting to cook in the same vein as their mentor the results may not be good. 

The best chefs will take the discipline, skill, technique and precision developed during their training in high end dining and apply it to cooking the food they love. This is what Tom Kerridge did when he opened The Hand & Flowers in Marlow, Buckinghamshire. One meal here and it is obvious that he is cooking the food that means a lot to him, the food that he himself would love to eat. His food is British and has it's roots in the British pub. A Sunday lunch in a pub sounds quite ordinary and not something that usually requires a booking 12 months in advance, but that is what faced us when we alighted the train from London in Marlow. But of course this isn't pub food in any shape or form that most people will have had before. Instead it is a decadent, almost flawless, highly accomplished display of fine food and skilled cookery. The Sunday lunch menu reads as an array of tempting dishes that you would love to eat on Sunday afternoon before sinking into the sofa to watch a movie or the football.

One starter of crispy pigs head with spiced date purée was warm and comforting, managing to be both satisfying, but surprisingly light. A duck liver parfait with orange chutney was intensely rich and highly addictive. After the starters you start to realise why this restaurant has created such a stir over the last few years. A main of Yorkshire grouse was perfectly cooked and it was extremely tasty dish, although it probably could have done without the game pie. It suffered slightly in comparison to the other main of the most amazing half roast chicken and summer truffle which was certainly the best dish of the day. The chicken was perfect, extremely moist and still slightly pink close to bone and it had the almost gamey taste that chicken should have, but rarely does these days. Long brining and, possibly, a water bath, are evident in it's preparation. Desserts didn't let the meal down either. A rich chocolate and ale cake was quite divine and the apple & custard slice was beautiful.

Kerridge has managed to keep an essence of pub food in his menu. It is very comforting, very moreish and very accessible to both the fine dining novice and the experienced gastronome. However, a meal in The Hand & Flowers is most definitely fine dining. The skill is evident and abundant, the techniques, although hidden from the diner (there are no foams, gels, leathers, powders etc), is there behind the scenes and it is obvious that a lot of time, love and attention goes into the dishes.

One slight criticism of our experience is it felt a little rushed near the end of the meal when we told they would need the table and we had to have our coffee at the bar. After waiting a year to get in it would be nice to be able to take a bit more time and relax. Especially since you will certainly be feeling full and content at the end of a meal in The Hand & Flowers.