The village inside Belgravia: suppers around Motcomb Street, Kinnerton Street and Halkin Arcade

A few minutes' walk south of Knightsbridge station, between Lowndes Square and Belgrave Square, three small streets make up what locals half jokingly call the village. Motcomb Street is the main one, lined with galleries, boutiques and restaurants under low stucco facades. Kinnerton Street winds off it, a narrow mews of little houses, cobbles and a couple of very good pubs. And Halkin Arcade, a short covered passage, links Motcomb Street to West Halkin Street and hides one of the most admired Indian restaurants in London.

What makes the area special is who eats here. Most of the grand hotel dining rooms in SW1 are full of visitors. Around Motcomb Street, residents outnumber tourists on most nights, the atmosphere is relaxed rather than performed, and a table for two feels like dinner in a neighbourhood rather than an evening in a showroom. It is one of the most rewarding corners of Belgravia for anyone staying nearby. In summer the tables spill onto the pavements and the street takes on an almost continental air; in winter, with lights strung overhead and windows steamed from the kitchens, the short walk to dinner feels like an event in itself.

The most striking building on Motcomb Street is the Pantechnicon, whose row of tall Greek Doric columns looks as though it belongs in front of a museum. It was built in the 1830s as a vast store for carriages, furniture and fine goods, and its name passed into the language as the word for a removal van. A fire destroyed much of the building later in the nineteenth century, but the facade survived.

Today it has been reborn as a showcase for Nordic and Japanese design and food, with a concept shop, a Japanese restaurant below ground, a Nordic dining room and a roof garden that is one of the loveliest places in Belgravia for a drink on a summer evening. It suits a first meeting well: interesting enough to talk about, calm enough to hear each other, and within strolling distance of the grand SW1X hotels.

Amaya, inside Halkin Arcade, is the place for a dinner that feels like an occasion. Its open kitchen of grills and tandoors is part of the show, the room is dark and glamorous, and the cooking, small plates of modern Indian grilling, is designed to be shared, which makes it ideal for two people getting to know each other's tastes.

Ottolenghi, on Motcomb Street itself, is lighter and brighter, with the famous display of salads and cakes and a relaxed dining room behind. It works beautifully for an early supper or a long lunch that turns into an afternoon. Round the corner on Kinnerton Street, Pétrus offers the formal alternative, and our note on quiet corner tables covers it alongside the other hushed rooms of SW1.

Belgravia's back streets hide some of the most charming pubs in London, and three of them lie within a few minutes of Motcomb Street. The Nag's Head, halfway along Kinnerton Street, is small, old-fashioned and famous for asking customers to keep their mobile phones out of sight, which makes it a surprisingly good place for a proper conversation. The Alfred Tennyson, on Motcomb Street, is a handsome dining pub with a quieter room upstairs.

The Grenadier, tucked into the cobbled mews of Wilton Row, is the best known, with its red, white and blue exterior, the sentry box by the door and a snug inside that has hardly changed in generations. Laura, who loves its stories of Wellington's officers, somehow always secures a corner of the snug, and she is always ready to swap travel tales, skiing and Italian trains above all.

The pleasure of this corner is that everything is on foot. A route that works on almost any night:

Rosie calls this kind of booking the night out, and the name comes from exactly this street. The four-hour dinner evening, £1,300, covers the route above comfortably, and three hours, £1,050, work for a drink and supper without the final nightcap. The full tariff is set out on the rates page, travel within the centre is included, and the fee for her company is settled privately with her, never at the table.

Beside Laura, Michelle is a natural choice for an evening like this: chatty, warm, quick to laugh, and a mixologist at heart who reads a cocktail list as a set of suggestions to improve upon. Both belong to the late twenties portraits. For a quieter supper, or a table at Sloane Street instead, describe your ideal night in a line or two and Rosie will propose a name.