Swanky affair: the Mount St. dining room
(Picture: Daniel Hambury/Stella Pictures Ltd)Even as the cost-of-living crisis deepens — even as market volatility gave us a Prime Minister outlasted by lettuce and another age of austerity beckons — new luxury restaurants continue to emerge. Miro is still gleefully offering 14 quid caviar “bumps” and £195 wagyu steaks. Blingy Essex institution Sheesh is coming to Mayfair soon. And then there is Richard Caring’s Bacchanalia: a place that, tittering behind its hand like a schoolboy who has crudely chalked a penis on someone’s blazer, recently put out a job ad for an in-house grape-feeder.
This isn’t all that surprising. But the question of how to cover these sorts of openings — and, beyond that, how to square that coverage with the fact that exceptional cooking should be adequately priced, and food businesses are locked in their own fight for survival in ruinously costly premises — has been something of a gnawing private dilemma. So let me just say that the obvious ridiculousness of many of these spendier restaurants, the ease with which they can be basically ignored, has been quite helpful.
