L'Artista, 61 The Parade, Watford

The usual high street pizza chains leave me craving flavour - I'm almost always dousing my pizza in their lacklustre chilli oil. But despite the restaurant quickly filling up after our arrival, making for a busy and slightly manic atmosphere, L'Artista in Watford has food with the most intense flavour. Initial frustrations of being slightly ignored by frantic looking staff soon dissapated once the starters arrived.

Tomato garlic pizza bread was perfectly crispy with a decadently garlicky tomatoey topping. The Aubergine Parmigiana was equally flavoursome - the roasted aubergines were amazingly smokey and the mozarella perfect.

The main courses were huge. The Americana pizza was robustly delicious with plenty of chillies. The Diversa pizza was partly pizza and partly calzone (which reminded me of the 'La Raqueta' pizza I had at Starita in Naples - best pizza in the world, AND it was shaped like a tennis racket)! My pizza had yet more roasted aubergines, red chillis and hearty herby italian sausage. I didn't have to reach for the chilli oil once.

The rigatoni was perfectly al a dente and the roast vegetable garlic and tomato sauce had really deep and satisfying flavours.

Overall - This place is very busy for a reason, good food, low prices and huge portions (we had to take some of it home). Full of big groups so service can be a bit slow, and it would be a terrible place for a romantic meal, but for cheap and cheerful and very very intensely flavoursome Italian food, it completely beats the High Street chain pizza places.

Sitaaray, Drury Lane, Covent Garden, London

Vegetarian or non-vegetarian - that was the only question that needed to be answered at Sitaaray. I like my ordering to be that uncomplicated.

Bollywood was the order of the evening. I'd rushed across London from a Bollywood themed Christmas party to this Bollywood themed restaurant housed in the New National Theatre on Drury Lane. I quite liked the atmosphere - two floors, busy but warmly cosy.

The concept is a high-end variation on that of the traditional 'thali' concept (ie unlimited helpings of a set range of curries in little metal bowls in a circular tray (the thali) - which makes for very cheap eating and plentiful refills. Given the touristy location, this was not quite the case at Sitaaray, but the concept was there - there were large set menus for a fixed price. All one had to do was decide whether they were going to be vegetarian or non-vegetarian that evening, and many many courses of food would be bought to you, and you could request more of anything you like. It sounded like a wonderful idea, particularly as it made large group ordering far less stressful than usual - (I didn't even really have to decide between veg or non veg as myself and Cel ordered one of each so that we could sample it all!)

Staff were efficient but quite curiously neither Indian nor Bollywood themed. Food started arriving quickly. Lots of snacks and starters, in well presented but tiny portions. This was not necessarily a bad thing - it meant that everything could be tasted and sampled without getting too full and everything was tasty. Tiny portions of lamb kebabs, spinach kebabs, grilled chicken, spicy potatoes, paneer, spicy mushrooms and stuffed peppers appeared in a long succession of courses - which turned out to be good for big group eating, drinking and conversation. However, we all seemed to feel the variety of small portions made us feel too mentally full to bother utilising the unlimited concept.

We were slightly distracted by the club that adjoins the restaurant - diners get free entry, but the incongruent music made us believe we should definitely steer clear.

Overall:
I was genuinely pleased and surprised to find good quality Indian food in such a touristy spot. The food, whilst not very traditional, was all beautifully presented and tasty. I enjoyed playing name-the-bollywood-star (photo), and gawping at the bollywood videos playing and liked the decor and atmosphere. The service was fine but probably not good enough to justify the hefty service charge. I think value for money was perhaps the area where this restaurant loses points. The unlimited concept sounds like it could be cheap but expensive drinks negate the savings. However the concept is great in that you can try a massive variety of foods even if you are not in a large group. I would certainly recommend to try at least once - I was very pleasantly surprised.