Sheekey tops the bill

Josef Sheekey must be grinning in his grave. J Sheekey, the French fish restaurant that the market stall holder opened in St Martin's Court in 1896, has topped the list of London's most talked-about restaurants in Harden's 16th annual restaurant guide.

It's the second year running that this favoured haunt of Sienna Miller and Victoria Beckham has topped the list.

What's more, this year's top 10 - exclusively revealed to the Evening Standard prior to publication on 29 August - shows Londoners turning away from novelty en masse and returning to tradition, comfort and good Gallic cooking.

The fashionably Japanese and minimalist Nobu, number seven on the list last year, is nowhere to be seen. The Oxo Tower, where the view is said by some critics to be often better than the food, has also dropped out of the top 10.

In their place are La Poule Au Pot, the cluttered and cosy Pimlico brasserie that first opened its doors in 1962, and Andrew Edmunds's Soho spot, which has occupied the same basic dining rooms since 1983. Theatreland favourite The Ivy (founded in 1917) may have dropped four places to number seven but Bleeding Heart, a classic Frenchstyle outpost in the heart of the City since 1983, stays at number six.

The fact that Alan Yau's Hakkasan is now the only oriental restaurant on the list, and that the newest restaurant in the top 10 is the threeyearold Wolseley, shows London has fallen back in love with simple French cooking. The other three places in the top 10 are taken once again by Gordon Ramsay's restaurants at Hospital Road and Claridge's, and another cosy French place, Chez Bruce in Wandsworth.

Richard Harden, co- editor of Harden's guides, thinks the list indicates a back-to-basics impulse among restaurant-goers, around 8,000 of whom contributed to the latest edition.

He said: "Restaurant-going seems to be returning to its roots, with diners now showing renewed interest in traditional styles of eating out - especially French - as opposed to the oriental/novelty styles which have seemed predominant in recent years."

Mr Harden added that fewer restaurants overall, and fewer oriental restaurants in particular, had opened in the past year. The majority that are newly included among the top 40 most-mentioned were French, Italian or British, such as Galvin Bistrot de Luxe and the relaunched Cipriani and Bentley's.

Harden's top 10 restaurants this year