From the moment I walked into Divo, the plush new Ukrainian restaurant near Trafalgar Square, my plan was to love it. And if I didn’t love it, and couldn’t love it, then to write it up as if I loved it anyway, and leave you, my perspicacious and sharp-witted readers, to read my true meaning.

“The biggest, richest, most abundant curtains you will ever see,” I was going to write. “The thickest carpets. The biggest chairs. From the flat-screen televisions in rococo frames mounted at slightly wonky angles to the bottles of Cristal priced at a keen £600 and the waitresses dressed as Alpine airport sex shop souvenirs, everything about Divo says ‘class’.”

But I wasn’t sure if I could make it last a whole piece. For example, my starter of “Salo with croutons”, which is described on the menu as “sliced, cured lard with salt”, was one about which, from the moment it was set down before me, it was always going to be difficult to rhapsodise. But I will try.

I ordered the “salo” because I love the Italian delicacy called lardo di colonnata, which is the pale, magnolia-coloured fat of the pigs of the Apuane Alps sliced to the thinness of polythene and draped over hot, gossamer-light buns so that in warming it yields up the scent of the coriander, sage, rosemary, pepper and garlic with which it is cured (usually in marble tubs).

So imagine my delight when I discovered that the Ukrainian way is to slice the fat off a kilo of thick-cut Danepak and served it curled into giant bows it would take an industrial waste disposal unit to chew through before closing time. You get about a kilo of this stuff on your plate, which may look scary, but don’t worry, it doesn’t taste of anything, and the man has not been born west of Warsaw who could digest it. Best of all, it was only four quid. A bargain which brought the average cost of our two starters down to £162.

For my guest, you see, had the beluga caviar with pancakes, priced at a generous £320. Look, I take a chick to a Ukrainian joint, I try to make it sound more appealing by saying, “We’ll have caviar and champagne”, and when I get there I find that it’s 320 quid. What do you want me to do, order the £14 salmon caviar? You just can’t do that in a place as classy as Divo. And anyway I wanted to see what it would feel like ordering a three hundred quid starter.

The waitress in the red pinafore and lace bustier didn’t even blink when I loudly declared, “And for Tallulah, the beluga.” Not at the idea that I was ordering so screamingly expensive a thing, nor at the idea that I might know someone called Tallulah, nor at the lovely sound the sentence made.

“Is it enough for two?” I asked.

“Is come with two pancakes,” she said.

“But do people normally share it or do they have one each?” I insisted. I was straining, straining for an excuse to fork out £640 on starters alone.

“Is normally not share.”

“Well, how much do you get for £320?” I asked.

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