Some say the London Power Restaurant died when Richard Caring closed Le Caprice three years ago. And it would be easy to see why. I used to entertain in the famous Art Deco dining room, situated behind the Ritz Hotel, at least three times a week, and where I sat was fundamental to the lunch’s success. There were seven tables it was acceptable to sit at, with three in particular being the very best.
If you were in the corner, by the window, where Princess Diana used to sit, you knew you had made it, especially if there were serious bold face names in the room. As did everyone else in the room. Which meant you received a lot of hate as well as a smidge of respect (often from the same people, and often from people who worked for my own company).
Now that there are so many great restaurants in London, and now that the West End media nexus is so diffuse, it has become rather more difficult to choose restaurants that still mean something in the way they used to. With most places it doesn’t really matter where you sit, which makes them little but glorified refuelling exercises, doing little for the power dynamic, and making it difficult to show off.
Because we should never forget that part of the thrill of going out to eat at a restaurant is showing off.
I would say that right now there are five restaurants in London where it really matters where you sit: Scott’s, in Mount Street (if you’re not facing the door there’s little point being there); the River Café, in Hammersmith (if they try to seat you by the pizza oven, it’s best to feign death); The Wolseley (the four inner corner tables only); Colbert, in Sloane Square (the best seats are exactly the opposite of where you think they are); and Wiltons, in Jermyn Street (if you’re not sitting in a booth, you may as well be eating in Pret-a-Manger).
We should never forget that part of the thrill of going out to eat at a restaurant is showing off
Wiltons is probably the best-kept secret in London, the venerable fish restaurant which claims to be the capital’s oldest (1742, they reckon, although some of their customers I think might be older), and which many people still think is a private members’ club. I first got taken there by S I Newhouse, the Manhattan genius who steered Condé Nast to glory, back when glossy magazines were really a thing. S I knew more about the power dynamics of publishing than anyone I’d ever met and made a point of taking his British editors to Wiltons on his annual trips to London because he thought it was what they deserved. To him it was the quintessential British experience, assuming all the other diners were either lords or ladies; I never contradicted him, even when I knew that most people in the room worked for Goldman Sachs.
These days I go to Wiltons six times a year, to have dinner with Tony Parsons, one of my oldest friends. We didn’t meet until the Eighties, although we soon worked out that we spent much of the Seventies squashed into the same dingy punk basements jumping up and down to the same electrified blitzkrieg, supping warm lager-style liquid and eating the same salmonella burgers.
Wiltons couldn’t be more different, as it’s probably the most traditional, the most orthodox restaurant in the city. The last time I went I ate eel followed by kidneys, which is not the kind of thing you get in modern molecular restaurants. Here, you drink claret and fizz, and not much else. They also take great pride in not “keeping up”, while their dress code still encourages men to wear jackets and ties.
There is one booth in Wiltons that is better than all the others, of course, but I wouldn’t dare divulge it in case it irritated Tony. The last thing I’d want to do is rub an old punk rocker up the wrong way, because while we both wear Ralph Lauren these days, I’m fairly certain that Tony still has a safety pin secreted somewhere on his person.
Not that I’ve ever seen it, of course, not in Wiltons. Because in Wiltons you only see the world as they want you to see it. Even if you’re sitting at the wrong table.
