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Is Le Relais de Venise the worst restaurant in London? Judging from some of the recent reviews, you'd think so. "A repulsive, oily dressing that would never get past the quality control team at Kraft," sniffed Matthew Norman in the Guardian. Yet in the three years that I've been reviewing restaurants for ES Magazine, I've come across several other contenders of this title.

So what makes a bad restaurant? Obviously dreadful food is a hurdle, then there's surly waiting staff, a dingy atmosphere, woeful decor, too many people, too few people and the crucial litmus--value for money. If there's something that really niggles, it's being ripped off.

Sometimes it is none of these things. Last July I took my wife to Babylon to celebrate our fourth wedding anniversary, imagining that this crow's nest in the Kensington Roof Gardens, with its panoramic views of London, would be an ideal romantic setting.

The food was just about acceptable, but the atmosphere was far too licentious. To give just one example, the ladies and gentlemen's lavatories were separated by a thin wall that included a large hole at crotch level. My wife discovered that by bending down and peering through it she could see men relieving themselves at the urinals. This is not good.

To be fair, many of the restaurants I've taken a dislike to over the years clearly aren't the worst in London. Rather, they're the most disappointing. When I became a restaurant critic I felt like the luckiest man alive because it meant I could eat at all the most expensive places in the capital for free. Unfortunately, I've learnt that high prices don't always mean high standards.

Cipriani, 25 Davies Street, London W1. 020-7399-0500. No of Covers: 150. Average cost per head: £65. Car Most Likely to be Parked Outside: Maybach.

With its marble floors and warm, buttery lighting, this new addition to the upmarket Venetian restaurant chain certainly looks the part. Unfortunately, whatever sense you have of being guests at a fabulous party disappears as soon as you make contact with the staff. After my wife and I had been subjected to an endless cavalcade of incompetence we decided that a better name for the place would be Il Torro di Fawlty.

Dish to avoid: Veal Milanese. It costs £31 and looks like roadkill.

Nobu Berkeley, 15 Berkeley Street, London W1. 020-7290-9222. No of Covers: 200. Average cost per head: £67. Car Most Likely to be Parked Outside: Red Ferrari.

Nobu Berkeley supposedly operates a "no reservations" policy, but in reality celebrities are shown to their tables straight away while ordinary people are forced to cool their heels in the bar. David Collins, the ubiquitous interior designer, has completely surpassed himself on this occasion. The gent's toilets combine blood-spattered, stainless steel walls with Kheils moisturiser dispensers. Who on earth is Nobu Berkeley supposed to be for? Metrosexual axe-murderers?

Dish to avoid: The chocolate bento box. I've had better chocolate fondants at Pizza Express.

Nozomi, 15 Beauchamp Place, London SW3. 020-7838-1500. No of Covers: 70. Average cost per head: £58. Car Most Likely to be Parked Outside: Mercedes SLR.

Hot-headed owner Marios Georgallides used to own Attica, but he lacks the diplomatic skills needed to succeed in the restaurant business. Since it opened in July, he's sacked the entire kitchen staff and every member of the front-of-house team. Nevertheless, I hope this restaurant stays open long enough to be featured on the next series of Gordon's Kitchen Nightmares, if only because the clash between Georgallides and the Glaswegian ex-footballer would be absolutely electrifying.

Dish to avoid: Deep-fried edamame in chili oil. After the paint-stripping potency of this appetizer you won't be able to taste the rest of your meal.

Mint Leaf, Corner of Haymarket and Suffolk Place, London SW1. 020-7930-9020. No of Covers: 350. Average cost per head: £45. Car Most Likely to be Parked Outside: Subaru Impreza.

Mint Leaf is supposed to be one of London's most upmarket Indian restaurants, but on the night I went there it took 45 minutes to attract the attention of a waitress. My companion's cubes of duck breast were dry and tough, while my lamb was stringy and flavourless. I ordered some Naan bread, which was slightly burnt, and a portion of Dal, which was bland.

Dish to avoid: Anything that's accompanied by dried fenugreek leaves. You might just as well sprinkle sawdust on your curry.

San Lorenzo, 22 Beauchamp Place, London SW3. 020-7584-1074. No of Covers: 120. Average cost per head: £52. Car Most Likely to be Parked Outside: BMW Z3.

If you're a member of the Jetset, San Lorenzo is a home-away-from-home, but from the perspective of a rank outsider it's pretty charmless. Bronze statues of reclining nudes may have been the height of exotica in 1963, but today they wouldn't look out of place in Luigi's on Peckham High Street. The food, too, is completely unexceptional.

Dish to avoid: Veal Milanese. It tastes like a piece of shoe leather sandwiched between two pieces of sandpaper.

Brunello. Baglioni Hotel, 60 Hyde Park Gate, London SW7. 020-7368-5900. No of Covers: 30. Average cost per head: £74. Car Most Likely to be Parked Outside: Pink Rolls Royce.

When it comes to sheer, over-the-top vulgarity, you've got to hand it to the Italians. One of my fellow critics described Brunello as looking like the inside of Liberace's coffin, but it was more like being in Donatella Versace's underwear drawer. It's the sort of restaurant that women describe as "sexy", but red-blooded heterosexuals think is so camp they might actually turn gay if they remain in it for more than five minutes.

Dish to avoid: Duck ham. The fat is inseparable from the meat, making each slice completely impossible to chew.

St John, 26 St John's Street, London EC1. 020-7251-0848. No of Covers: 130. Average cost per head: £46. Car Most Likely to be Parked Outside: Meat Wagon.

Why do all my colleagues rave about this restaurant? When my first course arrived--four sections of veal shin with a creamy, gelatinous substance oozing out of the ends--I felt a bit like Harrison Ford when he's served chilled monkey's brains in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Even though the dish that had been put in front of me was plainly revolting, I didn't want to give my hosts a bad impression by refusing to eat it. In retrospect, I wish I had.

Dish to avoid: The Barnsley Chop. It tastes like it has been boiled in effluent.

The Gallery at Sketch, 9 Conduit Street, London W1. 08707-774488. No of Covers: 125. Average cost per head: £60. Car Most Likely to be Parked Outside: Karma Cab.

Much has been written about the food at Sketch and I was genuinely looking forward to trying it. The chef, Pierre Gagnaire, is a Parisian legend, dreaming up dishes in collaboration with a French molecular physicist to produce the best possible combination of flavours. Well, I'm sorry to report that it was absolutely disgusting. Monsieur Gagnaire has been quoted as saying he likes to "play with different degrees of cold", and the upshot is that the food at Sketch tastes like the sort of thing you might pick off a wedding buffet at 4am when all the other guests have gone home.

Dish to avoid: Potato Gnocchi. It tastes like cotton wool wrapped in plasticine.

Fifth Floor Café, Harvey Nichols, 109-125 Knightsbridge, London SW1. 020-7823-1839. No of Covers: 120. Average cost per head: £27. Car Most Likely to be Parked Outside: Mercedes S320.

Fifth Floor has recently introduced a "Beauty Menu" which, in essence, means adding a bit of bullshit beneath the handful of the dishes on offer about the rejuvenating effects of the food. Thus, the list of starters now includes pan roasted scallops that will give you "rosy cheeks and a clear complexion", while the mains include grilled lemon sole that will provide you with, er, "rosy cheeks and a clear complexion". Even by the standards of PR gobbledegook, that's pretty weak.

Dish to avoid: Globe artichoke salad. The bits of artichoke had been marinated in lemon juice for so long they'd started to ferment.

Graze, 215 Sutherland Avenue, London W9. 020-7266-3131. No of Covers: 70. Average cost per head: £45. Car Most Likely to be Parked Outside: Ambulance.

Graze is owned by a Dane called Soren Jessen who is clearly making a bid to become the Mogens Tholstrup of his generation. I told my wife to put on her best party frock, while I dusted off my Richard James suit. The upshot was that the other customers stared at us as if we were some exotic species of bird. About half-a-dozen tables were occupied, one by two old ladies, another by a group of what looked like Eastern European graduate students, and another by a tattooed man with an egg-stained singlet. It was the kind of crowd you'd expect to see in the Accident and Emergency department of a Central London hospital.

Dish to avoid: Endive, pear and blue cheese salad. My wife said it tasted like "sick".