Poor old Jacques. Yet more proof - if any were needed - that he's well past his sell-by date. Has nobody told him that les rosbifs are doing some great food nowadays, and eating out has become a real pleasure? Here's a handful of fun places we've eaten at in London and the southeast recently.

The Ebury Wine Bar, 139 Ebury Street, London SW1 9QU, 
Tel. 020 7730 5447

Here’s a good address if you need to catch (or meet someone off) a bus at Victoria Coach or Railway Station – both are just around the corner. Its description in the Routiers guide as ‘a London classic that reassuringly doesn’t change’ hardly does it justice. If it hadn’t changed, Jacques would be spot on, the food would be dreary and the wines warm and ill assorted. In fact, the food - described as 'modern European/British' - has come on by leaps and bounds. The set lunch menu at £13.50 offers excellent value for London, with plenty of choice. The wine list features a good selection of fairly priced wines from New and Old worlds, and there are some good choices by the glass.

Amongst our party of 5 we had takers for the rocket salad with pancetta, avocado and a poached egg - an delectable conjunction that I’ve raced back home to try out for myself: picture a bed of peppery rocket cradling a soft-poached egg with crunchy pancetta crumbled on top and soft avocado slices on the side. An iced red pepper soup with tomato and pear worked well too, the pear picking up on the natural sweetness of the peppers. 

Salmon was beautifully (under)cooked with a basil coulis; a dish of crunchy-cooked, spicy Pad Thai vegetables was full of flavour and the al dente, soupy risotto of Jerusalem artichokes with seared scallops the best I’ve ever had bar none (and that includes Verona). Even the lamb cutlets were beautifully trimmed and correctly cooked, pink and delicious. (Jacques probably thinks we still overcook lamb and serve it with mint and vinegar sauce or jam.)

We were expecting a moderate meal in a convenient location. What we got was classy food in sensible quantities (not too copious), served up beautifully and promptly. As I went downstairs to tidy up after lunch I bumped into the chef, taking a brief breather in her cupboard-sized office next to the cupboard-sized kitchen. I told her we'd just had one of the finest lunches we'd eaten in a while, every mouthful a treat. Going back upstairs, I heard her racing through to the kitchen to say to her partners in crime: 'I've just had this extraordinary woman come to tell me that she had a fabulous meal, guys!!' A whoop of delight went up, and she went up a further notch in my estimation - not just a great cook but a good team leader too.

Five lunch menus and a bottle each of Sauvignon and Chardonnay, water and etceteras set us back £149.

The Ledbury, 127 Ledbury Road, Notting Hill, London W11 2AQ, 
Tel. 020 7792 9090, info@theledbury.com, www.theledbury.com

I got into training for the Ledbury – one of London’s latest openings and hottest tickets – by striding up there from Sloane Square. It took about an hour and quarter and by the time I arrived I was well exercised and in just the right mood for a meal. It was my pleasure to be invited by a food critic. He was writing it up, so we were here to work (naturally). 

The young, smiley sommelière proposed a glass of Rheingau Riesling from Georg Breuer – fabulously fruity and complex. We eschewed the lunch menu (£19.50 for 2 courses, £24.50 for 3) and the £55 tasting menu and went à la carte instead, each of us choosing something different to put the chef through his paces (a 24 yr-old guy from Australia). 

It's kind of boring to have to report that my scallops and squid on a bed of aubergine and pesto were faultless, but that's how it was - an extraordinarily good mix of flavours, textures and colours served on a square plate with little fronds of sprouted shiso scattered negligently around. And try as I might, I couldn’t fault the pigeon either: not a Trafalgar Square bird, but poached breast of succulent farmed squab whose pan-fried, fragile-crusted legs were served on the side, all bathed in an intensely well-flavoured consommé. Yum. My host went into a rave about his veal with a shallot jam and toasted almonds.

Lunch for two (I sneaked a look at the bill) with a glass each of Riesling and Zinfandel was £135 – not cheap, but excellent value for money.

La Fromagerie, 2 - 4 Moxon Street (just off Marylebone Lane), London W1U 4EW, Tel & Fax 020 7935 0341

La Fromagerie is not only one of London's best cheese shops (along with Neal's Yard and Paxton and Whitfield), it's also a fabulous spot for a light lunch or brunch. We went there one Sunday morning and the place was heaving with happy punters, families with small kids, visiting French people (Jacques: please note) and local Londoners who'd just been to the Farmer's Market round the corner.

I'm going to factor in brunch the next time I go, and I'm going to have two lightly boiled eggs with soldiers to dip in, and proper coffee (even that's quite common nowadays in London). As it was we were there for lunch and hit the salads: tough choice between rare (rare! in England!) fillet of beef (without a trace of BSE) with Umbrian lentils, roast red onions and infant cherry tomatoes, or white and green asparagus with roast fennel, lemon zest, garlic and herbs or sundry legumes (fava beans, peas,green beans) and courgettes with oven-roasted tomatoes and a minty lemon dressing. 

We shared a 'small' plate of the day's cheesy offerings, which was quite enough for two: two goats (Fleur de Chèvre and Charente-Poitou), three ewes' milk cheeses (Brique du Larzac, Tarn and a Spanish La Mancha), an artisanal Manchego, a friendly little Ami du Chambertin and a blue Fourme d'Ambert, all in perfect condition.

There's no booking, you just fetch up and stand in line. The turnover is brisk so the wait is not usually too long and it gives you time to get chatting to fellow diners and to study the dishes so you have an idea of what you'll order. There's a stammtisch formula: you sit down round a huge refectory table with all kinds of other folk, which is part of the fun. Patricia Michelson, the patronne, knows her stuff and has put together not just a terrific cheese shop where the cheeses are properly aged and served in peak condition, but also a great little eatery. I've lost the bill but from memory we paid around £43 for two luscious salads a couple of glasses of wine and the cheese plate.

The Sportsman, Faversham Road, Seasalter, Whitstable, Kent CT5 4BP, Tel. 01227 273 370

To anyone not familiar with the British eating scene nowadays (Jacques?) The Sportsman is an example of what's known as a gastro-pub – ghastly name, good concept. Instead of the classic smoky, dark-panelled place serving microwaved meals, warm beer and horrid house wines (you can tell how much I love pubs), the gastro-pub aspires to better things. In the Sportsman’s case, they do more than aspire. The place has the right feel to it: scrubbed maple tables, bentwood chairs, menus chalked up on the blackboard, a nice buzz of conversation even at lunch time. 

We went just for antipasti and post-pasti (a.k.a. puddings). It’s a mystery to visitors to our island that although it’s physically impossible to be further than 75 miles from the coast wherever you are in the country, rare is the place that serves a good selection of fresh fish and shellfish. The Sportsman scores here – it’s right nextdoor to Whitstable, one of the few British seaside places with a reputation for its oysters (though they're plentiful all around our coasts). 

The antipasti included – you guessed it – oysters. There were also good salads (lamb’s lettuce – a rarity in the UK), which came properly dressed (another rarity – in Jacques' day you had to ask for vinaigrette/salad dressing which was sweet and gluey and came in a grubby little bottle for punters to apply themselves). The home-smoked mackerel was plump, succulent and lightly salted, the boquerones perfectly preserved and the marinated salmon almost as good as my brother’s home-made gravadlax. Cold meats included jamón Serrano and rosette salami. 

I don’t generally ‘do’ puddings, but at the Sportsman you could just tell by reading the blackboard menu that these desserts really believed in themselves. A warm chocolate pudding/soufflé was briefly baked in a ramekin and came set in a small oval pie dish (the kind most pubs use for microwaved steak and kidney pie). The dish also harboured a generous blob or two of spotty vanilla ice. A trio of rhubarb sorbet with crème brulée and rhubarb coulis was served in glasses of graded heights: sorbet in the tallest one, crème brulée in the middle and the coulis in a short dumpy glass, all three of them lined up on a small tray. Even I (arch-sceptic where puddings are concerned) was convinced. 

Anti- and post-pasti for 3 with a couple of glasses of wine and a beer cost about £45.