After a hard evening sampling the best canapés The Ivy had to offer at the launch party of the London Restaurant Festival 2010, Hot Dinners were in need of greater sustenance, so we headed north two streets to the Giaconda Dining Room and scored the very last free table in a packed room on a Tuesday night. Having already scoffed plenty of starters at the Ivy, we went straight into main courses of ham hock breaded hash and a chilli crab linguine, both of which were exac tly what we needed – the hash had been formed into a patty and breadcrumbed, but was delicious and the crab linguine was dense with dark crab meat. Desserts weren’t quite so good – the Eton mess came with rock hard meringue and raspberries rather than the billed strawberries and the crème brulee was a little too lemony.

La Giaconda, as mentioned in the critics' reviews, feels like a real hidden gem - it's hidden away on grotty Denmark Street and is really tiny, but the food is delicious and the waitress very attentive and friendly. The only odd thing was the toilets - you go out through an Alice-in-Wonderland sized door and suddenly you're in a dingy corridor like a student flatshare, with handwritten signs pointing you to a distinctly underwhelming cubicle. I can't fault anything else though. Great steak and really nice fish starter, and they have a long list of specials each day which the waitress had very impressively memorised. She could do with a blackboard..