The foodie insiders' guide

Marco Pierre White, restaurateur

'That's a very impertinent question. You're very rude. I wouldn't recommend a place to anybody.'

Fay Maschler, Evening Standard restaurant critic

'Thinking back to when I had affairs, which restaurant to go to seemed immaterial. The physiological effect of illicit romance is like speed. Metabolism revs up, weight drops off, food can be pushed around the plate and the riveting aperçus of the new found idol drunk to the last drop. Ghastly establishments - Chittagong Charlie is one I remember - become a shared joke. When last this happened to me (reader I married him) I was working with Terence Conran on a restaurant guide (I assessed the food we ate). All I remember Terence saying is "but you've got so thin". He's never said it again. My two tips for places where you are unlikely to be seen, are Trader Vic's at the Hilton Hotel and Calabash at the Africa Centre, London.'

Jan Moir, Daily Telegraph restaurant critic

'Le Poule au Pot always wins awards as London's most romantic restaurant and it certainly has enough dark corners for an orgy. The only drawback is that so many other lovers have the same idea: Adam Boulton [Sky News political editor] and Anji Hunter [former aide to Blair] were spotted spooning among the steak knives before their wedding made them a boring legit couple. So my advice is get out of town if you can and head straight for Il Clandestino, a tiny, fabulous restaurant on Italy's Adriatic coast. As the sun goes down, warm up with a glass of rum, the home-made tiramisu and each other. Clandestino by name, clandestine by nature. No one will ever find you here ....oh no, here come Adam and Anji!'

Jean-Christophe Novelli, chef

'I would recommend a place but unfortunately I've never had an affair. However, if I was trying to impress, I'd go to Le Manoir aux Quat' Saisons, Oxfordshire or the Grove, Hertfortshire.'

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, food writer

'It's the sort of thing that one wouldn't, and shouldn't, reveal.'

OFM's top affair restaurant scenes

Tom Williams picks the best literary tables

Sometimes the place doesn't matter ...

'At 11 o'clock I was sitting in the third booth on the right-hand side as you go in from the dining room annexe ...The old bar waiter came by and glanced softly at my weak Scotch and water. I shook my head and he bobbed his white thatch, and right then a dream walked in. It seemed to me for an instant that there was no sound in the bar, that the sharpies stopped sharping and the drunk on the stool stopped burbling away, and it was like just after the conductor taps on his music stand and raises his arms and hold them poised ... I stared. She caught me staring. She lifted her glance half and inch and I wasn't there any more. But wherever I was I was holding my breath.'

Raymond Chandler, The Long Goodbye

And sometimes it is the food ...

'Afterwards - we were back at Rules and they had just fetched our steaks - she said, 'There was one scene you did write.'

'About the onions?'

'Yes.' And at that very moment a dish of onions was put on the table. I said to her - it hadn't even crossed my mind that evening to desire her - 'And does Henry mind onions?'

'Yes. He can't bear them. Do you like them?'

'Yes.' She helped me to them and then helped herself. Is it possible to fall in love over a dish of onions? It seems improbable and yet I could swear it was just then that I fell in love. It wasn't, of course, simply the onions - it was that sudden sense of an individual woman, of a frankness that was so often later to make me happy and miserable. I put my hand under the cloth and laid it on her knee, and her hand came down and held mine in place. I said, 'It's a good steak", and heard like poetry her reply, "It's the best I've ever eaten"."

From The End of the Affair by Graham Greene