Kingsley Amis was obsessed with Scott’s on Mount Street, Mayfair, and he knew a lot about food. He ate himself to death. In his unwise James Bond continuation novel Colonel Sun – Ian Fleming also loved Scott’s – Amis had Bond ponder that ‘every meal taken in those severe but comfortable panelled rooms [is] a tiny victory over the new hateful London of steel and glass matchbox architecture’. Bond then presumably dropped his knickers, because there is as much projection in Amis and Fleming as there is in this column.
Even so, I know how they feel about Scott’s. Mayfair is now the UAE with democracy and rain. It is gold and pink for toddler princes, and Scott’s, which is the colour of a Barbour, remains a tiny victory in brown. Of course Amis loved it. It’s a man’s restaurant, specialist in seafood, warfare and the possibility of gouty sex, at least in your head. The IRA loved it too. They bombed it twice.
It’s a man’s restaurant, specialist in seafood, warfare and the possibility of gouty sex
It was a Victorian oyster bar, then it lived in a house later consumed by the Trocadero on Coventry Street. If you look at the Trocadero building you can still see the old Scott’s bones, like a sort of half-buried restaurant dinosaur. Then it moved to Mayfair, and the Mount Street facade – glassy under redbrick Edwardian madness with a soul-black awning – reminds me of Venice in winter, because there is a sadness to Scott’s which I find very appealing. But I love a cause that is lost: that’s why I am a liberal. I think Scott’s smells of Roger Moore, who I saw here once, waiting for death in familiar rooms. It exudes the male heartbreak of my father’s generation and just because of this, I love it.
It is easy to get a table here, because Scott’s cannot be fashion-able, in the way that pavements cannot be fashionable. They are too useful, and Scott’s is useful, a history of old London in food. The clients – rich men, pretty women – look slightly dead, but that is to be expected. They look even worse at Wiltons. The rich are never happy: the idea of it is spin.
There is a Scott’s 2 which lives in Quinlan Terry’s mad fake Georgian dreamscape by Richmond Bridge. The relationship of the sequel to the original is that of the film Aliens to Alien: the second was blockbuster, the first arthouse. Scott’s 2 is almost unbearably camp – it makes Lilibet’s look restrained – but it is for a different constituency: second wives, who would never tolerate all this rational brown. It is cut with blinding white ceilings and amazing lamps, though: some are art deco, but not enough to terrorise you.
We have a steak, of course: a vast, charred ribeye which sits on the white plate that says ‘Scott’s’. It comes with a dainty rocket salad that it could, and does, squash flat. The risotto is less good: risotto needs a gentle hand, and this one looks like Ready Brek, or grouting.
It doesn’t matter. Scott’s has the thing all restaurants need: identity. It’s a very specialised identity, to be sure: ageing satyromaniac – and the golden syrup pudding, which comes for two and with custard, is the emotional destination of this condition. Sugared ecstasy. I am told men come here for the golden syrup pudding, which is served seasonally, because men do not eat golden syrup pudding in sunlight. I like to think they queue in Mount Street, and round the block.
In conclusion, I unconditionally endorse this restaurant. Go before they paint it pink to match the rest of Mayfair, and Bond’s frozen heart.
Scott’s, 20 Mount Street, London W1K 2HE; tel: 020 7495 7309.
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