Whether it's champagne for your real friends or real pain for your sham friends, thanks to The List's 24th Eating & Drinking Guide you'll never be stuck for somewhere to drown your sorrows. Our team of 70 reviewers have scoured – scoured! – Edinburgh and Glasgow to bring you the highs and lows of the dining and drinking scenes. And with 150 or so new openings this year, we've burst more than a few belt buckles along the way.

We've made a few changes to the 2017/18 version. As well as fully updated reviews of hundreds of restaurants, our trusty print guide will focus on the very best new bars and cafés, with more recommendations and suggestions than ever before. You'll also find every single review and recommendation online.

The guide will hit the streets on 18 April, but until then, here's our round-up of what's done to a turn and what's been done to death.

Everything's coming up roses for . . .

Brands
Love 'em or loathe 'em, brands are big in both cities this year. And while sometimes it feels like that means a Nando's on every corner, it's not necessarily bad news for discerning diners. Newcastle-born Smoke BBQ is packing them in over in Glasgow, while in Edinburgh, Italian wine café Veeno does a good line in aperitivo and a very reasonable wine list. Dishoom has also had them queuing round the block since opening in December and no wonder: have you tried that bacon naan?

Pizza
If it's wood-fired or stone-baked, them pies don't lose their shape: here at List Towers, we're predicting a long-overdue pizza revolution. In Edinburgh, frontrunners like La Favorita and Civerinos have been joined by Wildmanwood, wee Dough in Rose Street and Dalry's brand-new-but-almost-a-cult-already Pizzeria 1926. Over in Glasgow, Paesano Pizza set the ball rolling and have been joined by places like Baffo, Pizza Punks and Mozza, a new venture from Tony Macaroni specialising in Neapolitan flavours and sharing bottles of beer.

Street food
Street food is getting organised. Collectives and semi-permanent homes, like Food + Flea, Good Food Glasgow and Taste Buchanan have brought regularity into the scene, banking on the hope that their collective power will draw more diners in. It's easy to see the appeal, but let's hope the street scene doesn't lose its devil-may-care edge in the process.

And a bunch of garage flowers for …

Avocados
You like an avo smash as much as the next guy, amiright? But with concerns that the worldwide boom in avocado demand is contributing to deforestation as well as using serious amounts of precious water, the current trend for adding them to Every Single Plate needs to stop.

Fancy plates
Regular readers, feel free to cry 'fickle!' After all, we've been banging on about our hatred of slate tiles for what feels like decades now. But the new penchant for grey / blue artisanal hand-designed stoneware with a longer provenance than most ingredients is, frankly, giving us the hump. We know. Some folk are never happy.

The List Eating & Drinking Guide is out on Tue 18 Apr.