Paying the price
Sir: Beverley Nichols's restaurant bill may have been outrageous (Notebook, November 10), but if he didn't like it why did he go to that restaurant, where he must have been able to forecast the charges? For my lunch today, I and my companion ate half a melon, a prawn cocktail, a grilled sole with two vegetables, a 'haddock Monte Carlo' with a salad, two sweets off the trolley, a bottle of Pouilly Fuisse and coffee, and the bill was just over E12. This was at the Caprice, a ' smart ' restaurant; if Mr Nichols and his friend had cared to go to Chelsea or Kensington they could have got a similar meal for two-thirds as much.
If patrons want to• indulge their snobbery by going to expensive restaurants, why should they not pay for it? The answer to the question of "who has the money" is easily found. A harder question is why anyone willing to buy such a boring meal as Mr Nichols's should not find somewhere cheap to eat it at.
B. A. Young
Flat 3, 28 Elm Park Gardens, London SW10
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