Rav Casley Gera

Now, I’m not a gourmet restaurant critic. I like my good food, but I also like Pringles. A lot. So I’m not about to start telling people where to eat. But if you are looking for a delicious, nicely served and cheap vietnamese meal near Central London, you could do a lot worse than Cay Tre. One of an insane rash of vietnameses around Shoreditch (sorry, “London’s trendy Shoreditch” as it’s now known), it’s the most upmarket and best, but mercifully still dirt cheap. My slow-bake catfish came in a flaming dish, bubbling invitingly. The fish was soft and slid nicely off the bone, melting on the tongue; the sauce, caremelised in the slow-bake process, was sweet and rich and just quite staggeringly lovely.

Others enjoyed various noodles and soups, excellent starters, and meat dishes of various sorts. Portions are good, and even the house white wine was perfectly nice. One apparent howler is the Leeky Beef, which one diner declared bland. But one iffy dish out of 20 meals is pretty good going.

So if you’re looking for a venue, don’t fall into the Covent Garden price trap. Take a powder to Cay Tre, you won’t be left wanting. And after, you can always pop to the Foundry for a drink - despite having just undergone perhaps the world’s oddest upmarket-pub-revamp, it’s still shambolically Berlin-y.

Not that I’ve ever been to Berlin; but people who have assure me that’s what it’s like.

[Cay Tre, 301 Old Street, London EC1V 9LA, 020 7729 8662]