Neighbourhood restaurant Market Café serves the residents of Hackney from early morning right through to supper

2 Broadway Market, London E8 (020 7249 9070). Meal for two, including wine and service, £80

Every restaurant in Hackney serves breakfast. It’s the law. They just have to, because without it the vanguard of our creative industries would have nowhere to go to eat off their negroni-induced hangovers. The fonts on our magazine spreads would be gauche. The copywriting on our adverts would be shamefully free of achingly clever neologisms. Our chairs would be overly functional, our websites eye-rollingly banal. And all for the sake of some joint serving a reasonable eggs Benedict or a really bad version of huevos rancheros made by someone who’s never been to LA but read about it once in an old copy of Arena in a dentist’s waiting room.

That’s just what Hackney is like. Normally I don’t have to go there, because I live in Brixton. If you live in one you don’t ever have to visit the other. That’s also the law. Then again I do like to serve.

Getting into a black cab from King’s Cross I asked for Broadway Market and the driver said: “Yeah, that figures.” I asked him what he meant. “Well, you’re trendy, aren’t you?” This was thrilling. I haven’t been called trendy since my ill-advised Flock of Seagulls haircut in 1982, when I slightly overdid it with the home peroxide kit. Then again, I don’t think the driver meant it as a compliment. Actually, come to think of it, trendy wasn’t meant as a compliment in 1982 either. Though the whole pointing and laughing thing was uncalled for.

Happily nobody pointed and laughed at the Market Café, possibly because the staff is all trendier than I am. It was set up by Hugo Warner, formerly the “ugo” bit of the sandwich chain Benugo, which he left a few years ago. It’s a big, echoey, re-engineered pubby space with wooden floorboards, Formica-topped tables and a daytime clientele of new mothers with startled expressions on their faces clinging to each other for safety. They serve breakfast. And lunch. And dinner. And a few things in between. They serve everything, in a vaguely Italian-meets-Britain sort of way. So devilled kidneys on toast sit very happily alongside pecorino salads or a plate of coppa.

There is nothing radical about any of this. A restaurant that looks like Market Café, staffed by people who are trendier than you serving food off a menu which reads like this one could have been launched at any time in the past decade and a half. There is one major difference, though. Ten years ago it would have been rubbish, every dish a clumsy approximation of what they had promised. It would have been the kind of place you would only ever have visited for breakfast when your hangover cried out for hot fat and carbs.

Most of what we ate was far better than OK. Those devilled kidneys were pert and soft and proper pink at the centre and came with a spiky sauce and a thick piece of sourdough toast. A truffled rarebit may have been light on the truffle bit, but the rarebit bit was all cheese and mustard and punch. A squid salad with fat garden peas and rocket was sprightly and, like me, fresh and well dressed. There were thick slices of chargrilled lamb with salsa verde and roasted carrots, and a plate of their own tagliatelle with a sauce of sausagemeat and Parma ham that spoke of long, slow cooking. The menu makes much of the hand cutting of the tagliatelle. To be honest they may want to go back to getting a machine to do it. It was not the most glorious moment in the history of pasta, but the sauce made up for it. £12 brought a portion so big you could camp in it.

Desserts were less successful. An Amalfi lemon sorbet had none of the fragrance I associate with the promise of that word. It was also served inside a hollowed-out lemon, which is retro in a bad way. A rhubarb trifle was a bit of a churned-up mess. Still, they have cakes on the counter which may be a better bet. There are good wines by the glass, and a gentle buzz of people being well fed. It is, as ever, the quality of a place like this, set up less as a destination than a neighbourhood joint, which gives cause for optimism. Things are looking up. Hell, I might even go back for breakfast.

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

Eating out can be a nerve-racking experience if you have a food allergy, especially when restaurant staff think they know best

Chefs don’t want to poison their patrons, you’d presume. But if you have a food allergy or intolerance, you may be familiar with the game of Spot The Killer Ingredient I play when eating out with my fiancé, who is allergic to bell peppers (which show up in the most ridiculous places, such as on top of a steak sandwich) or my mother, who has a severe potato allergy – the tiniest amount will send her into anaphylactic shock. I’ve seen waiters nod sagely when she explains this, then bring her a salad topped with crisps.

There are varying degrees of sensitivity – Allergy UK says 2% of UK adults are diagnosed with a food allergy and an estimated 45% of the population suffers from food intolerance. At their most severe, food allergies can kill. We’re paranoid enough to put “warning: may contain nuts” on nut packets – or rather, the EU Labelling Directive is clear on the need to provide comprehensive ingredients lists and indicate the presence of the 14 most common food allergens on pre-packed food. New legislation for unpackaged foods won’t come into effect until 2014 and while it’s a start, it’s hardly a complete solution.

When it comes to allergies, restaurant staff can be well-meaning but ill-informed. In separate studies by Brighton and Sussex Medical School and the Jaffe Food Allergy Institute at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, restaurant workers were interviewed about their awareness of allergies. Over a fifth of the respondents in both surveys thought someone with an allergy could eat a small amount of that foodstuff (they can’t), and over a fifth thought it was fine to just pick it off a finished meal (it’s not).

Despite these and a frankly terrifying list of other misconceptions (38% of the Brits interviewed wrongly believed a glass of water could help to alleviate an allergic reaction, for example), the majority of respondents in both surveys thought they could confidently provide a safe meal for a person with a food allergy.

Then there are the people who hear “allergic” and think “fussy”. Of course, some people really are just being fussy, but the problem comes when restaurant staff take it upon themselves to decide who has a genuine allergy and who is just crying wolf.

“So many people claim to have an allergy or intolerance when they don’t, so restaurant and service staff don’t take it seriously,” says food and travel writer Nikki Bayley, who is allergic to mushrooms and jalapeño peppers. “I’ve swollen up in restaurants after asking if they’re in the recipe – including in restaurants that know she’s there to review them. “One chef decided there was some sauce I had to try. I spent an hour and a half being violently sick in their bathroom.”

“Sometimes they seem to think it’s not a big deal and I’m just being fussy,” agrees writer Camilla Chafer, who has a milk allergy. “Yes, the sauce has milk in it, now you mention it. Can’t you just scrape it off? No, I can’t. It’s not a choice and I’m not deliberately being awkward. I just don’t want to vomit or pass out in your restaurant.”

This is something restaurants need to recognise, says Alex Gazzola, author of the Food Allergy and Intolerance Ink blog. “There’s a psychological side to food sensitivity – people may feel frightened, ashamed, anxious or embarrassed.” It’s hardly pleasant being the person who kicks up a fuss or sends their meal back.

It would be far too cynical to assume restaurants simply don’t care and don’t want the hassle of catering for customers with allergies. After all, those that do it well can count on enduring customer loyalty and positive recommendations – and nobody wants to do it badly, do they? When I phone some restaurants to ask if they can cater for people with allergies, they all insist they can but, from experience, I already know otherwise.

It’s not as if staff would have to learn a million allergies and ingredients, they just need to listen when someone expresses concern about the menu. Gazzola also recommends that dishes are given clear, descriptive names (as opposed to “Chef’s Special”) and that menus be posted online so they can be studied in advance. He also advises diners with allergies to phone ahead if possible to ensure their needs can be accommodated.

Restaurants are not the sole culprits here: the worried well aren’t helping either. “I’m not saying restaurants are terrible and they need to sort their act out,” says Bayley. “People need to stop complaining about things that aren’t the matter with them.”

Life and style: Restaurants | guardian.co.uk

For gastro-porn Cantonese meats with absolutely no frills, head for Birmingham’s tiny Chinatown

Arcadian Centre, 70 Hurst Street, Birmingham (0121 622 1525). Meal for two, including service, £25.

Anybody who is at all serious about their lunch will be haunted by the same terror: that however good the food they are eating right now, there is a far better version of the same dish out there somewhere. I feel this way whenever I fall into one of the tight, noisy, Formica-tabled cafés that dot London’s Chinatown, which is often. In a life sodden with guilt and pleasure, my fetish for Cantonese roast meats, served just above room temperature with a splash of umami-rich sauce, stands proud.

I love char sui pork, the outside that violent shade of red that simply cannot be good for you. Obviously, I love the belly pork – the skin crisp, the fat yielding and the meat still with bite. Best of all is the duck. Chef Simon Hopkinson swears the Chinese are the best at roasting ducks, and I won’t argue. Done properly the bronze- lacquered skin should occupy a place between shattering glass and melting caramel. For that I go to Four Seasons in Gerrard Street. Table for one, back to the door so no one can catch my eye and know my shame. Plate of duck. Side order of dry-fried green beans. No rice. Avoid the carbs. We must eat healthily after all.

Yet even as I’m enjoying this I am wondering if somewhere, there might not be a better version. I don’t want luxury, thick napery and waiter frottage. But I do want it good. And so, as I rarely say, to Birmingham. To be honest I had to be in town and, prowling for review possibilities, came across Smoke and Umami, a food blog that has the sweaty-browed tone only true obsessives can muster. It belongs to a research scientist called Nick Loman, and has contributions from an actuarial analyst of Hong-Kong Chinese descent called Lap Lee. The latter recently surveyed the top places for Cantonese roast meats in the city’s Chinatown – “more a China hamlet,” according to Nick – and concluded that the winner by a long stretch was New Sum Ye.

I knew what I had to do: I arranged to visit the place with them. In his review, Lap told how “the burnished duck breasts press against the glass”, which, for any man of my vintage, is a sharp reminder of that scene in Kentucky Fried Movie. (Look it up.) Certainly I’ve always loved the brazenness of Cantonese roast meat. It’s real red-light-district action for gastro-porn fiends. The restaurant itself, which is unlicensed, is less sexy. It’s a utilitarian space with a counter at the front where they take the orders and a TV on one wall. What’s important here is the meat.

Lap isn’t wrong. It really is very good. A plate of three roast meats costs just £6.50 and comes on a pillow of rice with a couple of spoon-like leaves of crunchy pak choi draped across them. Too often with char sui only the outside is worth the effort, but here the flavour seemed to penetrate. The pork belly was crisp and soft and rich. The duck delivered on its carnal window promise. It was luscious, the skin crisp and salty, sweet and yielding. As a bonus there was their home-mixed chilli oil. Chilli oil is often a blunt hit of fire and toasted notes. This one was sweet, with lots of minced dry shrimp. Without noticing, I emptied the jar. I treated it less as condiment than side dish.

We tried a couple of other things to be sure: a plate of beef Ho Fun, the broad rice noodles smoky where they’d been seared in the wok, and Mela-style seafood noodles, which was a massive bowl of frightening orange liquor mined with numbing Sichuan peppercorns, queenie scallops, squid and prawns – violent and thrilling and a little too much. They were good but played second fiddle to the Cantonese meats. Often I’m asked whether food bloggers pose a challenge to what I do for a living. It’s a fair question. My answer? When they lead me to places like New Sum Ye, absolutely not. They are simply providing a service: one for which I give thanks.

Life and style: Restaurants | guardian.co.uk

Incanto has the potential to be a really good restaurant. But first the kitchen staff has to learn to calm down

41 High Street, Harrow-on-the-Hill, Middlesex (020 8426 6767). Meal for two, including wine and service, £120

There are great dish ideas. There are bad dish ideas. And then there are some that fall under the heading: “What the hell were they thinking?” The crab risotto with passion-fruit sorbet at Incanto is definitely one of those. That’s why I ordered it. If a restaurant puts a dish on the menu that sounds like the kind of thing someone thought up during a weekend on crystal meth, then I know what I have to do. I have to take one for the team.

It’s a shame. Obviously, it’s always a shame when good ingredients get wasted in the service of what some might call innovation and others sheer lunacy. In this case, it is even more so. I have known about Incanto, amid the village kitsch of Harrow-on-the-Hill, for some time. I grew up in Harrow and it’s where my dad still lives. A number of people had suggested I visit the restaurant and I’d resisted out of a fear of parochialism. If growing up is about leaving home and finding the big wide world, the notion I might find something exceptional back where I started didn’t make sense. But then I got yet another recommendation and decided to ignore my suspicions.

The disappointment with Incanto, which classes itself as an Italian, is that there is clearly someone in the kitchen who can cook. The basics are there. They know how to roast meats, bake great breads, knock up a soufflé and so on. There were lovely smoked olives on the table. A starter of light ravioli with a liquid duck-egg-yolk centre – tricky to pull off – came with bacon and wild mushroom, and was exemplary.

But on top of that is something else, which they no doubt would call creativity and I would class as desperation. The food resembled the dishes in the latter stages of MasterChef, when wet-lipped competitors are screaming “Feel my passion!” and have completely lost the plot. The stock base for that crab risotto was good, but the only thing it had to say to a scoop of passion fruit sorbet was: “Please go away.” It didn’t help that the texture was all wrong, the grains just simply undercooked.

Both main courses were served on big square flat plates, which may explain the lack of useful saucing. It would have dribbled off on to my lap. No matter, there were lots of other things. A venison dish had smears of sauces painted on to the plate like skid marks, which added no flavour or lubrication. The slices of venison fillet were nicely done, as was the round of shin, braised like an osso bucco. The rest was knobbly clutter. A “venison grissini” was a dry stick made of breaded meat. A deep-fried potato nest filled with a potato foam was just plain silly. A lamb dish was the same – great lamb, then strange smears and piles and baked things and squiggly things. A beetroot tatin was just a disc of dry pastry with slices of beetroot on top. Still, it was very crimson and that, I suspect, was the point. This was presentation with a capital P. It was “art”. It was “drama”. It was profoundly irritating. I ordered some truffle and parmesan thick-cut chips, hoping they might provide light relief. They were undercooked, dry and heavy and entirely lacking in truffle. We ate half of one and left the rest. To their credit they took them off the bill, unasked.

A pistachio soufflé did give light relief for being just that. But an overset orange panna cotta, with a chocolate ganache and a whole bunch of other things besides was so much more of the same. There is no excuse for putting rosemary and chilli in a tuile. In fact I’d go so far as to describe it as bad manners.

Incanto is an attractive space, with bare-wood beams and skylights and a deli at the front that looks rather pleasing. The staff are attentive if a little off the ball (almost every dish was offered to the wrong person). It could be a lovely restaurant, if everybody behind the kitchen door just learned to calm down. Right now a meal there feels like something to be endured. As Greg Wallace has probably already said, eating doesn’t get tougher than this.

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

Talked-about specialities are often the reason customers visit certain restaurants. Do you feel compelled to try signature dishes?

Signature dish. There’s something old-school and stolidly Escoffier about that phrase, suggesting carpeted dining rooms and soaring toques, curly moustaches and copperplate menus. It carries a uniquely cheffy vanity.

They are vital to almost every restaurant, and customers tend to seek them out. It’s only when you start to think about it that you realise to what degree the restaurant industry relies on the concept of signatures, from steakhouses to Pizza Express.

McDonald’s has so many a list of them reads like a petition. Its most famous dishes are decades old. The Filet-O-Fish arrived in 1962; the Big Mac is a soixante-huitard; the Quarter Pounder appeared in 1973, the McNugget (such a pretty word) in 1979. These signatures – I think it’s fair to call them that – are embedded in customers’ minds and perhaps were part of their childhood. Repeat custom is the basis of McDonald’s business model, as it is for any restaurant.

Restaurants use signature dishes to entice as well as keep customers. Many of the high-profile openings around London in the last year have had a signature: the cod cheek popcorn of Mishkin’s, the lobster brioche roll from Burger & Lobster, The Delaunay‘s tarte flambée. “Have you had the such-and-such at such-a-place,” restaurant fans like to ask each other in knowledgeable tones. These dishes done well create a buzz around the restaurant; it would be a brave or foolish chef who took no time over them.

“We don’t like to talk of signature dishes,” says Charles Pullan, manager of the great west London refectory the River Café. “But two things will never come off the menu.” To anyone who has eaten there or cooked from the Café’s books, what these are will be obvious: the squid with chilli, and the “chocolate nemesis”.

Both are fantastic dishes that, in their way, evoke the spirit of the restaurant: sound ingredients, simply cooked, are better than fussy elaborations. The nemesis has four ingredients: the squid with chilli is just that.

Raymond Blanc was once famous for courgette flowers stuffed with crab mousse, and squab pigeon baked in salt pastry crust. These dishes, along with chocolate fondant before it became a 90s cliché, attracted people like Egon Ronay to Le Manoir and kept other customers returning. “A signature represents the value and style of a restaurant,” says Blanc, “its texture, its classic values. It lasts through time and doesn’t follow any fashion.”

Certain dishes eventually become so successful that they typify the chef or restaurant. Waldorf salad, Heston’s bacon and egg ice cream or snail porridge at the Fat Duck (or meat fruit at Dinner, come to that), Nobu’s black cod with miso, canard à la presse at the Tour d’Argent, carpaccio from Harry’s Bar: each is part of the lore and glamour of those restaurants, the basis for column inches, the purpose of most first visits. When Michel Roux Jr took over Le Gavroche in 1991 he sought to make its menu lighter and less rigidly French. He thus removed the famous soufflé suissesse from the menu. But customers were so furious he had to put it back.

Do you seek out the dishes you know have caused a stir when you go out for dinner or do you prefer to take your chances?

Life and style: Restaurants | guardian.co.uk

Get stuck into andouillette in Paris or tarte tatin in Toulouse with these recommendations from Been there readers on the best bistros in France

• Add a tip for next week and you could win a digital camera

WINNING TIP: Le Colombier, Toulouse

Le Colombier is a lovely family-run restaurant away from the city’s tourist area. An unassuming front opens on to a rustic, friendly restaurant. They specialise in cassoulet and classics such as magret de canard. After a heavy main course try a refreshing sorbet ‘drowning’ in champagne.
• 14 rue Bayard, +33 5 6162 4005, restaurant-lecolombier.com, three-course menu €22
alexandraf

Paris

Chez Toinette, Montmartre
We found this warm friendly bistro by accident when walking away from the crowds through the back streets of Montmartre. It has a great atmosphere and reasonably priced, tasty classic dishes (around €15 for a main course). There’s a good, unpretentious selection of wine too. We went around 9pm, when it was quite buzzy, the clientele pretty much all French.
• 20 rue Germain Pilon, +33 1 4254 4436, cheztoinette.com
missmarple0512

Chez Germaine, Palais-Bourbon
It’s not often you find an excellent bistro in Paris at reasonable prices, but Chez Germaine ticks all the boxes. In the heart of Paris (7th arrondissement), it exudes class with its simple, yet elegant interior, daily set menus and friendly (English-speaking!) waiters. I would recommend a homemade terrine as a starter, followed by pork with lentils. Glorious!
• 30 rue Pierre Leroux, +33 1 4273 2834, three-course dinner €25
Mason1

Le Basilic, Montmartre
Typically we stumble on the best restaurants on the last night of our trips, and invariably they are right under our noses. Such was the case with Le Basilic. It is intimate, atmospheric, inviting and affordable with a three-course set menu for €23 or the Parisian staples of escargot and duck from the à la carte menu. We’d felt ripped off in the majority of Parisian eateries, but Le Basilic restored our faith in French bistros, especially considering its location within a mile of Moulin Rouge and Sacré-Coeur.
• 33 rue Lepic, +33 1 4606 7843, mains from €15
Tonyhardman

Chez Janou, Marais

Just behind the place des Vosges on the corner of a street, you come upon a small bistro bursting with colour, ambience and delicious food. You can wait for a table at the bar, which has a fabulous range of Provençal wines. Then enjoy a meal starting with tasty olives and moving on to classics such as mussels, steak and duck; somebody at your table has to have the chocolate mousse. This place is quintessentially French, and humming with local chat.
• 2 rue Roger Verlomme, +33 1 4272 2841, chezjanou.com, three-course lunch €14
JoDonaldson

Le Bistro au Vieux Chêne
This is a small, welcoming French bistro in a side street in the 11th arrondissement, a bit off the tourist track. The menu is short and the food good, and the wine list has something for every pocket.
• 7 rue du Dahomey, +33 1 4371 6769, vieuxchene.fr. Two-course dinner €28, three-course dinner €33
bananatruss

Pays de la Loire

Le Saint Georges, St-Juire-Champgillon
This is a lovely fine-dining restaurant in a village between Ste-Hermine and Chantonnay. Wonderful service, beautiful food! You need to book in advance as they fill up quickly.
• 11 place de la Mairie, +33 2 5127 8691, lesaintgeorges.wordpress.com, seven-course tasting menu €69
NatashaGSkinner

La Cigale, Nantes

A lunchtime visit to La Cigale en route back to the UK lifted our post-vacation spirits. La Cigale dates back to the 1890s andhas breathtaking ornate tiling between wooden panels and gorgeous mosaics. The cigale (grasshopper) can be seen in various poses in the tiles and mosaics. Apparently the cigale plays and eats all summer, a creature of the moment. The ambience of La Cigale coupled with the delicious food – sea food is a speciality – encourages you to live in moment.
4 place Graslin, +33 2 5184 9494 lacigale.com
Goforth12

Normandy

Auberge Des Peintres, Saint-Céneri-Le-Gérei
This building dates back 300 years, and the panelled walls are hung with local paintings. All the old favourites are on the menu. Pink magret de canard (duck breast), andouillette sausages, boudin noir (black pudding), and côte de boeuf. The joys of chocolate fondant and tarte tatin followed. Prices were reasonable for the excellent cooking. A pre-dinner stroll could take in the frescoed, Romanesque church wildflower gardens and Les Jardins de la Mansonière.
• +33 2 3326 4918, Le Bourg, mains €15-€30
MadeleineMorrow

Burgundy

Hameau Duboeuf, La Gare, Romanèche-Thorins
This makes a fantastic stop-off on your way down France. The bistro is in the Georges Duboeuf Wine Museum, serving latest wines from this amazing French wine king. The food is simple yet delicious, and the museum is also well worth a visit if you have time.
• route de la Gare, +33 3 8535 2222, hameauduvin.com
Popincourt

Life and style: Restaurants | guardian.co.uk

Outdoor catering covers an enormous range of circumstances, from street-sellers, to organised events such as village fetes or concerts, one-off occasions such as weddings, or regular planned events and the number of people expected to attend can also vary considerably. However, no matter what the occasion, the caterer needs to be aware of health and safety issues to protect the public and also to protect their catering livelihood.

For instance, the site should be carefully appraised to take in account the relevant factors which may impact on the catering experience. How many people are the caterers likely to serve? What are the facilities, including utilities, to power the catering equipment? What about toilets, water and drainage issues? Similarly, check out overhead or underground power lines so that they are taken into account when you set up your temporary outdoor catering venue/stall/establishment.

It is also important to think ahead about waste issues too. How is refuse to be disposed of safely and in accordance with appropriate regulations? What about the policy on the disposal of glass? What about fats and greasy waste? How about recycling? It is important to make sure that you are clear about these things.

Another relevant consideration is the impact you will have on the neighbourhood and local vicinity. How will you manage issues such as litter, noise, traffic and crowds at your event? These are all matters which need careful thought and planning and consultation with the appropriate authorities or compliance with appropriate regulations. What about access to the site and also egress? What about emergency access too? Does your event need a licence or agreement with the local authorities? What about insurance, including public liability insurance and employer liability insurance? These are all very valid considerations for you to think about.

Think, too, about the geography of your site. What is the weather forecast like for the period of your catering event? Do you need a contingency plan? What about the prevailing winds which may impact on the event? These are all considerations, amongst others, that need to be addressed before you even start to think about food preparation, storage and food health and safety issues.

In that regard, outdoor catering can be a high risk activity and it is very important to address issues of hygiene. The very nature of outdoor catering, especially in the summer, often involves the employment of temporary staff. They will need to be trained in issues of food health and safety appropriate to their job tasks.

There are many other issues to take into account and it is important to consider this carefully before undertaking outdoor catering. Of course, 2012 is a celebratory year as we are hosting the Olympics and there is also the Queen`s Diamond Jubilee. You do not want the breaking London news to relate to some health and safety issue, but rather to the successful catering during the holiday season, which pleases both tourists and those celebrating outdoors.

At one of his regular New York haunts, the film-maker explains why he loves risk-taking and the British sense of humour

Arriving at Balthazar in New York’s SoHo, there is a lunchtime crowd hovering near reservations, a combination of wide-eyed tourists who want a glimpse of real New Yorkers, and the pushy New Yorkers who want to avoid the tourists. Being a pushy New Yorker, I squeeze my way to the front.  I mention Morgan Spurlock and the maître’d nods. “Yes,” he says, handing over menus to the hostess. “His table is ready.”

I follow the hostess through the cavernous room which is modelled after a Parisian café – deep red banquettes and shiny brass rails. I’m told Spurlock likes the large, circular booth and yes, he comes in often. Later, he’ll explain his emotional connection to Balthazar; it’s where he celebrated the success of Super Size Me, his 2004 documentary about living only on McDonald’s for 30 days, which was nominated for an Academy award.

“I’ve had everything on the menu at least once,” he says. “It’s a Monday, though, so I probably won’t get the brook trout.”

He doesn’t like to eat fish on Mondays and believes superstition is rooted in some sort of fact.

“I’m a believer in getting fish on Tuesday. I like fresh fish. The fish market isn’t open on Sunday so where’s it coming in from?” He quizzically raises an eyebrow.  I enquire if that’s being smart or neurotic.

“Both,” he smiles. “It’s smarotic.”

Thus begins a lively conversation where it’s evident that Spurlock is as accessible and entertaining in person as he is in his films. Known primarily as a documentary filmmaker, his most recent, The Greatest Movie Ever Sold, is a film about product placement, and he combines a campaigning point of view with an engaging narrative. What’s appealing about him on camera is what comes through in person: heartfelt enthusiasm.

He grew up in West Virginia, “in a house where there was a dead animal on the table at every meal”. For his mum’s 70th birthday he’s taking her and the family to Tuscany and he’s close with them all. “We just don’t talk about religion or politics,” he says. He has a five-year-old son with his ex-wife and explains having a child has forced him to let go of a lot of his need for order: “You reach in your pocket and there’s a Lego toy or a half-chewed piece of gum.” He unpacks immediately when he gets to a hotel because he hates living out of a suitcase.

The waiter approaches and recites the specials of the day. Spurlock says “great” after all of them. Then he includes the waiter in our debate about fish on Mondays and asks for his thoughts. I decide to risk the brook trout. “It’s a good risk,” Spurlock reassures me. “Go for it.” He orders the chicken paillard.

Last year he was travelling for seven or eight months. While on the road, he eats whatever he wants but is adamant about exercise. He won’t stay in a hotel that doesn’t have a fitness centre or pool and he never eats at an airport. There’s a sushi restaurant at JFK which elicits a shiver of horror. But lately he’s been enduring a weekly transatlantic commute while shooting a Sky Atlantic show – Morgan Spurlock’s New Britannia – which highlights the differences in British and American culture. It’s a chat show with field pieces driven by Spurlock’s role as an outsider looking in. He credits his mother for his affinity for British humour. “I have an amazing mom who brought me up on a fantastic diet of comedy,” he says. “Monty Python. Fawlty Towers.”

Another attractive facet of making a show in the UK is owning the intellectual property rights. Financial independence is important to Spurlock. “I paid for Super Size Me out of my own pocket,” he says. “I made it for ,000.”

Why so inexpensive? I ask

“Because nobody got paid. We had a crew of 40 people and nobody made a dime over the year of making that movie. We had deals where they would get back pay.”

That he could get so many people to agree to get involved on the basis they would be paid eventually is a clue to the tenacity that characterises much of his success, right from the start, when he was involved with the early days of the dotcom boom. He tells a story from those days, of how he met an investor who wrote him a cheque for 0,000 in a bar on the Upper East Side.

“He said, ‘So, will you buy me a drink?’ and the question is how long do you stay in a bar and drink with someone who’s just given you a cheque for 0,000?” He pauses. “The answer is, as long as he wants.”

A month later, in 2000, he launched I Bet You Will, an internet show where people were paid to perform outrageous acts, such as drinking vast amounts of cod liver oil – and then he sold it to MTV. He was sleeping in a hammock in his office at the time but always believed the show would be a success.

Spurlock is clearly savvy in his approach to working in a creative industry but was he always so optimistic? And where did it come from? He credits his parents. 

“I think the minute you start doubting, that doubt is contagious and everyone starts believing it won’t happen. You have to inspire faith in people, especially when they’re not getting paid. The one thing I never saw my father do in the midst of failure was quit. I don’t ever remember seeing him depressed. I was never allowed to quit anything – once you started, you carried it through to the end. Period. So I think as I was ,000 in debt and evicted from my apartment, I was going to see it through until the end.”

Spurlock became “enraptured” by the entertainment business from a young age. “I never wanted to do anything else,” he says. “I was awkward as a kid. I wasn’t the best looking or the most athletic or the funniest – I was just persistent and tenacious.”

He also keeps every rejection letter that he’s ever received in a folder. He looked at it recently and realised that it even contains a note from an agent who would later change his mind and sign him. When was the last time Spurlock suffered rejection?

“Well, I just got divorced.” He laughs. “I get rejected all the time. There are lots of ideas I’m passionate about that no one wants.”

We order coffee and the dessert menus are placed in front of us.

“Want a creme brulee?” He asks. “It’s pretty bananas.”

I decline.

“You don’t want dessert? Trying to watch your figure? I don’t eat dessert.”

Ever since Super Size Me, he’s been susceptible to weight gain. “Once you develop those fat cells in your body, they never go away.” He imitates fat cells talking: “Go on – have another dessert buddy – go ahead!’

Spurlock never tires of talking about food. His favourite meal was in Japan in 2005: “4am at the fish market. There are little sushi restaurants. I got in line at 5.15 – I was eating the freshest fish I ever had in my life. I bit into a sea urchin that felt like someone had just plucked it out of the ocean.”

Before we leave he mentions a project called Failure Club that he’s nurtured for seven years. It’s now showing on Yahoo.com and a new episode launches every Tuesday and Friday. The show focuses on people who finally do the one thing in life they were most afraid of failing at. It’s a concept he’s excited about exploring.

“People get scared and stop going after things they want. We stop taking chances. We become risk averse.”

Embracing fear and taking risks  come easily to Spurlock. Just don’t ask him to have fish on Mondays.

The Greatest Movie Ever Sold is available on DVD from 27 February

Life and style: Restaurants | guardian.co.uk

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