In local Bow bus news, the D8 is being downgraded this morning from high-frequency to low-frequency. Until yesterday it ran every 12 minutes during the daytime but from today it only runs every 15. So that's bad. TDS Busman: Actually I think you'll find the D8 ran every 15 minutes until a frequency increase on 24th May 2008, so all we're doing is going back to how things were 20 years ago. TDS Busman: Actually I think you'll find it was the 108 which followed the A12 20 years ago, that is until the D8 and 108 swapped routes between Bow and Poplar on 1st October 2016. TDS Busman: Actually I think you'll find a new contract has been awarded. The previous fleet was nine 10.4m Geminis and the new fleet is seven Electric Volvo BZLs, so TfL are saving on two vehicles here. TDS Busman: Actually I think you'll find the previous D8 tender was for £2,088,386 (or £6 a mile) and the new tender is for 2,823,500 (or £10 a mile), so the new electric buses cost a lot more. TDS Busman: Actually I think you'll find the D8 got double decker vehicles in 2016 "to meet very peaked demand from Bow School". It makes economic sense to cater for peak capacity rather than run special school buses. TDS Busman: Actually I can't disagree there.

Here be dragons... and mermaids and giants.

It's mid-September so Free Building Visits season is here again. That means London Open House which starts today, but also Heritage Open Days which started yesterday, their two weekends unusually coinciding this year. And because Heritage Open Days also includes a few venues in the capital I've already been out and got my moneysworth, which in this case is no money at all (+£2 donation). Bow Street Museum of Crime and Justice Formerly known as: Bow Street Police Museum Location: 28 Bow Street, Covent Garden, WC2E 7AW [map] Open: 11am-4.30pm (Friday, Saturday, Sunday only) Admission: £8 (+£2 encouraged donation) Website: bowstreetmuseum.org.uk Four word summary: the famous court's cells Time to allow: less than an hour Bow Street, just round the back of the Royal Opera House, where London's first police force coalesced. The instigator was a magistrate called Henry Fielding who moved into number 4 in 1748 and became concerned by the amount of gin-based disorder in the locality. He hired eight constables to pursue criminals in a more civil manner than the usual street-based violence, these becoming known as the Bow Street Runners, and when his brother succeeded him as magistrate the patrol was refined into London's first effective police force. 2006 it was no longer required and the building was sold to a boutique hotel chain, although it took until 2021 before a different boutique hotel finally opened. As part of the deal a teensy strip of the old building became a museum, essentially a corridor of cells from the police station half, and if you want to see the courthouse these days you have to hire the hotel ballroom. In the main room we have the actual dock from Court number 2, which the curators hope one day you'll be able to stand on but not before some preservation work has been done. It's also not clear which famous accused stood on this board and which were tried in courts 1 or 3 instead. The walls here tell the story of Bow Street's evolution from Henry's home to full-on cop shop. The story's well told and illustrated but the focus is very much on words and pictures, there being very little in the way of artefacts. One cabinet has a lantern, rattle and inkwell from the olden days plus a trundle wheel used to measure the length of a copper's beat, the other shows what a Bow Street Runner might have worn, and then it's back to reading again. Visitors seemed content to peruse at length. The corridor is a lot more evocative, being original, with six numbered cells leading off the right-hand side. The first has been left as was with a mattress on a wooden plank as a bed, although the toilet wouldn't have had a glass sheet over it back in the day. The other five are now tiny little galleries with more to see and read, one with a video to watch (although it was a bit full in there so I didn't). The displays add background to the main story, particularly about how the police station operated, and I liked the photo of the old canteen that provided underwhelming breakfasts for prisoners who were up before the beak in the early slot. I see why they changed their name in April away from Bow Street Police Museum because it's not really that, but it's not really a Museum of Crime and Justice either. It's more a fascinating historic corridor leftover from a hotel conversion, gamely making the best of what they've got, but I fear they take less in admission in a week than a single guest pays for a night in a king-sized bed nextdoor.

It's very often the case about the very top London hotels that despite the amount of money they have at their disposal, and the pick of whatever celebrity or otherwise feted chefs they can choose from, the restaurants end up being rather mediocre. Partly this is due to the unique demands placed on a hotel restaurant, who have to cater for all kinds of requirements at all times of the day, and often various wildly different cuisines (burgers, curries, pasta) and inevitably end up doing none of them well. If you have room (and money) though, you can divide up your food offering amongst various different restaurants in the same hotel, and stand a much better chance of getting things right. In the brand-new Rosewood Chancery on Grosvenor Square there are fully six dining options (or at least will be - some are not going yet), ranging from super-spendy Japanese (Masa from NYC which once held the dubious title of New York's most expensive restaurant) down to GSQ (no I don't know what the letters stand for) a much more informal deli selling pastries and sandwiches. We began (after a decent gin Martini of course) with house breads - a sesame "koulouri" and a buttermilk pita. Both were either straight out of the oven or cleverly reheated as they were warm and fluffy and salty in all the right places. I've never been to Greece, but if these are indicative of the kind of bread they're eating over there, I need to make plans. Taramasalata was also superb - supremely smooth and light, full of flavour and presented neatly. It's become a cliché over the years that Greek food doesn't travel - that you eat very well in Greece itself but that Greek restaurants outside of the country tend to be a bit ropey - but places like here and Peckham Bazaar are enough evidence that it can be done if you approach it in the right way. This is beef loin with preserved tomato, studded with little blobs of 'grape must mustard'. Grape must (Wikipedia tells me) is an early stage of winemaking, and how they go about making mustard out of it is beyond me, but the effect was good, lifting what would be otherwise rather bland beef into something more interesting. Much better were scallops with peas and marigold, the sweet seafood (and a pretty generous portion for your £22) boosted by fresh herbs and really good fresh garden peas. This was one of the highlights of the dinner, a genuinely surprising and innovative preparation that was quite unlike anything I'd ever tried before. Not rocket science of course, but quirky and clever and a departure from your usual raw scallop dishes. Raw tuna (we tried ordering the sardines and the langoustines first but both were unavailable - don't put them on the menu, then, is my advice) was another top bit of seafood work, studded with lovely toasted hazelnuts, bottarga and - my favourite element - caper leaves. Like the scallops dish it took a familiar raw ingredient and added just enough intelligence and style to twist it into something new without losing what makes raw tuna so much fun to eat in the first place. Middlewhite pork "souvlaki" was a neat little arrangement of beautifully tender chargrilled pork, not overly fatty but with just enough to create crunch and ooze, dressed delicately with fennel seed, mustard and lemon as well as some colourful pickles. Technically impressive, of course, but crucially succeeding on the strength of the main ingredient - this was very good pork. And it was a slightly less than impressive main ingredient - the beef, again - that somewhat let down this grilled sirloin. As with the pork, the protein had been expertly grilled with a lovely pink colour and dark, dry crust, but just didn't really taste of much. The mixture underneath, in fact - aubergine peperonata - was the most notable thing about the dish, but you wouldn't really spend £40 just for that. We had a couple of sides I think but for some reason I've only ended up with a photo of the "fried potato", actually a Quality Chop House style confit/mandolined affair. They had a very good texture but I'm not sure 5 bitesize pieces for £8 is very close to anything approaching value. Yes, that's me moaning about prices in a brand new 5* hotel in Mayfair. Sue me (don't, I can't afford it). There was another main of wild prawn tartare pasta, which I didn't try because raw seafood on warm pasta makes me feel a bit queasy, but it looked like good pasta and I believe it went down pretty well. The only dessert I tried was the Sicilian lemon sorbet, which they offered to convert to a sgroppino with a shot of vodka so obviously I did. It was very nice actually - the lemon flavour boosted by grated lemon rind on top. too crazy and we had a good time so I suppose it could be worse. And when the food was good, it was very good, and sometimes it really is worth paying extra to sit in spectacular surroundings, and get cosseted by sparkling service. So if the prices bring the overall score down a bit, bear in mind that this is still way better than meals I've had in some other equally prestigious - and often far more spendy - places, and I can still recommend Serra, for trying to bring something genuinely new to top-end hotel dining. 7/10

Also: towels, scarves, trousers, false teeth.