Restaurants: Where shall we meet in Leicester Square?

Tiger Tiger is doing very well. Being enormous, and just round the corner from the Leicester Square, they have a good chance of doing well. It's a convenient location, and, unless you want to go to the cinema, which is the only other reason for being in the area, you can do your whole night's entertainment under the one roof, thereby foregoing the pleasures of being shanghaied by buskers, and made to walk very, very slowly behind groups of Japanese tourists. They have a bar that turns into a nightclub, and a restaurant.

This is probably a very good place to go if you're missing the sort of meat-markety, very-loud party with no introducing, that generally stops once people stop being students and start minding about their houses. There's a huge room, and a smaller room, and stairs for snogging on, one of those flashy chrome loos full of unguents and helpful people who live off tips, and an upstairs bar with hacienda-style windows overlooking the main bar.

There are so many people crammed in here that you'd be hard pressed not to score if that was what you were looking for. Just don't be tempted to find out about your new friends over a meal.

The food here is not good. I know I was in a bit of a mood because they'd forgotten our reservation, but I would have been hard-pressed if this hadn't been the case. No, actually: my friend's steak was good, and my spinach was good, and the tagliatelle that accompanied my slow-roasted duck was pretty nice, but really: there's a difference between slow-roasted and carbonised, and the prawns and calamari we had to start had, frankly, seen better days some time before.

Definitely one for party animals who don't really care about ballast.

Tiger Tiger, 29 Haymarket, London SW1 (0171-930 1885)

SURVIVING THE WEST END

All Bar One 48 Leicester Sq, WC2 (0171-839 0972)

Cafe Fish 39 Panton St, SW1 (0171-930 3999)

Havana 1 Leicester Place, WC2 (0171-287 0101)

Planet Hollywood Trocadero Centre, Coventry Centre, SW1 (0171-287 1000)