Is a little performance and spectacle a welcome addition to restaurant dining, or just a pain in the neck?

It’s not often that I take my seat at a restaurant out of breath and disoriented but the Secret Restaurant prides itself on the punter’s total immersion into the setting – on the night I visited, that was Vienna, 1946. Having whispered a password in a Frenchman’s ear and been led a scrambling chase through tunnels, over duckboards and up flight after flight of freezing stairs, the diner finally finds themselves in a candlelit loft. A collaboration between the well-loved Secret Cinema and St John, Fergus Henderson’s nose-to-tail eatery, guests are sworn to secrecy on the exact location and the film being shown, but it’s an unforgettable experience.

Characters from the film surround you and, if you’re very lucky (or unlucky, depending on your eagerness to get involved) dance with you, hug you, massage you, drink with you and talk to you. Fergus Henderson’s food is astonishing at St John, where the dining room is designed to enhance the experience of eating it. The Secret Restaurant is a great idea, and the candlelit room is full of nice touches – its piano, single malt Auchentoshan whisky and early Soviet artworks all add to the experience of the meal, but the sallow flower-sellers, drunken generals and police charging between the tables don’t do it for me. Sat at the table, I felt awkwardly immobile and unable to engage with the show or concentrate on the food and company.

The Medieval Banquet in London does not have to labour under the same expectations of high quality food, and to be honest any distraction from it is welcome. A “medieval” menu of vegetable soup, cold meats, roasted chicken and a fruit tart for tourists and office parties has been churned out nightly here for nearly 40 years. The basement that serves as the stage for this production is hot, sticky and overflowing with manufactured gaiety as “serving wenches” perform badly choreographed dances and cover saccharine songs over a crackling PA. A table of sales department lads on an office night try to get them to sit on their laps as a waiter asks me if I’d like to try on a tabard. I politely decline.

The Americans have an even greater flair for performance food than the venerable Banquet. Las Vegas’s notorious Heart Attack Grill sees scantily-clad “nurses” taking “prescriptions” from “patients” for single, double, triple or quadruple bypass burgers – 8,000 of your best heart-stopping calories. If the patient finishes a quadruple bypass, they’re placed in a wheelchair and conveyed to their car by a nurse. Owned by “Doctor” Jon Basso and cynically combining food, sex and theatre, the Heart Attack Grill has understandably faced fierce criticism, but the “patients” keep coming back – maybe because they receive free burgers once they pass the 350lb mark as part of the “HAG Diet Plan”.

Meanwhile, visitors to Romania can treat themselves to a visit to the Count Dracula Club, where a Dracula impersonator prowls the labyrinthine restaurant reciting tired lines from Bram Stoker’s classic and even, according to one diner, actually biting the punters’ necks. I know the place is meant to be horror-themed, but I can’t be the only person repelled by the idea of being bitten on the neck while trying to eat dinner.

Audience participation has long been the bane of my cultural life. I loathe pantomime, can’t stand magic shows and always sit at the back during comedy routines. It even makes me feel a bit uncomfortable when musicians try to get me clapping along. A good meal, like a great band or piece of theatre, is an experience in its own right, whether it’s the simplest salad with great company and beautiful surroundings or the high art of the Fat Duck or the lamented El Bulli. The idea that a meal needs this extra theatrical, “fun” side is misguided.

Is audience participation ever acceptable at the dinner table? Should the entertainment come solely from the food and company or do you like to be part of a performance as you eat?

Life and style: Restaurants | guardian.co.uk

What the Oysterage lacks in frills it more than makes up for with its flavoursome, no-nonsense cooking

Orford, Suffolk (01394 450 277). Meal for two, including drinks and service, £70

It would be hard to describe the Butley Orford Oysterage as pretty, especially on a deep midwinter’s day when even by lunchtime the light looks like it’s had enough and is thinking of packing up for the day. The Suffolk sky hangs low and heavy, and from time to time there is the smell on the air of smoking fish, like every day here is kipper day. Inside it is all metal-framed chairs on hard, dark-tiled floors. The paintwork is picked out in that shade of diluted pea green that used to be reserved for institutional crockery – the sort that bounced when you dropped it. The dining room has the feel of a cottage hospital café circa 1962, the sort where you might wait to hear from a consultant who looked like James Robertson Justice whether your loved one’s bunion operation went well. In one way that’s not far off, for the restaurant did launch in the 60s, when postwar London refusenik Richard Pinney was looking for an outlet for the smoked fish and oysters that were the core of his business.

And that is where the beauty lies. Not in the crockery or the paintwork or the lighting – none of which looks like it has altered much. It lies in the fish. The smokehouse Pinney’s of Orford is still there, and still smoking fish over whole oak logs pretty much as it was when Pinney set it up. They are still fishing out oysters from Butley Creek, where he first sowed them, using Portuguese rocks. And what oysters! Rarely do you eat oysters because you are hungry. Or, to put it another way, you may be hungry, but half a dozen raw oysters won’t fill you up. They enliven you. They slap you round the chops. They make you widen your eyes and let out a hiss of pleasure. These ones do all that and more. They are huge. They are big, sweet, meaty things. At £1.20 each they are also cheap. I swoon. I declare myself unequal to the task. I leave one uneaten. The shame!

For there are other things to be brought to me, by a bunch of sturdy, cheerful women who look like they have been in the fetching and carrying business for a fair old time. That is the pleasure of the place. It’s not out of date because it never had a date. It’s never out of fashion because it’s never been in fashion. A special of their own taramasalata may not remind me of that made by the mother of my Greek-Cypriot friend. Hers was creamy and light. This is big and butch and salty and all the better for that. It is full of fish oils and the tang of real smoke. A plate of sweet grilled squid is just that: small bodies, curly tentacles, none of it introduced to the heat for too long.

And then the mains. Stand back. Clear a bit of space. Something large is coming. There is a special of cod with a herb crust, flavoured with lemongrass. It is so big it looks like a sofa. If you couldn’t get a bed for the night this plateful would do. (And don’t send me cross notes about the sustainability of cod; have a look at what’s happening in the Barents Sea.) Perhaps inevitably, with such a big piece of fish, the ends are a little overcooked, but in the middle the flakes fall gently away from each other, as if that had always been their purpose, and they had only been hanging out together to pass the time. I have a skate wing in a pond of hot, acidulated brown butter with capers, and the flesh also pulls away from the cartilage with no effort whatsoever. It is there to serve.

There are boiled new potatoes. There is bread and butter. There is contented chatter. And that’s about it. The wine list is serviceable and, like all the pricing here, ungrasping. The cost shown here is only for those who insist upon gluttony. We order a slice of their warm chocolate cake with pistachio ice cream plus two spoons, more out of a desire to show willing than anything else. It is light and uncloying and completely unnecessary. We have been bathed in butter and good seafood. We have been fed well and, it feels, we have been fed often. No, the Butley Orford Oysterage is not pretty. But it is good, and that’s what matters.

Email Jay at jay.rayner@observer.co.uk or visit guardian.co.uk/profile/jayrayner for all his reviews in one place

Life and style: Restaurants | guardian.co.uk

On the wall above the semi-open kitchen at this week’s restaurant is the slogan: “Create – where good food and people matter.” Anybody with a healthy disdain for mission statements, sloganeering and the unintentional kitsch of Hallmark greeting cards will immediately hear alarm bells and ear-bleeding sirens. In a world sodden with motivational cobblers which regularly commits grievous bodily harm against the English language, we can be forgiven for being hostile to this sort of stuff. In this case, it is safe to disengage the early-warning systems. Create is a different sort of restaurant business, and there is much more to its slogans than mere vocabulary bingo.

Create is the latest manifestation of a social-enterprise venture which has been operating in the north for a few years, helping to get the long-term unemployed and disadvantaged back into the habit of work through a series of 12-week training schemes around food businesses. Up to now they have run a set of outside catering operations. A few months ago it finally secured the backing to launch a standalone restaurant and brought in Richard Walton-Allen, former head chef at Harvey Nichols in Leeds, to act as executive chef. A backbone of full-time professionals both front and back of house is supported by a roster of Create trainees. “If you can get yourself into work on time, put on the uniform, follow a recipe and cook a dish you can do almost any job,” Walton-Allen told me. It’s not about training up people to work in the food world, it’s simply about training them up for the world of work.

All of this is admirable, but would be a pointless waste of good ingredients if the restaurant was a calamity. It has to be a good place to eat first, second and third. All the other stuff then has to tuck in behind. Happily, Create is a good place to eat. The huge airy space with its big splashes of colour has a relaxed, easy feel (though they could probably do with turning down, or losing, the piped music. Or better still, losing it altogether). The menu is completely fluent in modern British, which is to say: food from all over the shop put together in sensible combinations. A plate of thinly sliced smoked venison, for example, with fresh figs alongside properly dressed rocket leaves is a thoroughly pretty plateful; crisp-shelled fritters of salt cod are a little dense but only because they haven’t been bulked up with potato. No matter: the tarragon mayonnaise helps them on their way.

Prices are noticeably ungrasping: £14 isn’t much money for a complex dish of partridge breast with confited leg, creamed Brussels sprouts, chestnuts and a generous handful of sautéed girolles. Even better value is one of the best-cooked hunks of skirt steak I have ever enjoyed, with a smoky charcoal char outside and a blush of pink within. There’s no point pretending: skirt is a cut solely for those with all their own teeth, but it rewards the effort.

The chocolate and orange mousse with a brash tangerine sorbet had the virtue of not being cloyingly oversweetened; a soft meringue and chocolate roulade had the virtue of looking like the sort of thing you might actually want to buy from the freezer cabinet at Iceland but wouldn’t dream of purchasing for fear of being spotted by the neighbours.

Service is entirely unremarkable – I cannot tell you if we were served by the pros or the trainees, though we did have cause to interact with almost everyone working the room. In short, while Create may be a social enterprise designed to vanquish the dismal, dreary, soul-destroying inequities of unemployment, you will merely regard it as a nice place to go for lunch. And go you should, because it deserves your support.

On the back wall is a further set of slogans: “Create is about believing”; “Believing that food is about hospitality not theatre, caring not showing off”; “Believing that people can grow, thrive and excel when given the chance”; “Believing that businesses and ordinary people can do extraordinary things”. It says much for the success of this place that by the end of lunch even this cynical old dog was ready to clamber on to his hind legs and applaud.

Guardian UK

It’s a cold, rainy day in Bradford and the balti restaurants and fast food outlets offering “desi” [Asian] milkshakes, have yet to fill up. But close by, the industrial kitchen of the International Food Academy is already buzzing with activity. Angelo Towse, 33, is frowning in concentration as he carefully folds, and stuffs, samosas. By the stainless steel sinks, former bricklayer Joel Stafford, 26, is patting mince on to skewers for kebabs while Awais Mumtaz, 20, whose father owns Mumtaz, one of Bradford’s best-known restaurants, is learning to make a stuffing and roast potatoes. It may not quite equal the heat and noise of an Indian restaurant, but kitchens like this could be the future of the British curry industry.

Since May, Bradford College has been training 50 youngsters to make – alongside Chinese and English dishes – curries, rotis and samosas. The dishes are sold everyday in the college canteen to students and staff – and while it may not be exactly the same as Mummyji used to make, the seekh kebabs, lamb green chilli, fish tikka masala and naan I try are fresh and tasty. There are plans to expand the course to 100 students this year, and programme director Graham Fleming hopes to persuade local restaurants to fund a city-centre premises, with branded stations where students can learn to cook in the style of the sponsor’s kitchen. “We started with no intention of becoming a ‘curry academy’,” Fleming says. “But because of the cry from the Asian sector we thought we would focus on that and get the restaurants to support what we are doing.”

Bobby Patel, from nearby Prashad, whose head chef – his wife Minal – teaches at the academy, says the project makes sense since the recession left a million young people out of work. “My younger brother is looking to develop into fast lunchtime food – wraps, paninis. We are looking to people who have had an exposure to Asian cuisine; they have had health and safety training, and they are hungry for a career.”

It should be music to the ears of Eric Pickles who, in reports that delighted headline writers in November, suggested a “curry college” to train British people to become chefs in Indian restaurants. While his Department for Communities and Local Government refused to confirm, or expand on, the idea, which is believed to be part of the government’s integration strategy, it issued a statement saying: “The government is continuing to look at how it can best support British talent in Asian cuisine, working with the sector to ensure employees have the right skills.”

The bland words hide a growing crisis in the country’s curry industry. The figures for the sector may seem robust – the trade magazine Spice Business, for instance, suggest that, every week, 2.5 million customers eat in one of 10,000 restaurants employing 80,000 staff, making the industry worth £3.6bn (not all sources are so generous – the industry authority the Curry Club puts the sector’s turnover at £2.5bn, while food industry analysts Horizons FS put it at £777m). And by 2002, Indian food in supermarkets alone was worth £600m – 80% of which was ready-meal curries.

David Cameron certainly thinks the Asian entrepreneurs involved in the business are important enough to cultivate. Last month, he joined, albeit by videolink, an unlikely set of guests, including Charlie Brooker and Boris Johnson, at the industry’s British Curry awards. According to its enthusiastic founder Enam Ali (who also owns Spice Business magazine), the glamour and power on display could rival the Oscars.

But the night’s glitter could not hide the anxiety of an industry squeezed between the recession and the government’s strict immigration policy. Made up of independent, small – and for the most part family-run – businesses, curry houses have been hit hard as customers eat at home. Analyst Peter Backman, of Horizons FS, says that while the restaurant industry has just stopped growing, the Indian restaurant sector is doing even worse, with profits falling. Pat Chapman, founder of the Curry Club, and author of the Good Curry Guide, notes, “You just instinctively know they are struggling”, while Backman adds that he is “increasingly gloomy” about the sector’s outlook for the next few years, believing Indian restaurants will “continue to lose share to the rest of the eating out market” if the recession continues.

The sector is already reeling from the effect of the government’s restrictions on south Asian chefs. For years, the skill and pay levels required for chefs to enter Britain has been a cause for concern. In 2008, Ali warned that the policy could “decimate” the industry, which relies on foreign chefs to whip up everything from Sinhalese string hoppers to various vindaloos. And raids on restaurants that ignore the rules are common. But then, in March, the desire to slash immigration figures even further led the government to announce only the top 5% of the most skilled chefs – who must earn more than £28,260 per year – now qualify for admission to the UK.

According to Ali, this has left one in four vacancies in Indian restaurants unfilled. “It’s a very difficult time,” he says. “I want to make sure my son and daughter are involved in the industry and a new generation is engaged. But if you don’t have a chef, you can spend millions on a restaurant but you will go bankrupt.” Smaller outlets have complained the vacancies are changing the food they serve, making them rely on easier-to-make fusion dishes, and warning that frozen food will become more commonplace. At the other end of the sector, Ranjit Mathrani, the chief executive of Masala World, which employs 5,000 people and, among others, owns London’s Veerasawamy, the country’s oldest surviving Indian restaurant, claims the chef shortage has brought the group’s expansion up short as surely as the recession.

The company, he points out, could not use “curry college” chefs, because they only allow chefs to cook dishes from their home regions, he says, so they can offer their customers authentic Indian food. “There are still opportunities, but we have had to hold back. We have stopped expanding in London because of the government’s rules, which are misguided. If we can’t get the chefs, we have no other option but to look abroad.”

He points out that despite advertising in jobcentres and being happy to take on apprentices, few British applicants come forward for jobs at his restaurants. Second-generation British Asians are reluctant to join the industry, including the children of restaurant owners. Wasim Tayyab, who along with his three brothers and wife runs Tayyabs restaurant in Whitechapel in east London, which his parents set up in 1972, says his situation is rare. “I have been working here since I was 17 and I’m 37 now,” he says. “I started on the basics, peeling, washing, cleaning. I wanted to do this, but your social life goes out of the window.”

The sector also has an image problem, according to Ali: “My son’s generation feel embarrassed to work in the Indian restaurant industry. They think it undervalues their skills and it has a stigma attached.” And many restaurant owners also prefer more aspirational careers for their children, such as medicine or accountancy.

In his cut-glass accent, Mathrani says the government’s policy does not distinguish between restaurants that serve specific, regional dishes, which he considers part of the ethnic food market, and the majority of curry houses which, he points out, serve “a form of cooking curries which is indigenous to the UK and that does not exist in authentic Indian cooking in India. They are not Indian restaurants in the proper sense of the word.”

It is a common argument. The term curry has no equivalent in India. While Indian restaurants first appeared in England in the 19th century, catering for Asian seamen and students, and then multiplied in the 1950s and 60s to feed the newly arrived south Asian factory workers, their boom time only begun in the 70s, when they adapted their menus for a working-class, white clientele. By 1982, there were 3,500 Indian restaurants in Britain and “going for a curry” became a standard evening out. Today it may be more fashionable to profess a love for south Indian dosas or Kashmiri rogan josh, but specialist regional restaurants are still a minority. Bangladeshis run 85-90% of the Indian restaurants in the UK, most of which rely on tried and tested Anglicised favourites such as vindaloo or tikka masala.

This journey from exotic treat to British comfort food, however, has given curry an emotional pull few other cuisines can rival. That has been something politicians are happy to point out – the late Robin Cook, for instance, memorably announced that chicken tikka masala is the nation’s favourite dish. But the way Indian food has been received has also highlighted tensions around the south Asian diaspora. The rule change to clamp down on chefs, for example, is seen by many as targeting immigrants from south Asia in the context of other mooted policies such as raising the age of spouse visas or raising the income threshold for those who wish to bring family members to the UK. In the 60s and 70s, anxieties about south Asian immigration were often voiced under the cover of complaining about the smell of curry, according to Elizabeth Buettner of the University of York. In the Journal of Modern History, she points out “the view that Asians and their surroundings ‘stank of curry’ … became deployed by landlords to explain why they refused Asians as tenants”. In factories, too, British workers are reported to have refused to work with Asian immigrants “because they could not bear the smell of garlic”. The insistence on cooking curries was also seen as an indication of the new immigrants’ refusal to assimilate.

But walking down London’s Brick Lane, with its razzle of neon lighting, discount offers and lengthy Identikit menus, it is easy to see how curry houses have adapted to meet demand, just as the British grew to love curries. Yet the lines of small competing restaurants also highlight the problems inherent in the industry’s economic model. Offering cheap meals to young people in a newly affluent society was possible through cutting corners in the preparation of the food, but also by paying low wages to staff. So perhaps it is no surprise that on the same day restaurant owners at the British Curry awards were watching dazzling dance troupes, a group of restaurant workers from the newly formed Bangladeshi Worker’s Union voted to join the GMB in a bid to improve conditions.

Organisers were told of waiters, chefs and porters paid below minimum wage and made to work extraordinarily long hours, with no paid holiday and no sick pay.

One former restaurant worker who joined up points out this was possibly, in part, because so many of the workers were vulnerable, recent immigrants. “Some owners treat workers like animals,” he says. “Sometimes they just pay £3.50 an hour. If, after one or two years, they ask for more – maybe minimum wage – they are told to leave. They can’t speak English, so they take this opportunity to work. I have friends all over the UK who are from Bangladesh and they face the same conditions.”

Tessa Wright, of Queen Mary, University of London, who interviewed ethnic minority and migrant workers in the catering and hotel industry in 2005, said 50- to 60-hour weeks were common for workers. “Conditions were pretty awful,” she says, but owners gave the impression that they believed the authorities knew about it. “It was kind of accepted that this is how these sorts of business ran.”

Azmal Hossein runs four restaurants on Brick Lane and helped set up the union to end the exploitation. He thinks a curry college could help – if it was funded properly. “If the [Asian] workers here had proper rights, they wouldn’t need to import [more] people. It makes me angry. Bangladeshi chefs don’t have the health and safety or hygiene training they need here.”

Yet restaurant owners say that while a string of colleges with good teaching could help ease the problem for certain restaurants, it would not suit all restaurants – and it may not be enough to protect the industry. Mathrani, among others, points out it would take years to train chefs to the standards he requires for a specialist restaurant if they had not grown up with the food. And Backman points out it would not solve the problems of the recession. “When Indian food came in, it offered a new eating out experience, but it has not moved on beyond that,” he says. “I think the Indian restaurant market needs to reinvent itself . It needs a high-spending demographic.”

Patel agrees: “People want a change. So far, innovation in the Indian restaurant scene has been about ambience – going upmarket and being contemporary – but how much more contemporary can you be than your last neon-style restaurant?” Having been in the final of TV reality show Ramsay’s Best Restaurant he thinks there is now a focus on innovation in the kitchen and a changing serving style. His Gujarati restaurant, Prashad, focuses on modern Indian cooking, he says, and takes inspiration from leading London restaurants The Cinnamon Club and Tamarind.

So is this the death of the curry house as we know it? At 2.30pm on a Thursday, I visit a slightly scruffy, packed Pakistani restaurant round the back of the East London mosque. A group of young women in bright headscarves are heading for the door past a boisterous group of lunching office workers in suits. On my right, doctor Nadia Javed is tucking into her lamb karahi with rice and naan in her lunch break from the nearby Royal Infirmary, while on my left cab driver Simon Hope, 32, has popped in between fares to wolf down a huge meal of lamb chops, lamb karahi, prawns and naan. Both are regulars at Tayyabs, a London institution, famous for its long queues and low prices. A plate of spicy lamb chops is placed in front of me. It sizzles so loudly it sounds like a round of applause for an industry that deserves to be celebrated.

Guardian UK

So whether it is a corporate function, a Party Poker or fancy dress themed party or a wedding, choose wisely. To help you do so, here are a few tips to help you along the way.

DO

- Know what food you want to serve up. There is nothing worse when you are trying to find a caterer, than not knowing what type of food you want served. Every caterer will supply different services and food. Some might specialise in continental recipes, while others will focus more on British cuisine. Know from the off what you are looking for and your search will be narrowed down significantly.

- When choosing a company make sure it is one that will provide both food and service. Do some research into the company and when you phone up, ask as many questions as you can to clear up any queries you have on the subject. ‘Do you provide napkins?’, ‘What about plates?’, pricing etc. Service is key to successful catering at a function.

DON’T

- Go with the first or cheapest company you find. There is a lot of choice out there, so really do your research. The first caterer you see won’t necessarily cater to what you need, and you might only find this once you are in the process of planning with them. Similarly, the cheapest caterer you find might be cheap for a reason. We know times are hard, but a smaller price won’t guarantee quality.

- Don’t leave it until the last minute to place a catering order. They need time to prepare, and the likelihood is their usual standard of service will be lower because they haven’t had the preparation time.

34 Grosvenor Square, London W1 (020 3350 2424). Meal for two, including drinks and service, £130

Sitting in a corner by the bar at 34, the new restaurant from the group behind the Ivy and Le Caprice among others, is a box-fresh baby grand piano. I’ll be honest – that’s enough for me. Any restaurant can invest in new cruet sets, a serious steak grill – the must-have accessory in London’s high-end kitchens these days – or enough crisp linen to wrap the Reichstag. But spending a fat four-figure sum on a beautiful hunk of wood and wire shows an uncommon commitment. As an enthusiastic (as against good) jazz pianist, it thrills me they have decided to install someone at the keys every night; indeed, that there will be a jazz trio on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays. It is a romantic, classy, gloriously old-fashioned touch.

All of which sums up the place. 34 is the most self-assured, delicious London restaurant launch in years. Everything, from the look of the place through the killer steaks to the desserts, is bang on. It is sexy and smart. Most of all it feels like it has been there for years rather than just a few weeks.

At which point I should declare an interest: I am a member of the Ivy Club, which is also owned by the perennially young Richard Caring, boss of the group that owns 34. This, however, has never stopped me saying what I think about his other places; Google my recent review of Le Caprice, then wash the blood off your hands. It did mean that I didn’t have trouble getting a table at a reasonable hour, when they were otherwise offering high tea or bed time. Amusingly they asked me not to mention this in the review because they didn’t want to give the impression that it’s just a place for those in the know. For the owners of the Ivy to worry about people thinking they are just for VIPs is a little like a lion getting upset for being called a carnivore. And, anyway, it’s part of the appeal. One of the reasons for wanting to eat at these restaurants is the allure of the phone-hackerati who are said to eat there. On any given night many tables really are filled by those whose privacy the tabs have deemed worth invading.

34 will soon be the same, and yet with a bit of planning getting a table at a sensible time is doable. The food is worth the effort. Witness a soft onion tart of flaky, buttery pastry with perfectly sautéed lamb sweetbreads and a slick of sweet-savoury jus, or a plate of salt-baked beets with a tumble of burrata, the in-vitro version of mozzarella.

In early publicity, 34 allowed itself to be billed as a meaty version of its sister fish restaurant Scott’s. I’m not sure that’s true. The menu is broader than that. But certainly a list of very good steaks is at its core, including Australian Wagyu at fearsome prices and Scottish cuts which are both more affordable and leave less of a whacking carbon footprint, with American steaks in between. My rib eye was simply a great piece of meat, cooked with care and precision. We loved another dish of long-braised short rib, slipping from the bone, with winter vegetables. Sides are worth making space for: creamed sweet corn with chilli and basil or Brussels sprouts with a crust of crumbed prosciutto and hazelnuts.

And then there’s dessert. In a city where you can have anything you like as long as it’s a chocolate fondant, a crème brûlée or a lemon tart, the 34 list is special. We didn’t have the pear tart or the sloe-gin fizz jelly or the butterscotch sponge pudding. We did have the chocolate bomb, a sphere of chocolate on to which was poured a hot sauce of same, melting it to reveal mint ice cream. There were also hot, sugared donuts with a dipping bowl of a zingy lemon curd and another of chocolate sauce. And if you don’t want to eat that right this instant, you are reading the wrong page.

Is any of this cheap? Don’t be silly. This is a flash restaurant in the flashiest corner of flash London. But with cold, economic winds blowing hard in 2012, we need to know where it’s worth spending whatever spare cash we might have. 34 is that place.

Guardian UK

A beautiful, simple Christmassy recipe from Spain

2 tbps olive oil
4 partridge
Salt & black pepper
2 medium carrots, diced
1 medium onion, diced
1 tsp pimentón
4 gloves garlic, sliced
200g chorizo, sliced
2 sprigs thyme
2 sprigs rosemary
2 bay leaves
150g manzanilla olives
1½ bottles decent wine white
3 sticks of celery, sliced, plus the leaves separately

In a pot heat the oil on a medium heat on the hob, season the partridge and fry until golden brown, then remove and place on a plate. In the same oil sweat the onion and garlic, add the pimentón and fry for 30 seconds.

Then add the garlic, partridge, chorizo, herbs and the olives with the wine, and add some water to cover. Cook for 1½ – 2 hours depending on how you like your partridge.

Five minutes before you want to serve up, add the celery and season to taste. Plate up and garnish with the celery leaves.

Life and style: Food & drink | guardian.co.uk

A vegetarian starter recipe lovingly borrowed from Paul, a chef at Rubicon in San Francisco in the 1990s

Paul was my Europhile sous-chef at Rubicon, a restaurant owned by Robin Williams, among others. I was working there the morning after he won his Oscar for Best Supporting Actor in Good Will Hunting – he came down into the kitchen and gave us all a bottle of champagne. Unexpected and very appreciated by his hard-working team. In California in the ’90s I feel certain they would have served this with a squiggle of balsamic reduction on the plate … thank God that trend seems to have bitten the dust.

Starter for 4 (12 little pancakes) and takes 10 minutes to get it ready then a 30-minute cook.

For the ragu:
20g / 3/4oz butter
150g / 5oz shallots, sliced
2–3 cloves of garlic, thinly sliced
220ml / 71/2fl oz tomato juice or passata
200g / 7oz vine-ripened cherry tomatoes
1 teaspoon balsamic vinegar
a touch of sugar (optional)

To serve:
a ball of buffalo mozzarella (about 200g/7oz), sliced

Melt the butter in a pan over a medium heat and cook the shallots with the garlic for a few minutes. When they start to sizzle but before they begin to brown, turn the heat down to minimum and put on a lid. Stir from time to time for about 8–10 minutes until they are well and truly softened, then set the lid aside and pour in the tomato juice. Simmer slowly for 12–15 minutes to a fairly thick sauce, seasoning along the way.

Lob in the cherry tomatoes and cook for 5-ish minutes, until their skins have split and they are just cooked, not collapsed. Turn the heat off, stir in the balsamic vinegar, and taste: you may want to add a touch of sugar, depending on the tomatoes.

While all that is going on, mush the brioche into the cream using the back of a spoon, then gradually stir in the eggs. In a blender, whiz together the basil, spinach and the soaked brioche until pale green and very smooth. Scrape it into a bowl, sift then fold in the flour and give it a decent shot of both salt and pepper.

Only start cooking the pancakes when the ragu is ready. In a large heavy-based frying pan over a medium heat, melt a teaspoon of the butter into a splash of olive oil. When the butter starts to sizzle, gently dollop in a desert spoon of the mix per pancake – you should be able to get at least 4 in the pan. Turn them over after 1–2 minutes and fry the other side until very lightly golden – it’s good to have a bit of goo left in the middle, so they should be in and out of the pan in 3 minutes. Drain quickly on kitchen paper and cover with foil to keep warm as you get on with the rest. Serve with the ragoût and a couple of slices of mozzarella.

• This recipe is taken from Bought, Borrowed & Stolen: Recipes and Knives from a Travelling Chef by Allegra McEvedy (Conran Octopus, £25). Order a copy for £18.75 from the Guardian bookshop

Life and style: Food & drink | guardian.co.uk

This tasty home-smoked dish originates in Uttar Pradesh, where it is called galavat ke kebab

Serves 4

500g / 1lb 2 oz boneless lamb from the leg, diced
100g / 4oz lamb fat (ask your butcher)
1 onion, sliced
50g / 2 oz cashew nuts
4 green chillies
1 tablespoon ginger and garlic paste
2 tablespoons papaya paste
½ teaspoon garam masala
1 teaspoon chilli powder
¼ teaspoon ground mace
¼ teaspoon ground cardamom
pinch of ground nutmeg
60g / 2½ oz roasted chana powder
6 tablespoons ghee
large pinch saffron strands
few sprigs fresh mint, chopped
salt, to taste
chopped tomato, red onion and cucumber, to serve

Combine the diced lamb and lamb fat. Blend in a food processor until finely minced.

Fry the sliced onion, cashew nuts and green chillies until golden brown, drain on kitchen paper and blend to a fine paste in a food processor, adding water if required. Set aside.

Put the minced lamb, ginger and garlic paste, papaya paste, and the onion, cashew nut and green chilli paste in a large bowl. Mix well. Add the garam masala, chilli powder, mace, cardamom, nutmeg and roasted chana powder. Add 4 tablespoons ghee, the saffron, chopped fresh mint and salt. Mix until thoroughly combined.

For an authentic smoky flavour you can now smoke the lamb. Tip the lamb mixture into a large roasting tray with deep sides. Place a hot piece of charcoal in a small metal bowl and place it in the middle of the roasting tray. Pour a teaspoon of ghee onto the charcoal and then cover the roasting tray with a lid or some aluminium foil, trapping the smoke inside.

Leave to stand for 5 minutes. Discard the charcoal and mix well. Divide the mixture into balls and then press them gently to make flat patties.

Heat the remaining ghee in a non-stick pan and fry the patties one at a time, for about 1 minute on each side. Turn and cook over a medium heat until golden brown on both sides. Serve with chopped tomato, red onion and cucumber.

• This recipe is taken from Food of the Grand Trunk Road – Recipes of rural India, from Bengal to the Punjab, by Anirudh Arora and Hardeep Singh Kohli (New Holland, £19.99). Order a copy for £15.99 from the Guardian bookshop

Life and style: Food & drink | guardian.co.uk

Two Europeans and one from the other side of the world to test your tastebuds

Jean-Luc Colombo “Les Vignes Rousses”, Côtes du Rhône, France 2009 (£5.99 reduced from £7.99, Majestic) Something in the spicy pepper and blackberry flavours of classic Côtes du Rhône fits just perfectly with the chill evenings, fallen leaves and bonfire smoke of autumn. This nicely priced new addition to the Majestic range is no exception: putting the accent firmly on crunchy hedgerow fruit with a touch of peppercorn, it would be at its happiest accompanying bangers and mash.

Marquesa de la Cruz Garnacha/Syrah/Mazuelo, Campo de Borja, Spain 2010 (£6.99, Sainsbury’s) The Campo de Borja region of north-west Spain is a great source of bargain red wines, and this one is particularly good value. Made by the talented Scottish expat winemaker Norrel Robertson MW, it’s a vibrantly juicy, unoaked blend, full of bright cherry-berry flavours and an attractive sappy character that make it just right for pork chops or a plate of Spanish ham.

Seifried Estate “Sweet Agnes” Riesling, Nelson, New Zealand 2010 (£13.99, 37.5cl, Waitrose) If you’ve ever been charmed by the sweet-and-sour effects of classic sweet German riesling – or a tarte tatin – then this modern Kiwi classic would be the ideal weekend treat. Sweet and honeyed, it is cut with scalpel-sharp acidity and a mandarin-orange zestiness. Try a glass in lieu of a sweet chutney or quince jelly with some ripe soft cheese or mature cheddar.

Life and style: Food & drink | guardian.co.uk