Germaine Greer has compiled a picture book in praise of adolescent boys. “Nearly ripe”, I’m told, is the term. She extols their spigotty, spurty, palely posing, pustular, hairless, gruff squeakiness. “Ooh, it were like rubber cosh wrapped in damp chamois.” Well, good for her. As a hobby, I’m sure it beats tapestry, or joining the neighbourhood watch.

I can say, without let, hindrance or contradiction, that Germaine Greer is the single most influential and memorable human being of the 20th century — principally, for making fabulously encompassing, brilliantly omnijudgmental, multi- Hoovering statements. She has earned her place in the son.

It has been pointed out, however, that it would be difficult for a man to write a companion tome. And fair enough, you might say, when every facet of popular culture, from advertising to movies, is already a sleazy paean to barely legal totty, produced by middle-aged men for middle-aged men. The last thing we need is a book in praise of girls, with their dappled, strappy gap years, their pinkly pointy buddings, their downy clefted, tightly folded, satin, slinky, sweet-scented, skinny bits, their wide-eyed insouciance and their romantic yearning for the firm, guiding embrace of a chap who is old enough to be their father (but doesn’t look it). We get enough of that at home. What makes me mildly jealous is that Greer is seen as a brave explorer, reclaiming virgin territory, whereas Gill would be just another virgin exploiter.

It’s an old French cliché that youth is wasted on the young. Well, it’s not. Only the young have the dumb resilience and naive cynicism to put up with youth, which is mostly a daily struggle to repel the attention of Greers of both sexes. There is a point after which sex with a partner who’s younger than your waist measurement is simply not nice. However, the French also say that there are consolations, compensations. You swap the squirm and slurp of the sofa for the luke-still pleasure of the concert hall and gallery. For while youth may not be wasted on the young, culture most certainly is. Culture is a closed shop. You have to be cultured to get culture, and to get cultured you need to have done culture. Sex may have passed to the Anglepoise generation, but culture belongs to me.

Except it doesn’t any more. I’m excluded from contemporary music, and contemporary art sighs “Whatever” when I ask what it means. Plays are now about people and situations that are vilely inexplicable. Fashion is “forget it”. And look at the Booker shortlist: was that fiction, or social services case files? All that’s left for me is the cosy, think-lite symphonia, a bit of dingy Chekhov, a postcards-you-have-loved compilation at the Royal Academy, and three pages of a Penguin Modern Classic before bed with Jeremy Paxman. Culture like Germaine’s dribbles over uncomprehending youths, whose attention spans last only as long as their erections (which, I’m led to believe, can take some of them through an entire Ring Cycle).

But there is one bit of the culture that remains the preserve of the cultured — food. If you ever see anyone under the age of 21 in a restaurant, either it’s their birthday, or they’re being interviewed for a job, or they’re on a date with Germaine Greer. The pleasures of the trencher grow with age. You could say that for the bored, the board replaces the bawd. Food is our thing, our solace, the platform for our wit, experience and what’s left of our flaccid flirtation.

So you can imagine my righteous indignation when I came across a restaurant that was run like a 17-year-old’s bedroom: Lola’s in Notting Hill Gate is an object lesson in why the young shouldn’t be allowed near catering. Children are fine; I love children in restaurants. But the moment they begin to slouch, roll their eyes and talk through their noses, they should be banned until they’ve had at least one divorce. Lola’s was so chronically adolescent that I ’m not even going to review it, save to mention my coq au vin, a plate that would have disgraced the first shared-digs dinner party given by an ugly sloane reading conflict resolution and meteorology at Durham. The turgid, amateur nastiness of the food was underlined by the slovenly, shuffling angst of the service. Some young, sex-sated and stupefied girl posing as a waitress occasionally idled by and asked if we wanted more wine — wine, in her experience, being the only reason for frequenting restaurants.

So I’m not going to review Lola’s. Instead I’m going to review the Ebury on Pimlico Road, which is a sort of King’s Road for people with mortgages and back problems. It’s full of antique shops and divorcées. This restaurant, I think, used to be a pub. It’s now two dining rooms: cheap and cheerless downstairs, chic and cheerless up. The first-floor room has ironic chandeliers and flames painted on one wall, as if they originally wanted to make it the Harley-Davidson cigar bar and bitch-swap club, then looked out of the window and changed their minds. I took Maurice, my dear old friend, and Jo, from Bali. Maurice fell upon the squash soup and volubly declared it the most opulent heaven. But then, he is a pushover for soup; anything warm and wet, he’ll suck till the plate squeaks.

Now, I haven’t been sick for a long, long time, but my kalamata olive risotto with baby squid and gremolata déjà-vued me straight back by DHL. It cleverly and precisely contrived the three Ts — taste, texture and temperature — of happy, youthful vomit. Just the right proportion of viscous bitter acidity. As you get old and more sophisticated, you’ll grow to understand that there is something worse than having the taste of your regurgitated dinner in your mouth. It’s having the taste of someone else’s regurgitated dinner with added squid in your mouth. Everything else paled into forgettability — oh, except the apple crumble. Wantonly, they replaced the crumble with warm, browned Alpen. Why would anyone want to do that? Service was from the JRR Tolkien school of butlering: everything was an interminable journey and a saga.

It’s £29 for three courses. For that, you could probably buy Germaine’s book, a rubber glove and a tin of custard. You see, in time, we learn that life is all about considered, grown-up choices. Which is why you’re reading a restaurant review on Sunday morning and not doing the dirty doggy with some mewling hardbody.

Lunch, Mon-Sun noon-3.30pm; dinner, Mon-Thur 6.30-10pm, Fri-Sat 6.30-10pm

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