It’s better than that. I feel like Chief Bromden at the end of Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest. Bromden is the Native American narrator whom the last page of the novel finds loping across the grounds of the mental asylum from which he has just escaped, planning on heading north, maybe taking a last look at the Old Country, declaring with elegiac obviousness: “I been away a long time.”

And in the meanwhile, restaurants have been opening, closing, changing hands, changing menus, swapping the soap fragrance in the ladies’ loos, and you have not had me here to guide you. How on earth did you manage?

I hope you didn’t go to Cecconi’s. Ye gods, what a turkey. The famous Italian joint in Mayfair has been bought and revamped and, to the naked eye, looks marvellous. But to the naked palate, a horror, darling. I’ve been twice and had shonky service, terrible food and eye-watering bills. But seeing how well the nearby and quite awful Cipriani is doing with the moneyed old goats of Mayfair, it’ll probably be a roaring success.

Dine, on the other hand, is a joy. It’s a couple of elegant little rooms squished higgle and piggle down a narrow street off High Holborn, and on a Monday lunchtime not long after opening was already pretty full. That would be because the chef is a chap called Thomas Han and comes from Roussillon, the little Pimlico diamond about which I have raved many times, and he is bloody good.

Open ravioli of big fat Burgundy snails, Yorkshire mallard with sautéd figs and a spanking saddle and leg of Lincolnshire rabbit demonstrated perfectly how to elevate “cuisine paysanne” to something posher, without losing one’s way in perfumed poncery. And if the meat cooking fully repaid the effort made to seek out interesting animals, then in the dandelion salads, fondant turnips, “first autumn roots and quince” and “Isle of Wight tomatoes confit” one saw instantly the hand of Alexis Gaultier, Han’s former boss at Roussillon and the best vegetable chef in London.

And then there was Leon. The revolutionary, wholesome “fast food” shack off Carnaby Street has spawned a second manifestation, this time a more restauranty type of a place at Ludgate Circus. They still bang out the GI-friendly, free-range, grass-fed, organic stuff in boxes down burger chutes for about a fiver a pop at lunchtime, but now with the option, after dark, of eating off china plates with knives and forks. How grown-up is that? And there’s music and booze and fresh pomegranate martinis now and everything. I love Leon and want its children.

I thought I would love Roast, too. Such a great name. Such a great location (hovering like the Starship Enterprise over Borough Market, the food-shopper’s Mecca). And, in Iqbal Wahhab of the Cinnamon Club, such a great restaurateur. But, my word, what a howling dog of a restaurant. You want to take it out and shoot it just from compassion.

For a start, it does not look like its name suggests it might. I was dreaming of flagstone floors, open fires, moody lighting and cosy, wintry meatiness, but instead it is part River Café, part Brighton Pavilion, and feels cold and unwelcoming – although that is mostly the staff’s fault. “Useless”, “ignorant” and “rude” are not the words. But I’m not allowed to write the words, so they’ll have to do.

After a couple of lovely Black Sheep ales at the bar (in keeping with the “everything British” mentality of the place), we sat down, and as we did so I noticed half a bottle of wine standing undrunk on the next table, which had been vacated but not cleared. Furthermore, it appeared to be a bottle of Brunello di Montalcino, my favourite Italian red by some distance. And best of all, it was the 2000 – the most recent vintage to come on the market and a rare opportunity, I felt, to taste a slug of something before deciding whether to lash £50 on a bottle. A passing waiter felt otherwise.

For as I reached over to pick up the bottle, turned it in my hand to verify exactly what I was drinking, and went to pour myself a drop, he grabbed, literally grabbed, the bottle from my hand. Was he going to help me pour? Was he hell.

“That’s for the staff!” he barked, clasping the bottle to his chest. I was speechless. I don’t know what the etiquette is on dead wine at adjacent tables (I am tempted to suggest some variant of “finders keepers”), but I know what the etiquette is on waiting tables. And grabbing things from people’s hands and barking at them ain’t it.

I gawped. I goggled. Words failed. “Can I at least taste a drop?” I asked. “No!” he said, scowling. Worse than that, the grasping, indolent toad made absolutely no effort to clear the rest of the table so that once he was back in his lair, nursing his precious bottle like Gollum, the dirty glasses and stained napkins remained for half an hour, mocking us, until I myself stacked them up and took them to the kitchen.

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