It's Friday, which means it must the first quarter final of Celebrity Masterchef! Last night Anna Pickard was over on Organ Grinder giving us her usual brilliant commentary of the second heat of round one, where Claire from Steps and Louis Emerick (from Brookside, apparently) made it through to join Andi Peters and Hywel Simons in tonight's quarter final.

Join me from 8.30pm on BBC1, just for half an hour, to see who will step up to the hotplate and earn their place in the semi finals. Click read more to read more, leave your comments below and don't forget to click refresh every now and then or you'll get quite bored fairly quickly.

Tonight's the night. The quarter final of the first round, after heats ... (I don't really understand this frenetic format, I'm just blindly copying what Anna said last night) three and four of Celebrity Masterchef. On this here Celebrity Masterchef site, they're saying the four winning celebrity chefs will be battling it out for two semi final places. That's cleared it up then.

What I do know, and can tell you with confidence, because I've checked this, is that tonight, on BBC1, at 8.30pm, the four winning celebrities, Claire from Steps, Louis Emerick, from Brookside, Andi Peters, from being generally annoying on telly and Hywel Simons (??), will be slaving away under the watchful eyes and cutting tongues of John Torode and Gregg Wallace for a place in the semi finals next week.

The calming Interior of Lemonia in Primrose Hill, London. Photograph: Katherine Rose

A Friday treat for WoM readers: Jay's restaurant review from this Sunday's Observer Magazine. Hope you've already had lunch ...

Lemonia
89 Regent's Park Road, London NW1
020 7586 7454

Meal for two, including wine and service, £65

For the past couple of years the family holidays have been spent in Greece, a country with which, gastronomically, I have a love/hate relationship. At first I love it. Then I hate it. I like a good, creamy non-DayGlo tarama and a basket of fresh hot bread with which to shovel it away. I think a bright, spiky tzatziki is a thing of beauty, and I barely need to tell you how happy bits of chargrilled animal on sticks make me. The thing is, they only make me happy for about three days. On day four I open the menu and sigh. By day five I am repeating the famous dictum by the American food writer Jeffrey Steingarten: never take advice on matters culinary from a people who 'pickle their cheese and put tree sap in their wine'.

The Torriano. Photograph: Dan Kitwood/Getty

So, news through yesterday confirms that the George Tavern in Stepney, in the east end of London, was saved from closure after a line of celebrities nailed their colours to the campaign mast. Not that everyone signed up for the protest, and no doubt artists waffling on about how the planned block next door would block out a "special light" for photography in the pub did little to elicit empathy from most regulars - still, whatever works, I suppose.

But, however worthy this particular protest may or may not have been, it seems that pubs up and down the country are threatened with closure all the time these days as developers eye up premium land - especially in cities.

So will someone please explain why it's fine to open up yet another boring chain bar, but when someone tries to do something of their own with a neighbourhood pub it gets shut down or turned into some fancy place nobody wants? I'm talking about my local, but I get the feeling this could easily be about a pub near you.

Returning to live in Britain after 15 years away, the thing I most looked forward to was reconnecting with my favourite pubs. The Cracke in Liverpool was the same benign bohemia. Even though the docks have gone and the warehouses are condos the joke is that the Atlantic on Dock Road would still survive a nuclear attack. The Royal Oak at Hooksway, West Sussex, was as warmly welcoming as ever, and the only harm done to the Green Tree in Bath was that the locals could no longer roll their Rizla indoors.

But in London, oh dear. All of my old haunts had gone in one of two directions; either I was scared of getting my teeth knocked in, or it was impossible to negotiate a beer without being offered today's special of sea bass on a bed of bloody fennel.

The stars and stripes. Photograph: Sean Connelley/AP

We had a rehearsal meal for the 4th of July earlier this week - for, though gourmet.com, like most American food sites, was giving Independence Day recipes that involved firing up the barbecue, in my natal Kentucky we naturally celebrated with fried chicken. Now I may have lived in England for most of my adult life, but I am the possessor of the only genuine recipe for making what is (Google it if you don't believe me) the world's most popular dish.

Why should the descendant of Russian Jews with an unbroken rabbinical pedigree be the world expert on KY fried chicken? Simple. Though I was not born on the 4th of July, my father was; and our birthplace was Lexington, home of Bluegrass, thoroughbreds, Bourbon (and Burley tobacco, the cash crop we farmed).

A juvenile sea bass. Photograph: Steven Senne/AP

I've written about sustainable fish on the blog before, more than once. Clearly you weren't listening. Even Susan Smillie, who rings me up and goes: "Err, they're going on again about how pollack is huge, and sustainable and everything: can you write another thing for WoM about how realistic it is and certification and size and what fish is sustainable and what isn't, and does the public understand yet and, and ... "

So let's see who's been paying attention ...

1. Your waiter says the bass is sustainable: diver-caught in a reservoir near Datchet. What do you say?

2. How sustainable is caviar?

3. What is the world's most widely eaten, officially sustainable fish?

4. Is fish farming sustainable?

5. Put these fish in order of sustainability: mackerel, haddock, salmon.

6. Larger net sizes or fewer days at sea - which measure is likely to preserve fish stocks better?

7. How often do customers in Something Fishy fishmongers, Broughton Street, Edinburgh, ask if the fish was sustainably caught?

8. What colour is the Marine Stewardship Council's tick logo denoting sustainability?

9. Farmed cod are given toys to play with in their pens. True or false?

10. Jellyfish? Sustainable? A recipe?

The answers are below but be warned, we can tell if you clicked on 'read more' before you wrote your answers in the comments box ...

Heston Blumenthal behind the bar of his pub, The Hinds Head. Photograph: Karen Robinson

"Can food still save the British pub?" runs the strapline in the current issue of Restaurant Magazine (who, full disclosure, I write for), which contains an otherwise detailed analysis of the gastropub market. It's a question which, despite having been asked numerous times before, is more pertinent than ever.

We all know the reasons (smoking ban, credit crunch, cheap supermarket booze) why pubs' wet-sales are evaporating. But, as they do so, the big pub companies are ploughing investment into food - Mitchells & Butlers' pubs now sell over 110m meals every year - and, increasingly, muddying the gastropub waters. For every model independent like the Anchor & Hope, there are now hundreds of pubs jumping on the food bandwagon, selling themselves as good places to eat.

Which begs the question: what actually makes a great gastropub?

Sad news this morning for lovers of Spanish cuisine. Simone Ortega has died. Born in Spain's Catalonia region, she was best known for publishing the first edition of the legendary 1,080 Recetas de Cocina, which Jose Pizarro wrote about for us back in October last year. I'll use his words to sum up her contribution to Spanish cooking:

I grew up with this book. In common with many a youngster flying the nest, I received it when I turned 16 and left my home in rural Extremadura to study in the provincial capital, Cáceres - my sister handed it over to me. I learned to cook lentils and made my first paella for my new school friends following the book's recipes. It's a Spanish institution, a culinary bible you'll find in most Spanish homes.

There you are, wandering happily around the farmers' market when, suddenly a camera is shoved in your face, a forkful of something in your mouth and you're ordered to give an opinion. Getting 'vox-popped' is the foodie equivalent of getting 'happy slapped'.

Now that cookery programmes represent pretty much the entire output of British TV, legions of people are being asked to taste things, live on air and come up with something to say and, unsurprisingly, they flounder. 'Hmm, that's tasty' seems too weak. 'Mmm. Tastes just like chicken', is a little obvious - especially if it's chicken - then finally a little light goes on in their poor confused heads and they come out with a variation on the Internationally Recognised Generic Food Comment.

Actually it's a formula. Here's a cut-out-and-keep guide to explain it:

Howard Schultz at the 2007 shareholders' meeting. Photograph: Elaine Thompson/AP

Trouble is brewing at Starbucks. The beast (named after a character in Moby Dick) responsible for bringing coffee culture to the mass market and introducing us to a dozen nonsense words is showing signs of weakness. It was announced this week that Starbucks is to close 600 of its American stores, some 5% of their US outlets. Writing on the chain's website, chairman, president and CEO Howard Schultz called the move, "the most angst-ridden decision we have made in my more than 25 years with Starbucks".

The decision is part of Schultz's attempts at restructuring the company, though initially only 100 underperforming outlets were to be closed. Of the stores which are to be closed, 70% were opened in the past 18 months, suggesting an over-ambitious expansion programme. A new Starbucks will open every day this year; in total there are some 15,000 Starbucks outlets worldwide and international expansion remains a priority.