Nopi, Soho

Beef brisket croquettes with Asian 'slaw

I'm a big fan of Ottolenghi - both the cafes and the cookbooks. With such bright and bold flavours and colours, a table full of Ottolenghi salads is like an exotic, glistening jewellery box appealing to the eye as much as the palate.

The Ottolenghi team have now opened Nopi in Soho. It's an all day dining brasserie with small sharing plates, brimming with Middle Eastern and Asian flavours.

Kingfish carpaccio

After an enthusiastic days shopping, TPG and I dropped in for a pitstop at the bar for some shared plates and a glass of wine (or two). (Although other reports suggest it's best to book ahead).

Beef brisket croquettes with Asian 'slaw are sublimely rich, meaty and moist - the tangy slaw cuts through them perfectly. A must, I'd say.

Pan fried sea bream with turmeric potatoes and rasam is excellent, so plump and juicy, while a spicy kingfish carpaccio with pickled cauliflower is light and lovely.

Creamy burrato oozes onto a salad of bright blood orange and coriander seeds.

The wine list is interesting and our servers at the bar are fantastic - they do a great job of suggesting wines to match our meal, which really hit the spot.

The atmosphere is lacking something (might it be different in the evening?), and its quite a dark spot on a sunny day - but I do love the funky light fittings. It's smarter than the Ottolenghi cafes, but it's still fairly relaxed and people seem to be enjoying themselves. The downstairs canteen area has a big communal table overlooking the open kitchen, and is more in the Ottolenghi cafe style. Special mention must go to the room of angled mirrors that is the bathroom - try to find your way out in under 5 seconds (it's totally worth a visit while you're there).

Prices are in the mid-high range and can stack up - our bill came in at just over £70 for two people, including 3 glasses of wine and service.

Thinking about Ottolenghi's lusty cake selection, I'm tempted to go back to Nopi to try the cardamom rice pudding with rose syrup and pistachio. I'll keep you posted.

 Nopi,  22 Warwick Street, Soho, London, W1B 5NE (Tel: 020 7494 9584)

Cafe Luc, Marylebone

I may have mentioned before that The Peanut Gallery has a baby which has nothing to do with me. His bike. It's custom made and now has brand new wheels. It appears he is preparing for the Tour de France.  If I had, long ago, instituted a rule that every dollar spent on the bike is to be matched by expenditure on shoes for me, I'd be a very happy woman.

The trouble with having a such a bike is that you can never take it anywhere - or leave it anywhere at least. Many times, we have cycled around town looking for a nice coffee spot where TPG can not only secure his bike nearby, but eyeball it while he is eating, and be within a clear path to a doorway or open window to enable him to leap through the air and pounce in the event that anyone looks sideways at it. Sometimes it's easier just to go home....

So the bike valet service at Cafe Luc is something of a welcome addition to the London cafe scene for our household. After a cycle around the leafy streets of Primrose Hill and Regent's Park, customers can drop off their bikes with the bike valet and eat with the assurance that their pride and joy is safely locked up inside the building.

Apparently, they also offer a shopping valet service if find yourself unable to resist the temptations of the cafe's chic Marylebone High Street location.

Cafe Luc is run by Julie van Oostende and her father, Belgian restaurateur, Luc van Oostende. Despite their Belgian heritage, the menu at Cafe Luc is more broadly Modern European - although there is a Belgian week menu coming up from 20 - 27 September 2010. (Unfortunately there will not be waffles - the first thing TPG checked - although there will be speculoos, vanilla and salted caramel ice-cream which will appease him).

The interior was designed by Stiff and Trevillion (who were behind Le Cafe Anglais' decor) and is something like that of a larger Galvin Bistrot de Luxe, although slightly more corporate. It's a schlick looking brasserie, with muted walls, black wooden tables, chocolate banquettes and lots of mirror action. Eye catching light fittings include amber hand blown glass bulbs from Murano bubbling over the copper bar, and clusters of small black lampshades spaced along the walls. Even the loos are rather dashing.

Open all day from 7am, with a breakfast menu available until noon and a brunch menu available until 6pm, the hearty Full English breakfast (£12) was just what I needed last Sunday afternoon. The yolks of my 2 perfectly poached eggs oozed gloriously onto toasted brown bread, a delicious sausage (unfortunately no-one could tell me where it came from), black pudding, roasted cherry tomatoes, tasty bacon, sauteed mushrooms and baked beans. The baked beans were the only slight let down here - they were fine, but a home made batch would improve things.

Two upright eggs with soldiers (£5.50) were also perfectly cooked, although the smallish serving of toast may not be enough to satisfy you on it's own. I would suggest accompanying this with fruit salad, or the TPG went for pancakes - a dainty stack with maple syrup and berries were excellent (£7.50).

There are healthy options like Greek yoghurt with berries and honey and, while the menu is mostly quite conventional, more offbeat numbers like apple spring rolls with green apple coulis are available.

Juices are freshly squeezed (I had orange, but carrot, apple, pear and grapefruit are also offered) and I enjoyed a spicy, well made Bloody Mary to accompany my Full English. The coffee was fine, although not one to go out of the way for.

Service appeared to be helpful and attentive across the room. There were occasional gaps in product knowledge, but not too much to begrudge them - it's all very casual and friendly.

Cafe Luc is a good option for breakfast with cocktails in style - or one to remember if you're out free wheeling with an obsessive compulsive bike owner.


Cafe Luc, 50 Marylebone High Street, London, W1U 5HN (Tel: 020 7258 9878)

Greedy Diva was a guest of Cafe Luc.

La Petite Maison: Nicoise cuisine in Mayfair, London

The Peanut Gallery and I spent last weekend eating and guffawing our way around Paris, in our own special tres chic style. TPG even grew a fine, curly 'tache for the occasion. Special Greedy Diva highlights are coming soon. However, suffice to say, many gallons of butter, animal fat and lashings of cream later, I'm not sure my body can cope with more French fare. I can still feel the eclairs au chocolat pulsing through my veins.

Fortunately, the menu at La Petite Maison holds promise of fresh, Nicoise cuisine - a bounty of seafood and grilled meats, vegetables, salads and Ligurian oils. A taste of the Mediterranean diet should be just what the doctor ordered.

Set on Brooks Mews in a quiet Mayfair cul-de-sac, La Petite Maison is a bright, buzzy, quintessential French brasserie based on a restaurant of the same name (and holding high regard) in Nice. Classic and classy, it's easy to see how it won Tatler's Best Room Award in 2008. It was brought to London by one of the owners of Roka and Zuma, but despite its position in the heart of the well heeled and sometimes stuffy streets of Mayfair, it's surprisingly relaxed and fun. Plates are meant to be shared (although you can just as easily stick to your own if you're not a sharer - perfectly understandable) which enhances the informality, despite the elegance of the food.

For me, it's love at first sight. The infatuation only increases as the food arrives. Friends Kerry, Ben, Sarah and Tim join The Peanut Gallery and I as we devour plate after plate of truly delightful fare.

As we fawn over the menu, thick slices of crusty bread are continually replenished on the table before us. A large bowl of grassy, green hued Ligurian olive oil takes centre stage on the table along with lemons and tomatoes to be sliced and rubbed into the bread in rustic tradition.

We share delicate starters of carpaccio of scallop and a superb dish of thinly sliced octopus in lemon oil which was truly a taste sensation. We're already working ourselves up into quite a flutter. We pair up these lighter choices with some deep fried courgette flowers, with sage, anchovy and onions, and pots of deep fried baby squid which were both perfectly adequate, although proferring slightly less to get het up about.

We also decide to share our mains - essentially, of course, out of a spirit of curiousity, gluttony and hedging our bets than any mightier principle of generosity. I choose the turbot with artichokes, chorizo, white wine and olive oil. It's delectable. It's been cooked in stock with vegetables, and is meaty, succulent and satisfying.

Tim and TPG each choose the grilled rib eye steak which turns out to be a fantastic piece of Scottish beef, grilled perfectly medium rare and cut into thick, mouthwatering strips to share.

The grilled veal chop is gorgeously creamy, while the grilled lamb chops with smoked aubergine are tender and pink. With all this, we share sides of green beans and crisp fries.

Usually, there's at least one dud in a field of so many. But it was impossible to pick a winner.

There's a clear leader on the dessert front as far as I'm concerned - and thankfully, it's mine. The warm chocolate mousse with malt ice-cream is so good I want to clear the room, find the vessel its stored in, and take a head first dive. Even TPG who has an annoyingly inexplicable aversion to chocolate mousse agrees it rocks.

His thin apple tart with vanilla ice cream looks a little on the light side, although he wolfed it down before I had the chance to try. The pear clafoutis was eggy and scrumptious (according to the eggy dessert lovers among us - such things are not my first choice, but it was lovely even to me).

I'm mentally preparing for a revisit already, even if only to try what must surely be a heavenly black leg whole chicken with foie gras (the aforesaid chook has been much hyped by reviewers in the past, which may or may not be a good sign). La Petite Maison is not cheap - expect Mayfair prices (at around £60 per head for us plus drinks). But every dish was fantastic, as was our wine from the largely French wine list. This is high class, rustic, wholesome fare - set in a chic, flirtateously French ambience. Somewhere for a romantic tete a tete, or a wine guzzling extravaganza with like minded friends, it's got it all. (Except the Nice foreshore.)

La Petite Maison, 53-54 Brook's Mews, Mayfair, W1K 4EG London
Ph: 020 7495 4774