The 10 best new London restaurants of the year

In March, the return of Bruno Loubet after eight years in Australia set food lovers and bloggers a-twitter. Clever Mark Sainsbury had enticed him to The Zetter hotel in Clerkenwell, where Bistrot Bruno Loubet in designer-rough surroundings by Russell Sage gives customers French food with heart and soul. Loubet, above, has been cooking professionally since he was 13 and shows no sign of losing passion or perspicacity. Try his hare royale. Not many people cook that.

Trish Hilferty, who worked at The Eagle in Farringdon Road and has self-effacingly put many a gastropub on the culinary map, seemed shyly content to have her name associated with The Canton Arms, in south Lambeth. The conversion of a big old boozer with minimum flash or flurry, so that old-timers still feel comfortable, has given the area a wonderful place to eat extremely well at no great cost. Making foie gras into a toastie was a stroke of genius.

Miles Kirby honed his talent for the fascinating fusion food served at Caravan in Exmouth Market at Peter Gordon's Marylebone restaurant, Providores (Gordon has just opened the all-day café Kopapa in Covent Garden). A state-of-the-art coffee roaster presides in the basement, signalling that Kiwis take coffee very seriously as they do enjoyment, civility and culinary diversion. A sharing plate of Middle-Eastern assemblies is a good place to start on the menu. At the weekend brunch try salt beef fritters with green beans, mustard and a fried egg.

A legacy of the late Rose Gray is the trickledown of the River Café ethos to restaurants that have copied almost everything about the spirit except insouciant pricing. Bermondsey Street lacks a river running beside it but Zucca, started by River Café alumnus Sam Harris, offers carefully chosen produce cooked with an understanding of the virtue of restraint, an open kitchen, a great Italian wine list and enthusiastic, knowledgeable service. The eponymous pumpkin "fritti" should be included in small eats, and veal chop or game in the main course. A super Tuscan will not be super-marked up.

After Bacchus in Hoxton — "fine dining in trainers" — and the launch of The Loft Project showcasing bright young chefs, which is still going strong, Nuno Mendes, who has cooked around the world including a stint at El Bulli, opened Viajante in the former Bethnal Green Town Hall. It is extreme cooking — love it or loathe it seems the response but a bit of both is probably accurate — served with old-fashioned courtliness Mendes and his chefs, on view clutching their tweezers in an open kitchen, bring out some of the many courses to acquaint themselves with the customers. If you can't get to Noma in Copenhagen, surely you can manage the A107. Who'd have thought you would eat again the skin off the warm milk of your childhood?

When Pierre Koffmann popped up on the roof of Selfridges for the first London Restaurant Festival he was gratified that most of the customers were much younger than him, given that his legendary La Tante Claire opened in 1977. It was a factor in his decision to make a comeback called Koffmann's at The Berkeley. Like many great chefs he yearns to run a brasserie but neither a luxury hotel setting nor his long marinade in haute cuisine brings this about. What you get is his presence and perfect pitch. Try the masterful pied de cochon aux morilles, but lapin rôti à la moutarde is equally engaging. 

Giorgio Locatelli espouses family values. He has backed his former head chef and sommelier, the brothers Federico and Max Sali, in Tinello in Pimlico. In an area known for slightly arthritic Italian food, it's a breath of fresh Tuscan air and shows that scattering pearls before those who wear a double row can work. One of my dishes of the year was Tinello's polenta with poached eggs, onto which white truffle was grated. Antony Demetre and Will Smith pleased us with Arbutus and Wild Honey but dazzled with Les Deux Salons, their evocation of a Parisian brasserie. The food is more adventurous than one of those, the wines a better deal. "Will it be the new Ivy?" is a question I have heard. It is in the right place. Try Friday's classic Marseille bouillabaisse and see what a Josper oven can do to a young chicken with lemon and garlic.

Chefs from Club Gascon quietly brought the scents and sounds and flavours of Provence to Cigalon off Fleet Street. The surroundings are evocative — are those crickets chirping in the shrubbery? — and the food has the intensity of the sun, whose existence we are in danger of forgetting. To see what I mean, try aioli de cabillaud de ligne au sel and beef cannelloni with sauce diable. Downstairs have a game of petanques in Bar Anis.

Faithful readers will have noticed that last week I gave Brawn in Hackney five stars. This sibling of Terroirs on the fringes of Covent Garden seems to me to synthesise all the positive ways in which London restaurants are moving. The menu is malleable and light-footed, the wines explorative, the service friendly but also serious, the prices reasonable and it honours its neighbourhood.  Red mullet with chanterelles and boudin of zander with shellfish sauce were two fabulous dishes.

I can't leave 2010 without mentioning three other restaurants not reviewed by me on these pages. Koya, the udon shop in Frith Street, Soho, Hawksmoor steak house in Seven Dials and Yashin sushi restaurant off Kensington High Street are not to be missed by any food lover.

10 Best New London Restaurants of the Year 2010

BISTROT BRUNO LOUBET St John's Sq, Clerkenwell Rd, EC1 (020 7324 4455) £92

CANTON ARMS 177 South Lambeth Rd, SW8 1XP (020 7582 8710) £64

CARAVAN 11-13 Exmouth Market, EC1R 4QD (020 7833 8115) £70

ZUCCA 184 Bermondsey Street, SE1 3TQ (020 7378 6809) £64

VIAJANTE Patriot Square, Bethnal Green, E2 9NF (020 7871 0461) £250

KOFFMANN'S The Berkeley, Wilton Place, SW1X 7RL (020 7235 1010) £140

TINELLO 87 Pimlico Rd, SW1W 8PH(020 7730 3663) £74

LES DEUX SALONS 40-42 William IV St, WC2N 4DD (020 7420 2050) £100

CIGALON 115 Chancery Lane, WC2A 1PP (020 7242 8373) £90

BRAWN 49 Columbia Road, E2 7RG
(020 7729 5692) £78