Last night I had a truly awful experience in a truly terrific restaurant. And when I say “awful”, I mean that it was typical of the small-minded, brutal, ignorant, greedy, snobbish, ugly, filthy quagmire of moral excrement which is, on occasion, the London top-end restaurant scene. It was a night that exemplified everything which you, the people, the demos, hoi polloi, the rock and wellspring of all that is great about our nation, worry might happen to you when you go to a flashy new restaurant and encounter them, the oligarchs, the parasites, the pampered plutocrats, the crapulent kakistocracy that tramples on the decent, the modest, the good and the kind, the right and the proper, to satisfy its greed, its vanity, its vulgar, cupiditous, misplaced sense of superiority. And when I say “terrific”, I mean that when the food finally arrived at my table - by which time my evening had already been ruined - it was about as good as one could hope to be served in a restaurant.
I was always planning to go to Roka pretty soon after it opened. Everyone knew that Rainer Becker, the chef proprietor at Zuma in Knightsbridge, the big opening of 2002, had been planning a second project right from the start, and that it would be very much like Zuma, and would thus serve brilliant modern Japanese cooking to horrendous worldtrash people (it is not fair always to blame Europe), so that while eating the finest raw fish and little robata-grilled delicacies you would find yourself vibrating deep inside to the sickening throb of Ferraris pulling up and parking on the pavement. There would be a roiling, bubbling, babbling Babel of those languages that are spoken only in the most severely moneyed little principalities and fiefdoms of the world, and you would be subjected to a level of service directly correlated to how much money the particular staff member thinks you have in your wallet, in your bedroom safe, in your numbered accounts at banks in countries where sex with children and trafficking in Nazi gold are not only accepted, but are conditions of habitation. It is one of those restaurants - like Nobu, Hakkasan, Pétrus, Zafferano, Le Caprice - of which one generally says, “Great food, shit people”. Well, one does.
The restaurant critic I most admire in all the world loved Roka. But she went to a “soft” opening and asked the waiter to “devise a meal of what he thought were the most interesting dishes”. The upshot was that the chef “rose to the challenge magnificently” and she gave him four stars. It sounds like she had a lovely evening but it reveals nothing at all, I am afraid, about what it is to go as an unknown punter.
So I’ll tell you. I strolled down jolly old Charlotte Street with its ageless palimpsest f great, average and terrible restaurants, and as I crossed towards Roka, I saw a man in a dark suit standing in front of the door with his hands clasped in front of his genitals. “Oh darling, I’m sorry,” I muttered to my girlfriend. “I have a feeling this place might turn out to be horrible.”
Sure enough, the man in the suit looked me up and down. Head to toe. Evening ruined. I said, “Good evening.” At this point, had he merely said, “Good evening, sir,” and opened the door for me, I might have been prepared to forget the up-and-down thing. But he said: “Are you here for the restaurant?” Rather than make a smartarse remark, which would have come out wrong as I was already pretty irritated, said: “Yes.” And what do you think he said?
He said, “Sorry, the restaurant is completely full. Reservations only.”
So I stabbed him in the eye, cut out his heart while he was still breathing and posted it to his mother. And then I said: “How do you know I haven’t got a reservation?” Eventually, sick to my stomach, I was allowed through to the front desk. I took in the large, airy, All Bar One-style room and gave them the daft name I had used to book the table. I was told to go down to the bar and wait to be called. Fair enough. It was 8.50 and my booking was for nine. I always arrive ten minutes before my booking because it gives them time to prepare the table.
The bar itself is a dimly lit subterranean room full of decorative barrels. It looks like the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disneyworld, except that these particular bloodthirsty losers from around the world were wearing sunglasses on their heads instead of eye-patches. And it was more a case of “yo ho ho and a rose petal martini” than a bottle of rum. Oh, and they wouldn’t give us our rose petal martinis until we had handed over a credit card for security. Classy.
At 21.15 I went up to ask if my table was ready and was told that it was being cleaned and prepared (although not, as it turned out, for me). When I tried to return to the bar, however, the doorman barred my way and told me, “Sorry, the bar’s full.” I told him my girlfriend was down there, and my credit card, and my rose petal martini. Still he barred my way. So I barged past and went downstairs. Steaming. At 21.30 nobody had come to get us, we’d had two cocktails already and had started a bottle of wine (what else do you do in a bar for three quarters of an hour?) and I was tense, a bit squiffy, and no longer hungry.
I went upstairs and shouted. They seated us, finally, just before ten. At the bloody noodle bar round the grill (boiling hot, sweaty) on stools, next to each other. Just rubbish. I grumbled to the 25-year-old Italian banker sitting next to me, him with the orange skin and the baseball cap on backwards and the snakeskin shoes. Oh, he said, they hadn’t had to wait, they’d just walked in. No reservations needed for the noodle bar.
Imagine my delight. I broke things. I screamed like Violet Elizabeth Bott. They gave us a table. And then it took 20 minutes to get my bottle of wine brought up from the bar. And then I asked for my credit card back now that I was seated where they could keep an eye on me in case I tried to do a runner. And the maître d’ went and got it and he handed it to me saying, “Your card, Mr…” and he looked down for the name. And he looked up at me. And down at the card. And then he said, “Good evening, Mr Coren.”
Thereafter, I had the experience I had read about in the review by my favourite critic. The service became incredibly efficient. Instead of no attention at all, I had three waiters to myself. Everyone was incredibly polite and solicitous. The food was brilliant: fresh, excitingly prepared, imaginatively presented and not at all overpriced. But I’m buggered if I’m going to tell you about it. Because you might think the place sounds worth a trip, despite everything, and give it a try. And they might insult you, too.
Food: 9
My evening: 0
Score: 4.5
Nobu
19 Old Park Lane, W1 (020-7447 4747)
Great fish, wonderful cooking, horrendous punters. I always get stuck in a window box and waited on by the trainee, but the prices are good for a laugh.
J. Sheekey
28 St Martin’s Court, WC2 (020-7240 2565)
Fantastic fish restaurant. I always arrive unannounced at 6pm and eat at the bar, because if you book they just sit you in the toilet in case Stephen Fry or Mariella Frostrup come in and want a table.
