Restaurant

Q. I have been working in a large restaurant alongside a very attractive, although shy, girl. I live near the restaurant and she has come back for drinks on a few occasions. She seems to enjoy my company but I have been too feeble to take things further. I fear that if she does not find me attractive, by making a move I could ruin our friendship. What should I do? – Name withheld, London W6 A. Step one: buy a Feverscan forehead thermometer. This liquid crystal strip is held on to one person’s forehead by another, thus requiring a degree of physical intimacy. Step two: ask the girl to your flat along with another colleague. When they arrive, act slow-witted and explain you are feeling odd.

The Langham is a Victorian Gothic hotel opposite the BBC in Portland Place. It’s an odd place: haunted house near the wreckage of Newsnight. Perhaps I think this because the last time I came here I interviewed Jeremy Paxman about his ghosts: when he was anxious he banged the wall. The time before, my godmother collapsed at tea in this very room, now Chez Roux. It’s a vast, dimly lit silver space. The lights are long and slender, like giant earrings. Palms wobble. A palm court is a Victorian conceit; the Titanic also had one. I wonder if they were here for Napoleon III, Guy Burgess, or Sherlock Holmes. I wonder how they stay alive in darkness. Le Gavroche closed in January, and if it hasa successor, it is this It’s a hard thing to dress, a windowless room.

The oldest and best chophouse in London was Simpson’s Tavern in Ball Court Alley off Cornhill (since 1757 on that site): Charles Dickens’s favourite chophouse, and mine. Simpson’s was locked out by landlords who impersonate cartoon villains at the end of 2022 for failing to pay pandemic arrears promptly. Simpson’s said they survived world wars, the plague and the Industrial Revolution, but not a landlord who doesn’t understand chops. (This part I paraphrase.) We settle into a spindly table for what is, by any measure, an exceptional roast lunch Court proceedings are ongoing: meanwhile it’s a ruin. It was vandalised in May, as these things tend to be. Now it is empty, and ornamental books tumble out of smashed windows.

I am fretting about this restaurant column’s election coverage and then I alight on something superficially grand and lovely, which has been hollowed out and is now useless and barely able to function: a shell. It is the Wolseley 2 – the Wolseley City – and this is perfect. I name it the election restaurant, and Tories should eat here while they still have their shirts Few restaurants are important, though I treasure Martha Gellhorn’s description of an operating theatre for the wounded of the Spanish Civil War which was once a restaurant in a grand hotel. But was it any good? Tales of society folk eating are self-serving: real history happens nowhere near them, says the Marxist in me – and PR is, well, PR.

Ottolenghi is an Israeli deli co-owned by Yotam Ottolenghi, an Israeli Jew, and Sami Tamimi, a Palestinian Muslim. They met in Baker & Spice in London, where they bonded over the dream of persuading more British people to eat salad. This is an ideal story of co-existence (I have met a group of Israeli Jews and Arabs dieting for peace) and I thought the new Ottolenghi in Hampstead might be picketed by idiots shouting for peace but meaning war. (Martha Gellhorn was right about slogans. Never shout them: even ones you agree with.) It is fine in that I wish I were in the Middle East to eat the original But this is Hampstead, not Bloomsbury, and there aren’t any pickets.

Q. My husband and I (both in our eighties) recently visited a carpet shop with a view to replacing the stair carpet in our four-storey house. The salesman showed us various carpets and we discussed their relative merits. When I asked him how hard-wearing a particular carpet was, he looked at us carefully and said: ‘Well, it is not going to need to be very long-lasting is it?’ We were a bit surprised and will be taking our business elsewhere. But can you suggest how we might have been able to indicate to him politely that this particular form of words was unlikely to secure a sale? – R.H., Cheltenham A. You might have cried pleasantly, ‘What do you mean? We’ve just extended our lease by 20 years!’ and then stared at him enquiringly while he struggled to answer. Q.

Arlington is named for the 1st Earl of Arlington and his street behind the Ritz Hotel. It used to be Le Caprice, which was opened in 1947 by the Italian Mario Gellati, who would not, by the new rules, get into Britain now, but this is not a column about pain. In 1981 Le Caprice was taken over by Chris Corbin and Jeremy King, and it became the most fashionable restaurant in London. Princess Diana dined here and when Jeffrey Archer was released from prison, he ate here. None ofthese dishes could be improved. Five stars, no notes After an interregnum from Richard Caring, under which Le Caprice closed in 2020 – it could not compete with Caring’s mad themed restaurants across Piccadilly – Jeremy King, who is more emotional and skilful than most restaurateurs, returned here.

Paper Moon is the Italian restaurant inside the Old War Office on Whitehall, now a hotel called Raffles London at the OWO. It has nine restaurants and bars, because it is a Disneyland for the 1 per cent in the fraying centre of the British state, which is enraging and hilarious. I reviewed Saison in November and found it as chilly and finessed as the British state pre-crisis. OWO reminds me of a theme park I visited in Georgia, Russia, two decades ago in winter. It was a fine endeavour but pointless, the happy children had fled. You can’t have a grand hotel inside a post-Imperial bin fire. It makes no sense. Paper Moon is grey, and Art Deco, of course: the pre-calamity aestheticof choice Paper Moon is rather better than Saison: perhaps Italian food can’t help but exude warmth.

Dear Jackie is the restaurant in the new hotel Broadwick Soho on Broadwick Street in Soho, which is most famous, if you are an infectious diseases nerd, for being the site of the 1854 cholera outbreak and its cure. Dr John Snow isolated it to the street’s water pump, noted local brewers were immune, and proved cholera is not airborne. When children stopped dying, Soho eased into its time of moral rot. This is as spirited an attempt to re­animate the 1970s as I have found beyond musical theatre This is a changeable thing. Drama fled Soho in the 1970s, and Broadwick Soho is an attempt to put it back. This is no generic hotel.

Noble Rot, which is named for a sickness that afflicts grapes, a self-aware name for a restaurant in London, is becoming a chain. Don’t get me wrong. The Rots in Lamb’s Conduit Street and Greek Street (which replaced the Gay Hussar that died in sympathy with the intelligent left) are two of the best restaurants we have. My only complaint is that, like the Plastics in Mean Girls, they know how lovely they are and have their own promotional magazine. This food has a loving intensity to it, and it is as good as you will find in London Now they have expanded into Mayfair – but the least horrifying part, which is Shepherd’s Market.

Q. An old friend offered to treat me to a birthday lunch, provided I choose and book the restaurant myself. (He has always hated admin.) On booking, the restaurant asked me for a £50 deposit — this to deter no-shows — and I was told this would be refundable on our arrival. When the bill was presented my friend characteristically just handed over his card without even glancing at it. The next day, on noting that my deposit had not been refunded, I rang up this agreeable local restaurant. It turned out there had been a misunderstanding. They had not refunded my account but had instead reduced my friend’s bill by £50. It’s not that I want the £50 back.

Scotching my bright idea of a stiff gin for Dutch courage in the bar across the road, Catriona bounded straight for the door of the Colombe d’Or. My restaurant phobia was fast upon me and I followed her into the bourgeois holy of holies more slowly than a nudist climbing through a barbed wire fence. We were half an hour early and directed to the bar. Here my plea for strong spirits was again denied and I had to make do with champagne. Speechless with ecstasy — this was her birthday treat — Catriona toddled off with her flute to cast her eye over the Miros, Matisses and Chagalls in the dining room. I sat alone on the windowsill in the bar where Picasso and Yves Montand and James Baldwin had once parked their famous arses and I mourned.