Debbie does Dining

The brunch files: La Fromagerie, Marylebone

La Fromagerie of Marylebone specialises in yesobviouslycheese, and vegetables and some fresh pastas and salume as well as the usual mimsy gift items (12 types of honey, anyone?). You can get lardo di colonata, so they know what they're about. The piece de resistance and real point of the place is a sizeable cheese room stuffed to bursting with 300 or so perfectly kept cheeses and a smattering of properly trained staff – a facility of which anyone can be justly proud.

The brunch files: The Wolseley, Piccadilly

I love to try new restaurants. Like a birthday present, there is the excitement of examining the outside, and exploring what shiny novelties lie within. But sometimes, like dear old Proust, I yearn to return to the places I have known and loved. To recapture the experience and understand it in a new way – and because being away for too long makes me a little bit sad.

The brunch files: The Brass Rail, Selfridges

This place is recommended as a salt beef mecca but I couldn't find many reviews or any photos on the internet. I hereby plug this gap.

The Brass Rail is the main in-house cafe bit in the food hall of Selfridges, taking up a larger space than alien concessions of the ghastly Yo! Sushi and meh Dunkin Donuts, and occupying a prime spot next to the side doors. The only hot things it serves are salt beef and tongue, served on rye, bagel or several more types of bread. It's been there for, like, ever.

The brunch files: The Island @ The Lancaster, Hyde Park

This swish hotel breakfast room is exquisitely placed. Its massive windows look serenely across the street to Hyde Park's most charming water gardens, and our inviting corner table was surrounded by greenery and blazing sunshine. ‘Isn’t it a lovely day?’ the cheery waiter asked. ‘It’s like the first day of summer’.

The brunch files: Hawksmoor, Shoreditch

Hawksmoor is a mecca of meat. A fantasia of flesh. A carnival of the carnivorous. Of an evening, that means steak, but what can they offer those with breakfast on their minds?

Well, there's bacon chop, black pudding and sausage. But what if punters insist on some sullen vegetable roughage, such as baked beans, bubble and squeak, and toast? Oh hell, let's sneak some meat into those dishes too. This is Hawksmoor's attitude - and it's one I wholeheartedly respect.

The brunch files: El Vergel, Southwark

This Latin American/Mediterranean cafe (hear the warning bells?) is a handy little place to spend a morning, eat breakfast and watch a little of the world go by. But its South American soul seems to have got lost somewhere on the way to Southwark. What I mean is, it's nice, but it's a little vanilla guerilla to strum the heartstrings - or the tastebuds.

The brunch files: Trojka, Primrose Hill

This is not a Russian tearoom. It's a person who lives in Primrose Hill who has once read Anna Karenina's idea of what a Russian tearoom might have been in the 19th century if you turfed out the proto-revolutionaries and replaced them with middle-aged women with iPhones. It's run by real Ukrainians, though.

What proceeds is a short description of the brunch, and a long anecdote about an omelette. That's the kind of mood I'm in.

The brunch files: Fuzzy’s Grub, Fleet Street

Fuzzy’s is a comfort food paradise. For lunch, it specialises in massive roasts of all kinds of domestic animal and bird, which you can buy as a takeaway roast dinner, or in a sandwich. I will review this one of these days. I am ever a martyr to this blog. However, Fuzzy's perhaps lesser-known breakfast fare is, I would argue, just as good as anything with gravy.

The brunch files: The Natural Kitchen, Marylebone

Boiled eggs and soldiers. Infinite DIY toast. Espresso. Smoothie of the day. Rating: 7/10