One of the most special rooms in town. This Bond villain’s eyrie, formerly the BBC TV Centre, overlooking West London, just happens to host perhaps the best omakase in town, too. Sushi Tetsu heads may contest that particular claim, but sushi master Endo Kazutoshi has certainly turned his 15-seater counter into an equally desirable and equally impossible to reserve piece of real estate. Anyone lucky enough to get hold of one of those will know what to expect at the restaurant proper: best-in-class produce, handled with the precision and finesse of a true master of his craft.

The bill here still hits with the bracing chill of a plunge pool on a hot day, but for the majority of punters that’s kind of the point: for decades now, The River Café has been selling a specific kind of fantasy to everyone who walks through its doors, cultivating a genteel illusion within which, if only for a few hours, it is possible to imagine oneself as yacht rich, Succession rich, £30 pizzetta-on-a-whim rich. It’s a credit to the cooking, the setting and the hospitality that — unlike so many other places with multiple pound signs next to them in the guide books — the eventual pain feels genuinely worth it.

Glitz, glamour, elegance, style, luxury — throw all of the usual fine dining signifiers at Claude Bosi’s 2-Michelin-starred Michelin star and any of them will stick. But unlike many of the restaurant’s similarly-garlanded peers in the capital, CB@B doesn’t feel like an exercise in just playing the hits for a bored, moneyed, fundamentally incurious crowd: the menu reads like a synthesis of the past century of French fine dining, with a keen eye for newer, more innovative techniques as well. The downstairs oyster bar would also go toe-to-toe with any of Paris’ huitreries; the upstairs dining room — gorgeous stained glass tribute to a mascot composed of rubber and all — rivals anything the grandes dames of the City of Lights could produce, too.

Gymkhana has the celebs, Brigadiers has the city boys, BiBi has the all-important buzz. But does Trishna lowkey have the best food of all the Indian restaurants in JKS Restaurants’ proud stable? The opening salvo of snacks and fried stuff marries finesse with a serious whack of chilli heat; chicken, seafood and paneer emerge impeccably blackened from the tandoor to follow; mains run the gauntlet from Southern Indian curries (don’t miss the cashew and pepper chicken) to a selection of the group’s justly famed biryani. There is a “Taste of Trishna” menu available, but the move is absolutely to go à la carte and overorder so dramatically that there’s plenty left over to take away.

Nestled in the leafy surrounds of ultra-moneyed Belgravia is one of London’s most unusual hidden gems. “Hunan isn’t your typical Chinese restaurant,” the website reads, and ordering dinner is pretty atypical, too: simply describe dietary preferences and openness to spice and the legendary Chef Peng will take care of the rest. Also by its own admission, Hunan is something of a misnomer, given the range of regional cuisines that a typical dinner can cover in a dizzying succession of small plates — from Shanghainese xiaolong bao to Cantonese steamed sea bass via Sichuan-style dry-fried frogs legs and a signature bamboo cup soup. Given the location, the prices — for both tasting menu and wine — are a genuine bargain.

Royal China Club remains the city’s gold standard for tabletops groaning with steamer baskets full of dumplings, but for truly the best dim sum in town make a beeline for Andrew Wong’s Victoria terminus. At lunch time, that is: evenings play host to a dazzling multicourse “Taste of China” menu that showcases centuries’ worth of research, filtered through a creativity and sensibility that is still unmistakably modern. Whatever the time of day, A Wong remains one of London’s most singular dining destinations, and reservations are accordingly elusive, so get on it early to avoid disappointment.

The bar and counter downstairs at Sabor are wonderful in their own way, but the true jewel in Nieves Barragan’s crown is the first-floor Asador. Here is one of the few places in London that serves an entire Segovian suckling pig. one of the great delicacies of a country not short on them, served so astoundingly succulent that it is possible to carve the flesh with the side of a plate. An acquired taste for some, perhaps — but what a taste for those in the know. A quarter pig is £42.50 and feeds two handily with a few other bits and pieces from further up the menu beforehand; if scaling up all the way to a full pig (£210), add hungry friends accordingly.

There’s the wine list, of course. A recipient of so many industry awards that at this point, singing its praises further would be pointless. But what occasionally gets overlooked amongst all the cork dork froth is how superbly Noble Rot accommodates a certain kind of genuinely old-school capital-L Lunch. Oysters are present when appropriate, and are beautifully shucked and presented; a quasi-secretive specials board will often conceal jewels in the British crown like langoustines and lobster. Come Christmas, there is always roast goose — a wonderfully Dickensian flourish for a restaurant ideally suited to celebrating high days and holidays alike.

At least every other word on the à la carte menu at Otto’s is one of the keystones of la grande bouffe philosophy: truffles and mushrooms, veal and poulet de Bresse. But true sybarites know to seek out the famed Canard à la Presse. “One Duck, Two Guests, Three Courses” reads the website with admirable if somewhat misleading economy: this is a grand tour of old haute cuisine’s greatest hits, featuring morels, brioche, pommes soufflés, foie gras and black truffle in addition to the main event itself, a whole Challans duck. It costs £180: small beer for such transportive whisking back to a time when Escoffier was still in his pomp.

Over the course of his tenure as head chef there, Shaun Searley has steadily and stealthily transformed The Quality Chop House into one of London’s most unabashedly hedonistic dining experiences. Of course, it’s still possible to pursue a more straightforwardly British meat-n-two-veg approach, but why bother when the alternative is so much more fun, comprising the likes of luxuriant chicken liver parfait draped in shaved black truffle, or confit potatoes propping up steak tartare flavoured in the style of a Big Mac? The by-the-glass Coravin blackboard packs a punch for anyone looking to really splash out; the olive oil ice cream drowning in about ten quid’s worth of Le Coste or Capezzana’s finest probably isn’t all that healthy of a digestif, but rounds things off admirably. If dining at lunch time, do not plan to operate heavy machinery for the rest of the afternoon.

There are, of course, shinier temples to the joy of seafood to be found closer to the heart of the city. But nowhere has the sheer romance of Jeremie Cometto-Lingenheim and David Gingell’s Highbury stalwart; nowhere has the same lightning-in-a-bottle magic of stepping from a cold winter’s evening into such a sparsely beautiful candlelit room. Plus, nowhere has that blackboard — a litany of provocations that only the strongest-of-nerve can resist, from croquettes to small plates to a Stygian baked cuttlefish fideo noodle dish that goes to places the likes of Scott’s could never.