HOW is the not smoking going? Fine, thanks. Marvellous, even.
Except that I'm very depressed and cry a lot and hate every- thing and everybody and suffer from these Incredibly strong urges to run over pedes- trians (particularly elderly ones, on zebra crossings) and my brain has gone to mush and I have to be physically restrained most evenings from going out and renting yet another video with Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan in it and I'm eating too much and get- ting fat. Indeed, I've lately developed something of an obsessive interest in the new-look Vanessa Feltz, although I can't help wondering why no one has yet pointed out that she is still fat! Just the other day I was looking at a 49-page spread on her (and that was just the one photo) in Hello! when I remarked to my partner, 'But she's still fat! Size 12? My elbow!' He said that I'm a very nasty person. And childish, too. However, I rather skilfully argued my cor- ner by putting my fingers in my ears and going, very loudly: 'La, la, la, la, la . . . Not listening . . . La, la, la, la la. . . Anyway, what has any of this to do with restaurants? Well, absolutely nothing, frankly. But, tell me, if I don't write about myself, who will? Martin Amis? Doris Less- lug? Alexander Solzhenitsyn? As it hap- pens, Mr Solzhenitsyn did once approach me with a view to writing 'A Day in the Life of Deborah Ross', but when he realised it would go 'Got up. Felt fat. Went back to bed,' he didn't think it was quite the thing to revive his career. Silly boy. Talk about looking a gift horse in the mouth. Oh, all right then, I'll squeeze a restaurant in. I went to the Mirabelle, one of Marco Pierre White'ws places, and it was really, really nice. vv here were we? Oh, yes. It's not that I'm fat as such, yet, it's just that I'm going that way. The Mirabelle is on Curzon Street, in `A'arilicY Mayfair. You enter at pavement level and then go down, down, down to s.°Inewhere quite green and gloomy with JUm.bo leather sofas and the biggest silver- disco ball I've ever seen in my life. Honestly, should there ever be dancing you'd look pretty idiotic doing it Ttittd your handbag. You'd need the full Louis Vuitton luggage set. My friend, Emma, is already in the bar ,wattins for me. Emma is irritatingly thin and ?eutiful, but has just fallen off the treadmill at her health club and has broken her finger, the poor thing (tee-hee). Emma recently started a frighteningly substantial job on the London Evening Standard's glossy ES maga- zine. I know she knows what she is doing just — but, still, I feel I ought to tell her that what Londoners really want to read about are top-class beach holidays in Mauritius. An irksome commission, I know, but, as we go back a long way, I inform her 1 could probably undertake it. I could go tomorrow, even. she says. She adds that she has spent the last two weeks test-driving an open-topped Mercedes. Cow! I hope all her tights sag at the knees from now on. Truly, I don't know when I started being so horrid and resentful. Well done, Vanessa Feltz! Only another four stone to go!
We have a drink in the bar, a glass of champagne each, then go into the dining- room. The tables are quite close together, which is something I like, because I can eavesdrop and anyone's conversation is usually better than mine. However, on this occasion, the youngish couple to our right seem to be in competition. 'The thing is,' he says at one point, 'it's all going to depend on the overall corporate strategy.' I don't think he's going to get into his dining com- panion's pants tonight, frankly. He might be better off trying to get into my pants, which are so big these days it should be easy-peasy. Tragically, the difficulty will be getting out again! To the left, we have a foursome of elderly American tourists, including a couple of those marvellous, overgroomed American ladies with hair so tightly pulled back in velvet-bow thingies it `Sun-dried eye of newt, sun-dried wing of bat, sun-dried leg of frog.' looks like the bows are holding their faces on. What happens when the bows come out at night? I wonder. Do their faces drop off on to the floor? Do their husbands cry, Tor God's sake, why do you always have to leave your face lying around all over the place? I just trod on it again.'
The service here is, thankfully, nicely dis- creet. I hate it when waiters in smart estab- lishments are in your face. It means you have to do your impersonation of a grown- up all the time. Not that I am ever childish, actually. Indeed, the fact that I still ring door-bells and run away is, I think, neither here nor there. Anyway, we order our food, then get the wine list, which is terrifyingly huge and includes an 1847, £30,000 Bor- deaux. 'We'll have the £30,000 Bordeaux,' I tell the sommelier. He doesn't blink. I then have to chase him through the restaurant, crying, 'Only joking!' (A £30,000 bottle of wine. There's a thing. If there are six glass- es to a bottle, it works out at £5,000 a glass. And if there are two sips to a glass — as there are, when I'm drinking — then that's £2,500 a sip.) We order the Chateauneuf- du-Pape at £30. It'll do. 'Do you mind if I smoke?' asks Emma. 'No,' I lie.
The food is brilliant. I order some kind of salmon terrine to start with, which comes as a little fishy sandcastle and, as little fishy sandcastles go, it's the tops. Emma's asparagus with sauce mousseline comes in a sweet little bundle like one of those dried-flower arrangements you can buy in National Trust shops. Next, she has the lemon sole, while I have the grilled lobster with herbs and garlic. Mostly, I don't like shellfish. I once tried oysters but, tell me, what's the point in sucking something slimy and biological out of a small ashtray? Still, I've always had a soft spot for lobsters, even though they are evil-looking and one doesn't so much eat them as give them a good, brutal going-over. Thankfully, though, this lobster arrives with the brutal bit already accomplished, so I can just gen- teelly pick the juicy bits out of the shell with a fork. Delicious. We finish with crème brillee Granny Smith. I could have eaten a vat of it.
All in all, it's not as expensive as I'd imagined it would be. Starters are around £10 a go, entrees are £15, and the puddings are all £7.50. I'm not saying this is cheap. I wouldn't recommend it to Big Issue ven- dors. It's just not that expensive. We leave late, and are pleasantly tipsy. Emma says she might let me test-drive open-topped skateboards for her one day, but only if I'm very good and stop revving my engine at old folk on pedestrian crossings. She says she thinks Vanessa Feltz might be a size 12. `Pull the other one,' I say, 'it's got cellulite on it.' That it has,' she says. I hope she breaks another finger. Quite soon.
The Mirabelle, 56 Curzon Street, London WI. Tel: 0207 499 4636. Open daily from 12 to 2.30 p.m. (3 p.m., Saturdays and Sundays) and 6 to 11.30 p.m. (10.30 p.m., Sundays).
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