Trinity

Adam Byatt returned to Clapham Old Town in 2006 to open Trinity, a privately owned neighbourhood restaurant on the corner of The Polygon, and it has held a MICHELIN star ever since he got one. The ground-floor dining room is calm and low-key rather than grand: herringbone parquet, white linen, soft grey walls hung with three outsized ceramic plates painted with wildflowers, and an open pass at the far end that lets the room watch the kitchen work. Byatt is now Chairman of the Royal Academy of Culinary Arts, and the restaurant carries three AA rosettes alongside the star.

The room that does the private work is Upstairs, the self-contained restaurant on the floor above. It is a different register entirely: pale wood, bare boards, a wall of hand-painted hexagonal tiles, dried flowers strung from the ceiling and a counter in the window looking over the Common. It has its own bar, its own kitchen island, its own staff and its own lavatory, so an exclusive hire here is genuinely sealed off from the restaurant below. Upstairs holds a Bib Gourmand in its own right.

For a smaller table, Trinity Tableside seats six to eight at a walnut table beside a kitchen station in the main restaurant, where the chefs plate, dress and carve in front of the guests and a reserve list from Byatt's cellar is opened only for that table. Clapham Common station is a four-minute walk, and the terrace on The Polygon takes tables through the summer.