Jan Moir Are You Ready To Order

Tracking back through the year, these are our favourite dishes of 2008 from home and abroad...Merry Christmas everyone!

Mushrooms - and tremendous trofie @ Bocca Di Lupo, London

The chef thickly slices a few fat porcini, and sizzles them until they are etched with gold. A chunk of sunshine yellow polenta is heated on the charcoal grill. When both are cooked through and piping hot, they are set on a plate. Gossamer sheets of lardo di Colonnata are laid on top, much in the manner of shrouding the family Chippendales in muslin. The lardo clings and melts to the round caps of mushrooms and the edge of the polenta, leaving a ghostly, salty richness in its wake. The result is whimperingly delicious. Also tremendous - the trofie pasta dish, as made by Nick Bell.

Neither are really dishes, both more of an assembly, yet they encapsulate everything that is good about Italian cooking and notable about this new restaurant in Soho.

Salad of Game Birds @ Corrigan's, London

A simple, pitch perfect dish of salad of roast game birds with romesco sauce, just one offering on a dizzying list of over 20 starters. Although billed as a trio of game birds, sometimes four are actually served, depending on what is in season. On our visit, the dish comprised of long, thin ribbony slices of mallard, pheasant, grouse and partridge tossed into a mixed leaf salad dressed with a pungent romesco sauce with its wonderful rubble of hazelnuts and freshly chopped tomatoes. Tremendous! S still believes it to be - along with the terrine at Le Champignon Sauvage - to be one of the dishes of the century. Any century.

Grilled John Dory @ Le Club 55, St Tropez

The menu at this famous beach restaurant in the south of France sticks to a tried and tested range of Provencal or Med favourites. Alongside the crudités and plates of tiny crevettes, there is artichaut vinaigrette, salad nicoise, figues Garibaldi, steak tartare, hamburger a cheval, omelettes, big bowls of salad and the house speciality: a crisp tarte a l’oignon. There is a special selection of wild fish, all sparkling fresh and marvellously cooked. Our favourite was a nice, big St Pierre (John Dory) for two - as white as an iceberg with firm, moist flesh. It is served with delicious potatoes – cut into thin slices, and baked with oil – and a pot of butter sauce.

Fish Stew with Fregola @ L'Anima, London

The delicious food at this upscale new Italian in the city included a dish of wood-roasted aubergine with burrata. The vegetable is scooped from its purple casings after cooking and formed into a smoky mound while on top is a generous portion of creamy burrata cheese - buttery and rich - the best S has tasted. This is finished with a long pour of olive oil, then sprinkled with pepper and parsley and garnished with some roasted cherry tomatoes. A home-made taglioni is perfect in every way, with a dense mushroom sauce and a shaving of summer truffle to add a bit of luxe. Best of all was the fish stew with fregola, Sardinia’s answer to couscous. It is made from semolina and water, rolled into little balls and then toasted. The stew is a mixture of baby octopus, clams, mussels, prawns and squid piled into a tomato sauce that is deepened and enriched with shaved bottarga, then pepped up with a hit of chilli. Tremendous stuff. Honorable mentionfor the pudding of the year; a big, bad cricket ball of dark chocolate iced truffle encasing a globe of frozen chocolate with lots of hazelnut chunks squirreled inside. It is served in a paper bag, in a dreamy explosion of chocolate powder.

Turbot @ O Canastro Gallego, Gran Canaria

This simple restaurant serves clams in a good and gutsy classic sauce – white wine, parsley and a shake of pepperincino – fuel-injected with lots of natural clam juice from the shellfish. Lovely cigala are split down the middle and tossed on the plancha with a few slivers of garlic. Octopus on Spanish territory always seems to have more flavour than the stuff we get at home; here it is prepared in traditional Galician style - boiled, then with the slices of tentacle dusted with paprika. No wooden board, but no complaints either. Best of all is the magnificent turbot; a single portion comprises a large piece of fish cleaved in two across the central bone, seared on the plancha and finished off in the oven. This is perfection; the best way to cook this lovely, wild gelatinous fish. The chefs use garlic like maniacs, but even with the turbot it never overwhelms and they know the secret of cooking this robust fish in a robust way. With a green salad, a hunk of crusty bread and a glass of crisp Albarino, this is lunch heaven.

Spring Lobster Salad @ The Ritz, London

The spring menu at the Ritz was particularly aluring this year. On the a la carte there was salad of asparagus with croquette of lamb sweetbreads, gribiche puree and new season almonds; five spiced duck with grapefruit confit, vol au vent printanier, cardamom and coffee jus; fillet of beef with brisket and broad bean tart, braised baby onions and horseradish sabayon; tart fine with caramelised banana, caramel mousse and rum and raisin ice cream. Yet nothing could top their beautiful native lobster salad.

To begin with, it had beautiful, crunchy tail meat, and lots of it. The sweet, juicy shellfish was served with a clear, golden jelly studded with tiny broad beans and peas. Slivers of baby carrot added texture. It was a work of art in every way; divine to look at and to eat.

Bocca Di Lupo, 12 Archer Street , London W1D 7BB . Tel: 020 7734 2223.

Corrigan’s Mayfair , 28 Upper Grosvenor Street , London W1K 7EH . Tel: 020 7499 9943.

Le Club 55, Plage de Pampelonne, Boulevard Patch, 83350 Ramatuelle, France. Tel: 0033 (0) 494 555555.

L’Anima, 1 Snowden Street, Broadgate West, London EC2A 2DQ.Tel: 020 7422 7000.

O Canastro Gallego, Puerto Chico, San Agustin, Gran Canaria. Tel: 928 774274.

The Ritz Restaurant, The Ritz, Piccadilly, London W1. Tel; 020 7493 8181.

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