After The Fat Duck and the most anticipated opening perhaps ever, can Heston maintain his gastronomic glory with Dinner?

Of all the big openings over the past year – Koffmann's, Bar Boulud, Les Deux Salons, Polpetto and Spuntino - and those to come, notably Jason Atherton's Pollen Street Social and St John's Leicester Square hotel, none has generated more international attention, PR and press hype more than Dinner by Heston Blumenthal in Knightsbridge's Mandarin Oriental Hotel. Despite inevitable comparisons to

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On Wednesday night at the VIP Taste of London Secret Garden party we announced the winners of the inaugural Best in Taste Wine Awards sponsored by Blue Tomato magazine.

This competition was open to all the wine exhibitors and producers at Taste of London. We decided on three fun wine categories for the awards: Taste of Summer Wine, Foodies Wine and Indulgence Wine. I enlisted the help of Mickey Narea, sommelier at Launceston Place, Denise Medrano, The Wine Sleuth, and Roberto Della Pietra, sommelier at Gauthier Soho for the judging. In order to taste the 80 wines entered, we set aside three hours for our blind tasting - this is the correct way to judge wines by covering up the labels. Each of the wines were then...

Small plate dining is the flavour of the month in London, with new openings and firm favourites vying for the capital's seasoned grazers. Taste investigates.

Despite the past few years of apparent economic gloom, London has been a mecca for openings of every possible shade. The capital seems to be sprouting restaurants and the online chatter is as much about opening dates for reservations as actual openings. Along the way, we've learnt to eat on communal benches, breakfast with the conversation turned up and dine at crowded bars - typically ones that sit somewhere in the interior design nexus of reclaimed materials and industrial fittings.

On the culinary front, a now firmly established theme is menus encouraging the casual pick-and-mix of small plate dining in its various regional iterations: from tapas bars to Japanese izekaya joints, Chinese dim sum to Venetian cicheti. It's a noisy, boozy way to eat, privileging an indecisive, picky crowd as intent ...

In a week of reports that world food prices are set to double in 20 years, it's worth focusing on how we eat fish - our main source of 'wild' protein, and one with considerable environmental costs attached.

The Zoological Society of London, campaigners and artists have partnered with Selfridges to launch Project Ocean - "a creative public call to action to defend the fish in the sea." The campaign and debates hinge on the projected collapse of the world's major fisheries by mid-century, its purpose to engage the public on the cost of overfishing and possible alternatives. We're increasingly aware of high-profile issues about eating farmed meat - cutting down for health reasons and supporting local farmers with higher welfare standards (like

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Summer kicks off with a  cluster of openings of small, inventive offerings.

We're only half way through the year, yet London has seen four openings by key chefs. Dinner by Heston Blumenthal, Fergus Henderson's St John Hotel, Jason Atherton's Pollen Street Social and Marcus Wareing's The Gilbert Scott. And still there's more on the way in June - particularly a handful of smaller, innovative locations.

José Pizarro - ex-chef partner of Tapas Brindisa at Borough Market - opens tiny sherry (19 by the glass or bottle) and tapas bar, José, on June 1. He joins the immensely popular modern Italian, Zucca - also on Bermondsey Street - as well as Magd...

On Monday evening we held the second of the Taste of London restaurant safaris for the press. My job is to find the right wine and food match for each of the dishes suggested by the featured restaurants and hope that everyone approves!

First stop, Quo Vadis, part of the Hart Brothers Group which includes the consistently crowd-pleasing Fino and Barrafina tapas bars.

Before testing my food and wine match we had a delicious, dry aperitif sherry made by the high class sherry house of Lustau. The cream sherry and carpet slippers market is becoming a thing of the past and it's now time to indulge in fabulous dry sherry styles such as manzanilla and fino – so join the growing throng of new, hip and trendy sherry fans sampling such delights. Post sherry, we enjo...

Think street food and Londoners might reflect on shameful encounters with a late night kebab or a dubious burger en route to the stadium. But beyond the grease and mystery meats, there's an emerging cohort of innovative, quirky and quality focused vendors setting up shop in traditional market streets and among the weekend farmers' stalls across the capital.

Keeping up with these vintage vans and temporary stalls - particularly when their locations are passed word of mouth or flagged on Twitter - means being plugged into the right conversation. It's the digital whispers that make this new wave of street food, underground supper clubs and pop-ups so compelling to adventurous foodies, with its veneer of exclusivity beyond the reach of traditional media. Here are a few gearing up to make the rounds on social media and across our A to Zs this summer. After closing his hugely popular January to April underground diner Meateasy in s...

This week we held the first of our two Taste of London Safari Lunch press launches in which we visit three different London restaurants in two hours, enjoying an entrée course and wine match at the first, followed by a main course and wine match at the second and a dessert and wine match at the third. My pleasurable task in the days beforehand is to prepare the wine match for each course - then on the day, hope all the journalists agree with my choices!

First up, was the high quality and always popular seafood restaurant Scott's in Mayfair, with a delicious and beautifully textured starter of octopus carpaccio and slow roasted datterini tomatoes, capers and rocket, which I matched with the impressive dry white Chapel Down Bacchus 2010 from Tenterden in Kent. Scott's is a restaurant where you need to book if you plan on eating here as it's one of London's top dining spots and the day's dish certainly proved that p...

Dinner By Heston Blumenthal takes the the top gong.

Taste joined the Tatler Restaurant Awards on May 9 for all the theatre, regulation quaffing of Laurent-Perrier, cup cakes and canapés that make up a cracking award ceremony. Tatler's 2011 Restaurant Guide is out now with the June issue of the magazine, so the awards - presented by the guide's editor, Jeremy Wayne - bookend what appears to be a thoroughly enjoyable romp through London's best dining rooms over the past year.

Best Restaurant went to Dinner By Heston Blumenthal. Executive chef Ashley Palmer-Watts collected the award on behalf of Heston and the team while Jeremy Wayne suggested the audience hope for the best and attempt to secure a booking by the 2012 Olympics. The Laurent-Perrier Lifetime Achievement Award struck a sadder note, with Ruth Rogers of

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Last week I was in Milan meeting the S. Pellegrino team. Milan has a great reputation for restaurants like Cracco, where Carlo Cracco produces some original dishes like baked veal kidneys and sea urchins, and goat's milk ravioli. In contrast, my trip to the pretty wine area of Oltrepò Pavese in the Lombardy region just south of Milan was full of stunning scenery, excellent under-rated Pinot Nero spumante wines, fruity Moscatos and the local, family-run Ristorante Belvedere which produced the largest antipasto I have ever had and delicious ravioli.

At S.Pellegrino we had an informative and intriguing tasting of various dishes, a range of wines which were light, fruity, oaked, unoaked, tannic and mellow with the still Acqua Panna and sparkling S.Pellegrino mineral waters. This was fascinating in terms of realising the importance of storing and serving mineral water correctly, how the style of Acqua Panna harmonises with different food and wine dishes and how S.Pe...

Taste takes a look at the soon to be opened The Gilbert Scott, Marcus Wareing's British brasserie at the St Pancras Renaissance Hotel.

We've seen a flurry of big name openings across London in the past year or so, with hotel restaurants among the highest profile. No sooner has the online chatter and media's attention focused on the latest returnee (Pierre Koffmann, Bruno Loubet), Atlantic crossing (Daniel Boulud and Wolfgang Puck, imminently), or second coming (Heston Blumenthal) the foodie world's capricious gaze seems to move on, looking for the latest action.

One hotel restaurant thoroughly bedded down since 2008, Marcus Wareing's eponymous, two Michelin starred restaurant at The Berkeley routinely sends critics weak at the knees with his modern French cuisine. Now London's aflutter as Wareing prepares to open his second restaurant, The Gilbert Scott, in one of the capital's most dramatic locations. The "British brasserie" occupies the 1873...

Last week I was lucky enough to attend The S.Pellegrino World's 50 Best Restaurant Awards 2011at which it was great to see René Redzepi pick up first prize once again for Noma in Copenhagen. What is exciting about this competition is the diversity of countries represented in the top 50 including Brazil, Peru, Russia, Finland, and of course the UK.

At Taste of London 2011, where I'll be presenting on food and wine, there will be an amazing and highly eclectic range of restaurants and wines featured.

Just as a teaser on the vino front, expect an impressive range of wine specialists and producers, including St Clair Family Estate from Marlborough, New Zealand. St Clair produces stunning, high quality Sauvignon Blancs and Pinot Noirs and is hugely respected - they also won the prestigious International Win...

The 2011 top 50 are out.

Snapping at the heels of Michelin's gastronomic dominance with its emphatically internationalist line-up and chef heavy London ceremony, the World's 50 Best Restaurants awards is a far cry from the red guide's annual pre-publication leak and subsequent sniping over who got too many stars, who not enough.

The top 50 departs from the diner reviews of Zagat's or Harden's, and Michelin with its byzantine system and secretive reviewers. Here a mix of critics, restaurateurs, chefs and gastronomes vote to rank winners, with results that can markedly contrast with the established status quo. This year, world number one Noma was awarded two out of three possible stars by Michelin inspectors. Japan, with its reverence for cuisine focused on locally sourced seasonal ingredients and artful presentation saw two restaurants in the top 50 - in the world of Michel...

In addition to being The Wine Tipster, on Saturdays I'm a horse racing pundit - last week I delivered a healthy windfall by tipping the second and fourth in the Grand National! Follow my racing tips on thewinetipster.co.uk.

But enough of the world of racing and on to another of my favourite events - Taste of London. I'm delighted once again to be the food and wine matching expert for this fantastic gourmet festival in London's Regent's Park. This gives me the enviable task of tasting a huge array of dishes from a diverse range of high-class restaurants - and enjoying great quality wines from around the world in my quest to recommend some stunning food and wine combinations. On the food side, one of the chefs who will be at Taste of London and who I really admire is John Williams MBE, Executive Chef of The Ritz Restaurant. Since joining Th...

There's nothing like a financial crisis to get the creative juices flowing. An East London-sized universe of creative thrift, vintage clothing and work wear is having its day, and exclusivity - in bars, clubs and restaurants - is more about hard-to-find destinations than a credit card on the bar. While top flight sashimi might have hiccupped with the banks, comfort food is the business and cheap cuts of meat and farmers' markets ascendant. Austerity Britain has seen a boom in underground dining and private supper clubs spurred by the return of the dinner party - they're boisterous, secretive affairs; competitive, hyper social and all about the food.

Sadly, few of us can afford the sorts of bashes thrown a century ago by robber barons and aristos (New Yorker C.K.G. Billings put on a shindig involving horses in a turfed high-rise hotel ballroom where waiters dressed as grooms served mounted guests), but L...

Perhaps there's more to mid-Atlantic cross pollination than an easterly drift of upmarket burgers, distressed brick walls and filament light bulbs from New York City. A decade of experimentation and the revival of pre-prohibition cocktails in America has seen an emphasis on 'lost' flavours, botanicals and hard to find mixers championed by bartenders who emphasise the scientific over the

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London's getting to know serious coffee, with independent cafes using old-is-new methods and seasonal beans forming a small but inventive coffee scene.

The capital's long relationship with the world's premier (legal) pick-me-up has been patchy, with a great start -18th century coffee houses were centres of politics, business and literature - before tea muscled in and getting a decent cup in the city became near impossible outside the Italian bits of Soho. The baton passed to Europe where its cafes and great manufacturers like Lavazza still enshrine coffee culture. Europe had pavement seating, elegant interiors and chromed espresso machines, while in Britain medicinal caffeine came in mugs of dishwater fortified with milk. But there's a new coffee culture emerging, and it looks and tastes very different to the cafes of Paris, Mil...

London's an inward looking city - it's less about big windows and urban vistas than street scenes and Tubes and interiors; feet walking past basement windows and road rimmed villages.

Most of its restaurants follow suit - and that's not a bad thing - a lot can be done with lighting and furniture and art, but the lack of a view makes those things more important. You can forgive brunch at a rickety table on a narrow footpath in Sydney when you're looking over yachts scudding across a glittering harbour; New York power dining will always get a boost from some high altitude attitude; and cocktails and jazz might never be the same after a trip to the New York Bar in Tokyo. While some of London's coolest and cosiest restaurants have no view to speak of beyond the people watching and what's on the plate, there are a few boasting views that remind us how vast ...

"Throughout the history of civilisation, food has been more than simple necessity. In countless cultures, it has been livelihood, status symbol, entertainment - and passion."

So goes the announcement that Penguin Books is launching its Great Food series on April 7, with a line-up that extends beyond today's chorus of usual suspects and delves into the recipes, travel, fictitious diversions and historical cul-de-sacs of great food writing. The 20 books span four centuries: Claudia Roden's nostalgia laden evocation of a food culture scattered by migration; Parmesan-loving Pepys' diarising of his excesses in the taverns and oyster bars of Stua...