Cafe Culture

For as long as I can remember, spending a few hours in a well run, well loved cafe or restaurant has been one of life's greatest pleasures. My memories range from falling asleep on velour banquettes when I was very young - the adults voices and clattering of cutlery my lullaby - to a thousand putting-the-world-to-rights conversations with friends and family, picking over our plates, topping up our glasses and stirring our coffees. Good restaurants can make the world feel like a better place for a moment; oases of calm, indulgence and order when outside chaos reigns, or splashes of bright colour during an otherwise grey day.

I've been lucky enough to witness the restaurant scene flourish quite dramatically in the last fifteen years, and I've been even luckier to write about it. So I feel a certain pride, and pit-of-the-stomach warm fuzziness, that London now has its own Restaurant Festival, thanks to queen of the food critics Fay Maschler, her business partner Simon Davis and their team.

At the launch party at Quaglino's on Wednesday night it was heartwarming to see some of the pioneering old-school brigade like Terence Conran mingle with the new generation of chefs and restaurateurs such as Nick Jones and Francesco Mazzei of L'Anima, as well as swirls of critics and PRs who've helped to make London's restaurants swing.

It also made me nostalgic for some of the foodie figures who played a key part in upping the eating-out stakes in London and the UK, but are sadly no longer with us, such as everyone's favourite gunslinging gourmand Keith Floyd and the no less colourful PR Alan Crompton-Batt - the party would have been even more fun if they'd still been around.

If you didn't manage to bag a hot-ticket table at Pierre Koffman's rooftop restaurant at Selfridges, or a place for dinner on the London Eye I strongly recommend making the most of some great-priced menus and deals to be had in the restaurants listed on the Festival website.

It could be a memory you'll treasure for quite some time.