“Are you supposed to eat that?” A Week in Japan

“Are you supposed to eat that?” We’re peering at something poking out of something else covered in delicious tempura batter. My dining companion shrugs and it’s gone. Five minutes earlier, he broke a chopstick vigorously attacking aubergine. Consider this a warning. In Japan, you will turn into a voracious eating machine - only a downside depending on your point of view.

We’re in Kyoto, having first visited Japan two years ago with a packed itinerary. This time, we’ve scaled back to two cities – Kyoto and Tokyo – to sweep up that food and drink we may have missed. We head to Sake Bar Yoramu.

Saying Goodbye: Bitesize London

When I first moved to London six years ago, I was prepared for city living to leave me cold. Or flat, like the headless beer I'd been warned about. I love home in Yorkshire. I love having a large, but close, extended family within easy reach, a big group of friends who’ve never lost touch, and a beautiful landscape that isn’t completely cut off from civilisation. By civilisation I mean more places to drink and dance.

I’ve only come to appreciate over the past few years how lucky I am to have had the childhood I had. However, career opportunities and a handsome Southerner beckoned. It took me six years to make the most of London life, and 2013 so far has been full of it – celebrating K’s 30^th at Sushi Tetsu, watching an open air play in Regent’s Park, rousing a friend from the depths of a serious hangover for a Sunday showing of The Dark Crystal at the BFI, managing to finally arrange a date with said friend and another good pal to eat birthday bone marrow at St John’s.

Then our background plan to live in another country at some point started to actually take shape, and it dawned on both of us that the life we’d been lucky enough to enjoy for a while was about to be fully remodelled on a Michael Jackson’s face kind of scale.

The five weeks between handing our notice in and getting on the plane to China were a blur of fun seeing as many friends as possible – and a pretty good snapshot of what we’re sad to leave behind. My bitesize rundown doesn’t include all my favourite places, but does include cheap eats, expensive cocktails and a tattoo in Soho – sounds like a good London night out to me.

Polpetto: Once Upon a Balmy Summers' Eve

I've had one glass of (overpriced) red wine, and he's had a beer while we watched an intense film at a cinema on Shaftesbury Avenue. It's past 9pm. We're on the hunt for food.

Sniffing, memory-squeezing, wandering. Grub-finding in Soho is harder than it looks sometimes. It's 9.20pm and we're dangerously close to whining, "But we're in Soho! The centre of Lahndahn! The world at our fingertips!" Too much choice and not enough.

No matter, nights like these are what Polpetto are made for. We half-run to The French House. I've been before for work schmoozes (the nice kind where I go somewhere I like rather than the kind where I do any actual work) so I know you cannot book, which makes it perfect for a relaxed, drawn out, accidentally-drink-quite-a-lot-before-you-eat evening.

"Sit down boy, I will handle this one". I install him at the bar and nip upstairs to give the waiter my mobile number. This is so he can ring me when a table is free - I am not a hussy.

You cannot have a pint while waiting downstairs in the French House, however much you cry. And do not make the mistake of assuming the barmaid merely did not hear you ask for a pint and say it louder. They do NOT serve pints, only halves. "I saw Paloma Faith in here once," I tell him again.

He has a half of something. I have a cider, in a glass that looks bigger than a half. It is a weeknight and it is busy, we are lucky to find our seats. It is lovely where we are sat, the big windows are open on to the street, the pub feels cosy behind us. We finish our drinks, argue briefly about me going for a cigarette, then my phone is ringing.

Upstairs, there's room for maybe 25, 30 covers. The tables are very close together, and it feels a little like sitting in someone's attic. Retro, dusty-but-not-really, dimly lit. Previously, I've landed tables next to the windows, looking out at a flag moving lazily beneath, eating lovely food and supping wine. Those tables say 'Yeah man, I live in London and eat here and this is what I do'. This time, we are at a table that says nothing, because you cannot hear it over the conversations of those sat an inch away from you on either side. This is not a problem when you are fuzzily drunk. Sir, a bottle of house red please and thank you.

The menus are the place mats. We peruse the array of Italian small plates. I, having downed a little more wine, am very enthusiastic about the courgette fries. We order a few more dishes too - sweetbread meatballs, a Devon crab dish, something with squid. The food comes as and when it's ready, and I like to eat like this. It's relaxing.

The first two come extremely quickly. Joy! He says the meatballs are over-seasoned. I don't want to concur because this is my recommendation and I like it, but they are. He begins to mumble misgivings about the place being too cool for school. I bat them away and pour more wine.

The two dishes are long gone, and we wait. The wine is disappearing fast. We are deep in alcohol-tinged conversation.

"Oh my god, are you having a little drunk cry? You are tiddled. You're panini-ed!"
"No!" Sniff. "I feel fat."
"I feel you've had too much to drink."
"You should never say that to a lady!"
"What? That's not some well known proverb or saying!"
"Shut up! Shall we have dessert?"
"Stop telling me to shut up, you drunken wench."

We realise our other dishes have not materialised. The waiter comes over and asks if we want the bill, a little surprised we should choose to eat so little. We ask for the rest of what we ordered, then the wine is gone, so we finish our meal with water. It is fine, (except the courgette fries, which are fantastic) and the waiter is nice enough not to mention my drunk face. 

We fall back into the outside world. "Cocktails!" I cry. "No" he says. "You're battered. Not a good idea." But it is too late - the cloud has lifted and I am happy drunk on a summers' eve with no work tomorrow. 

We stumble to Café Boheme two minutes away. We have a cocktail each. I choose the first fizzy one I see. Now he's finished his gin martini, he is well on his way too. "Listen, seriously why do you never do the washing up? Seriously?" I order another cocktail for myself, and a Bloody Mary with gin for him and go for another cigarette. I come back in and he's forgotten about the housework and the barman is smiling at us. We grin inanely back and leave for the tube, boozy and full.

Polpetto, upstairs at The French House, 49 Dean Street, London (approx. £50 dinner for two with wine)

Café Boheme, 13 Old Compton Street, London

TONY'S CONTROVERSIAL BEAN DISH

Welcome to a land where every question is answered with a mistrusting glance, every doubt blown up to the size of a football pitch, and every mistake jumped on and dragged up repeatedly, squeezed for every last dreg of melodrama until there's nothing left but the dry heave of a seasoned bulimic. Welcome (drumroll) to the land of Great British Menu.

I'm being unkind. Welcome to the land of competitive food telly. Hell's Kitchen and Masterchef - I'm scowling at you.

My beef is the heavy editing designed to create drama. Each week, banter between the three chefs competing is reduced to the voiceover explaining why there's tension, the chef vaguely referencing the tension, cutting to a shot of another chef eyeing him across the kitchen while chopping carrots in a sinister fashion. It happens so often per show that these people must have learned to create gastronomic delights without ever looking down. 

I understand that half an hour of chefs silently beavering away on their chocolate tempering is not thrilling TV, but I find the formula repetitive. Their dishes are simple so there's NO ROOM FOR ERROR or their dishes are complicated so HAVE THEY BITTEN OFF MORE THAN THEY CAN CHEW?

Last week, we were battered round the head with poor Philip Carnegie's shortfalls. I'm surprised he didn't run screaming from the building with a pathological fear of ovens after the constant gloating voiceover repeatedly reminded us that "the Michelin-starred chef burnt his oh-so-technical starter and he's new to the competition, what a loser, throw rocks".

Now, I appreciate I'm a total dick to watch TV with. I bloody love reading out the disclaimer small print on misleading adverts, shouting "HA!", and am scathing in a fairly teenage way - an urge to prove I'm not stupid enough to fall for claims of Bifividus Digestivum Bollocksidis and buy loads of yoghurt perhaps - but I don't think it's TV snobbery. 

Shows like Britain's Got Talent and The X Factor (which I watch) do this a lot. The X Factor got so on board with the idea that they used the same cutaway shot of Dannii Minogue's reaction for two different contestants one series, but we don't feel cheated because these shows are big budget pantomime. Doing it on Great British Menu feels like a distraction technique. It smacks of someone not confident in their content, but why? When Tony Singh dumped a tin of Heinz in his main, I was perfectly capable of being faintly surprised without regular roars of "TONY'S CONTROVERSIAL BEAN DISH" through my telly box. Johnnie Mountain's emotion when he made it through to cook for the judges in the North West heat was genuine, no extra frosting necessary.

Maybe it has always been thus, and only now can I see the strings thanks to growing up, or getting a job 'behind the magic'. Yet I still love it and watch it daily. Food porn, huh? Ignore the words and just look at the pictures.

Great British Menu, BBC2, 6.30pm, Monday to Friday

We should have ordered the pizza

Perusing the menu at Zaza in Ruislip, we suddenly noticed how long we'd been sat there. On arrival, our drinks order was taken and produced within five minutes. 40 minutes later, they hadn't returned for the food.

An uncharitable murmur went round the table that it was to do with rinsing us for a higher alcohol spend. I mused whether the delay could have been because the staff knew we'd need hours to read the vast list of meals. Haven't these people watched Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares? The first rule of Eat Club is "Scale it the fuck down". I decided to leave my choice to Restaurant Tourettes and see what happened when the waitress eventually reappeared. Nevertheless, I resolved to drink no more, just in case.

The birthday boy mopped his brow. "Is it me or is it hot in here?" I sipped my wine and surreptitiously sat on a spare napkin to avoid the awkward situations an arse print can cause.

Our girl turned up. One of our party mentioned the temperature. "Oh I know! We've got those windows open behind you, though."

"We just opened those."

"There you go!"

Frowning, we ordered. I privately applauded my mouth's choice of 'Insalata Toscana' - chargrilled chicken and crispy smoked pancetta, tossed with avocado, vine ripened tomato, spinach leaves & wild rocket in a creamy Italian vinaigrette with Parmesan shavings. That'll do, pig.

Birthday boy opened his presents. I shifted around on my seat, preoccupied with my sweaty legs. The meals arrived. "Would you like some black pepper?" Why yes I would. In fact if I cannot be trusted to season my own meal, or equally the professional chef cannot be trusted to season it for me, I'd like you to grind me a little pile of it just on one side of my plate because you can't be bothered to lean over far enough. Perfecto. No, hold the Parmesan, thanks.

A green mountain, now with a volcanic flow of pepper down one side, faced me. Thin slices of avocado wilted sadly. Two rigid slices of salty pancetta looked embarrassed at the abundance of dry and distinctly un-chargrilled chicken covered in white ropes of something with the texture of mayonnaise, but no discernible flavour.

My other half was pushing some flabby Gorgonzola and walnut ravioli around a pool of split sage and butter sauce. He looked uncomprehending at it, then me, with watery eyes. "It's... split?" he whispered sadly. I ordered another wine.

Two chipper waitresses and a harassed-looking manager asked how we were at regular intervals. I remained silent. After the fourth "Everything okay?" and the mumbling had died down, our girl stopped dead, my tellingly still full plate in hand and stared at me. 

"Everything okay?" 

I smiled. "Food okay?" 

She was calling me out! Shit fuck shit, abort abort. I smiled again. She didn't leave. I continued to smile, then made a slightly strangled noise and widened my eyes, juddering my head in what I felt to be slightly encouraging fashion. She left. I flushed with shame.

We settled up. Our sunny waitress left to get the card machine, and returned with an unexpected plate of tiramisu complete with candle. In the minute or so of momentary confusion, her steely eyes locked on mine and unseen, she calmly hissed, 'Sing Happy Birthday'.

I dutifully burst into panicked song.