CITY AND SUBURBAN
Some day soon the Bank of England will reopen as a gastrodome and no one will turn up
CHRISTOPHER FILDES
Oliver St John Gogarty wanted to reform the Irish banking system by turning the banks into brothels and the brothels into banks. (The Bank of Ireland, as I rec- ollect, would become Piano Mary's.) We have been trying out his transformation scene in London, where the banks are all being converted to restaurants and the restaurants are turning into banks. They have been drawn together by the great boom in gastrodomes. Chefs are now indis- tinguishable from investment bankers, and behave just like them. They have learned to flounce out at the drop of a toque and take their brigade with them as they march across the road to the crackle of banknotes. (Bad news for their former employers at L'Oranger and Aubergine, who have been left holding the parcel and find that the music has stopped.) Many of them have given up the chores of cooking for the plea- sures of branding and franchising. The gas- trodomes themselves keep the investment bankers busy, backing them, buying them, selling them, putting them together, float- ing them off and puffing them along. It is almost a year since I identified the Gas- trodome Factor and concluded that the British economy was overeating. Discre- tionary spending, so I said, was pouring down the red lane in an avalanche of seared tuna and a tidal wave of Pinot Gri- gio. New multi-seater gastrodomes were opening every week, each with its theme and its stroppy girl to make, or rather to refuse, the reservations. Not long ago Aubergine had a five-month waiting list.
Previous page
