There's the new Pope, Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, of course. Then there's Lionel Messi, who year after year is advancing his claim to be called the greatest footballer in history. And these guys – conquistadors of Catholicism and the world's favourite game, respectively – are as almost nothing compared with Sergio Martinez, the astonishing middleweight boxer who is being talked of as the best in the ring since Sugar Ray Robinson.

For a restaurant to survive in a prime location for a decade or two, it must be doing something right. Or at least doing something OK-ish with lots of charm and a happy way with its regulars. Christopher's is one such – a Theatreland fixture which by virtue of hanging on in for 22 years, now counts as one of London's grand old-stagers. Founded by Tory scion, Christopher Gilmour, and splendidly housed in a handsome Covent Garden mansion, Christopher's specialised in American-style dining – lobsters, burgers, steak and the like – at a time when that kind of fare was the exception in London rather than the rule.

I finally find the place, beyond the Bevis Marks synagogue, in a security-gated courtyard. And it's completely empty. I call David. He's a few streets away, in another kosher restaurant – also called Bevis Marks – where he's ordered a drink, eaten a piece of bread and counted at least three women wearing sheitels.

"You're kidding aren't you?" she replied. "You look up in the air…"
"I'm not asking the location of the Shard," I said coldly. "I want to know how to get into your restaurant without paying the building's £25 entrance fee."
"No problem," she said, "You just go down the escalator, to find the lift."

It's all ups and downs, getting to Oblix. You stand gawping up at what seems like several thousand miles of shiny steel (about as welcoming as a medieval fortress) before heading for the entrance. Three doormen murmurously discover your intentions, and whisperingly suggest you take the escalator, then ask (discreetly) at the bottom.Downstairs, you find three more laconic bouncers who (hesitantly) direct you to the third of three doors. Yet another doorman inscrutably directs you to the lift, which whizzes you up 32 floors at warp-factor 19…

So it is with mixed feelings that I approach the Diner, a two-year pop-up in London's West End. Jamie Oliver jumping on two bandwagons at once (ouch!) – that of the pop-up and of the haute burger/hot-dog movement – could be simultaneously bad news for my dining pleasure and good news for my critical eye.

A manager stands, tapping at a plinth-mounted iPad, like a synth-pop artist on a late-Seventies edition of Top of the Pops. He looks up briefly, then returns to his screen with renewed focus. What can he be doing? Sending an email? Updating Facebook? Bashing out the instrumental break to "Vienna"? Finally, reluctantly, he tears his eyes from the screen to deal with the couple, who no longer feel like Fred and Ginger, but more like Fred and Rosemary West.

Clement Heaton, James Butler and Robert Turnill Bayne eventually became influential far beyond London, having inserted their work in Westminster Abbey among other places. Something of their early workshop has been retained in the sparse white brickwork and minimal furnishings of the restaurant that has now opened here. The site used to be known as The Forge, also owned by Siegler, and is part of a renaissance of sorts in the area: Polpo, Opera Tavern, Meat Market and Mishkin's have all opened up around Covent Garden in recent years to a warm reception.

Now Nina's a world-famous casting director with her own empire while Spud U Like has almost disappeared. So imagine my delight at hearing about The Potato Merchant, a new spot in London's Clerkenwell specialising in spuds in all their glory. On a recent Saturday I took Mr M and Miss T along for a late, leisurely lunch.

During opening week, the here-be-dragons territory at the scruffier end of Tower Bridge rang to the keening of disoriented restaurant critics and bloggers, whose desperate attempts to be first through the doors of Story were endangered by their inability to find it.

Located on the North Devon coast, it's just past a place called Croyde, which may sound like one of the departments in hell, but is in fact full of gorse and thatched houses. You get to these villages via Barnstaple, where a new bypass – big news in the South-West, bypasses – has cut a good 45 minutes out of the journey time from anywhere south or east. Georgeham has a beautiful church, summer festivals, a glorious beach where the surfing is good three minutes away, and two pubs.

A shameless interest in the fortunes and physiognomies of the rich and beautiful does, however, draw the rest of us to the French Riviera from time to time; just as the fleshpots, cocktails and topless bathing in Cannes and San Tropez attracted our parents' generation. And since Monte Carlo is currently celebrating 150 years of posh-gambler style, we thought we'd help by visiting the best hotel in town.

What a difference a few years and a gazillion-pound regeneration programme can make. With its street-food market and open-air performance space, its buffed-up warehouse quartier and performing arts hub, King's Cross is now an area to travel to, not through. The opening last year of a dramatic new concourse brought the train station into line with its swanky hinterland. And now the next phase of its transformation is unveiled – the rebirth of the Great Northern Hotel, a Victorian survivor, connected to the new concourse on the St Pancras side, which has stood derelict these last dozen years.