The Truffler: Festivals; Neat; closing restaurants; Barbara Cartland

Nothing since Christmas, then three festivals associated with food come along in one week: Shrove Tuesday (pancake day) is also the beginning of the Chinese Year of the Horse, and Thursday is the feast of the martyred bishop, St Valentine. Restaurants that have been struggling since Christmas pin their hopes and jack up their prices on Valentine's night. Go to your neighbourhood bistro – if they can fit you in among the other whispering couples – and you'll find prices have gone through the ceiling, and all you get is a glass of pink fizz and a rose for the laydee thrown in. Call me an unromantic old pig but I always spend the evening scoffing and smouldering in the privacy of my sty, ready with an "I told you so" when others report back. Last year, a less curmudgeonly colleague – having called various restaurants and found they were full up or too expensive – turned up at the usually reasonably priced, doesn't-take-bookings Carluccio's hoping to find its cheerful Italian formula unchanged that night. No such luck. There was only a £50-for-two menu with very little choice. This year, Carluccio's has the same arrangement. At least the price hasn't gone up, but nonetheless, caveat lovers.

* Another restaurant that told me all its reservationists were on other calls, and that if I would please hold my call will be answered shortly, was Neat. Don't expect an answer. Opened only last summer to reviews that were more enthusiastic about the food than the decor, and doubts that the combination of its size and the high prices would ever generate a full house, the huge Neat restaurant and brasserie has closed. Chef Richard Neat, who was jetting between France and London, will now be able to stay put in Cannes where he confounded the French by being awarded a Michelin star for his restaurant there.

* Richard Neat is one of those chefs who have given into the temptation to put their name to more than one restaurant only to have to remove it. So far this year, Marco Pierre White's The Oak Room and Edinburgh's Rhodes & Co have also closed. It's tough on the chefs, like Robert Reid at The Oak Room, who have been cooking there day to day, and makes Michelin's latest Red Guide to Great Britain and Ireland, which gave The Oak Room one star, Rhodes & Co its smiley-face Bib Gourmand, but nothing to Neat, out of date already.

* There's nothing complicated about the way to a man's heart, according to the late queen of romance, Barbara Cartland. Her Recipes for Lovers, published in 1977, is an exhibit in the inaugural exhibition at the Women's Library, which this week opened the doors of its new home in east London. "Cooks and Campaigners" includes sections on cookery and lifestyles, illustrating how much has changed (or not) for women. Has Dame Barbara's seduction advice aged well? Try it on Thursday: "A pink dinner is a lovely way of celebrating... Have pink candles on the table and pink flowers, pink napkins and of course, wear a pink dress." The equally unsubtle menu comprises Trout in Pink Coat; Pink Chicken; Strawberry Ice Cream with Hot Raspberry Sauce, served with Pink Champagne. Those of us who are naturally pig-pink consider this sort of behaviour as going a shade too far.