Two decades on, Locanda Locatelli's star still shines for elegant simplicity, regional cuisine

There are just three Italian restaurants in London blessed with Michelin stars. Though each is distinctive from the other, all three present a view of the world's most popular cuisine that's far removed from the pizza and pasta joints most people associate with the word Italian. Closest to my heart has always been Locanda Locatelli, which celebrates its 20th year with a star in 2023.

It was the first place I'd ever been that elevated Italian food to fine dining. Many of the dishes were
familiar ... the major cultural influence of my childhood was Italian-American ... and I cooked some of them regularly, but chef Giorgio Locatelli worked a magic that took flavours to a different level. Yet he did it while retaining the simplicity, and the celebration of key ingredients, that's so essential to Italian food. He also maintained a rare authenticity to regional recipes. Downmarket Italian Anglicises everything, upmarket tends to bring in a lot of French influence, or goes off piste with crazy experimentation. Giorgio's kitchen serves up dishes that might come straight from a nonna in Palermo or Piedmont, just refined to their finest essence.

It's been 11 years since my last visit, and I'm delighted to say that absolutely nothing has changed. So you could just read my last review. But to give two decades of quality its due, I'll write on.

It was a special occasion, as any visit to the Michelin stratosphere and its related prices should be. An adopted nephew provided the excuse: a young foodie whose tastes in both food and wine are already quite sophisticated, we'd offered a Michelin-starred meal if he made his expected A-level grades. His success meant we got to accompany him on a culinary journey while his parents get to fund King‘s College London. A clear win for team Bencard.

We decided to go for the full four-course Italian extravaganza: antipasto, pasta, main and pudding. Clearly, I didn't read my own review before we sat down or I would have remembered "you could do the traditional four ... but the portions here are large enough to make that rather excessive." Hey ho. We were in excess territory. The menu was so tempting it would have been hard to decide what to forgo, with the antipaste looking particularly tempting. I actually thought of having two or three of those instead of the traditional courses.

Our young scholar started with scallops, the husband opted for pigeon legs accompanied by pigeon-liver pate on crostini and I went for burrata with grilled fennel and grapefruit. The last was a riposte to all of the times I've been positive I don't like grapefruit in savoury salads. It's clearly all about the balance, which Locatelli's somehow manages to get right. The scallops were a revelation for our lad, who'd never had them cooked with their corals still attached and was pleasantly surprised. My husband's delighte with the pigeon was sharpened by an exquisite bottle of schioppettino that he proclaimed a perfect match. (This little known variety from Friuli is one of my favourites and something I'll order whenever I see it on a menu. The sommelier's unfeigned joy when I chose it was one of the best parts of the meal.) Meanwhile, the lad and I had tucked into a carricante (white) from the slopes of Mt. Etna.

Thankfully, Mr. B had moved to pumpkin tortellini for the next course so switched wine colours, or we would have needed another bottle of the red. Our scholar and I both opted for the lobster with spaghetti, which was good but lacked the sweet acidity this dish has at its best, with ripe, fresh summer tomatoes. I should have gone with my other choice, gnocchi with a wild venison ragu. Not only would it have been more seasonal, but I've never really managed to make good gnocchi at home, so it's always informative to sample a professional offering.

Our guest clearly won the contest of the main courses with slices of char-grilled ribeye on cavolo nero, its simple perfection a textbook definition of great Italian food. I chose roast rabbit leg wrapped in parma ham, again defaulting to something I love but always have trouble cooking. (The difference between raw and overcooked rabbit is minuscule.) Mr. B left the rest of the schioppettino to us, moving on to a truffle-crusted fillet of brill and the rest of the bottle of carricante. Even though I loved my dish, I was looking with envy at the others. Everything managed the trick of being delicious comfort food while at the same time elegant and sophisticated.

Only a broken oven saved me from the sad inevitability of powering through a dessert when I was already stuffed. But I would have happily continued on through a pistachio shuffle and chocolate chip ice cream,  combining some of my favourite flavours in the world. Fortunately they did have some pistachio ice cream, so we could end with a bit of sweetness without approaching a Mr. Creosote moment. Locatelli's only uses the pistachios from the Sicilian village of Bronte, famed as the most flavourful in the world. One small quenelle of the ice cream here has more flavour than a gallon of the green stuff in your typical gelateria. With flavours this intense, less really is more. 

I have been to many Michelin-starred establishments since my first visit to the then newly-celebrated Locanda Locatelli. In many ways, this place is an aberration. While the food is beautifully plated, it's closer to what you could attempt at home than the gels, towers, cubes and swooshes that so often turn a dinner plate into modern art. There's no tasting menu. Nothing is re-invented or de-constructed. The front of house staff is resolutely Italian, in a city where almost every top restaurant features a United Nations of talented youth ambitious to get ahead in this high-end industry. It feels like a warm, welcoming family restaurant, not a palace of cutting edge gastronomy. Forget all the extra pomp and circumstance, Locanda Locatelli's star is for what's going on in your mouth. After 20 years, I'm happy to say they still deserve it.

Angela Hartnett's Murano and the legendary River Cafe hold London's other two Italian stars. I adore Murano and it was the other option for this lunch the moment our scholar chose Italian. Giorgio got my vote simply because we hadn't been there in so long. Angela's is more formal, more likely to infuse the core Italian cuisine with innovation, and will offer you a chef's tasting menu. It's a very different approach, but equally delicious and I'd happily contribute my discretionary income to either place. My River Cafe experience, so long ago that it pre-dates this blog, didn't encourage me to try again. Though their team deserves credit for being the first to bring high-end Italian to London, I just didn't think the food was that exceptional for what it was (I was spending a lot of time in Italy at the time so comparing accordingly). For me, the restaurant also suffered badly from its tough-to-get-to Hammersmith location and its industrial warehouse vibe, not an atmosphere I enjoy in restaurants. That's not to take away from the River Cafe's accomplishments: this is Ground Zero for Italian fine dining in London, their cookbooks have been hugely influential and the list of chefs who trained here (Jamie Oliver, Theo Randall) is extraordinary.

Westminster Abbey shows off the English talent for cultural mixology

The English have a magic at picking and mixing the best from other cultures and blending those elements into something so thoroughly their own that they forget the influences were even foreign to begin with. Dig deep enough into almost anything in this country, from culinary traditions to village names to family bloodlines, and you’re likely to find roots leading somewhere beyond this island.

My homeland of the United States, of course, is a nation of immigrants and imports. But hyphenated Americans hold onto their roots. (Witness American tourists in Ireland coming “home” 160 years after their ancestors couldn’t wait to shake the sod off their heels.) The English assimilate. Maybe not immediately, but slowly, steadily and permanently.

A brilliant case in point is the climax of any visit to Westminster Abbey: the Lady Chapel. This triumph of English Perpendicular Gothic is arguably the most beautiful single interior in the whole country. As a representative of the architectural style only King’s College Chapel at Cambridge can come close.

With its soaring windows, delicate tracery and ceilings like bunches of hanging lace, Perpendicular Gothic became so synonymous with the English that when the Victorians sought to kick out all of the foreign neo-classicism of the 18th century it was their go-to “local” style for the rebuild of the Houses of Parliament.

And yet…

If you look hard at Westminster Abbey’s exquisite culmination of Perpendicular Gothic you’ll see a Welsh-born king buried at its centre, who important Italian iron workers for his tomb, surrounded by a style originally created by the French, based on a pointed Arabic arch. (All, of course, glorifying a god born in the Eastern Mediterranean.) Yet, somehow, English gothic is distinctly English. There’s a playfulness and lightness to it that’s completely lacking in, for example, the royal tombs of Ferdinand and Isabella in Grenada that are from the exact same time period.

If you only linger over one thing in the vastness of Westminster Abbey, this magnificent room is it. In addition to the tomb of Henry VII and Elizabeth of York, founders of the Tudor dynasty, the side chapels are encrusted with additional royal and aristocratic tombs like barnacles on an old boat’s hull. But these are exquisite barnacles, bristling with spires, angels, faithful dogs, heraldic beasts and grieving relatives.

The chapel is also the formal centre of the heraldic order of the Knights of the Bath, with gorgeous mahogany choir stalls topped with helms and each members’ banner. Any lover of architecture and history could easily spend an hour just in this one small chapel.

But this is Westminster Abbey, national burial place of the great and the good, and the Lady Chapel is just a small fragment of what there is to see. Tombs are the thing, and a solid working knowledge of British history … or a good connection to Google … is hugely helpful. Beyond identifying the kings, signage is sketchy and the famous verger tours … where experts tell you who’s who … aren’t running because of social distancing. The most magnificent tombs don’t necessarily commemorate people whose fame has lasted, so you may end up playing detective. (Only bother laying out £5 on the audio tour if you are coming with absolutely no prior knowledge. It’s extremely basic.)

Medieval worthies lie beneath stone effigies of themselves in armour or their best court clothes, faithful hounds at their feet. Most of those have lost their original colour but William de Valence, a half-brother of Henry III, opted for bronze with enamel accents and still rests his head on a brightly coloured and patterned pillow.

Henry V is, sadly, on a perch too high to get close to, but the gothic chantry chapel forming a bridge above your head is spectacular.

The Tudors and Jacobeans loved colour, too. A riotous variety of their monuments show off not only the bodies they wanted remembered but exuberant architecture and decorative elements attesting to their wealth. But it’s the Georgians who really start getting extravagant, with sculpted scenes of the climactic moments in their life (a long-forgotten sea captain has a naval engagement in high waves so vivid it looks like the set for a play about to open) or extraordinary creatures either mourning or winging them to heaven. One of my favourites is the monument to General Wolfe, hero of the Battle of Quebec, whose tomb is guarded by two of the most emotionally stricken lions it’s possible to imagine.

Another favourite is David Garrick, superstar of the Georgian stage, who is shown full length and life-sized (at least it appears that way from the ground), throwing aside the theatre curtain to take his applause. Even the most self-obsessed “luvvie” wouldn’t have the confidence for such eternal self promotion these days.

The thing that was once the centrepiece of the whole church … the tomb and shrine of Saint Edward the Confessor … isn’t much to look at now and is in a raised area blocked off to visitors. That won’t matter to most because the tomb that now stands in his place in the veneration stakes is that of the unknown warrior, near the front door and near a memorial to Churchill. Framed with a perpetual border of poppies, the warrior’s is the only tomb in the Abbey nobody is allowed to walk on.

While the tombs could keep you busy for days, it is worth remembering that you’re in one of the great medieval cathedrals of Europe and paying some attention to the architecture. One of the most precious things in the building is something neither signage nor the audio tour give enough attention to: the magnificent Cosmati pavement.

The Cosmatis were a family of Roman craftsmen who reinvented the idea of mosaic for their own age. Rather than the tiny square tesserae the ancient Romans used to bring detailed illustrations to life on their floors, the Cosmatis went for a more abstract approach inspired by Islamic artists in North Africa, and used reclaimed bits of ancient Roman buildings for their materials. They were particularly famed for figuring out how to take thin discs off ancient columns, as if they were slicing a salami. You can see many of those big circles in the Westminster pavement.

Cosmati work is rarely found outside of the Italian world, went out of fashion by the high Middle Ages and the Westminster example is unique for having inscriptions set into the marble made of brass letters. It really is quite extraordinary to be able to see such a complete example, and another proof point of the English comfort with assimilating foreign styles.

The current, pandemic-driven low density of tourists gives visitors a chance to appreciate the stark beauty of the bones of the place. Look up from the tombs and notice the elegant simplicity of the black columns beneath the white vaults. I leave it to you to decide whether the exuberant Victorian choir screen and the towering organ enhance or take away from the scene. On the way out you’ll go through the old cloisters and the Chapter House, deft examples of English skill with an older, more French version of gothic than you see in the Lady Chapel.

A socially-distanced visit has its drawbacks. No guided tours is a problem in a place with so many layers of history. The chapels containing Elizabeth I and Mary I on one side and Mary, Queen of Scots on the other are closed because their tight spaces don’t allow enough room to keep people apart. And these are amongst the top 3 things you want to see here. The staircase up to the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Galleries is also closed because of unenforceable social distancing, and was the one new thing in the Abbey I’d been wanting to see. The views are supposed to be fantastic and there’s a whole new design of the old museum to appreciate.

So as much as I loved the low-crowd visit, this is still a place I need to return once regulations loosen.

A famous gardener and a now-exotic London outing make this birthday/anniversary special

My husband is not typically a creative gift giver. Like many men, he likes the safety of working off a list provided by the recipient, and loved the efficiency of having something delivered direct from Amazon ... not minding if it’s sans card or gift wrapping. Thus it was quite a shock this year when, for my birthday and our anniversary ... which happen on the same day ... he came through with a customised surprise to make the most romantic gesture seem trivial: a 45-minute private garden consultation by Zoom with Alan Titchmarsh.

American readers may need some context here. Imagine hanging out with Martha Stewart to get home style tips, receiving batting coaching from Albert Pujols, or rap instruction from Lin Manuel-Miranda. Titchmarsh is the UK's favourite gardener, a humble, working-class lad from Yorkshire who went from flower beds to horticultural journalist to TV star. When I moved to the UK in the late '90s he was omnipresent, hosting the annual Chelsea Flower Show coverage, running a wildly-popular garden makeover show called Ground Force and hosting the weekly broadcast (and national institution) of Gardeners' World. Now 71, Titchmarsh has moved solidly into national treasure territory, and is in theory semi-retired though he still hosts a radio show on ClassicFM, writes garden columns, produces the occasional novel, pops up on TV and promotes charitable causes.

It's the combination of charity and ClassicFM that provided the opportunity for my birthday present. He'd donated the consultation to the station's charity auction and my husband spotted his opportunity to procure a gift to make his wife swoon.

My call was far more than just a brush with fame. Titchmarsh's experience is abundant and he delivers it with the skills of a master consultant. He manages to tell you what's wrong without implying an ounce of criticism to your gardening skills. In fact, his praise of my efforts thus far made me bloom with pride at the same time he was able to tell me exactly what I'd done wrong and how to fix it. It was all terribly appropriate, since much of the knowledge I used to design and take care of my garden has come from his broadcasts and columns over the years. He also radiates a genial kindness that marks him out as one of the true good guys in this world, a hunch confirmed by a friend who used to work with him at the BBC.

So what's wrong with my garden? The same thing I've been hired to fix at work. Too many things competing for attention. I need to do more with less. It's ironic that I can see and attack the problem so clearly in my professional life, but didn't spot it in my own herbaceous borders. But, as my new best friend and horticultural coach consoled me, when you truly love plants and don't have a lot of room, you try to pack in everything possible. 

This autumn will see me stripping out about a third of my plants and making a few tweaks to create bigger blocks of colour. The same applies to my pond, which already looks better after sending armloads of reeds, water lilies and oxygenating plants to the compost heap. My least successful bed (pictured below) lacks a strong focal point; I'll be digging the whole thing out, investing in the recommended Japanese maple and planting around it. And while there's no rescuing my espaliered apple tree (planted in too shady a spot and now too established to move), the west-facing wall I've ignored until now could support three carefully-chosen fruit trees.

My date with Alan Titchmarsh took place several weeks before my birthday, leaving the day itself for other treats. I went up to London for the first time since the world shut down in March to meet a friend for lunch (in a nice parallel, the same one who used to work with him at the BBC). The experience was a bit surreal, at once both familiar and alien. I long ago lost count of the number of times I’ve gone from Basingstoke to Green Park station, and the Wolseley is one of London’s most comforting, long-running, establishment venues for a business lunch. And yet the trains running 1/3 full, the empty, echoing corridors of Underground stations, the blank advertising spaces and the closed up shops felt like I was walking through the zombie apocalypse. London without foreign tourists is an oddly alien place and, frankly, glorious. But not economically sustainable; at least not as it was at the year’s opening.

The Wolseley, always a favourite with a traditional English crowd, was having no issues. Every table was packed, with a time limit to prepare for the flip to afternoon tea. They might have moved the tables a bit further apart, but one of the advantages of the Wolseley for business meetings has always been the generous space between tables so it was hard to tell. The most obvious signs of these plague times were an airport-security style contraption you had to face off to have your temperature taken before preceding to your table, and the individual portion of hand sanitiser waiting atop the crisp linen napkin. 

This is one of the grandest dining rooms in London. A glorious testimony to the madness of boom and bust cycles in the 1920s, it was originally built as a car showroom. The opulent Venetian/Florentine palazzo inspiration is a reminder that motor cars were originally the preserve of the super-rich. The black-and-white marble floors, black marble columns, white vaulted ceilings, shining brass railings and grand chandeliers are properly palatial. Wolseley Motors went bankrupt in five years, however, so Barclays took the building on as its Mayfair branch. The original architect returned to update the decor with Japanese lacquer and other Oriental gewgaws that were high fashion by the late ‘20s. It’s a bizarre but merry combination that works particularly well in the afternoon when the place is functioning as a high class tea room. 

Food here is inspired by the grand cafes of Europe, with a menu very similar to that of sister restaurant The Delauney. They’re particularly known for their oyster and shellfish bar and for having breakfast favourites like eggs benedict and kedgeree on the menu 24/7. My friend swears by their chopped salads (hers did look tempting), while I opted for a classic steak tartare. Schnitzel is always on the menu as is a proper baked cheesecake. 

One of the reasons the Wolseley has remained so popular with punters since it opened in 2003 is its pricing. The prix-fixe menu is only £19.95 for two courses and £24 for three, and main courses tend to be in the mid £20s. Sure, you can have a blow out with lobster, chateaubriand and champagne, but you can also enjoy grand elegance and feel like you’ve had proper value for your money with most choices. Which is actually far truer to the English establishment who once dominated Mayfair than the Ritz across the street, which has pumped up the gold gilt, escalated prices to the stratosphere and targets cash-splashing conspicuous consumers. Who are rarely English, and seldom old establishment.

Back home, my husband celebrated our anniversary by cooking dinner ... the next night. The breakfast bar in the kitchen where we normally eat might fall short of the Wolseley’s decor and our plating is too generous to be called fine dining, but I think our black and white granite counters are a bit grand and Mr. B’s salmon en croute with a lemon cream sauce wouldn’t be out of place in a grand European cafe. 

Yes, he’s a keeper. Even before the Titchmarsh consultation. Maybe I should take him to the Wolseley.

Spencer House: One of London's most remarkable, hidden jewels

Winter weekends are custom-made for city breaks and indoor sightseeing. London's museums know this well, with November through February being a favourite time for blockbuster exhibitions. A day wandering the V&A or the British Museum will always banish the gloom that short, dark days wrap around me. It's worth remembering, however, that London has many gems beyond the usual blockbusters, and January and February are ideal times to explore. With tourists at their seasonal low, you might even find that you have a treasure almost to yourself.

Such was the case recently at Spencer House, arguably one of the greatest Georgian interiors in the country yet little known beyond serious fans of the age. Its location couldn't be more central ... overlooking Green Park, almost within shouting distance of Buckingham Palace ... but most Londoners have probably never heard of it, and would be challenged to direct you to its backstreet entrance.

This is the only aristocratic townhouse in London that appears as it would have in the 18th century. Once, every noble family maintained these urban palaces, from which they ran business, controlled the social scene and pulled political strings. By the 20th century, however, the world had changed and cash-strapped old families were re-trenching to their country estates to try to survive. Many properties met the wrecker's ball, with whole rooms often being sold to museums or rich business magnates in the States. Though many of the buildings remain, most of them have now been converted to private clubs, offices or embassies. Spencer House is unique.

It wasn't always this way. Like so many others, it had been used as offices from World War II until the mid-'80s. Enter the hero of our story: Jacob, 4th Baron Rothschild. Businessman, philanthropist, passionate about art and history. (I dined with him at a business event in the '00s and had to fight to avoid fan-girl swooning.) Rothschild procured a 96-year lease from the Spencer family, who still own the place, and set to work. The walls and ceilings had been covered by modern plasterboard and were mostly intact. The restoration team cleaned, refurbished, re-gilt ... then set to work buying period furnishings to bring the place to life. So though the original residents John and Georgiana Spencer wouldn't claim any of the furnishings as their own, they certainly would have found them familiar.

A guided tour, only possible on Sundays, will take you through 11 rooms now glowing with 18th-century authenticity. You'll find all of the beautiful details you expect from any Georgian stately home: portraits and Old Master paintings, furniture in the style of Chippendale and Robert Adam, piles of worthy books, busts of great men, sumptuous draperies. What's different about Spencer House? First, because Rothschild selected all the furnishings and still uses the place for work, socialising and special events during the week, it has a "lived in" feel about it despite its Georgian credentials. Second, it has two rooms that are beguilingly gorgeous, and unique in British architecture.

The first is the Palm Room, one of the few interiors in Britain where neo-classical Palladianism approaches the giddy heights of Rococo. Its bones are pure Georgian: Lofty rectangle, classical frieze, column-framed fireplace, alcove on one end through a screen of columns. The flight of fancy comes with the columns themselves, which have been transformed into palm trees by riots of gold-gilt plaster. You get the idea that the plasterers had never actually seen a palm tree, but their loose interpretation only adds to the charm. At the centre of the alcove stands a copy of a famous Roman statue of Venus, beneath a dome and framed by three alcove-topping half domes all coffered with more gold gilt. One wonders if a young Prince George, someday to become the Prince Regent and then the 4th king of his name, found inspiration here that led to his madcap house at Brighton.

The other masterpiece is immediately above. While the Palm Room was intended as an after-dinner lounge for the gentlemen, couples came back together in the Painted Room. Designer James "Athenian" Stuart made the decorative scheme a celebration of marriage in honour of the owners' famously happy one. Several legendary marriages are depicted and deities of love dance across painted walls that would look at home in Pompeii or Herculaneum. Light floods in from the windows in the semi-circular apse, making the gilt details and dazzling white columns shine. How magical it would be to grab a book, stretch out on the green silk sofa between the mastiff-sized golden griffins that form the arms, and spend the afternoon here. But unless your name is Rothschild, that's unlikely.

If you are a female visitor, don't miss the chance to visit the ladies' loo before you leave. You'll find a fantastic collection of 18th century satirical cartoons and a 1/12 scale model of the house above that gives you another perspective on the decorative detail. The model by husband and wife team Kevin Mulvany and Susan Rogers took two years to make and is correct in every detail, from its hand-woven rugs to the furniture and paintings. It's as fascinating as any of the interiors upstairs.

Spencer House is open every Sunday from 10 am to 4:30 pm. You must go through with a guide, but that's a real treat. Unlike the well-meaning but often ill-informed volunteers who add little to a National Trust house, these are professionals hired by the Rothschilds to bring the house to life. They'll cover the history, the art, the architecture, the romantic story of John and Georgiana Spencer (ancestors of both Georgiana Duchess of Devonshire and Princess Diana) and how the decorative schemes throughout the house celebrate their relationship. It's a bargain at £15, and you get a discount if you're a member of the Tate, V&A, Royal Academy or the Art Fund. If you want a free sample, Spencer House is open to all during London Open House weekend ... usually in mid-September ... but the queues are prodigious and the tours are much shorter.

Give yourself a winter treat and pay for the full experience. You won't regret it.

Beauty is more than skin deep on London's new Fourth Plinth sculpture

A lamassu first opened my eyes to the realisation that there was civilisation beyond the Western European tradition I called my own.

I couldn't have expressed it like that at the time. I was eight.

My mother used to escort her art history class to Chicago to show them more of what they studied "in the flesh". The University of Chicago's Oriental Institute was always on the agenda. And there, wandering by myself in a quiet, cavernous gallery, I came face to face ... actually more face-to-kneecap ... with one of the the giant winged creatures that served as guardian figures at the gates of Assyrian palaces. The towering statue is a placid bull with a man's head, delicate feathers carved from shoulders upward to give him a mighty wingspan. Chicago's lamassu gazes down with a benign smile. As alien and awesome as the creature was, I instantly understood it was a guardian.

I've had a soft spot for the creatures ever since, and that one sparked my appreciation for the staggering cultural larder between the Tigris and Euphrates. I've never been there and have no family links to the place, but I am one of those odd people who ... as politics and wars have raged across the territory ... think of magnificent ziggurats, signature scrolls, relief carvings and winged bulls before oil, deserts, dictators and terrorists.

I was, therefore, pleased to see that a modern take on a lamassu was going to top Trafalgar Square's fourth plinth for the next two-year slot in London's rotating civic art scheme. Pleasure that turned to delight when I discovered the artist is also a professor at my alma mater, Northwestern University.

The lamassu took its place on Wednesday, and I was lucky enough to attend a chat about it between artist Michael Rakowitz and journalist Jon Snow at the British Museum yesterday. Complex layers of meaning surround the sculpture. You can enjoy it in complete ignorance ... it is remarkably beautiful ... but understanding its origins makes it all the more magical.

The new sculpture is part of a series Rakowitz has been producing since 2003 called the invisible
enemy should not exist. In it, he re-creates artefacts stolen from the National Museum of Baghdad during the war or, in the lamassu's case, destroyed in ISIS' iconoclastic fury. He skins his figures in Arabic newspapers and hammered-flat tins of Iraqi foodstuffs, creating a poignant memory of lost culture.

"I was interested in making ghosts, not fakes," Rakowitz said.

London's lamassu is mostly comprised of date syrup cans, an iconic ingredient in Iraqi cooking and one that Rakowitz' grandparents .... who immigrated from Iraq to the United States ... used to import. Though modern politics mean he's never visited Iraq, he grew up highly influenced by the culture. Like the diaspora of so many nations, the taste and the smells of the family kitchen maintained the strongest link to a family's origins. (I get this: the oregano-laden mist of my mother's pasta sauce and the sweet crunch of cannoli preceded art or history in my awareness of Sicily. Food is as critical a piece of culture as great art or music; a truth that lies at the heart of this blog.) So the date syrup tins aren't just a clever way of colouring the sculpture, they plug directly into that sense of lost heritage that immigrant food celebrates all over the world.

There are harsher realities here than lost art and grandmother's kitchen, of course. These are symbols for lost lives and lost economies. Dates were a bedrock of the Iraqi economy, with groves of more than 30 million trees once supplying global markets. Now numbers have dropped to something like 3 million. So the lamassu's skin speaks of a collapsed economy. It stands looking south, toward parliament; it could shift its eyes left towards Iraq 3,200 miles beyond: a beguilingly beautiful reprimand to how quickly we forget.

While the Iraq war is over in the minds of most Americans and Brits, Rakowitz pointed out, it's still very much a live trauma for those on the ground. And for more than two million Iraqi refugees around the world who don't feel it's safe enough to go home. Estimates say that somewhere approaching a quarter of that number live in the UK. Scores turned up at the British Museum to see Michael and hear about his project, which clearly connected with their souls. The most touching moment came when a young woman born in Iraq but living in London for most of her life spoke with passion about how much this work meant to her, and of her fervent hope that it would spark awareness that could help young people like her get home. I was standing with her afterwards when we met Michael. She cried. Her mum cried. I suspect, down the road in Trafalgar Square, the lamassu cried.

Beauty and tragedy. Comfort and harsh truths. Protection and destruction. The London lamassu is a creature of contradictions. As Michael reminded the audience: "hospitality and hostility come from the same root word ... things are complicated."

You can see the lamassu at the northwest corner of Trafalgar Square for the next two years. Look on it and be amazed. But be thoughtful, as well. Like my friend at the Oriental Institute, this sculpture has lessons to teach.

Queen's Gallery captures lush and lavish world of Restoration

In a drawer awaiting my retirement lies the first two chapters and an outline for the rest of my novel, started at university and abandoned when real work got in the way. A sweeping historical saga charting an English Royalist family's attempts to survive through the Commonwealth and take advantage of the Restoration, it reflects my early and enduring fascination with Charles II. He's my favourite of all the British monarchs, and his court had a panache few others have equalled.

It's no surprise, then, that I was an early visitor to the latest show in the Queen's Gallery, London. Charles II: Art and Power shares my fascination, exploring how The Merry Monarch used art to validate his reign.

Charles chose his 30th birthday for his coronation (29 May 1660), celebrated with a blaze of magnificence.

His life up to that point, however, had probably been the hardest of any person to occupy the English throne since before the Norman Conquest. Though his father and mother kept a magnificent court, the tensions that exploded into the Civil War were present from his earliest memories. He was barely a teenager when circumstance forced him to the battlefield, 20 when Parliament executed his father, and by 22 was fleeing to exile as the Royalists lost their last battle at Worcester.

For the next eight years he lived off the generosity of friends and family on the Continent. The early years weren't so bad, hosted by his glamorous cousin Louis XIV. (Charles' mother, Henrietta Maria, was sister to Louis XIII.) But as the Commonwealth's grip on power tightened, France decided the benefits of trade with a current ... though illegal ... British administration outweighed the benefits of supporting a rightful heir with dwindling prospects. Louis asked his cousin to leave. By the late '50s, Charles and a tiny group of friends were living hand-to-mouth in freezing garrets in the Netherlands.

Had Cromwell been a bit less of a Puritan, Charles' story might have ended there. But history proves that few people like the restrictions brought on by religious fundamentalism; particularly not the English. When Cromwell died without an effective succession plan (his son Richard was a disaster), the head of the army took the initiative and invited the rightful heir back home.

Though Charles vaulted from pauper to king, his worries weren't over. He had to re-establish the business of monarchy from scratch when the Parliamentarians had sold off or melted down most of its trappings. He had to reconcile two sides in a society that had been in conflict for almost 20 years. European politics demanded military involvement, plague popped up and London burned down. Through it all, the treasury was never full and Parliament ... the organisation that murdered his father ... controlled the purse strings.

It's thus no surprise that Charles became a master of compromise. The Merry Monarch on the surface, he was a practical man of the people, scholar, scientist and secret Catholic at heart. He was the centre of a newly-glamorous court, but always managed on a budget. (His plans for a palace near Winchester to rival his cousin's Versailles never got funded. He made do with makeovers at Windsor that, while in the height of lavish fashion, were done on the cheap ... thus in poor enough shape by the early 1800s that most were swept away by renovations.) He was often quoted as saying that he had no desire to go on his travels again, thus would do whatever was necessary to keep the new status quo.

The objects on display here illustrate three storylines from Charles' life that have always fascinated me.

1. The role of the visual arts in what we now know as public relations, used by Charles to shore up his position and create a new story for his family.
2. Charles' career walking a knife edge between delivering the magnificence expected by both the public and fellow monarchs, while limiting spending and staying on parliament's good side.
3. How Charles managed his inner demons: coping with, and trying to redress, a tragic family legacy

We start in a room dominated by a somber portrait of the father, Charles' I, captured during his trial. The strange combination of intelligent nobility and pig-headed obstinance that drives so much of the Stuart family saga is obvious in his face. We move to the restoration of 1660 quickly, however. This is an art show, after all, and the dreary years of Civil War, Commonwealth and exile produced little. More often, it destroyed or eliminated art ... making it particularly appropriate that the first blockbuster display here is the plate Charles II commissioned for his coronation.

With the exception of the solid gold chalice and paten (the small plate used for the communion wafer), the collection of platters, ewers, candlesticks and a weighty mace is "only" silver plate. Still, it's enough to make a statement of serious bling. The royals were back, and livin' large. The work on these pieces is exquisite. (Check out the cavalier King Charles spaniel characteristically scrounging for scraps from the table of Jesus' last supper; sadly the only appearance I spotted in the show of the era's iconic.) Normally, this set lives at the end of the gallery with the crown jewels in the Tower of London, where you've been overwhelmed with other bling and you're buffeted by tourists. It's a delight to see it here, given its own space in a gallery generally free of crowds.

Though they initially pale before the glitter of all that gold, the prints and books that dominate the rest of this first large gallery provide a fascinating exploration of the Restoration world. The real artistic firepower, however, comes in the following galleries.

One, dominated by a ceremonial portrait of Charles II enthroned (pictured above), is mostly lush and lavish portraits of the key players in the Stuart court. There's no better way to drink in the spirit of this age than to revel in how its key players chose to be remembered: strong men, romantic women, everyone dressed in ridiculously expensive, lovingly detailed fabrics while they flash their bedroom eyes at you. The the real people couldn't possibly have been as attractive as the artists made them. Within the exhibition you can compare some early, and probably more realistic, portraits of Charles' Queen Catherine of Braganza with the sexy, oversized painting of her as a shepherdess. This is first-class image management for PR spin.

The last large gallery looks at Charles II's efforts to re-establish a Royal Collection after his father's was sold off. Though cursed with abysmal political instincts, Charles I was arguably the greatest single connoisseur of art in English royal history. As sensuous in their own way as the portraits, his son's treasures include pastel-perfect Renaissance scenes, photo-realistic Dutch old masters, magnificent tapestries and noteworthy furniture. Most impressive amongst the last is a rare silver furniture set. The table, matching mirror and pair of pedestal stands usually live at Windsor Castle, where they can be lost in the surrounding opulence. Here ... much like that Coronation plate ... their isolation in a plain background allows you to appreciate them for the magnificent items that they are. Especially as the whole set has just been cleaned and restored, shining with an almost eye-damaging gleam.

Three smaller rooms offer additional insight into Charles' re-assembly of royal treasures. There's ornate dining decor, including the magnificent Exeter salt; precious books, some of which demonstrate Charles' serious commitment to science; Old Master drawings (here's the source of the Royal Collection's wealth of Michelangelo, Leonardo and Holbein on paper); detailed portrait miniatures, jewellery and a blockbuster ivory and ebony altarpiece.

Overall, the exhibit does a fine job of capturing Charles' story and conveying the lush style of the court. Your £11 admission includes an interesting audio guide and the right to return to the gallery for a year. As with anything in the Queen's Gallery, the intimate spaces mean the show is digestible without being overwhelming, and you can appreciate items without big crowds.

It is, however, a solidly traditional exhibition and thus perhaps best for people who already have an interest in the topic. Last month I wrote about how the Opera show currently on at the V&A sets a new high bar in how to present culture and deploy multi-media. After that, the Queen's Gallery seems much more solemn, and like harder work. Charles II might have been famed for his common touch, but this show appeals to more rarified tastes.

Charles II: Art and Power is on at the Queen's Gallery, Buckingham Palace, until 13 May.

Creative process revealed in National Gallery's fascinating Michelangelo, Sebastiano show

I approached the National Gallery's new lead exhibition with skepticism. Focusing on a partnership between Michelangelo and a little-known colleague, with many more of the latter's works that the former ... and including copies rather than the real thing? Were the curators getting desperate? Would nobody loan them anything better?

I was wrong. Michelangelo and Sebastiano is a fascinating show that shines a light onto how the collaborative process actually works. We spend more time on the painters as individuals, rather than just critically regarding the art they left behind.

And those copies? Absolutely brilliant. There's an exact plaster cast of Michelangelo's most famous Pieta, liberating that great work of art from its usual distant place enclosed in a perspex diorama well above your natural line of sight. Here, you can wander all around it, getting up close to appreciate the drama and skill of the composition. The reproduction of the Borgherini Chapel is a wonder of modern technology, as the highest tech digital scanning and printing give us a copy so perfect it even replicates the battered power outlet some cretin drilled through the fresco in the last century.

There's no denying that Sebastiano del Piombo was a lesser artist, and no surprise that he's not very well known. While you wouldn't turn down a gift of one of his works, they're hard to distinguish from an army of candy-pastel coloured saints, Tuscan landscapes and fat putti rolling out of workshops up and down the Italian peninsula in the 16th century. He was, however, in the right place at the right time.

In the early 1510s, despite the fact that he'd already painted the Sistine Chapel and the new pope was a childhood friend, Michelangelo's popularity was fading before the glittering arrival of Raphael in Rome. Young, spectacularly handsome and famously jovial, he ousted the older, legendarily taciturn Florentine from several prime commissions. Michelangelo realised that adopting a younger, better looking, more politically savvy protege than himself would help to compete with Raphael, and thus the odd partnership was born.

Sebastiano is ennobled by his relationship with the great master and, under his coaching, achieves something approaching greatness in paintings like his The Raising of Lazarus on display here. Splash out the extra cash for the audio tour, so you can hear the details of how the mentor's advice changed this, and other, works on display.  Michaelangelo's pencil sketches revealed on the back of Sebastiano's painting of a pieta (displayed facing the cast of the Vatican's sculpture) give you brilliant insight into the raw brainstorming of two artists.

Letters between the two broaden that view, and also show off Sebastiano's diplomatic skills. The cantankerous Michelangelo managed to alienate most people quickly and had few friends. Sebastiano staying in his good graces for almost two decades, even making the elder a godfather to one of his sons, was a remarkable achievement. The letters make clear that the way to Michelangelo's heart was flattery mixed with complete adulation. The two men finally fell out when a more secure Sebastiano started to offer suggestions to the older man's work.

The insight into the creative process goes beyond the dual collaboration. In my opinion, the best thing here is the unfinished Taddei Tondo (which only had to travel down the street from the Royal Academy), because the curators guide you through the whole process of creation. From considering marble choice to comparing the rough chisel marks with the smooth completed areas to observing the innovation of the composition, the work rewards lengthy contemplation steered by the audio guide.

The blockbuster loan, however, is the Risen Christ normally resident with the monks of San Vincenzo in Bassano Romano. Few outside of that order have ever been allowed to meditate upon the larger-than-life, shockingly-human-in-his-nakedness Christ leaning casually against his cross like a Greek god. Michelangelo almost finished this one, but abandoned it when a crack flawed the marble. Another perfect plaster cast stands beside it, allowing us to examine the version he did finish, now standing in Rome's Santa Maria Sopra Minerva.

Amongst the copies, however, I found most delight in the Borgherini Chapel. The quality of the duplication is extraordinary; the ability to experience something this close to a Michelangelo fresco without travelling to Italy unprecedented. While the Sebastiano did the painting, Michelangelo sketched it all out for him first. The contorted figures in the lunettes above are straight out of the Sistine Chapel ceiling, and the Flagellation of Christ is a tour de force of perspective and pathos.

Michelangelo and Sebastiano is on at the National Gallery until 25th June. If you're interested in artistic collaboration, or want to get close to one of the Renaissance's greatest masters without trekking to Italy, get this in your diary.

Unsung heroes of London dining deserve some attention

This blog is stuffed with articles about special occasion restaurants. We save up, we dine, we generally rave with appreciation ... and then we rarely go back. There's a whole other category of London restaurants in my world that I'm ashamed to admit I've never bothered writing about. My dependable "go tos" have quality food, reliable service, pleasant dining rooms and convenient locations. All are less expensive than their Michelin-starred cousins; some dramatically so. Here are my thus-far unsung London dining heroes.

Delaunay
Designed to evoke the grand, late 19th-century dining rooms of the Austro-Hungarian empire, Delaunay manages to balance elegance and sophistication with a laid-back, casual vibe. (A trait it has in common with its sister restaurants The Wolseley and Colbert.) The food is straight out of Vienna: schnitzel, goulash, spaetzle, struedel, Sacher torte. It's all excellent. Schnitzel has a light, crunchy coating surrounding meat that's still moist. Goulash comes with the kind of tart, thick soured cream you don't get here, but remember from trips to Munich and further east, while the spaetzle looks and tastes home made. Their Sacher torte, IMHO, is far better than the "original" recipe the Hotel Sacher serves up.  If you're feeling like something lighter, the menu has the feel of a posh grill, with plenty of steaks and seafood options. The latter is particularly good on the starters, where prawn cocktails, crab salads and oysters are always available.

They open early and do a wide range of breakfast options, from hearty cooked fare to an impressive range of Vienna-style pastries. Given its central location at the top of The Aldwych, where Kingsway runs into it, it's no surprise this is a popular venue for business breakfasts. They have a private room at the back that's ideal for mid-sized corporate events. It's also just on the edge of the theatre district, so a great option for pre-show dinners. It crops up a lot as a meeting point for old friends and, though always crowded, the staff never seem to be rushing you along. We recently lingered over dinner from 6:30 until late trains started beckoning around 11.

The Delaunay is the most expensive of the options listed here, with food a bit more than average and the wine list pushing into fine dining territory. You'll work hard to keep your choices under £40 a bottle. Happily, there are more frugal options for visiting, including a bargain pre-theatre menu and "The Counter" ... and informal cafe up front that sells pastries and sandwiches in a coffee bar atmosphere.

28-50 Wine Workshop and Kitchen
I've been a regular patron of this casual offering from Michelin-gilded duo Agnar Sverrisson and Xavier Rousset (Texture, Le Manoir) since their original venture in a basement off Fetter Lane circa 2010. Now there are three. My favourite occupies a light-flooded corner on a back street in Marylebone, the other is tucked in to smaller lanes just west of Regent Street. If you recognise the significance of the name ... the latitude lines between which wine grapes can be grown ... you'll grasp the hook of the place. It's all about wine, and was one of the first restaurants in London to take their by-the-glass wine list very seriously. Sommeliers rotate the bottles on offer frequently and present selections from a wide range of styles and countries. All of the servers are highly trained, able to explain more about the lists and recommend culinary pairings.

The menu changes regularly but maintains an elegant simplicity: light salads, shellfish, terrines and pates for starters; steaks, game, grilled fish for mains. Every dish has been concocted with wine in mind, making this the kind of place you can start with wine and order the food to match. Sverrisson is Icelandic, so you'll usually see some Nordic elements on offer like gravlax, open sandwiches or Icelandic fish pie ... some dusted with his trademark volcanic ash. (It's good, really.) There are sharing platters, too, perfect when you want to concentrate on wine tasting or are just dropping in for a drink before heading somewhere else. Rousset, who was the wine guy, has left the partnership to start his own place, but I think the oenological ethos and expertise was so deeply embedded by the time he left to make his loss invisible to the regular diner.

The temptation of ordering by-the-glass can drive the price up, but if you behave yourself there are bargains to be had. Especially for lunch and early dinners between 6 and 7, when 3 courses for £21 is one of London's great bargains.

Brasserie Blanc
Raymond Blanc started the trend that gave rise to 28-50: the acclaimed Michelin starred chef launching a chain of reasonably-priced restaurants so more people can experience of his style. And, presumably, so he can expand his revenues with a higher-margin, lower labour-cost operating model. In 1996, long before I could even imagine affording dinner at his flagship Le Manoir aux Quat'Saisons, I met up with friends at his newly-opened Le Petit Blanc. It was the first of what became a chain of 18 Brasserie Blancs, five in London.

Blanc wanted to bring the high quality and seasonal approach of simple brasseries in French country towns to England. There was nothing quite like it at its price point when it launched, and though it now has competition from chains like Cafe Rouge and Cote, it still stands in a category all its own. Despite being a chain, the restaurants always feel like one-offs, with excellent service and great attention to detail. Menus change with the season but are always authentically French. The plates coming out of the kitchen always feel like someone's prepared them with love. This is no doubt why we've been to more of these than any other chain restaurant in England, regularly going to the Covent Garden location (great for pre-opera dinners), St. Paul's (excellent for work) and South Bank (on the way to the train home) in London, while calling the Winchester branch our local. Despite being a chain, the decor varies between locations. They all, however, share a cozy, romantic warmth. Early in our courtship we had a memorable meal in the Cheltenham branch, from which I will always remember them taking great care over my then-boyfriend's allergy while bringing me extras of the extraordinary freshly salted and roasted local tomatoes that he couldn't eat.

We have only one complaint: there's no branch convenient enough for us to use on our regular outings with my mother-in-law. For that...

Osteria Antica Bologna
With its wood panelling and compact interiors, this neighbourhood bolthole in Clapham is surprisingly cozy despite its location on bustling Northcote Road. It's also comfortingly authentic, from the all-Italian staff to an all-Italian wine list and a menu full of regional Italian dishes that change seasonally. Chef Marzio Zacchi worked with Giorgio Locatelli at Zafferano, so there's a touch of fine dining earnestness and quality here at everyday restaurant prices.

It's not universally excellent: last visit, my pasta with wild boar sauce was eye-rollingly fantastic while my husband described his crab pasta as "pretty basic". I was dying to pinch a bite of my mother-in-law's enticing fritto misto (she said it was wonderful), but wasn't thrilled with the cannoli ... finger-sized and with a filling that lacked the density of proper cannoli cream, it suggested that while they might have Italians in the kitchen, none of them came from anywhere south of Naples. But it certainly passes my most important Italian restaurant test. Is it as good, or better, than I can do at home? Yes. And far better than most Italian places in London, which default to quick-and-easy basics and strip out authentic flavours to suit an Anglo palate. With my favourite moderately-priced Italian restaurant, Luce e Limoni, inconveniently located in a part of London beyond all of our usual flight paths, the Osteria has become my favourite spot for getting a comforting taste of my childhood.

Outlaw's is a fish-lover's dream (with a nightmare bill)

Ask the average Brit to name a famous seafood chef, and Rick Stein's name will inevitably top the list. Serious foodies, however, will probably default to his protege Nathan Outlaw.

After learning his trade at several well-known restaurants, he opened his own place and got his first Michelin star at the tender age of 25. He's a frequent guest chef on the BBC's Saturday Kitchen, and his eponymous Cornwall-based flagship holds two Michelin stars. Heading to Fowey for dinner is no simple undertaking, however, so we were excited to hear that he'd opened a place in London.

Outlaw's at The Capital is a small, elegant restaurant tucked into a boutique hotel in a Knightsbridge backstreet near Harrods. In a part of London synonymous with bling, it's a tasteful room done with amber wood paneling, subtle stripes and cream pottery, where a knowledgeable staff serves with quiet efficiency. While there are other things on the menu, the point of this place is seafood and the tasting menu is a fish-lover's dream. Having made the effort to come here, we could hardly do anything else.

The 5-course tasting menu is £85, the matching wine flight £65. That does not include  the copious add-ons like amuse bouche, pre-deserts and petit fours that often come with the chef's menu. These are definitely Knightsbridge prices.

We started with a whisky-cured salmon, presumably prepared in a sous vide to impart its feather-light, melt-in-the-mouth texture. The saffron kohlrabi and horseradish yogurt was hardly noticeable on the side; I could have used a bit more to balance the dish. That was brilliantly matched with a sharp Etna bianco to cut through the richness of the fish. Next came a fillet of brill served beside a deep-fried, crispy oyster. The contrast of flavours and textures was spot on, as was a sauvignon blanc from the Loire.

Moving from classic cooking to the peasant kitchen, out came red-wine braised octopus with beans and seaweed dressing. This was the best take on this tricky-to-cook fish I've ever eaten, the fantasy recipe you want someone to serve you in a big bowl with piles of crusty bread while sitting on a Mediterranean beach. Sadly, it's never this good on holiday. Some clever Spaniards have injected a bit of Riesling into their Albarino to provide a good match here.

Last up was cod in "devilled butter" with brown shrimps and brussels sprouts. The spices elevated what was otherwise a resolutely traditional dish; even so, it was the least impressive of the savoury courses because of its familiarity. It was the wine that made this course memorable. An all-seafood menu is tough for a red wine-lover; this was the course that gave the sommelier a chance to break old pairing traditions, letting the meaty heft of the cod carry a light, fruity Rully (pinot noir).

We added a cheese course (£10 supplement) which, in retrospect, was unexceptional and not needed to round out the menu. The courses might have been small, but they were filling, and the dessert was exceptional. A rich, dark chocolate fondant tart in a marvellously crisp pastry case, accompanied by poached kumquats in syrup and malted milk ice cream. Why isn't this a standardly-available flavour? Magnificent stuff.

This was a beautifully balanced meal bringing in a variety of fish and cooking styles. My only real complaint would be with that cod dish ... the fish itself is so close to brill that the two courses seemed a bit redundant. Though the brill was elevated by the fried oyster, I'd probably have preferred something like shellfish or smoked eel for that second course to get an even wider variety of fish in.

The great danger when eating here is the add-ons. The base tasting menu and wine flight price is standard and manageable for a nice night out. Once you include that cheese course, the glasses of port to go with it, glasses of champagne to start and coffee to finish, we hit an eye watering total. A wonderful special treat, but most definitely not an everyday restaurant.

Utopian Franco-Italian fusion at Angela Hartnett's Murano

The computer that matched us said we were 98% compatible. As we mark five years of marriage, we acknowledge that it got us right on the headlines, but perhaps missed the fine points.

We both love opera, but he considers my Italians bombastic and trite, while I think his German needs editing and has difficulties making passion credible on stage. In the wine cellar, I find his beloved light French reds tart and forgettable, while he thinks my favoured merlot/cab sav blends are over-fruited thugs. We're both keen on history, but his obsession with battles and military hardware can try my patience, while he feels the same about my fascination with personalities, art and architecture. Both card-carrying "foodies", I'm sceptical about his classic French cuisine, which often over-complicates and has too many sauces and potatoes for my taste. He's unconvinced by the Italians.

Which is why Angela Hartnett's Murano is probably the best place we could possibly choose to celebrate our fifth wedding anniversary. (And my birthday.) Though Hartnett is best known as an Italian chef, the truth is that Murano's Michelin-starred menu brings us a culinary utopia where influences from Paris to Palermo come together to create the perfect fusion cuisine. Mr. Bencard feels French. The former Miss Ferrara feels Italian. Both are very happy.

Murano's pricing is elegantly simple: decide whether you're doing two, three, four or five courses, each with a set price, then pick your food. While options are laid out in what would be a traditional Italian order of dining, if you want to start with something from the third course, and follow up with two dishes from the first, they're happy to oblige. We went for four. Given the delicate serving sizes and the extras (amuse bouche, a bit of charcuterie, breads, pre-desert, petit four) this is the right level if you're hungry. Five would probably be excessive, and three would be more than sufficient ... but then you'd miss out on too much of the magic coming out of the kitchen.

I started with rabbit tortellini in one of those light but flavour-packed sauces that demands you use a bit of bread to mop up every bit. (One of the earliest life lessons taught to me by my revered Sicilian grandfather. No wonder I've always had a weight problem.) Piers admittedly won the contest on this course with a salmon tartare that was exceptionally balanced, with rich fish, creamy dressing, crunchy veg and citric fruit combining to deliver a sunny Mediterranean afternoon on a plate. I wouldn't have traded, however, as I would have missed out on the Valpolicella that proves you can have light red that's also mellow and fruity. (Made by Italians, naturally.)

On to artichoke heart served with a blue cheese croquette. This tiny plate exemplified how fine dining can actually be Weight Watchers-friendly. Just a quarter of the heart, with a croquette the size of the top half of your thumb, yet packed with enough flavour to power a dish four times its size. It was a course meant for cutting up into tiny slivers, savouring each one with a rather bizarre wine from Slovenia that was overly-minerally on its own but a perfect match for the notoriously hard-to-pair ingredients. Piers, meanwhile, was blissfully ensconced in a crab salad and a glass of Reisling.

We split the cote de boef for our main. (This has a supplemental charge.) A dish to make me weep for all the vegetarians in the world. Simple, perfectly cooked, carved off the bone at the table. Perfection.

Though Murano has a fascinating wine list, we let the sommelier put together a wine flight for us. This is a great option, as she pairs the right wine for each individual dish, and we found every choice to be flawless. Note, however, that the "about" £45 each is quite flexible, especially when you choose to have a second glass of the extraordinarily tasty St. Emillion she chose for the beef.

If there's one dish on the planet that best exemplifies Franco-Italian fusion, it has to be pistachio soufflé. The flavours of Italy packed into the most classical of French processes, Murano delivers the best I've ever had. This is what-I-want-for-my-last-meal-on-Earth stuff, with a towering rise, punchy flavours and a rich chocolate sauce to obliterate any health effects of the egg-white based soufflé. Aware that it was both my birthday and our anniversary, the kitchen piled on the sugar with an additional lemon tart and a triple chocolate delice with almond brittle and black currant sorbet, decorated with celebratory messages in chocolate sauce. I thought briefly of those profligate Romans with their vomitoriums off their banqueting halls, so they could pause and make room for more courses of culinary delight. Disgusting to modern sensibilities, but in this situation I could understand their strategy. I let modem sensibility prevail and sent 2/3rds of the bonus desserts back to the kitchen. But not before sampling enough to assure you, dear reader, that Murano is a haven for those with a sweet tooth.

As if to drive that point home, the petit four arrived. Squares of palate-cleansing quince jelly and cannoli the size of your pinkie. "Delicious," I said dubiously of the frothy citric concoction inside, " but not really cannoli cream."

"So much better than those heavy door stops you made me eat at Missouri baking," he insisted. "Light pastry, subtle filling ... they've made them French!"

I decided not to argue. In marriage as in restaurants, fusion and compromise bring out the best in us.

O'Keeffe show doesn't deliver the magic I was seeking

I set off for Tate Modern wanting desperately to love the Georgia O'Keefe show. I already had an affection for the artist based on childhood visits to her work at the Art Institute of Chicago. I wanted to bask in her rich colours, get past the cliches of the endlessly-reproduced flowers and the sexual innuendo to find something greater. Sadly, I did not.

Instead, I drifted quickly through a series of rooms filled with a lot of work that didn't catch my attention. The first four rooms on her early career left me cold. I know the developmental stuff is essential in a major retrospective, but knowing more didn't do me any favours. I saw an early version of today's marketing-savvy modern artist, more about creating shock and disrupting the status quo than creating inspired beauty. (I freely admit that this statement reveals my prejudice against ... and some would argue lack of understanding of ... modern art.) 

We're confronted early on with some of those highly-sexualised flower paintings. Sorry, but the enormous floral clitoris just hits me as a juvenile attempt to shock. The New York cityscapes are striking, but I didn't think they were that much better than the Art Deco-style paintings that finish off the 1930s look at the recently renovated Lansdowne Club's dining room. Great interior design, but high art?

Things improve when O'Keeffe gets out of the city. There's an enormous canvas of two luscious red poppies that delivered the awe and emotion I wanted from the whole show. Many of the other canvases were smaller than I expected, and lacked depth. Little drew me in or invited lingering study; I found her colours surprisingly flat, closer to great graphic design than great art.  

I was most keen to see her works from the American West. With the Grand Canyon such a recent memory, I have a greater appreciation of the magical colours of the desert. In trying to photograph it, I got a sense of how difficult it is to capture the nuances, the shadows, the vast spaces. It's a landscape better suited to art than photography. Indeed, these were the works I liked best, wanting to clamber through that frame and explore the alternate reality of those shadowy valleys and mesas. And yet, the things that held my attention for longest  in this room weren't O'Keeffe's work, but a couple of black and white photographs from her buddy Ansel Adams. These moved me more than anything else in the exhibition, and are the things I'm likely to remember longest.

Near the end there's a version of the cloudscape that was my childhood favourite at the Art Institute. Chicago's is vast, hung above a light-flooded, grand stairwell so that you actually have the feeling of soaring as you hold on to the upper landing railing and gaze over it. The show's version is more modestly-sized, on a normal wall. Without the setting, it just doesn't inspire the magic. 

I wanted this show to move me past the cliches. Instead, it pushed me towards them. O'Keeffe's work reproduces well for posters, bags and household items. It's pretty. It's a perfect interior design choice if you're trying to convey Art Deco, or flowery femininity with a modern edge, or a sophisticated version of the American West. But I wanted more.

Drinking and Dining at Tate Modern

My general ambivalence towards modern art means I've only covered the Tate here once before in almost ten years of cultural coverage. Gaugin didn't fare that well under my criticism either. 

I've been in the building frequently over the years, however. It's a popular event venue with spectacular views over the Thames towards St. Pauls. I have many friends who are members as much to get access to the 5th floor members' lounge, with its stunning rooftop balcony, as to see the art. We spent the early evening appreciating the view as the long light of the setting sun peeked through clearing clouds, making streets and buildings that had been slicked by an earlier rain shimmer. It was as beautiful as anything we'd seen inside.

We headed upstairs one floor to the Kitchen and Bar for dinner. The Tate has just opened a massive new extension called the Switch House, which is topped by a new restaurant. They're clearly trying to push visitors there, as the old Kitchen and Bar no longer accepts reservations and is doing much less promotion. It used to be tough to get a table here for a Friday night; last night it was half empty.

The Switch House restaurant is much more expensive and has gotten terrible reviews, both for poor room design that squanders its views and small portions of average food at unreasonable prices. Meanwhile, the Kitchen and Bar continues to deliver what I've come to count on it for: gastropub style classics with a resolutely English provenance to match the Tate's original British mission. With a stunning view. Unlike the Switch House restaurant, which reports say only has windows at shoulder height, meaning you can't see anything when you sit down, the original restaurant has floor-to-ceiling glass walls offering the whole sweep of the city between Waterloo and Tower bridges. I don't think there's anywhere else along the South Bank you can get that view while dining for such a reasonable price. You can even indulge your inner modern artist with pots of crayons and colouring-book style table covers.