restaurant sits on a slightly scruffy street corner in Fitzrovia. 'It's a big solid door and it feels reassuringly strong. By the time we open, there's quite a gathering outside.' Since they can't batter down the entrance to try Dabbous' minimalist, delicately flavoured and visually delightful cooking, customers hit the phones instead. The reservation book is crammed and there isn't a table to be had until November 2013. This would be astonishing enough, but what's more remarkable about Dabbous' popularity is that the restaurant has only been going for eight months. Three days after it opened, Fay Maschler, this paper's restaurant critic, wrote a game-changing review, awarding it five stars, and it has been wildly busy ever since. She, and other restaurant critics, were won over by what food writer Tom Parker Bowles calls Ollie's 'huge technical skill and keen, whip-smart culinary intelligence'. As Parker Bowles says: the man 'crackles with talent and makes fascinating food you really want to eat'. This, I found on a raw early November night, included barbecued Ibrico pork with savoury acorn praline, turnip tops and apple vinegar -- which was deliciously nutty and rich. But I also devoured a beautiful ribbon of celeriac with muscat grapes, lovage and hazelnuts, and a coddled egg with woodland mushrooms, which is something of a signature -- a sort of mushroom hollandaise sauce served in a brown egg shell on straw. The food is light and bright and cleverly put together and the place oozes excitement -- the