Hix Soho - Soho

66-70 Brewer St, London, W1F 9UP

I wasn't going to review Hix Soho, for one thing I didn't take many photos, for another I wanted a meal off without worrying about what I was going to write. But, why break the habit of a lifetime? Or at least one from the last two years.

Soho is a trendy old place and Hix is no exception. Leaving Oxford Circus station via Argyll Street, the tourists melt away around the landmark that is Liberty, replaced by the trendy folks wandering the side roads that flank Carnaby Street. Bags from new-vintage shops dangling from one hand, an en vogue cocktail in the other, while wearing the heaviest of all the denim - there's plenty of places for these guys to call home and the bar at Hix has a stuffed fox; that alone makes it perfect for this crowd.

Ignoring the complaints of some older folks about the quality of the chairs on offer, I liked Mark's Bar, as it's called. A long list of spirits, competent bar staff and no raise of an eyebrow when I asked for my whisky in a different glass. Well, what's the point of all these trips if I don't at least learn something?! It was quiet too, for a late Saturday lunch - the trendy crowd not yet out of bed. I drank a gin and tonic. Gin seems to be the flavour of the month, but I wasn’t quite sure who was paying, so I hedged my bets with a Tanqueray 10.

The bright lights and open space of the Hix restaurant is a stark (bright?) contrast to the bar downstairs. It’s my biggest bug-bear of day-time basement drinking. Like a long-haul flight, your body thinks the time wrong, not liking the sunlight that it’s not expecting to see. If only someone hadn’t been playing with the lights, that might have helped. It would have also been nice for the good service of the bar to continue upstairs too. For at least ten minutes (or it could have been fifteen - damn that basement jet-lag) we sat waiting for someone, anyone, to take a drinks order - the French guy whose accent was so thick as to make his words incomprehensible, the suited guy who helped to put the napkins straight, or any number of the other waiters who looked in every direction but ours. It was all very aloof. Perhaps I’m just not cut out for this part of town; everytime I visit I meet staff whose priority is anything but serving me.

The food, when it arrived, was good. Excellent in many places. The snacks of crispy pork crackling, parsnips crisps, and padrón peppers, were an amusing distraction. The price probably a little cheeky on the feeble bowl of crisps, and to be told the peppers would be delayed as ‘they need to be cooked’ is beyond a joke. When presented with the bill, I was inclined to remark that the money need to be earned, but then I wasn’t paying. Things began to settle when the final starter arrived. It was a salmon pâté - we’d already had one delivered; clearly someone couldn’t count. My plate of whipped squash and goat’s curd was tasty in parts; a tangy cheese, but a fairly bland squash. I suppose it is squash, whipped; I can’t expect much more. The main was far better. A duck hash with a double yolk-egg balanced on top. Earthy flavours from the meat, sticky sweetness from the egg, very morish. They can keep the white. Again, it’s white - what more can I ask? Well, perhaps a few more potatoes. I was warned not to order them as the hash is mainly potato. True, but I could inhale this number of potatoes and not worry about indigestion, choking, or even notice for that matter. Had this been my only side, I would have been disappointed.

Finally, an apple pie, smothered in custard. You can’t go wrong here, surely? Even I can cook a killer apple pie and I don’t even own a pie dish. I’ve had poor ones before though and not a million miles from where I sat, so I approached it cautiously. I needn’t have worried. This was a bowl of comfort that, even with a coffee, pushed my eyelids firmly closed. A good way to close the meal and by now there seem to be enough alert staff on the floor to get the plates tidied and bill settled quickly. Although, I wonder if that waitress who said she’d be back for the coffee orders is still be wandering around looking for us?

Newman Arms - Fitzrovia, London

23 Rathbone St, London, W1T 1NG

The most obvious pubs in Central London tend to be tourists traps, luring the Germans, the Japanese, and day-trippers in for pints creeping every closer to the £6.00 mark and food rejected by Findus. There are some hidden gems though, tucked away along alleyways off the main thoroughfares, they sell a relatively-reasonably priced pint from a brewery other than Samuel Smith. Finding them is tough, unless you're a 'local'.

The Newman Arms on Rathbone Street is one such pub. To get there from Oxford Street requires a map, a compass, good boots, and traversing one or two narrow Dickensian passageways lifted straight from the pages of a Hollywood script. The pub itself has an equally narrow door - a sliver of a thing that bars most American tourists from entering - opening in to a single roomed bar, featuring a range of different ales on tap, and that classic of all London pubs: the dank basement toilet. 

While a good drinking hole, the real beauty of this pub lies upstairs. In a small but ornate room, ten tables sit arm-rubbingly close to one another, surrounded on every wall by china bowls, collections of cigarette cards, and memorabilia from the Crimean War - the last one that is. Here, they sell pie and pudding. The pie wouldn't pass the test of the Pierateers: a ceramic bowl of stew topped with a puff pasty lid is always a poor excuse for a pie. The choice of the real connoisseur is the pudding: a lump of suet surrounding boiling hot and delicious chicken and leek innards. Accompanied with crushed potatoes and various vegetables, this could be a contender for healthiest pie served in London. A second pudding to follow is a must. This time in the non-traditional sense of the word, the pudding is a no-nonsense bowl of sticky toffee pudding - a mound of sponge and sugar - drowned like a cat in either cream, ice-cream, or custard.

After two courses and a pint, all for under £20, to leave via the front door is tricky and the alleyway back to Oxford Street feels even narrower.

Drakes Tabanco - Fitzrovia

3 Windmill Street, Fitzrovia, London, W1T 2HY

According to food critic Matthew Norman, food contributes less than 50% to the experience of eating out. With ambience, service, company, and drinks to consider, he's not wrong. Sitting at a long table in the cellar-like Drakes Tabanco, the company, sherry, and Rosita Voll (7.0%) definitely made up for the slight sloth of service and the Bakewell tart with the adamantium base. Then again, what was a dessert from 1,000 miles north of Madrid doing on the menu anyway?

Just off Oxford Street, Drakes Tabanco is a small Spanish restaurant that I walked past twice before finding the door. Aiming to recreate a traditional Iberian tavern, golden candle light twinkles off cherry red tables and dark haired waitresses with thick accents carve thin strips from a large mouth-watering ham sat on the bar. Having visited Benidorm, I can say they've failed. Not a Sky Sports poster, bottle of salad cream, or tattooed Brit in sight. A terrible recreation of Spanish culture.

The drink is not too traditional either. Here, they serve sherry, not warm cans of Stella. Given that my experience of sherry extends to a half-drunk bottle of Croft Original and a two-hour visit to the town of Masala, I'm limited to the description of 'sweet and sticky' for every sherry I try. They assured me this was good stuff though and Jay Raynor almost agrees.

Aside from that slice of Bakewell tart, the food - a variety of hams, cheeses, and meat heavy mains - was brilliant. With so much on offer, I should have taken notes, but sharing platters are far too distracting. Watching your dinner pass to other people before you get a chance to eat is sheer hell. Like a dog, you ignore everything else and follow the plate with your eyes, measuring how much others are taking and making damn sure you take the same - or more. Maybe next time I'll visit on my own.

Patty and Bun - James Street

54 James St, London, W1U 1EU

Many people wrongly believe that burgers are eaten by slovenly Meat Loaf look-a-likes, who delight in nothing more than pushing 6 ounces of beef and bread through their teeth while trying not to choke on their own saliva. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, it's those healthier-than-thou types - lacking as they do any experience in proper burger consumption - who dribble meat juice down their slim chin and minute wrists, pausing to mop the table, floor, and their laps with ream-after-ream of paper napkins. The well-practiced among us are deft at handling a burger, skilled in the art of dribbling only on the plate, elbows apart - knees as well, if no table - with only one napkin soiled. 

Patty and Bun - located just off Oxford Street, near Bond Street station - serve a burger which requires a high level of control. Not only is the plate absent, increasing the risk of post-spill run-off, but the moisture of the meat combined with several other wet ingredients creates a 'perfect storm' for the amateur. Elbows here should be set at 4 and 8. Don't mistake this for criticism, however. The ingredients bound inside a Patty and Bun 'ARI GOLD' Cheeseburger are a near perfect taste-sensation, featuring amongst other things traditional sweet-sweet plastic cheese, pickled onions, and smokey mayo. The burger does require two hands to manoeuvre effectively; unfortunately, this means that a handful of rosemary salt covered chips between each bite has to be foregone, leaving them all for the end and my belt another hole down.

With burgers this good, it's hard to see why Patty and Bun only has the one venue - albeit slap-bang in the centre of London. I'd wager that we'll see them expand soon though, jostling for position in a sea of Byron's and Honest Burgers - and I'd wager that they'll float fairly well.

The Golden Eagle - Marylebone

59 Marylebone Ln, London W1U 2NY

Just off Oxford Street there's a pub which proudly proclaims in mile-high letters above the door to be 'A Traditional Pub'. I've never visited this pub and it may be one of the best in London. Given the location, I can see the appeal of a sign which will attract throngs of Japanese tourists to stand outside taking photographs and perhaps even buy a drink. However, it strikes me that a truly traditional pub wouldn't have such a sign: by virtue of the fact that it's not a traditional thing for a pub to do. A publicans Catch-22 if you will.

Not a long skip away there is a truly traditional pub. Nestled beside the fancy restaurants, expensive handbag shops, and orange Lamborghinis of Marylebone sits The Golden Eagle. This is a pub where the doors are taller than the floor is wide, where the carpet is worn to threads where the regulars stand, and an ageing pianist with the middle-name of 'Fingers' hammers out old cockney classics, including the underplayed 'Hitler Has Only Got One Ball'. 

The Eagle is like a living exhibit from the Imperial War Museum. Nicholas Lyndhurst sits at the bar in a trilby, white crosses of tape adorn the windows, and a small boy will run in shouting that El Alamein has fallen if you stand still for long enough.

Judging by the neighbours, you would have thought that high rates would have forced this waxwork back to Lambeth. References to the barman's name suggest that a loyal clientele keep the place going, and perhaps post-work drinks on a Friday inject sufficient cash to cover the quiet times. Being such a 'traditional' pub though, were it to consider closing the European Union should surely step in with a cultural subsidy; but then perhaps 'Fingers' would need to lay off the teutonophobic songs.