I am very fortunate in that I eat out a lot. Generally at the same places, and generally I don't bother to review them (other than on the incredibly rare occasion that I find myself in an absolute, howling dog of a restaurant).

But last weekend I had such a superb blow out at the Peruvian restaurant Pachamama that I have to spread the word. It's in a tardis-like basement in Marylebone, blink and you'd miss the entrance. The interior is full of mismatched lights and pot plants and could be mistaken for a student pad. The natural habitat for many of the customers - there are lots of hats, tats, beards and piercings. Which didn't auger well for someone such as myself who is as crusty as a month-old loaf of Hovis.

But the food was outstanding. Dishes are to share, we were told to order about three each. We had six. It tasted even better than it looked, and it looked phenomenal:


Stand out for me was crispy belly of lamb with an arse-burning amount of jalapeno, slow cooked rib of pork with white asparagus and fried aubergine with smoked yoghurt. Four of us sampled pretty much everything on the menu and didn't have a single duff dish. And a shout out to our waiter Fabien, who was outstandingly knowledgable, helpful and unflappable despite racing around like a chimp on speed.

Go for cocktails rather than wine. We had gin martinis made with macerated capers rather than olives before dinner, lots of pisco sours during, and some fantastic old fashioned infused with the smoke of some amazonian wood after.

Probably more of a dinner place than a lunch place, it's very noisy, they turn tables, the bar gets very full very quickly. Go anyway.