Being a parent is hard work, but mainly for your children. To make up for being embarrassing, lacking in self awareness and generally being a pain in the arse, I like to treat them each to a lavish birthday meal every year (Mrs Nigel is also engaged in treating them, of course, but she has nothing to make up for...). As discussed in previous reviews, #1 son is a vegetarian, and so all meals have to be planned accordingly.

I am in the middle of a dispute with one of the few places you can get decent French food in this country, or at least could, until very recently. As far as I can tell, my photo and description have been placed at the door and till of every Côte restaurant in the UK, with regular training given to staff as to what to do when tackling an unstable food critic.

Wondering where Nigel has been hiding for the last few weeks? Well, a friend of mine sent me on a wild pig chase... When I mentioned I was off to Malaga for a few days, my friend G, sent me a vast array of recommendations to eat and drink, spread across the Malaga area. G is trilingual (in English, Spanish, and I was told by one of his fellow countrymen a few weeks ago, Glaswegian), and so has seen Malaga from a local's perspective, which means some of the places were a little inaccessible to us (knowing 100 words of Spanish only gets you so far), but we were keen to try.

It is not often you get offered two free lunches on the same day, but such is the lot of the famous restaurant reviewer. This is a story of one of them (the other requires me to break my "no noodles" policy, which I may soon be prepared to flex as I am a notorious tightwad...) The Riding House Fitzrovia lunch was at the behest of a very dear friend of mine, who used to work just up the road, and for whom this place used to be part canteen, part people watching space (as the BBC is just up the road, and part canteen for them as well...).

Picking restaurants for other people is always a nerve-wracking experience, especially if you have not been there before yourself. Picking restaurants for highly sophisticated Americans with refined palettes and high expectations is even more tricky. Fortunately my (probably now former) friends were not that discerning, but nonetheless I wanted to make a good impression. So it was back to the Michelin Guide, as we had a very specific set of geographical restrictions to deal with, and it turns out there are not that many places recommended in the Guide "out West".

Had Meryl Streep not almost got swept off the harbour wall in Lyme Regis, it is possible no-one would ever have heard of the place. I was, I have to say, very disappointed when the kids failed to identify the famous scene from the French Lieutenant's Woman that Mrs Nigel and I tried to replicate on the Cobb. I took an amazing photo of her looking moodily over her shoulder, although the weather didn't play ball and was stubbornly (and unusually) sunny.

Do you remember when children were meant to be seen and not heard, and actually, where possible, not seen at all? Certainly feels like my childhood, but while the modern world was catching up to a more inclusive parenting, 25 years ago many hotels still lagged far behind. I will never forget having to dress my children for dinner at a hotel in Corfe Castle (even I was not allowed to wear jeans, having had to purchase a pair of trousers in a local "Men's Outfitters" after Mrs Nigel made me put the dead man's trousers back on the rail at Oxfam), and watching the waiters lift "silver" platters from each dreary main course, charged at full price if I wanted the kids to eat with me in the evening.

The Zoku is that good, this could end up being a really short review! I realised when booking this trip that while I have ticked off almost every major European capital on my list of places I have travelled to (and many more minor cities), I didn’t think I had ever been to Denmark. This turns out to have been a major oversight.

From Folkestone to Rye, discover 9 coastal stops reviewed by Nigel Noshes - 5 worth the hike, 4 to approach with caution along the English Coast Path.

Looking for a Central London Restaurant near Trafalgar Square. Get an (almost) excellent set menu at a really good price at Ochre.

A curated list of 9 London restaurants, 5 worth visiting and 4 to approach with caution, based on recent Nigel Noshes reviews across the capital.

I wasn't expecting to like this place. We had a fabulous meal the night before at Little Rock on the Harbour Arm, and the general rule is that for any given town, there is only one horse. Mrs Nigel had attempted to describe Marleys me to (unsuccessfully), and all I had in my mind was that it would be a local equivalent of Bill's (and that is not a good thing as far as I am concerned).

Why does anyone go to Folkestone? It's an issue that this seaside town has been struggling with since the ferry port closed in 2000, killed by competition from its nearby neighbour, the Channel Tunnel. In recent years, a real effort has been made to promote the town as a destination, and as I will show in a couple of later reviews, it has managed to do so, with some amazing food, and the most beautifully reimagined "Harbour Arm" which has taken over the old Harbour Station where once you could step almost directly from the train onto a ferry (sounds magical, was in fact reasonably crap as you had to try to get a few hours' sleep on a bucking boat!).

I had more fun in two nights in the Eagle and Child in this delightful Lake District village than I have had in the pubs of Richmond and environs in two years. Perhaps we were lucky, or perhaps this is where all the cool kids hang out. You would not think of this pub as the den of iniquity it clearly is by looking at it from the outside, or in fact the inside.

Portsmouth is not a place you go to, rather it is a place you pass through. You can get ferries and ships to all sorts of exotic places (and the Isle of Wight), but a little like Bilbao, it is not a place you really linger for any period of time. In fact, wherever you go in Portsmouth, there are prominent signs which direct you "Out of CIty": It is not a good portent at all!

Family legend says that someone had something to do with the construction of the OXO Tower. We used to drive past it a lot as a kid on our way "up to town", especially in the bad old days when moving from East to West was either a grim slog on a set of side roads that happened to share a name (the grandly-named "North Circular"), or a straight shot up the A13 into a 15 mile long traffic jam from Canning Town to Heathrow.

I live in a terrible place for a food blogger. My nearest large conurbation is Richmond, and apart from a handful of reasonable chain restaurants, and of course Mignonette, it is pretty devoid of anywhere decent to eat. No 1 Duke Street has pretty good food (but appalling and appallingly priced drinks), and the Britannia just can't help being a pub, no matter how hard it tries.

I had my best ever bottle of restaurant wine at Bubala. Well, actually, strictly speaking, on the location that is now Bubula, as it has passed through a number of hands over the years. Last time I was here (and this shows my age) it was Vasco and Pierro's Pavilion Restaurant, and I am really showing my age when I say I am old enough to remember when they had the actual Pavilion.

British cuisine has always taken a bit of a kicking from visitors from abroad. We continue to known as rosbifs to the French because of our supposed love of all forms of roasted meat, particularly beef. As if that is a bad thing! Anyone who has tried my roast potatoes (and to a lesser degree my Yorkshire puddings), knows that when properly prepared, traditional British food is among the finest on the planet (I prefer slow-cooked shoulder of lamb, if anyone is interested).

People of Lewes: What the hell is wrong with you? You seem completely incapable of supporting decent independent restaurants, which makes it hard on us posh buggers who swoop in once a year for Glyndeboure and expect London food at Country prices. Over the years, we have seen quite a few quite excellent restaurants come and go in Lewes, one a victim of COVID, but the rest seemingly because everyone else eats at Bills, which now occupies as much space as the average out-of-town Tesco.

Some titles just write themselves: And maybe some shouldn't, but I could not resist it. Richmond is not a great place to live from a restaurant point of view, and it is a shame that a chain is one of the best places to eat out, but if it has to be a chain, probably better it is The Ivy than, say, Five Guys.

Petersham Nurseries is best described as a restaurant with a garden centre attached. Any notion that the primary purpose of this location is to sell plants has edged further and further away from the truth over the years, to the point where maintaining the fiction is now almost impossible. And that is something that has sent certain local residents and planners into paroxysms of fury.

New York seems to bring out strong emotions in people. Many songs have been written in praise of it, and only this week I watched an episode of "And Just Like That" where beautiful people live beautiful lives in a beautifully clean city while being rude about tourists and their backward ways, not appreciating the "Real" New York. "She asked me to dinner at the Tavern on the Green", says Miranda to Carrie, as if that is the worst possible faux pas in social history.

Inside of me there is a small boy still trying to recreate his first pizza hit. I was about 10, and had been cooped up in the back of my parents' car for 2 or 3 years on a driving trip down to the Amalfi Coast. Quite possibly my grandmother was squeezed into the middle seat between my sister and myself.

Peer pressure is a terrible thing. I went back to Delamina East (review here from previously) last Saturday with our friends S&M. S is an avid follower of Nigel Noshes, and due to the 19th Century tech setup chez S&M, M is also forced to read the occasional review. They were completely horrified that I wasn't intending to re-review the place, and I have been wrestling with the ethics of a second, proximate, review for the last few days.