Perfil de omnivore

There is such a thing as too much service, I thought, as the fourth waiter arrived at our table seconds after the last to explain the baffling menu at Chakra recently.

My mum and I went to sample this new curry restaurant soon after it opened. It takes the place of Cultural Revolution, which – in my view – offered excellent value tasty food but precious little atmosphere. With Chakra, the reverse is true; it’s all style over samosas…and expensive to boot.

But when you’ve forked out a fortune on plush interior décor as the owners clearly have here, you’re not going to charge £1 for a Frisbee-sized poppadum and a generous carousel of sauces. No. You’re going to charge closer to £5 for quarter a broken up poppadum and serve it in a tiny little dish with a few scraps of chopped up tomato and onion and a thimbleful of sauce.

As most London curry houses in London are much of a muchness, in my experience, with tired décor and predictable menus, it’s easy to impress and even fool diners into thinking they are getting a superlative experience with a fine dining approach. When this is done well it can be a sublime experience, such as that to be had at my favourite curry place: Amaya.

But in Chakra’s case, upholstered white walls, clever uplighting and an army of waiting staff can’t compensate for very mediocre food, which is what we had. It was certainly highly-coloured when it all arrived in barge-style dishes. However, the contents had also been liquidized to oblivion in a thick sauce, so it was hard to identify what was what, save the odd bit of chicken or prawn which sometimes broke the surface. As for flavour, well, it just tasted generally curryish, but with no delicate distinction of flavours.

Chakra also favours that annoying policy of keeping your wine as far away from your table as possible and then sprinting over to refill your glass if you so much as touch your wine glass, meaning you end up guzzling far more than you would normally. Here the cheapest bottle of plonk is £28, so be warned.

Despite what I’ve said Chakra will flourish due largely to its location and the fact the only good curry house nearby – Malabar – is tucked away out of sight.

Ironically, despite the over-zealous army of waiting staff during our meal, no one was on hand to fetch our coats after our meal so we waited around like lemons for 5 minutes…no way to curry favour with new customers.

As a local and fan of Westfield, I was salivating at the thought of Jamie's Italian opening right on my doorstep. So as soon as it did I went along with a friend. Initial impressions were good; it was buzzing with a friendly, laid-back vibe, and friendly staff.

However, the spaghetti carbonara I had there was very disappointing - a dry, bland affair with spartan flecks of bacon. As any carbonara lover knows, you just cannot overcook the egg in this dish. In fact it's barely cooked and that's what makes the slippery, yellow sauce. Overcook it a fraction and the effect is lost as the egg hardens and you get an eggy sludge, losing your sauce in the process.

Had the restaurant been called 'a very average Italian joint', I might have left satisfied. But the name 'Jamie' carries with it a certain promise of excellence and your expectations are raised accordingly.

I'm a very big fan of Jamie Oliver generally. Instead of retiring smugly to a pile in Sussex with his squillions and gorgeous family, he's out there on a tough crusade against obesity, which is to be applauded. It would be good though if he could find time to pop back every now and then to remind his chefs about what constitutes authentic Italian cooking.

In a world of dizzying choices, the Popeseye is refreshingly limited. All they serve is steak and chips. Not just any steak, mind. This is succulent, juicy, bursting-with-flavour flesh.

In case you were wondering, 'popeseye' is the Scots name for rump steak, but there's also superlative sirloin and fillet on offer here. All come from Aberdeen Angus beef which is delivered daily from Scotland and hung for 28 days.

All you will need to decide is whether you want a 6, 8, 12, 20 or 30 oz slab of steak with your chips, and how you want it cooked.

The decor here is simple and atmosphere convivial, although it's probably a bit dead early in the week, due to its sleepy location; the footfall tends to be neighbourhood regulars and those in the know.

All in all, a bloody good find.

I love and loathe Brinkleys in equal measures. There's the braying, sharking, ageing hoorays who circle the bar for succulent prey. And the prey itself: a permatanned, botoxed breed of glossy-haired slightly faded fillies. I exclude myself from this description, naturally.

There's an intimate bar at the front with some cosy, booth-style seating you can book. Further back, there's a spacious restaurant which serves excellent roasts and one of the best Thai chicken curries I've had in London (although it's best to order two as they are a bit small).

The menu - like the clientele - never changes, but it's always pretty good. Another reason I love this place is that I have always had a riotous time whenever I've visited. It has a bit of a high-rolling eighties feel to it, where punters seem to exist in a bubble, untouched by the economic gloom and doom. Perhaps for them though it's just meant a couple less million in the bank, or having to sell a residence or two...no biggie.

Despite the well-heeled clientele the wines are surprisingly affordable which is perhaps what makes the place perenially popular; come on a Friday or Saturday night and it's buzzing. It's also virtually impossible not to pull here if that is your goal. There's a unique intimacy here that encourages interaction among strangers. Just watch out for those sharks!

When you're charged £16 to watch a film, as you are here at the Scene part of Vue, you expect a superlative viewing experience in return. Or, at least, as my companion said, 'a few naked men thrown in.'

At least there were some nice sofas to sink into in the foyer while we waited for our film to start, we thought. Except, they weren't very nice as it turned out. They were lurid red, too small, unyielding carbuncles that wouldn't have looked out of place in McDonalds. We bought some popcorn to console ourselves. This cost £5!! Really. £5 for what is around 90% air.

Our purses thoroughly emaciated, we made our way expectantly into the auditorium. "For £16, it's going to be AMAZING", we cooed. Well, yes, the seats are generous and made of leather (or something resembling it) and yes, they recline..a bit. Oh, and you get a little table to put your extortionately priced snacks on. But really, that's it.

If you're the nearby Electric cinema and ooze glamour and decadence you can get away with that kind of pricing. Not, I'm afraid if you're a charmless multiplex in a shopping centre. Unless, that is, you add naked men.

Really not my scene.

For some spooky reason, while the rest of Clapham Junction's bars and pubs are heaving on a Saturday night, this place is reassuringly chilled and virtually empty (until the rest of the bars and pubs kick everyone out and then it's packed and to be avoided at all costs). However, that does mean that there are no nice warm bodies to absorb the music which plays at ear-splitting volume.

It's great for what I have now moved onto in the dating world: micro dates. This is a way of meeting and assessing a date, whilst not dedicating an entire evening to the activity. You can breeze in, be served immediately at the bar and get down to it..before hot-footing it away. My date here the other night had something of the night about him I'm afraid; like he'd just buried someone under his paving before tucking into a robust glass of claret. He also went to the loo about 5 times in the course of an hour. Now maybe I'm being uncharitable here but I suspect it wasn't for the usual reasons. After our drinks and I had left to go on to a party, I received a text saying it was a shame I hadn't taken him along so he could 'flirt with all my scrummy tennis pals'. Oh dear. What not to say on a first date.

It helps when opening a new restaurant to situate it on a road which actually exists. That is, a road that's on the map so that people can actually find it. Sadly Nottingdale is on a brand new road which hasn't yet made it onto one. Cue Qype placing it somewhere in Croydon on their map.

When I visited I didn't know this fact. So I punched in the postcode into my iphone and was given coordinates for the middle of a council estate in W11. It would certainly have made a brave, not to mention avant garde addition to the otherwise smart area. But somehow, I got the impression while wandering around the deserted blocks that I was not going to find Nottingdale there.

When I did eventually track it down - in a nonedescript building resembling an office block - my Mum was the only diner. How to describe the restaurant; it has the atmosphere of a multi-storey car park crossed with an Ikea cafe after closing time. Perhaps at lunch it springs to life with nearby Westfield's teeming shoppers. But for dinner? Dead as a dodo.

On the plus side, we got the chef's undivided attention. On the downside, the menu was very limited with only four starters and three mains to choose from. And despite being the only diners we waited ages for our first course, sitting on laughably uncomfortable chairs.

We had risotto of new season cepes, girolles and summer truffle to start, which was ok, although very salty, followed by roasted Shetland salmon with jersey royals and summer crudites and anchovy mayo. My mum deemed this 'extremely ordinary', especially for a whopping £17.

With so many new restaurants opening in Westfield, it's hard to imagine how Nottingdale will survive...especially if no one can find it. Perhaps it would fair better in Croydon.

I have been on two first dates here and have decided it's the perfect venue for them. Of course there's the Asian fusion food which is fabulous. But only a foolish first-dater would commit to an entire meal with someone who, let's face it, might bore your pants off within five minutes/pick their nose/eat with their mouth open/yell at the waiters. So in E&O we have the perfect compromise. It's very lively, which provides some much needed noise when conversation peters out. Plus, it's dimly-lit - great if you have lied about your age/height/looks. What's more you can order some finger food there and try and eat it sexily with chopsticks (I have not managed this yet). Crucially, the loos are a good way from the bar downstairs, and it's easy to slip away home from them unnoticed if sparks don't fly. I'm obviously being a little negative. You might get on famously, in which case you have the fun of trying to secure a table in the restaurant - impossible if you're a muggle and haven't booked years in advance, but quite easy from 10pm. I went on a first date here recently and it didn't disappoint, although no sparks.

There's a whiff of the Generation Game about this new Itsu; you need to be quick and grab your chosen dishes from a conveyor belt, which snakes around the tables.

You can bet though as soon as you whip some crab rolls away that something better will catch your eye further along the belt. And you soon learn that if you miss that delectable tub of Bang Bang chicken you've spotted, that it'll be some time before it glides by again...that's if some other punter doesn't whisk it away first. However, we found the staff were only too happy to go in search of whatever dish we'd missed from the belt.

Strangely, the conveyor belt doesn't seem to adversely affect the atmosphere of this comfortable spot, that's a world away from the starker lunchtime Itsu experience.

They've also come up with a great credit crunch friendly concept - the 'early deal' whereby if you arrive between 3pm and 8pm you can choose any four cold plates from the conveyor for £9.95. I would recommend you stick to these as the more expensive hot dishes my friend and I also tried weren't nearly as impressive.