There is a feeling in some quarters that a dose of recession might be just what the London restaurant scene needs. The gastro-economy has become bloated with vulgar cash it has done nothing to deserve, goes the argument, and is in need of a purge.

Those hungering for the apocalypse see restaurant prices going up without any corresponding rise in the standard of cooking and service, and they blame it on undiscerning punters for whom money is easily earned and easily spent: these hedge-bank fundament people about whom one hears so much, football players and their WOGs, other non-descript orange people vaguely familiar from the party pages of the weekend supplements, Russian minigarchs…

They see a lazy, offhand, snide, rather European sort of surliness creeping into the attitude of some serving staff – staff who were once so hospitable, so grateful, so pleased to see you – and at the same time they see tables of young men screaming for more Krug in a thousand languages and having the time of their lives, and they feel left out, forgotten, wronged. And so they long for the great wind of economic depression to blow through this land. For the faraway ripple of the US sub-prime mortgage crisis to grow into a righteous tsunami and blast away this complacency with the violence of its fiscal wrath (“Come, friendly credit crunch, and fall on Nobu…”).

Just as the Black Death thinned out the dead wood of the Middle Ages and ushered in the Renaissance, the argument continues, or a fire destroys a forest only to allow a mightier one to grow in its place, so the forced withdrawal of this fools’ gold by global financial meltdown will force restaurants to look into themselves and ask what they are truly for, force them once again to provide value and excellence as they did in the old days, when people knew the value of money and Russia’s energy resources were still owned by the state.

Some of this thinking is motivated by nostalgia. Some of it by a true hankering after value and good service. Mostly, though, it’s just xenophobia and snobbery, and I try not to fall for it.

But I did have a rotten time the other night at the sub-Nobu, pan-Asian Sumosan in Mayfair, which I reviewed very favourably in 2004 but which is now thoroughly spoiled, even though it is more crammed than ever with the punters pilloried in the second paragraph. The staff gave me a crappy time-slot and warned me that the table would be turned. They looked me up and down to check my sense-to-money ratio and then whacked my party into a small table round a corner against the wall. When I asked if a friend might join us later for a drink, the seating girl hawked up a phlegmy “No, there’s no room”, and gobbed it in my eye. And then the table next to us remained empty all night.

I asked for a jug of tap water and was told sternly: “We don’t have jugs.” I said I’d have two glasses instead, but had to ask three times before they eventually came. I tried to order a plain house sake for about £15. The simpering sommelier simply wouldn’t hear of it. “You really should try our premium sake,” he said, indicating first a bottle priced at £900, then £600, then £300. I nearly buckled. “Will it be warm?” I asked. He said not. He said all the premium sakes were served cold. I said I wanted warm sake, even if it cost only £15. He curled his lip and said: “Nobody drinks warm sake any more.”

When a waiter finally arrived I ordered sushi. Every single thing I asked for was met with, “That is a very small portion, you should have two”, until my order soared above £150. Then he said: “Don’t you want any appetisers?”

Appetisers? Before sushi? I said not. The man practically wept. And when the sushi was gone he simply refused to accept that I didn’t want a raft of hot dishes made from the arses of larks and priced in barrels of oil because mere currency could not convey their worth.

Meanwhile, on other tables, people were having a ball, with glamorous girl waiters attending to their every whim (you have to spend, spend, spend to get served by a girl here – it’s not far off a lap dancing club, but with fresher fish). And when they wanted something else they were clicking their fingers. Actually clicking. One swollen gimp of a post-Communist corporate rapist actually clapped his hands for service. Initially I thought he was applauding his jewel-hobbled stick of a girlfriend for going without crack for a week but, no, he was summoning gratification, like some pre-medieval Caliph, with a sharp double clap of his fat paws. In my damn city.

I hope they all die.

The good news is that Tom Ilic, cheeky Serbian whiz with the inner organs of beasts and fowls (I reviewed his rooster bollock vol-au-vents at Bonds in the City and hailed his unmatchable chopped gonads at Addendum) finally has his own place and is serving unpretentious but undoubtedly top-end scoff for prices that take you back to the days when, um… unpretentious but undoubtedly top-end scoff cost less than it does now.

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