What is Marco Pierre White lugging through the woods? No, it’s not the body parts of a young kitchen insubordinate or the shredded pages of Gordon Ramsay’s latest book, but a piece of kit that every man should think about investing in this summer…

The MarcO-Grill 1000 is a portable gas grill that can be used with a portable O-gas canister (not much bigger than a man-sized can of Right Guard) or a normal leisure canister. Ideal for fishing, camping trips or for when all you’ve got in the fridge is a packet of sausages. £134.99 from www.heavenchef.co.uk

Although it’s been open for just a month or so, Bistrot Bruno Loubet is already being talked about by foodies and critics as the restaurant opening of the year.

It’s perfect for the moment being relatively inexpensive, boasting a wine list with plenty of unusual bottles in the twenties and with the right complexion to its service – quiet and unassuming rather than embarrassingly toadying.

The tricky ground level space of the Zetter Hotel in which it’s housed has been refurbed in a relaxed mélange of modernist and country style, breaking up the former hard lines of a room that used to feel overly people watchery (and, lets face it, the people often weren’t up to it.)

The ultimate draw of course though is Bruno himself who’s producing dishes that are clever without being self-consciously showy. It’s all done so effortlessly it’s easy to forget you’re actually in the presence of proper old skool greatness.

Bordeaux-born Bruno was the big star of the 80s and 90s, working at Le Manoir aux Quat’ Saison then gaining his own Michelin Star at Inn On The Park before opening Bistrot Bruno and L’Odeon. Then for some strange reason he legged it to Australia, presumably for a quieter life.

He returned to the UK apparently looking for an out-of-London gastro pub but was talked out of it by the owners of the Zetter. The menu is French brasserie style but with subtle innovations and it’s this mix of novelty and tradition that’s so nicely packaged and presented here.

A starter of Mauricette snails and meatballs with snails (apparently a reinvention of his mum’s favourite dish) was done without theatre or fuss.  The wood pigeon main in a quinoa and giblet sauce main (in which floated tiny florets of cauliflower) was unfashionably rich for modern tastes and all the better for it. A pasta of ravioli meanwhile was almost transparent and the millefeuille (we were feeling greedy) nicely chewy with a beautiful scent of orange and apple.

Like The Modern Pantry 100 yards or so away, it’s essentially an unpretentious but Michelin star quality neighbourhood restaurant. It would be easy to dissolve into paroxysms of joy at having Bruno back but we’ll leave that to you when you go. As you really must.

St John’s Square, 86-88 Clerkenwell Road, London EC1 (020-7324 4455; www.thezetter.com)

The first summer rays of 2010 were teasing their way through the Esquire windows this week, so we thought we’d bring you the latest from the world of designer sunglasses.

The big news is that evergreen trend-setter Madonna is putting her commerical weight (and tiny name tag) behind a new Dolce & Gabbana range that will go on sale this May – giving you a handy new option should there be a special birthday coming up.

The collection incorporates a distinctive letter ‘M’ (that will be for Madonna) on the arm and will retail for around £120. It’s the first co-branding venture Madge and the designer range have embarked on to date.

Look out for the advertising images for the MDGs that have been shot by Steven Klein in ‘fim noir’ style and starring – you guessed it – pop star and businesswoman, Madonna. Now all we need is for the sun to come out again.

As Ian McEwan releases his new book Solar, in which, familiarly, a man of deviant appetite and less-than-sound morals is cast in a tussle between science and nature, Esquire looks at the men who write men best – even if it isn’t always flattering.

1. Ernest Hemingway: War, hunting, bull-fighting and hard liquor: reading the Hemingway canon is like going on the ultimate stag do, with novels like For Whom The Bell Tolls and A Farewell To Arms providing fantasies for suit-wearing, office-treading modern men since the beginning of the 20th century. But it was with his final novella The Old Man & The Sea that ‘Papa’ crystallized what he had spent a lifetime trying to depict: the nobility, or ‘grace under pressure’, that a man can attain when facing enormous odds – in this case, a bloody big marlin caught off the coast of Havana. Essential reading: Fiesta (The Sun Also Rises), For Whom The Bell Tolls, The Old Man & The Sea

2. Irvine Welsh: Ever since his debut novel Trainspotting, the man who dragged Scottish literature’s proud tradition for dialect into the murky modern world has been associated with heroin addicts, pill poppers and alcoholics. But his more substantial works – 2001’s epic, generation-spanning Glue and Trainspotting’s 2002 sequel Porno – are more concerned with the nature of male fraternity and the enduring loyalties (and resentments) of shared childhoods than ‘wee bags of broon’ or hooliganism. For all the menace and debauchery that makes Welsh a compelling novelist for men in particular, it is his ability to show the bonds and tensions that keep us together that lies at the heart of his appeal. Essential reading: Trainspotting, Glue, Porno

3. Ian McEwan: The man they called ‘Ian Macabre’ in his early career likes to take male characters to very dark places. From the father who loses his daughter in a supermarket in The Child in Time to the victim of an obsessive stalker in Enduring Love, McEwan shackles his accomplished thinkers and scientists with that very male quality, arrogance. More often than not this intellectual bravado is played out against cruel twists of fate and irrational enemies, like the unstable Baxter from Saturday, in plots that climax in a version of an old-fashioned shoot-out. Essential reading: The Cement Garden, Amsterdam, Saturday

4. John Updike: Updike understood better than any other writer what Mike Skinner of The Streets labelled ‘a man’s burden’: that unquenchable inner belief that on some level we deserve – and are able – to bed pretty much any woman we want. Updike’s protagonists are selfish, self-centred adulterers bed-hopping around middle class suburbia behind their wife’s back, but in his lyrical prose, he manages to capture what we so often struggle to make woman understand: the depths to which we desire them, the complexity of our fascination with them, and why sex is never too far from our minds. Essential reading: The ‘Rabbit’ Series, Couples, Villages

5. Martin Amis: So often is Amis in the news for offending somebody – religious groups, women, the elderly – that it’s easy to forget he’s primarily a novelist, and with his debut effort The Rachel Papers (1989) managed to provide the kind of insight into being a teenage boy that you’d have to combine every John Hughes film ever made to begin to match. The rest of his career continued the trend, with 1984’s Money and 2003’s Yellow Dog in particular tracings the failings and frailties of manhood in the writer’s unmistakable high-low brow style. Essential reading: The Rachel Papers, Money, London Fields

Words by Sam Parker

In a compressed and clipped MP3-driven music world good sound often comes second to design. As fans of both we’ve teamed up with the people at PMC who supply the best recording and mastering studios around the world to give away a pair of Fact8 speakers worth over £4500.

The fact 8s are Advanced Transmission Line speakers derived from the company’s reference speakers used by the likes of Coldplay, Prince and Stevie Wonder and companies such as Lucasfilm, the BBC Atlantic Records and Polygram.

Until now studio monitors have looked OK in the studio but terrible in your living space – just accessorise with overflowing bowl of half-burnt ciggies and some empty bottles of blue label vodka to turn your designer living area into a black hole reeking of unwashed guitar tech.

Not so with the Fact 8s. Their look is as pure as their sound. The lucky winner can pick the finish from a choice of Graphite Poplar, Rich Walnut, Tiger Ebony and Natural Oak all of which are sourced from sustainable forests (which is where you’ll likely be chased to once the neighbours hear how loud they can be driven.)

We could tell you about the twin hand-built five-and-a-half inch bass units formulated with a feather light stiff-matte doping process or the  SONOMEX™ soft-domed tweeter made from a phenomenally uniform  pre-coated material offering advantages over individually treated domes – but we’d have to kill ourselves.

To enter, email your name and address to online@esquire.co.uk with PMC competition in the subject head by midday on 26 March.

Competition rules

Only one entry will be accepted per person.  The closing date for receipt of competition entries is 22 March 2010.

The competition is only open to UK residents over the age of 18.

Entry to the competition and acceptance of the prize constitutes permission to use the winner’s name for promotional purposes without additional consultation.

This competition is not open to employees of The National Magazine Company Limited or our competition partners or their direct family members.

The prize winners will be selected at random by The National Magazine Company Limited.  No purchase necessary.

Only the winners will be contacted personally. A list of winners will be available by sending a SAE to Esquire magazine, Competition winners, 72 Broadwick Street, London W1F 9EP.

Prizes must be taken as stated and cannot be deferred although The National Magazine Company Limited reserve the right to change the prizes in the event of unforeseen circumstances. There will be no cash alternative.

The National Magazine Company Limited does not accept any responsibility for late or lost entries.  Proof of sending is not proof of receipt.

The National Magazine Company Limited’s decision is final in every situation, including any not covered above and no correspondence will be entered into.

Entrants will be deemed to have accepted these rules and to agree to be bound by them.

The National Magazine Company Limited shall be permitted to exclude any entrant at any time at its sole discretion.

Where The National Magazine Company Limited runs a competition with a promoter such that the promoter is responsible for the selection and/or the provision of prizes then The National Magazine Company Limited shall not be responsible for or have any liability for the provision of such prizes.

If there is any conflict with these rules and the specific competition rules then the latter take preference.

There’s already two things you can’t be cheap about – shoes and suits - but can we add sweatshirts to that list? While you could find a perfectly acceptable looking version at any high street clothing store, a cheap sweatshirt will always feel, well, cheap.

That’s why it’s far better that you look for a reasonably priced  – as opposed to low priced – version instead. Swedish label Our Legacy have this sweatshirt for Spring, priced at £80, they’ve modestly called it ’great sweat’. While we’d love to be contrarian, we can’t help but agree with them. www.endclothing.co.uk

Esky, Esquire’s mascot, was born in 1934. He has featured on more than 500 copies of the magazine, and appears every month on our cover, graces our Twitter page and look top left, there he is again. Well, Esky may well be in for a shock.

We cannot be the only ones who have noticed the uncanny similarities between Esky and a certain George Sprott, minor television presenter from Ontario and cartoon star of the New York Times Magazine. Sprott is the creation of of Seth (aka Gregory Gallant), and in this stunning new graphic novel, George Sprott 1984-1975, we are introduced to him in the last year of his life at the age of 81.

Exploring themes of time, identity, loss and the persistence of memory, we are presented a review of Sprott’s fluctuating life through old interviews, flashbacks and personal reminiscences. And as the story progresses we learn a great deal more about a character who initially appears to be little more than a washed-up relic of a bygone world.

Seth has written a number of other books, including Clyde Fans, It’s a Good Life if You Don’t Weaken and Wimbledon Green. The award winning illustrator’s work has also graced the cover of the New Yorker. Esky, meanwhile, remains defiantly Esquire’s. Stephen Isaacs-Wilson

George Sprott (1894-1975) by Seth (Jonathan Cape) is published on 13 May

When does something stop being a staple and start being just plain boring? If it’s a menswear trend, it’s when every man within a 50 mile radius is wearing it. And we’ve certainly reached that point with check shirts, which is why a small crop of designers have taken to sprucing up the pattern.

Swedish brand Velour have done with this shirt, which mixes stripe and check patterns. While on paper this sounds like an awful idea, it actually works rather well. Still, we hope this is as far as it goes. www.numbersixlondon.com