D Map The focal point at this unique restaurant and bar perched directly above Borough Market is the glassed-in kitchen with an open spit, where ribs of beef, suckling pigs, birds and game (no doubt sourced from the stalls below) are roasted.

At dusk, we climbed onto two "motos," the small ubiquitous motorbikes with drivers, and asked to be taken to Chez Claude, a French restaurant perched on a hill overlooking Sokha and Independence, two other beaches.

Dressed in pressed jeans and a fisherman's cap, Michel greets customers at the door of the restaurant, perched on the corniche with a view of the old harbor.

The restaurant, perched over the water at the end of a raised boardwalk over mangroves, is fairly high class in terms of service and table settings, but it's the sea and mountain views that raise it above the ordinary.

In 1963 it had nothing but old-timers, memories, seven deserted hotels and one extraordinary restaurant perched high on the headland, the Nautilus, run by a retired chef from one of Melbourne's ritziest hotels.

The Nepenthe restaurant and bar, perched on a cliff high above the Pacific, was immortalised in the 1965 Hollywood film The Sandpiper.

The Cliff House is a restaurant perched on the headland above the cliffs just north of Ocean Beach, on the western side of San Francisco, California.

Some of the restaurants perched on the dunes are full, their tables set below canvas roofs that flap in the blustery winds.

There's not much to Colva - a sweet church, Our Lady of Mercy, and some restaurants perched on stilts on the beach, but the crowds here (and the smell from the canal running along the beach) can be daunting.

K Map Oloroso is one of Edinburgh's most stylish restaurants, perched on a glass-encased New Town rooftop with views across a Mary Poppins' chimney-scape to the Firth of Forth and Fife hills.