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Pearl Liang, Paddington, London

I’m incredibly excited to be reviewing Pearl Liang (8 Sheldon Square, W2 6EZ, tel: 020 7289 7000). It’s a new Chinese restaurant in Paddington with a confident website (beware – it plays music), an interesting menu and excellent credentials (the head chef has defected from Queensway’s Mandarin Kitchen). The Great She Elephant and I went for a dim sum lunch yesterday, and my, I’m glad we did.

Dim sum is tricky. There are a bazillion restaurants in London’s Chinatown and in Bayswater serving these lovely little packets of Chinese flavour, and while some do it admirably well, some are pretty mediocre. It can be hard to find somewhere where the dim sum is exceptional, but I think I’ve found it in Pearl Liang, a couple of minutes from Paddington station.

The restaurant has a remarkable interior. It’s a bit like a 1970s brothel/disco, with plushy purple upholstery, modern flock wallpaper, lots of gilding and little ice-cube lights. It’s all in a new development at the waterside in Paddington (use the map and the directions on Pearl Liang’s website, since it can be hard to find without some help), a curious furtive mauve bolthole hidden among the office blocks.

The dim sum menu isn’t huge by Chinese standards; a selection of about fifteen steamed dishes and ten fried ones, alongside cheung fun (wide strips of silky rice noodle wrapped around a savoury filling and bathed in a wonderfully savoury sauce) and noodles are offered on a menu where you tick a box on a form to order each dish. This relatively small menu is a good move – every dim sum we sampled was cooked with real attention to detail. A sampler platter of ten individual dim sum is available for under £10, with the familiar (Siu Mai, the pork dumplings shaped like a cup, open at one end, and Har Gow, the translucent prawn dumplings) alongside the unfamiliar (a diamond of sticky rice wrapped in a leaf of seaweed and flavoured strongly with caramelised onions, and a ravishing little spinach dumpling). Perched in the middle was one of the best Char Siu Bao I’ve tasted.

We ordered the Doug (crispy dough cruller) Cheung Fun and some Lo Bak Goh to go with the platter, alongside a bowl of Malaysian Char Kway Teow noodles. The Lo Bak Goh, a delicious square of grated Chinese radish (one of my favourite dim sum options) was flavoured with a beautifully made Chinese sausage and delicate dried shrimp, and seared to a golden crisp on the outside while softly shredded inside. The Char Kway Teow was spiked with perfectly fresh prawns, and was subtly spiced. If I were being super-picky (and I am), I would have wanted more wok hei, the smoky flavour of a well-seasoned and extremely hot wok, permeating the dish, but hey – it was still as good a dish of Char Kway Teow as I’ve ever eaten in London. Service is charming and helpful.

The evening menu looks extremely exciting as well. There’s lobster steamboat (a kind of Chinese fondue), fresh fish including Dover sole and sea bass, Buddha Jump Over the Wall (the soup which was said to smell so good that the Buddha abandoned his meditation and jumped over the temple wall to sample it) and some other very interesting-sounding options like a pomegranate sweet and sour chicken. I can’t wait to get back there to sample the rest of the menu.

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Feminist cheese

I have an absolutely excellent brother, who sent me a big box of cheese from The Fine Cheese Company in Bath for my birthday. (He’s got the hang of this birthday lark; he sent my Mum a big box of oysters for hers. Go Ben.)

The Fine Cheese Company are great – their cheese is beautifully kept, and the cheeses in the box arrived at a perfect stage of ripeness: the stinky cheeses were stinky, the soft ones meltingly gooey.

This particular selection, called the Sisters in Cheese Box, is all produced by female cheesemakers. My initial reaction on learning this was ‘Out of what?’, but it turns out that the milk in question is actually squirted benignly out of sheep and cows. I think I just have a filthy mind.

You can see the cheeses above. The top cheese, soft and unctuous, was my favourite. It’s a half baby Wigmore, made by Anne Wigmore in Berkshire from ewes’ milk, and it’s a wonderfully sticky little beast. Moving clockwise, the hard cheese with the yellow label is a Curworthy, made to a centuries-old recipe. The next cheese is a delicious unpasturised Brie made by Debbie Mumford in Sharpham, Devon, and was by far the best (and best-kept) English Brie I’ve tasted. Finally, the wedge of cheese is the fruity Keltic Gold, a rind-washed hard cow’s cheese from Cornwall.

A useful card on the proper storage and keeping of cheese for those of us without a lovely cool pantry is included with the box, and this cheesy cornucopia kept us busy after dinner for several days, accompanied by lots of wine, some Bath Oliver biscuits and some digestives. Thanks Ben and Katie!

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Hotel Chocolat Easter Egg

Hotel Chocolat sent me their Signature Egg to review a couple of weeks ago. This was excellent news – I am a big fan of Hotel Chocolat, who are my favourite high-street chocolatiers. They currently have 21 shops in the UK, a mail-order chocolate tasting service and some really interesting products – my very favourite thing in the whole shop is the cocoa nibs, which are simply little shards of cocoa bean with no sugar.

The Signature Egg, cleverly, uses milk chocolate for one half of the shell and dark for the other. This was one of the best chocolate shells I’ve tasted – it’s extra-thick, and the dark chocolate in particular is very good; not too sweet, and extremely smooth with a lovely creamy texture. Hotel Chocolat have their own cocoa plantation in the West Indies, which guarantees the quality of the chocolate. I had some Cadbury’s chocolate in the kitchen to taste as a sort of control chocolate,which was granular and tooth-hurtingly sweet by comparison.

You can see the very pretty mini-eggs that fill the shell in the photograph. They are all liqueur creams…and this is where the Signature Egg, with its gorgeous, thick shell, falls down. On paper, the flavours looked great; pink Marc de Champagne, Tiramisu, Kirsch, Amaretto and so on. Unfortunately, the lecithin-slippery centres all tasted rather synthetic (the pink Marc being a dead ringer for Angel Delight). Advocaat, a flavour I usually dislike, was by far the best (and appropriately Easterish, being made from egg yolks), but the Kir cream managed to mimic cough mixture. Still – these were sweet, and sufficiently grown-up tasting that you won’t find them being stolen by the kids. Unless the kids happen to like Kirsch.

Hotel Chocolat is currently running an Easter-Egg Hunt competition to win a rather lovely-looking Easter Hamper full of chocolatey goodness. You can enter until April 2. Happy hunting!

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Picasso, Bellagio, Las Vegas

Update, October 2009: we went back to Picasso for a return match last month, about two and a half years after our first visit. A good meal, but nowhere near as great as it was back in 2007 – and somewhat alarmingly, the tasting menu hasn’t changed at all, which speaks to me of an over-laid-back kitchen. Service this time was pushier and more obtrusive, the wine pairings weren’t as good as I’d have hoped (a couple of the whites in particular were simply too young), and the prix fixe we settled on was surprisingly tame. The room itself is still fabulous, but I suspect we won’t visit again – a lousy shame, because in 2007, they were absolutely at the top of their game. For nostalgia’s sake, read on…

I’ve held off writing about Picasso for a few weeks because I feel moved to empty the bank account and run away to live at the Bellagio casino resort every time I sit down and think about the meal. It was near-perfect; it’s almost intimidating to write about the place, because I simply don’t have a bad word to say about the experience…and that makes me look like an unthinking, uncritical sort of eater. I’m not; really I’m not – this was just quite simply the very best meal I’ve eaten in my life.

Even if Picasso weren’t serving spectacularly good food, the room itself would be reason enough to visit. Right next to the Bellagio fountains (one of my favourite free Las Vegas attractions – they’re 60ft tall and they dance to a playlist of showtunes, classical music and opera), the restaurant is filled with original Picasso ceramics and paintings, and decked out with vase upon vase upon vase of fresh flowers. Between the fountains, the still-life on the wall opposite me and the enormous jugs of freesias and tulips, even the ravishingly handsome Dr Weasel was having trouble holding my attention. Despite all this grandeur, the room is designed to be very intimate, with little nooks and crannies of seating to make you feel you’re almost eating on your own.

Even if the room were not filled with art and flowers, and even if those fountains weren’t swaying outside the window, the service alone would be reason enough to visit. Perfectly unobtrusive, the waiters changed dirty napkins with such skill you didn’t notice them doing it, poured exactly the right amount of wine, kept the water glasses brimming – there’s a reason the Zagat guide gives this restaurant its top score for service. I am allergic to lobster (as far as I am concerned, one of the worst things that you could choose to be allergic to – I used to love the stuff), and mentioned to the waiter that I would prefer something different for the first course of our degustation menu. Other restaurants have left me without a course when this happens, or with a portion of whatever came to hand in the kitchen (nothing is so galling as sitting there with a small bowl of pumpkin soup while the rest of the table is ripping a couple of lobsters to shreds). Not Picasso. The waiter beamed, told me I could have anything I wanted from the menu…so I took him at his word and selected poached oysters in a delicate beurre blanc, each dressed with a teaspoon of wonderful, wonderful Oscietra caviar. Heaven.

If you visit Picasso, the tasting menu is fit for a king. Lobster terrine (‘totally yum’ according to Dr Weasel – bet you’re glad he doesn’t write this blog) and those aromatic, vermouth-spiked oysters came after an amuse bouche of soupe de poivrons with a truffled potato croquette to dip into the little soup pot. Scallops were sauced with a veal jus, gloriously savoury against their fresh sweetness. An escalope of seared foie gras was prepared perfectly; glass-crisp on the outside with a silky soft interior, with figs and sweet walnuts alongside. Halibut was moist and toothsome, and it seems almost churlish to call my lamb chop a lamb chop – it was one of the best pieces of meat that’s ever been past my teeth. Dessert was a lychee bavarois with one of the most ridiculous and delicious items I’ve seen on a dessert plate – a giant, chocolate-dipped fresh coconut popsicle. And the petits fours with my coffee were delicate and delightful. They even brought a set for Dr Weasel, who wasn’t drinking coffee.

The wine list is large and thoughtful. On another occasion I might choose to have the wine pairing with each course, but this time we chose a Russian River unoaked Chardonnay (a wine that’s extremely difficult to find in the UK, so we tend to order it whenever possible in America), which was absolutely delicious. I love it when the wine waiter ensures he’s not pouring so fast you’ll move through the bottle before you’re really ready; at Picasso our wine was poured carefully so it lasted us until we had finished our main course.

Picasso’s chef, Julian Serrano, has the James Beard award for Best South-Western Chef, five AAA diamonds, and a vast array of Zagat awards. Obviously, a meal of this quality comes at a price, and currently the degustation menu is $115. (This is a positive bargain for those of us used to European prices.) If you visit Picasso, you will need to book at least a month in advance, and make sure you dress well – there were people wearing less smart clothes in there and they looked immensely uncomfortable. I promise you that the meal you eat will be worth the dressing up, the advance booking and at least three times what you’re paying – this is something really special.

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Dining in Las Vegas

Update, Jan 2008 – there are now a lot more reviews of Las Vegas restaurants on this site. Click here to read them all.

I’m back from a couple of weeks’ holiday. Regular readers will notice that I’m a frequent visitor to Las Vegas. Being a neophobe, I decided to squeeze four days of Vegas into the start of the trip. Las Vegas wins my favourite city prize even though I don’t gamble – it has a remarkable concentration of world-class restaurants, some of America’s strangest visitor attractions and some amazingly good bars, clubs, shows and other night-time diversions for the jetlagged.

If you’re a first-time visitor, the sheer choice of restaurants can be overwhelming. These are just a few of the Vegas restaurants that will make your toes curl with gustatory pleasure.

Stripsteak is a new Michael Mina venture at the Mandalay Bay resort and casino (my favourite place to stay in Las Vegas – it’s at the very southern end of the strip, so you can get away from the crowds in some degree of style). Mina is known for his Californian-inspired fine cuisine, and was named Bon Appetit’s chef of the year in 2005. Stripsteak is a bit of a departure for Mina, whose other restaurants tend to be very exclusive, with menus specialising in seafood; at first glance Stripsteak looks like yet another Vegas steakhouse. What a steakhouse, though. The menu is overflowing with Kobe beef, truffles, duck fat and other riches. I can recommend the obscenely good duck fat fries, the perfectly tender and flavourful American Kobe ribeye, the truffled mac and cheese and the carpaccio (potently but not aggressively flavoured with Thai spices) wholeheartedly. (How long the arteries surrounding that heart are going to hold up at this rate is a matter of opinion.)

Red Square, also at Mandalay Bay, is best known as a bar and nightclub. It’s almost intimidatingly hip: there’s an ice bar; a frozen vodka locker where you’re provided with fur coats and hats for tastings; a headless statue of Lenin; and a air of decayed Imperialism. The restaurant, in the face of all this coolness, is often overlooked by guidebooks which are overwhelmed by the excellent bar. This makes this place one of the best-kept secrets in Vegas. Don’t go expecting traditional Russian cooking – Red Square has a high-class but decidedly modern American menu with the occasional twist like Siberian Nachos (won ton crisps with smoked salmon and wasabi tobiko). Try the farmed America sturgeon caviar, which is a fraction of the price of the Iranian stuff also on offer, but just as good. It’s served with a mother-of-pearl spoon, with your choice of blinis or toast points and all the traditional accompaniments. The Roquefort-crusted steak is one of the best in town – and the Martinis and other vodka cocktails are to die for.

Shibuya, a Japanese restaurant at MGM Grand, serves glorious food and gilds the lily with its enormous sake list, employing a specialised somellier. The staff couldn’t be more helpful; last time I visited we asked to move tables when the restaurant was full to escape from some obnoxious neighbours, and were accommodated immediately and without fuss. Toro tartar was glorious, and the miso snow crab legs were fresh, sweet and tender.

Chinois, a Wolfgang Puck property at the Forum Shops, is another restaurant which transforms into a club at night. The upstairs club area is beautiful, but I prefer to visit at lunchtime, when the restaurant is quieter. (Felicity Huffman from Desperate Housewives decided to have lunch there on the same day I did, which I found quite stupidly exciting.) There’s one overarching reason to visit Chinois, and that’s the Chinois Chicken Salad, a light, crisp confection which I would happily sell my own grandmother for. The restaurant is perfectly happy for you to only order appetisers if you want a lighter lunch.

Jean-Philippe Patisserie at Bellagio is not only host to the world’s largest chocolate fountain, it’s also the most consistently excellent patisserie I’ve found anywhere in the world (this after a stint living in Paris and a late twenties spent searching London for the perfect macaroon). Jean-Philippe Maury won the Gold Medal from the 2002 World Pastry Team Championship, and if you are up for afternoon tea or a stellar breakfast, you should drop in. If you can avoid being seduced by the fresh crepes or the gorgeous ice-cream made on the premises, try the Strawberry (made from a slice of crisp macaroon, an almond paste and fresh glazed strawberries), the Exotic (a prize-winning tropical fruit and coconut confection) or the Rose Macaron (raspberry and rose macaroon).

For a savoury breakfast, I’ve found nothing in the city as good as the Stage Deli at the Forum Shops – it’s much, much better than other places serving breakfast mid-strip, so if you’re staying at Caesar’s, the Mirage or TI…or anywhere else, for that matter, head on over. Stage Deli is a branch of the well-known New York deli, but fortunately they have managed not to import the famous New York attitude along with the corned beef. Try the pastrami hash or smoked fish and bagel for breakfast, and any of the giant sandwiches for lunch.

Las Vegas is, of course, famous for its buffets. The food at the buffets is never as good as you’ll get at a restaurant with service, but some of the casino buffets stand out – Le Village Buffet at Paris is one of the better ones, but my very favourite is at Bellagio, where the breakfast boasts an excellent Asian station with congee and pork floss. The slab-carved salmon is smoked in-house – it’s excellent and is served with all the trimmings. Quality remains high across the spread. At weekends, the casino offers a champagne brunch and gourmet dinner at the buffet.

I’m saving our visit to Picasso for another post, simply because it was completely outstanding: absolutely the best meal I’ve ever had, even after years of chasing tables with Michelin stars in France. Watch this space. **Update – the whole review is here.**

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Indian sweets

Monday’s post massaged my online shopping gland. For several hours after writing it, I found I wasn’t concentrating properly. My thoughts kept wandering in the direction of squashy, silky, sugary Indian sweets like the ones from Ambala Foods. Eventually I gave in and ordered a 500g box. At £3.90, these boxes are fantastic value, so their purchase won’t weigh heavily on your mind. ( Your hips are another matter.)

Ambala cooks the sweets on the day they’re ordered and ships them immediately, to arrive with you within 24 hours. I don’t know whether it’s the freshness or the light but calculated hand with highly fragrant spices that makes them so exceptionally good, but I can tell you that we polished off a whole box in one evening. My pancreas still hurts.

It hurts because these sweets are…well…incredibly sweet. If you love the milky, tooth-hurting, concentrated sweetness of good English fudge, you’ll roll over and whimper with happiness when presented with a box of Ambala’s sweets. The 500g box contains a selection of Barfis (a condensed milk block); Halvas (sweetened nut pastes cut into rectangles); some syrup-soaked, spongy Gulabjamun and Chamcham (packed in a little plastic bag to keep them moist); a ceremonial sweet called Motichoor Ladoo (the round sweet in a black paper cup at the top of the page); and my favourite, the milky, silky pera.

Here’s the Motichoor ladoo. It’s a traditional sweet, eaten only at very special occasions, like weddings and festivals. It’s also given as a very special gift. It’s a lovely little mouthful made from little pellets of gram flour, sugar and ghee, which is cooked in a sugary syrup. A little pistachio is sprinkled on top.

Pera (right) is, according to Ambala, a sweet which is loved by children. I love it too – it’s made from sugary curds of milk, flavoured with saffron, and is sweetly silky. Each of these sweets is available to order individually, alongside some other mixed boxes, including one which is full of very lovely, fudgy Barfi.

My favourite Barfi are the plain ones. Their scented flavouring is beautifully put together; the flavour comes from orris root (the root of a highly fragranced iris, which is also used in perfumery) and cardamom seed. This box also contains Barfi with almonds and pistachios, and a slice of amazing carrot Halwa, which is also flavoured with that incredible orris root.

I’ve gone off fudge for good.

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Flavoured chocolates

I’ve recently started fixating on good, high-cocoa chocolates with unusual flavourings. Forget Terry’s Chocolate Orange – I want a bar full of exotic fruits, flower flavours and exciting spices. They’re increasingly popular at the moment; branches of Hotel du Chocolat are springing up all over the place, and Rococo Chocolates, NewTree and good old Green and Black’s are now supplying supermarkets. (Those after the ultimate posh chocolate experience should put in an order at l’Artisan du Chocolat, where flavours include banana and thyme, tonka bean and tobacco. The chocolates are expensive, but those I’ve had have been absolutely excellent – sadly, though, I have eaten the grand total of two of the things in my entire life. If I can get my hands on a box for Christmas, you’ll see them reviewed here.)

At the supermarket this week, I found myself scooping bars of chocolate into the basket like a woman possessed. Made to put most of them back by Dr Weasel, I held onto an organic bar of dark chocolate and cardamom from Rococo, and a bar of lavender and lime blossom milk chocolate from NewTree.

Rococo are based in Chelsea’s King’s Road, and have been producing organic chocolates of remarkably high quality for nearly 20 years. Luckily for you, they’ve discovered e-commerce and now ship worldwide, and some of their artisan bars and gift collections now appear in Waitrose. Their flower fondants are my very favourites, and have solidly replaced Charbonnel & Walker’s rose and violet creams in my affections. Always a sucker for good packaging design, I’m absolutely enchanted by Rococo’s wrappers, which use images from an 1850s French catalogue of chocolate moulds.

This cardamom artisan bar is, for me, about as good as dark chocolate gets. Cardamom has that same affinity with a bitter chocolate as it does with good, bitter coffee, and the 65% cocoa solids and high percentage of cocoa butter give the bar a beautifully clean snap when broken. The crisp, granular shards of cardamom seeds are glorious against the silky texture of the chocolate. It is unfortunate that these are so darn good; I can quite happily eat one in a single sitting.

NewTree (beware – very busy Flash site with music) a Belgian chocolate makers, are a brand I’d not come across before, but once I saw the label on their Tranquility milk chocolate, boasting lime blossom extract and lavender, I was sold. A single bar is said to have the same relaxing properties as three cups of lime blossom tisane. The milk chocolate was slightly granular, but delicately fragranced and delicious. If in quibblesome mood, I might complain that the chocolate was a little sweeter than the ideal, but this seems almost churlish given how well blended the unusual flower flavours were. I don’t really feel qualified to comment on whether or not I was left tranquil; any calming effect may have come from the glass of violet liqueur I was drinking on the side.

NewTree’s schtick is an appealing one; they flavour their chocolate bars with spices and herbs used not only for their flavour, but also for their health applications. With names like Pleasure, Eternity, Young, Digest, Vivacity, Sexy, Tranquility, Serenity and Cocoon, NewTree seem to have hit on something the rest of us have suspected for years – chocolate really is a universal panacea. Grab a bar if you see one, and please report back in the comments section and let me know whether you really did feel serene and cocooned.

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Hyères – restaurants and food shopping

Two weeks spent variously floating prone on my back in the Mediterranean, being splendidly cultural and hunting down Provençal recipes have left me tanned, educated, full of the sort of vitamins you only find in absurdly ripe fruit and vegetables, and with a groaning liver. I blame the foie gras and the local rosé wine.

The house we rented (pictured above) was glorious – a heap of palatial decay whose kitchen bristled with good equipment, including a chinois sieve, a mandoline, oyster knives, griddle pans and some of the sharpest knives it’s ever been my pleasure to handle. I do not, however, recommend its horse-hair mattresses, which made sleeping feel a lot like vigorous exercise on sacks full of prickly potatoes.

Hyères itself is a town surrounded by small growers with a daily market and a huge number of small grocers and little independent foodshops. If you visit, walk up to the Place Massillon in the old town and explore the labyrinth of small streets around it. You’ll find little shops selling nothing but dozens of different kinds of goat’s cheese, artisanal bakeries (in season, you can buy lavender bread), greengrocers which only sell local produce and some fantastic ethnic grocers, including a shop devoted to Arabic spices and a really excellent Vietnamese traiteur. Rotisseries punctuate the streets, but you’re not limited to chickens; quails and pork knuckles were on offer too.

If you visit the town, you’ll find plenty of good restaurants. Les Jardins de Bacchus on Av. Gambetta is a modern gastronomic restaurant, where courses were punctuated with Blumenthal-ish little jokes like a capuccino made from langoustines and foie gras. Service was excellent, and the food very good indeed. For a more casual meal, we really liked Le Jardin (19 Av. Joseph-Clotis), where Provençal food is served on a garden patio from noon until midnight. Try the crudites, which are served with a fierce anchoide and a home-made tapenade. Saigon-Hyeres is a beautifully decorated Vietnamese/Thai restaurant on Rue Crivelli, where the Thai fondue was fragrant and delicious – order plenty, though, as the portions are quite small.

My personal favourite was the Bistrot de Marius, a restaurant in Place Massillon specialising in the local fish and seasonal vegetables. (Bistrot de Marius has no website, but you’ll find other reviews of it online.) You can eat on the square in the shadow of the Knights Templar tower, and the food is extremely well-priced, thoughtfully prepared and absolutely delicious. Their soupe de poissons was the best I had on the holiday (and I sampled many), with a dense, heady aroma, served with a glossy, garlic-y rouille. Try the moules au gratin; mussels prepared in the same way you’d eat snails in Burgundy. A hundred times nicer than snails, and the butter was a joy to mop up with your bread. Red mullet was rolled with a fatty ham and pan fried. Iles flottantes were airy, their crème Anglaise dotted with vanilla – and to cap it all, the after-dinner coffee was some of the best I’ve had. Do drop in if you’re in town.

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Ladurée, Harrods, Knightsbridge

Ladurée is one of my favourite Parisian tea-rooms. They’ve recently opened a branch in Harrods in London, their first outside France. It’s a jewel of a place, with little linked salons in the style of Napoleon III, serving excellent teas, faultlessly French light meals and some of the best patisserie you’ll find in London. These people have style coming out of their ears; Ladurée is the pastry consultant for Sophia Coppola’s film about Marie Antoinette.

My Mum and I were at Harrods for a day of Ladies’ Nice Things, and stopped off for tea and macaroons at Ladurée. Ladurée’s macaroons are what makes them so very famous: crisp discs of ground almonds with a soft middle, sandwiched together with flavoured cream. The macaroons are served festooned with raspberries, pistachio cream and other good things if you have some in the tea-rooms. I bought a large box to take home as well.

These macaroons are flavoured delicately with the highest quality ingredients. There’s a basic range which is available all year round, and some seasonal flavours. (The black one in this box was a seasonal one; liquorice, which was surprisingly subtle and tenderly flavoured.) The flavours aren’t what you’d expect – the pale pink one here is scented with rose petals, the gold one caramel with fleur de sel (sandwiched together with some of the creamiest, most delicious caramel I’ve ever eaten). At certain times of year an orange flower macaroon is available, and I had a violet and cassis one in Paris a few years ago which I still think about fondly on occasion.

Eating at the tea-rooms themselves is a lesson in luxury. Each salon is decorated in a different style; this is the Black Salon, a tiny room packed to the gills with Etruscan caryatids. Zeus, surrounded by snakes, glowers from the middle of the cupola in the ceiling. I am informed that the velvet on the seats is made from pure mohair, and I can’t think of anywhere nicer to enjoy your truffle and morel omelette.

If you visit Ladurée, ask for the violet-scented black tea. I brought a (very expensive) packet home, and it’s glorious stuff; delicately scented and laced with violet and hibiscus flowers. I’m going to have to make another visit in a month or so – I have a dreadful craving for a black truffle religieuse and a large box of marrons glacés.

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George Hotel, Stamford – Seafood platter

Dr Weasel and I spent this week’s Bank Holiday Monday in Stamford, where we had our wedding reception in 2004. The George Hotel is one of my favourite places in the country: it’s a coaching inn that’s been active since around 947 AD, with a gorgeously planted garden, quiet lounges with inglenook fireplaces, comfortable rooms and two very good restaurants. It’s in Stamford, a beautiful market town built out of creamy Barnack stone, a few minutes from Burghley House, the palace built by Elizabeth I’s treasurer, William Cecil. We spent the morning at Burghley, then stopped at the George for the afternoon to have tea and scones by the fireplace, and read our books.

The hotel is probably the oldest still functioning in the UK. The original coaching inn forms the heart of the building, with the two religious buildings on either side incorporated into the inn about 500 years ago. One side used to be the Holy Sepulchre, a hospital of the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem. The George’s historical success came from its position at the side of the old Great North Road, and pilgrims and knights of the Holy Sepulchre stopped here as they travelled from the north down this main conduit on their journey to Jerusalem. There is a crypt beneath the cocktail bar where you can see part of the old hospital, and little architectural details pop out all over the building; trefoils carved in the stone, medieval gateways and the thick walls which once formed the outside of the building, now inside the hotel.

There are two restaurants at The George – the Garden Lounge is smart, but less formal than the Oak Panelled Dining Room, where men are asked to wear a tie. (Dr Weasel had left his in Cambridge when we visited a few years ago, and was given one by the head waiter.) Try the Oak Panelled Dining Room if you get the opportunity; it’s an experience simply to sit in the beautiful room, lit only by candlelight. The wine list is fascinating and meticulous, and the food, traditional English dishes like Woodbridge duck, suckling pig and a wonderful sirloin of beef, is always hearty and delicious. (We’ve looked up from our plates to see Judi Dench eating in the restaurant twice in the last few years – stalkers take note.)

We ate yesterday’s meal in the Garden Lounge, where the menu is a bit lighter. The menu changes seasonally, but there are a few constants – the gruyere fritters with a Thai chilli jam have been on the menu since I can remember. I had this gorgeous Brittany Platter – a dressed crab, a langoustine, an oyster (only one, sadly), a clutch of whelks, little palourde clams, cockles, mussels, tiny pink prawns and a huge king prawn. The enormous platter was served with a green salad spiked with celery, home-baked bread, and three home-made mayonnaise sauces; a Marie Rose, a mayonnaise tout simple and an astonishingly good tartare sauce.

The seafood here is always good; this was gloriously fresh. The shellfish, steamed gently, tasted of the sea, and the prawns were sweet and tender. It’s always good to find a whelk that’s not gritty or slimy, and these whelks accomplished that with aplomb. Grated egg yolk and white garnished the crab, and my, those little clams were a thing of beauty. Remarkably, I nearly managed to finish this; I left about five prawns, a couple of mussels, a whelk and some of the crab’s brown meat. Nearly 24 hours have passed, and I’m still full.

If you’re in the UK and looking for a weekend away, or if you’re visiting England from abroad, do think about spending a couple of days at the George. There’s nowhere I know that serves up that mixture of tradition, service and comfort quite as well. Ask for the kippers as part of your enormous breakfast, and tell them I sent you.