Where to eat comfort food

You would think that with fewer people going to old-style boarding schools there would be less of an appetite for the familiar dishes of Nanny cuisine, but comfort food goes from strength to strength.

The best comfort food has three main characteristics - it always offers a substantial hit of carbohydrate; it is never aggressively flavoured although it can be extremely sweet (good comfort food is not bland but neither is it spicy); and comfort food is always easy to eat - not too much chewing, not too much cutting up on the plate.

You could define comfort food as delicious slops, but that would be unfair to some splendid traditional dishes. The allure of the genre has not escaped the notice of some of London's best restaurants.

Risotto is a key comfort food and at its most charming at this time of year. Gloopy and rich it has even joined the mainstream with the opening of a risotto bar called Ooze, but for me the best risotto in London is to be found at Zafferano.
During the white truffle season (now sadly coming to an end) head chef Andy Needham's wildly extravagant and gloriously simple white truffle risotto gets centre stage, but it will be replaced on the menu by another classic, the saffron and bone-marrow risotto. This is a very rich dish indeed as the risotto is finished with plenty of butter and cheese.
Ooze Risotto Bar, 62 Goodge Street, W1 (020 7436 9444); Zafferano, 15 Lowndes Street, SW1 (020 7235 5800)

Mince can also be a very comforting bowlful, but even though it's a simple dish it takes a very confident restaurant to add it to the menu. At St John, chef-proprietor Fergus Henderson has gone to great lengths to ensure that when "mince and tatties" graces his menu ,it is the genuine article.
He says: "In Scotland, the exact recipe for perfect mince is hotly debated, much as the components of the perfect cassoulet are discussed in Toulouse. Do you add carrots? Do you add peas? At St John we use best beef mince and add some carrot, also my mother's secret ingredient - a little oatmeal to thicken the gravy."
St John, 26 St John Street, EC1 (020 7251 0848)

Custard has all the attributes of the best comfort food - plenty of carbohydrate, sweetness and a sloppy texture. But proper comfort custard is very different from the thinner, lighter crème Anglais. At the back of every comfort food devotee's mind is thick and unyielding yellow stuff that came from Mr Bird's blue and yellow drums. Crème Anglais is a simple emulsion of eggs, sugar and cream but at The Ivy, Mark Hix insists that the puddings are served with traditional custard. "We serve proper thick custard with our puds, not wishy-washy sauce Anglais. For the Ivy recipe we whisk some cornflour into the egg yolks and use jersey cream."
The Ivy, 1 West Street, WC2 (020 7836 4751

Like risotto, mashed potato has also been spotted as a dish worth exploiting in its own right. Fast food newcomer "Mother Mash" on Ganton Street rearranges menu priorities by inviting you to choose a mashed potato and then team it with sausages, pies or gravy - it offers classic mash; cheesy mash; cheesy mustard mash; and an Irish variant, champ mash.
But surely the best comfort food mash is honest mash, like the silky stuff served at Tom Aiken's new restaurant Tom's Kitchen. Here, the menu features roast chicken, which is served with bread sauce, a dollop of very smooth mash and gravy. Roast chicken and mashed potato is almost a comfort meal in itself, but the mashed potato at Tom's Kitchen is exceptionally fine, not overworked and gluey but rich and buttery.
Mother Mash, 26 Ganton Street, W1 (020 7494 9644); Tom's Kitchen, 27 Cale Street, SW3 (020 7349 0202)

The Italian contribution to comfort eating may well be risotto, but long before risotto rice became a fixture on supermarket shelves short-grain rice was an English store cupboard staple. There is nothing quite so satisfying as a well-made old-fashioned rice pudding. This is one dish that must be made slowly and carefully with fullcream milk and a gentle oven.
At the Paternoster Chop House, head chef Peter Weeden makes rice pudding with milk, sugar, vanilla and rice but he is convinced that the key to a good rice pudding lies in the jam you serve with it. The Paternoster Chop House uses homemade jams such as damson; elderberry; rowan and crab apple; and cherry and plum.
Weeden believes that the contrast between the rich and sweet milkiness of the rice pudding and the sharpness of the jam is the making of the dish. But for true unabashed comfort food it's hard to oppose a creamy rice pudding and an indulgent swirl of honey.
Paternoster Chop House, Warwick Court, Paternoster Square, EC4 (020 7029 9400)