The grand-a-head lunch

In yesterday’s Metro, their food critic Marina O’Loughlin (who I just *heart*) wrote about her underwhelming experience of dinner at Restaurant Gordon Ramsay which came in at a prolapse-inducing £460 for two. Well Marina I can top that – because yesterday I experienced the £1000-a-head lunch.

The restaurant was located in leafy Bloomsbury, which whilst pretty and historic is a million miles in terms of prestige from Royal Hospital Road. It had not a single Michelin star, or even AA rosette, to its name. It doesn’t feature in any guidebooks (well, maybe a couple of the dodgier ones) and it will certainly not be racking up any ‘World’s Best Restaurant’ awards any time soon or rather ever. To top it all off, it was self-service.

So what did my companion and I feast on for a grand apiece? Beluga caviar, foie gras, Bresse chicken, white truffles? Did we quaff Petrus and Yquem? Er, no. For starters we had a cold collation of Scotch egg, egg mayonnaise, curried potato salad, cous cous terrine and mixed leaves. For our main course we had beef casserole and coq au vin with roast potatoes, carrots and broccoli. I did manage to shovel down four desserts – tiramisu, chocolate cake, fruit salad and profiteroles, all slathered in thick double cream - but given that this blow out was all washed down with water, and tap water at that, how on earth could a lunch so lowly come in at £2000 for two?

Well, the restaurant in question was in the Holiday Inn, where the company I work for had booked a suite of rooms, IT services and catering for an event that day – including lunch for four – but had had to cancel at short notice, incurring a 100% cancellation fee of, you’ve guessed it, a cool two grand. Of course we protested at this, but the Holiday Inn people were not to be moved although they did – I’m sure they thought helpfully – inform us that if we liked we could still have our lunch ‘as chef will have bought the food now’. Woo hoo! So cometh the hour, cometh the man and at 12.30 yesterday I took my best-buddy-at-work Annie down the road to the Holiday Inn and we sat down for our thousand pounds per person lunch. I can’t say it was the best meal of my life although it was far from awful; I can’t say it was the most memorable, because I’d forgotten it all by dinner – which amazingly I still ate despite the four puds. But it was, without a shadow of a doubt, and quite possibly forever more will be, the most expensive I have consumed, and will hold a special place in my heart for knowing that.

Marina, don’t feel ripped off by Gordon’s lacklustre menu prestige; compared to my £2K effort you got an absolute bargain!