Deborah Ross
MY friend Oscar says [should take him out to eat because he is 'poor'. 'Look at these shirt sleeves,' he says, hoiking them up. 'I've had this shirt since I was 12.' But Oscar, I protest, I just saw you hoik the sleeves up! 'That may be.' he says. 'But I've still had this shirt since I was 12. I was a very big 12-yearold.' I put it to him — as politely as one can put these things to anyone — that he truly doesn't look . ahem • . famished. 'Typical you.' he says, 'to hold it against me because my poverty has yet to hit my waistline.' I can see he has a point here. Look at the Russians. They're poor and awesomely enormous, aren't they? And single mums who live on council estates. I went to Asda (once) and it was full of such mums. Couldn't get down any of the aisles, they were all so bloody fat. Personally, I think it's too many potatoes and not enough sushi.
Anyway, being an extraordinarily kind and generous-hearted person — honestly, I can't pass a Big Issue seller without averting my gaze and quickening my pace — I agree not only to take Oscar out, hut to take him to lunch at Sketch. It sounds like a dry-cleaners, I know, but it certainly isn't. Sketch is owned jointly by Pierre Gagnaire (one of France's finest, most Michelin-starred chefs) and Mourad Mazouz (the owner of Momo), and it's the fanciest, most chichi, most terrifyingly expensive — starters: £58; mains: £75; pud: £40 — restaurant in London, the UK, the world, the cosmos, the universe. Indeed, if food is the new religion, then Sketch is probably the Vatican via Mecca and Jerusalem and the community centre opposite us where the Happy Clappies gather every Sunday evening and go 'Hallelujah' so loud that we have to turn the volume right up on the Antiques Roadshow. If I were Jesus, I think I'd prefer it if people asked me into their lives quietly. I might even make it a condition of being saved.
So, off to Sketch, then, which is on Conduit Street where, apparently, the old Christian Dior building used to be. I'm a little frightened, I admit. Sketch has had rave reviews thus far — 'Spectacular' (Independent), 'Terrific' (Observer), 'You what?' (Big Issue) — but will I live up to it? Am I going to be made to feel the sort of rubbish, wholly unglamorous person that I am? Already, the booking process has been somewhat fraught. You have to hand over your credit-card details, then sign a fax saying that if you cancel you'll still pay £25 a head. It might simply not be my kind of place. I think I'd feel better if it were housed in an old Gap building, say.
In I go. And? Jesus! (Said whisperingly, because I deserve to be saved as much as anyone.) The place — which is enormous — is as much a shrine to modern design as anything else: benches that melt out of walls, a grand staircase dribbling with faux waterfalls
of melting chocolate. Sketch is not just the Lecture Room (the expensive restaurant at the top) but also a patisserie serving teeny doll's-house cakes, an extraordinary video art gallery that becomes a cheaper 'brasserie' in the evenings, a white-out sunken bar and . .. the toilets! Incredible, with their crystalembedded, illuminated walls. It's like going for a pee in Ivana Trump's jewellery box. It's fun, especially if you've always longed to have a pee in Ivana Trump's jewellery box, which, I suddenly realise, I always have.
Into the Lecture Room now, which is vast and cream and gold-leafed. Ah, here is Oscar. Oscar is wearing, today, a thick, cosylooking purple shirt. I do not ask him about its origins in case he says it's a Babygro with the bottom half cut off ('I was a very big baby'). Oscar is a playwright and actor, currently performing in an Internet sitcom at www.salmondays.tv. He used to be the drunk Glaswegian waiter, but is now playing an installation artist, which, I think, represents a promotion of some kind. Oscar and I are thinking of going into business together. We plan to make our fortunes with a stable of anti-lifestyle magazines. Oscar, we've decided, will edit Just Seventeen (Stone), which will be full of useful tips not only on how to gain weight, but how to keep it on — it's as much about changing your eating habits as anything; always butter your Bounty bars — while I will take charge of Hell Decoration, with its useful advice on where to source woodchip wallpaper, and its special features on where to hide when the bailiffs call because of the video you took out from Blockbusters in 1973 and couldn't be arsed to take back. A quick tip? Don't go behind the sofa because it's one of the first things they'll take, so where will that leave you? Apart from squashed against the skirting board and looking like a right idiot, that is. We are looking for somewhere to have our editorial meetings. Sketch is certainly under consideration, but only if they can reassure us that they are shortly going to
Artex all the absurdly domed ceilings and get MFI in to revamp the toilets. Probably, we'll settle for Nandos in the end.
Anyway, our waiter turns out to be astonishingly adorable, not pompous at all. He is French via Laos. I ask if there is a dress code here. He says, Won. If you want to eat in your pants, we serve you in your pants.' Oscar, thankfully, has no wish to eat in his pants. Probably, he's had his pants since he was three, and they've got Action Man all over them, and he'll hoik them up just to prove his point. We are brought the menus — unnecessarily gimmicky, leather-bound sketch books with bits of paper sticking out — and some top-class nibbles: caramelised nuts, a cuttlefish dip, silver spoons with teeny tastes of foie gras on them, cinnamon sticks, and even sweet, immensely tasty cheese-on-toast things, which must be the three-starred French take on the Welsh national dish. (Can they actually cook anything else in Wales? What happens at ambassadorial receptions? 'Quick, the Italian cultural attaché is coming, put the grill on!') Our waiter talks us through everything, not patronisingly but with real delight in what he is serving.
Time to order. OK, you could go for the a la carte, which, with wine, would probably work out at about £200 a head, but there is also a 'casual' lunch menu for £48 a head which, in the end, we opt for, mostly because I don't want to overspend and get into trouble with Boris, who I wish to keep sweet, as I have him in mind for penning a beauty column in one of our other planned publications, So Not In Style It Would Be Funny If It Wasn't So Sad. I accept that £48 isn't cheap, but it isn't la-la land, either. And for this you get a starter in four parts: seared scallops on a pumpkin veloute, daube of beef, sashimi of tuna in black-olive jelly, red mullet on toast. Everything is wonderful. Take the daube of beef, which comes with a crisp savoury biscuit on top, and the rich, intensely flavoured stew beneath. Staggering. Next, it's a choice of two mains, I go for the monkfish on a smoked tea bisque, while Oscar goes for the Bresse chicken, which comes in a light curry sauce. 'It fair melts in the mouth,' says Oscar happily. Truly, it may be the best food I've ever had. It's all seriously impressive, technically perfect, hugely recommended, worth every penny.
Oscar and I enjoy our lunch. We are never made to feel uncomfortable or not glamorous enough. Our final bill, including wine, comes to £150, which isn't that much. I pass a Big Issue seller on my way home. `Big Issue?' he asks. 'Bless you,' I say. I think it must be all that standing about in the cold, Don't these people have homes to go to?
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