Hard as it may be to believe from my supremely easy-going and liberal attitude these days (no laughing at the back), there was a time when I was, well, if not completely anti-vegan then certainly vegan-skeptic. To someone who once considered vegetarianism radically restrictive, veganism seemed like vegetarianism with the few remaining good bits (butter, cheese, cream, eggs) taken out, a path taken only by people who didn't really like food in the first place and were looking for a more socially acceptable word to substitute for "dietary neurosis". And certainly, there are cuisines that (for want of a better word) "veganise" better than others. Most of the SE Asian and Indian subcontinent handle veganism supremely well - certain subgenres of Indian food are largely vegan anyway, and I have it on good authority from a vegan friend who went on holiday to Thailand recently that he ate extremely well almost everywhere. Just don't try being a vegan in France - one member of my family recently asked for a vegan alternative to a set menu starter and was served pâté de foie gras, a substitution very much from the Nana Royal attitude to hospitality. Sushi, with its focus on fresh fish, doesn't seem like an obvious cuisine to lend itself to going vegan, but then chains like Pret and Wasabi have done so for a number of years already with their avocado and cucumber rolls. What if it was done properly, with a chef's attitude to detail and with real presentational flair? Studio Gauthier attempts to do just that, making excellent sushi that just happens to have no animal in it. Can it really work? Well, in a word, yes. The first thing to arrive to our table was this cute presentation of plant-based "caviar", the deception strengthened by being served in a little custom-printed caviar tin. The "caviar" itself was remarkably realistic - certainly the equal to the lumpfish roe you can get from Tesco, probably even nicer - and underneath was a layer of creamy, salty plant-based crème fraiche of some kind (probably made from nuts but don't hold me to that). It was all rather lovely, despite the vegan blinis perhaps not working quite as well as their butter and milk-based counterparts and also being somewhat burned. Passing the huge open kitchen a little later, I noticed one of the staff despondently picking through a pile of burned blinis for the occasional one that could be salvaged and used, so clearly something had gone wrong in the preparation that day. I'm sure they're normally a lot better than this. When it comes to accurately describing the actual sushi, I'm going to have a bit of an issue, as some of the very clever techniques they used to recreate the standard sushi sets are quite beyond my powers of deduction. But alongside avocado nigiri here are "salmon" and "tuna" nigiri made, I'm told from tapioca starch with more fake tuna urumaki, all of it more than convincing. What also helped was that the sushi rice was warm - a detail that plenty of "actual" (and far more expensive) sushi places get wrong. Another plate of nigiri featured chargrilled aubergine, piquillo peppers with passion fruit chutney and, in the centre there, "Green Dynamite" - crisp rice fritters topped with tofu "crab", and sliced jalapeño dotted with sriracha. Thoughtfully put together and each mouthful bursting with flavour, I think it was about this point that I completely forgot I was eating plant-based food and was just eagerly looking forward to the next thing to arrive. More "tuna" and avocado and truffled miso nigiri came sharing a plate with a bitesize inari - a spongey, sweet tofu thing stuffed with soft, warm rice. Inari are actually vegan anyway, so perhaps the success of this shouldn't be too much of a surprise, but it was still a very good example of its kind, and right up there with the caviar as one of my favourite things overall. With a couple of cocktails, the bill came to £43pp, more than reasonable for London these days, certainly for food which although doesn't contain any expensive protein did still clearly have a lot of work and thought gone into it. I'm just docking a couple of points firstly for the burned blinis, and also for slightly inexperienced service charged at slightly-over-normal 15% - we had to ask a couple of times for various things. Also, the room isn't air-conditioned which you could just about get away with when it's 28C (the day we visited) but once it goes over 30C, which it often does in London these days, you're not going to want to be there very long. Still, these are niggles. Even a committed protein eater like me had a blast at Studio Gauthier - it's intelligent, enjoyable food done well in attractive yet informal surroundings, and for not very much money at all. For vegans though, this could very easily be everything they ever wanted in a restaurant, where instead of having to choose between the only plant option (usually mushroom risotto, or something involving butternut squash) or going hungry, they can have anything they want from this enticing menu, and be just as smug and satisfied as their protein-eating friends anywhere else in town. And that alone has to be worth a trip, surely? 8/10

After traipsing halfway across London, dodging travel works and closed Overground lines and carriages with malfunctioning air conditioning and all the other things that make moving around this city on a weekend in the summer such an endless joy, it's equally annoying to find that your destination is good or bad. If it's good, you will bemoan the fact that somewhere worth visiting is so bloody difficult to get to, and seethe with jealousy of those lucky locals who have such a good place on their doorstep. And if it's bad, you wish you'd spent your Saturday morning and sanity going somewhere else. Uncle Hon's isn't awful. It's not great, but it's not awful. The brisket (sorry, ox cheeks) was over-tender to the point of mush (it would definitely not pass the competition BBQ "pull-test" and a bit too sweet. Pulled lamb had a decent flavour but a rather uniform texture - the joys of the "pulled" element of a BBQ tray lie almost entirely in finding little crispy crunchy bits of fat and charred flesh; this was just a bit boring. And some cubes of pork belly were decent enough in that Cantonese roast style but was yet more sweet, syrupy, mushy meat next to two other piles of sweet, syrupy, mushy meat and the whole thing was just a bit sickly. Iberico ribs were a bit better in terms of texture - they did at least have a bit of a bite and didn't just slop off the bone as is depressingly often the case - but I feel like Iberico has become a bit of a meaningless foodie buzzword like Wagyu, ie. nowhere near the guarantee of quality it once was (if indeed it ever was). These were definitely the best things we ate though, and were pretty easily polished off. Oh I should say pickles and slaw were fine, if fairly unmemorable, and a single piece of crackling weirdly lodged vertically into a mound of rice like the sword in the stone had a pleasant enough greaseless texture but was pretty under seasoned. Look, I can see what they're trying to do at Uncle Hon's - fusion American/Chinese BBQ food, bringing a bit of a new twist to what is now fairly ubiquitous London drinking-den fare, and with a bit more thought and skill it could have been, well, if not completely worth that awful journey but at least some compensation for your efforts. But after having paid £50pp for what is an only fairly mediocre tray of food plus 3 small extra pork ribs, we were left feeling fairly unhappy, not very satisfied and more than a little ripped off. 5/10

They're like the buses, these rotisserie places. You wait years for a decent, affordable spit-roast chicken in the capital, and then two come along at once. one in Holborn closed (where I would go at least once every couple of weeks back in the day), then Kentish Town, then Tooting, and then after hanging on for a year or two the final spot in St John's Wood shuttered. Hélène Darroze's Sunday roast (sorry - Dimanche poulet) at the Connaught, and while some of the starter elements were very nice (particularly a genius-level chicken consommé and Armagnac shot - hook it into my veins) the main event was overcooked, dry and disappointing. And, of course, stupidly expensive. Knave of Clubs (in fact I believe they opened within a couple of months of each other) is Norbert's in East Dulwich, a much more modest operation than that grand old Victorian pub in Shoreditch (I'm sure Norbert's won't mind me saying) but still aiming to apply intelligence and skill to the business of roast poultry. The menu is short - very short, just the aforementioned chicken with sides and a couple of starters - but then that's the whole point of a specialist place like this. This is not a restaurant that does chicken, it is a chicken restaurant, and if you're vegetarian, well, you can find somewhere else to eat. We started with taramasalata which in itself was lovely but the salt and vinegar crisps it came with was, I think, a flavour too far for the same dish, the astringency fighting with the seafood. Much better would have been plain, I think. But still, an excellent tarama. didn't like it, and was offered something else. In a hapless attempt to salvage both mine and the restaurant's mistake I offered to pay for the first wine anyway, so we ended up in the end spending a small fortune on wine, not all of which we ended up drinking. The chicken, though, was just about worth the stress. A healthily thick, dark skin packed with spice and seasoning, a brined but not in the least bit 'hammy' flesh, some excellent crisp fries that held their structure and flavour until the last bite, and a supremely crunchy, fresh salad. Perhaps it wasn't quite the same level as the Turner & George chicken from the Knave, for an almost identical price (salad and fries are extra here, but included at the Knave) but was still worth the journey. We also found space for some nice cheese from Mons cheesemongers up the road, a gruyere style from Ireland which was a perfect temperature. Which didn't help our £72pp final bill but as I say, most of that was wine, whether we wanted it or not. I'm in two minds about Norbert's. On the one hand it is perfectly acceptable chicken for not a huge amount of money and it's an unpretentious little addition to this corner of East Dulwich. On the other hand the whole business with the wine left us wishing the whole experience had gone differently, and yes it doesn't compare well with a certain other rival rotisserie spot in Shoreditch doing things a little bit better for pretty much the same price. I think I know where's more likely to get my repeat custom. We paid in full but didn't get a photo of the receipt. If you want to keep subscribing for free via email please sign up to my Substack where there may also even be occasional treats for paid subscribers coming soon.

I wouldn't normally feel comfortable sticking a score on a place after sampling just 2 dishes from a menu, but I will make an exception for the Knave of Clubs for two reasons. Firstly, they have put the rotisserie "centre stage" at one end of the large dining room and that is what, I imagine, the large majority of their visitors will be ordering. Secondly, I bloody loved the place, so I don't think they'll mind me writing about it even without trying most of what their kitchens can offer. We started, though, with oysters - an extremely reasonable £20 for 6 large, lean specimens supplied with all the correct condiments. In a town when the average price per bivalve is hovering around the £5 mark (and in some cases is well above that), it's nice to know that there's somewhere still offering value like this. The same sense of value is evident in the rest of the menu. They really could charge a lot more for a whole chicken than £38, especially given the quality of these birds (from arguably London's best butcher Turner and George), and even if they didn't come with a giant helping of sides. For your money you get loads of chicken fat roasties, a nice sharply-dressed green salad, some slices of baguette and a little pot of light, homemade aioli. All of this generosity would have come to naught if the chicken itself wasn't up to scratch, but fortunately thanks to the provenance I mentioned, plus judicious use of brining (not too salty but just enough to ensure every bit of the flesh is tender and juicy), plus a really lovely chermoula spice rub, the end result was a truly impressive bit of rotisserie - the best pub roast chicken I've had the pleasure to tear into in recent memory; certainly the best value. We absolutely demolished the chicken then spent many happy minutes mopping up the chermoula cooking juices with the slices of baguette, and for a while, all was well with the world. The bill, with a £32 bottle of wine came to £51pp - you really can spend a lot more than this and get a lot less, and not just in central London. In fact the whole experience, including the lovely and attentive staff, made me forgive the only real complaint I have about the place - bloody communal tables. But the spots are spread out around them quite generously, and actually just gives me an excuse to return and try the bistro-style One Club Row upstairs in the same building, where chef Patrick Powell (ex- Allegra) is really stretching his wings. I bet it's great. Watch this space. P.S. Anyone who subscribes by email I am aware of the fact that follow.it have started to be very annoying and not posting the content in the body of the email, just a link to it hosted by them. I didn't ask for this, and am not making any money from it. If you want to continue receiving the full posts via email, can I suggest you subscribe to my substack here, where you can opt to receive the full posts via email, for free.