Mark Bolland's best restaurants of 2008

By Mark Bolland
Last updated at 10:45am on 22.12.08

Patterson's, The Sands End, St Alban...the best restaurants of the year...

If you want the best value in town, then head for Gilmour's, just of the Fulham Road

People are always asking me which is my 'favourite' London restaurant. Sadly, there's no one magical, do-it-all place that will guarantee perfection. You choose your venue according to your mood, your needs and, of course, your choice of dining companion.

If you want the best value in town, then head for Gilmour's, a new restaurant with an impressive pedigree, just off the Fulham Road. Amid cool colours such as turquoise and amethyst, you can sit in serene comfort and eat massive portions of delicious food. A monster surf 'n' turf (burger and lobster), original soup, and treacle tart oozing with syrup and fresh from the oven: here you'll find farmhouse cooking in the centre of Sloaneville.

The Botanist on Sloane Square (© Corbis)

Venture a little further towards Sloane Square and you will find the best all-day eating in The Botanist, in an outstandingly pretty room. Study the backlit panels of stained glass showing fauna and flora while enjoying a mouthwatering variety of food. Brunch is especially good. There's a brilliant eggs Benedict, and fruit-filled, meltingly sweet blueberry muffins that you could happily feed to a homesick North American. If it's lively and eclectic you're after, then 32 Great Queen Street is the place. The big, faded main room has a Spanish feel - and a few tables jostle for space on the pavement. Menus change daily and the food is simple, seasonal and scrumptious. On a blazing summer's evening I sat outside and ate perfect asparagus and ordered a plate of chips so good the couple on the next table were moved to ask if they could try one.

As a confirmed carnivore, I was surprised and delighted to find that two of the most taste-bud tingling meals of my life were marvellously meat-free. Step forward Saf and New Tayyabs, the best East End vegetarian restaurants. Saf is vegan and right-on (you sense Feng Shui experts had a hand in the design), and you can eat such wonders as parsnip rice and courgette-sesame noodles. New Tayyabs was a revelation: this is Pakistani curry that tastes like brilliant home-cooking, with its masala fish, lady-finger stew and delicious samosas that were cheaper than chips.

If you want to observe movers and shakers, then I'd recommend St Alban. The food is faultless (soft-shell crab, baked harissa prawns) and the room is welcoming and supremely comfortable. In fact, you get a real sense of polished professionalism - not so surprising when you remember it's run by Corbin and King, undisputed maestros of the business.

Marcus Wareing at The Berkeley

The most imaginative restaurant is Marcus Wareing at The Berkeley (it's also the most expensive). As soon as you enter the hushed room you know immediately you're in Michelin-star territory. But if you want a meal-of-a-lifetime, then save up your pennies and sample the delights of this culinary genius. Marcus creates food that looks beautiful on the plate and tastes sublime. A properly grand destination. Best out-of-centre is The Sands End, a large, homely, wood-filled pub set in an unremarkable part of Fulham and well worth the trip. Busy and buzzy, it's another all-day restaurant with a particularly interesting snack menu devised by its talented Irish chef, Liam Kirwan. You can munch teeny Welsh rarebit soldiers and big crispy curves of pork crackling, served with apple sauce. I'm salivating just thinking about it.

For best service, it was perhaps inevitable that hotels came out on top. It was difficult to decide between The Goring and The Capital. These are both privately run family hotels and it shows. You get a real sense of being properly looked after, as if the staff really care. And Stewart at The Goring deserves his own special award for being the finest maître d' in the city.

I had to think long and hard about the best place for a first date. I came up with the Imperial War Museum Café, which you might think an unusual choice. Think again. It's one of London's mighty but neglected buildings, set in an unexpected swathe of green in Kennington. There's plenty to do to keep boredom at bay (try the London Blitz experience), and it makes you feel rather lucky to be alive. And where else are you going to get to eat beetroot and seed salad, and Anzac biscuits?

Imperial War Museum Café

My last 'best of' is the perfect answer to a question that popped into my inbox the other day: can you suggest a place for dinner, with two friends in from Palm Beach and their mothers, so it needs to have white tablecloths, good uncomplicated food, be not achingly trendy, distinctly London, and ideally this side of the West End? It had to be Patterson's, a surprisingly little-known restaurant tucked away behind Regent Street. It offers the best bread in town (try the walnut) and fantastic fish.

The year ends, inevitably, amid fears for the future, provoked by the credit crunch. But London's best restaurants will continue to thrive because eating out remains an affordable, feel-good experience. Bon appetit.