MY eyes widened as I noticed the prices on the menu at top chef Marco Pierre White's new outpost in Hampstead, north London. A three course lunch is just £13.50. In York, that wouldn't even buy you a main lunch course at the much-lauded Blue Bicycle restaurant.

And what a meal it was. The French onion soup was a thick, silky-onion stew topped with cheese-encrusted croutons and was simply sublime. The confit of duck with salad and haricots blancs was cooked to perfection, although I found the plain beans rather bland and the side salad too salty.

However, amends were made with the dessert. In the 'died and gone to heaven' league, the sticky toffee pudding with caramel ice cream clinched first place. Warm and gooey, it was devilishly decadent and like all good things, I didn't want the encounter to end.

As well as the price, what was also astonishing about the meal was that it took place at the Posthouse hotel.

The Yorkshire-born chef has teamed up with the Posthouse to open the MPW Brasserie at its Hampstead hotel. And I can assure you that the quality of the food at the brasserie is every bit as good as at a mainstream MPW restaurant, because the following day I had lunch at his restaurant Drones in London's swanky Belgravia and I thought the Hampstead fare just had the edge.

Another taste of affordable luxury was our room at the Posthouse's sister hotel in Coram Street, Bloomsbury, formerly London's literary and bohemian heartland.

A recent refurb has transformed this hotel into the height of contemporary chic. The decor wouldn't be out of place in a Habitat showroom, and our rooms were clean, bright and very comfy. Fluffy towelling robes and a duvet on the bed. Welcome to the modern age!

Location is everything in London and from our base camp in Bloomsbury, the centre of London was a stroll away (or a short trip in the Tube).

We spent Saturday morning walking through Bloomsbury with guide Alan Edwards, who pointed out the various buildings occupied by Bloomsbury Set members such as author Virginia Woolf and her artist sister Vanessa Bell.

We also entered the near-by British Museum, where we marvelled at the recently-opened Great Court and visited the Elgin Marbles.

Later, we headed over to theatre land for a matinee performance of Ben Elton and Andrew Lloyd Webber's The Beautiful Game. Set at the outset of the Troubles in Northern Ireland, it tells the story of a group of teenagers in Belfast whose lives are torn apart by religious divisions. Moving, yet funny - thanks to Elton's pacy script - the highlight for me was the choreographed dance sequences in which the lads played football in slo-mo.

The following day, we met up with Alan again for a trip on the London Eye - or the Millennium Wheel as it is also known. A marvel of engineering, the capsule seems to glide effortlessly up over the London skyline, revealing ever more as it clocks its way around the frame of the giant wheel, rising to 450ft above the Thames.

The Houses of Parliament, Westminster Abbey, Buckingham Palace, Canary Wharf, St Paul's - even the Millennium Dome at Greenwich could be seen clearly.

Descending, we also noticed a new attraction next to the Eye on the south bank of the Thames.

It was the just-opened Salvador Dali museum. But a lunch date with Marco beckoned, so reluctantly, we agreed to put Dali off until our next trip to the capital.