This is not a restaurant column, but dining out is a big part of City life and it must be right to address the issue of what to look for in a restaurant. The formula seems easy – sophisticated but comfortable atmosphere combined with great, inventive, dishes and wonderful, personal service, all without paying stupid prices. So here’s my four-way restaurant road test, pitting Mayfair’s new Pollen Street Social against Heston Blumenthal’s Dinner in Knightsbridge, Marylebone’s Michelin-starred L’Autre Pied vs old school St James’s Le Caprice.

Pollen Street is the glitzy new kid on the block. Former Gordon Ramsay protégé and Maze chef Jason Atherton is the creative force in the kitchen both here and at sister restaurant Table No 1 in Shanghai. It's a gimmicky place - full English breakfast is one of the starters and on arrival each guest is given a key to a deposit box that contains a surprise gift when they leave. The food here is classy and you will eat well; but the staff hardly know each other, never mind the guests, and every so often there is a slo-mo train-crash feel as the service veers, not off the rails, but on to the wrong track.