May 28 (Bloomberg) -- Mahiki, home to royal revelers and tropical cocktails, was named Best Bar at the London Club & Bar Awards. Papa Jules of Mahiki won Best Bartender for the Mayfair venue whose drinks list features the Armada Treasure Chest, a jumbo cocktail for eight people that costs 650 pounds ($1,000) when it features Louis Roederer Cristal Champagne.

Other winners at the Park Plaza Riverbank hotel on Tuesday night included Whisky Mist (Best Night, for Tuesday), Vendome (Design Accolade), Cuckoo (Boutique Club), Monroe (New Boutique Club), Whisky Mist & JuJu (Best New Bar), Mamounia (Restaurant Bar), Maddox (Club) and Jalouse (New Club). The only sad note was that Paris Hilton failed to show up. The heiress and entertainer only made it as far as a pre-awards event.

Pierre Gagnaire, the French three-Michelin-star chef, turned into a restaurant reviewer last week on assignment for “Jamie Magazine,” the new publication from Jamie Oliver. Gagnaire had his choice of London establishments to write about and he chose the River Cafe, where Oliver started his career as a chef. “I love that restaurant -- the food, the atmosphere, everything,” Gagnaire says. “It’s very honest.” Sounds like River Cafe should get a favorable review.

Gagnaire was speaking in the basement kitchen of his London restaurant Sketch while preparing lunch for an event promoting a sweetener. The main course alone consisted of Peking aiguillette of duck with teriyaki; spinach salad with fresh ginger; curcuma and Maltitol farm cider; sliced turnip with Campari and rum; cubes of Agria potato with sesame seeds; Maltitol stilton cream. He was busy. Over lunch, the nutritionist Carrie Ruxton -- several months pregnant -- recommended a Web site that’s great for those keen on seasonality: http://www.iminseason.com/.

Food bloggers will host a stall at the Covent Garden Real Food Market every Thursday from June 4 through Aug. 6, dishing out culinary advice. My main experience of bloggers is seeing them taking photographs of dishes in restaurants, but chefs are taking note. Mark Hix invited http://agirlhastoeat.com/ to a lunch I attended last month, while the restaurateur Will Beckett is in touch with http://www.doshermanos.co.uk/, a site that is often first to review new eateries. For more on the market, call +44-20-3047-2555 or see http://www.coventgardenlondonuk.com/.

Some of Europe’s leading chefs will converge on London next month when the gastronomic congress Identita Golose is held in the U.K. for the first time. Italian masters, including Moreno Cedroni of Madonnina del Pescatore and Massimiliano Alajmo of Le Calandre, will join Rene Redzepi of Noma (Copenhagen), Alex Atala of D.O.M. (Sao Paulo) and London-based Angela Hartnett and Giorgio Locatelli at Vinopolis. For more details on Identita London, June 29-30, click on http://www.identitalondon.com/.

LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton SA and L’Atelier des Chefs are holding evenings where amateur chefs are taught to prepare a dish that they then consume with matching wines whose suitability will be explained by a representative of the drinks and luxury-goods maker. The menu features pan-fried scallops with Puy-lentil vinaigrette; rack of lamb with herb crust, pommes maxim, green beans and red-wine jus; and dark-chocolate pave with blackberries. The evenings are scheduled for June 4, July 9 and Sept. 10, and the cost is 72 pounds. For more information, go to http://www.atelierdeschefs.co.uk/.

Palm, the U.S. steakhouse coming to London, finally got a telephone booking line. It’s +44-20-7201-0710. The official opening is tomorrow but there’s half-price food today if you can get a table. The address is 1 Pont Street, SW1X 9EJ.

Australians ruing their absence from home may welcome the first G’Day U.K. week, to be held from June 24-30. Expat chefs Shane Osborn (Pied a Terre) and Brett Graham will create canapes for a reception to mark the start of the week and an Australian- themed menu to be served in Selfridges, on Oxford Street.

(Richard Vines is chief food critic for Bloomberg News. Opinions expressed are his own.)

To contact the writer on the story: Richard Vines in London at rvines@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: May 27, 2009 19:00 EDT