1. THE LIGHT FANTASTIC
Food tastes better and wine floods your senses more spectacularly when there are windows around. I can't explain why. Eating lunch while sunlight pours through the glass both lifts your mood and stimulates your taste receptors. Even if it's raining outside, natural light releases little bombs of serotonin inside you.
Dining at night in a curtainless eating house, you can enjoy the twinkle and bustle of the street life outside.
Eating in a basement, however glamorous or sexily candle- lit, doesn't give your gustatory equipment a chance to shine. Basements are for getting drunk in, for scheming and uttering furtive propositions; they're inimical to the full enjoyment of a good meal.
2. SIMPLICITY
Restaurants used to be shrines to immaculate taste: white damask napery, cut glass, burnished silver serving dishes, opulent creamy drapes, Sabatier cutlery ...
Today, we suspect eating houses that come on like
shrines. Simple decor is best. Exposed wood and brickwork, original beams and industrial joists are imaginatively pressed into service in new restaurants.
3. A BIT OF A BUZZ
Restaurant reviewers award points for ambience, and
every diner-out knows the value of a little noise with your meal. I don't mean the effortful badinage of theatrical Italians in upscale trattorias. I mean some good music (a bit of The Killers, a soupcon of KD Lang)
played quietly and unobtrusively, and a buzz of easy conversation, the kind conducted by people who know they aren't being overheard.
Beware the restaurant where silence rules and the
tables are so close together that, by the end of the first
course, you know more about your neighbour's yeast infection than you really should.
4. WAITERS WHO KNOW WHAT'S IN THE SAUCE
You don't ask much from the serving staff. You want them to notice you when you arrive, bring you cutlery, bread, water and a wine list, and not leave you sitting there unattended, like babies in high-chairs.
You hope they will ham up, ever so slightly, their delight that you've chosen to eat there. You hope they'll know what each dish consists of, what's in the sauce, whether the bread contains nuts, and that they
can explain what mirepoix (or any other unfamiliar words on the menu) mean.
At the end of your meal, you'd like them to clear everything away without remarking on your failure to eat more than half the main course (Are you sick or something?).
5. COMPREHENSIVE MENUS
Unless you're in a specialist Hungarian/Eritrean/Japanese/ Jamaican/Brazilian or fish-only establishment, a restaurant should offer - either among the starters or the mains - some concoctions of
beef, lamb, pork, duck, chicken, venison, game birds, on-bone fish, filleted fish, crab or lobster, plus a vegetarian dish. Anything less than that shows they're not really trying. And they should have a soup, and a cheese board, by which they would be happy to have their reputation judged.
6. THE WAY MAMA MADE IT
One vital sign of a good restaurant is its commitment to the home-made: in-house pasta and bread, made-on-the-premises minestrone, pies, puddings, sauces and tarts.
When you're offered a bread basket whose contents - bacon focaccia, black-olive-studded rolls and slabs of oniony bap - have come straight from the bread oven, you know you're in good hands.
7. CHATEAUX CHEAPO
Every wine list will have its own character, its show-off 1982 clarets and New World exotica. The quality sommelier shows his skill by his choices at the lower end of the scale.
Finding a cheaper house white wine that doesn't strip
the enamel from your teeth is a marvellous thing. Best of all, though, is finding a place where every single wine on the list is available by the glass.
8. FINDING A BIG STEAK
Sometimes you're just too starving, too hungover, too irritable or too macho to feel like weighing up the delights of the Confit of Duck with Cherries or the Sea Bass with Braised Fennel. You body cries: Gimme a big rib-eye with fries right now! Some restaurants
have realised this simple fact about the urgent requirements of hypoglycaemic men (and women) and adjusted their menus accordingly. They deserve our warm gratitude.
9. THE JOY OF PUDDINGS
One of the delights of becoming a restaurant critic is the discovery - after years of waving away the dessert menu - of how much imagination goes into modern puddings. Once you've tried a few - chocolate fondant, apple creme brulee, raspberry panna cotta and pear
crumble with custard - you realise they're the truest indicators of a chef 's creativity.
10. CAN THE SERVICE CHARGE
A good, responsible restaurant does not impose a service charge, either mandatory or optional. It leaves it to the patron to reward their waiter/ waitress with a suitable gratuity. Or not, of course, if they didn't try very hard.