With the alluring prospect of Jools Holland's Hogmanay hootenannny on the box, the wonder was I could be lured from the house at all. But a party at Oxford's Malmaison Hotel is an event not to be missed. This one proved a fitting finale to the festive fun, every bit as memorable as the one 12 months earlier that ushered in 2007.

The hotel set the tone for entertaining on a lavish scale with its brilliant opening party at the end of 2005. The vast buffet that characterised this celebration, served from a series of stations along the galleried main wing of this former prison, has been successfully imitated at the parties since. This year, the chef Russell Heeley and his team did a wonderful job. Visual appeal was particularly supplied at the fish and seafood section, where amazing ice sculptures included a swan and opened scallop shells.

Though strictly speaking forbidden fruit for me, I couldn't resist tucking into the oysters which I enjoyed, as befits a member of the Tabasco Club, with plenty of this fiery pepper sauce. This was perhaps tempting fate, since it was the consumption of one of these molluscs that almost cost the life, through a rare disease, of restaurant writer Michael Winner - a gentleman much in my mind at the party, since the Malmaison had been the subject of his musings in this week's Sunday Times.

How long a gap there can be between his inspection and report was apparent in this instance. I heard about Winner's stay from the hotel manager Stephen Woodhouse (pictured) at a party in mid-October to launch the Visitors' Room, which had been given a face-lift following the fire at the hotel in June. Stephen was naturally a little worried, bearing in mind Winner's acerbic approach to his reporting, that he might find himself, tasting the rough edge of his tongue.

In the event, the critic was most complimentary - about Stephen especially, whom he described as "the superbly courteous general manager". Famously customer-friendly, the hotel could hardly have harmed its cause on this occasion through the very wise decision to put Death Wish, a film directed by Winner, on the DVD player in his room.

The encouraging report comes just a few months after the Malmaison was named hotel of the year in awards organised by the Hotel and Caterer magazine. As Stephen said on that occasion: "No-one in Oxfordshire has won this award. It is a really big thing. As a hotelier, you can't get anything bigger. It is a huge award and we are very honoured. It is down to our whole team."

At the start of a new year, I must just briefly mention an Oxford restaurant which helped make the last one so enjoyable for me. Barely a week passed in which I didn't eat a delicious dinner or, more rarely, lunch at La Cucina, in St Clements, which is owned by the hugely talented Italian chef Alberto Brunelli and his charming wife, Yola. Last month, I actually managed both on the same day, though lunch was only a bowl of split barley soup. I was there, in fact, precisely in order to reserve a table for that night. As I finished my soup, Yola suddenly remembered that a four-strong party had also booked for that evening, saying that they were friends of mine. The waiter hadn't noted down their names, however.

That night we discovered the friends were a delightful couple whom Rosemarie and I had entertained to dinner there exactly a week before. They had enjoyed it so much that they wanted to introduce it to two of their friends. La Cucina is that sort of place. Long may it prosper.