I've always been looking for a restaurant directory that has consistency and a wide, but detailed coverage of my area. Another thing ? do directories like yell.com or Locallife really think giving us a restaurant's address and phone number is going to help us in any way? Up until now, the future looked, for want of a better word, quite unsavoury. However, when I stumbled across http://www.lacartes.com, things started to shape up. Rich in information, with good coverage of South London, this is the website to visit for all your restaurant queries.

Each listing comes with an up-to-date menu, which is very useful when you want to make a delivery order, photographs (in case you've never visited the restaurant before), opening hours so that you don't get caught out, average cost per person, parking and seating information, accepted methods of payment and so on. You simply enter your postcode and specify the distance from your house, and an extensive but well laid out list will appear. If you, like yours truly, regularly order takeaways, factors such as whether the establishment offers home delivery, will come in handy. So http://www.lacartes.com have provided us with a more advanced search. This allows you to narrow down the results to home delivery details, the type of cuisine you desire, average cost per head and more. If you know the name of the restaurant or takeaway you are looking for, you can simply type this in the space above.

Well it's fair enough having all this information, but how should one differentiate between a restaurant with poor to average food or indeed bad service, and those at the higher end of the scale? The answer is by means of an intelligent rating system. A clever system has been integrated into their database so that restaurants get a rating similar to those seen on Ebay. The written comments submitted by customers give an indication of the quality of the restaurant, not only because you can read them yourself and decide whether or not you like what you hear, but also other users can rate the reviewer on the relevance and credibility of their comments, amounting to a star rating.

You can also opt to leave a suggestion on how a restaurant could perhaps improve their service or extend their menu to a certain dish, which goes directly to the restaurant's account. (Oh yes, and you need to register for a free personal account to do this, but it only takes a second!)

It doesn't stop here; say you have a question or query that another user made in a review or feedback that they left, you can message them via their private http://www.lacartes.com account. I had a go with a friend, just to test it out, and it worked very well. But don't worry about people spamming you or sending you rude, inappropriate messages because it comes with an easy-to-use filtering system.

Being a real gourmand, this is my new best friend. I feel young again, like a kid in a candy store!