Food

Regular readers of this column might have noticed that I don't do restaurant reviews. I'm not one of your A A Gills or Fay Maschlers. I've never been to Mezzo or Momo or Moro, let alone had the chance to become blase about them. London makes me feel gauche and provincial, and my usual haunt is Pizza Express, where I know the fiorentina will never disappoint, even if the egg is sometimes a little hard and the crust a little dry. Who am I, therefore, to comment on fashionable restaurants? This is by way of explanation for what follows.

The other night I ate the grandest meal I will probably consume in my whole life. We had been planning it for weeks, my husband and I, ever since a certain celebrated chef opened his new establishment. By the time our hard-won booking finally came round we were sick with anticipation. Admiration for the chef's exquisite cookbook was my reason for going. I had made his monkfish with red wine sauce, his chocolate fondants and ginger ice cream, and marvelled at pictures of his oven-dried strawberries. But on the train to London, our smartest shoes pinching and our stomachs rumbling, we wished we could call it off and eat fish and chips.

Somehow we got there - a small purple-painted venue on a long, cold road (I guess real reviewers take taxis). After much meeting and greeting from a coven of French waiters, we were shown to a cramped table in a room ornamented with strange glasswork. Given the once-in-a-lifetime feeling of the evening, we and our two friends decided on the menu prestige: seven tiny courses designed to display the full range of the chef's genius. We were starving now, and nibbling small rolls, trying not to spoil our appetites.

Then the first course arrived, which I immediately recognised from the cookbook - a diminutive coffee cup filled with a frothy white soup of haricots blancs and girolle mushrooms, adorned with a light sprinkling of black truffle flecks: a trompe l'oeil cappuccino. As insubstantial as a tisane, yet as full of flavours as a three-course meal. And it was only the amuse-gueule. Next came a tranche of wobbling foie gras, gooey like baby flesh, seasoned with a delicate swirl of quince chutney. Then more huge silver domes were swept away to reveal shimmering lobster and langoustine ravioli.

We had abandoned conversation now. Each dish came accompanied by a lecture from the waiters on its components and we didn't like to interrupt. Any unfinished morsel also provoked a rebuke, as at school. When a piece of brill arrived, we were didactically told how it was poached in red wine to give it a deep mahogany colour. It was another delicious creation, yet depression descended as we ate it. The thought that we had not even reached the main course (lamb with artichokes and thyme jus), let alone the two pudding courses, made us despair.

By the time we got to coffee they had moved us to a draughty ante-room. After we had waited a month for our table, the establishment waited five minutes before asking us to vacate it for the next sitting. As we chewed macaroons from a Wedgwood box, our tastebuds thoroughly overwhelmed, we started to think about value for money (£100 a head - no expense accounts on this magazine). Man cannot live on flavour alone, especially when it costs as much as a winter coat.

I won't tell you the restaurant, though, because - would you believe it? - the chef is reputed to be a retiring chap, who hates publicity.

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