W2 escorts, Paddington to Bayswater: a postcode best read by its tables

The western side of the Edgware Road, above Marble Arch, is W2, and for decades it has been London's Arab high street. Lebanese kitchens, bakeries stacking flatbread in the window, juice counters, shop signs in Arabic beside the English. Dinner here is a table of small dishes arriving all at once, grilled meat to follow, and on a mild night a seat under an awning where the shisha pipes glow along the pavement. It is loud, generous and unhurried, the right choice for a guest who wants appetite more than hush.

Queensway runs north from the park's edge and has long been known for its Chinese dining rooms, lacquered meats hanging in the windows and round tables set for large families. Turn west at the top onto Westbourne Grove and the mood changes entirely: brasseries, bakeries and small cafés drifting towards Notting Hill, where the tables belong to the neighbourhood rather than to visitors. One street is a feast, the other a supper, and escorts in W2 dress for either.

West of the Edgware Road and just north of Hyde Park, the few streets around Connaught Street and Porchester Place call themselves Connaught Village. Independent shops, a handful of small restaurants and cafés, mostly residents on the pavements. It is the place in W2 for a dinner where conversation matters more than the room. Its eastern edge is the Edgware Road, and across the junction at Marble Arch Park Lane begins.

Behind Paddington station, the basin at the end of the Grand Union Canal's Paddington Arm has been rebuilt with offices and flats, and restaurants and bars now line the water beneath them, narrowboats moored alongside. It is at its best for an early drink before dinner elsewhere. Beneath Brunel's great iron and glass roof, the station feeds the traveller with an hour to spare, but nobody plans an evening there.