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I like pearls. But there was a time when I thought, given a choice, I would have chosen diamonds over pearls any day, diamonds being that much shinier. Like how Marilyn Monroe use to wax lyrical about Harry Winston in “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend”, I would nod in silent agreement and say bring them on.

But as I’ve gotten older, (for arguments sake, let’s say past my early 20s) my take on pearls has mellowed. Pearls are classy, and I must confess I wouldn’t mind some of those now in my jewellery box. Not that I have either diamonds or pearls mind, it’s just that they would both be nice to have. Sigh. A girl has to dream…

Anyway, my pre-ramble was brought on in part by the occasion of my dinner at Pearl Restaurant the other night. I adore Pearl Restaurant. I’ve been there on a couple of occasions, even managing to high-tail it once to the private dining room. My experiences at Pearl in the past have always been thoroughly enjoyable: great food, accomplished service, good company. And befitting a gem of a restaurant, it’s all shiny and sparkling.

Over a million hand-strung pearls dangle along the length of the bar which you must strut past in order to arrive at your table. They shimmer and emit soft flashes of shine in an all too seductive, ‘come hither’ kind of way. The bar is elegance personified: classically beautiful, classy and chic with warm walnut panelling, comfortable leather armchair seating and touches of marble throughout. Walking along this bejewelled path, one can’t help but feel that it would have been rather appropriate to be slinking down in a sexy little black Armani number with killer Manolo Blahniks and some gorgeous little pearls to boot.

Except on this particular occasion of my dinner at Pearl, a restaurant with a modern take on classic French cuisine, I was wearing anything but. More like jeans and a nice sweater. And rather than partaking from the standard à la carte menu (1 course, £32; 2 courses, £46; 3 courses, £54) or the tasting menu (£64), we were merely sampling the 3-course ‘special offer’ that I had secured through Toptable. My experiences of the special offers on Toptable have run the gamut of hits and misses. Actually probably more misses than hits, so it is always with extreme care that I deign to click that cursor on any Toptable special offer. But Pearl Restaurant is altogether in a different league, and chef Jun Tanaka is a wondrous chef with an exquisite touch, having started his career at Le Gavroche and worked at some of London’s other great Michelin restaurants such as The Capital and The Square. Therefore in times of such credit crunch blues, the special offer of three courses with wine for £30 seemed unbeatable value for this calibre of cooking, even if the options were limited to only three choices per course.

Elegance personified, the dining room is an impressive extension of the bar. The hand-strung pearls again adorn this ample space and stunning chandeliers illuminate the ceiling. We started with a sample of delectable amuse-bouches, and moved onto a glorious starter of warm salad of crisp pig’s trotter and marinated veal rump with celeriac and apple. The pig’s trotter was deliciously soft and moist, with the added bite of crunchiness from its crispy crumbed outer coating. Add the multitude of flavours from the velvety smooth veal rump; the gooey, slightly runny centre of the quail’s egg; the fresh, delicate greens and slight sweetness of the apple, and it tasted of textural heaven.

A main of braised beef with celeriac puree and roast roscoff onion was moist, succulent and deeply flavourful, a perfect execution of a braised beef dish. A roasted smoked salmon was prepared perfectly, although the smokiness of the fish was perhaps a little overpowering for the dish. It was accompanied by a scotch egg and a spring onion risotto which was creamy and decadent.

A dessert of pistachio and plum streusel and plum sorbet was simply sensational. A cake of pistachio and plum was both a little nutty and a little sweet from the soft baked fruit. Add the crunchy, sugary, crumbly topping, and it melded perfectly with the moist, buttery cake. Another dessert of poached pear williams in sauternes jelly, milk chocolate mousse and vanilla ice cream was rich and creamy and a definite must for chocolate mousse lovers.

Our 3-courses were then followed by complementary petit fours and fairy floss. It was all rather impressive to see this volume of food, given such a well-priced menu, but more impressive perhaps for wine lovers is Pearl’s comprehensive array of wine choices. Pearl’s award winning wine list houses over 1,400 bottles of wine and also purports to offer the most extensive choices of premium wines by the glass. Pearl utilises a Cruvinet system, which employs nitrogen to expel oxygen from the opened bottles that allow for the over 40 different types of wines by the glass at Pearl to maintain their freshness when opened.

Service was slick, refined and unpretentious. And my friend, she was good company too. So once again, my time at Pearl was thoroughly enjoyable: great food, accomplished service, good company.

Yeah, Pearl’s shiny. What a little gem.

Price - The £30 three course menu was booked through Toptable. Check Toptable for availability. Otherwise £54 for the three course à la carte menu. Excludes drinks and service.

When a restaurant boasts the name of Alan Yau behind it, one cannot help but have high expectations. Alan Yau is the man synonymous with the success of Hakkasan and Yauatcha, both Michelin star holders, and other well-known establishments such as Busaba Eathai, Wagamama and the recently-opened gorgeous Milanese bakery, Princi. Such is his Midas touch, it seems only just to have high expectations when stepping through the door of one of his restaurants. So it was that I went to dinner at Sake no Hana (Flower of Sake) last night, another Alan Yau offering, giddy with the weight of expectation. Add the money of owner Evgeny Lebedev, son of a Russian oligarch, and a location in the heart of Mayfair, and you would seemingly have a blend to induce one huge success story.

But for the privilege of such a pedigree, a monied backdrop and said location, comes a price. Case in point, the beer. £9.50. Yes you read right, nine pounds and fifty pence. Ok, it was good beer, Suntory premium malt (a winner of the Grand Gold Medal at Monde Selection for Three Consecutive Years), and admittedly not a kind you might readily obtain in London. But still: £9.50? It was the same price as my cocktail, the ‘Gandara Dream’ (Kumquats, Diplomatico Reserva rum, Don Julio Silver tequila, Umeshu plum liqueur, almond sugar and green tea), which as delicious as it was, was more ice than drink.

We started with a softshell crab salad with wasabi sauce (£10.50), although we had tried to start with two different scallop dishes: the prawn, scallop and lotus root katsu (£8), and the scallop and spring onion in miso mustard dressing (£8.50), only to be told that both the scallop dishes were unavailable. Huh? It was barely 7pm, and with Sake no Hana’s pricing levels and upmarket persona, this was all too disappointing.

Next we were told that the oysters were also unavailable, so we finally settled on the crab, managing to secure the very last serving, and only because of the sheer ingenuity of the waitress rushing off to reserve this dish with the kitchen before she came back to take the rest of our order.

The softshell crab was delicate and sweet, with a crunchy, crisp batter that was delicious if perhaps a little heavy - heavy in a way that slightly submerged the gentle sweetness of the crab flesh. Another disappointment was that there was only one piece of the small crab. I had hoped for more. A wagyu beef came with a fragrant, delicate mustard sauce and was succulent, if chewy in parts. But it came in at a heady £45 which, although not unexpected for wagyu, seemed exceedingly pricey given the six meagre slices of beef.

A dish of crabmeat wrapped with seabass and yuba (tofu skin) was simply gorgeous, although it was yet again another tiny portion given it was priced at £10.50. Flavoursome and sweet, the two different types of seafood provided a lovely textural contrast, delicate from crabmeat, firm from the seabass. It came with a gorgeous sauce made from dashi stock (Japanese soup stock) and mirin (rice wine).

A dish of braised miso tuna cheek was exceedingly fishy, fishier than one would expect of fresh tuna that it could only lead me to suspect that the tuna cheek was not entirely fresh. Texturally quite meaty, the accompanying sauce was heavy and rich and the combination with the fish rendered an overwhelming aftertaste on the palate. With the added boniness of the tuna cheek where I was forced to constantly pull the bones from my mouth, the dish in summation was all rather difficult to eat.

We skipped the nigiri which starts from £3 a piece and instead went for a delicious futomaki roll (£8.50) which hit the spot nicely. Filled with eel, prawn, egg and other yummy fillings, it provided a wonderful contrast of flavours, and the rice served to fill the tummy after some of the small portions we had so far thus encountered. A wonderful dessert of walnut cruistillante (crisp) (£7.50) also hit the spot nicely. It was creamy and nutty, but subtly so without being too rich or sweet.

Despite my high expectations, there were just a few too many little things about Sake no Hana that niggled, notwithstanding the not-insignificant factor of its pricing and all too small portions. The food was inconsistent. Whilst some dishes shone with intense astute flavours, some didn’t resound with success.

Onto the décor which is trademark Alan Yau. Sake no Hana is slick and modern, with gorgeous high ceilings, and slim wrap-around screens that dress the windows from ceiling to floor. And merging the West with the Orient, there is also a choice of seating between the western style and the traditional Japanese arrangement of tatami mats on the floor, which at Sake no Hana have been adapted for westerners with the low tables dug into the floor so one could dangle one’s legs rather than cross them. But elegant as it may be, it is also a little sterile and uninviting. The bathroom, located two floors down in the basement, could only be accessed with a lift from the dining room on the first floor, inconvenient if you happen to have just missed the lift given that it is rather slow. Finally wine lovers might be in for a disappointment as the wine list is limited to only about a dozen choices, although there is a range of cocktails, sake and top brass champagnes to fill this void.

Sake no Hana is pricey, and on this basis it was hard to be entirely forgiving about all the little niggles. But the upside is the small portions mean you can order more different dishes to try, which is perfect for those who, like me, love to sample different dishes.

Approximate price bracket - £40 to £60 based on four to six dishes between two to share. Excludes drink service.

We had lunch last Friday at Le Pont de la Tour and I was ever so grateful that despite the freezing cold we’ve had to endure thus far this winter, at least this day turned out to be one of lovely sunshine beaming down over London. One of the endearing features of Le Pont de la Tour is that it has secured a prime location overlooking Tower Bridge, and so a sunny day makes for fine viewing indeed.

Le Pont de la Tour at lunch time is a place for the suits, if the attire of those dining at the three other tables at the restaurant were anything to go by. Certainly, it can be enough to make you feel uncomfortable if you are wearing anything but. And the price tag attached to the lunchtime menu (£19.50 to £25 for mains) might warrant most people to only lunch here if they’re on an expense account. I suspect Boris Johnson, Mayor of London, and the three colleagues he was dining with a few tables down would have been doing nothing but. Unfortunately they were seated a little too far away for me to be able to eavesdrop on any noteworthy gossip on the state of London’s affairs that I could share with you. But his presence paved the way for us to spend a good 10 minutes having a nice giggle (oh yes we did) about the sort of shenanigans we could potentially get up to involving Boris that might secure us a spot on the 6 o’clock news and a chance for our 15 minutes of fame.

But back to the more important matter at hand: the food. Sadly we were not on an expense account, so we settled instead on the menu du jour (3 courses for £25).

A smoked haddock omelette with hollandaise glaze was just lovely. A baked omelette, it was runny and soft and warm in the centre, with pieces of flavoursome smoked haddock running through. A celeriac soup with garlic croutons was also gorgeous. It was creamy and rich with an intense depth of flavour that satisfied even the palate of my vegetarian friend who normally finds only disappointment with vegetarian options at restaurants.

My fish main of pave of salmon, wilted spinach and horseradish sauce left me wondering if the poissonier (fish chef) was having a slightly off day. My salmon turned up well done, even though I had ordered medium rare. Conversely, the adjoining table suffered the opposite problem when both patrons sent their salmon back for being underdone and not cooked properly. Clearly not all was quite going according to plan at the fish station. But I couldn’t fault the execution of the sauce. Light, creamy and reduced perfectly, it complemented the fish wonderfully.

Another main of beef and Guinness pie with pomme gaufrettes was satisfying and hearty with a light crispy pastry. A vegetarian papparadelle with wild mushrooms proved bland however and needed more flavouring in the cream-based sauce.

To desserts. There’s always something so wonderfully satisfying about a trifle. Cream, sponge cake and fruit always work well together and our trifle of blackberry and sherry worked very well, thank you very much. But a chocolate tart with mascarpone mousse disappointed due to an unappetising pastry and its miniscule portion size. Similarly, a musetti coffee bean crème brûlée wasn’t quite right texturally, proving too eggy.

Despite the few irks, I was in a forgiving mood since I was only paying for a limited price menu and the fact that it was a sunny day. At full prices I undoubtedly would have been less impressed. But it was enough to demonstrate that there is inconsistency in the standard of the cooking, and enough to make me wary about forking out for a full price menu. In fact, on a previous evening visit, my order of grilled lobster with béarnaise sauce was pleasant, but unspectacular and pricey at £35.

Le Pont de la Tour was formerly part of the Sir Terence Conran restaurant empire and was bought by D and D London, a restaurant group, in 2006, so his designer influence still remains. The setting is refined sophistication with a stiff upper lip; from the crisp, perfectly pressed white tablecloths to the hand drawn pictures of the upper class gentry sporting top hats that line the full breadth of the walls. Service is stiff, and a bit too self important. But then this is a power players’ haunt, and there’s a hard-covered book of serious wines to prove it, with seriously matching prices.

There’s also a simpler, cheaper bar and grill menu at the adjoining, and slightly less formal bar area where in the evenings a pianist plays cocktail tunes. All very dandy, but just be aware of the noise levels which can render conversation a little difficult.

Approximate price bracket - £25 for the three course set menu lunch, otherwise £40 to £60 (based on three courses). Excludes drinks and service.