Romaine lettuce, grilled chicken, croutons, anchovies, Parmesan and an emulsified dressing of lemon juice, garlic, olive oil, egg and Worcestershire sauce. Ex nihilo, Caesar salad!
What, then, one is minded to ask, the hell was going on at Westminster’s Chez Antoinette when they came up with their recipe? It just about resembles a Caesar salad, shadows-in-the-cave style. Lettuce (tepid and limp); croutons (cracker-adjacent); anchovies (first of their kind to defy their oily-fish moniker); pancetta (unwelcome); Parmesan (no complaints). And then – cherry tomatoes? Half a boiled egg? While the hunt for London’s best Caesar salad is still on, the passive search for its most blah can be called off.
But, dry anchovies aside, I have started this column in the wrong place. Because Chez, as it is affectionately known by friends and rivals at the nearby Spectator, is not really a restaurant – don’t be fooled by the menus, the cutlery, the reservation system and the floor staff. The food is collateral to your real mission. Judging Chez by its food is like judging a horse by its IQ. Unfair, unorthodox, directionally wrong. I once watched a senior political editor eat a steak off of his lap there.
You are at the standard-issue meeting point of your standard-issue London politico, in one of those New Labour-y newbuilds between Victoria and Westminster. The Ministry of Justice is around the corner, parliament a short walk; there is a Greggs next door. You are here to drink wine from a rigmarole list with a predictable mark-up. You are here to be a voyeur, to engage in the art of subtle distinction: does that thin man in horn-rimmed glasses work at the Economist or the Treasury? And why, on a Tuesday lunchtime, do none of them appear to be working? Four years ago, you would have come here to spot Keir Starmer conspire with the Times editor Tony Gallagher.
It’s an odd place, Westminster. And not just owing to its attendant critters: the taxidermied shire Tory; the self-consciously déclassé think-tanker; the turbo-ambitious Labour parliamentary private secretary (who frequents much nicer restaurants than Chez anyway); the blithe and aspirant young political correspondents. The geography itself insults: Parliament Square is a multi-lane roundabout, with a centre that plays host to occasional anti-austerity protests. Whitehall is a motorway with a central reservation dedicated to remembrance. The pubs are full and sticky-floored franchises. There is almost nowhere good to eat.
That makes me concerned about the state of our political class. It is a particularly English mode of self-punishment to think that caring about what you eat is somehow an effete, European affectation; to believe that the pursuit of sensory pleasure is a nouveau pastime. It is a fixture of the national psyche that damages a lot more than its palates – meat-and-two-veg Britain (“I don’t care about the fancy stuff”) is condemning us to a grey-scale public realm, and Torsten Bell to bad Caesar salads. Taste is not the only quality I want in my politicians, but it is a desirable one nevertheless. Style is morality, and all that.
And so, here I am in Chez, a victim of the performative anti-taste class, watching a friend eat a croque monsieur constructed with the dexterity of a JCB. With its red and white woven chairs, maroon and gold A4 menus, high ceilings, steak frites and French onion soup, it is doing its best impersonation of Café Rouge in 1997. You can smoke under the enclosed awning, which feels illegal in 2025 – or in the very least, discourteous. Not that it stopped us. The entire effect does make me wonder why anyone would want to do an impression of Café Rouge in the first place. But, people behave in all sorts of strange and unaccountable ways.
I am minded to say, at this point, that I like the place: I appreciate the functionality, I can tolerate the culinary repetition, I don’t even mind the ectomorph civil servants. It is good that it exists and I hope it continues to do so – for all those in search of idle political correspondents and a liquid lunch (hold the lunch). But I do wish the British establishment fed themselves a little better. Our lunch is downstream of theirs, ultimately.
[See also: The millennial parent trap]
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This article appears in the 03 Sep 2025 issue of the New Statesman, The Age of Deportation
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