Hand pulled noodles at Greenwich Market

You can spend £150 on a massive nosh-up in a Michelin-starred restaurant but it doesn't offer the unique joy of finding a hidden gem. An extremely cheap hidden gem. One of many food stalls down at Greenwich Market, this one caught my attention following the demise of a favourite hand-pulled noodle restaurant, Oodle Noodle (or is it Noodle Oodle) at the arse end of Oxford Street amongst the shit leather shops.

The actual stall itself offers chicken, pork and duck either in soup or with rice as well as dim sum that maybe I'll try next time. The soups vary from spicier offerings to more savoury broth-based ones for nonces like me.

I had the char siu soup and the noodle man quickly got to work, cutting off a section of quite wet dough, lobbing some flour around and rolling it into a tube and proceeded to work his magic. I nearly wrote "wok his magic" there but it would have been particularly twattish.



These noodles were dumped into hot water along with some pak choi, some char siu rapidly cut up and a darkish stock thrown over the top. £4.50 please. I have great pleasure in saying, in my limited noodle opinion, that the whole thing was wonderful. I am still amazed that you can get noodles from a blob of dough in about 3 minutes. They were very good - firm but definitely not mushy. The char siu portion was overly-generous, the pak choi retained a crunch and this all sat in a really intensely savoury - maybe even too savoury! - broth.



I am really struggling to think of anything better in London in terms of value of money and a satisfyingly full belly. It's just a shame they don't operate at weekends. I ate at 12.30 and by the time I'd got to the bottom of the bowl the queue was about 10 deep. Deservedly so. I'm sure if I do a saddo Nick Hornby-style "Top 5" at the end of the year that this will be in it. 9.

As an addendum, I also had some very nice chicken karaage from a nearby stall. Re-fried seemingly to order, it was crisp, hot and still really tender and moist in the middle. Two triumphs in one day.

The Gurnard's Head, nr Zennor, Cornwall

A five day tour round Cornwall taking in various sights and smells. Nathan Outlaw's grill where we paid £25 for a very nice, but small portion of sea-bass (that's two stars for you), the shits after some bad mussels (stand up, Sam's, in Fowey and take a bow), but two meals really grabbed me.

Stayed one night in the Gurnard's Head - an old pub/inn that was rough around the edges but served up as near as dammit the best meal I've had all year. Staff were friendly, atmosphere was welcoming, beds were comfortable - food was bloody brilliant. Why can't more stays away from home be like this?

Started wih a sea-bass ceviche - sweet with tomatoes and mangoes which initially I thought might end up a bit odd but was a hands-down success. Friend had a crab cannelloni starter that was packed with gusty brown meat in an equally gutsy crabby sauce. The main course thought was the killer - spring lamb done two ways with braised gem lettuce, broad beans and roasted "cocotte" potatoes (new one on me). Christ, I almost made a decent photo of it:



Very clever little cake of braised shoulder meat - dense, well-seasoned, to go alongside the lamb cutlet. I'll flag it up as my favourite meal of the year so far. You can bollock on about simple produce well cooked but this was the case. I wish I could remember what my dining companions had. I can't.

Dessert was a solid (not literally) apricot and almond tart. Dinner, bed and breakfast was about £120 per room. The breakfast was smashing, too - some of the best smoked bacon I've had and proper chunks of portabello mushroom that hadn't had the moisture whacked out of them from overcooking.

Oh for more places like this around the country. 8. Or even a 9.

The Fisherman's Arms, Plymouth

"It's where the locals eat" said the bloke who ran the Plymouth guesthouse we stayed in ahead of a wedding down in Newquay. Plymouth, in places, is simply Bracknell-on-Sea. A 1950s/1960s urban apocalypse thanks to the friendly Mr Hitler.

We traipsed through the town and were happy to find some nicer scenery down by the sea, and then wandered back with foreboding to a shit housing estate that housed the Fisherman's Arms. Thankfully the inside was wonderfully modern but inviting and where I discovered St Austell's Trelawney bitter that accompanied me at many of the pubs throughout the trip.

Friendly barmaid gave us our menus and we had a charcuterie board to share - slathered with chorizo, bread, olives and what appeared to be a rose veal carpaccio. Mains were nothing short of enormous and impeccably cooked. The portion of mussels (cooked in cider and cream) was gargantuan. Really. Another platter of mixed fish on olive oil mash in a creamy sauce was wonderfully presented - and stupidly generous.

I went boring and had fish and chips. Yeah, shoot me down. But it was good: very, very good. Seriously thin, crispy batter, obviously fresh fish and some chunky, obviously multiply-cooked chips. The waitress asked me if I was vegetarian as the mushy peas came with bacon. Inspired. Smoky, mushy peas to go against the cod. Inspired. Did I say that already? Crap picture alert, I'll probably change it in due course to the prettier main courses the other folks had:



We almost went somewhere better-looking on the outside: apples and skins and all that. Great fishy start to the holiday. 8.