I was reading the other day about how the London restaurant scene has blossomed in the past 30 years – how great everything is now, how crap everything was then – and I thought to myself: wouldn’t it be fun to do a comparative review between a top-notch restaurant from 2008 and one from 1978?

All one would need is a time machine. Which of course I don’t have. And if I did, I would soooo not waste it on restaurants. Not when there’s Helen of Troy to be goosed, Cleopatra’s back to be scrubbed in that bath of ass’s milk and the story about Catherine the Great and her horse to be verified…

But then I remembered about Oslo Court, the restaurant beneath a block of flats in St John’s Wood. It is famously unchanged since the Seventies and is always, always rammed full. This, I thought, would do as well as anywhere to stand for 1978, pending the development of time travel. To stand for 2008, I hit randomly on Tom Aikens. Mr Aikens was one of two chaps in London given a special sort of one-and-a-half stars mark from Michelin this year, and I hadn’t been back to his flagship joint since it opened five years ago.

2008 When I phone to book, they can only offer me a 7.15pm table, and want a credit card number to secure the booking.

1978 When I phone to book, they say they will do their best to squeeze me in at my desired time of 8.15. They do not ask for a credit card number. This is 1978, so nobody has a credit card. Apart from maybe John Travolta.

2008 The colour scheme is black and grey. Sleek but charmless. Black clothes on the staff. Dark wooden screens over the windows. Very low lighting. Designed, perhaps, by the Wicked Witch of the West.

1978 The colour scheme is… pink! Pink everything: tablecloths, napkins, walls, curtains, carpet, everything. Designed, no doubt, by Glinda, Good Witch of the South. The staff wear bow-ties. Bless.

2008 Before even seeing a menu we are brought three spoons containing some sort of chicken and parsley jelly, a scrambled egg thing and a jabugo thing, as well as a flat, thin thing rolled into a cigar that tastes of red pepper, and two glasses of foamy slime, one green and wheatgrassy, the other tasting faintly of crab.

1978 Before even seeing a menu I have a Campari and soda at the bar. My guest has a glass of Piesporter and is surprised at how nearly OK it is. There are crudités.

2008 The punters are thin on the ground when we arrive, being Londoners prepared to eat at this preposterously early hour. The coveted 8pm-9pm tables are eventually filled by large groups of out-of-towners who booked months ago. The men wear untucked, short-sleeved shirts and shiny, big-buckled, square-toed shoes; the women have big dyed hair and wear perfume made from marmalade.

1978 The punters are elderly locals eating at the same time and at the same table as they always do. The men wear suits and ties, the women have big hair again, though less of it, and wear perfume made from Edwardian wardrobes.

2008 The menu offers a set menu called “Classic Tom Aikens”, which costs £100 and contains, among other things, roasted scallops with poached grapes and Pernod, braised pig’s head with stuffed trotter and confit turnip and mango ravioli. We go à la carte.

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