DEBORAH ROSS
So, at last, off to The Wolseley, which is, according to Michael Winner in the Sunday Times, 'unquestionably the most important new place for
decades . . . the best dining experience in London.' He adds, 'When I went with Michael Caine and Sean Connery our table for six was far more spacious than a table for six I'd had at the Ivy.' Well, that's a relief. Phew. Sometimes I can't sleep at night, worrying about whether Michael Winner and Michael Caine and Sean Connety have been accommodated in a sufficiently roomy way. And then the nightmares. . . Sean squeezed between the Michaels, forks colliding, wine spilled, elbows in the ashtrays, thighs tightly pressed up against each other. I wake up bathed in sweat, heart pounding, dry-mouthed. 'What is it?' my partner will ask. `I dreamed that Michael Winner and Michael Caine and Sean Connery went out for dinner and didn't have enough space,' I'll say. 'Ifs all right,' he will say. 'It was just a dream. You are safe now. There, there.' Sometimes I dream that Michael Winner's made a half-decent film with no spanking in it and is driving a Vauxhall Corsa and dating a woman his own age, but that's OK, because even while I'm dreaming it I somehow know it can't possibly be true. Only kidding, Michael. I love you dearly and wholeheartedly, as you know. The Esure adverts? Top-class, although I'm not sure about the woman who finishes the ad with a 'Hello, mum' direct to camera. How old must her mum be? Is she in the Guinness Book of Records?
Anyway, the restaurant, created by those wonder boys Jeremy King and Chris Corbin (formerly of the Ivy, Le Caprice and J. Sheekey) is phenomenally popular — a runaway, runaway success — with, by all accounts, more than 1,200 reservation requests per day. You can't, it seems, book a table, roomy or otherwise, for love or money or personal favours. I ask a restaurant critic friend of mine if it's worth phoning whoever the press people are to see if they can swing it for me. She laughs at me, roundly, then says, 'I tried that and they laughed at me. It depends on whether you want the humiliation.' I decide I do not want the humiliation. Sometimes, when it comes to humiliation, you have no choice in the matter. It's decided to get you and it will. Most recently, I went to the dentist, the first time for years as I am terrified of dentists and have a pathetically low pain threshold. 'Ouch, it hurts, give me an injection,' I shout as the nurse tucks the napkin round my neck. On my way out, the receptionist said, 'That'll be one-fifty.' I gave her a £2 coin. She wrote on a piece of paper: '1150.' I found that quite humiliating. 'Oh, that kind of one-fifty,' I said, as my cheeks burned. 'Why didn't you say as much?' So given the choice between being humiliated or not, I would choose not. But what's this? According to Winner, 'I've been here 12 times since my first visit in October 2003. . . ' Hey, what's he got that I haven't, apart from an amazing, F-off house in Holland Park, a subterranean swimming pool, a Roller, a girlfriend half my age and a co-star whose mum must surely be in the Guinness Book of Records? As it happens, my mother should be in the Guinness Records, if only for re-using the same coffee filter several hundred times. (She rinses them out.) However, the good news is that a proportion of the tables for dinner are available on a first-come first-served basis, but the bad news is that, of course, there is no guarantee you are going to get one. Just how 'first' do you have to be? Still, the restaurant is open daily from 7 a.m., so you can just drop in for breakfast in the morning, or perhaps tea and a cake in the afternoon. I decide on the breakfast option, with a friend, who is all for it once I explain that Michael Winner and Michael Caine and Sean Connery went there and found it most capacious. ('Well,' she said. 'Say no more.) The restaurant is at 160 Piccadilly, next to the Ritz, in a gorgeous, huge, Grade II, 1921 building designed by William Curtis Green, architect of the Dorchester, and originally commissioned by Wolseley cars as their London showroom. It's been modelled on the grand coffee houses of Prague, Vienna and Budapest, and as you enter you feel you should be wearing a big Dr Zhivago-style furry hat. You feel you should be brushing snow off your shoulders and stamping your feet. Brr, brr. Inside, it is grand enough to be impressive — high ceilings, vast chandeliers, lots of black Japanese lacquer— but not so grand that you feel it's all too much and wish you'd gone to Starbucks. That's the thing about Corbin and King. They simply seem to know how to create something a bit special without it being too scarily chi-chi or, frankly, up its own arse in a Sketch kind of way. That said, though, we are seated next to a table of ladies Chanel'd to the eyeballs. Quite intimidating, as my friend and I are more New Look via Matalan. We think they might work in one of the art galleries on nearby Cork Street. They have that icy hauteur. Have you ever dared go into a gallery on Cork Street? I haven't. Goodness, I am such a wuss. I have to be feeling especially confident to visit Space NK. That's scary enough. It always takes me a fortnight to pull a Band-Aid off.
I'm not normally a breakfast person. Fortynine cups of Nescafe and 72 fags usually does me first thing. Sometimes I think that if it wasn't for my hardened arteries I wouldn't be able to stand at all. But the menu does look so, so good: crispy bacon sandwiches; waffles with maple syrup; French toast with preserves; grilled kipper with mustard butter, boiled eggs with soldiers; even '2 eir im glas (10 mins)', whatever that is. My friend goes for The English (eggs of your choice, bacon, sausage, tomato, black pudding, mushroom and fried bread, £9.75), while I opt for scrambled eggs, smoked salmon and brioche, the most expensive item on the menu at £11.50. My Atnericano coffee is £2.50 but comes in a large silver pot, enough for several cups. My friend declares her cappuccino 'truly excellent'.
What can one say about smoked salmon, scrambled eggs and brioche? That the eggs should be soft, creamy, almost whipped? They are. That the smoked salmon should be plentiful, smoky, slightly lemony, not vividly dyed? It is. That the brioche should be flaky, buttery, with just a nudge of sweetness? It is. Yum. And The English! A mushroom as big as a fist, a properly meaty sausage (ditto bacon), poached eggs cooked just so, a black pudding that I'm told is 'melt-in-the-mouth'. The service is faultless and no one seems to mind that we sit about for ages after we've paid the bill, and even ask for water — tap, thanks. And if you just want a coffee and croissant, say, it'll only put you back about £3 or so, which isn't significantly more expensive than Starbucks. So, the Wolseley, a fab place in a fab building with a nice buzz. I hope to go there for dinner some time. And if, under the table, I found my thigh tightly pressed against Sean's, say, I'm not sure I would complain. I've dreamed about that too on occasion, but that's quite another story.
The Wolseley, 160 Piccadilly, London WI. 020 7499 6996.
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