As this is the gardening issue, what I am going to do is not so much write a review, as plant one. I’m starting with a cutting, though, rather than a seed. I am far too impatient for seeds.

The cutting is taken from one of my very favourite restaurants, the Anchor and Hope, which is located, appositely enough, in The Cut. I like it, but it’s a long way away. It’s too big now to move it from Waterloo, but if the cutting takes root and grows happily, we should end up with something very similar to the Anchor and Hope in a much more propitious location. For Great Queen Street (the restaurant is named after the street on which it stands) is not only two miles nearer my North London home than the original, but is located, serendipitously, in the Garden of Covent.

It shares most of its owners with the Anchor and Hope, there are some familiar staff, the same sort of menu… indeed, if the mother plant had a single weakness, it was that one could not book tables, and this weakness has been bred out of the offshoot, so it could do better still.

But first, before planting, I must prepare the ground. And the first thing to do is to clear out rocks and pebbles, weeds and any existing plants that might compete for nutrients, water, sunlight, etcetera.

Three other restaurants I visited recently might be considered to have prior claim to the earmarked plot – to whit, this column – but I have to make space for GQS somewhere, and so I am now going to pull them out and discard them. Gardening can be a ruthless business.

The first is Banners in Crouch End. Caitlin Moran took me there (you know her: funnier than me and just as pretty, but will insist on posing for her byline photo with a TV remote control in her mouth) because she thought I would approve of the way they charge 15p per glass for tap water, passing the money on to Wateraid. And I do. It is an opt-out scheme that has been running since March 2005, and out of which only one person has ever opted. One hopes he subsequently drowned.

Caitlin booked us into the table at which, it is claimed, Bob Dylan once sat. It is certainly marked with a plaque. But as far as I can make out, Bob did not sit in it for long. It is said that when told that Banners’ licence forbade them from serving alcohol without food, his agent intervened, saying, “Don’t you know who this is?” The waitress said she did not – I guess the plaque wasn’t there then – and off Bob toddled. Not even one more cup of coffee ’fore he went.

Other interesting things about Banners include the availability for sale of individual cigarettes at 30p a pop, and a great enthusiasm for children. I assume the two are not related. Caitlin had a mezze plate that she ate some bits of, and I had ackee and saltfish which was… well, it’s a great water policy anyway.

Now, Franklins. You know those shrubs you put in sometimes in a dodgy spot in the garden, hoping they won’t mind, and they look very miserable for a season in their dark little corner and you feel really bad for them, and then you look at them one day and suddenly they’re doing fine? Well, Franklins is like that.

Itself an offshoot of a restaurant in Dulwich, it opened last spring on an island between two scary dual carriageways in Kennington, and since my girlfriend Rachel lives just across the road (one which you cross by waiting for the green man, holding hands, and then getting into a taxi) we obviously gave it a try.

It had a lovely seating space out back, a nice airy feel, friendly staff and very enticing menus. We were terribly excited (like when the shrub looks great on the label). But then the food came at a funereal pace, and was terrible – fridge cold starters and lazily reheated mains. Hoping it had been an aberration (sometimes rot can be treated very easily) we went back and had the same experience. And then again. And so we gave up.

Then, the other week, we tried again (like all gardeners, gluttons for punishment) and this time I was berated by the owner for having ignored his restaurant in a recent Kennington round-up. It is always odd when owners do this, because the only reason I ever don’t write about places is that they weren’t very good. And if your restaurant is not very good, then why would you want me to tell people?

I explained this, and then we had a great meal: light crispy crab beignets with fresh dressed crab and blobs of avocado and laces of lovely light, pickled cucumber; juicy little quail with rocket and olives; a gorgeous chunk of brill with hollandaise on wild garlic (good use of its brief season) and still the lovely service and secluded al fresco thing. So, yes, a shrub saved. And great value two-course lunches, too, at £11.50.

Finally, Cheyne Walk Brasserie. After Kennington and Crouch End, a Chelsea Flower Show of a restaurant. I reviewed it when it was still called La Chaumière, and quite liked it. But now I like it even more. I went for an end-of-season dinner with my Fives Club to celebrated promotion to the First Division for the first time in 25 years, and had a brilliant night.

In the main restaurant all was palely decorated and subtly lit, still with the magnificent central grill as a focal point, and stuffed with a youngish local clientele. Tucked out of harm’s way on our table of 12, we ate beautiful, sweet, plump mounds of salmon tartare with capers, grilled tail end of rump, grilled organic chicken, blinding gratin dauphinoise, and then very good puds (chocolate fondant with tonka seeds, big crèmes brûlées, prunes in spiced wine).

It’s really a top local joint, of the sort you wouldn’t expect round here. The other lads told me to say how gorgeous the waitresses were but, really, I didn’t notice.

So, right, with those three cleared out to make way, there looks to be room to dig a hole about 250 words deep for GQS. Not that it needs it. Already it looks like the best opening of the summer by miles. There’s very little for an old hack gardener like me to do. The place plants itself.

It’s amazing, the fuss people make about opening restaurants. The multimillion-pound refurbs, the celebrity consultants, the press kits, the gimmicks, the let-me-explain-how-the-menu-works… And then you walk in here, a couple of weeks after opening and you laugh, because these boys have the magic. The green fingers. They make it look so damn easy.

It’s just a long red room, with a long wooden bar, lots of wooden tables, laid-back, knowledgeable, efficient, sexy service and fantastic, properly soulful food (the celebrated food writer Tom Norrington-Davies, a co-owner of GQS, joins the Anchor and Hope team seamlessly).

There were sweetbreads with sautéed turnips and bacon and morels, all creamy and rich; a lovely clear broth of beef and wild garlic, nice and simple; duck gizzard, radish and foie gras salad; seven-hour lamb shoulder and gratin dauphinoise for 4 at £52; and cuttlefish with butter beans and aïoli.

Best of all was “Hereford beef” followed by a colon, a new margin, and then that animal offered as rump at £16, or rib for two at £40, each with chips and béarnaise, and then as steak and kidney pie for two at a piffling £28. Lordy, the pie was dense and rich and complex with a soggy-crunchy suet cover that knocks the Sistine chapel off top slot for divinely inspired roof-making.

As if being a bookable version of the Anchor and Hope were not enough (and it is), GQS opts to take delivery of a whole beef carcass each week from a favourite farmer, one Tom Jones, and work through it over the following seven days: sirloins, rumps, ribs, burgers, steak pies, beef broth…

From this acorn a mighty oak tree will surely grow, whether you go and water it or not. But do yourself a favour, go give it a sprinkle.

Great Queen Street

(020-7242 0622)

Meat/fish: 10

Cooking: 9

Green fingers: 9

Score: 9.33

Water: 6 (tap, Hildon, Portuguese fizzy)

Price: £35 a head will feed and water you handsomely.

Banners

21 Park Road, Crouch End, N8

(020-8348 2930)

Franklins

205-209 Kennington Lane, SE11

(020-7793 8313)

Cheyne Walk Brasserie

50 Cheyne Walk, SW3

(020-7376 8787)

E-mail feedme2@thetimes.co.uk if you know somewhere good, and maybe we’ll go there.

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