Mercy me: the restaurant is too pretentious for words, but you’re determined to enjoy the evening. You won’t, of course, be indulging the worst vices: hailing or clicking at waiters, using your phone at the table, or even mentioning that execrable word ‘Tripadvisor’. But here are some other ways to survive those long hours in irrepressibly – and undeservedly – smug surroundings:
1- If the waiter’s opening greeting is ‘do you know how the restaurant works?’, you’ve got to act quickly and decisively. The two options: either whip pencil cases out (the place is BYO), whap pens and paper out on the table, and start scribbling out the byzantine rules that follow, making sure to show your working; or stand up (for the simple things in life) and leave at pace.
2- After the open hospitability of the starter course (which may be absurdly dubbed the entrée!), things are going to get very real very quickly. All sorts of moreish foodstuffs around you will suddenly start to disappear. Guard what counts: defend the bread. Huge skill and cunning will be required to keep this humble staple on the table for the main business of the evening. Give no quarter.
3- No, your hazy sump of GCSE French isn’t going to carry you through this pompfest of a menu, ’mafraid, so come prepared. Use a full-sized Collins dictionary as a booster seat throughout the meal, hauling it out-n-up when appropriate. Any good restaurant will warmly welcome a bevy of corrigenda.
4- If, despite all best efforts, you’ve ordered something that in every conceivable category is the opposite of what you’d hoped for, you’ve got to fight on. Stomach a few polite mouthfuls and then begin the long, Grand-Designs-inspired process of reworking, compacting and hiding the rest of the inedible meal. Use a slab of bread as a cover, deploying salad leaves as camouflage. Remember, you’re British: do not raise the issue.
5- As pretention whirls around you, bring things back down to earth. Feel free to deploy these phrases, and with the most earnest expression: ‘the ones that look like little bow-ties’; ‘can chef do the grouse with nik naks?’; ‘come on, what does the D actually stands for in ‘maître d’?’; ‘holy moly: who on earth ordered the ‘gratuity’?!’.
6- There’s certainly going to be a surfeit of wine options. But you haven’t the time – nor, on occasion, the energy – to weigh up the merits of a cabbage-spiced Tokay against a grass-barrelled Macon. Turn to the house list, dismiss the cheapest (too obvious), dodge the second (actually the worst wine, which they really want to shift) and order a couple of bottles of the third. Then ensure that they don’t keep performing extraordinary rendition on each bottle by whisking it off to a dark corner between sub-niggardly glass-splashes.
7 – Ah, you’ve seriously misjudged the patently ridiculous dress code. Easily done. Take direct action: roll up your left trouser leg to mid-thigh height (ladies, hitch dress as appropriate); roll up left sleeve to mid-bicep height; place the salt shaker in left sock and dust the exposed elbow liberally with pepper. If any judgmental stares come your way, mouth back ‘pois chiche chic’.
8 – If the sommelier recommends a rose wine, control your rage. Deflect anger by enquiring earnestly for something far less perverse: ask for a ‘Man’s Rose’ – one house red, one house white, mixed à la table by the good man himself. If he scoffs at this, raise the game: ask what vintages of Vimto the cellar can turn up. Be sure to gush luvvily about the bumper blackcurrant crop of ’87.
9 – Warning: are you finding one of your hands gesturing with baroque grandeur throughout the meal? Check at once whether you are eating with only a fork. If so, make necessary reparations: pick up the knife with the free hand, invert the wrist, perform a ‘butter-spike’, and spend the rest of the meal hoisting that knob in the air, like Liberty slowly deliquescing.
10 – When the sommelier eventually does bring over a bottle, and unscrews the top with great ceremony, you know there is only one sensible response to the question ‘Would Sir like to taste?’ It takes a cork to cork, m’lad.
11 – If you’re stuck with one of those waiters who believes they can take a 25-part order without notes, push that memory to its limits. Tell him that, owing to a polite tradition, you’d each like to place the order for the person to your right; before the first course appears, swap places with the person to your left. Profess outrage when the inevitable questions come tumbling forth.
12 – As the ludicrously showy – and designedly overhearable – phrases from surrounding tables assault your ears, start to pepper your chat with some seriously spicy morsels. Raise your voice and try ‘no, you’re right: bigamy isn’t what it used to be; in fact, neither is bestiality’; or, with a bang of the table, ‘if I’d have known the inheritance tax was going to be so aggressive, I’d never have agreed to the murder!’ The rest of the meal should pass undisturbed.
13 – If you’re dealing with over-zealous waiting staff, who can’t but indulge their linen origami habit when you leave your napkin unguarded, leave a surprise in wait. By ‘surprise’ I mean, of course, a full-length Cumberland. You know what to do if they disturb or remove it without consultation: go spare.
14 – Bill-splitter-coordinator: know thyself. Either have all pay equally per head; or create a no-questions-asked, loser-stakes-all table game. I recommend double-handed-thumb wars, for which you really must bring the requisite number of sweatbands (2 x total wrists attending meal + 1 communal headband).
15 – Finally, if you’re asked out of the blue whether you’d like to see the specials board, don’t go along with such a misanthropic suggestion: would you want to see The Jam jaded or The Clash upset?
