Even when the icy grip of this recession has been at its iciest, The Times has been a mensch about my expenses. Not a word has been said at their end about belt-tightening in these difficult times and so, in a reciprocal demonstration of maturity and self-restraint, I have unilaterally reined in my expenses claims. Since late last year, venerable brandy, cigars and dancing girls have not appeared on the bills I have filed. There have been no famous wines from notable years in multiples of more than four, nor has there been a single unreviewed all-day banquet at the Gavroche, forwarded to the accounts department as “background material”.

This minor straitening has been a goodwill gesture on my part, however, and I think both sides know well that if I do choose to make merry with a bottle of Cheval Blanc and a bowl of wok-flashed orang-utan toes in dolphin sauce, the ledger can always be balanced with the firing of a designer. Or, if the claret is an ’82, perhaps a night editor. But it’s all very gentlemanly.

Nonetheless, I’ve got to tell you, when I entertained a table of four at Mayfair’s new Dolada last week, and one of my guests chose the scampi starter at £28, I was glad as hell she was my boss’s wife.

“Twenty-eight pounds, sterling?!!!” I could just imagine my editor bellowing at me down the phone like J. Jonah Jameson, Peter Parker’s terrifying boss at the Daily Bugle in Spider-Man, as he held my monthly expenses invoice in his quivering hand. “For scampi?”

“B-b-b-b-b-but, boss,” I could hear myself stammering back. “It wasn’t just any old scampi. It was scampi ‘carpaccio’.”

“I don’t care if it was scampi deep-fried in a basket woven from the hair of the last mermaid in Waikiki!” I could well imagine him fuming. “The Times does not pay anybody 28 English pounds for a plate of scampi! You’re fired, Coren! You hear me? Fired! Fired! Fired!”

But that was never going to happen, because on this occasion my editor was sitting opposite me at Dolada, with his wife, Amanda (and my girlfriend, Esther), when the waiter brought the menu to our table, complete with prices. Staggering prices. Prices to make Roman Abramovich slap his hand to his forehead, stagger backwards and sell Michael Ballack to a glue factory.

We’d been having a good time until then. Esther and I got there a bit early (we always do) and were served Camparis and soda by an elegant, genial maître d’ at an elegant, genial bar at the front end of a long, Campari-and-soda-coloured dining room that was a little dishearteningly underfilled for 8.30 on a Friday night.

But the atmosphere soon warmed up with the good old laugh we had at the menu. Tortellini in brodo – £18. EIGHTEEN POUNDS! for a clear broth with a handful of small dumplings in it. It was an okay little soup; £7 would have been fine. At Locanda Locatelli, the best and, I had thought, the most expensive Italian kitchen in London, you pay £11 – and there the consommé is clearer, the tortellini lighter and cleaner. (I mentioned the bank-busting brodo to my friend Roberto, maître d’ at Locanda, when I bumped into him at a party a few days later, and he said, “Eighteen pounds? What do they put in it, gold?”)

A single raviolo of aubergine with a scattering of chopped, skinned, rather wan tomato – described by the aforementioned boss as “boring” – came in, again, at EIGHTEEN POUNDS!!

My “new spaghetti carbonara”, “new” in the sense that the components – a coil of pasta, a pile of bacon, some grated parmesan, a raw egg – came separately for me to compile myself, was (have a guess) EIGHTEEN POUNDS! I’ll admit, it was delicious, and I’d have gladly paid, say, £11 for it. But £18 is just ridiculous, the deconstructed nature of it only underpinning the ridiculousness, as you fork out a £20 note (inc serv) for one egg, one rasher of bacon, a small piece of cheese and 50 grams of pasta. I’m not even getting the spadework of the kitchen boy who would have stirred it together for my money, and I’ll wager I charge more for my labour than he would have done.

And then there was Amanda’s “scampi carpaccio with violet caviar”. She shied away from it at first, but I insisted. Here, now, with the boss in vision, was my only chance of ordering something so stupidly overpriced. When I asked what violet caviar was, the waiter started off on one of those speeches which you know is never going to get past the old no-two-countries-can-ever-agree-on-what-fish-is-called-what-or-how-to-translate-it barrier.

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