So, I'm having dinner at one of New York's more fashionable eating places - horseradish pannacotta, sea bass with green tea and enoki mushrooms and pear and sea-urchin sorbet (OK, I made that last one up), and my lemon verbena tea has just arrived with three different flavours of warm marshmallow. Despite having to listen to the restaurant manager recite every last detail of all 16 items on everyone's plate (hurry up, it's getting COLD!) I am having a thoroughly enjoyable time. The place is packed, there are two big Hollywood names on the next table and I have fallen in love with the sashimi and miso amuse-gueule. It would be nice to think that most people are here for the food but I suspect a few have just come to see or be seen.

Is this a bad thing? Does it matter that people clamour for a table at your restaurant simply because they might bump into Brad Pitt? The Observer's Kathryn Flett has unfurled more than her fair share of Frette napkins and in this month's OFM she tells us what really makes a restaurant fashionable. Could it ever be the food?

Of course if you are really famous you don't book, you just stand in line next to Leonardo di Caprio. At least that's what you do if you want to eat at Davé in Paris, the world's most sought-after table. The food is unremarkable Chinese, there is no menu and you are charged whatever the proprietor feels like. Eh? OFM jumps the queue on page 20.

Now, when Gordon Ramsay isn't advertising crisps or supermarkets, appearing on chat shows, writing cookbooks, polishing his Michelin stars or sorting out other people's failing restaurants he is, of course, slaving over a hot stove. But this month we found him in Los Angeles, in the hotel where John Belushi killed himself (go on Gordon, I dare you) where our favourite chef is up to his apron strings in a new series of Hell's Kitchen. Jay Rayner tracks him down to his hotel suite (Chateau Marmont, don't ya know) where he now tells us how he wants to get back to the kitchen. Don't you just love him? Make your own mind up on page 42. We also have Bella Freud's wheat-free diet, Valentino's favourite table, my winter vegetarian recipes and we chill-out with organic rock stars Jo and Ronnie Wood. Welcome to our special food and fashion issue.
OFM

· Nigel Slater is The Observer's cookery writer