Restaurants

Le Colombier, Chelsea, London SW3

Bridge Tea Rooms, Bradford-on-avon, Wiltshire The Secret Garden, Faversham, Kent

One of the defining characteristics of the first restaurants in Paris in the mid-18th century was the proliferation of mirrors.

They enabled young counts to feast on the downward reflection of young ladies, as they sipped their ‘restaurant’, the restorative broth which got the whole show on the road. The old brasseries in Paris continue this tradition of ogling.

Vain as I may be, I find them incredibly irritating: either my beautiful wife spends the entire dinner studying how she laughs, smiles, eats and frowns, or, if I am facing the mirror, I am told off every five minutes for looking at myself. Occasionally, they have the delightful benefit of enabling spying on other punters, but I always stare too long and get caught in the act.

So there I was at lunch with writer Joseph Connolly and editor Harry Mount, faced with my elephantine reflection in the enormous, mirrored wall at Le Colombier, the most French restaurant in London. And France. Were it not for the fact that Joseph, Britain’s last musketeer, has the most enticing visage in London, I would have been forced to watch myself consuming every bite of the Breton sardines, cod with lentils, and too-cold Brie.

I was spared this horror because I was desperate to get up close and personal with the wonders of Joseph’s beard – think Edward Lear crossed with Athos – which even has its own passport. It has such beautiful manners that it never lets any food get caught in its long tresses; it even forbade Joseph from hiding his overdone steak within them.

The terrace is the perfect venue for a musketeer to while away an afternoon sipping a bottle of 2010 Ormes de Pez (for only £65) before re-scabbarding his epée and taking his beard for a tincture in the garden of the Chelsea Arts Club.

I suffer from a lifelong despair with the British tea room. Memories of miserable Sundays out from my prep school in

Dorset engulf me: no one knowing what to say, and then the unimaginable horror of the arrival of Maitland-titterton and his unfeasibly attractive and dignified parents, who served only to amplify what I saw as the ill-kempt flea circus that were my own.

I was never convinced of the joys of cream on a scone until my daughter, Honor, took me to the 16th-century Bridge Tea Rooms in Bradford-on-avon. Cute isn’t the half of it: Mrs Tiggywinkle, in her mob cap and apron, opened the door to her low-ceilinged Hobbit home with its harp music. We went upstairs past the table of delicious cakes, wisely choosing the coffee and walnut in mid-ascent. Through the little windows, we could see the Blind House on the famous bridge, where until recently drunkards were kept.

Rolling from the success of this visit, I strode with my new-found confidence into the Secret Garden tea room in the Standard Quay of pretty Faversham, on the day of their annual hop festival, in the first weekend of September. Again, there were prize-winning cakes and extremely helpful staff. A few oldies were enjoying a late full English, while others were reading newspapers, limbering up for the onslaught of strange ales. I will take Mr Connolly there next September. Together with his beard to catch the froth.

Le Colombier, 145 Dovehouse St, London SW3 6LB; tel: 020 7351 1155

Bridge Tea Rooms, 24a Bridge St, BA15 1BY; tel: 01225 865537

The Secret Garden Café, Monks Granary, Faversham ME13 7BS