Telephone: 020-7328 2637
Address: Small & Beautiful, 351-353 Kilburn High Road, London NW6.

The bare tables, bare floors, bare bricks and heavy-duty gilt-framed mirrors sum up Small & Beautiful. Keeps cheap with the bare essentials, except for the food, which has an unexpected turn of, well, if not luxury, style certainly. Holiday around the Med without leaving north-west London. Good olives. The obligatory grilled goat's cheese (what would we do with all those goats' cheeses if they weren't melted under the grill in a thousand variations?). Terrific and unconventional pasta and pizza. Big on steaks, too. Puddings owe more to the British sweet tooth than Med asceticism, viz toffee cream pie, toffee mousse. Service bright and breezy. Bills aesthetically pleasing and miniature by London standards.

Quick bites ... where to eat out in under 15 minutes

Telephone: 020-7328 1744.
Address: Meson Bilbao, 33 Malvern Road, London NW6.
A tapas local, run with cheerful, if not always coherent, sense of style. Cooking generally well above your run-of-the-mill patatas-bravas-chorizo-bouncy-Spanish-omelette of more loudly trumpeted places. Chipirones en su tinta (squid in its ink) sets the standard for London. Boquerones (anchovies), mussels Bilbaina, grilled sardines and the rest are top-notch nibbles. Heftier dishes for longer lunchers are cooked to the same high standard. Hake is the favoured fish when it comes to serious cooking. Paella goes down well with the locals. Multiple riojas go down even quicker. Service is sometimes a bit leisurely for consistent quick bites, but tapas should get you in and out under the time limit.