Graham Layer visits a variety of Michelin-starred restaurants on both sides of the Atlantic

I am often asked what my favourite restaurant is. Right at this minute, following the American College of Surgeons conference in San Francisco, I really have to write that it is Gary Danko, recognised by the Relais and Chateaux organisation and with one Michelin Star. It is near impossible to get a table, rather like the ethereal French Laundry in Yountville an hour or so north in the Napa Valley. However, the secret is that Gary Danko does have a bar area where patient waiting clients can be seated and enjoy the full à la carte menu and be served by the best waiters that I have ever come across.

I had never had cause to go to Hove before and really hadn’t realised that it was very different from its other half, Brighton, however I very much enjoyed visiting The Meadow restaurant on a relatively quiet Saturday evening. It is a block or so down from the cricket ground and back from the seafront on a corner in what to me looked like a converted old bank. A very distressed décor in a huge space with delightful staff who were stressed out - they made the excuse that they were a chef short that night and hence the very slow service that we endured, but it gave us longer to gossip which was fine.

Restaurants from England, Dubai and the USA make up the latest eclectic selections from Graham Layer

My work and life take me to many venues both nationally and internationally and I have been fortunate to sample a spectrum of restaurants, from the independent on your local high street to the famous Michelin-starred restaurants. I have learnt to adjust my palate and my expectations appropriately, and always bearing in mind the cost of these multi-cultural experiences.

€uro experiences and some Sterling ones

I have just returned from an invigorating and challenging experience at the SARS meeting in Dublin – very cold and surgically cutting-edge stuff, but I managed a lunch for two at Peploe’s on St Stephen’s Green, a few steps from the hospitable Irish College. No sign of financial worries here in this semi-basement Georgian property.