So here’s the thing. We’re off to a restaurant, but it feels like we’re catching a plane. First, we have to check in, show proof of identification and receive passes that will get us to the gate. Then, we have to pass through security (beep) and have our bags checked. “Lift B,” says security, after he has tired of looking for drugs and bombs and eyebrow tweezers. Lift B is to be found miles away from escape routes 4 and 5, and nowhere near channels 8, 9 or 10, but we don’t know this yet.
We don’t know this because, after a long time spent wandering aimlessly around strange corridors and peculiar antechambers, we have found ourselves in a blue, oddly shaped room with lots of arrows pointing towards a brick wall, and a lift, whose buttons are to be found in a small, sharp metal recess. “Ow!” yelps my husband, showing me his finger, “Lift B bit me.”
But it isn’t Lift B. Lift B is actually around the corner, near Lifts A, C and D. When we reach the 24th floor, there are more arrows, but they are pointing to more brick walls. We look at the maps on the wall, but although they show Walkways 13 and 14, and Stairways E and G, and although they are all brightly colour-coded, we still have no idea where we are.
In the end, we see a strange purple light emanating from a doorway and find ourselves drawn towards it. The light is the kind that could deconstruct a hippopotamus on a molecular level. Luckily, none of us is looking at each other, because straight ahead is the Gherkin. “Look, the Gherkin,” I say, rushing over to the window, realising (too late) that, just as I am no longer keen on flying, I have also become very scared of heights.
It is only some time later, when sitting at our table, that I return to my senses. I am staring at a small silver boob. The small silver boob could be a tiny, shrunken mini-bell we need to ring to attract the waiter’s attention. Or it could be a tiny, shrunken mini-platter with its tiny, shrunken mini-lid still on. “Ta-da,” says my friend Naomi, lifting the lid in a tiny, shrunken mini-flourish to reveal a pat of butter. As my eyes adjust, I notice that the entire restaurant is full of things that are either disproportionately large or small. Things that are disproportionately small: ashtrays, sherry glasses, the waitress’s voice. Things that are disproportionately large: matches, trays, the sommelier’s bottom.
I realise everything has taken rather an odd proportional turn. We are in the old NatWest tower in the City, where the view is, arguably, one of the best London has to offer. The only problem is that, whereas the New York skyline can make you feel as if you have been slapped in the face, the London skyline has a tendency to scurry under your feet. Then there is the issue of the floor-to-ceiling windows, and the fact that, although this is the former NatWest tower, the place still seems to be entirely peopled with accountants and bank managers (short-sleeved stripy shirts and tiny faces). It is as if — blame it on the invisible currents produced by the vertigo, if you will — everyone in the restaurant is in a giant people bowl and a huge fish is about to peer in.
All of this is rather unnerving. But we order. As it is a Gary Rhodes restaurant, the menu is simple and British. It has little headings that say things such as Turkey, Mutton, Haddock. It feels Christmassy, and makes me want to put on a woolly hat, write my name with a sparkler and ask one of the assembled bank managers for an extension on my overdraft.
Naomi orders the seared scallops, shallot mustard sauce and mashed potatoes. Scallops are not my favourite, because of their uncanny gelatinous texture, but these are the best scallops I have ever eaten. Hughie has the partridge sausage, sweet thyme roast parsnips and sharp bramley apple sauce. The sausage feels oddly like a scallop, a sensation which, as I’ve mentioned, you don’t even want from a scallop. It melts in the mouth instead of having a rough, roll-around-the-hay sausage texture, and rather clings to the teeth. The apple sauce, on the other hand, conjures up visions of galloping off into season of mellow fruitfulness on a Thelwell pony called Billy.
Marcus has the artichoke bottom, chopped wild mushrooms, poached egg and hollandaise sauce. It is delicious, if veering towards gloopiness. And I have the braised oxtail cottage pie. It arrives looking like a little goblin house with a whipped-up mashed potato roof. It is very good, minus the tough crust cup it comes in, and the diced carrots — unfortunate.
We are so excited by our starters that we become quite discombobulated. We bounce up and down in our seats and clatter our knives and forks on the table. “We must have more wine,” we say overexcitedly. “Bring us the head of the sommelier on a tiny bosom platter.”
Then the main courses arrive. The effect reminds me of the time I went midnight sledging with my friend Tom. For the first two minutes, I laughed the joyful, liberated laugh of the undead. Then, after we had fallen off for the umpteenth time, Tom climbed awkwardly back onto the sledge and, in doing so, broke it into many pieces. We walked the rest of that seven-mile hill in silence. I did not speak to him for three days.
So, back to the main courses. Naomi calls her potato “a comedy dish”. Marcus chews and nods at his duck in silence. Hughie’s veal comes with more diced carrots. And my beef is fine — the meat itself is good, but the button mushrooms that come with it are reminiscent of the things people stick under table legs to stop them scratching the floor.
“Look,” says Naomi, whose birthday we are celebrating. “We had a jolly nice time, anyway.”
“Until we looked at the carpet,” says Hughie. We look at the carpet. “What is it?” I say, aghast. “It’s called turbo-cord,” Hughie says. “It’s cheap and hard-wearing.”
This seems, rather bleakly, to sum up our evening. It is a feeling that, luckily, the quiet, wet, midnight drive home, past the milky luminescence of St Paul’s and all the courts of gothic, gory justice do extremely well to dispel.
AA Gill is away
This week's star rating guide:
Adventures in wonderland
Eat me
Curiouser and curiouser
Pool of tears
Off with their heads
