What really makes a restaurant the best? God knows precisely how the final list is compiled from voters scattered across the five continents. But given the obscure methodology and commercial benefits of inclusion, you may assume that PR lobbying plays a part in the conclusion that some temple to molecular gastronomy in the Basque country is better or worse than a purveyor of classical French cuisine bourgeoise in Napa Valley. Other irritants include the fixation on novelty which dictates that, despite maintaining immaculate standards, a restaurant as consistently magnificent as The Fat Duck (number one a few years ago, but dropping 20 places this, from 13 to 33) will be savagely downgraded for no stronger reason than familiarity. While anything that heightens interest in restaurants is a good thing, what aggravates most about this list is the conflation of grandeur with greatness. The potential field is confined to places in which the only way to avoid paying £100 per head, if not twice or even thrice that, is climbing through the loo window and running for your life. What makes a restaurant great is a case, to thieve an old slogan from Findus, of horses for courses. Some of us want formality while others prefer the "hey, you guys" style of service. Some adore elaborate amuse bouches, and others are irked by the mimsiness. A 20-course tasting menu that is heaven to one diner will be a buttock-numbing Dantean circle of hell for another. For everyone electrified by live green ants crawling about in a jar, as served by René Redzepi of Copenhagen's Noma (down to number 2 after three years in the top slot) during last summer's brief pop-up at Claridge's, a couple of disrespectful fools will find the concept too close to the sort of installation the Woody Allen art pseud would call "a touch jejune," and succumb to an explosive fit of the giggles. Forced to reduce what makes a restaurant "great" to a lone sentence, however, I would plump for nothing more than sophisticated than its magnetic capacity to draw you back. While the San Pellegrino panellists would disagree, this depends only in part on the quality of the cooking. I have eaten superlative food in restaurants to which I would not dream of returning for any number of reasons (cost, decor, lighting, acoustic, supercilious staff, music, even an uncomfortable chair). And while some of the places to which I do return serve stellar food, such as Heston Blumenthal's Dinner (up to number seven), Cambio de Tercio (a scandalous absentee) and the sensational Lima which last week joined those two as a recipient of a perfect 10/10 from me, others do not. What all the keepers have in common, to lurch into child-like simplicity, is that they make me happy, or at least happier than I was before I walked through the door. And happiness, lest Ken Dodd's sage words should elude you, is the greatest gift that we possess. Attempting to quantify happiness or analyse what creates it may be an even more nebulous discipline than ranking restaurants separated by oceans and serving entirely different cuisines against one another. But you know it when you find it, and with eating out it depends at least as much on the sense of being a cherished guest, if not almost part of an extended family, as on culinary technique. It is not the list's business to celebrate the diamond in the rough, but however diverting the eulogies to Michelin triple-starred joints in Tokyo and Hong Kong, the restaurants most of us really regard as great are the cosy ones on our doorsteps... the local joint you probably first visited on the Edmund Hillary principle that it was there, and came to adore. In a personal list of greatest restaurants, for example, alongside such obvious candidates as the Blumenthal duo and the supremely inventive L'Enclume in Cumbria, I include The Patio, a Polish joint in Hammersmith. The first time I went, some 15 years ago, a friend mentioned a chronic stomach condition to the owner, Ewa Michalik. Ewa duly produced four vegetable dishes my friend could safely eat, none of them on the menu, and fussed over her offering remedies like the trained pharmacologist she happens to be. Chuck in three courses of competent stodge, coffee, fruit, chocolates and a shot of vodka for less than a tenner, and who could not have been smitten? Even the late Michael Winner became a fan after I bullied him into a trip (Valium was Ewa's preferred self-prescription as he sat there yelling "What's this dear? A sausage? I'm eating a very fine sausage" into his dictaphone), citing The Patio as "Best Budget Restaurant" in his Winner's Dinners global rankings. Others to make the cut would be Abu Zaad, a gaudy Syrian joint ideally suited to the recovering alcoholic (no booze at all, not even bring-your-own); a Nepalese, the Kathmandu Inn, which not only serves the best and hottest curry (gorkali) ever to have the sweat cascading down this forehead, but whose staff continue to embarrass a young man of my acquaintance by treating him to a plastic, ice cream-filled character called Punky now that he has turned 16 and hit almost six feet; and a shabby but endearing Japanese/Korean restaurant called Yoshi Sushi, patrolled by the smiliest of staff, in which a compelling nightly ritual involves parties of Korean tourists arriving, eating the kimchi already laid out on the tables, and being back on the coach within 12 minutes. All three produce reliably good and cheap food, and consistency is an underrated virtue in an industry that venerates the faddish. But the ingredient that elevates them is a quality that concerns the San Pellegrino judges little, if at all. They exude warmth. The same goes for the most startling labour-of-love venture I have ever reviewed, Quean's of Leamington Spa, in which Laura Hamilton not only turns out clever, inventive dishes without a shred of help in the kitchen, but waits on the tables with infectious, auntyish jollity. All over Britain, albeit concentrated in urban centres and scarce in rural areas, are score upon score of unsung heroes, seldom reviewed beyond Tripadvisor and battling the economic gloom for survival with unfailing good grace. They are as far removed from the San Pellegrino galacticos, in income and stature, as a gnarled second division central defender is from Lionel Messi. But a hero is no less a hero for being unsung, and global mega-stardom is no prerequisite to be regarded as great.