Five to try: Doing Something Right

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ZAFFERANO
15 Lowndes Street, SW1
(020 7235 5800) £63
The wisdom of naming Zafferano winner of Consistently Excellent Restaurant at the Tatler Awards last week became apparent in trying to eat there after the event. Even leaning heavily on handsome manager Enzo Cassini (always a pleasure) we had to wait for a table on a Monday night. It was worth it for puntarelle served as an unannounced appetiser, the first-course salad based on shin of veal and beauteous spaghetti with lobster. Great wine list.

GALVIN BISTROT DE LUXE
66 Baker Street, W1 (020 7935 4007) £44
The restaurant was rammed with tables being turned at a recent Friday lunchtime. Wood-panelled surroundings, snowy linen, service now running more like a well-oiled machine and a tempting £15.50 three-course lunch (and pre-theatre) menu; Galvin is the archetypal French restaurant so often invoked, so seldom realised. Favourite dishes: lasagne of Dorset crab; tagine of lamb; pear tarte Tatin and, as of the other day, set-lunch pumpkin soup.

INDIAN ZING
236 King Street, W6 (020 8748 5959) £34
Before setting out for the Antipodes on Christmas Day 2008, I made sure of a fine Indian meal with a seasonal slant at this star of west London's Indian restaurant street. When a chef is deft and intelligent, as is Manoj Vasaikar, any festive occasion is grist to the mill. It is easy to fill a dining room in December but it is sensible to book ahead here at any time: the decor is harmonious, the food special and prices sober.

BOCCA DI LUPO
12 Archer Street, W1 (020 7734 2223) £44
Reviewed here just after it opened in early December, Jacob Kenedy's precise and imaginative Italian food is now on everyone's lips. A friend who rang me for advice on where to take his pal Rick Stein for dinner had to settle for the downstairs private dining room to get a seat. Stein loved it. A long bar where you can watch the chefs at work, the dishes, and many of the well-chosen wines at two sizes makes the Mouth of the Wolf accessible to all.

TERROIRS
5 William IV Street, WC2
(020 7036 0660) £36
Sometimes chefs struggle before settling comfortably into a kitchen that suits them. Ed Wilson, whose cooking I've tried elsewhere without notable thrill, is flourishing in this French-owned and run wine bar. His menu of cannily crafted small plates sits well with roaming freely over the drinks list that specialises in hangover-resistant "natural", organic and biodynamic wines. Staff on the floor are clued up, friendly, and impart the feeling that the enterprise is a happy ship.

Prices estimate the cost of a meal with wine for one.