Bolivia is hardly known for its foodie scene but that hasn't stopped the founder of one of the world's best restaurants opening an outpost in La Paz. Ed Stocker takes a culinary tour of the country. Plus: the effects of cooking at 3,600m

I hadn't signed up for this. A small corner cafe in the Bolivian city of El Alto and a steamy bowl of soup plonked down in front of me. The dish in question, a local speciality known as caldo de cardán, sounded fine until I heard the English translation – bull's penis soup.

I think the owner of the restaurant had taken pity on the perspiring gringo seated in his establishment and included only a modest phallus in my portion. Now all I had to do was give it a try. Spoon at the ready, I chickened out on first attempt after the diner at the next table explained – with a certain relish – that the particular tint to the soup was thanks to the bullish offering. Second attempt and I managed to get it into my mouth. The taste wasn't unpleasant but the gristly texture did for me.

Within Bolivia, caldo de cardán is famed for its energy-boosting qualities, and for doing wonders for male fertility. But among foreigners the country is hardly feted as a gastronomic mecca. Visitors tend to come for the scenery. As for the grub? Forget it. In recent years, that job in Latin America has gone to neighbouring Peru, with is delicate flavours and high profile celebrity chefs such as Gastón Acurio, who is due to open a London restaurant later this year.

But if Bolivia is meant to be a land of bad food, Claus Meyer – founder of the Copenhagen's Noma, voted the world's best restaurant for three consecutive years until it lost the crown this year – clearly hasn't been listening. In April, the chef-turned-business mogul opened Gustu (restaurantgustu.com, dishes £6-15), in the southern part of the capital, La Paz, to prove that Bolivia can give Peru a run for its money when it comes to cuisine. I'm here on a gastronomic tour to see if this could happen.

A good place to start is La Paz's Mercado Rodríguez on a Saturday morning. It is packed with vendors and punters, and the view is stunning in this city of almost impossible gradients. I'm standing in the city centre, 3,600m above sea level, and I feel I am almost touching the low-hanging fluffy clouds that stretch to the horizon.

The market is flooded with colour. Makeshift stalls are tended by cholitas– the local term for the rural Aymara women in traditional dresses and bowler hats who have come to sell their produce. I have managed to steal Mauricio López, one of the Gustu sous chefs, to explain the weird and wonderful produce on display: fruits and vegetables I simply didn't know existed, alien shapes and forms, undiscovered tastes. Pacay, for example, is a green-husked fruit with giant black seeds and a texture a bit like candyfloss inside the thick pod.

And then there are the endless varieties of potatoes – I'm proudly told Bolivia has more than Peru – of which the most spectacular is the papalisa, an incredible spud that looks more like a fruit than a familiar stodgy staple, its bright yellow skin covered with fluorescent pink spots.

We arrive at another potato stand – with a difference. All of the produce here is covered with what looks likes a white powder dusting. It turns out that this is the tunta, cousin of the jet-black potato I'd tried in the, ahem, aforementioned soup.

"In the Altiplano, people place these potatoes in sacks and then put them in a river to wash through," explains Mauricio. "The skin is removed and then they're left out in sub-zero conditions overnight. There's no moisture left after this process; they can last like that for years."

It's this hotchpotch of exotic fodder that Gustu has tapped into. I head there in the evening to try some of the produce I've been staring at during the day. The modernist space is in the Calacoto neighbourhood, one of the wealthier parts of La Paz, a city where the poor look down on the rich. The service is super-slick, marshalled by the amiable maître d' and sommelier, Jonas Andersen, a Dane who towers above me.

With chefs from Venezuela and Denmark respectively, there's a definite international slant to this restaurant – and it wouldn't look out of place in London or New York – but all of its ingredients are sourced from within the country.

The food is beautifully presented: minute chicken hearts rolled in a spicy peanut cream; shredded Huaycha potato, poached trout from Lake Titicaca with coa, a unique minty herb; and quinoa (Bolivia is the largest producer in the world of the superfood du jour) with rehydrated cherries, amaranth (another local plant) and buttery walnuts. The 15-course tasting menu, with an alcohol pairing for each course, will set you back 925 bolivianos (around £87; the five-course version costs £39). Though far less expensive than the equivalent fine dining experience in Europe and the US, it is still way out of reach for most of the Bolivian population.

But Meyer's project isn't intended simply as a moneymaker. Staff at the restaurant often come from humble backgrounds and are there to learn everything from food hygiene to how to how to fillet a fish. Meyer has set up the Melting Pot Foundation, a philanthropic arm aimed at teaching food education. The foundation takes a cut of profits and dividends from the restaurant to plough back into the local community.

"Even though I'm Bolivian, I've tried ingredients here that I hadn't even heard of," Estefanía Morales, a 22-year-old trainee, tells me before scurrying into the kitchen. "My mother sells food in El Alto and now I'm telling her 'no, you have to do it like this'."

The food boom in La Paz is by no means restricted to Gustu, however. Steady economic growth and an expanding middle class mean more expendable income kicking about, and new restaurants are opening all the time. My tour of the city also includes a visit to Villaserena (Avenida Ecuador 2582, +591 2 241 8151, mains £5-10), a bohemian joint in an old building that also functions as a cultural centre. The food here is very much high-end gastronomy, but the setting is wonderfully laid-back with chef-owner Juan Pablo Villalobos wandering around his dinner guests' tables. I tuck into an intriguing salad of ajipa, blueberries, raisins and herbs. Ajipa is another otherworldly vegetable, the shape of a sweet potato; peeling it reveals a white vegetable with purple flecks. Its taste isn't strong, and it has the texture of an apple, perfect with olive oil and sweet fruit.

Another highlight is his particular take on sajita de pollo, a classic Bolivian dish of spicy chicken that normally comes with a sarza, a garnish of red onion and tomatoes. Here, though, Juan Pablo has swapped the tomatoes for strawberries.

As I am finishing off my dinner, the distinctive chords of Bon Jovi waft towards me. Juan Pablo also owns the next-door Full Moon rock bar, and plays bass guitar. He is gagging to take off his whites and change into black, let his locks down and join his fellow rockers on stage. Before I leave, he presses a CD into my hand, the latest from his band, Tapako. The album is daintily entitled Drunk Punk Death Doom Fuckin' Metal.

Another rather good establishment in La Paz is El Vagón del Sur (Avenida Julio C Patino 1295, +591 2 279 3700, mains £6-£9.50) in the south of town, which again focuses on Bolivian dishes with a fusion twist. But perhaps my favourite place is run by a Swiss German, Walter Schmid, who married a local woman and settled in this country more than two decades earlier. His Oberland restaurant and hotel (Calle El Agrario 3118, Mallasa, +591 2 274 5040, h-oberland.com, mains £4.50-£6.50), is a calming haven in what can be a mad city, with tables and chairs in a tranquil garden space. Oberland is in the suburbs of the city, at the edge of the Moon Valley where cliff erosion has left epic, lunar scenery. His establishment may be built like a Swiss chalet but he knows a thing or two about Bolivian food: his quinoa tabbouleh and tumbo sour – an aperitif of tumbo fruit and singani, the country's potent grape-based spirit, similar to Peruvian pisco – are particular winners.

But as surprising as all the delicious grub is the way the drinks match it step for step – not just the singani but the wine, too. Prior to my visit I wasn't even aware that Bolivia was a wine producer, but I find myself taking an internal flight to its vine-growing heartland, the southern city of Tarija. There have been vineyards here since the 17th century but it wasn't until the 1960s that the industry took off, with the introduction of modern wine-producing techniques.

The town, just a few hours from the border with Argentina, is a major domestic gastronomy destination thanks to its vineyards and, surprisingly, a booming cured ham market – a legacy of Franciscan missionaries in the 18th century.

I'm on the Ruta del Vino y Singani de Altura, a panoramic route between bodegas in one of the highest-altitude grape growing regions in the world, stretching up to 3,330m. I've prepared myself for some rather sweet, poor-quality wines – and am about to be proved completely wrong.

We drive out of town, past the Guadalquivir river, and into a desert-like terrain of yellowy-brown soil and thick shrubs. Clouds hang over the nearby mountains. My destination is Bodega La Concepción (+591 4 663 2250, laconcepcion.bo), 2km from the village of La Concepción in a valley of the same name, the oldest winery in the region and located on land formerly owned by Luis de Fuentes, Tarija's founding father.

Guests are received on a beautiful terrace, with a table set up next to the vines for tasting. Of the several surprisingly good varieties I taste, the best is the Cepas de Altura line and the 2009 syrah, oak-aged for three months with a slight kick – but not as heavy as some other South American reds. The whites are pretty decent too.

With a booze buzz on, it's time to move on to Bodega Campos de Solana (+591 466 48482, camposdesolana.com), in the Santa Ana valley closer to Tarija, and probably Bolivia's biggest wine player.

"Wines from around here are similar to those from some zones of South Africa, or Patagonia. There's a decent fruity presence and the taste isn't too concentrated, which means they're very drinkable," oenologist Nelson Sfarcich tells me as we quaff the 2010 Trivarietal Reserva, a blend of cabernet sauvignon, malbec (Argentina's grape of choice) and tannat, which is popular in Uruguay.

Tarija is also the birthplace of singani, and Nelson offers me a shot of the heady spirit before we move on to the longest-established of the white spirit's producers, Bodegas Kuhlmann (+591 4 664 4346, bodegaskuhlmann.com), which has been making the Los Parrales brand of singani since 1930. Co-owner Franz Molina, who looks like a bodybuilder, gives me a tour and shows me the distilling process. Singani has a clean, fragrant kick and deserves its place on shelves at cocktail bars around the world. Franz tells me plans are under way for a regional denomination, in order to help promote the tipple.

The bodegas of Tarija may not yet have the infrastructure of Mendoza or Cafayate in Argentina – and the internal market may also be small in comparison– but the potential is there. Things are beginning to change, too. There's a project to create a wine-related art installation on one of the bridges along the wine route, and La Concepción will open a guesthouse later in the year, so tourists can stay out in the valley instead of returning to the city with their tour or hire car.

As the day draws to a close it is time to bring my Bolivian degustación to a close and return to Tarija. I head into town to try out the street food. I've had a fair amount of booze and there's nothing like saice, a Tarijan speciality, to soak it up. The juicy minced beef and peas with rice is just as worth eating as the high-end cuisine I had in La Paz. I also sample skewers of tripa (yes, tripe) from the next stand. I'll happily try anything, I think to myself, but then remember the one thing I drew the line at: caldo de cardán. The less said about that the better.

High tea … and dinner: the effects of cooking at altitude

Standing at 3,600m above sea level at its centre, La Paz is one of the highest cities in the world, and you'll need to take time to acclimatise on arrival. One way to do this, locals will tell you, is to drink mate de coca (coca tea), made from leaves of the coca plant and consumed across the Andes, especially in Bolivia, Peru and Argentina. The locals, of course, are already well acclimatised. Bolivia may not have a very successful national football team but when visiting teams come to play in La Paz – even football giants Brazil and Argentina – they often lose because of the difficult conditions.

Cooking at altitude also has its complications. Water boils at 88C, so while a cup of tea tastes fine, rice takes a lot longer to cook; salt reacts differently, so you need to season dishes more; and bread is reluctant to rise. When it comes to alcohol, pouring a beer produces more foam because there is less air pressure. And then there are the stonking hangovers …

The bitterly cold nights on the Altiplano are also perfect for giving potatoes that are left outside a rich, musty taste. The chuños and tuntas (see main text) – frozen potatoes that are later rehydrated – wouldn't be the same without the particular cold, dry climate. One favourite local dish involves boiling the potato with anise the next day and serving it with egg.

There are other foodstuffs that just wouldn't be the same without the altitude. In the manufacture of pasankallas, the puffed white corn that is Bolivia's super-sweet take on popcorn, the low air pressure allows for perfect popping. One pasankallascompany moved its factory to El Alto, a satellite of La Paz, for that reason.

Standing at an incredible 4,150m above sea level, El Alto is the world's highest large city. But altitude isn't the only unique thing about El Alto: with a population of almost 1.5 million it is the largest Amerindian city in Latin America – about 76% of its inhabitants are Aymara, and less than 1% are of European descent.

• The trip was provided by High Lives (020-8144 2629, highlives.co.uk). Its seven-day Gourmet Tour of Bolivia costs from £3,000pp, including domestic and international flights from Gatwick; visits to wine producers, salt producers and quinoa plantations; a desert safari; and the 15-course dining experience at Gustu. Flights from Gatwick to Santa Cruz via Madrid were provided by Air Europa (0871 423 0717, aireuropa.com, from around £750 return). Internal flights were provided by the local airline Amaszonas (amaszonas.com)

As a boy, Jason Atherton sold donkey rides on Skegness beach. Now he runs a global empire with restaurants in London, Hong Kong, Singapore and Shanghai. Tim Adams tries to keep up

There are times, travelling with Jason Atherton, as he does the rounds of his new restaurants and soon-to-be restaurants and not-quite-fully-formed-ideas-for restaurants in Singapore and Hong Kong and Dubai over the course of five intensive days, when you are profoundly grateful you are not in the company of either of his sometime mentors, Gordon Ramsay or Marco Pierre White. One such moment is at the luggage information desk at Dubai's colossal, soul-sucking airport where, after the third overnight flight, the inevitable has happened and our bags have finally gone astray.

Atherton has just done a full cooking shift at 22 Ships, his inspired tapas bar in the heart of Hong Kong's old red light district, while simultaneously checking in with staff about the lunch service at his Michelin-starred London home, Pollen Street Social, and fielding emails about his new ventures in Sydney and Shanghai. He's due at a meeting with a developer working with the InterContinental hotel group in Dubai at 9am to sign off on a deal to open a new waterfront property worth several million dollars. He is in the jeans and T-shirt he has tried to sleep in on the plane, and unshowered. At 7am the glum manager of the luggage information desk, at which we are the sole customers, is showing little interest in our missing bags.

After extensive walkie-talkie conversations and a languid, fruitless search for a pen with which to take our details, a long hour or so has passed before he relays the information that "I think your bags are somewhere in the system". At which point you might imagine Gordon or Marco, testosterone pumping, jetlag jagging, would have taken some selfish relief in reducing the manager, his system and the entire luggage information operation at Dubai International to a lightly astringent jus.

Atherton, who worked for Ramsay for 10 years, creating the highly successful Maze, and who has, as I have witnessed in various time zones, an obsessive interest in the efficiencies of service, remains courteous. "I tell you what," he says, "I wanted to have a look at the fish market this morning before the meeting, so we'll head out there, and perhaps if our bags turn up we can pay for them to be sent on to the hotel?"

We head to the fish market, a dockside hangar in which an extraordinary variety of sea creatures have been dredged from the Gulf to be vigorously descaled, chopped and then examined by some of the desert city's army of chefs. Atherton is in his element, enthused by the idea that "there are probably 30 species here I've never cooked" and therefore further excited by the prospect of his Dubai kitchen, which might be open by the autumn, if he makes his InterContinental meeting.

We head to the hotel to find the bags have been delivered, testament to Atherton's patience and local knowledge ("I worked here for Gordon for four years and I know if you start shouting the odds to locals you are screwed"). The chef makes his meeting, signs his deal, does a walking tour of the first-floor shell of a skyscraper fronting the marina in which his restaurant will take shape, and is still smiling at lunchtime when he sits down at the waterside opposite the building site, and celebrates the contract with a carrot juice. "The thing is," he says of our morning, "if I start to get annoyed about a lost bag or whatever, I just make sure I immediately give myself a kick up the butt. You know, I've had more difficult days than these…"

Atherton's journey to this particular waterfront began at a seaside about as far from the glass-fronted fantasy of Dubai's marina as you can imagine. Born in Sheffield, he moved with his mother to Skegness after his parents separated when he was three. He lived with his mum and his sister in a caravan, "quite cosy but frigging cold in the winter", and got his first taste of kitchens and hotels at a guesthouse, the Maryland, that his mother set up on Skegness's North Sea coast.

"Even in the holidays we always had to work," Atherton, now 41, recalls. "I would get up early to help do the breakfasts, then go out and be a donkey boy, doing rides for kids on the beach all day, then come back, help with the evening meal. My stepdad Dave was a joiner. He would be out first thing on building sites, then come back and put a dickie bow and a white shirt on and work the bar until midnight. On a Friday, the treat for my sister and me was to watch the telly, plugged into the cigarette lighter of the car, with pop and crisps, for an hour before the battery ran down."

This work ethic has clearly never left Atherton. After "24 years busting my nuts in other people's kitchens", he invested every last penny of his savings into Pollen Street Social in Mayfair only two years ago; with the help of partners he now has eight restaurants and counting across the world (two others opened earlier this year in London, Little Social, over the road from the original, and the Social Eating House, in Soho). All have quickly won praise and awards and, more to the point, customers. "We have two kinds of restaurants, extremely successful ones and successful ones, but they all make money," he says and shows me the daily incoming texts of takings to prove it. Esquina, for example, has paid back its investment in just 10 months. Atherton, who is married to Ihra, a Filipina who worked with him in Dubai, and has two daughters, aged seven and two, is about to start filming a TV series for Sky, My Kitchen Rules, in which couples compete to create pop-up restaurants in their front rooms; he has three cookbooks in the works. It is, you might say, his moment; but having seen casualties of previous such moments up close, he is anxious, desperate, not to let it go to his head.

One of the fascinations of Atherton's rise – White singled him out recently as one of only three or four "proper" British cooks – is that he is very much a second-generation figure; he has learned from the excesses of the celebrity fathers. He won't say a bad word about Ramsay but they don't see each other now – "his choice not mine"; the Scot was characteristically annoyed that his protege eventually left Maze, but still Atherton has learned, he says, from his old boss, "both what to do and what not to do".

Much of this is detail. In his autobiography, Ramsay reveals that when he started out he was in the habit of chucking any complaints from customers in the bin. The chef was always right. In the course of our travels, Atherton has any complaints made in any of his outposts immediately texted over to him. In Hong Kong he discovers that a lunch party in Singapore had to wait 20 minutes for dessert, while one of 100 diners in Soho at lunchtime thought his steak a little fatty. Atherton immediately responds with questions to sous chefs and maitre d's, and apologies to customers. He talks in passing, "don't quote me", of memorably truculent guests over the years but prides himself on never losing his rag.

"I've never chucked anyone out," he says, "and I don't imagine I ever will. I have had people in Pollen Street say 'there is not a single thing on this menu I like'. But I kill them with kindness. I go out and say, tell me what you want and I will happily cook it for you. I'm not interested in 'chef knows best' bullshit."

When Atherton worked for Nico Ladenis in London in the early 90s they weren't allowed to put salt and pepper on the table. "If people asked for pepper, Nico would likely ask them to leave. To me, if someone likes a lot of pepper, it's not a problem. He has paid for it, he can do what he likes."

It's tempting to think that some of this spirit is a legacy from Skegness. He agrees that there was probably no tougher crowd to please. "We had busloads every week from Doncaster, Barnsley, Rotherham, Nottingham," Atherton recalls. "We would have Leicester week, in which the only question you ever heard was 'Ow much is it, duck?' I'd have to check with my mum but I think to start with it was about £3.50 for the weekend, bed and board, so it wasn't bad value."

Atherton brought a good deal of that can-do possibility down to London with him. At 16, he wrote to the top 20 chefs in the country, from Raymond Blanc down, and asked if they might find a space for him. He received a positive reply from one, Boyd Gilmour, who had left the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra to set up Boyd's in Covent Garden. Atherton came down with his knives and his whites, said he could start tomorrow and that was that. He lived in the youth hostel in Earl's Court for two years with about a tenner a week to spend and "loved every second of it".

He didn't travel abroad until he was 22, working a season at the three-star Auberge de L'Ill in Alsace. Five years after that he became the first non-Spanish speaker to work with Ferran Adrià at El Bulli having turned up with a backpack and refused to leave until he got a trial in the world's best kitchen. In between times he cooked with White in his heyday at Harvey's and then at the Hyde Park hotel.

His time in Spain perhaps gives most clues to the kind of cooking Ahterton aspires to now – smart, witty plates, with intense flavours, made with sharing in mind. "You stepped into that kitchen and it was like you were in a different world," he says of El Bulli. From White, the original el bully,he learned something about man management. "You'd try not to catch Marco's eye at midnight when he was off hunting with his mates, otherwise you would be up making bacon sandwiches for them when they got back at five in the morning and then straight on to prepping," he says. He put up with that, and even, he hesitates to suggest, the occasional physical confrontation, because "Marco was the best chef working in Britain. He was so fast and so perfect, all out of this complete chaos."

As I witness a few times, watching him at work, at the futuristic Pollen in Singapore, which is housed in a glass-domed botanical gardens on the bay, or at Esquina, his tapas bar in that heart of that city, Atherton is hardly reticent when imposing his standards on his chefs. He is only here for a day or two, so each observation has to count. "When I do give someone a hard time it's usually if they disrespect ingredients, or if the veg is not packed away properly in the morning. I know it sounds OCD but my organic carrots, I don't want them tossed in a scruffy container: they are laid down nicely all facing the right way and treated with respect. I get angry if stuff like that is not done, but not madman angry."

A running theme of our travels is the fact that Atherton only ever gets asked two questions by journalists: "How did you survive working with Gordon?" and "Aren't you in danger of spreading yourself too thin?"

In a sense one of the questions answers the other. Atherton eventually left Maze not because of Ramsay, "but because I couldn't work with his father-in-law [Chris Hutcheson, Ramsay's then business partner]. I tried for years. But it was time to move on."

Atherton has so far been luckier with his own business partners. His principal backer is Mrs Mavis Oei, owner of the Goodwood Park group of hotels and daughter of the late Khoo Teck Puat, once Singapore's richest man. Oei was seduced by Atherton's food – he cooked for her first at Maze and then at her homes in Bray and in the Far East. Having invited him over to discuss a business proposition in 2011, she refused to let him return to the UK until he had signed a deal by which she offered an initial £3m as finance for a 25% stake in what became Pollen Street Social. The rest of the opportunities have flowed from there.

In Singapore, Atherton has breakfast with Peng Loh, a former lawyer who has hotel and restaurant interests throughout the world, including London's Viajante and One Leicester Street. Their plans for the former Foster's brewery building in Sydney are laid out on the table. "What do the Australians eat for breakfast?" Peng wonders. "Well, I do this great kind of mini-English breakfast on a proper pizza," Atherton suggests, which sounds about right. In Hong Kong he meets Yenn Wong, perhaps the most immaculately groomed woman I have ever encountered, with whom he is renovating PMQ, the former colonial police barracks in the middle of town, with a casual "bread oven-type place" downstairs and a "farm-to-table eating" restaurant upstairs. There is talk of tracking down "the only properly organic farmer in China" for the veg. Yenn takes a precise note. She helped to design 22 Ships and they have plans for a speakeasy across the street.

All of which begs an answer to the second of the two questions Atherton is perennially asked: is he in danger of spreading himself too thin? Inevitably, I guess, but the trick is to find chefs who instinctively know what he wants, for each of his satellites, and to keep them happy. He has a scheme for Andy Walsh, a young Irish chef doing precise wonders at Esquina, which gives him a 10% profit share. His chefs in Hong Kong and London are on the same incentive once the restaurants have earned back their investment. "I feel like the bloke who did Dolly the Sheep," he says at one point. "We clone them and we put them in a box and we ship them out. It's like Madagascar 3, crates of chefs marked fragile."

Atherton will have to find a few more crates yet. Three other London properties are planned for this year or next. A collaboration with the ultimate concept man Ian Schrager in the now defunct Berners Hotel; a City Social satellite of his deconstructed Pollen Street concept in Tower 42; and perhaps something in the old Bow Street Magistrates building in Covent Garden. Only a few places are beyond the pale. He was recently approached to do something in Moscow. ("I have no desire even to visit.") Likewise Tokyo: too many great restaurants already. Otherwise, the world still seems a newly shucked oyster.

Looking at that world through the eyes of a chef like Atherton is a curious thing. Cities become not so much multi-faceted metropolises as the home to places you can buy food. "When we are not working in restaurants we are eating in restaurants," Atherton says, and in my time with him this seems literally true. In Singapore he takes his chefs for spicy crab at the beach on their Sunday lunch off; in Hong Kong we visit the cheapest Michelin-starred restaurant in the world, the dim sum canteen Tim Ho Wan. In Dubai he checks out, and loves, La Petite Maison, and puts his head round the door of the outpost of Wheelers, to which Marco Pierre White has given his name, which is all but empty. And all the time he seems to be thinking, sniffing, tasting opportunities.

In his efforts to coolly colonise the world, one site-sensitive neighbourhood tapas bar at a time – "we are not into concepts, we are not fucking TGI Friday's" – it seems he is not alone. One night, on our way between Esquina in Singapore and his bar over the road (which requires a password to enter, and in which a Buddhist cocktail impresario serves drinks in miniature wooden dhows), Atherton meets José Andrés, another graduate of El Bulli. Andrés is puffing on a big cigar, and also covertly looking for new opportunities. Outside 22 Ships in Hong Kong, Atherton runs into Alvin Leung, the so-called Demon Chef, who has just exported his "extreme fusion" cooking to London. They talk of cities not yet on the international restaurant radar, Rangoon, Bangkok, Manila. There is, Atherton suggests later as we wait for a plane, hardly a departure lounge in which he does not meet one Michelin star or another, all scenting possibilities in the global foodie air.

A few days after we return, I look in on Atherton in Pollen Street Social. After the spin of the previous week he seems relieved to be grounded. Before an impeccable lunch he shows me around with pride and joy. The kitchen in which all the carrots, and everything else, are facing the right way, the dessert bar, and the Buccleuch beef ageing behind glass. Downstairs is his office, in a corner of the prepping kitchen, no bigger than a Skegness caravan bedroom. He doesn't have a PA, so he runs his mini-empire from here by email. What you've got to remember, he says, not for the first time, is that, "we are just a bunch of guys cooking food and having fun"; and the thing is, he still just about believes it.

Tim Adams stayed at the Goodwood Park hotel, Singapore

Photographer Richard Saker follows chef Jason Atherton for a week on a tour of the far east outposts of his restaurant empire

Try a dish from one of Jason Atherton's new London restaurants, Little Social, which opened earlier this year across the road from the original Pollen Street Social in Mayfair

(Serves four)
For the tartare dressing
93g tomato ketchup
13g Dijon mustard
40g Worcestershire sauce
1.5g Tabasco sauce (red)
salt to taste
freshly ground black peppercorns to taste
26g cornichons, finely chopped
26g Lilliput capers, finely chopped
4g flat leaf parsley, finely chopped

sirloin steak 240g
baguette
olive oil
quail's egg 1

For the tartare dressing, combine all the ingredients and mix well.

For the steak tartare, take the sirloin, remove all the fat and sinew and finely dice the meat. Then add the dressing and mix well. Taste and add more salt and pepper if necessary. Toast two slices of baguette per person and dress with olive oil and salt.

Arrange the steak tartare on a plate, place a quail's egg with the top cut off on top of the meat, garnish with the toast and serve with a side salad.

• Little Social, 5 Pollen Street, Mayfair, London W1S 1NE; 020 7870 3730; littlesocial.co.uk

It has the menu and atmosphere of the best rural pubs. All that's missing from the Newman Street Tavern is the mud

48 Newman Street, London W1 (020 3667 1445). Meal for two, including drinks and service: £100

I have located the perfect country pub. It's a place where the cooking is shorn of dreary metropolitan clichés and posturing, where the choice of ingredients flows with the seasons, where you feel the Lawrencesque throb of nature and appetite working as one. As with any serious country pub, it's the kind of place where you could misplace a whole afternoon. And the best thing about it? You don't have to wade out into the country to find it. The Newman Street Tavern is on a corner overlooking a dusty building site just north of London's Oxford Street. Result.

I have nothing against the countryside. Some of my best friends live there. A lot of my working life involves stumbling across rutted farm fields wearing inappropriate footwear, like a character from some Howard Jacobson novel. I can do outdoors. But I'm much better at cocktails and central heating. Still, I do like the approach to food that "out there" can bring. The menu at the Newman Street Tavern sums it up perfectly. I have the paper in front of me and it feels like a place of safety. I'm stroking it. It's a bunch of ingredients – wild garlic, sweet cured trout, brown crabmeat, gulls' eggs – which bellow "Eat me!"

To all of these things chef and partner Peter Weeden does only what is necessary. That crabmeat arrives mined with pebbles of rosy roe on a thick-cut piece of warm buttered toast. It is all the richest, most intense bits of the crab, with a squirt of lemon to make it decent. Another piece of toast is smeared with laverbread, that glorious Welsh seaweed gunge which has all of the iodine and umami kick of its Japanese relatives. On top are two slices of crisp-cooked, dry-cured bacon. And then, to cool everything down, a still-warm boiled gull's egg, with a yolk soft enough to be spread.

An onion tart is where the kitchen's serious chops become obvious. If I tried to make pastry as stupidly thin and delicate as this, my kitchen would be littered with debris. I would be found sobbing in a corner, covered in pastry. This is a magnificent piece of work, the shell filled with a soft-sweet stew of tangled onions.

They do fish here, but we didn't. They had Blackface lamb and suckling kid. (The meat comes in on whole carcasses and is butchered on site.) Plus, they understand the imperative of fat; that fat is where all the flavour is. Their rounds of sweet suckling kid, the meat enclosing pearlescent jellied pebbles of the best fat, with butter-sautéed St George's mushrooms, are why I belong to a gym. They are why I wear a headband and bash away at the treadmill four times a week, arriving precisely nowhere. I do that so I can eat this. There are tiny ribs and a little bit of the belly. The Blackface lamb comes with some loin and belly and one large chop, and a proper ribbon of its own bronzed fat at its back, and tastes of a life properly led. Underneath there are salty-bitter sea vegetables, a little monk's beard and green frondy, crunchy things I cannot identify, but which I welcome all the same. There's grilled fennel with lemon and parsley and nutty little Jersey Royal potatoes.

There are two floors of solidly built pub, the walls covered with art of occasionally dodgy quality which somehow works. There are tall windows to let in the light and cheery staff to add to the lightness, and lots of wines from interesting places – wine of the month was a heavy-browed red from Turkey – many available by glass and carafe.

Obviously we did not need sticky toffee pudding or a sweet blackthorn jelly surrounded by a deep moat of Ayrshire cream. But a place like the Newman Street Tavern is not about need. It's about want. They have recently started doing brunch at weekends: brown trout Benedict, Galloway sirloin with egg and chips, green shore crab bisque and the like.

Come Fridays, some of my friends head to the country; if I need a weekend in the country I'm just going to come here.

Email Jay at jay.rayner@observer.co.uk. Follow Jay on Twitter @jayrayner1

Tipping etiquette can be a nightmare, especially on holiday. A waiter tells you how not to be hounded out after your meal

What should we make of the £50 tip David Cameron supposedly left in Pizza Express? After years of working in restaurants, I have to say, £50 is a big tip. Both to give and receive. And if he was in the Jazz Club bit of Pizza Express in Dean Street, which it looks like he was, there was service charge on that bill as well.

Leaving a tip equal to the bill could be seen as a little ostentatious. It could be construed as a PR stunt. An over-the-top gesture to make up for the last tipping disaster in Tuscany, perhaps?

To be fair to the PM, on his Tuscan jaunt, holiday tipping etiquette can be an unparalleled nightmare. When to tip and when not to tip? If you should, then how much? We're British, we wouldn't want to cause offence abroad right? So herewith, for Cameron and anyone else in need, a waiter's guide to tipping:

Where don't you tip?

In Japan, it just isn't done . Because of a tip's nature as a gift or a favour, it can be perceived as an implication of servility. The price is the price. End of story.

Where do you tip?

Everywhere else.

Even in France and Australia, where service is included in the prices, it is never embarrassing to leave a tip on the table. In fact, in countries where it isn't required it's all the more appreciated. As a waiter, I find it hard to imagine anyone being upset with extra cash.

Same goes in places with service charges – everywhere from Britain to the Philippines. The service means that you should never feel obliged to tip, that money (should) be given to the staff. And if you have any worries, get it taken off the bill and leave cash instead. But do note: in restaurants where people are well paid, the service charge will often be shared with the kitchen staff as well – which is a good thing, helping everyone earn a bit more.

How much do you tip?

The standard service charge is 12.5% of the bill in Britain, certainly in London. And 10% still seems to be accepted in places not charging for service. In North America, less than 20% can get you in trouble. There are stories of people being hounded out of restaurants for tipping 10%, which quite frankly is terrifying. If the wages are so low and people are that desperate, why don't restaurants add a service charge as Thomas Keller's Per Se and French Laundry do?

At the upper level? Quite frankly, there's never too much. If you're worried about leaving too much, you're my favourite type of customer. Say what you want about Cameron's tip being over the top, but whoever got it probably ended their night smashing tequilas and drinking beer at El Camion with the rest of Soho's restaurant staff.

But – and this is important – if you're leaving a good tip, don't make a big song and dance about it, expecting the waiter to fawn over you while your guests look on adoringly. Do it discreetly and enjoy the feelgood factor inside instead.

Whatever else you do, don't be one of the keep-the-change crowd. I serve them all the time, and it makes me want to kill people. I had a table recently who I'd gone to all sorts of trouble with: gone through the menu with the vegan, the coeliac and the person who doesn't like onions. I got the kitchen to alter dishes for the child at the table and gave them samples of six wines. They paid in cash, and as I approached with the change, the matriarch put her hand round mine and said: "Don't worry about that, you've been great. Keep it." I opened my hand – 16p.

And don't use money to beg forgiveness. This is a classic tactic of the business chump, desperate to look important in front of guests. Cold and cruel throughout the meal, this customer can be found dismissing the waiter with waves of the hand and maintaining a lack of eye contact. Then, when the guests have left, a distinct warming up and two crisp 20s left on the table. I'll take the money, but it isn't nice – and it makes me feel sullied and cheap.

When shouldn't you tip?

When the service really isn't worth what they're charging – asking for things that never arrive and old fashioned nonchalance are the worst of the worst. As long as someone is trying, I tend to be very forgiving. What many people think of as "slow service" is often more the kitchen's fault than the waiter's. And plates left on the table can be an attempt to disguise the impending 40-minute wait for the next course.

If I feel that a restaurant simply isn't run well enough to allow the waiter to do their job, I normally pay the service or leave a tip and never go back. Which, now I say it, sounds very British.

So, tipping, how do you do yours?

Santa Fe's restaurants, cafes and diners aren't just about fajitas and tacos – though they're pretty good. The city puts on some of the best New Mexican cooking you'll find

Compound

Recognised by the James Beard Foundation as the "Best Chef of the Southwest", Mark Kiffen, owner of Compound restaurant, on Santa Fe's famed Canyon Road, is a longtime local foodie favourite. Compound does an acclaimed contemporary seasonal menu that draws on the flavours of both the south-west and the Mediterranean. Come when there's reason to celebrate – the wine list includes a few excellent champagnes.
• 635 Canyon Road, +1 505 982 4353, compoundrestaurant.com. Open Mon-Sat noon-2pm (lunch), daily 6pm-to close (dinner), bar opens at 5pm

El Molero fajita truck on the Plaza

If you're on a budget downtown, one of the cheapest and tastiest places to eat lunch is from the licensed stalls on the lawn of the central plaza. The beef fajitas with fresh guacamole is a personal favourite. Tacos and burritos are also offered. Everything costs less than $10.
• Corner of East San Francisco Street and Lincoln Avenue

Maria's New Mexican Kitchen

One of Robert Redford's favourite spots when visiting Santa Fe, this is also where the locals come for authentic New Mexican cooking and tequila – there are some 300 varieties on offer. The blue corn enchiladas are a house specialty, as are super-strong house margaritas made with 100% blue agave tequila and freshly squeezed lemon or lime juice. Decor is traditional, with white adobe walls and vigas (beams). Reservations are recommended. It's a good spot to bring the kids. Note Maria's is not downtown, but off St Francis Boulevard, about five minutes' drive from the plaza.
• 555 West Cordova Road, +1 505 983 7929, marias-santafe.com. Open daily Mon-Fri 11am-10pm, Sat-Sun noon-10pm

Tia Sophia's

Come for breakfast, when this Santa Fe institution is usually jammed, and it isn't unusual to see a local artist or visiting celebrity waiting in the crowd. Breakfast burritos and other south-western morning favourites such as huevos rancheros (black beans, eggs, cheese and chilli over a tortilla) are the things to order, though if you show up closer to noon, lunch is pretty dang tasty as well – the perfectly prepared chiles rellenos (stuffed chilli peppers) are a personal favourite. The restaurant is a good place to bring the kids – there is a whole shelf of children's books to delve into and it is noisy enough for them to run around without being noticed.
• 210 West San Francisco Street, +1 505 983 9880, no website. Open Mon-Sat 7am-2pm, Sun 8am-1pm

Tomasita's

Locals hate to admit it, but they love the New Mexican cooking at this Santa Fe institution as much as the tourists reading about it in the guidebooks do. It serves top-notch green chilli, legendary blue corn enchiladas and daily blue-plate specials at lunch. Save room for dessert – the sopapillas (fried pastries) with honey butter are included with the mains. It's a rowdy joint that's perfect for families with exuberant kids. Prepare to wait as the restaurant is nearly always packed.
• 500 South Guadalupe Street, +1 505 983 5721, no website. Open Mon-Sat 11am-10pm, closed Sun

Cowgirl Hall of Fame

In the hipster Guadalupe district, the Cowgirl, a New Mexico-meets-Texas BBQ joint, has been a Santa Fe standby for a long time with good reason, known for its excellent food and strong tasty margaritas. It is a fun place for all ages thanks to the great playground, wacky western-style feminist flair, huge patio and live music on the inside stage after 9pm. Cowgirl is most famous for its BBQ brisket – order it in a build-your own quesadilla with green chilli and avocados. The margarita list is long and potent.
• 319 South Guadalupe Street, +1 505 982 2565, cowgirlsantafe.com. Open (for lunch) Mon-Fri 11.30am-4.30pm, Sat-Sun 11am-4.30pm; (for dinner) Mon-Wed 4.30pm-10.30pm, Fri-Sat 4.30pm-11pm, Sun 4.30pm-10.30pm

Second Street Brewery

The second outpost of Santa Fe's second most famous craft brewery does some of the town's best pub grub in a happening Railyard district with plenty of indoor and outdoor seating. When it comes to eating, the chilli Philly and the crispy buffalo chicken are sandwich winners for carnivores, while the portobello mushroom panini will woo the vegetarians. The food lineup is combined with a good selection of English-style beers, from the excellent hoppy IPA to a denser porter brewed at the original 2nd Street location (also a great pub) on Santa Fe's outskirts.
• 607 Paseo de Peralta 10, +1 505 989 3278, secondstreetbrewery.com. Open Mon-Thurs 11am-10pm, Fri-Sat 11am-11pm, Sun noon-9pm

Gabriel's

It's worth the 12-mile drive north of Santa Fe to chow on made-at-your-table fresh guacamole at Gabriel's. The scenic patio is perfect for soaking up high-desert mountain views in warmer months, while the beautiful interior is hung with art by Miguel Martinez that looks as good as the food tastes. The ribs here are fabulous, and so are the New Mexican offerings: the homemade corn tortillas and margaritas with freshly squeezed lime juice and gold tequila. It makes a good lunch or dinner choice if you're headed north to Taos, the hot springs at Ojo Caliente or just the popular flea market down the road in Tesuque.
• 4 Banana Lane/Highway 285, +1 505 455 7000, restauranteur.com/gabriels. Open Sun-Thurs 11.30am-9pm, Fri-Sat 11.30-10pm

The Shed

Most famous for its red and green chilli-covered chicken enchiladas, it also does grilled fish tacos equally well – these are also a lighter meal calorie-wise too, making it easier to justify another round of freshly squeezed margaritas. The James Beard Award-winning restaurant is run by the same family that started the casual but atmospheric joint in 1953, in a courtyard just off the main square in an adobe building built in about 1692 . In summer, sit outside on the patio. Reservations are highly recommended.
• 113½ East Palace Avenue, +1 505 982 9030, sfshed.com. Open daily for lunch 11am-2.30pm, and dinner 5.30pm-9pm

La Cantina at Coyote Cafe

The restaurant downstairs, the Coyote Cafe, is one of the best in Santa Fe, but the secret most people don't know is that if you head to the roof, you can order the same creations by chef Mark Miller at cut prices. And you get a lively alfresco rooftop cantina ambiance with fantastic sunset views. The place is only open during the warmer months, and sometimes you have to wait, but it's well worth the effort. Try the Oaxacan chicken mole, spit-roasted pork tacos with pineapple and the signature mango margarita.
• 132 Water Street, +1 505 983 1615, coyotecafe.com. Restaurant open daily 5.30pm-to close; rooftop cantina open daily 11.30am-to close

Becca Blond is a travel journalist based in Denver, Colorado, who regularly visits family in Santa Fe. She has written more than 30 Lonely Planet guides and is a regular contributor to the Los Angeles Times (planetblond.wordpress.com)

• For more information on holidays in the USA, visit DiscoverAmerica.com

'There's stuff here I haven't seen in the UK. If you're a tofu lover, Baiwei will thrill – it pops up crumbled, twisted, silken, pressed'

Drunkenly staggering around Chinatown in London one evening, I was delighted to find something called Great Leap Forward. Chinatowns are tricky to get a handle on: fast-moving, opaque, protean; places where leases change hands and chefs come and go before you've had time to figure out what the set menu is.

But this was clearly brand new. And had something of a brass neck calling itself after Mao's, er, misguided initiative. There was nothing about it on the internet, so I figured I might steal a march on the other critics: they are far too busy being wafted about in ortolan-fuelled carriages to stagger drunkenly round Chinatown.

Alas for my scoop, turns out it's part of the acclaimed Bar Shu group: if there's anything approaching a brand in these pigeon-pocked streets, it's these guys. When I soberly return, I find it renamed Baiwei, meaning "100 flavours" (in Sichuan cuisine "100 dishes have 100 different flavours"; seems Maoist humour doesn't quite translate to WC2). As with previous outlets, their masterstroke is hiring writer and Chinese food specialist Fuchsia Dunlop as consultant. If anyone has the lightness of touch required to play rugged authenticity off against the kind of thing that won't frighten the horses, it's her.

A tiny townhouse of the "lovely model, fifth floor" variety, it's a series of cramped rooms, all sharp-edged furniture, bottom-defeating stools and hand-decorated walls. We're on the ground floor, with a massive dumb waiter and several actual waiters staring at us as we try to make sense of the menu. There are helpful photographs of every dish; the detail they've managed to get into the glistening folds of tripe is quite remarkable.

It's a collection of "comfort food" from Sichuan and northern China; owner Shao Wei is from Shandong in the north, while chef Shu Bing is from Chengdu. There's stuff here I haven't seen in the UK: beef and coriander wontons; spicy stewed beef with tofu knots (exactly how it sounds: knots of tofu skin, plaited like mozzarella). If you're a tofu lover, Baiwei will thrill – it pops up crumbled, twisted, silken, pressed. We love the effect that freezing has on it, puffing it up into a sponge, perfect for mopping up the greasy, savoury juices from some pigs' trotters. The appendages themselves aren't in any way sanitised: as you spit out some eldritch little bones, it's hard not to think "toes".

Familiar dishes are given clever, pungent twists: smoked bamboo shoots in crisp, airy potsticker dumplings; red-braised pork given woody depth by tea tree mushrooms. The standout for me is catfish with pancakes, a Shandong dish made with huge, fatty fish heads here translated for scaredy westerners into thick, slightly gummy fillets in a dark brown sauce of such savour I want to plunge into it face first. Dried chillies jostle with star anise and more fat cloves of garlic than should be legal, all bound with fermented bean paste. The chewy pancakes, flung into the sauce, become alluringly floppy. Gorgeous.

This is cafe food, so thickly battered and fried aubergine slices sandwich fragrant minced pork. There are street food favourites, too: dan dan noodles, a rubble of beef with the numbing sting of Sichuan peppercorns and a rich, composty undertaste from preserved veg. I'm not convinced by "gorgeously spicy steamed chicken in roasted rice"; rather than a Thai larb-like crunch, the rice is steamed with the meat until it collapses into a fiery goo. And I've finally accepted I'm never going to love ducks' tongues: that unexpected crunch of cartilage is plain unnerving.

I realise we've forgotten to order Sichuan's beloved twice-cooked belly pork with black bean and chilli, but there's so much more to explore. Baiwei is the kind of rickety little joint you'd find in backstreet Sheung Wan, but with a better travelled menu. And I mean that as quite the compliment.

• Baiwei 8 Little Newport Street, London WC2, 020-7494 3605. Open all week, noon-11pm. About £20 a head with drinks and service.

Food 7/10
Atmosphere 5/10
Value for money 8/10

Follow Marina on Twitter.

Rubbish spelling is the least of their worries at STK – a 'female-friendly' steakhouse with a macho mindset

336-337 Strand, London WC2 (020 7395 3450). Meal for two, including wine and service: £150

Vowels are useful little blighters. With them the word Steak becomes a serviceable, if blunt name for a restaurant. Without them it becomes STK, and that just sounds like a nasty sexually transmitted disease. In the sense that the minimal amount of pleasure gained from the experience is not worth the risks and general unpleasantness, that's spot on. STK, part of an American chain, describes itself as a "female-friendly" joint, or as the slogan puts it: this is "Not your daddy's steakhouse". I'm sure this is so, because if your father was in the market for a steakhouse he'd doubtless go to a good one, which this is not. The food here grasps for adequacy and mostly misses.

As it is meant to be a female-friendly steakhouse I went with two females. We agreed that the only obviously female thing in the room was the flanged and labial chicken-wire sculpture hanging from the ceiling, the sweet spot represented by some dangling light bulbs. Gals, if a representation of a giant fanny makes you feel at ease and welcomed, then this is the place for you. Otherwise it's all black-leather banquettes, downlighters and thumping music. It looks like you imagine a chronic cocaine habit feels, all tiresome dash and bellow.

Prices are very high, as is the ambition. It's just all too frenetic, overworked and underthought. A "brioche" loaf, for example, must remain inside those quotation marks for having the texture of cheap white bread. It was not improved by being smeared with blue-cheese oil. I can't quite imagine anything would be. A dish of "Prawns Rice Krispies" brings a bowl with three well-cooked prawns on a bed of multicoloured puffed rice. Over this is poured a powerful shellfish bisque. You hear the Krispies snap and crackle – and that is the moment of their death. And so, farewell. It ends up looking like something produced by a toddler when the weaning got a little ambitious. The deflated Krispies bob like so much undigested roughage. An aromatic duck salad is wet and not especially aromatic.

Lil' BRGS irritate for having mislaid most of its vowels (apart from the "i", which probably has a better agent than the other letters). It brings two wagyu sliders at £10.50 the pair. Add £6 for slices of truffle because they tell us it would make things so much better, and we hanker after that. Wagyu is prized for its texture. So why the hell put it through the mincer? They are small dense pucks of mildly flavourful beef. It is one of those items that achieves that adequacy it craved.

Waiting for the mains recalls the moment before the puff of air and insertion of my last colonoscopy. You just know it's going to be something that must be endured. I order the New York strip – the equivalent of a sirloin in the UK – at £24 for 250g. I ask for it medium rare; it arrives medium, and cut tragically thin, so that it's far too much char and not enough blood. A good steak needs depth, which this does not have. Their béarnaise is a catering student's admirable first attempt. Coconut-fried halibut is a fine tranche of overcooked fish on an underdressed noodle salad. A "head to hoof" veal mixed grill is odd for having an honour guard of stodgy, lacklustre black pudding which had nothing to do with baby cow and everything to do with pig. Bits of overcooked veal kidney squeak their way across the teeth. A piece of loin is tough. By some terrible oversight the small slab of veal liver is cooked perfectly. There will probably have to be an inquest over this, to see what went wrong.While the flavour isn't bad, the sauce in a mac 'n' cheese has split so it's all sandy graininess. We prefer the dish of sweet roasted baby onions.

We finish with the "fairground attraction", a shiny Ferris wheel hung with sweet things. The tiny ice cream cones are pleasant; the sticky popcorn, toffee apples, marshmallows and candyfloss all distinctly average for £14. Wines are punishingly expensive, staff omnipresent and not always vastly intelligible, and the toilets smell of melon. Yes, really. Then again it is a female-friendly steakhouse. I went for a wee and felt my oestrogen levels leap. It was the high point of the evening.

Email Jay at jay.rayner@observer.co.uk. Follow Jay on Twitter @jayrayner1

So many French restaurants now use pre-prepared 'industrial products' that a union is calling for a new law to protect chefs who cook from scratch. Do frozen frites bother you?

France's proud food tradition is being crushed under layers of reheated lasagne, according to a leading restaurant union that is lobbying for a new law to protect chefs who are cooking from scratch. French politicians are considering drawing up a restaurant "appellation", similar to the system already used in wine, which could only be used by outlets cooking food in-house and from fresh.

Leading the charge to open this proverbial can of worms is Synhorcat, a national union for restaurant, cafe and hotel owners. It cites a recent study that suggests a third of France's 100,000 restaurants are using "industrial products". These, it says, are not "true" restaurants. And that's before starting on the estimated 50,000 fast-food joints, from McDonald's to local kebab houses.

This debate is part of a long-held fear that, while the French "gastronomic meal" may enjoy Unesco recognition as an "intangible cultural heritage of humanity", the country has let itself go. A seedy and swelling underbelly of packaged meals and on-the-go sandwiches is weighing on the national psyche.

There are, of course, many great places to eat in Paris, but there is also talk of frozen chips and boil-in-the-bag rice becoming increasingly popular in some brasserie kitchens. "People want cheap food, and it saves some restaurants time," one Parisian waiter tells me. He doesn't want to be named. Others are keeping the side up. "All of our desserts are freshly made in-house," says Carole Londais, the owner of La Fontaine St Michel brasserie, proudly displaying a glass cabinet of sweet treats.

Synhorcat's president, Didier Chenet, warns that more restaurants need to up their game if they are to stay in business. He says young people working in restaurants face a future of carrying and reheating, rather than cooking.

And he's not the only one voicing concerns. In April, the Collège Culinaire de France, led by all-star chef duo Alain Ducasse and Joel Robuchon, launched a new label named Restaurant de Qualité. The seal is aimed at artisan restaurants, which can join if they meet certain standards on product origins, freshness and diner satisfaction.

Restaurant critic Jay Rayner has previously argued that the real story in France is not the collapse of haute cuisine, but the "demise of the €15 lunch" – a sign that minimum standards have slipped. The better news, according to Didier Chenet, is that research suggests many restaurants currently using pre-prepared "industrial products" would happily switch to freshly prepared meals if it meant gaining access to an "appellation".

I have had some of my best and worst meals in France. It is still possible to find excellent fresh food markets and superb out-of-the way restaurants that will rustle up innovative dishes at relatively little cost, such as the picturesque Fleurs d'Olargues in the rugged hinterland of Languedoc. Yet this is also the country where Flunch, a cumbersome melange of tired cuisine, manages to stay in business. As in practically every other country around the world, young people flock to McDonald's, despite the best efforts of José Bové and his crew, and giant hypermarkets dominate suburban retail parks.

Do you agree with the Gallic hardliners that no true restaurant should serve pre-prepared food? If not, what's acceptable? Does it depend on the type of restaurant and the meal in question? Would you, for instance, be outraged to discover that your basket of pommes frites had done time in the brasserie's freezer?

Where do chefs go to eat? Will Holland, head chef at La Bécasse in Ludlow, Shropshire, recommends a modern rotisserie restaurant in central London

Whether you are in Aberystwyth for the sunsets over Cardigan Bay or to visit the National Library of Wales, you will need to eat. Tony Naylor has scouted its best budget options and has suggestions for wider Ceredigion, too

• What do you think of our 10? Add a comment below
• Interactive map: Britain's best budget eats

Baravin

The coolest venue in Aber? No doubt. With its white-brick tiles, zinc table tops and partially open kitchen, Baravin could pass for one of those hip Soho joints. One of those hip Soho joints, that is, that desperately wants to be a buzzing Williamsburg bar-diner. Naturally, Baravin serves bottles of Brooklyn lager (£4). A spin-off from the Harbour Master Hotel, see below, Baravin makes the most of its seafront location, with a curved glass wall offering fantastic 180° views across Cardigan Bay. In terms of what the budget traveller might eat here, the menu runs to bruschetta (somewhat oddly served on sourdough, but excellent sourdough), topped with first-rate artisan ingredients; a handful of pastas; and innovatively topped pizza, such as a Welsh lamb, minted pesto, peas and mozzarella number. A couple could pair a pizza with a big salad for under £20.
• Daytime bruschetta from £5.50, pasta and pizzas from £8. The Old King's Hall, The Promenade, 01970 611189, baravin.co.uk

Gwesty Cymru

The restaurant at this reasonably chic, contemporary hotel has a decent reputation, reflected in the prices on its dinner menu. During the day, however, it's more accessible. There are salads and proper rarebits, which you can amend with various local and Welsh ingredients, and several filling platters of mini-dishes, which can be rolled together with ice-cream as dessert, for £9.95. Some items, such as an unusual but moreish mushroom-mined fish pie, topped with a Welsh cheese crumble, were more successful than others. For instance, the pastry on a pasty was almost thicker than the filling. But overall the quality was impressive. On a sunny day, the patio-cum-garden area is a great place to eat, with its views out across Cardigan Bay.
• Dishes £5.50-£10.95. 19 Marine Terrace, 01970 612252, gwestycymru.com

Treehouse

This organic hub encompasses two shops – a grocer's and, over the road, a cosmetics and clothing store – as well as a first-floor cafe. In the food shop, where you can pick-up everything from organic custard powder to butternut squash, you can buy some of what the Treehouse kitchen produces: hummus, quiches, brilliant cakes, at knockdown prices (60p-£2.45). Or you can eat in the tight, busy cafe space upstairs. Local artisan produce is key across a predominantly vegetarian menu that takes in exciting soups and salads, burgers and ploughman's platters, which you can wash down with Sam Smith's and Welsh Pen-Lon beers (from £2.50). Incidentally, right-on as it is, the Treehouse is in no way po-faced. If in doubt, check the cafe's on-street A-board, which promises all mod cons, such as tables, forks, menus and eco-friendly air-con (in the shape of open windows).
• Snacks and breakfast £1.95-£6, meals £4.30-£9.20. 14 Baker Street, 01970 615791, treehousewales.co.uk

The Dolphin

With its pristine 1970's tiling, vinyl-padded booths and Formica tables, the vintage Dolphin is an evocative slice of British social history. It is also a pretty fine chip-shop cafe. One where tradition is upheld, not through stubbornness, but good sense. Freshness being half the battle, the Dolphin tries to cook its fish and chips to order as often as it can. A wait of a few minutes was rewarded with a piece of firm cod encased in a crisp, almost transparently delicate batter. The chips, while they looked a bit anaemic, were great: soft and fluffy and boasting that tell-tale, freshly chipped, true potato flavour. The sun was out, I had the smell of hot salt and vinegar in my nostrils. What more could you want at the seaside?
• Fish and chips, takeaway from £5.45, eat-in from £6.30. 47 Great Darkgate Street, 01970 624081, no website

Chives

Many sandwich shops are simply utilitarian filling stations. They serve a purpose, but joylessly. Now and then, however, you do come across one where the baps are that bit fresher, butter is offered readily, the ham is generously carved, and the fillings are a little more interesting. Chives is just such an establishment. It feeds people with a bit of spark and generosity, with the added bonus that it also offers a small choice of hot, home-cooked dishes, daily. Vegetable moussaka was simple, honest, tasty and filling; it was a bit old-fashioned, perhaps, but the aubergines and peppers were bright with flavour, and adding small halves of baked potato, which gave the dish a lovely earthy base, was clever improvisation. For £3.95, it hit the spot.
• Sandwiches and meals from £1.60-£3.95. 2 Eastgate Street, 01970 626667, no website

MGs

This upmarket cafe-bar prides itself on its local sourcing. Meats come from renowned Ceredigion butcher, Rob Rattray, whose shop is next door. MGs' bread arrives from the Hot Bread shop, around the corner at Cambrian Place. Such sourcing, however, doesn't obviate the need for a critical analysis of what you're serving. Ideally, my sample burger would have been served with a different bun (heavily seeded rolls aren't meant to be toasted) and, for me, a different burger. It's personal taste but this was one of those very finely ground, dense steak burgers which I find too firm. They lack the loose, fatty, falling apart pleasures of a great patty. That said, the sides of caramelised red onion and a poky chilli tomato relish brought the plate alive, and the chips were exceptional: irregular shards, their jagged, crispy exteriors gave way to beautifully buttery cores. MGs specials can include a pastrami, gherkin and rocket wrap; chicken and broccoli pie with new potatoes; or tuna nicoise salad.
• Sandwiches and light dishes £3.95-£6.45, meals, £6.95-£9.95. 6 Chalybeate Street, 01970 625624, mgscafebar.com

Ultracomida

In terms of food and atmosphere, this deli and tapas bar is one of the UK's most authentic Spanish experiences. One which, if you don't get too carried away, the budget traveller can enjoy, too. By day, a couple of its tapas, such as slow, fino-cooked beef cheeks with garlic potato puree, or baked hake, lentils, Serrano ham and chorizo, would – certainly with complimentary bread, olives and oil – make a satisfying light lunch. Many of those dishes are also available as main-course-size raciones, at £8.95.

You can take away jazzy Iberian sandwiches – for example, chorizo, piquillo peppers and rocket; or tortilla, alioli and semi-dried tomatoes for £3-£4.25 – and a hot dish of the day (£4). Properly seasoned with saffron and paprika, a tub of chicken and pork paella had a well-judged, hot smoky tang to it, and the Calasparra rice was delicious. The meat, however, was a shade dry.
• Tapas £2.95-£5.95. 31 Pier Street, 01970 630686, ultracomida.co.uk

Morgan's

This traditional butcher's doesn't look much. It could do with a Mary Portas-style makeover in terms of merchandising and display. I'm not sure, either, that a butcher's hot food takeaway counter would be my first port of call for a curry or pasta dish. But in the areas in which you would expect a butcher to excel – roast meat baps or black pudding and egg breakfast sandwichesm – Morgan's food looks fantastic. One of its fist-sized homemade faggots, served with mushy peas and gravy, is – for just £2 – probably the best bargain in Aber. Rich and moist, livery but not overly so, and baked so that a good savoury crust has formed on top, it's a fine example of this unofficial Welsh national dish. Gluttons note: Morgan's sells pork crackling separately, at £1 a pop.
• Snacks and meals £1-£4. 5 North Parade, 01970 612243, morgansbutchersaberystwyth.co.uk

Agnelli's

Food is treated with real fastidiousness at this small Italian deli-cafe. An espresso arrives first – smooth, rich and strong, barely a hint of bitterness to it – followed by a board of bresaola with parmesan and rocket, which was a model of rigorous sourcing and careful plating. It had been judiciously dressed with dots of olive oil and syrupy balsamic, and the whole thing was a compelling back and forth of cured and tart, salty, creamy and clean, leafy flavours. Elsewhere on the menu, you'll find other platters, panini and hot dishes such as parmigiana, and chicken and vegetable skewers with baked smoked cheese. At the counter, for dessert, tiny, ornate cannoli and aragostine demand further investigation.
• Breakfast and snacks from £1.10, sandwiches and other dishes £3.70-£9. 3 Bridge Street, 07969 959466, no website

Around Aberystwyth

If you venture out of Aberystwyth, by car, there is a good chance that you'll head down the coast to Aberaeron. The bar-diner at the aforementioned Harbour Master Hotel (breakfast/light lunches, £2.50-£9, mains from £8) serves a sound repertoire of modish, casual dishes: pizza, burgers, rarebit, cheese and meat platters, which, if you order prudently, you should be able to bring in at around £20 for two. There are cheaper light mains available and the Harbour Master also serves an excellent breakfast menu. Don't miss the ice-cream at near neighbour Hive on the Quay (takeaway £2-£4.95). Naturally sweetened with local honey, connoisseur's will tell you it's the best on the coast.

Inland from Aber, the Y Talbot gastropub at Tregaron (mains from £7) has a good reputation, sound fundamentals and keeps its food accessible, by retaining a core of sub-£10 mains, such as gammon and chips or butternut squash and pine-nut ravioli. There are also posh sandwiches served all day in the bar (£5).

The place that really catches my eye, however, is Y Ffarmers (mains from £9.50), a Good Food Guide-listed pub, about eight miles from Aberystwyth, which, unusually, serves an affordable takeaway menu (mains £5-£6, desserts £2-£3). Chef-owner Rhodri Edwards positively bubbles with enthusiasm for his craft and the local ingredients at his disposal, and this is a great way of sampling his food. That short takeaway menu will typically include fish and chips, a seasonal pie, and a couple of house burgers, including a veggie one that contains nuggets of Teifi, a nettle-wrapped gouda made locally by a Dutch ex-pat.

Travel between Manchester and Aberystwyth was provided by Arriva Trains Wales (arrivatrainswales.co.uk). For more information on Aberystwyth and wider Ceredigion, visit Discover Ceredigion (discoverceredigion.co.uk)

US companies set to open outlets 320 metres apart and will jostle for position with homegrown chains in sizzling market

A tweeted picture of George Osborne tucking into a takeaway from the upmarket chain Byron late at night while completing details of the spending review may have prompted ridicule this week, but the chancellor was bang on trend in buying a "posh" burger.

The mushrooming of upscale burger joints, especially in London, is set to escalate next week when two US companies open their first UK outlets within 24 hours of each other – and just 320 metres apart.

Five Guys, America's fastest growing restaurant chain, which counts Barack Obama as a fan and is said to have half the market for posh burgers, opens its first non-US outlet on Thursday in Covent Garden. And a day later New York's Shake Shack will make its London debut four minutes' walk away.

Both companies claim to have known nothing of the other's intentions and were quick to try to downplay any suggestion of competition between them. Randy Garutti, chief executive of Shake Shack, said Five Guys "do something very different to what we do". "We don't talk about competition because we think there is enough to go around," he said.

Five Guys intends to open five outlets in the UK – four of them in London – by October and between five and 10 more every three months after that, in a joint venture with the Carphone Warehouse co-founder Charles Dunstone. John Eckbert, the UK managing director, who works with Dunstone, said Five Guys had a "very respectful" relationship with Shake Shack.

"We have yet to find someone in the US that we believe is really like us," he said. "We think the burger is as good as we can make it." The simple Five Guys menu and style were more akin to the operation of the sandwich chain Pret A Manger, he said.

It is a boom time for high-end burger chains. Eckbert said research showed that almost a third of the US burger market was taken up by "better burger" outlets. In the UK, homegrown companies such as Byron, the Meat chain and Honest Burger have grown rapidly on the back of soaring demand. This month it was reported that Byron, which launched five years ago and now has 34 restaurants, had been withdrawn for sale after bidders failed to meet the £100m asking price.

Tom Barton, who with two business partners runs the critically acclaimed Honest Burger, is working on plans for the company's third restaurant in two years, having started the first for £8,500. He said the burger trend was based on consumer demand for simple, quality food.

"I think everybody has always had this interest in burgers but unfortunately burgers have always been generally pretty average. For me it has been a very simple meal done very badly so it has been stuck in its way like that for a very long time," he said.

Mike Palmer, a restaurant consultant, said people wanted to "consume experiences" and now had a much more advanced idea of what they wanted to eat compared with in the recent past.

One of the most successful of the new breed has been the Meat chain, which started out as a burger van touring London and now, five years later, is preparing to open its fourth outlet, in Brighton with 110 seats. The co-founder Scott Collins said turnover last year was £8m, of which 21% was profit. This year the company projects turnover of £10m.

Large players have also caught on. The Soho House Group opened Dirty Burger in Kentish Town last year and it has so far exceeded expectations, according to the group's director of restaurants, Nick Canton.

The proliferation of restaurants has led to suggestions that the market could become over-saturated, especially with the new arrivals. Collins predicted a "war-off" between the two, which are both located close to a Meat branch.

"I don't think people are going to stop eating good burgers and go back to bad burgers, so as long as these companies keep evolving I think there is plenty of room. I think people will be trading up – McDonald's eaters, Burger King eaters will go on to a better burger," he said.

'This is a whip-smart menu of mostly small plates rammed with interesting ingredients that's hard to pigeonhole. Modern Brit with touches of Moro is my best stab'

The two local chums I ask about Bell's Diner have very different experiences to relate. "Ah," one says, misty-eyed, "that's where I stayed up till the smoky small hours as a student, necking vast quantities of red vino collapso." The other reminisces about fayn daynin': "It was all sous-vided oxtails and foraged alexanders." Me, I always thought it was vegetarian.

It transpires we're all right. Since it opened back in 1976, this little trouper – a former greengrocers in grungy Montpelier – has been all things to all Bristolians. But quietly, and with little fanfare, it recently turned into Bell's Diner & Bar Rooms (a nod, I'd say, to its new informality), and something altogether special.

Of the three small, interlinked rooms, we're led to the least prepossessing, almost through the hive-of-activity kitchen, and to a table opposite the lavs. It's singularly lacking in the scuffed, rickety charms of the other rooms, with their big windows, vintage coffee roasters and turntables ("We've got Stevie Wonder coming up next"). Our server attempts a nice bit of sleight of hand – "You've got these lovely doggie pictures to look at" – but it's not convincing anyone.

So it's down to the sheer loveliness of everything else that I'm still bathed in a warm glow about the place. I love the clever, urbane menu; I love the wine list, brimming with desirable arcana (sweet Puglian reds; amphora-fermented organic Catalonians), gently marked up and responsible for slightly denting my passion for albariño in favour of a treixadura from Ribeiro. And I particularly love beardy waiter Simon, his beaming warmth and friendliness a great hug of a welcome, his accent so rich and delicious you could spread it on toast.

The new bosses have installed Sam Sohn-Rethel, ex of fine locals Flinty Red and Manna, in the kitchen. His is a whip-smart menu of mostly small plates rammed with interesting ingredients – garlic scapes (the plant tops), Israeli couscous, pork rillons – that's hard to pigeonhole. Modern Brit with touches of Moro is my best stab. But there are rogues such as Elizabeth David's classic lamb Ste Menehould; here, the fatty lamb breast is confited in duck fat, then fried in breadcrumbs. Teetering towards overkill with the addition of tartare sauce, it's as dangerously snarfable as pork scratchings.

Rabbit, as tender as a goodbye kiss, is butched up by slabs of spicy morcilla, then soothed by fresh peas. As the blood sausage is cut, it leaches into the light broth, giving it a sexy, murky depth. Fat roasted scallops are served with lardo di Colonnata and those punchy little scapes. It all just works.

There are hiccups, sure, but they are forgivable and don't cramp the pleasures. A crémant substituted for prosecco? Yes, we do notice, and yes, it probably is nicer, but they might have mentioned it. There are chicken oysters, aka sot-l'y-laisses ("the fool leaves them"), which must have come from the world's weaseliest chickens, their chipotle yoghurt marinade not adding much by way of personality. Pannacotta lacks lascivious, milky wibble. And I'm pretty sure that the chips that come with our 12-hour-smoked pigs' cheeks – an amazing collision of soft flesh and smoky fat with a blurt of quince aïoli; one of those dishes whose oafish looks belie the beauty of their taste – are close cousins of those served at McDonald's. But after plunging a spoon into a lemon meringue pie so crisp, so perfectly lemony, so super-light, it's all forgotten.

The new custodians of Bell's Diner, Connie Coombes with right-hand-woman duties from Kate Hawkings, have a background in another Bristol restaurant legend, Rocinantes. They say they'd like to clone "the democratic Rocinantes vibe of eating as little or as much as one wants, whatever time of day, with nice drinks and jolly service". Well, they've totally pulled this off. And the food is bloody good, too.

• Bell's Diner 1-3 York Road, Montpelier, Bristol, 0117 924 0357. Open Tues-Sat, 10am-10pm. £25-30 a head, plus drinks and service.

Food 7/10
Atmosphere 8/10
Value for money 9/10

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Does great taste in music lead to great tasting food? Well, Manchester's Yuzu has Miles Davis on the stereo…

39 Falkner Street, Manchester (0161 236 4159) Meal for two, including wine and service: £70

The website for Yuzu, a small Japanese restaurant in Manchester, carries an intriguing message. They will not serve sushi, it says, because that has "to be made by a properly trained sushi master, which we are not". Oh for a world of restaurants which recognise all the things they cannot adequately do. Imagine all the great sauces that would not be screwed up. No more would we be tortured by the promise of a classic dish only to receive an approximation made by someone who had never tasted the real thing. The world, or at least the hungry one I inhabit, would be a better place.

All that said, the menu at Yuzu in Manchester is not a diverting read. Unless you had been reassured in advance, you might look up from its laminated pages to whoever had dragged you to this small, high-ceilinged blond-wood space in Chinatown – it feels like eating inside an elegant, well-lit wardrobe – and frown. What's so special? There are gyoza and chicken kara-age. There is tempura. There is sashimi. It is an unremarkable set of dishes. Then again I would much prefer to be served one unoriginal dish done very well indeed, than 10 failed attempts at innovation. Yuzu does what it knows how to do very well indeed. That's what's special.

There is so much to love about this place, starting with the music. As we sat down the breathy moaning trumpet of Miles Davis on Kind of Blue was floating out across the narrow space. They kept up a mix of Coltrane and Davis all night. I found myself wondering whether a great taste in music could be taken as sign of great taste generally. And if merely raising this thought means that, from here on in, restaurateurs fire up the Miles Davis playlist on Spotify every time they see me, I'll regard that as an easy win. Even if the food's crap the music will be a compensation.

Yuzu's execution of classics is spot on. The pork gyoza are glorious pouches made with the best slippery silken casings which have proper bite. They enclose a fresh bolus of meat and vegetables with just a little stock. You think you can hear the steam giving a gentle sigh as you bite in, until you realise you are the one sighing. The chicken kara-age makes all other fried chicken look like a first draft, the salty crunch continuing far beyond what feels decent. Chicken yakitori can too often be cheap scraps of tensed, knackered hen, disguised with a bucket of sauce. These smokey, grilled pieces feel like they are what the bird died for.

Sashimi changes depending upon what is available in the market. It is served in a bowl, "don" style on top of just-warm lightly vinegared rice. Today, the kaisen don brings salmon, sticky slices of scallop and sweet translucent prawn. I can think of places in London which would ask for the deeds to your house for a serving like this; here it is £14.50 for the very best stuff. Do I need tell you about the unimpeachable quality of their greaseless tempura?

There is a special tonight – a whole sea bream. It is grilled, a little salt applied to its skin. And that's it: a whole fish on a plate with, on the side, a small jug of soy, with an uncommon softness and subtlety. We fillet it from the bone and pour the soy over the lightly steaming tranches of white flesh. If there is a more perfect way to eat a fish I am yet to meet it and shake it by the tail. Only pork yaki udon – thick, wheat flour noodles to be slurped away – misses the mark and even then, not by much. The slices of pork fillet are still tender, but the whole is just a little bland. It is the minor fault that points up the brilliance of everything else; of a restaurant sticking to what it does best.

We drink beer, and a glass of saki cloudy with yuzu juice and settle a bill that redefines the word "reasonable". It is that best, most understated kind of special.

Food designed for sharing is all very well, but today's trendy restaurants serve tiny portions at exorbitant prices. Is it time to re-embrace big plates of food?

For the love of elbow room, I can't do this anymore. If I walk into one more distressed-wood-furnished, naked-lightbulbed, glass-tumblered, formica-loving concept restaurant and walk out hungrier than when I entered, I'm going to move back to Finchley. Because in Finchley everything is served on big plates. Honestly, they're huge.

But in the capital's gentrified (ew) areas – east London, Brixton, Peckham – the annoying food trend that's become as ubiquitous as extra virgin olive oil is now knocking really quite hard on chutzpah's door. It's the same old story wherever you go …

"Hi, have you been here before?" Yep.

"OK, well I'll explain the concept. It's …"

"… small plates?"

"YEAH! Small plates, so you can, like …"

"… share?"

"Yup!"

"HOW?"

That is my question. How are we meant to share anything that is now ostensibly served on what classifies as a button?

Don't get me wrong. I liked small plates in the beginning. Three years ago, when little rooms serving starters as mains started popping up here and there, I was enthusiastic. I'd got to a stage where, finally, I was comfortable with sh … sharing. You know, "tapas-style dining" – which is hard to say without moving your head from side to side. I'd been working for years on sharing after a misspent youth hiding the "good" crisps from my brother.

These small plate places were nook-like, cosy, sexily lit and usually had a revered chef on board such as Neil Rankin or Nuno Mendes, who would wink as they personally served you pigeon, scallops, burrata THEIR way, and for a good price. Small plates enabled you to try what great chefs have to offer without having to pay for a whopping great a la carte meal at their Michelin-starred restaurant.

The casual dining approach encouraged you to relax, chat and eat freely with your date, or whoever you were with. The tables were minuscule, sure, but that was all part of the intimacy. And with this small plate trend came the cocky little menu, basically the size of a Sainsbury's receipt just, you know, listing dishes by their ingredients in typewriter font. No pound signs, God forbid:

Pork, squid, black pudding, salt, pepper. 630

Oh, you read that as six hundred and thirty pounds? Well, you're an idiot – apparently.

Everyone got so into it. Like buttoned-up shirts. I even started serving stuff on small plates at home, wearing buttoned-up shirts. Cornflakes, porridge, padron blinkin' peppers … I'd invite friends round for dinner and, God forgive me, in the email I'd put: "Nothing huge, just small plates," because it felt classy, sociable and also because I am a massive twat.

Then someone with a calculator and megaphone stood in the middle of Liverpool Street, central London, and screamed: "There are HUGE profits to be made in small plates!!!!!!", and it was done.

Restaurant owners far and wide fervently climbed the ladders of their parents' attics to unearth the dusty saucers Granny Prunella left behind. Doll's houses were raided for their kitsch crockery. Never mind fixie bikes, not one restaurant owner in Dalston didn't now get to work on a bandwagon. Small. Was. It.

But this lusted-after discreetness (most places did away with fascias, and even names) has got out of hand and become something of a, well, vanishing act. First they lose the sign – nobody wants to look like Masala Zone. Then the tables got smaller – now it's a toss-up between water or bread; there isn't room for both. And then, of course, it was the plates – which increasingly serve portions comparable to what you'd give someone who's just woken from a coma.

Last month I ate at a new one – Mayfields, E9– and although still finding its feet, the portions were pitiful. "1250" for a little bit of octopus and asparagus? They took the bread away because the water came. I can't live like this! I think back to the halcyon days of L'Artista in Golders Green, when a gigantic plate of spaghetti carbonara blocked my view of the person opposite. Aww.

We're in straitened times, sure. Food prices in this country are about to reach terrifying levels once more, and very soon. But while I've still got my dignity (just), I'm saying NO to small plates. Seriously. Get bigger – or go back to the doll's houses from whence you came.

'There's a no-choice menu. You either like it or lump it. There are few cheffy indulgences, hardly any blowsy carbs. But it's some of the loveliest food I've eaten in ages'

Confession: I was avoiding the Clove Club. "Why?" you might ask. After all, this is a restaurant from a trio of chaps (chef Isaac McHale and his front-of-house cohorts Daniel Willis and Johnny Smith) who have for years been running ecstatically received foodie events in parks, or abandoned Canary Wharf office blocks, or upstairs rooms of historical pubs.

The answer is, I didn't fancy it. I've eaten at the Canary Wharf and upstairs room gigs. I didn't like the look of some of the dishes endured by early reviewers – a big old leek, split open and rogered with smoked mussels, gave me the particular groo. And the spartan room in the old Shoreditch Town Hall wasn't gladdening my comfort-loving heart.

Then a hotshot foodie pal dragged me along for lunch at the homemade charcuterie-draped bar and I was silenced. Silenced by the gorgeousness of a dish that's a McHale signature, buttermilk fried chicken: nuggets fit for a deity on a nest of pine twigs, the outsides crisp, the insides supple, with a fleeting fragrance from pine salt – not in an Airwick way, more a whiff of astringent woodiness. Speechless at rosy lamb with rösti on top, less proletarian potato cake and more dadaist doodle. "You need to go back for dinner," the pal said as my pupils dilated with every mouthful.

So I do. This time, we're in the dining room, high-ceilinged, long-windowed and clattery, a space of almost Presbyterian plainness. The only colour comes from the azure-tiled kitchen, which isn't just open, it's positively splayed. From here, apron-clad staff – chefs and servers – dive about ferrying dishes: baskets of McHale's nutty, intense sourdough, or cocktails laced with homemade cordials and aromatics. I've sniped about chefs waiting tables in the past, but when the kitchen is virtually part of the room, and the chef doesn't appear from nowhere like a rabbit out of a hat, I'll make an exception.

There's a no-choice menu, a gentle £47 for eight courses. You either like it or lump it. There are few cheffy indulgences (unless you count putting your own-made petit four "teacakes" in carefully reconstructed Tunnock's wrappers), hardly any blowsy carbs. But it's some of the loveliest food I've eaten in ages.

McHale has a way with a vegetable. Asparagus comes with a dollop of gochujang (Korean fermented chilli paste), mayo and ground black sesame, a feisty trio. What's billed as a salad, a beautiful, painterly dish, delivers bursts of intense pleasure: perfectly slow-poached pheasant's egg, snowy-white almonds, crisp, peppery radishes with their leaves, chive flowers, tendrils of creamy, home-cured lardo, the sweetest, greenest peas… Oh, so much more. Underneath is fresh ricotta with a perfectly judged wink of truffle oil; on top, a snowstorm of fresh truffle, flakes and folds of it – utmost luxury.

I haven't room to drone on about the elderflower-vinegared mackerel or the anchovied lamb, not even the little smoked neck collops that are almost the star of the meal. My main quibble with this style of cooking – a bit Redzepi, a bit Aizpitarte, a bit Henderson– usually comes at pudding stage: I've waded through many an avocado or artichoke atrocity in the name of modernity. Here the technique is out there – strawberries and cream starring different textures of the fruit and a cloud-light sheep's milk; almost toffeed prune ice-cream with a sorbet made from the kernels – but it's stuff you actually want to eat.

There will always be reactionary types who'll hate the Clove Club, its tablecloth-free lack of schmooze, the "tyranny" of the no-choice menu. Their loss. I wouldn't have ordered "smoked wild Irish char, sour cream & rye" if I'd seen it on a menu, but it's a joy, its crispbread wafer-thin and almost buttery, the fish fondant-soft, clean, sweet and subtly smoky. Sometimes it's nice to be led by the nose. I'm glad I ditched my small-minded, leek-fuelled preconceptions and went.

• The Clove Club Shoreditch Town Hall, 380 Old Street, London EC1, 020-7729 6496. Open Mon-Sat, noon-2.30pm, 6-9.30pm (11pm bar menu). Lunch, from £25 a head for three courses; nine-course set dinner, £47 a head, plus drinks and service.

Food 8/10
Atmosphere 6/10
Value for money 9/10

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The food, service and atmosphere at this new Peckham diner is as buzzy and colourful as the neighbourhood

12-16 Blenheim Grove, London SE5 (020 7639 1106 – no bookings). Meal for two, with wine £70

If you approach this restaurant from the west you might dismiss it as merely a part of the gentrified corner of Peckham through which you pass to get there. It's known, rather cutely, as Bellenden Village, a term which makes some locals roll their eyes. Childish sorts might point out that the title has both the words "bell" and "end" in it; I shall not.

However, carry on west from the door of the Peckham Refreshment Rooms– named after a local hostelry, now long gone – and you quickly realise you aren't in some gussied-up version of Peckham but in the real thing. Here are rows of Afro-Caribbean hairdressers bubbling with laughter and the ricochet and crack of gossip. Beyond that is Rye Lane. It's a vivid, scuffed place of saturated colours where normal everyday life is a spectator sport.

The point? This is a good restaurant where you would least expect to find it. The fact that it is here is proof both that the no-go areas for good taste are in retreat, and that in the patchwork quilt of London, poverty and surplus can sit side by side. It just needs to be unshowy, which this place is. In the evenings it is rammed, and diners are certainly not coming for a nice sitdown. The restaurant may be many things, but comfortable is not one of them. All seating is at high counters or the bar, on blunt stools which demand long legs. It looks like it was kitted out by crashing an Ikea charge card. Clearly they are coming for the food, which is simple and well-priced.

The cooking is upper-class British holiday-home chic: half a measure faux-rustic French, a third faux-rustic Italian, the occasional outbreak of dirty Spanish, and that hazy thing called modern British. It is big-boned food, with a sense of its own good looks. We sit at the counter, watching the bustle of the kitchen, and order Bayonne ham, which we can see hanging from the wall awaiting the slicer, the fat warming nicely. It comes with a celeriac remoulade which is all crunch and mustard. From the specials there is a fiercely heated cast-iron bowl, bubbling with butter and garlic and spring onions and three fat king prawns. We add a good sprinkle of salt, eat the prawns, suck their heads and then mop furiously with sourdough bread.

Small dishes are around £6, the bigger dishes rarely more than £10, and there aren't many of either. Duck confit has crisp skin and has been cooked by someone who knows that the only thing it understands is serious heat. What makes this dish sing is the carrots underneath. Nothing much has been done to them, if you don't count the liberal application of duck fat (which is a lot). They just taste gloriously of themselves. There is a plate of Bourgogne snails, filled into their shells with garlic butter. Again they need a little more salt, but as the good flaky stuff is in a dish by your hand, who's complaining? The snails and their ponds of melted butter are what that sourdough was destined for. A slab of bavette, that steak which rewards those who look after their teeth, is served with a roasted marrowbone, the contents of which have been mixed with heavy-duty breadcrumbs and butter. The heart sighs even as the arteries harden.

We share a lemon posset for dessert, the execution of which is bettered only by the shortbread biscuits alongside. The wine list is admirably concise – half a dozen whites and reds – and drawn from the same parts of the old world as the food. All are available in glass, carafe and bottle. The service, from bright-eyed young people who know they are part of something they will not forget, is engaged and efficient. And that is all you need to know, save that it will now be even busier and I will be blamed, which is unfair – it's not my fault the place I went for dinner in Peckham one Friday evening is so good. Though I grant you that the mere fact I could do so is noteworthy.

Email Jay at jay.rayner@observer.co.uk. Follow Jay on Twitter @jayrayner1

A good burger is a thing of beauty. As two cult chains open in London, we ask if the new imports are any better than what's already on offer

What seems like a hundred years ago, a phenomenon arrived in my provincial city. Its name was McDonald's. My fellow citizens went wild for the place, overwhelmed by its novelty, by the thin salty 'fries' ("Fries? Whit the buggery are yon?"), the burger that actually bent in the middle and its sweet, exotically seeded bun, the whole, glamorous American-ness of it all. As food writer and burger maven Josh Ozersky puts it in his book on the iconic beef sandwich: "nothing says America like a hamburger". A couple of decades later, I thought we had outgrown all that nonsense, that goggle-eyed thrall to all things corporate You-Ess-of-A. Apparently not. Two Stateside behemoths just landed in London with every bit as much worshipful fanfare as if aliens had parked their spaceships above the piazza in Covent Garden. Here's Shake Shack, from arch-restaurateur Danny Meyer with its "smashed" patties and potato buns; over there is Five Guys, allegedly beloved of Barack Obama, with its proud no-freezers, peanut-oil-only boasts. People camped overnight in anticipation of the openings. A friend who heroically joined the day one, two-hour long queue for Five Guys reported that people were joining the queue simply because there was a queue.

What is it about burgers that's creating this current critical mass? It may be an overused word, but the burger can genuinely lay claim to the status of "icon". It can be dressed up à la Daniel Boulud (probably the first of the big name chefs to become burger-obsessed just over a decade ago) with his sirloin burger stuffed with braised short rib and with foie gras or dressed down like the 'Dirty Burger' below. It has moved seamlessly from a snack to grab on the run without care for provenance or sustainability, to the knowing plaything of the foodist classes.

Burgers are the perfect fodder for a recession-hit Britain newly fixated with what it is putting down its neck: the latest, hottest new burger will still cost you less than a fairly ordinary plate of pasta. Although, as George Osborne found to his cost after tweeting his "posh" Byron burger, you will be judged on your choice. These aren't just burgers, these are semiotics.

Lest we forget, a good burger is a thing of beauty, a satisfying, messy manifestation of all things umami: fine beef, sticky cheese, tomatoes: , both fresh and in ketchup, all ready to be loaded up with your heart's content of bacon, relish, salad, pickles, chilli … there are few things culinary that can be relied on to do their job as effectively. But hey, even a bad burger, a Maccy D's or a Burger King, isn't going to disappoint its legion of fans. They know what they want and they can get it, cheap and filling and – crucially – consistent, time after time. It is a perfect package, a pop art idol, an unimprovable piece of design.

Proper burgers are also tricky to replicate at home unless you have a patient butcher prepared to faff around with percentages of chuck, short-rib, brisket and bone-marrow – just feel those American cuts – and a professional grill in your kitchen. Plus a professional extraction system. Why would you bother anyway, when the High St continues to offer more and more of the things? Chances are, the first time you went out to eat as a child, it was for a burger. At some kind of fundamental level, they allow you to experience food in a way you probably haven't since you were very small. And you can laugh in the face of cutlery like a giant toddler. The current furore might die down after the discerning discovery that the new imports aren't much more exciting than the old ones. And it's not like we haven't been creating some pretty magnificent specimens of our own, spearheaded in London by the likes of the MEATliquor crew and rapidly colonising most of the UK's major cities. But, when the queues do disappear, burgers are here to stay, defying health advice and food fashion. Businesses like them – nice fat markups. And punters love them. It will be ever thus until we all combust in a giant ball of methane. Which is exactly how I feel after road-testing this little lot.

Lucky Chip
E8, NW5, London, Royale wit cheese [sic], £8

Meat: Salty! This salt fan loves the sea salt crust clinging to the ample curves of Lucky Chip's 32-day-aged, rough-hewn Wiltshire beef baby.

Bun: Big and bouncy. A stout, oily, seeded classic that defies meat juices.

Toppings: Mustard and ketchup. Gooey American cheese, cascading over the meat. Shredded lettuce, tomato, red onion. Smoked bacon. All excellent.

USP: Oozy, gooey, juicy, a handsome aristocratic two-hander that lands a magnificent beefy punch.

Rating:4 out of 5

MEATliquor
W1, London, Dead Hippie, £7.50

Meat: Two patties of 28-day-aged chuck steak. Madly juicy – good fat content: paper towels at the ready.

Bun: Just the right amount of heft to contain the explosion of beef, grease and cheese.

Toppings: "Hippie" sauce a bit like a mustardy Thousand Island. Minced white onions delivering a touch of retro-Wimpy. Cheese that seeps into every beefy crevice thanks to a final "cloche-ing" on the griddle. Lettuce, tomato, pickle on the side.

USP: Apparently based on a burger from cult Californian In-N-Out's Double Double Animal Style, it's no beauty to look at. A greasy beast delivering a massive thwack of satisfaction.

4/5

Shake Shack,
WC2, London, ShackBurger, £5

Meat: Sure, it's 100% Aberdeen Angus, grass-fed in Scotland, but what's the point if that ends up as an anaemic patty in dire need of charring? And where's the seasoning?

Bun: Weird muffin-like consistency. With this much bun to burger, you want more bite.

Toppings: Cheese – unchallenging, as it should be. Crisp lettuce, but they forgot the "ShackSauce"on mine. Why bother with tomato if you don't source decent ones?

USP: Famous US chain opens in the UK; we're meant to swoon at its majesty. Not buying.

2/5

Opera Tavern
WC2, London, Ibérico pork and foie gras, £6.50

Meat: Ibérico pork served daringly pink, given outrageous depth and savour from shavings of foie gras.

Bun: Slightly sweet, pain de mie-style, from London's Seven Seeded bakery.

Toppings: Above: butterhead lettuce, shaved manchego and crisps of fried red onion. Below: onion jam and aioli.

USP: Virtually flawless. The only improvement would be supersizing. (These are mini sizes, so I usually order two. At least.)

5/5

Five Guys
WC2, London, Cheeseburger, £8

Meat: Two grayish patties, granular and super-greasy. Cheap-tasting with a weird boiled quality.

Bun: Clammy, sesame-topped – it looks like it came from Burger King. And then someone sat on it.

Toppings: "There are over 250,000 ways to order," they crow. My sugary relish and gooey orange cheese means I'm not trying the remaining 249,999.

USP: DC import brought to us by boss of Carphone Warehouse; queues of up to two hours for one of these foil-wrapped disappointments. Can only attribute it to mass hysteria.

1/5

Dirty Burger
NW5, London, Cheeseburger, £5.50

Meat: Dense, aged beef with a nice "animal-style" mustardy crust. Highly-seasoned, with real beefy bite, but could be pinker and juicier.

Bun: Just the right side of dense, shiny, demi- brioche. Excellent vehicle for the meat.

Toppings: Pasty yellow Cheddar, onion, gherkins, lettuce, tomato. More American mustard.

USP: The perfect finale to a night on the lash. A no-frills surprise from swanky Soho House group, but not nearly as "dirty" as it thinks it is.

3/5

Patty & Bun
W1, London, Smokey Robinson burger, £8

Meat: Thick, 32-day-aged, grass-fed Angus steak of wonderful intensity served perfectly pink. A riot of meat.

Bun: Glossy, sweetish, toasted brioche that's just about up to the job of keeping it all together.

Toppings: Sticky American-style cheese, jammy caramelised onions, ketchup, just-crisp-enough smoky bacon and "P&B mayo". Meld together happily. Lettuce and tomato.

USP: A juicy, messy monster to lose yourself in.

4.5/5

Almost Famous
Northern Quarter, Manchester, Famous Burger, £6.50

Meat: AF welcomes "meat sluts" and "meat whores" to get grubby with their slobbery big snogs of burgers made from filler-free aged Cheshire chuck and brisket.

Bun: Buttered, toasted, demi-brioche.

Toppings: Excessive. A recent special, "ultimate triple frickin' cheeseburger", featured three cheeses,(Swiss, Port Salut, Cheddar) fried onions, chilli pickles, bacon, chipotle ketchup … oh, you name it.

USP: After their devastating fire in Manchester, the AF crew are about to land in Liverpool. Dirty, rude, politically incorrect fun.

3/5

Shake Shack,
WC2, London, 'Shroom burger, £5.25

Veggieburger: Take one portobello mushroom, whack a slab of cheese on top, coat the lot in seasoned breadcrumbs and deep-fry until crisp. Result: when you take that crucial first bite, molten cheese ejaculates, scalding your mouth and hands. Burgers are meant to be messy, but this takes the biscuit.

Bun: Same bun as the ShackBurger, but the mushroom fills it way more impressively.

Toppings: See the ShackBurger.

USP: It's not a bean burger.

2.5/5

Byron
Various locations, England, The Veggie, £7.75

Veggieburger: Somewhat dull mushroom, not smoky, served tepid. Could do with marination and/or fiercer grilling.

Bun: A little too pillowy; without meat juices, it seems dry.

Toppings: Spinach, garlic mayo, punchy goat's cheese and excellent peeled and roasted red peppers

USP: For a carnivore, this is a poor substitute. But kudos to Byron for catering for vegetarians.

2.5/5

• This article was amended on 10 July 2013. The earlier version gave the price of Shake Shack's ShackBurger as £7.50. That is the price of the double ShackBurger, but the one pictured is the single ShackBurger, which costs £5. It was further amended on 11 July 2013 to correct the spelling of Josh Ozersky's name, which was originally given as Osersky.

Would you happily fork out for a meal if you could decide how much you were prepared to pay?

As the age-old adage goes, there's no such thing as a free lunch. There is, however, a lunch that can cost you less that it should. One that, if you are bold – or greedy – enough you could even have for free. "Pay what you want" restaurants invite customers to do just that. The idea relies on the belief that people are inherently honest, and given the option, would happily stump up the cash.

It's nothing new (and neither is it restricted to restaurants, as Radiohead famously showed) – honesty boxes are often used by farms and small shops in rural areas to shift excess produce – but it's becoming increasingly common in restaurants and cafes. In many instances, the pay-what-you-want scheme has been a quick path to publicity and an easy way to get people through the door. Tanner & Co in Bermondsey, London, ran a week-long pay-what-you-want promotion on launch earlier this year, while the Little Bay group of restaurants, owned by Peter Ilic, has run similar short-lived promotions.

But there are examples where it's more than a gimmick. The US bakery chain Panera Bread Cafe runs five locations with a take-what-you-want, leave-your-fair-share policy, the hope being that those who do pay might cover those who don't or can't. Three years in, it has proved a success, with a reported 60% paying full price, 20% paying less or nothing, and 20% paying more. In Berlin (of course it would be in Berlin), the Weinerei has been a pay-what-you-want operation for over a decade. Owner, Jürgen Stumpf started a simple shop to sell wine from the family vineyard and wasn't sure what to charge, so left it to his customers to decide. Quickly finding success as an informal – and trusting – winebar, it later evolved into a restaurant when his neighbour started cooking.

Back in London, Just Around the Corner restaurant became the UK's first model, says Ilic, who opened it in 1985. It has since closed, but ran successfully price-free for over a decade. Ilic realised that people often paid more than 10% service, and decided to give new customers the option of choosing: "I thought I would run it for two or three months and, if I was losing money, stop." Part of its success was down to location. "If you open in a student/tourist area, it's not going to work," he points out, "it worked well in the mainly residential area [Finchley Road]."

This is something Chris Bennet seemingly overlooked when he opened the Dock Cafe, a faith-based community cafe, which runs an honesty box system at the Titanic Quarter of Belfast. By Ilic's estimation, the Dock Cafe's location in a newly renovated tourist hub, opposite a college, should be a perfect storm of freeloading. Yet several months on, it's still going strong, offering tea, coffee, cakes and soups, all priced at the discretion of the customer, although Bennet (one of the resident Chaplains) admits the student effect is noticeable: "You can see the income spike go up and down, depending on whether it's term time or not."

Their route into pay-what-you-want came from necessity, as the site developers didn't want a commercial operation. Although that has since changed, they're sticking with the honesty box, in part because it is an ideal they like to promote, but also because it's something they have become known for – the publicity and reputation it brings is enough to keep it going.

Whether the pay-what-you-want model makes for an enjoyable customer experience is another matter – it may seem attractive for the economically restricted (and stingy), but it goes against the face-saving British character. And consider the fact that each diner has to ponder how much each dish is worth – that would surely spoil most people's dining experience. No matter how noble or honest the cause, no one should have to eat in a restaurant filled with critics.