Why would anyone want to be the member of a club? I don’t mean Friends of War Memorials, the Fancy Goldfish Appreciation Society, the Royal Geographical Society or Alcoholics Anonymous (only one of which I’m not a member of), but those clubs whose definition and sole purpose is to keep them out: the smelly, leering, stupid, embarrassing, bovine, gummy-toed, claggy-toothed, flop-bellied them.

All my life, I have instinctively known that I’m a them. When clubbable, mottle-nosed men drop a conspiratorial octave and say “Well, of course, I don’t mean people like us”, I metaphorically pull down the shutters and pack a small bag, because I know, sure as blackballs are blackballs, that they do mean me. Even now, when my name is on the clipboard at the door, I know it’s not really me they’re waving through — it’s this column. When the time comes for the us and the them to be separated, you’ll find me with the goats. (And if you sense a perverse hint of pride in this collar-up, nose-against-the-window existentialism, you are probably right.)

But I still don’t understand why anyone would want to be a member of a club, with its implicit admission of snobbery, insecurity, loneliness and desperate social ineptitude. The reason for old gents’ clubs — as grown-up common rooms for unmarried men who lodged in the City and couldn’t cook for themselves — no longer pertains. Now, they are desperate mausoleums, smelling of sprouts, Anusol and denture breath, where bald, fat men with ugly bodies and good tailors talk about sex in the past tense, but can’t stand having a woman in the building unless she is carrying a tray. Who in all the world could imagine that this is a step up in a cultured existence?

Yet every other restaurant I’m told about these days says it is going to be a club, or have some sort of socially tiered entry system. This is diametrically opposed to the reason for, and principles of, restaurants. They are, by intent and custom, democratic; a restaurant is actually one of the practical symbols of free speech, free association and adult suffrage.

I was reminded of all this a couple of weeks ago, when I went to dinner at the Groucho Club, in Soho, for the reissue of Fergus Henderson’s classic food book Nose to Tail Eating and Anthony Bourdain’s recipes from his estimable New York restaurant, Les Halles. Both authors spoke amusingly and warmly, then invited questions.

Their audience were all Groucho members, and a lot were utter members: inexcusably rude, leakingly soused, loud, furious and pompous. Here were two men whose lives have been devoted to public hospitality and the imparting of goodness and joy, being roundly unwelcomed by people who had chosen to turn away strangers at the door.

I looked at the audience and thought: how come it is always these people, or their fathers, grandfathers, cousins and batty aunts, who find their way into clubs? Then it came to me in a flash — of course, clubs are really bore traps. Clubs are started and initially patronised by exciting, famous, talented, attractive people who want to escape the attentions of mouth-breathers, lapel-pokers and poisoned-compliment-mongers. But they always creep in anyway, like damp and mould, until they form a critical mass. Then the interesting, lively, attractive folk sidle off — because they’ve got things to be and people to do, and they can’t get to the bar any more. And the vile bores are left, like eels in a storm drain. The postmodern point of the Groucho and its siblings is to keep undesirables out of restaurants and bars where interesting people go.

Thankfully, none of them was out the night we went to Refuel, at the Soho Hotel, just up Dean Street. “My God,” said Jeremy Clarkson (for I was feeding him), “I parked my car (voice drops a gear) on this very table. It used to be a car park. There was a man in a box over there who sold drugs.” (Before any of you phone to ask, there isn’t any more.)

The hotel is attractive and has risen nicely out of its old concrete past. The bar and restaurant are arranged on the ground floor, where the large window looks out at the entrance. Unfortunately, taxi headlights point in straight at the table, making it like eating in Colditz, as well as providing a passing insight into the final moments of most hedgehogs.

Even so, we all liked the hotel a lot, and thought that, if we were still of an age, appetite and stamina when a hotel room less than a mile from your own bed was a reason for heart-racing, wink-heavy anticipation, we’d all be in like Flynn. But we probably wouldn’t eat first.

The restaurant has a good mix of tables, separated but not divorced from the bar, and exudes an excitable, attractive atmosphere. But then they go and give you the menu, which is both a litany and tediously trendy — a Woolworths Christmas selection of last year’s gastro hits. At the same time, it has all been spiked with ingredients or wacky couplings that make each dish particularly unattractive, like a ginger-haired man with halitosis.

I had saffron linguine with rope-grown Cornish mussels. The pasta was cooked to a pulp and the mussels were anorexic. On the whole, I’d rather have tried the rope. Seared blue-fin tuna “Toro” steak (what do the inverted commas mean: they only say it’s Toro? Sources close to the fisherman say it was Toro?) came with aubergine relish, spinach salad and a plum dressing that the waiter said was “tarty”. I think he meant tart, but who knows? Anyway, it was cold. All of it. On purpose.

There were six of us at dinner, varying in gastronomic sensitivity from the sandpaper gob of Clarkson to the silky sensitivity of the Blonde’s bouche. Christa D’Souza thought her halibut with glazed salsify, rocket and cabernet sauvignon vinaigrette tasted of toilet, which I guess was some way from the palate-titillating effect the chef was aiming for. None of us found much to enjoy. It wasn’t bad enough to refuse to eat or pay for, but it wasn’t good enough to entice us back.

It’s a shame, because although the service is a bit glitchy, the room is great and the technical ability of the kitchen undeniable. It’s really just a crap menu. It needs a rethink and a point of view and something interesting to talk about. It needs a club, like the Groucho — in the baby-seal sense.

Mon-Sat, 7am-11am, noon-3pm and 6pm-11pm; Sun, 8am-3pm and 5pm-10.30pm

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