I got into a spot of bother the other day when I asked some random flopsy out on a date and then realised I was meant to be meeting my mate Jez the same night for a mammoth, see-who-falls-down-last session, ideally incorporating something to line the stomach with first. Jeez, and I’m supposed to be nearly 40.

But if I’ve learnt anything in my 39 years, certainly in my ten as a restaurant critic, it’s that when you tell some floozy that you’ll take her out for a posh dinner in Chelsea (in this case, at a new restaurant called Jimmy’s), and then cancel at the last minute, and she comes on all disappointed, the thing she is disappointed about is that she is not getting the free scoff.

So what I did was I phoned this doris, who’s actually a bit of a journalist herself (although very junior – don’t go thinking I’m asking Melanie Phillips out on dates or anything, or Janet Daley), and I said: “I’m sorry, dollface, I can’t do tonight, I’ve got to go out and get shrinered with Jez,” and then, as she drew breath to sigh, I said, “so why don’t you take some of your little chums to Jimmy’s, swipe a menu for me, write down a couple of thoughts on it and I'll pick up the tab. I’ll take Jez to the Botanist in Sloane Square, just the other end of the Kings Road from you, we’ll compare notes later and I’ll do a parallel review of the two places – a sort of up and down the Kings Road sort of thing.”

And she went for it. So while she headed for a bright-sounding new restaurant with a 25-year-old chef up at World’s End, I sauntered off to the posh end of the road to what used to be the Royal Court Tavern, a stinky old man’s pub also popular with Sloanes and – if I recall my days at Westminster correctly – the thicker, richer, more Eurotrashy contingent of London’s smartest school.

Well, it’s not smelly any more. But the Sloanes are still there in their thousands – girls in Alice bands, I kid you not, guys in pale jeans with sunglasses on their heads, spilling on to the street, drinking, yelping, smoking in that special Sloaney way where you tilt your head upwards and exhale with your bottom lip sticking out as if aiming for the dormitory air vent – and so are the Westminster boys, acting as if they own the place, which two of them do.

For this is the latest venture from Tom and Ed Martin (all Westminster boys are called Tom or Ed, it’s why nobody believes I went there) who have had great success in the past with the Well in Clerkenwell and the Gun in Docklands, and have now brought their little empire west.

Jez and I had chosen the right place to get mullahed. For this is a loud, posh, rowdy, overspilling, slickly designed bar with a decent stomach-lining refectory attached. You’ll grasp how dominating is the noise and ram and hustle of the bar when I transcribe this short, shouted conversation with our waitress.

“Is the quail wild or farmed?”

“No.”

“So it’s farmed?”

“Chicory and bacon.”

“I’ll have it anyway.”

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