I am sitting in a restaurant in Korcula, Croatia, alleged birthplace of Marco Polo.  In fact I have just been to the Marco Polo house (alleged) and the Marco Polo shop (real) where they do a nice line in Marco Polo mugs and t-shirts. So now I am relaxing with a glass of nicely chilled Grk. I haven’t forgotten the vowels: it is spelled that way.

The day before yesterday the boat broke down and we limped in to a little fishing village on the island of Vis. The boatman needed a couple of hours so we went to the nearest konoba for lunch. It was fabulous. The wine list was divided into three headings: wine, bottle wine and famous bottle wine. The menu was brief to the point of mystery. ‘How are the scampi cooked?’ I asked. ‘Everything grilled’ was the reply. It could not have been better. The scampi and langoustines really were charred, sweet and sea salty. The non-famous wine was excellent. It summed up for me the important difference between rustic cooking and bourgeois cooking. Rustic cooking is about keeping close to the ground - or sea in this case - and making the most out of the least. For me it is so much more satisfying and interesting than a lot of the kitchen showmanship inflicted on us.

By the way if you happen to be passing the island of Vis in the Adriatic, the restaurant is called Konoba Dalmatino.

Reporting from Hvar, Croatia - often described as the ‘new St Tropez.’ Well, new St Tropez or not, it is very beautiful with wonderful Venetian architecture and excellent food, particularly if you like fish. Lots of bream, dented, tuna and spiny lobsters feature on local menus, mostly grilled or stewed with white wine, onions and potatoes. Many of the dozens of bays around the island feature beach front restaurants so you can swim between courses. And the local wine is particularly good too.

Xanthe Clay is one of my favourite cookery writers: always entertaining and inspirational. And her recipes work.

In the Telegraph she alerts readers to the delights of Cornish sardines - modest and delicious fish, certified as sustainable by the excellent Marine Stewardship Council. 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/foodanddrink/recipes/7944429/Cornish-sardines-Hooked-on-these-glittering-pieces-of-silver.html 

As small as it is, Santorini has a distinctive and fascinating food and wine culture. There are vineyards all over the island and here they grow the vines close to the ground to minimise evaporation and protect the grapes from the prevailing winds. The whites, and a few of the reds, can be very good indeed, especially those produced by Domaine Sigalas.

Otherwise the significant local produce consists of capers (used generously in the local version of Greek salad), the delicious cherry tomatoes I mentioned in my last blog post, and fava, made from split peas boiled and seasoned with olive oil and red onions to create a delicious puree which I can only describe as Santorini’s answer to dhal.

I have never been to a Greek Island I didn’t like. Now I’m on Santorini. So many dishes in the local tavernas are familiar- this is of course partially due to the demands of the tourist industry- but many details are different. Capers and caper leaves find their way into many dishes and the Santorini tomatoes are wonderful. Maybe it’s the island’s volcanic soil. After all, the fabulous San Marzano tomatoes of the Campania owe much of their flavor to the way the local soil was enriched by Mount Vesuvius’ eruptions.

The International Herald Tribune reports that some artisinal ice cream makers in America are now charging up to $150 a pound for their ice cream and describes 2010 as ‘the summer of ice cream sticker shock.’

By such standards UK prices for even the most luxurious scoops remain modest. My current favourite maker is Oddono’s available in London and at Cambridge’s excellent bakery Fitzbillies.

New York has gone meatball mad. The latest craze is documented in New York Magazine which lists nine of the Big Apple’s top meatballs including ‘grass-fed-beef-balls wrapped in falafel.’ Well, I suppose that anything worth doing is worth over-doing. I don’t have a view on Gotham City meatballs, but for my money the best in London are the grilled lamb meatballs at As Greek As It Gets in Earl’s Court.

There is a sudden outbreak of excitement in smart London hotels. Long missed uberchef Pierre Koffman has just opened his new restaurant (which I hope to report on soon) at the Berkeley. Across the road at the Mandarin Oriental, Bar Boulud is booming and soon to be joined by Heston Blumenthal’s latest. And in Mayfair the restaurant of the May Fair Hotel will soon be under the command of Bulgarian born Silvena Rowe who will be dishing up her exciting take on Ottoman cooking.

At 35 degrees, New York is an inferno. The heat turns it into a third world city: the colours are brighter, the smells are stronger and the people are slower.

I am sitting in my favourite overpriced Upper East Side café- E.A.T. which is not to be confused with our more reasonably priced British chain Eat.

E.A.T. is celebrated for its bread, salads and all around high quality food. Although the décor is functional and the service rudimentary, plenty of people- including me- are happy to pay for what E.A.T. offers.

I am tucking into a huge plate of assorted smoked fish featuring buttery salmon (much, much better than what usually passes for smoked salmon in the US) sublime smoked sturgeon and, best of all, whitefish salad; a mysterious but enchanting concoction of Great Lakes whitefish (a member of the salmon family), mayonnaise and red onions. Believe me, just like the restaurant that serves it, the sum is much greater than the parts.

TripAdvisor, ‘the World’s largest travel review site,’ has bad things to say about London restaurants, according to a report in the Independent. Those surveyed by TripAdvisor rate London as having the worst restaurants in Europe and Rome as the city with the best.

As someone who travels a lot and is in restaurants all the time, I have to say these findings are pretty ridiculous. I have eaten some outstanding meals in Rome, but also know that like all tourist magnets and capital cities, Rome has its fair share of clip joints peddling pretty poor grub. Ditto London, but unlike so many other big European cities, London is blessed with a dazzling array of ethnic restaurants and cafes which offer both different and original flavours and good prices. At the top end, fancy pants London restaurants are as good as any others in Europe if you like that sort of thing, which I usually don’t. Where London falls down - and I suspect what disgruntled tourists notice - is a continuing serious lack of good value, mid range non-chain places to eat. Fortunately this gap is being filled by the gastro pub boom.